IMPERFECT Lady

My Body and Mind are with Me.

I have been working on a book that has photographs of my quilts along with some writings and it feels like it is a completion to my Art Therapy. Sitting with each quilt and writing about what wisdom it imparted to me; a journey in fabric.

I now can see why folks write books, for it takes all the loose ends and ties them together, completing a section of your journey.  I am seriously thinking now, of doing a reading book...one that will encapsulate how it feels to wake up in abuse and walk with truth in order to be free.

It finally feels like I have picked apart and investigated many aspects of abuse and that I can leave it behind with full understanding...knowing it, will allow me to sidestep the same potholes in my future.

The greatest part of my journey wasn't the act of abuse, but how I developed and grew from there.  How my mind was completely changed to make me believe in an alternate reality, one where I lived for 40 years.

In my experience, healing from abuse is to work your way back to reality...where the truth fits in.

It feels like I am entering into a new phase, one that isn't so littered with fragments of an unexplored life.  The mountain of abuse has to be climbed, it isn't good enough to just glance its way and walk on.  I had to become intimate with abuse in order to rescue my self from it.

Abuse had infested each aspect of my life, for I was the common denominator and my mind was present in each of my life experiences, even when the truth was kept out. A confused mind recorded my history, "weaving the most plausible story"...as Dr. Jill Bolte writes.

Wrestling my life back from my mind and correcting its errors has been a thrilling terrifying ride.  

Martha Beck describes it this way. "I recall its horror and beauty, the enormity of all the things I have lost and the incalculable preciousness of the things I have gained.  I wouldn't give up the journey - not a moment of it.  On the other hand I have no desire to live it again."  

I agree with her 100%.  I have no desire to restart this process of rewiring my mind connecting it to reality...nor would I want to again go through the disconnection of so many relationships.

It truly is like killing one life and birthing another. Harder than death, for in death, you are just gone.  Now, I am gone from their lives, but alive.

I felt the death of my old life. I grieved for me...while resurrecting a me.

All that really died were lies....and what was born was truth.

But, the lies I had come to love.

And now I had to learn to love the truth...it took awhile for me to love the truth, for the first tastes of truth were seasoned with abuse.

Now, I am comfortable here.  

I love truth, and feel uncomfortable with lies and skirting around issues and pretend...or silence about the things that matter.

I even believe that my mind is happier, more at peace, relaxed and content...for it no longer has to manufacture an overlay to hide what I didn't want to know.

My body and mind are at ease, they agree.

My Spirit feels safe to be me...for it no longer has a conflicted perception of the world in front of it.

Where I am, my body and mind are with Me.

I began at zero.

The feelings of wanting to be rid of the stain from abuse, leads me to feel that with it I am not okay...that something is wrong, I am not whole or complete; that I am ruined.

Somehow we have taken abuse to be a huge negative about us, to who we are and how we are seen by others. Shame enters when we are no longer perfect or whole, when we somehow feel damaged.

We internalize this damage as now being part of who we are, and NOT something that happened to us.

Unlike sickness or even scars from accidents, the wounds from sexual abuse become a direct reflection upon who we are.  It slides into the soul and its dark energies invade our sense of self worth.

I am not sure if other abuses do the same thing, but sexual abuse is the one area that is littered with shame and self blame for being victimized.

We own the crime...because it changes who we are.

We are no longer the self we were prior, NOR can we return.

We are forced to live like this now.

It may be due to the damage to the psyche that sexual abuse seeps into who we are and not something that happened to us.

Once our psyche is damaged, we feel we are damaged.

Unlike a broken leg, the psyche is how we perceive the world.  And a broken psyche skews how we see the world now.

Abuse that comes from friendly fire if you will, causes the deepest wounds.

In order to maintain the family unit, you have to live with a damaged psyche but not show it. You have to "Honor thy Parents" and in order to do so, you bend or break your psyche to make it so.

The cost of living with a broken psyche is to keep the pain/abuse hidden and out of view. To remain friendly in an unfriendly zone.

The pain, fear and lack of trust is present, we just pretend it isn't so. We continue to try and perceive friendly parents.

 To live in a body that knows and a mind that is convinced it isn't so, is to live forward and backwards at the same time.

The damage to the body heals quickly, but the broken psyche will stay broken until you can see the truth of your abusive home.

It seems we are in the tightest of spots.  Lose a family or lose your mind.

What other disease or accident would require such a choice?

I do know that living in an abusive home and pretending it isn't so, completely messes with your psyche.  I am not sure if it matters, whether your mother hits you or your mother is an alcoholic, the results are the same.  You have to pretend that all is well with thee...that life is the facade that is given to the world and not the truth you have experienced.

Bending this truth into something it isn't, is the task each little child has to do, in order to honor thy mother and father...and in doing so they dishonor their own psyche.

I am sitting here today with my psyche unbent, but a family lays in ruin.  It was literally my sanity or them.  

Somehow we have it more honorable or more loving, more kind and pretty to save a parent and family, than we have to save your own mind.

The affects of abuse, the literal damage to my vagina healed within days/weeks of the event.  The damage to my psyche went untreated and actually was exacerbated each time my mother treated Ray Huhta like a loving father and husband.

Perhaps our biggest shame is that we can't, no matter how we try, fix our psyche to match kind illusion that so many adults in our world see.

"Do you see what I see?"  

I know that what caused the damage to me, it wasn't the act itself, but the way I had to perceive it...in order to keep a 'loving' family alive.

At 46 years of age, I discovered my broken mind...and it changed my loving family into a broken one.

It has taken 7 years and counting to unbend my broken psyche...and each time it straightened out, my family broke even more.

The contorting you have to do in your mind to change a pedophile into a father, is what a child's mind is forced to do...in order to keep a mother's dream alive...and a father's sickness from being known in the world. 

I can't begin to begin to begin, to pick up that wreckage and create a loving family.

I also believe that I have a inner knowing of what a broken psyche looks like, talks like and walks like.  I know mental illness now...and in a dysfunctional family, clarity and truth are its worst enemy.

This truly is the seeds of dysfunctional...to break the psyche to not see the harm or to turn it into loving kindness.  To not see the harmful parent, but instead see a loving dad or mom.

You either get a broken family or a broken psyche....pick one.

To undo this damage is a journey of a million sorrows and huge gulps of calm peace to finally be one with the truth of what is.

So, what they call psychic blindness, really is to see what isn't there to see.

To see love instead of abuse.  And in order to keep a loving family alive in an abusive home, you become the abuse, not them.

You and your sense of self have the value of abuse.

And they who are abuse get the value of love.

I began at zero.

All of it is Me.

I learned some more about Sexual Assault yesterday at Dial Help...some facts that I wasn't aware of, about me.

There are three ways to deal in a Crisis, "Fight, Flight or Freeze".  

Freeze, the most common one is not talked about, where you prepare to hide surrender or die. They will stop and freeze in the middle of an activity or situation. It is most common in those with early trauma, most likely to have PTSD, dissociates, holds breath, look "through" you or will have no eye contact...

Flee/Flight is to avoid and retreat. Moves away from threat, difficulty with emotional intensity, easily over stimulated, fidgety and nervous, physically moving away and retracting, avoidance behavior...

Fight, prepared for action.  Moves towards conflict, combative, physically aggressive, argumentative, interrupts, directive and controlling, intense....

What is also very interesting is when the police are investigating sexual abuse crimes and are talking to the victim, the victim will express the same 'guilty' look of a criminal, but their guilt is for speaking the truth.  So, often the police, who are used to dealing with criminals, spot the 'guilty' behaviors and then wonder about the validity of their story.  I found this very fascinating.  How shame and self blame, along with breaking the silence, comes forth as guilt...and the police respond to the guilt, but misdiagnose the reasons for it.

I also learned that there are more people suffering from PTSD from sexual violence than from war.  Yet I don't recall hearing this...1 in 4 from war, and 3 in 4 from sexual violence.  Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is a normal emotional and psychological reaction to trauma. 

There are phases for PTSD.

Acute Phase, is complete disruption of life, contradicting emotional responses.  Victim is often disoriented and disorganized. With two types of reactions.  1. Expressed: openly display emotions, may be agitated and restless.  2. Controlled: may contain emotions, energy is directed inward.

The Reorganization Phase: Reorganizes life and learns to cope again. Different personalities will affect how people "reorganize" their life.  Sometimes referred to as the "Outward Adjustment Phase". Social, psychological, sexual & physical reactions.

A possible 3rd Stage... Some believe there to be 3 stages; the third being "The Resolution Phase", where the rape is no longer the central focus of the victim's life. The victim realizes that the rape will remain part of their life, but are able to move on. The person moves from being a victim to being a survivor.

What I somehow missed in my processing of my sexual abuse, the simple fact that I would not be able to rid myself of this.  Beneath my clear thinking, was a child like belief, that If I dealt with it, IF I felt it, IF I expressed it, IF I did all the things I could to deal with it totally, that I could remove this from its existence in me.  I can't.

I felt a bit let down after my 7 hour training about sexual abuse...to learn that I will not be healed from this...but rather I will learn to control its affects.  There is before trauma, trauma and then post trauma.  The post trauma will never look like before the trauma.  

I know where I slipped into this belief, it was when I accepted "For Now" I will let my old life go, but I don't believe I was totally convinced that I would never see it again.

I would admit to this childhood sexual abuse, deal with it, understand and explore it, but eventually I would return to the girl I was prior to sexual abuse. Become the little girl I was meant to be.  But, it snuck in and caught me unaware, that sexual abuse is a huge part of who I am, how I lived my life, and it isn't like a cold or flu that disappears, it stays.  It is chronic.

I didn't know this.

Somehow in my naivetty I unconsciously felt I would eventually escape all the baggage that goes along with incest.  I would emerge whole...unscarred.  Perhaps it is my illusional mind that kept me from seeing abuse, also kept me from seeing the real outcome...that I would learn and adjust, and how to live with it, but it would never totally disappear.

Like chronic pain...it will have its good days and its bad.  You manage it...you learn ways to deal.

My fix it personality, believed I could eventually regain my total innocence or before the abuse status.  That what was broken, could be fixed like new, restoring myself back to my original self.

Now I know that this is me.  The knicks, and chips will be there forever, that I will not get out from behind sexual abuse, that it will remain part of me for the rest of my life.

It is the raw goods that make me me.  

How funny it is, that I look at the Martha Becks, the Terry Wises of the world and see their courage and beauty and the hope they display, as to how their lives can still be of worth, and in fact more worthy, for what they can teach, about surviving childhood abuse and its after effects, and yet I wanted to be them, minus my abuse.

I guess I wanted to compartmentalize my life, shutting off parts of it, when in fact my whole life story is the message of hope, not just the 'good' parts.

Even though I have lived full disclosure of my abuse for 7 years, I believed this was a phase I was going through, and that eventually, I would return to 'normal', that I would be healed.  Now, I know...all of it is me.

Pain Killers

After 7 years of trying to understand all the aspects of abuse, both in my life and in general, it comes down to either being in reality or not.  Sounds simple and seems impossible to NOT be in reality.... but it is extremely hard to do what you feel, and not what is expected.  To stand up when everyone else is sitting down...to speak the truth, when most feel uncomfortable with it.  Yet, the one thing that keeps us connected to abuse IS our lack of being able to say the truth.  To ourselves and to others. To own it and act in harmony with it.

The reason it is so hard is that we are taught at a very young age to leave reality for our love and happiness, we are told, is to remain outside of reality.  Love and approval will be withdrawn if you attempt to leave. So, we stay.

In order to stay outside of the truth, we will acquire many many habits that will ease this pain of not being able to embrace our truths.  

What is so telling is that when you see folks with abusive behaviors, they are red flags that they are not able to be in the truth. The abusive behaviors ARE there only for one reason, to cover up the pain, they are not allowed to express.

It seems incredible to me that EVEN if they don't want to share their truth, the tools they use to cover it up shouts at us...that they are not living their natural life.

A natural life will not require pain killers.  My brother said this on the phone to me. Pain killers are addictions.  They are used to kill the pain.

People don't just become addicted to the substance, they become addicted to IT covering up their pain.  

I believe the pain is mostly from not being seen as the innocent in abuse, not being validated, and how the family member IS NOT treated like the abuser/criminal that he/she is, and instead is treated and even 'respected' and honored as the parent.

The raising of the perpetrator, lowers the innocent into the water of shame, blame and guilt.  This is the pain that we try and eat to cover up, drink to wash it away, etc.

Pain is the only reason we part take in these behaviors IT makes us feel better by not feeling our pain.

I believe that all pain comes from not being able to walk in reality.

We are not allowed to keep reality.  It has to be a secret.  Hidden.

What came to me yesterday is that the FALC is playing this hide reality game, with its forgiveness of sins and wiping clean the slate.  How a whole religion is feeding into this concept blows my mind.  The way the church uses this is to keep the abusers clean...and the children Unseen.  There are no abused children in the church...for all the 'sins' have been washed away.  

This leaves the children invisible...their pain undealt with, and they have to self soothe.  And they do so with anything that pushed down their true feelings.

How is a child suppose to stand up for her truth, when family and church vow to keep it hidden?  

In order to be in my mother's family, you have to act like abuse didn't happen, that you were NOT affected.  

There is no place in the family for you IF you want to explore the multiple ways that abuse and never talking about it, has colored your world.  The only way you get to stay in and be fully included is IF you can go on as if NOTHING happened and you are okay.

They don't want to see the evidence of the abuse...for that may make it real...and their current lives a lie.  

It is best to shut out abuse and keep their lives.

I know that they are not keeping me out, but rather keeping abuse out of their lives.

They haven't learned a thing from my mother's life.

She did this, and look where it got her?

In the end, her life was still connected with abuse.  For whether you admit it or not, abuse tags along...it is there, because you can't erase reality.

Abuse tags along no matter what addiction you use to kill it.  It survives. Truth goes nowhere.  The only way to be at peace is to see abuse...to feel all the emotions that abuse truly is.

Once you feel it, you will have no need to cover it up.  And we see the cover up and we know why you need it. Those who live in their truth have no reason for pain killers.

We abuse our self.

I am working on putting a Picture Book together with my Story Line quilts...and writing a brief synopsis about each quilt as it represents a portion of my journey.

I have a visual graph of my inner transformation as I undid abuse and changed my perceptions back to the truth.

Change is a very slippery word and it often times gets misconstrued, for we are expecting a dramatic life altering physical change, when all that is required is a 360 degree perceptional change.

It is to change HOW you see things, not the things.

To remove yourself from one belief and settle your self into another.

Moving your awareness.  Rearranging your thoughts to match reality instead of using thoughts to cover up what is real.

What most may fail to recognize, are the changes we fail to make when abuse calls upon us.  Many will focus on the physical act, but few will focus on our perceptions.

In an abusive home, where abuse isn't addressed...what this means is that, perceptions don't change to now match the new reality.  It isn't that the act isn't dealt with, but rather the perceptions don't change to mirror what just happened.

It is this that totally screws with the minds of a child.

Here is the deal.

My father CHANGED when he acted out sexually to me.  At this point, my viewpoint of him should have changed too.  When I didn't change this inside of my head.  My head no longer matched reality.

With a head that is askew, I then built my life.

To undo the abuse, what we are really saying is that we need to straighten out our perceptions.  We have to now make the changes we failed to make way back then.

It sounds so simple, but I had created a whole life, based on the wrong perceptions.

I now had to change a father into a pedophile, a mother into his accomplice, and it left me with a new family portrait.

Change one picture, and the rest start to shift.

My father changed when he abused me and I didn't act like anything had changed. 

However, my reality had changed, I just wasn't allowed to let my perceptions of him change.

Instead of recording the actual event, it recorded things that surrounded it.

I don't have many memories of my childhood, but I do have wierd ones.

However, most importantly, my body recorded it accurately.  IT feared my father.

It didn't want to get close to him.

No matter what my mind concocted, my body held the correct perceptions.

I had to change my mind to match what my body felt.

Undoing abuse means you have to change your mind.

It doesn't mean forcing your body to feel comfortable or at ease with someone who has hurt you.  It means to follow your body's lead.

When you change the perceptions in your head to match reality, you will begin to act differently. 

You will act in kind to reality.

I no longer felt I had to force myself to be in relationships with family who I no longer trusted or felt safe with...or whose perceptions didn't match reality.

The greatest tragedy of abuse is that we don't change our perceptions of the person who hurt us.  We want a mother and father so badly, we will think anything to maintain this in our heads.  And as little helpless children, we needed to believe that we were safe.  We wouldn't have survived knowing there was no one there to save us, that we were living in the home of a pedophile and his wife.

How awful this is to an abused child.  Your wounds go unattended, in order to keep up the perceptions in your home.  If they see your abuse, they will see the monster who lives there too.

In order to keep the illusion going, you adjust your perceptions.

Most have no clue what this does to a human being.  It makes you insane.

Insanity is seeing a reality that doesn't exist.

Seeing a father where a pedophile stands.

I became sane, when I saw reality...my perceptions finally matched my body.

Abused children who are abused by a family member, are usually neglected in order to keep the abusive family member. Rarely is the child treated and the family member removed.

They would rather keep an abusive father than live without one.

The child then learns, to overlook abuse and keep the relationship.

What we fail to appreciate is that we are holding onto abuse and there is no relationship outside of that.  Our new relationships are abuse.

It is abusive to ourselves to change our truth and perceptions to go against reality.

We keep a 'loving' father and we abuse our self.

Who Blame Others.

Learning with Dial Help has given me a wider view of the same problems.  And I can see it doesn't matter who you are or what is your crisis, we all need the same things.

We all need to see our self in the truth of our life, not as we wish it were, but as it is...and we can't look at others being MY problem.  They are not My problem, I am my problem.

When I see me  as my problem, my healing begins.

Until then, you are just stirring the pot of drama.

Iyanla said, "You can't have a relationship without truth."  And this is extremely important with the relationship with yourself.  If you can't tell yourself the truth, you don't have a relationship with your self.  You have lies.

Lies with your self will not lead to a better life, but rather to a life that gets further out of your control.  The lies control your life.

Most are unaware of the lies they tell themselves...and the lies may even sound kind and sorta spiritual and gentle, but they are lies nonetheless.

My lies were clearly hidden in plain view. Yet the truth was no where spoken in my family.  If my mother couldn't speak her truth, she taught me not to speak mine.

The truth was to be omitted from our daily lives.

We lie to be kind, to be friendlier, to be liked, but each time we lie, we add to the spin of our worlds; spinning us in the wrong direction.

I had a whole life that was spun in a complete opposite direction from the truth.  A life that was far away from my feelings and emotions.  I wasn't allowed to speak truthfully about what I thought or felt in my childhood home.  

We are taught how to cover up our truths.

What I know from experience, is that crisis is when you can't find and accept the truth of what is...and see that you are the crisis maker.

Certainly there will be tragedies in life, accidents and deaths, that are out of our control, but even these are handled better when you can allow your self to feel what you feel, and you see yourself and the choices each situation brings for you.

The biggest crisis of all, is when you lose sight of your self...and the truth is so far away from you, that you can't even see it.  

No self and No truth.  

Just a life spinning out of control, without a ground to stand upon.  

I woke up there.

And I used nature to ground me.  To keep me in reality, while I looked at how I had allowed my life to spin so far away from me and my feelings.

I can't know what will wake you up...but, until then, there is nothing anyone can do to fix your life, to make you happier, or more at peace. If they can, it is all an illusion. For true happiness and peace, love and joy, come when you can see yourself and your truth, no matter how out of control and ugly it is.

Truth can indeed set you free.

And, God does help those who help themselves...he doesn't help those who blame others.

Spinning out of Control

What I learned today at Dial Help, is that you can't help someone who doesn't see themselves as part of the problem; if all your troubles are due to other folks, you will be lost forever.  

Lost in a sea of one crisis after another.  

Most people who call the crisis lines, call about having a crisis with other people; very few will say that they are the problem for their troubles.  They can't see the choices that they made that led them to this point....but, they can only see how others need to change.  

When, in fact, they are the key reason for their lives spinning out of control. But, if you can't admit that you are the problem, your problems will continue to grow.

It is very interesting to see how your life can change.  And equally as interesting to see how you will continue to suffer, if you wait for others to make you happy.

I didn't even try to change my family around, but spent all of my time and energy to change me.  I didn't realize that this was the only way out...but tonight, I was able to see how futile it is to look for your life to change, by wanting others to be different.

I was able to turn my life around, by turning myself around.  I didn't look for anyone to change at all.  The only thing that made changes in my life, was when I made new choices.

I know this may seem elementary to most of you, but when folks find themselves in a life that is spinning out of control, they immediately look and see others making it spin, rarely do they see that they are the only ones on the merry-go-round.

Our lives are like mini worlds, and we are the axel upon which it spins.  If you don't like the direction it is going, you are the only one who can make it stop and change direction.

And, making someone realize that they are hand that is spinning their top, is the biggest job and the first step in true healing.

As long as you believe anyone has the power to spin your life, you are helpless.

Without the person in crisis seeing their hand in the vortex of spinning, they will not be able to stop the momentum.

In the past, I had trouble with vertigo, and when it felt like my body was spinning or when I would awake in frozen terror, IF I could move one finger, just a bit, I could stop the spinning or break the spell.  I had to interject me into an otherwise spell upon me.  

Waking in frozen terror was so dibilitating.  It wasn't the terror, but my lack of being able to move.  Or I would spin and not be able to stop....both had me powerless. UNLESS, I could move.

This is exactly how it is to change your life.  You have to move. You have to become activated.

Ironically or not, I have not woken up frozen in terror since knowing that my father was a pedophile.  And my vertigo has been gone now for at least 5 years. When I began making conscious choices, my unconsciousness didn't have to show me how frozen I was and how my life was spinning out of control.

A broken heart is an Open Heart.

I marvel at the synchronicity of my life...after writing about my Mothering Test, I turn on Sirius and I hear Iyanla Vanzant talking about three generations of women, who are working on relating to each other.  She has a new show called, "Fix My Life" that will be on OWN Network this fall.

The oldest generation abandoned her daughter, by not seeing her disability....the second generation abandoned her daughter while seeking attention she never got from her mother, abandoning her own daughter when she came along.  Now thirty years later, they say, "I love you, but I don't like you..."

I was given an audio image of how the legacy continues...

Iyanla worked with them to say their true feelings, to call it like it is...for the reason they are so far apart, is that the truth wasn't part of their relationship. She says, "Without the truth, there is no relationship," and that the healing cannot begin, till you name your truth.

She had to keep reminding them to "call a thing a thing"....and not skirt the feelings and call it something else. 

Those who really want to know the truth and say the truth, will be helped by her.

Iyanla also said, "A child whose mother is not emotionally available, cannot feel safe."  This really hit home for me...with my own mother.  I never felt safe, that she had my back.  

The youngest daughter could not get close to her mother, for she did not feel safe...I totally can relate both in being the daughter and having my daughters shy away.

She also worked with the youngest to say to her mother, "I am angry, because...."

The daughter had a hard time going deep into her feelings and emotions.

And Iyanla said, "Go ahead and let your heart break....for when it breaks, it will allow compassion and empathy in."  "Go ahead, you will not die, you will be okay, let your heart break."

This was another huge moment for me.  For, I understood the anger and the heart breaking.  

It is heartbreaking to feel the abandonment.

Iyanla said, that the Mom's neglected due to the absence of knowing better.

I again loved that.  

It isn't intentionally....they loved by how they were taught.

What struck me was the timing of this being aired on the radio, along with how grateful I am to be far into the healing process....being with my truth and naming it like it is... and also letting go of my original position, of being out of control and controlling.

There was sadness that I was not able to work with my mother on this, but extreme gratitude, that I was able to work with my girls.

I felt the emotions of the mother and then, those of the daughter, and could totally see the avenue, that Iyanla was trying to take them.  She is bringing them to the road of their truths.

The road of the truths.

Naming it as it is and not giving it names so as to 'not hurt' the other...

We hurt others more by keeping our truths to ourselves.

I love that I am able to let my truths out and that I was able to let my heart break.

It is trying like hell to not feel the broken feelings, that keep you from your own emotions, and thus be emotionally unavailable.

What a day...oh, and it came to me, I will not be graded on my Mother Test, until my daughters have daughters of their own....and I can see the pattern of mothering.

It broke my heart in so many places to see how my mother tried to mother and its result and how I took that and tried to mother...and then the struggle to be an abandoned daughter, without knowing how....mother my daughters differently. 

This too, you can't see while you are in it....you can only see it as you emerge on the other side.  And you can't know if you are making progress...the evidence is down the road...not to be seen as this time.

I felt different when my daughter left, and thought it was to be one woman less in my home, but what I really feel it is now, is the completion of my exam.  I completed that section.  

An abandoned child (woman) with a broken heart, opened herself to be emotionally available to her children.  In order to save my own daughters, I had to name my truths, feel my broken heart and feel my own emotions.

What I also feel, is that this is a work in progress....just because I am open, it will take time for my daughters to feel safe with me.  A broken heart is an open heart. 

The Right Seeds.

The feelings I have inside, and how I feel about myself, and how much I know myself, and where I come from, are huge factors in how I mother. 

When I had no connection to myself and the truth of my history, I mothered by controlling the child.  When I knew who I was and where I had come from, I mothered by controlling me.

The difference is in knowing where I can affect change and where I cannot.  What is my business and what is not. What I am allowed to control and what I have to surrender to.  The difference is knowing where to put my attention and focus.

My life didn't change, but what I concentrated on did.  In the past I used to focus intently on what they were doing, and now I had to keep looking at me.

For the past 4 years I have had an adult daughter, or two or three, all come home to live, while they completed their schooling or become financially able to make it on their own.  But, regardless, they were back home living with me.

The first year there were 4 adult women in my home, and I panicked.  For, I instinctively felt the control of the home slipping out of my grasp.  Yet, it had nothing to do with the home or them,and had everything to do with me.  I felt that I would have to have iron control of myself...or be out of control. 

It was like I was being thrown into a Mothering Test.

One that would require my utmost skills to make it through with healthy relationships with my daughters in tact.

When I didn't know my self or the path I had grew up on, I mothered by needing to control... severely control.  I expected the outside to bend and sway in a way that made me comfortable. And when the outside was a mess or confusing, I would go out of control.

I didn't know that I could instead make me comfortable no matter the situation.  So, I would fly off the handle at the barest of excuses.  I wasn't in control of my life. 

It seems impossible, but the more I knew of where I came from, the more in control I became.  It didn't matter if my childhood was out of control...or my feelings inside about it were confusing and emotionally out of control...the more I discovered about me, the more I could control me.

When I was mothering in the dark, if you will, I was way out of control.

But, once I knew the mess I came from, I began gaining control over my self.

It was a long process and still a work in progress, but what I know, is that the outside isn't what we learn to control, but rather how we will respond, that grants us the freedom from being out of control.

What I find so amazing is that there is no control being out of control, and yet we feel we are in control...and we feel powerful, while being powerless.

The oxymoron of this all, is what is so hard to escape from...for real power comes when you stop controlling or wanting to control of the outside...meaning the people you live with.

I had to learn this while living in real time with my adult children...and they gave me great lessons in giving up control...and some were harder won than others.  

This power struggle eclipses love and nurturing or even caring. For the biggest pull is to be in control.  

In my experience, love and control are the opposites.

Suffocating the life out of your child is not love, it is control.

To relax in my home and give up power or control over even the little details was not an easy thing to do for me. Mostly to surrender or open the space for everyone to move a bit more freer...to breathe.

 Details of the house relaxed.  Rules were adjusted.  Ideals were released. It became a much freer space for all.  

I believe to the depth of my being, that my kids had to move back home, so I could do  the Mothering Test and learn to set them free.

My last daughter moved out this weekend.  And I believe, we neutralized the negative feelings each of us had of the other...over the past 4 years.  For she was my greatest teacher.

She didn't fear standing up for her rights...her needs or what she wanted. She would answer back and argue her point...making me work harder to keep my inner peace.

It is easy to mother (okay control) a child who wants to please you...much harder when it is one who wants to please herself. She was doing what I wanted and needed to do...she was my example of being your own self.

My other daughters do that too, but just not so loudly...

All my daughters are in control of themselves and are now free to do what they please and not what pleases me.  That is a success as a mother.  How awful it would have been to have children live to please me.  To do what I wanted, needed in order for me to be comfortable in MY life.  

A controlling mother sees her children as what it means to Her, not what it means in Their lives. She fails to see her child, but what Her child can do for her.

The difference is so wide...and the gap between is where love gets lost...where respect disappears, and a child's life swings in the balance.

I am so grateful to have had the chance to re-mother.  It wasn't perfect or pretty, but it was much closer to being loving and free.  

The parting was without drama.  

She didn't leave angry.  I didn't feel desperate to have her gone.

But, it was time...for both of us.  She needs to make her own home...and I completed my test.

The combination of what I had to do within this Mothering Test boggles my mind.

I was undoing the damage I had done to my children. 

I was re-learning how to mother.

And I was healing the child within me.

Mothering my children and me, while being the mother and the wounded child.

My children's lives will tell me...if I succeeded at mothering.

If they have a voice and a choice...and they are free to use both, they will live free.

If they feel worthy and empowered, I did my job well.

I am hoping I planted the right seeds.

Hear Their Cries.

It is that time a year when on my route, I get to see babies in nature.  The ones I particularly love, are the fawns.  They are so wobbly and tiny, and yet expected to cross the roads quickly behind their moms.  I have seen three sets this spring.

This little one got confused.  It did not follow the mom, and was making crying noises.  When I got between the baby and his mom, she came back across the road and stood between me and baby.  And she began making distress noises.  I drove off, letting them be in peace.  And, forgetting to get her picture.  You can tell by the size of the "For Sale" sign, how tiny it is.

Further on the route, on a paved road, I again watched a mom cross the road, and a baby start, hesitate and then go back to the side of the road and lay down.

So, I slowly drove up and snapped this picture.

This is right on the side of the pavement....I am just leaning out of my passenger window.  It can almost hide in the short grass.

As I am taking this picture, the mom comes back across the road, but quickly disappears in the trees. I again, leave...knowing I am causing them both stress.

What amazes me is how attentive the mothers are in nature, and how defensive of their little ones, how they will put themselves in the way of danger to save their child. The natural mother instinct to protect, is alive and well out in the wild.

What a marvel that without parenting classes they do this so well.  I said to the momma deer that stood and pranced in distress...."Good Mom, you are doing a good job!"

And then there is the human species, who seem to fail at this in rising numbers.

I am not sure if our natural mother instincts are disengaged, or do we not recognize danger?  

In my experience, my body had a warning system fully engaged, but my mind overrode this "fear" signal.  It first of all deleted the molestation pictures or failed to even record them. So, all I had was a beeping body, but nothing else to go on.  My fears of my father seemed groundless and false.

I was unable to discern danger...for I wanted my mind to agree. 

As a child, in order to survive, our minds protect us. By not remembering the abuse. And this alone disengages the danger knowing.  We can't survive in childhood, with all of our faculties, IF we know, we are in danger.  Yet, oddly, what we don't feel is safe. We are not if full blown danger, but nor are we relaxed and feeling cared for.

I have been thinking about what I could contribute to Dial Help as a hand out.  For they handed to me what was abuse.  I am thinking, instead there needs to be a worksheet, that is similar to "You know you're a Redneck, IF...."

So, it would be, "You know you're a victim, IF..."

The way the human body and mind work together to help us survive, is the hurdle we need to overcome in order to get back to who we were prior to abuse.

This mechanism that is automatic, pre-sets us into believing what is not real...and not believing that which IS.

Our inner sight and knowing is completely backwards.

It is my belief, that there are many folks just like me in the FALC, who have this psychic blindness. And we are asking the blind to see. How?

 I am not sure I can articulate this accurately, to portray the dilemma any agency will have to flip this around, for they are living in a sea of danger and are unaware.

The momma deer, knows I am a danger to her child.

The woman who is married to a pedophile doesn't see the danger.

What I do believe, though, at least in my experience...is that the child is trying to teach the parent. The child is giving out signals that the parent is missing.

But what I also know to be true in most cases, is that the parent themselves are abused and their own pain has them so self absorbed, they can't see their children.

They haven't healed from their own childhoods...so they don't know how to mother naturally, and to know danger.  Unlike animals in nature, we don't know who the predators are.

And when this is so, the children are left unprotected.  It is open season all year round, and a child has no one to hear their cries.