IMPERFECT Lady

Control of others.

I have been part of the discussion on the ex-toots blog  http://extoots.blogspot.com as we all discusss the consequences of extreme religions.

I feel those who stand in defense of the church are actually defending themselves against any life change.  They simply can't bear the consequences of being wrong.

While a woman's life has reached the extreme end of anguish, a baby's life is lost, the much larger more deeply felt is the shaking of their religious beliefs.

What would happen if the church would be found out, to be upheld by a wobbly foundation?  How much of their lives would collapse when it falls?

When a collective group have fashioned their lives and given up their own rights for a cause, for a belief that is larger than their self...it eclipses the self and they become it.  They become the church, they are part of the foundation, one of the bricks.

And, when the bricks begin to crumble and show their instability, then what?

Somehow we see the "Church" as being this higher power, this impotent god like untouchable person.  When in fact the church is made up of humans.  It is being lead by a collective board of humans, and preached by a human to other humans.

The collectiveness of these folks IS the church.  And yet, with the discussion on the ex-toots blog, it appears that the church is a non-human thing is what they are following...and IT is reading the bible and pulling out things that they should or should not do, and creates these rules and the rewards and or punishment.  Like a imagination game....but with real life consequences.  And all things have to be run through this non-human like thing, although the church is run by humans.

It is quite spectacular in its own mentalness.

The preachers are not willing to stand in the light of reality and claim clearly and succinctly how it is that they don't believe in woman's rights.  And the women who have given up their rights are looking to the 'church' to stand strong in saying how it will be impossible to get to heaven IF you take birth control.

What happens to the women who have abided by these rules to find out that they are not steadfast?  

How terrifyingly incredible it is to watch them speak out of both sides of their mouth, to see the twisting twirling sliding ungrasping of this rule in the light of murder.

No one wants to claim it as part of their faith.

How sad that this mother who killed her child doing what was deemed good and promising of heaven is now standing out there alone.

Her preachers are unable to articulate and own the path they set her upon.

They ARE responsible for preaching.  She is responsible for letting them control her body, until it became uncontrollable. 

A clear example of what happens when you take control of others...

 

What we want

As I have watched nature showing itself as Flooding, I watched the changing transformation....how it expanded and now how it is contracting, receding back into its normal size.

I have thought how it is a metaphor for life.  How we will have moments or events that will overflow, create difficulty in life.  We traverse them, grow, gain confidence, wisdom and then they too recede into our past.  A memory.

I was delighted yesterday morning to see the evidence of the river level dropping.

The snow banks are gone, and the chair stands...

This is the corner where the river found its exit....and it is still coming out, but much much slower.  And, further up the road there is a place where the river flows back in...like it is testing land for a bit...or perhaps Me.

What my jeep looks like after a rough day on the Spring roads.  I actually had to use my four- wheel drive to get out of the mud. But, on my way home yesterday, through the water, it washed the wheels.  A good under body flush while the river was up! 

See how green everything is beginning to turn...there are buds on the trees, but very small...a bit of warm weather and another transformation begins.

I guess what we love are pretty transformations, the ones that seem to require nothing of us, just our admiration upon completion.  But, the transformations that tear apart your insides, demand changes in behavior, etc we deem as 'bad'.

However, they are the ones who develop us.  Those transformations oddly are course corrections, they are taking away all that isn't our soul's purpose or what is right for us.  

Most of what I lost were toxic or dysfunctional or abusive.  I didn't lose love, peace and joy....it was through the transformation that I found them.

And how would we appreciate dry dusty roads, if we didn't have a foot of water to compare them to?  The contrasts of life gives us meaning, helps us navigate into what we want. 

Love, Friendship and Loyalty.

I am half way done with the book, "Bloom - Finding Beauty in the Unexpected" by Kelle Hampton.  It is a wonderful fast moving harsh truth read; when life changes its course without our permission or willingness to go along.  

It isn't so much about WHAT event changes your life course, but how you handle it, what goes on in your mind, how you act, don't act, learn, grow and how when life changes, often so does your perception.

AND, what had me in the ugly cry, is how much love and support she got at the moment her old life halted and the new one began.  How her flailing psyche, emotional insides were being held up by so many supportive people.  How different we both were.

Until I read the massive amounts of help she received, did I sit with the silent echo when my old life halted and my new one sat there.

My new life.

A life change that came out of nowhere, yet one that had been traveling with me unawares...Guess I was living a double life and the false one fell down.

To me, it isn't the tragedies in life that mark you so much, BUT it is how others act when it happens. How your relationships can withstand the punch.

We all assume, that our families are waiting in the wings...arms and spirits ready to catch us when we fall...that our tragedy will be one they will not mind handling...

This book left me wondering if sexual abuse is the last place of discomfort?  Are we as a society so ill prepared to deal and address the needs of a victim as she makes a life away from her abuser?

How is it that my tragedy had people walking away from me and not draw in closer?

The very people Kelle leaned on the most heavily, were absent in my life.  Granted, new people stepped in, but the old reliables, were unreliable.

It perhaps was by far more tragedy on an already tragic moment.  In fact, it is what Kelle feared the most; the reactions of her family and friends.  She needed them to see her life change in a positive way, and not have it be untouchable.

I felt untouchable.

I felt the repulsive push back.  

I saw the familiar friends, turn away instead of scurrying to bring comfort.  Quick short glances, a soft hi and the turn away.  Or, worse yet, hollering and outrage from my family....and even worse yet, the comfort and care my father received...he the sexual abuser....and NOT me, one of his many victims.

I do understand the why this happened, I just don't know how we can change it.

The why....Is because my abuser was their father and husband.  It was Grandpa....and his accomplice, their mother and grandmother.  I was asking them to let go of a relationship to support me.  I was asking them to drop their old self and take the free fall with me into the land of the unknown....estrangement.

It isn't about sexual abuse.  It is about CHOOSING the life of estrangement.  

Well, choosing isn't actually what we freely do either, but actually what happens.

I again looked up the word estrangement.

"estrange, alienate, disaffect
These verbs refer to disruption of a bond of love, friendship, or loyalty. Estrange and alienate are often used with reference to two persons whose harmonious relationship has been replaced by hostility or indifference: "

I didn't find the other definition about moving away from hostility.....

But, I guess we can look at both sides of estrangement. How folks responded and then what I chose to do with their reactions.  

Imagine feeling hostility and/or indifference to your sexual abuse BY familiar family...your 'support' system?

While they were anything but HOSTILE and INDIFFERENT to my father.

It was the complete and utter flip or backwardness of it all.

Which again, is why I felt so cheated, so ostracized, so rejected when tragedy struck.  

You truly don't know the circles of support you have around you....from the very close family, to the really good friends, to your intimate partners, to sisters....until you test its strength, by tragedy or a challenging life situation.

You can't know until.

Will relationships bloom brighter or whither on the vine?  What is the strength of the relationship? 

Sadly looking back, my estrangement happened when I was a very young girl. Sexual abuse was the disruption in the bond of love and trust, it happened way back then. But living in denial and living with a mind that blocked out the "disruption" I continued on like the bond had not been broken.  Like there was love, trust and loyalty...when it was long gone.  

You know what is funny in a tragic way, is that I felt the broken bond.  I lived with feelings of "not feeling close" of not feeling warm or loving towards them....But I thought it was me.  I thought I wasn't trying hard enough to feel more.  I had a broken inside, I was cold and uncaring. I had the fault inside of me.

Instead, on the cold December day, I felt the truth of it all.  I wasn't broken.  I was completely right.  I couldn't get close to hostility.  It wasn't me that was broken, but them.

They (my parents) disrupted my bond with them.  They broke the chain, not I.

And, I took this broken chain and called it love.  

I modeled my life after theirs.  I mothered a lot like she did. I treated my self a lot like she did.  I worked harder and tried to be more perfect to fix the broken chain.

When, the only way to fix me, was to walk away.

The tragedy of sexual abuse, is that in order to heal, you have to walk away from the broken chain...you can't fix the chain by staying.  You will just be another broken link in the line of many.

Isn't the saying we are as strong as our weakest link?

Sexual abuse tears the bond of love, friendship and loyalty.

 

 

What is the Cost of No Choice?

The issue of women's rights has come up with the death of a woman's 9th child by her own hands...or maybe the lack of Human Rights.

What I am hopeful of, is this is the hole where common sense will begin to seep in or at least begin the real conversation of how human rights are being taken away in order to follow these extreme religions...and its very high cost; human life.

When a woman no longer has her human rights, she is not free.  

Martha Beck uses the phrase, "born in captivity" and that applies to so many women who were brought up within these churches, how their human rights were taken away in childhood; choices eliminated by church rules.

In the climate where there are no choices, only one way, a person doesn't use their own common sense, it is a muscle that has grown weak and virtually useless...their 'strength' is in their staunch support of the ruling system...not in standing up for their own Self.

You always hear comments suchas, "who in their right mind would do such a thing?"...without hearing your own words..."right mind".

It is hard to explain or articulate the absence of choice and how the mind is created or convinced...how it feels to live "BrainWashed".

Where common sense is washed away.

Where self and individual choices are beat out of you...by fear dressed in many outfits.

In order to survive as a child, you give up your human rights.

They become a virtual stranger to you, a thing you never quite can recall, gone before you knew they existed.

You know yourself as part of the whole...a paraiste...at the mercy of the animal (church and/or family) and would cease to exist if the family and church were to die. There is virtually no separated self.  You only live as part of the whole.

The mind sees no self.

The mind is incapable of reaching so far back where choices lie...without encountering the fear that was used when choice was taken away.

Many people fear freedom, like all manner of hell will break lose if people were free, if our rights were our own...and forget to see the Hell many live due to being brainwashed free of choice.

Just sit with the feelings of no choice.

At a certain point, this will implode upon itself...just as it did for the mom who felt her only choice was to kill her baby...only a confused, tortured mind would see it as a solution.

May the conversation begin...what road did this woman travel to get here?

What is the cost of no choice?