IMPERFECT Lady

Recovery of being you, Perfectly.

When Normal seems Perfect and all others are considered 'mental' and imperfect, there becomes a need to hide that which isn't perfect.

We have somehow believed incorrectly, that the majority among us are living perfect lives and it is complete and utter failure to admit your life isn't going okay, that inside of you it isn't the peaceful pasture of perfection.

In order to lose the stigma of entering a facility for help with our lives and relationships and most importantly to find peace with your self and your life, we need to recognize there is NO Perfect.  Oh, and There is NO normal....and only those who believe it to be so, are even more confused than the most confused among us.

I even wonder, is it harder to maintain the image of normal and perfect, than it is to bear the discomfort of failing to get there?

What if, we all were to embrace that each of us is our own kind of perfect normal, coming from whence we came?

I will fail at being perfect each time I seek to have a childhood untouched by abuse.

I will succeed at perfection for me, when I embrace my whole past.

My perfect me, was abused and raised in a cult like religion. I made choices based upon those two very distinctive events.  These two ingredients in my life created a perfect representation of the two.  I was perfectly abused and a perfect woman whose mind was brain washed by a fanatical religion.

Maybe we think perfect only in the good terms and not perfect at being dysfunctional.

If we looked upon the recovery places as places to restore our own sense of perfection, they would not have such a negative connotation. Instead we see them as places that will shine a light of imperfection upon us.  That only those of great imperfections will enter there...will fit in.  And, perfection passes these places by.

Perfection is a myth in the sense that we will all match and look the same and do the same and fall into a category of normal.

What if instead we embraced the individual.  That the healthiest among us are the most authentic and original.

What if the "mental health" places were places to go for becoming original....to break out of the crowd mentality, to separate and individualize you from the masses, to perfect a complete and perfect you?

While September is Recovery month, is recovery to recover YOU?

Okay, I had to look up recovery's definition.

"a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength."

"the action or process of regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost."

So the 'shame' or stigma is that we don't want to admit we have lost our self...our strength or the control of our lives.  And yet we will each see many folks living lives out of control, while trying to convince themselves and others they are in perfect control.

Recovery to me, is to regain the power of self....individuality and authenticity, the recovery of being you, Perfectly.  

On the Road to Recovery

My second visit to Copper Country Mental Health was carrying a carpet roll of 26 Art Quilts...or Art Therapy quilts to be more exact.  My Lady is being showcased for Recovery Month at this healing space.

Shelly and Joe were terrific in orchestrating where the quilts were to be hung.  It was decided to not put them in numerical order, but to have them be placed randomly and for it to be a surprise as to what each mean and their order.  I liked this idea.

Rick was our measuring man, keeping things in balance and so easy to work with...Everyone who happened by had comments and interest.  I love that my lady was catching attention...

A good team, fun quilts and wonderful wall space...and it is my hope they will inspire and lend courage to those who are healthy enough to realize the help that can be gotten here.

My lady engaging the sitting area with their color and content...part of the recovery conversation.

This is space is as you enter into the building.  I think the quilts do a wonderful job welcoming all!

It is my hope they bring a softer tone to a place often filled with stigma and shame...at least for those of us who are in need of their services. 

And, you have to wonder how we, society as a rule, have it so wrong...that it is shameful to admit we need help, that we are not able to handle our lives and our truths.

My Lady is bringing the public eye to a space that is typically protected and private, and feels even that I am hanging quilts in spaces often kept in the dark...bringing artful color and loud boldness to clinical hushed tones.

There is even a small fear that the 'public' will mix with the 'private' and that it will cause 'discomfort' and, for us not to advertise or to open up general traffic, so that the privacy can be maintained...

Meaning, to offer this display to the public, will draw to much of the general public to this space...a space where folks like to keep their mental illness private.

However, it is my humble opinion, that most of the public is/was or will be in need of these services...if not now, then at some point in their future.  Mental Health is for all, not just the most wounded among us.

I would love for My Lady and I, to begin the process of normalizing the look of those in need of Mental Health.  To stop the judgement against those who are willing and able to admit, their lives and their minds are in need of a second opinion.  

I even believe, that my quilts, if allowed to be advertised in a public way, would bring folks into offices in which people are too scared to enter....to admit, that they could use an ear to listen or help with locating helpful services that will restore balance.

Perhaps we could all start entering this space as we do a dentist.  We don't let our teeth go untreated, due to the fear of being recognized that we have neglected our mouths, and yet our minds somehow have been tagged with a negative connotation.

And really, who among us can state that they have always had a clear mind, that they have never had troubles with their lives, their choices, and their truths, that their history has been a clean slate of pure brilliance and perfection?

I truly believe that we all could use extra help. That if we paid attention to our mental health, our emotional and physical would take care of itself.  

So....that being said, I highly suggest we all take a stroll through Copper Country Mental Health and begin to neutralize the stigma of Mental Health.

And, you know what came to me....that when you can recognize and own that your mental health isn't quite right, you are on the road to recovery.

(Perhaps there should be a sign only the Perfect need not enter. We somehow believe that it is failing to be imperfect. And, as you know, It is impossible to be imperfect....for even the word says, I'm Perfect!)

Toys and Candy

In the jeep today, I listened to Nujood Ali's story, "I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced."  What a remarkable girl.  

She is the first one to break down the door; showing a different way.  

She is trying to get the laws of Yemen changed...for it to be illegal to marry before 18.  At the time of the book, the law hadn't been embraced by the leader of her country....

What you hear is a little girl caught up in a grown-up world far beyond her years of comprehension and without family who dared or moved to help her.  In fact, it was her father who married her to an older man....and she but 9 or 10. (She doesn't have papers to know her real age or birthday.)

After she was granted a divorce, two other little girls, ages 9 and 10 also got divorces.

Imagine???

She often drew a house with beautiful windows. When asked about the home she dreamed of....It was a home for girls like her.  A place for them to go to escape family.  A House of Joy!

It goes to show what great change one person can achieve, if they dare to buck the system.  

In 2008, she was only 10 years old....today she is near 18.  Her goal was to become a lawyer to help other little girls like herself and to Never Get Married, ever!

I wonder where she is today and what turns and roads her life has taken.  

I almost, ALMOST, respect these men who openly marry to perform sexual abuse, for they are doing it in plain view.  I said, "almost".  And how tragic that the grown women in her life, did nothing to help her, but to say, "This is what the life of women is in Yemen, for generations...to suffer in silence for the sake of family honor."

She didn't even know what "Honor" meant.  Or, how her suffering would be good for her father and her family name.

I got that.  

How the family honor is upheld as long as we suffer in silence.

Nevermind, that the honor wasn't there to begin with.

All it takes for changes to happen, is for someone to dare to be different! 

Go Nujood!  I hope you are following you life intentions....and that you will be a lawyer and have a house of Joy, for the little girls who have lost their childhood.

When she was divorced, she wanted toys and candy.

 

Protecting my truths.

In an online group, we were having a conversation about journaling, and one women said, her journal is on her computer and password protected, and it struck me as it was her true self that she didn't want known.  Or, at least that is what my journals are filled with, bits and pieces and scattered and jumbled up thoughts, about me, my feelings and need to express.

How it hit me, that when we feel this desperate need to hide our selves...it (the things we don't want known) then has power and becomes a shield or wall in front of us.  The words we write but don't dare have anyone know.

I wonder too, how adults still live in this spot.  Or perhaps how they live in front of this secret spot, not wanting or able to live from the spot itself.

I have a real hard time now, recollecting how I too used to live without ever touching, looking or even considering, my secret spot; my truth.

And, how I would often catch glimpses of wishes...of telling someone the truth, but instead politely smile and go along.  Or grit my teeth, and try to stem the flow of rage. Or do it, get it over with, and then return to my peace...like doling out parcels of my life, and saving small bits for me.  

I didn't even write a journal until I was 46 years old.

In "Simple Abundance" Sarah Ban Breathnach writes, "But in order to be true to a creative work, the artist must journey to the center of self.  Past the conscious sentries in the brain, beyond the barbed wire barricades of the heart, into the trenches of "truth or dare." You can't write a true sentence or live authentically if you don't trust yourself. You can trust yourself without courage."

What I know now, 8 years later, is that I was unable, unwilling and not even aware or conscious, that the life I was living was out in front of my secret spot.  And, once my secret spot was exposed, (I was sexual abused by my father) I had to write in order to find out who I was.

Journal writing was self exploration, it was excavating of my soul.  And, I guess once it made the local news and papers, the need to hide was null and void.

But, what I know for certain, the need to hide and be secret, is the very thing that is stopping you from living a soul full life of freedom and living in love, peace and joy!

I am so grateful that I am able to live from my inner spot...and have not from the outer layer, in front of the barrier that is protecting my truths.

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader." Rober Frost.

Nothing to Forgive.

I know that churches are built upon the premise of "Forgiveness" of restoring life back to where it was, 'before the sin', to keep things looking beautiful, normal and loving.  And yet, I know that this tool is only beneficial to the perpetrator of sin and is very hurtful for the victim.

Even the sentiment and feelings that the victim should be reaching for the forgiveness application, is wrong.  

Why is it my job to restore Her kindness?  And furthermore, is it even possible?

Was I the one who changed her from being kind to not being kind?

I used to believe that my behavior (usually negative) was the fault of my kids.  If only they acted better, did this or that, without my having to tell them etc, then I would not go off the deep end in rage....I too used to put my kindness or the lack thereof, in their hands.

When you ask a child to forgive their parents For Their Negative Behavior, you are blaming the child for that negative.

I can see it no other way.

I am the problem.  I was the one who made her act poorly and I am the one who can give her back her good graces, IF ONLY I would 'forgive' her.

The Forgiveness that I was asked to use, was to let bygones be bygones...to settle my mother back into her mother role.  Like I am the one who has the power for her to be motherly or not motherly, depending again upon MY behavior NOT hers.

There is a new definition of forgiveness that I cling to...and that is accepting that the past could be no different.   Accepting that I did not have a loving mother.  Accepting that she was unable to put up boundaries to keep hurtful people away from her and her children.  Accepting her as she is and not believing that I have the power to make her kind or to make her act unkind.  

I forgive her, by accepting that she fell far below the level of mother. I forgive her for NOT being a mom.  

She had once wrote to me, that "I failed as a mother, but can we be friends?"

Like it would be easy to skip the mothering part and go right to friends.  Really, as I am your daughter.  I am not looking for a friend, I am looking for a mother.  

A mother's job doesn't end.  It doesn't go away when the children are over 18, it is a life long role in the lives of your children.  You don't get to give up and still maintain a relationship....or at least a relationship of any value.

So again....how do you forgive a woman who failed as a mother, but wants to still hang around, if you are her daughter?

And, you know, it isn't that she failed as a mother that is so hurtful, but that she failed to see her child, you.  Your needs, your pain, your suffering....she just flippantly, shrugs off her mother cape and wants to don the friendly cloak.

I simply can't do it.

I was like the seagull with the broken wing, looking for a mother...someone to care and see my wound...and protect me from predators.

And instead she catered to his (predator) needs...allowing him access to girls so he could break their wings. The broken wing girl's needs were not seen or met or considered.  

And somehow there are folks who believe it is up to me, to change my mother back to kindness. Can I?  Will forgiving her in the churches definition work?  Will it make her see my broken wing?  Really?  Or are you asking me to NOT see my broken wing?

For no matter how many words of 'forgiveness' are uttered, my broken wing remains.

And, what is truly broken is what my parents did to my love, my trust, and my faith IN Them.  I handed it over as a believe-a-head, an innocent, without much thought or restraint.  I gave it to them and they broke it.  They didn't respect it or honor it.

I see them as love breakers.

I see them as trust wreckers.

What I guess many can't know, until it happens to them, what it feels like to have these thing shattered. To give out love, to have it trashed.

Is it me?

Was I wrong to give it to them?

Or, is the fault completely theirs?

What I would caution everyone, is before you ask a child to forgive, you look at the adult, the perpetor.  What do they do with love?

My love wasn't bad....it wasn't less worthy.  I just had given it to the wrong folks...or perhaps they were only doing to my love, that which was done to their love.

Here is what I know....children's love is innocent.  It has nothing to forgive.

 

 

I Feel Kind.

It is a simple question, delivered with grand intentions, that is felt deeply negative by me. "Will you ever forgive your mother?" 

This was asked of me.  

Held at my like a gun.

That it is MY fault she is unwelcome at my daughter's wedding, taking no glances at her ledger of un-mother-like behavior, but that I as a daughter am under scrutiny.

That my core level of kindness has to be bankrupt, that I am empty, hollow and cold.

My behavior and actions as a daughter are closely looked at, while my mother's behavior isn't spared a second glance or even a first.  But rather her 'feelings' about being shunned come clearly into view, and the blame sits squarely upon me.  Like I am magically inventing this unforgiving 'attitude'.

Where did I get this demeanor?

How is that I can be so cold?

What happened to me?

What this 'innocent' asking person pleads for, is for me to back down and make small or minimize actions that stripped my mother from being a mom.

What struck me today, was that the grief and trauma we experience, isn't about the pain, sex and indifference, but the disappearing loving being.  We mourn the loss of kindness.

And now, they are ASKING me to be kind, and never once questioning my mother's behavior.

As I turned the corner at the bottom of my driveway this morning a seagull sat in the middle of the road.  Just sat there.  Weird I thought.  What is up little fellow, I asked.

As I got closer, I could see he had one very damaged wing; he could not fly.  He was stuck unable to save himself...and I was not daring enough to try.

I called our local "Wild Life Rescue" girl....and she called me later to tell me she did pick him up. He had a very bad wing. She wasn't sure she could save him, but she would at least allow him to die in peace and not be at the mercy of a predator.

I got the Seagull.

I also got how it was that my mother looked the other way, while I called for help.

I feel kind.

 

I am on the Team!

As we work on the details for my Story Line Quilts at Copper Country Mental Health, a contact introduced himself to me as a team member of Trauma Informed Recovery Team.  I had to look up the word trauma.

"Trauma".

A deeply distressing or disturbing experience.

Emotional shock following a stressful event or a physical injury, which may be associated with physical shock.  

A serious injury or shock to the body, as from violence or an accident. An emotional wound.

What is more amazing than the definition is that I had to ask.  Like, how in the world having been traumatized, did I not know its content.  

We use words, and words often hide the actual facts.  "Trauma" encapsulates the actual event like a shroud, hiding the literal activities and content.

To say Trauma instead of describing the actual events, allows us to not feel, know and react or respond viserally.  It almost seems that words allow for more denial or denial period.

And, maybe the "Trauma Informed Recovery Team" clearly understands the contents of trauma and we the traumatized are slowly awakened to them.

Imagine, it takes a team to help us recover...to sort through the trauma and to find a way to live in peace, love and joy after it.

I am very grateful that there is a team for trauma, a recovery team!

The trauma in my life was to experience sexual abuse from a father.  It had both emotional shock as well as physical injury from violence.  Trauma sure seems like a nicer word, that rape by a dad. 

I am looking forward to see what else I learn as I hang My Story Line Quilts at Copper Country Mental Health. What services and teams are waiting there to help in my recovery.  

I am hopeful that my quilts will bring awareness to teams waiting to help those of us who sadly know the after affects of trauma...to recover and restore our center, our balance, our confidence, our self esteem....our self.

I know, that what was clearly shattered and destroyed was my sense of safety, of having some who loved and cared for me, my faith and trust....this is what gets shot to hell, when the ones you love....sexually abuse or are incapable of responding...like my mother.  I lost my parents and that was traumatic.

It isn't the act of sexual abuse or the indifference after, it is finding out there is no one there to protect you.  That the world of safety and love is no more.

Trauma is breaking the innocent world by those you loved and trusted.

When kindness and love are replaced with rape and indifference...that is traumatic, for they are polar opposites.  To recover from that, often times means getting away from those hurtful people....which often leaves us estranged from family.

I would love to be part of the Trauma Informed Recovery Team.  And, if my quilts help someone, give hope, lend inspiration....I am on the team!

Uncomfortable.

I am sitting with the feelings of strength after sending the letter to my mother.  It is never easy to write what you know they don't want to hear.  Nor is it easy to be brutally honest with your self and say what you feel.  And yet, it is by doing just that, that my life returns to calm.

It was helpful to get it down on paper, to sort out the whys and the why nots, to sift through the past and envision the future with two distinctly different sides in abuse and say what I needed to say.

I can feel the unease or the disease of being silent and 'hoping' and 'wishing' for the other side to come to reason on their own. 

I know that in the past I never clearly stated what I needed...and how I felt, without regard to how it would impact the person's feelings before my own.

I felt strong standing up for me.  

I felt empowered and grown up.  

I felt that I wasn't being a bully, but rather stating to me, the obvious...to someone who would try and slip back into my world, caring less about my feelings...and believing I would have no outright objection.

While it gave me moments of fright, it honestly gave me much strength and determination that I have the right to ask for space, for consideration, to be honored as the estranged.

I can't know how it was received, but have to believe that there is no way she can not know how I feel.  

And oddly, my actions in the past 8 years are a clear indication of how I feel.  I want space.  I have kept space...removing myself from relationships that I felt were blind to my feelings...or what I felt would be inconsiderate to a victim of sexual abuse.

I can see how the old silence self would have been....just hoping and waiting for my mother to finally see, to change, to do different, while I did nothing overt to stop her current behavior. 

We somehow want the other person to change, so we don't have to.

So we don't have to speak up and say what it is we feel, to express and object to their behaviors, we expect them to suddenly be hit with a streak of kindness and finally see us.

See our needs.

See our feelings.

See our hearts and souls.

When, it is up to us to show people how to treat us.

Isn't that what Dr. Phil says, "We show people how to treat us." 

That means we speak up when we are mistreated. We set boundaries. We say how something feels to us. We don't just bare the pain and wish for them to change.

Will my letter asking for space and continual separation be enough to keep my mother away from me...or will she come in boldly, arrogantly righteously right and once again wreck havoc in my world?

I feel I have a better chance of her staying away by sending the letter, than I do by being silent.

I just didn't know that silence and staying away wasn't a clear signal, that I would have to put it in writing.  That some would still press forward into my world.  Perhaps feeling that time heals all wounds....and that I may have changed my mind.

What I felt yesterday was that the boundary keeping will be a life long event.  It isn't to just step out once, but to do so repeatedly with each new event.

There is no returning to life as normal...where I will not be put into the same position again and again.  That my family of origin will not be asking to join or be part of my life and my family events.  

I guess I never dreamed it would never end.  That unlike a death, it is to be a living ghost, and to have past dead relationships surface time and time again.

It is to be comfortable sitting relaxed amidst the evil and swirling energies of abuse....is to be comfortable with the uncomfortable.

 

Having Boundaries.

Putting up boundaries against family, is not an easy task, and yet, with the statistics as they are, boundaries against abuse, WILL be against someone you know, most often a family member.  This is how abuse ends, not with kindness and understanding, those are NOT boundaries, nor a deterrent for abusive behaviors, but an open door.

Having boundaries, is a fuzzy concept and one that needs to be clarified...it can blend into the background of life.

A boundary is to stop or change behavior...to respond differently, and it is more often seen as 'not kind'.  Kindness is very allowing and accepting, no matter what. Boundaries are much more selective and rejecting.

Somehow, we as a society, see people who have healthy boundaries as being 'unkind' and those without them kind, christian like and forgiving.  There is a totaly dysfunctional viewing upon how we respond to evil and what we call it.

When I wrote a very clear and concise letter to my mother, requesting space and for continual silence and separation, and for her to remain absent in my life, it may be seen as "unkind".

And, what many will focus on is my behavior and not hers.  

Not the fact that she had no boundaries against evil...or the fact that her actions were to ad and abet my father's deviancy. She isn't untainted or less guilty than he, her lack of boundaries allowed his evil to permeate her...she joined what she did not stand against.  

What I have come to know, is if the parent doesn't use boundaries against evil within the home, the children will erect boundaries against the parent.  IF, they choose to change the pattern of abuse.  Otherwise, they too will join the evil side, simply by their lack of boundaries; they become colored by the same brush as evil, they don't stand out.

I am okay with others seeing me as bad, wrong and heartless...for I know different. 

I know how it feels to reject a parent, to set up a boundary, to become an orphan by choice.  I know the backlash I am opening myself up to...and I am okay.

I would rather stand against evil, than be washed in its bloody tones.

There is no way you can be kind to evil and not be stained by what you are allowing.

I cannot see how you can remain in relationships with folks who are hurtful and not be colored by their behavior.  

The only way, I can show my boundaries is to walk them out.

You can't say you are against what someone is doing while standing with them when they are doing it, doing nothing to show your objections.

What does 'objection' mean?

"An expression or feeling of disapproval or opposition; a reason for disagreeing."

How can you show your disapproval when you are silent and not acting different?

What I feel so strongly about, is that if you are not the one doing the evil, but the one who is unmoved by evil, you are contributing to it.  

You are either with it or are standing free of it.  

What I am still amazed by are the sheer numbers of folks who are standing with evil and calling it loving kindness.

And, even more floored at how I am seen as unkind, for having boundaries.

 

 

 

 

The Helpers and the Help.

Yesterday was the first time I had walked into Copper Country Mental Health...after spending a half an hour I left with an overwhelming sense of gratitude.  I felt the sincerity and kindness...helpfulness and understanding a safe haven for those needing guidance.

Gulping down an unexpected wave of emotion....I drove away.

I had even said, "I should have probably used this place during my crisis..." and yet I had not.  I don't know exactly why, but it never crossed my mind.  

I am not sure of their policies or services or pay schedules, but the feelings I had when I met with a few of the employees was kindness and caring....sincerely. A place for the troubled mind to find compassion.

I truly have not given this place a thought, not a conscious literal mindful, or even inquiring thought, it has been a known place, but one I drive by unnoticing.

Having been approached to exhibit My Story Line Quilts, I was invited in.  I went.

My Story Line Quilts will shine there, be welcomed and appreciated, just like the rest of their consumers, clients, patients...etc.

It is more special than an Art Gallery, for the eyes that gaze upon them will know my journey well....from both sides...the helpers and the helped.

(I will take pictures of the exhibit in September...until then, I will get my quilts and their words together.)