IMPERFECT Lady

The Laundry List

Below is The Laundry List from the book, commonly known as the Big Red Book...Adult Children of Alcoholics/dysfunctional families.

 

If you see yourself on the list....you may want to consider this something helpful to read!

 

1. We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.
2. We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.
3. We are frightened by angry people and any personal criticism.
4. We either become alcoholics, marry them or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.
5. We live our life from the viewpoint of victims and are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships.
6. We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults, etc.
7. We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.
8. We became addicted to excitement.
9. We confuse love and pity and tend to "love" people we can "pity" and "rescue."
10. We have "stuffed our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much. (Denial.)
11. We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low self-esteem.
12. We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to experience the painful abandonment feelings, which we received from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us.
13. Alcoholism is a family disease; we became para-alcoholics and took on the characteristics of that disease even though we did not pick up the drink.
14. Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors.

 

 

 

 

Get this book

I received a message on Facebook suggesting a book titled "Adult Children of Alcoholics/Dysfunctional Families....in that I would find lots familiar.  Wow, is there ever.

I am sure there will much I find helpful in sharing!

Here is a sample...

"People of all ages are so afraid of betraying their parents.  Speaking your truth, owning your reality is not an act of betrayal with your parents. There is a betrayal, but the betrayal is with the disease, the disorder, the dysfunction. To not own your reality or to not speak your truth is the ulitmate act of betrayal to yourself."

"When you are speaking about what happened you are owning your losses; you are letting go of the minimizing, rationalizing, and denial.  It is part of rectifying your past. It means you are no longer carrying the baggage that comes with denial. At times adult children have been criticized for blaming their parents. The principles of ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics/dysfunctional families) are not about blame. They are about owning your truth, grieving your losses, and being accountable today for how you live your life."  

"There are two other primary resistances to this recovery process as well.  People want recovery, but they prefer it be pain free. That is understandable, but unfortunately, identifying and feeling our feelings is part of healing.  People are afraid they are too fragile and will fall apart.  Where there is loss there will be tears; where there is loss there will be anger. but feelings are cues and signals to tell you what you need. It is the repression or distorted expression of them that gets people sick or into personal difficulty.  This program will help you learn to tolerate your feelings without hurting yourself or another.  I have been asked many times, does the pain ever go away? I believe the answer is yes."

"Another resistance is people want to heal and live in the present, but they prefer to do it alone. This is often based on rigid self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency is valued in our culture. The rigidity of self-sufficiency is based on mistrust in others and the fear of letting go of control. When you allow others to be part of your path, that is when it is possible to meet the resistance of fear of feelings. Others will shine the light and offer the hope that we deserve. As adult children we have lived a life of isolation for too long. Recovery is about connection."  ACA

Now, can you see what this is a book that I would stand by....and I am only in it 2% according to the Kindle.  

For all those who want to blame me for blaming our parents or for not getting me, I say get this book.

Mental to Love

My episode on Call Me Mental, has a few members on the family tree talking about the mental illness of our relatives; past and present...and Is There Proof?

It seems so completely insane that they will doubt the mental illness and want documented proof of suicides.  Like the obits will say "died by carbon monoxide due to having car running in closed garage...and that he suffered severe depression." 

Even my father's obituary did not state he was a pedophile...nor did it say how many victims lay in his wake.

Or that there needs to be more proof of my mother's state of mind, when she stayed married to a pedophile for 49 years.

And, I have been writing this blog stating how I lived in denial and was mental for 46 years and how it has been to come out of the fog and the consequences of a brainwashing religion.  And, still they want PROOF?

How odd this all is to me.

Mostly, what I feel is that they will die trying to belittle or make light the mental illness that is running through our family on both sides.  A tree that is filled with nuts and they refuse to see them and instead want normal!

Can you convince mental people that they are not normal...will any proof dent this belief?

On both sides we have mental illnesses that have wrecked havoc on lives...mostly due to denial.

Not only denial, but the indifference to those of us who are saying the truth to the cost of these mental illnesses.

It isn't so much that my father is a pedophile...gone untreated and unstopped, but the folks who knew and did nothing.  It is like the mental illness is compounded by indifference and it flows without a hitch, for no one in their right mind was willing to stand up and say what is really going on.

What I love is how the episode that was filmed is being defended and not cheered...for it shows how mental my family tree really is.  That is the proof.

Turning your back with indifference upon my story and my journey and my art, IS all the proof I need.  If you were all truly in your right state of mind, you would naturally support the victims.

But, you don't.

You can't.

Did you ever wonder why?

If the only family you have ever known came from a Mental Family Tree, how would you know what mental is...for you have always called it normal....or better yet, the family 'secrets' of any mental activity was quickly blessed forgotten and life moves on.

Most are emphatically stating that they are moving on with Joyful Hearts...paying no never mind to Beth and Carl and their filming on a documentary called "Call Me Mental".  They refuse to bring in our mentalness, JUST as they refused to bring in my father's and my uncles and the list goes on.

This is a backwards stigma of abuse where your family WILL NOT ACCEPT you being mental.  And are only called mental when you point out the mental people.

Can you get that?

The refusal to see mental illness IS what keeps the mentally ill accepted as normal.

And those of us who are trying to shine the light of what this has done to the victims in the past and the victims yet to be born...we are shown as mental while they defend they are a normal family of joyful hearts.

What they truly want is a normal happy family that is blossoming...untouched fruits...when it is impossible.

There is no way you can call your self or your life normal IF you were born into a home of a pedophile and with a wife who turned two blind eyes to what he was doing.

I am sorry...impossible to come out normal from there.

The only way you can, is to fully accept the mental illness you have inherited...and to start undoing the process by acting different. Sorta like behavior therapy.

What is so hard is that the mental illness in their mind refuses to see itself...or to label itself being mentally ill.

It was only when my mind and world completely fell apart was I able to see how mental it was...and still I had to earn my way forward.  I had to NoT do what I was taught by mental people.

Even as I sit on a film called "Call Me Mental" the family refuses to see themselves in me...

They want proof of being mental...and that is what I have been writing about for years is that our family is damaged and it will spread this on to the next generation by the virtue of indifference.

I have heard in various tellings how my family members are moving on...leaving behind the negative, that life is too short, that they can't find peace with the negative, that they forgave and are now peaceful....Like the mental illness can be avoided by ignoring it.

Really?

Sadly the mental illness is alive and well in your head...and is making choices for you.

It is seen by the way you act or don't act.

It is in the indifference towards me.

It is in the cruelty and belittling of my brother's life.

You are the carrier of its insideous ways...and the only thing that will slow it down is to see it.  To embrace it and to own it.  And, to not shun those of us who claim it...but rather learn from us as to how we can stop it.

Would my father have had such a long run, IF someone would have seen his mental illness?  Would there have been so many victims IF we as a family had embraced this disease and had him put away...40 years ago.  If my neighbors, pastors and mother brought him to the police and supported the victims in telling their story?

I think not.

What we don't acknowledge grows and spreads...

I am proud to be called mental...for it is from there that I can work to right myself.

It isn't the members of society that fully embrace their mental illness, but those who refuse to entertain the dark, that are damaging our families.

My experiences with my family IS all the proof I need to know that mental is where I came from.  There is no part of my upbringing that was considered normal as far as the emotional, psychological and nurturing goes.  For I witnessed first hand how a pedophile is lovingly accepted, blessed and taken care of.

And, the victim....left alone.  That is mental illness.

For in a normal nurturing loving family, the victim would not be left standing alone...

Love would know innocence from abuse...would move heaven and earth to stay far far away from anyone who hurts children.  Love would see the child's needs first, always.

I moved from mental to love...

 

 

 

 

Un-wounded.

The climate that is needed for an abused child to be heard is a place where all things go.  There can be no narrow road...but it has to be wide expanse of openness.

The narrow road most will not see...even as they present it.

When you live a life that is totally regimented, you leave little room for new information.

I wonder what upsets you the most, that the new information will wreck your idealized life or the person delivering it.  What do you not want to change?  Your life or the image you hold of someone?

I find this all intriguing and frustrating.

Our concepts of each other and what our world 'should' look like closes the door for reality.

Why is reality such a frightful place to be...when it is only your mind who will not let you see it, for your body lives here.

The greatest clues we have is how our bodies feel.  

I believe that some feel, I could have remained in the family and recovered.  That I could have continued my life UNCHANGED and made changes. That it was an extreme life surgery to give up family relationships.

And yet IT is their responses to the truth that had me make the family changes.

If they would have been open to wholly accept the totality of my truth, I would not have had to leave.

They act, like I acted alone.  I did not.

Even as the episode airs it is causing friction...NOT from its content, but from the indifference from my family.  

What they will argue about isn't the truth, but the messenger. They will deflect the truth by tearing apart the person speaking it.

I caught a small snippet about Solitary Confinement, and how it was started by the Quackers.  It was believed that if you gave a person the silent treatment, they would eventually see the error of their ways.

I see their indifference the same way. It is somehow believed that if they don't respond, I will eventually 'see the wrongness of my ways' and return to the fold.

The fold is waiting.  

Waiting for me to concede my truths and accept the 'loving' family.

They are waiting for me to return to the fold, sheepishly admitting, my bad.

What they fail to see is how they are an unwelcomed clan for any truth and pain about abuse.

They don't want to hear about the mental diseases that have plagued our family.

The ancestors whose lives were displays of the affects of abuse.

All signs of our longevity with denying abuse.

Suicides, alcoholics, depression, bi-polar, addictions, sexual abusers, to those whose lives are without intimacy...to name a few. Not to mention the physical body and its ailments.  My family tree hangs heavy with the side affects of abuse and yet...there are many who don't want to look at this part.

They want to remain focused on the good, like it will wipe away the rotting fruit.

Rejecting what you all call 'rotten' or not loving and kind, is to shut off those of us who are abused.

My silent and indifferent family would like me to believe that we are the same, and yet I hear not one word from them. All I hear, even second hand, is that perceptions of our family are many.

Oh and that they are. 

But, in the end there is only one truth, no matter how many perceptions there are.

I looked up the word perception.

"the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses."

One of my mother's last sentences she spoke to me was "You and I have two different perceptions of the same man."  

Yes, we do.

There are two different perceptions of our family. But their inability to see or hear the wounded doesn't make us un-wounded.

 

Oppression of the Silence

I see the project "Call Me Mental" as a great invitation to stand up and be real.  It was an unveiling if you will, about my whole life...and how I live with its truth.

How interesting that there is a need for a documentary to show our 'whole' lives. That we have been taught and conditioned to just wear our 'nice' things out in public.

Is this what is called "mental" to fully reveal your darkness?

When others see me as being courageous, it seems odd to me...now.  

However, I do recall the sheer terror and choking sensation of uttering words about something that has been kept in the dark for generations...and to admit I had no idea who I was...for I had built a life minus my truths.

And, I also instinctively knew the cost of breaking the silence.  Which I guess is why I am seen as brave. 

How many of us are keeping things in the dark and what is the cost?

It seems to me we all pay a cost, it just depends on who carries the weight of the truth or handles the burdens of silence.

My Self was the cost of 46 years of silence.  

I lived a life minus me.  

I lived to support others lives and to ensure their comfort.  

Mostly I lived to keep the abusers happy...and the legacy of abuse going...unknowingly when I turned away from my truths.

The only ones whose disapproval I feel, are those who still are actively supporting the legacy by their own silence and lack of owning their truths.  

The stigma or disgrace that I am asked to carry is to be outspoken. That is a no no in the land of abuse. I am called mental for doing so, and being punished by silence.

It is funny, in a sad and peculiar way, how my speaking out is viewed... 

It isn't my words, my quilts or the newspaper articles that I shared, but rather where each person is standing in their own lives with the truth of who they are...that makes the difference.

Their truth or the lack they live it, means more in how they hear me, than what I can say.

It just seems that in this day and age, we should have evolved more in awareness and consciousness to be more truthful and open with not only ourselves, but with those we hang with. 

If the "Call Me Mental" tour is inspiring others to live their truth, it will be a huge success.  To have folks from all walks of life, displaying their lives in a way that will lend courage for others to do so. We will evolve into more aware humans if we can all do this.

It will be to break down the wall of perfection...that is disabling us from being ourselves.  

The stigma is to disgrace perfection as its false strength... It wasn't that I have disgraced a warm loving strong family, but rather one that is steeped in abuse.

We don't applaud perfection; but rather those who have overcome great odds to live a life of peace, love and joy, coming from whence they came.

No one would see me as courageous for creating quilts. It is to create art when you don't know who the hell you are.

To have the quilts showing me the way out of my darkness...for that is where I escaped when the rest of my life didn't make sense.  

I had to make sense of the abuse. I had to accept a father that was less.  I had to lose family in order to stand by my truth.  

My courage is to find a new me while lossing huge portions of the old me, and to live it out loud. 

To show how mental it was to be removed from the truth and then how mental I am accused of being for standing by it.  

I see those of us who refuse to bow back into the land of pretend, called Mentally Challenged, for we will not conceed our truths for your comfort and ease...and I guess grace.  

We are willing and able to disgrace your life of pretending... as you pretend nothing is wrong...we continue to show you there is. We are mentally challenged when we can't pretend to pretend to pretend.

 Call Me Mental tour will be seeking those who dare speak their truths...when their families and society would prefer us to remain silent for their comfort.  It will be those of us who can't live in the oppression of the silence.