IMPERFECT Lady

2+ Days

Yesterday during a Tim Ferris Podcast, I heard about a couple ideas that I love. He was speaking to Jim Collins. 

One was "Who Lucky".  Who were you lucky to meet along your journey, who helped grow you into who you are?  Who was there at the right moment in time to give you what you needed? Who was the role model? Who would be mentioned in the most influential people list?

My Who Lucky list is truly amazing. There are folks who have walked parts of the journey with me offering wisdom, courage and a path forward.

When in my darkest times, they appeared with the right and perfect answer. A book and author were sent my way. 

They were an ear to listen and an eye to witness my pain.

As I walked along the path of speaking out, some would steer clear and others came closer. 

My Who Lucky ones held my truth with reverence, not dismissal.

I believed in me, and their cheers encouraged me to be braver, always.

My Who Lucky ones, helped unravel that which I had wrong.

Being strong enough to tell me the truth I needed to hear.

When you think of your life, and see the people you were lucky to meet, perhaps marry and have as children, they make your Who Lucky list.

Friends who you feel lucky to have spent time with, who walked with you in times of trouble or in moments of adventure and growing, they make the Who Lucky list.

New friends whose presence brings you calm assurance you are walking in a healing direction.

My Who Lucky list are those who have touched my life and helped me be who I now am.

I want to thank all those who are on my Who Lucky List!

 

Another thing Jim Collins spoke about was to rate his day.

I will put this in my words, since I can't remember his rating system.

2+ is a day where you did something amazing, a new fun thing, or an old fun thing, but with a great friend. A great day!

2 is a day where you had a good day, an overall positive flowing day.

1+ is maybe a day were it wasn't outstanding, just a regular ho hum day.

1 is a bland day, leaning towards lower feelings.

-1 is you feel down, tired and uninspired.

0 is you are in a slump and can't seem to find the energy to move.

 

He would put a number on the calendar by his bedside each night to give him a sense of how his week and or life is going.  If there were too many 1's he would add more 2's if he could.  Knowing what made a great day for him.

 

What I know is that my life holds so many awesome Who Lucky people who have also made my days 2+ days.

 

 

 

 

 

Facade of life

In talking to a friend, I was shown how we can't see what we can't see, even though we see it.

The definition of denial.

How we are actually responding and acting with a red flag, but perhaps can't see its color OR know what it is.

Hard to explain, how living in dysfunction, set me up to not see it.

How even the level of mental illness that ran through our family seemed just average. Well, perhaps a person with idiosyncrasies - just odd habits.

Or to label them unkind or selfish etc, and not realizing the very nature of their mental wellness IS the dysfunction.

Not being able to fully engage with your emotions and feelings allowing you to be not only kind to others, but to first love you.

 

In my family, I never remember there being a discussion about our mental well being. What would be better for us or what more, is wounding us.  Even who is unstable and why.

And secondly, we were not show self love. 

Based on this, how do you know what a mental illness looks like, if it was never called that? And, what do you know about loving yourself.

How can you discern these odd characteristics as being components to mental illness?

I lived in denial that I was in denial.

My brother and I used to cal this a double blind or sometimes we even had a triple.

I also think, we subjectively see the world through our own mental wellness.

We see as broad as our closed mind is open.

 

While I have written adnauseam about dysfunction, I wasn't seeing it clearly or perhaps from a far.

It is trying to find normal in an abnormal environment and not recognizing it is impossible.

Can a mental person see their own mentalness clearly?

Will your mental mind be a huge blockage to knowing this?

 

How can I see my own mental mind, with a mind that was raised in dysfunction, am I not handicapped to do so?

Who do we rely upon to tell us what is mental wellness?

Is there even such a thing?

 

What brings me love, joy and peace, may not bring someone else the same.

Being back with my family may bring my brother emotions, that are the opposite of mine, who can tell what is right for either of us?

Is there a neutral zone, where it is better for us to remain, compared to other relationships that cause us stress?

I can't know the deeper ideals of mental stability, but I can know what I tolerate or what brings me great stress.

My body is the barometer of what my mind can hold.

 

What is also weird to me, is that prior to my breakout from denial, I denied my feelings and my mind was at peace.  Peace, being it didn't really want to know the truth. My mind was okay having my body feel the stress and shut down.

Now, that my mind knows the truth, it and my body are in harmony.

The disconnect is now connected.

 

What I often fail to appreciate, is that there were many experiences coming from my family home, and we were not all raised the same, nor did we experience it the same.

What I call dysfunction is just normal.

Even above normal.

Where they can feel that their forgiving attitude and dropping the justified resentments, seems like love.

It is love to them.

Do we not all have our own definitions of love.

Yet, some love will have emotional and mental ramifications upon the human condition.

What I know for sure, is that my experiences is a unique and different experience.

My love of self requires me to act in ways others may find mental.

And, I may find mental how others live in their relationships.

 

Coming from denial I live in as much transparency as I can muster. I strive to see that which I can't see. I want to fully embrace the total picture as much as my mind can allow.

I feel most well being, when all things align.

When reality and my mind and body agree.

If one things is unsettled, I know there is something I am missing.

 

The biggest red flag in dysfunctional homes, is not seeing the red flags.

My childhood was littered with red and I was color blind.

Even my adult years there were flags leading back to abuse, and yet I was unaware.

 

I am grateful we are learning more and more about mental illnesses and perhaps to see we are all on the spectrum. That even in one day, we slip and slide on the scale of normal.

The bottom line, is a good life is one where you can live out loud your feelings, emotions and desires.  Where you are not pretending to pretend you are you. Living a facade of a life.

 

 

 

The Mastery of Love

This week I listened to "Don Miguel Ruiz" on Maria Shriver's podcast "Meaningful Conversations".

What I loved about the podcast is, it is the author speaking about the book, "The Mastery of Love" and he is doing so with someone who is more or less skeptical and disbelieving.

 

I had the book "The Mastery of Love" and I read it years ago.  This time however, it makes so much more sense to me, especially after listening to their conversation.

Here is a part of the book.

"So many humans are suffering because of all the false images we try to protect. Humans pretend to be something very important, but at the same time we believe we are nothing. We work so hard to be someone in that society Dream, to be recognized and approved by others. We try so hard to be important, to be a winner, to be powerful, to be rich, to be famous, to express our personal dream, and to impose our dream onto other people around us. Why?  Because humans believe the Dream is real, and we take it very seriously."

It is interesting to see life with this perspective, especially when we pretend to be something, while feeling we are nothing. The contrast itself is enough to spin your world into madness.

 

And, I love this part too.

"The emotional body perceives emotions, but not through the eyes. We perceive emotions through our emotional body.  Children just feel emotions and their reasoning mind doesn't interpret or question them. This is why children accept certain people and reject other people. When they don't feel confident around someone, they reject that person because they can feel the emotions that person is projecting. Children can easily perceive when someone is angry and their alarm system generates a little fear that says, "Stay away". And they follow their instincts - they stay away."

"We learn to be emotional according to the emotional energy in our home, and our personal reaction to that energy. That is why every brother and sister will react differently according to how they learn to defend themselves and adapt to different circumstances. When parents are constantly fighting, when there is disharmony, and disrespect, and lies, we learn the emotional way of being like them. Even if they tell us not to be that way and not to lie, the emotional energy of our parents, of our entire family, will make us receive the world in a similar way."

"The emotional energy that lives in our home is going to tune our emotional body to that frequency. The emotional body starts to change its tune, and it is no longer the normal tune of the human being. We play the game of the adults, we play the game of the outside dream, and we lose. We lose our innocent, we lose our freedom, we lose our happiness, and we lose our tendency to love. We are forced to change and we start receiving another world, another reality; the reality of injustice, the reality of emotional pain, the reality of emotional poison. Welcome to hell - the hell that humans create, which is the Dream of the Planet. We are welcomed into that hell, but we don't invent it personally. It was here before we were born."

"You can see how real love and freedom are destroyed by looking at children. Imagine a child two and three years old running and having fun in the park. Mom is there watching the little guy, and she's afraid he might fall and hurt himself. At a certain point she wants to stop him, so he tries to run faster from her. Cars are passing in the street nearby, which makes Mom even more afraid, and finally she catches him. The child is expecting her to play and she spanks him. Boom! It's a shock. The child's happiness was the expression of love coming out of him and he does not understand why she is acting this way. This is a shock that stops love little by little over time. The child does not understand words, but even so he can question, "Why?"  

"Running and playing is an expression of love, but it's no longer safe because your parents punish you when you express your love. They send you to our room and you cannot do what you want to do. They tell you that you are being a bad boy, or a bad girl, and that puts you down, that means punishment."

"In that system of reward and punishment there is a sense of justice and injustice, what is fair and what is not fair. The sense of injustice is like a knife that opens an emotional wound in the mind. Then, according to our reaction to the injustice, the wound may get infected with emotional poison. Why do some wounds get infected? Let's look at another example."

"Imagine that you are two or three years old. You are happy, you are playing and exploring. You aren't conscious of what is good, what is bad, what is right, what is wrong, what you should be doing and what you shouldn't be doing, because you are not domesticated. You are playing in the living room with whatever is around you. You don't have any bad intention, you don't try to hurt anything, but you are playing with your Daddy's guitar. For you, its' just a toy; you don't try and hurt your Daddy at all. But your father is having on of those days when he doesn't feel right. He has problems in his business, and he goes into the living room and finds you playing with his things. He gets mad right away, and grabs you and spanks you."

"This is injustice from your point of view. Your father just comes, and with anger hurts you. This is someone you trusted completely because he is your daddy, someone who usually protects you and allows you to be you. That sense of injustice is like a pain in your heart. You feel sensitive, it hurts and makes you cry. But you cry not just because he spanks you. Its not the physical aggression that hurts you; it's the emotional aggression you feel is not fair. You didn't do anything."

"That sense of injustice opens a wound in your mind. Your emotional body is wounded, and in that moment you lose a little part of your innocence.  You learn that you cannot trust your father. Even if your mind doesn't know it yet, because your mind doesn't analyze, it still understands, "I cannot trust." Your emotional body tells you there is something that you cannot trust, and that something can be repeated."

"You reaction might be fear; your reaction might be anger or being shy or just crying. But that reaction is already emotional poison, because the normal reaction before domestication is that your daddy spanks you and you want to hit him back. You hit him back or just intend to put your hand up, and that makes your father even madder at you. The reaction of your father for just putting your hand up against him creates a worse punishment. Now you know he will destroy you. Now you are afraid of him, and you no longer defend yourself because you know it will only make things worse."

"You still don't understand why, but you know your father can even kill you. This opens a fierce wound in your mind. Before this, your mind was completely healthy; you were completely innocent. After this, the reasoning mind tries to do something with the experience. You learn to react a certain way, your personal way. You keep that emotion with you, and it changes your way of life. This experience will repeat itself more often now. The injustice will come from Mom and Dad, from brothers and sisters, from aunts and uncles, from school, from society, from everyone. With each fear, you learn to defend yourself, but not the way you did before domestication, where you would defend yourself and just keep playing."

"Now there is something inside the wound that at first is not a big problem; emotional poison. The emotional poison accumulates, and the mind begins to play with that poison. Now we start to worry a little about the future because we have memory of the poison  and we don't want that to happen again. We also have memories of being accepted; we remember mom and dad being good to us and living in harmony. We want harmony, but we don't know how to create it. And because we are inside the bubble of our own perception, whatever happens around us now seems as if it is because of us. We believe Mom and Dad fight because of us, even if it doesn't have anything to do with us."

"Little by little we lose our innocence; we start to feel resentment, then we no longer forgive. Over time these incidents and interactions let us know its not safe to be who we really are. Of course this will vary in intensity with each human according to his intelligence and his education. It will depend on many things. If you are lucky, the domestication is not that strong. But if you are not so lucky, the domestication can be strong and the wounds so deep, that you can eve be afraid to speak. This results is "Oh I am shy," Shyness is the fear of expressing yourself. You may believe you don't know how to dance or how to sing, but this is just expression of the normal human instinct to express love." Miguel

 

This is how we learn to not love who we are, not trust who we are, not have a voice or a choice.  

I find this wildly enthralling how we are who we are by how we were nurtured or domesticated in his words.

Knowing your past and how it has worked to shape you, you cannot blame yourself if you are having a hard time being you.

However, if we were taught this, we can unlearn what we were taught.

The untangling of my love of self, literally happened each time I used my voice or made an action for myself, instead of for the other. I was willing to do what I needed to do, regardless of the punishment that would come.

What is so odd, is that I also felt I had 'unreasonable' fear of my father and my mother as well. Yet, this writing shows how we suffer emotional wounding and how it infects our emotions. As well as how we hide our real emotions in order to make peace

I used to say, I was a whore for love and peace. I can see this more clearly in how I thought I had to be.

When we are raised in a dysfunctional toxic environment, we are unlucky in our domestication, and lose touch with our inner child.  Lose connection with our healthy emotional responses.

We can peel back our fears and learn to love ourselves, but we may piss off a few folks in order to do so. We have to learn it is okay if others are upset. It isn't our responsibility to make them happy.

Being a master of our own emotions, is the mastery of love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most Gorgeous thing of all

On Instagram Mirna Valerio asked,

"Tell me how you came to love your body. Tell me how you love what your body has been and is able to do? Tell me how your body amazes you every day. Tell me how your body has defied expectations (both your own, and others). Tell me how you encourage others to love their bodies. I want to know your story of body love and honor. If you don't have a body love story yet, that's okay. Take the opportunity to read others' stories and be inspired, motivated and encouraged. Look at your own life and make a plan for how you will try to love yourself a little more each day."  Mirna

I love this.

Isn't that an interesting story, "How I came to love my body."  

The more popular story is why I don't love my body.

 

How I came to love my body, was when I was 46 years old.  By then a mother of 4 children, overweight and fairly inactive.

It wasn't that my body suddenly deserved love, but rather I was made aware of how it carried my truth.

I loved and honored my body, not for its size or shape, but rather for its wisdom.

I became aware of the soft body within the body.

The world of feelings and unexpressed emotions.

The awakening to my innocence filled me with worth.

It was the polar opposite of how I had viewed myself prior.

I loved my wounded little girl and her wise body.

She came before the good opinion of others.

Before their needs and what would please them.

This wounded messed up girl unraveled herself using her body as her guide.

I loved the wisdom stored within my body.

I am not certain, who I loved first, the neglected little girl or the wise body.

It appeared as one.

What I want most for others to know, is that they are worthy and that their truth is priceless and that their bodies are wise with truth.

For years I worked on re-working a new pattern of living for me.

And, slowly began adding activities that I now love.

I love what my body does for me.

It is beyond what my heart can hold.

They are all seemingly small things; but are life altering.

Just the feelings of Me loving Me is life changing.

Imagine a life where your very starting point in all things, is love.

It makes all of life infused with love, peace and joy.

I know that with this self love comes the courage to be disliked, as a title of a book states.

The courage to be my self always.

I simply can't imagine living any other way.

I am the common denominator in all of my relationships, and how I feel about me IS what I bring to each of them.

I love my mind for what it has gone through and its ability to rewire and re-string new meanings of life. I love its ability to change its beliefs.

I love my body for all the incredible things it allows me to enjoy. A million sensations in a day.

I love the story of how I came to love my body.

I came to love it first through feelings of sorrow, grief, and pain beyond what my mind could hold. 

I felt the darkest and learned that the depth of sorrow would also be the depth of joy.

I honor my body by living the truth of what is.

I don't see my body as a size or a shape. 

I see it as an incredible complex and vital part that holds love.

It is the vehicle that allows me to experience life.

The vast wonders and levels of living.

The million ways to love.

 

My granddaughter and I began stating what we loved most about our day before going to bed.

Last night, she misspoke and called it our gorgeous things.

"Grandma, what was the most gorgeous thing today?"

She's almost 4 and its about Mommy, kitties and me.

I love that we lay and reflect before falling asleep about our gorgeous things.

How I came to love my body is the most gorgeous thing of all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not to lose it.

There is a thought, that when we leave the church, we then become "lost souls".  And I can understand how this image appears in their minds. 

However, I am quite certain there are also found souls.  

Souls who have found themselves by eliminating the middleman.  By stepping out in the world, beyond religion.

It is scary, and very freeing, at the same time.

The hardest part is that we are often seen as detached and perhaps 'unsaved' or, a foreigner in their land.

We become the 'other'.  

Whereas prior we were one of them.  Often categorized as "the right church" or the "True" religion, part of God's church and his saved children, etc.

It is like you are going from the popular group, to the unpopular group; from the chosen to the unchosen.

We have chosen now to be 'unsaved' or, willing to be in hell and not heaven.

 

I truly do not feel lost at all.

Or, unsaved.

Or, that I am heading to hell when I die.

 

It is weird to be out on your own in the world unaffiliated.

To live life as a free agent.

I am sure it is as strange to see us without a religion, as it is for some of us, to see them with one.  

There are two different schools of thought, and we are no longer matching.

 

Some, who have never tried living life without a religion, find it very hard and even unimaginable to be living without one.

 

It was a foreign concept to me too.

As I said, it is a very scary process to leave the religion of your childhood.  Or, to leave the path that feels secure and so inclusive by God and others. 

To have none of the old reassurances about life and death.

To dare and step off the path, into the land of the unknown.

Into the same land that is preached against.

We are walking among what many would now call "Unbelievers".

Or, lost souls.

And, to be sure, I did feel lost at the beginning. Until I realized that God didn't live in the church.  And, I wasn't only valuable with a the religion franchise.

Perhaps it was when I discovered I didn't leave God behind, it became less scary.

 

I can understand the sentiment, that I would be lost without religion. For it does appear to be the truth, when you feel so identified with the religion.  

It was a huge identifier of who I was, until it wasn't.

I would even say, in my case, it stole my identity.

It was more me, than Me.

My individual thoughts and desires were drowned out by the religion's preferences.

I found me underneath the layers of beliefs.

And, I also found, that my life didn't run amuck, when I no longer believed in the faith.

I wasn't walking hand and hand with the devil.

I didn't become evil, etc.

I actually became more thoughtful and present. 

I am eager to see how others see the world and even death.

I am open to learning new ways of spirituality.

I am less judgmental and more inquisitive about other ways of life.

And, just plain curious to the human journey and how we are nurtured into different faiths and how they have impacts on how we live and see others.

I am learning how often religion is given, or forced upon us as children and spirituality something we can discover on our own.  

Spirituality isn't franchised either.

Religion is often fear based. Fear of what will happen if you leave or when you die etc.

Spirituality feels more about the present and true self.

It is true I have lost the connection I felt within the church.

I have lost the respect.

I have lost the faith in their message.

I have lost the trust in their actions.

I have lost the belief in their way.

But, I did not lose my soul when leaving there.

I feel that I have found it.

I did not realize the weight and burden of the religion until I set it down

The sheer load of unworthiness or the identifier of 'sinner' dragged me down.

Outside of this belief I found my self worth.

In fact, oddly the sentiments of the religion about Self, mirrored or echoed the feelings of abuse.

Perhaps because I discovered my abuse the same time I left the church, I could see the connection being equal.

Regardless, I within myself, felt my soul's worth outside of the religion.

The correlation between the dysfunctional family and how I needed to be and how I was viewed when I challenged its beliefs, equaled that of the religious community.

The two most powerful sources that created my self worth, were both equally dysfunctional.

So, when I hear that I am a lost soul or perceived as one, I would have to say, my soul was lost both in my family and religion.  

However, once I stepped into my own power and began to see and challenge things, I found it.

It stood with me as I walked into the dark.

I was never alone upon leaving.

Perhaps even, I had to leave both places because they were hurting my soul.

I didn't lose my soul for leaving, but rather was led by my soul.

We walked together into the unknown.

Knowing that what we were leaving no longer, if ever, was healthy for my spirit.

I left to save my soul, not to lose it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Right to Criticize Me

Mostly I blog or write on here to sort out my mind, and to place unanswered questions, I write to unscramble frustrations.  I am doing this mostly for me.  And, most often by the end of the blog, I have a new awareness.

Sometimes, I just want the record of the days news or history or to keep a new understanding written down.

I want evidence, if you will, how prevalent sexual abuse is within church communities, how I am NOT the anomaly that many accused me of being.

Perhaps I too, want my voice to be heard, in my voice.

To write what most won't listen to.

I write about my experiences, and my insights, and my viewpoint.

I write to bring to light to an area that has been in the dark.

That operates in the dark.

That needs there to be silence and no one talking about it.

Where no one challenges the faithful.

I am willing to get the flack for speaking out.

Which is why so many are silent.

I want to be the prod to make others think differently.

For I could have used a prod years ago.

Someone has to be the one to speak up.

To ask the tough questions.

To be willing to be seen as 'short sighted' or how little I know.

I deleted a Facebook post, which I should have kept.

It is amazing how they will come full guns upon me, instead of going where the real trouble is.

That church isn't about Man.

Really?

It is about God.

Yet, the man is who is in the churches sexually abusing.

You have to put your God down for a moment and deal with this.

God isn't going anywhere.

What I am trying to tell you all, is that while you are worshiping your God, Man is running around abusing the children. 

What can we do about this?

What can you do?

The sheer frustration to me, is that you will continue to worship and go and see God, regardless of what is going on underneath.

The underneath needs attention.

It needs you to stop and refocus your attention.

God can take care of himself, the children cannot.

 

I can't even begin to remember my old faith, the way I was unwilling to place anything before it. I can't know what would have shook me out of that faithfulness. Well, what did was my niece saying Grandpa touched me.

It was abuse within my family.

And, perhaps the closeness that echoed in me.

But, what will it literally take.

Hollering back at me is not the answer.

Belittling me isn't going to work neither.

 

What do I know.

I know, that if you the truly faithful continue on being faithful, it doesn't affect the lives of the abused.

What I needed as a child, were church members to be horrified.

To not keep up the image of the goodness of the church.

I needed them to get rid of the darkness it operated within.

I needed light upon what was making us all traumatized.

I needed the good christians to have been more concerned about the children than their relationship with God.

 

There has to be a way for you all to keep your God and to protect the children.

There has to be answers.

A new way.

As I have said a thousand times before, you can't keep doing what the generations before you did, and expect things to change.

Abuse isn't going to stop itself.

Abusers will not decide one day to stop abusing.

Children are being molested and we have to find ways to not be co-conspirators by our inactions.

 

I walked out of my church.

I walked out of my family.

I didn't do these things because I hated God.

I didn't leave God, I left due to the fact that abuse wasn't being dealt with, at all.

In fact, the very nature of the church's business was to forgive the 'sins' abuse that the perpetrators did upon the children.

This was too much for me to handle.

I didn't leave my family cause I stopped loving them.

I left because their actions were not going to stop abuse from happening again.

 

I needed to change what I was doing, in order to be the end of the abuse cycle in my life.

 

I can't see how doing the same thing you did prior to knowing of the abuse, will affect change.

I can't, and I can't not speak out to women who are perplexed and outraged at the volume of abuse, and YET, they are not making life changes in their own lives.

I get it.

Change is hard.

Looking deeply into what is going on and how your actions may or may not be a contributing factor is hard. But, WHO IS GOING TO STOP ABUSE?

It feels like the apathy is winning.

The faithful are remaining faithful.

How is it going to be stopped?

I have been told repeatedly to keep speaking out, keep being brave, keep having the courage and to keep this blog going.

Really?

To what end?

What changes have others made in their lives that will stop the cycles from picking up speed.

The numbers in the catholic church that have been exposed, by a few States doing the investigating, are the tip of the iceberg in that religion.

That religion.

That one religion.

What about the others.

What about the church you attend?

What about within the circle of your friends and community?

What are you willing to give up to save a child from having to experience trauma?

Go ahead and blast me, I don't care.

I have had more wrath than I ever expected to be sent my way for speaking up.

But, at the end of the day, you all sit with your actions, your God and your religion.

You get to see how your life is preventing abuse or enabling it.

I am not mad, I am frustrated more at the non-abusing folks than at the abusers almost.

It takes a village to keep the darkness dark.

My one blog isn't loud enough to shake the foundations upon which you all stand.

What will topple the cycles of abuse?

What will make it harder for abusers to abuse?

Will it matter to them if you are diligently worshiping your God?

Will it matter to them if you are keeping the family close and unchallenged?

Will it matter to them if they see how you forgive and forget?

Know, that the abusers are watching you.

 

And more, the children are watching you too.

What will they see you doing?

I can't know, if I have done enough to stop abuse in my family's tree, from my life. From the lives of my children and grandchildren.

I can't know if what I have done is enough.

Or, what more can I do.

I can know is that I am trying

I am sharing how abuse is seen from the eyes of a victim.

What is helpful and then not helpful.

I can be outspoken in my life and hope that at the very least, there are no dark places.

Will my new pattern be enough?

Will there be more generations beneath me who is still abused?

Will what I have done, matter?

I believe, based on what I needed my mother to do, that it is a start in the right direction.

I am doing what I wished would have been done for me.

At the very least, look at your pattern, your cycle and see if there are changes from when you were a child. 

As I sit here today, as I sit here with myself, I am at peace that I have tried.

I have done what I can to change the pattern in the cycle of abuse within my life span.

I can only affect my life.

Each of you will have to do the same within your own life cycles.

This blog has not been for naught.

It has allowed me the space to unravel and old pattern and reconstruct a new one.

The me who began this blog was not the me who is sitting here today.

 I M perfect, and it is impossible not to be.

This is my rendition of trying to stop the cycle of abuse.

Certainly there were places I could have done better, but at least I am in the arena trying to wrestle this beast.  

Only those in the arena with me have the right to criticize me.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Theodore Roosevelt 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Faithful

As another church scandal hits the news, another almost 300 priests are named in sexual abuse cases in Texas, how can this religion, NOT be smeared?

How can its validity still stand strong?

Seriously, I am asking how its content can still be a container of hope, love etc?

How can good people stay?

Or maybe, what will it take for you to go?

I sincerely can't understand how you can keep the faith separated from the sexual abuse that is so prevalent within it.

 

I had a conversation with a woman from another church, (not catholic) who was abused say 50 years ago, and she was telling me about how it has gotten so much worse.  

And, I asked her, "how can you stay in a church knowing that so much abuse is going on?" And, she said, it isn't the church.

I asked her to tell me how she can hold them both, but in two separated containers.

How can you have this undying faith and belief in a system that YOU KNOW has not stepped in and stopped abuse.

She herself knows that the leaders have been abusers. And, yet she has faith in it.

Faith in what?

How can the system whose leaders abuse, still be something to be faithful to?

How can you separate it into two cans, the abuse and the faith?

Seriously asking?

I truly do not get it.

I am mind blown when talking with folks who still remain so fervently faithful AFTER knowing about the abuse inside their faith.

How can catholics hold the system, the faith, separated from the abuse.

How can it NOT touch the faith, when the leaders are doing the abusing?

And, the old adage, we are all sinners, is not an answer.

Just as someone told me, no sin is too big to forgive, when talking about my father sexually abusing little girls.

Seriously.

IF that is what your faith teaches, do you not see it as a problem or perhaps a benefit to those abusing inside of your faith?

What I am losing faith for, or hope in, is the non- abusing to leave.

When will it be enough?

How many children will it take to make you seriously look upon the faith you are holding dear?

And further more, how can that same faith not hold the trauma of all the children that have suffered in the name of God, in the hope of you going to heaven one day.

I just don't get it.

It makes sense to me that pedophiles abuse children, that is what they do.

What doesn't make sense is good hearted women (and men) staying. 

I just don't get it.

Certainly the God you believe in, would want you to at some point take a stand.

At some point walk away from systems who repeatedly abuse and cover up, who continue to make a new victim over and over again.

How can you not be mixed in the mixture of abuse, coverup and knowing?

You are playing a part in the whole culture of sexual abuse.

 

In each abuse scandal that happens, the very large and focal ones we all see, the similar refrain that weaves itself through, is how many knew.

How many knew and did not report.

Or, how many knew and forgave them.

The victims stand, abused again, when they discover that good people knew and did nothing.

Meaning, they did not exit the church.

They did not give names to the police.

They did not show some sign of being anguished by the fact that abuse was going on.

If only, the good hearted would leave.

If they would lead the way out of the abuse.

If they would show the victims, that their lives mattered enough to go.

I sat across from the woman whose whole life was led by the church she believes in, whose whole life she tried to be as good as she can be, whose whole life was littered by the acts of forgiveness, her intentions, faithful.

And, yet. 

She wasn't able to take a stand.

Against what is soiling her religion.

Instead, she remains faithful.

Obedient.

Compliant.

Steadfast.

A member of a church that continues to not make it their business to look into matters of abuse.

Now tell me what is she a member of?

She doesn't see her forgiveness as being an instrument that keeps the pedophiles washed white as snow.

She doesn't see her ability to hold their sins in one container and the ideal of the faith in another.

Isn't that like holding on to  the highest potential, even when there is little evidence to hold it.

Like loving what some one could be, not what some one is.

What is the real picture of these churches?

What is the real content?

While you are holding on to the picture of wholeness, of good, of hope, of love, you are not seeing the abused children.

Perhaps these are not your children, not in your circle, not this or not that, but the fact remains, the system you have faith in, which guides your life, IS also a smoothly operating system that systematically has for decades and decades, kept in the dark the facts they have known.

Sexual abuse is prevalent inside.

It isn't like the leaders are shocked.

They have helped keep the darkness, by covering up the abuse.

And, I can't but help see you as co-conspirators, for you too know and do not leave.

 

In all my years of trying to figure out the landscape of abuse, the part that stumbles me the most, is those who are unable to move.

Unable to change their minds.

Unable to see that there is only one container.

One reality.

 

I find that the most faithful, the most diehard believers are the most frustrating.

Their believing minds will not accept another thought that contradicts what they were taught to believe.

As the quote says, "A mind convinced against its will is of the same opinion still."

There is a mind blockage that keeps them from moving differently than they have all these years.

Something inside of them refuses to give up on their religion, refuses to see that IF it can knowingly coverup sexual abuse against children, IT has very little value.

How can it maintain value after decades of coverup?

How?

So, in the wake of another headline, what will leave me most confounded, is the lack of movement from the faithful.