IMPERFECT Lady

Express the Inexpressible.

This blog has been a space to put down my confusion to express the inexpressible.

 

I had to look up the word "inexpressible".

"(of a feeling) too strong to be described or conveyed in words."

"not capable of being expressed."

 

Perhaps I have troubles pinpointing the feelings to be expressed.

Because how do you express what empty feels like.

Or the content of hollow or nothing.

Yet full of every imaginable emotion.

The past is littered with volatile feelings and emotions.

It is like every emotion and then the vacuum of none.

Estrangement leaves a void that eclipse emotions.

Estrangement doesn't seem to have a feeling - just a desire for nothing.

 

So, with all that in mind.  I will try and explain an incident that happened tonight.

My friend and I drive up to our volunteer garden, El Camino and three kayaks - we slide into a parking spot and an old woman is up ahead in front of us - walking with a cane.  I feel her familiarity. Looking closer - I see my mother.

 

I sit in the car and watch - knowing she knows this car - or perhaps she has forgotten. 

I shut off the engine and tell my friend.  If my mother notices me/this car I will walk away.

I want zero interaction with her.

 

Walking slowly she approaches our garden, pauses for a beat or more - and then ambles off. 

 

This feeling - of having a mother - who you haven't seen in 9 years and haven't talked to in 17 - is inexpressible. 

It is unnatural.

What feelings are inside to be expressed - when what you want is space, distance, silence and no contact.

What you want is a permanent void.

But, you don't have that.

You have a life walking pausing being there.

 

This life, that gave you life - then gave you pain and did not notice - is in your world - unannounced.

One moment your world doesn't have her - and then she's there.

A ghost

A prick to the wound.

A reminder.

 

Slamming into each other are emotions and expressions.

She walks with a cane and denial.

I sit with reality and our history.

The years of healing, boundaries and absence has made me into a different person.

But she has missed all that.

To her, I would be the same; but just absent.

Not different.

 

What she would see and want to engage with is the old me.

The me who lived in denial. Her daughter.  She would want to be my mom.

That me has died.

 

The woman who sat in the El Camino - is aware now.

She knows, feels and has healed years of pains and sorrows.

 

The old woman with a cane - doesn't know my pain or my sorrows.

She didn't see me tonight and didn't see me years ago.

 

A ghost walked by our garden tonight.

A critical part of my history and source of much heartbreaking emotions.

She was unaware I was so close. 

Maybe I am the ghost.

 

I don't often wonder what she thinks or even if she thinks of me.

What would she do with a girl like me - unruly, strong, empowered, brave, badass, boundary setting lady.

She was haughty the last time we spoke.

Imagine, haughty towards a daughter who was abused by her husband.

Haughty is a good word.

 

Here is what that means. "arrogantly superior and disdainful."

 

The crazy makings of trying to articulate this - is the lack of accountability on her part. The lack of utter and overwhelming grief - that she hurt so many.  Instead she comes 'home' to her family.  Comes back to the scene of the crimes.  Comes back like there is no past history of horrible memories.  To her she is coming home to beauty.

 

This lack of remorse or even knowing what she participated in to her own children leaves me breathless and with zero desire to even entertain one minute of conversation.

 

I don't know what is normal for an estranged daughter who sees her mother.

But my reaction was to let the ladies know - I would walk away.

 

At times like these this bugs me too. I am unable to have a normal or regular reaction when I see my mother. 

I am placed in an awkward pose.

Inside of me isn't a warm exciting longing loving feeling.

Inside of me feels like victim who sees their perpetrator.

I want distance and I don't want them to see me.

I don't want further pokes into my wound.

I want to protect my inner love and peace and joy.

I want to walk my joy away.

 

I did still have a good night.

We tended the garden.

We floated on the water.

I won't lie - thoughts came and went and I was distracted - jarred from seeing her.

I wonder at times why the universe plops her into my world.

What am I to learn.

Imagine the precision of timing it takes to have us in the same space at the exact moment of time.

Especially when we can go years without a sighting.

I did see her once years ago in my mail jeep - passing like ships in the night - I didn't slow down.

 

Anyway. I feel better having played with words trying to express the inexpressible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Commitment to myself

"If abandonment is the core wound

the disconnection from mother

the loss of wholeness

then the most potent of medicine 

is the ancient commitment

to never abandon

yourself

to discover wholeness in the whole-mess

to be a loving mother

to your insides

to hold the broken bits 

in warm open awareness

and to illuminate the sore places

with the light

of love."  Jeff Foster.

 

So much is being said in the words above that resonate with me and my journey.

How I was abandoned with my wounds - unattended - and how I had to hold my broken bits with warm open awareness.  Seriously. 

I recall feeling the task was too large. To ask a broken down person to heal thy self if you will - felt insane.

 

To illuminate the sore places is heart wrenching and yet hold them to the light with love. To love the sadness and empty hole where a loving parent should be.

 

Often I hear that abused children lose their innocence - they don't.

They lose the parent who leaves us unattended.

We lose the parent who hurts us.

We don't lose our innocence, we are innocent.

We are abandoned but still innocent.

We can even be broken and innocent.

The ones who lose their innocence IS the perpetrator. They no longer are innocent parents. That is theirs to carry. When they harmed us or left us unattended, they abandoned us.

I am not sure I can articulate the way a parent abandons us as they abuse. For they no longer are our parents. We are left without parents.  A true loving parent will not abuse. A true loving parent walks away from those who abuse their child. 

It seems utterly insane that this even happens.

Yet, so many children, adult children, experience being left alone far too early.

To not have the comfort of knowing someone is there for you.

 

What is so tragic are the many children who are left alone with huge wounds in dysfunctional homes, who have no one that sees them or hears them. That alone feeling can only be healed when we step in and mother ourselves.

We truly can be the mother we never had.

 

I had to learn how to mother.

Learn how to be strong and set boundaries while broken.

 

I had an image of me as a young girl and she lived in me. At 46, I began making choices that would honor her and respect her and her brokenness.  Even broken I was a good mother to me.

 

As the years have passed, I am in awe of what I achieved - maintaining a strong commitment to myself - even when challenged by my family of origin - or more abandoned by them.

Which many of them would argue against.

 

Yet, as a brother or sister - If you stood with the parents - you abandoned me.

The same many would claim that it was I who abandoned my family for I am estranged.

That it is I who walked away.

 

As an estranged child it does appear at first glance that it was I who choose to leave.

Many never consider the reasons I am no longer part of the family.

Or more - see the commitment to my self and what I needed to heal.

All they may see is family - and love it and all its brokenness.

Neglecting the pieces that make up a family - each person.

 

I love the words and the sentiments they hold - for they bring hope and healing and more self -love.

 

Often we want to love only the good parts of us - and seldom is it talked about how we actually need to shine light and loving kindness on the pieces that hurt us.

 

This is one of my greatest achievements - my commitment to myself.

 

 

 

Out of My Mind

I was asked to write an article for this paper.

I have never written formally before.

I have written a million or more words in my journals and on my blogs, but nothing formal.

 

It took many first starts to find my tone.  It is the same tone I use on my blog.

The tone is me.  

Just speaking from this moment in time and my experiences.

 

It is an interesting question on what Health and Happiness means to you.

How does it sit in your world - how do you tend it?

 

I have a clear moment in time where I woke up from a brainwashed system both in my family and in religion.  My mind had been securely closed off - and I wasn't aware.

 

For true health and happiness, I believe you need an open mind.  A mind that is healthy, and able to challenge itself. In yoga they speak about bringing the mind back to the body - and to me that is the hardest thing to do - to be present in this moment of time - and not have a mind running amuck on endless fruitless tracks. 

 

A quiet mind.  A mind that I can use and not have it use me. This quiet open mind has allowed me to live in peace, love and joy. To me, that is true health and happiness.

 

My mind was a complete and utter mess.  It had so many wires crossed and was filled with lies and blank spaces. And, it had been living my life unchallenged. It never occurred to me that its contents were untruths. 

A friend asked me, how was it possible to live in denial.

Like, how can you not know.

 

It is the oddest thing to not know you don't know.

 

I think, I thought denial was, you knew and choose not to believe.

Instead you don't know and you don't choose not to know.  Something in your brain doesn't allow information in that will oppose what it believes in.

 

It is frightening to know that your brain can filter reality to keep its story alive.

 

For the first 46 years of my life I lived a fairytale - reality wasn't allowed in.

 

It isn't as rare as many may think.

In my experience, I have encountered many who live under the control of their minds.  Childhood beliefs and religious standards become their own rulers.  Rulers as in kings.  It dominates and steers their lives.

 

I used to think faith was a kind master.  Now, I am not so sure.

 

A strong faith is often a mind that has been warped - and a body controlled.

 

I am not certain whether my spiritual abuse came before or after my sexual abuse. But, the two together formed an ironclad bond in my mind.  It kept me from Me.

 

The mind disowned my body and its truths. And, the mind turned a blind eye to reality and what was happening. I get it. I was too young to know what was going on and it shielded me with blankness.

Yet it left me not knowing what I needed to know.  

 

It is hard for many folks to understand what the mind does with abuse.

To me the longest affects of abuse is the damaged mind.  The mind that believes in untruths.

This sets you up to live life in a very confused way.

 

Where reality skips by and untruths live as if they were true.

There is a weird place you can literally live your whole life, untouched by reality.

Seriously.

 

I did it for 46 years.  

 

Where you don't have the ability or space to question your thoughts and challenge your beliefs to go back and delve into systems you were raised in - to look at a wider deeper lens into your own life.

To see see things as they are, not as your mind believes they are.

Because I came from a religion that set itself up like a cult, where sameness was needed. Where rules and sins were in place to keep order and fear of hell made following the rules imperative. I see so many people lost in their minds and they don't even know it. Just as I was.

 

Health and happiness is when you can break free of the mind and see things as they are.

I feel so secure with reality and living what is.

My body feels peace in reality.

I often wonder when there is so much anxiety if it isn't grounded in a mind out of touch with reality.

A mind that was created for a reason and then lost touch with the ground.

 

It is scary to me to see so many lost in their beliefs.

 

It was interesting to me as I was waking up from the brainwashing, how the lies of the mind felt in the body, compared to the truth of reality.  Bit by bit, I would question my mind and its lies.  Learning more and more how wiley it was.

 

Unraveling years of denial and blind faith.

What I know to be true for me, is happiness and health truly come when I live outside of my mind - when I am able to be here now, and accept what reality is serving in this moment of time.  Allowing life to be as it is, like nature.  

I am one with nature and the nature of even being me.  My mind is now used to witness reality instead of erasing what is. I am happily out of my mind.