IMPERFECT Lady

Our Legacy

They say the best thing a father can do for his children -  is to love their mother.

 

My husband didn't have the easiest of roads.

 

He and I didn't know my past, and when it was revealed - he could have easily cut bait and left.

 

He not only choose to stay - he learned to love the new me - along with me.  

He was willing to lay our marriage down - and to work instead on ourselves - to find our best versions.  To work with the concept that the marriage is only as good as the people in it.

 

My breakdown was the worst and hardest thing we experienced together - and yet it has been the most rewarding to see how truth and being ourselves has allowed us both to relax and love without conditions.

 

Love is easy - when it is kind and beautiful looking.

Love is so much harder when things go sideways.

 

What I recall is not knowing who I was - and how I could not go back to being blind - and yet I had zero ideas of who I would ultimately become.   And more than all of that - I had the space in my marriage and my home to become.

 

He did not put any rules upon me.

 

He and I both allowed the old me to die and the new me to be born.

He not only accepted my truths, he loved me with them.

He loved my wounds.

 

I felt that my family of origin only wanted the old blind complacent forgiving boundary-less person. They had zero interest in or engaging with my new awareness and truths.

 

The juxtaposition between how my husband engaged with me - compared to them - is so completely vast - there is no common denominator.

 

On this one little and gargantuan way of loving me - changed the content of our home.  In how he accepted me - as me - wounded and unknowing who I was - also set the tone in accepting others.  He has shown me it is not only okay to be myself - it is something to be celebrated.

 

This.

 

This is what I celebrate in great fathers.

Fathers who love their wives.

Are faithful, kind, loving, respectful, hardworking, hard loving, fun and forever curious ---- the list goes on.

 

I know how lucky my children are - for he loves them the same.

He allows them just to be themselves - and LOVES them as they are.

There is nothing he needs added - for him to love them more.

 

Our family has love - boundless love because of this man.

 

Unconditional love - no rules - freedom to be love.

 

He has a happy Father's Day every day.  

He makes being a father look easy.

Being a grandpa a piece of cake.

For what he truly does best is just allow us all to be.

 

What I also love about him - is he is always himself.  He doesn't change - he is what you see - there is no mask.  He is unabashedly himself - always.  He is his own man - he follows his own north star.  Just being so content to be himself - has allowed me to settle into being Me.

 

This love.

 

Is the love that is our legacy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Branch of the Family Tree

Family has been on my mind lately.  Perhaps it is family reunions, family trips - and now Father's Day.  

There are two opposing threads that are tangled in my mind.

Family and Estrangement.

They don't coexist together. Like water and oil they don't mix - yet they roll around in my mind.  The desire and longing - with the opposing feelings of wanting distance.

 

I can't think of family - without thinking of me being on the outside. And how the family circle continues to turn - appearing unscathed.

 

I almost feel like I was unaware of the path I was taking and what it really really really meant.  That standing up and against sexual abuse within the family meant - being on the outside - losing family members. 

I don't believe I would have ever dreamed this was possible. I would lose family.

 

What else I hadn't counted on - was that most of my family would respond differently than I.

 

I would never have dreamed - we'd all face the same reality and walk completely different with it - based on how we were raised - I would have thought we'd respond the same. 

Just as we sorta lived the same. 

And, for the most part they did respond the same - except me.

 

There is one brother who is an anomaly - he walked for awhile on my path and then turned around and headed back.  This is partly what stirs my mind and thoughts.

Who was he all along?

Who was I talking to?

What was and are his truths.

How can he fit in both camps - when there is no common denominator between these two paths?

An outlier among outliers.

 

It is so interesting during crisis, we see parts of our families characters in a whole new light.  We perhaps get to know them for the first time.

 

Until we are put the test - our whole character is not revealed. I met myself for the first time - it broke my denial and showed me who was - and more it challenged me to dare stare at reality and than act accordingly.

 

It appeared to me - the choices were clear - stand with abuse or stand against it.  And I believe they stood with family or against family.  Which is different - they separated the abuse from the family.

I could not do that.  I wasn't able to separate my father from his abusive behaviors.

To me, each person came with their actions before their title - mom, dad, sibling.

 

It appears I was affected differently by the realization my father was a pedophile - I chose to stand against abuse. Even when family was entangled.  I see it as it is more important - not less. 

I am grateful I am on this path - it just comes with strange and complex musings.

 

 

In estrangement we have family that are strangers.

We have memories with strangers.

Family is a thing of the past.

 

I have a family on my branch of the tree - but the feelings of being part of where I came from now seems foreign to me - it has been so long.

My memories of family are tainted by my denial and the abuse.  It isn't even a normal family.  But, I felt that I belonged. I was part of - there was a connection.

Perhaps another mind game. For in the end the strength of my relationships were very weak. Broken with ease.

That too is shocking - in how quickly my family relationships crumbled - without a fight.

They'd say I didn't fight.

I'd say they didn't fight.

It was like our relationship was a tiny string not worth fighting for.

 

So as we sit at the eve of Father's Day - I have nothing when I search for father feelings. It was like I thought I had a dad, but it was just a mask hiding what was really beneath.

There are no holidays for masks.

 

It is almost as if, all I got left with was a pile of masks. 

Family relationships now appear fake - no substance to them, nothing worth fighting for.

I know there is a little girl inside of me - wishing it was different.

Wishing for the masks - yet knowing they are not real.

 

Estrangement is an odd place to live in. You long for what is not there. What was never there. 

 

What I also know, is that grief of losing your family origin - isn't made up for with having your own family.  It is a loss.  And in my case a huge loss - there are 14 of us plus parents.   And the extended families that flow from each - and each again.  The older I get the bigger the family grows - more strangers called family.

 

Yet sitting here. I am grateful.

I am at peace.

While my mind chews - and spins.  Not as often as before - but it does come back.  Again when family holidays present themselves.  We all automatically go to our family, our dad.... back to the complicated mess.

 

I can turn and refocus. And celebrate the real men who are fathers. Who love, care, an protect their child. Men worth celebrating and honoring.

If you have/had a loving father - I wonder how that feels in your heart?

To look back fondly on your history....

 

It is like I am afloat - looking toward the future - the past was too fake to keep.

I am grateful to witness my husband as a kind loving dad and grandpa.

My son-in-law a kind and loving dad.

It isn't the same as looking back longingly over years worth of history of loving a dad - 

But I can celebrate fathers on my branch of the family tree