Our concept of love and trust starts at home. - Printable Version +- Bring4th (https://www.bring4th.org/forums) +-- Forum: Bring4th Community (https://www.bring4th.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=16) +--- Forum: Olio (https://www.bring4th.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=7) +--- Thread: Our concept of love and trust starts at home. (/showthread.php?tid=7507) |
Our concept of love and trust starts at home. - Adonai One - 06-29-2013 Just feel like venting: Most of my early life, I've felt I had merry-weather friends and family. My mother and father's fuses are very short and were often compromised by absurdly simple things -- materialistic things. Unadulterated anger would be directed towards me over the spilling of drinks, the minor messes that naturally exist around a house and just very minor things. Constantly for years. The same thing applied to toys and other purchases in indescribable ways. The same thing happened through my father but in a much different way, a way based on compulsivity and a constant state of lack. I hardly saw him because most of my early life he resigned himself to working 80 hour weeks... He suffered from an addiction... An addiction to some mishapen American dream born from an impoverished childhood. This environment eventually led me to put myself in a constant state of guilt, of unworthiness and insecurity. Inevitably I would beat myself up over anything stemming from the criticism I recieved; I take responsibility for anything that goes wrong. Burden after emotional burden, I became crippled and I still remain that way somewhat today. Who am I kidding? I am a mess. I am stunted by the fear that I will fail in my relationships and other endeavors because everything seems to have a high cost to bear. I fear the same scorn and anger that has befallen me all these years from the very people that raised me. Yet I know I chose this. I will come to know the rewards of this struggle. We rely so much on our homes and parents. They can either enable us to love greatly from the start or cripple us, rewarding us with a struggle that has great potential. The very concepts of love and faith start here. I was not given an optimal start. I am still struggling with the warped perspective I have but I am grateful to gain from it. TLDR: Don't make your kids feel like worthless pieces of s*** because they make messes. RE: Our concept of love and trust starts at home. - Ankh - 06-29-2013 What you wrote reminded of this story: Dear Mom, I was 7 when I discovered that you were fat, ugly, and horrible. Up until that point I had believed that you were beautiful—in every sense of the word. I remember flicking through old photo albums and staring at pictures of you standing on the deck of a boat. Your white strapless bathing suit looked so glamorous, just like a movie star. Whenever I had the chance I’d pull out that wondrous white bathing suit hidden in your bottom drawer and imagine a time when I’d be big enough to wear it; when I’d be like you. But all of that changed when, one night, we were dressed up for a party and you said to me, ‘‘Look at you, so thin, beautiful, and lovely. And look at me, fat, ugly, and horrible.’’ At first I didn’t understand what you meant. ‘‘You’re not fat,’’ I said earnestly and innocently, and you replied, ‘‘Yes I am, darling. I’ve always been fat; even as a child.’’ In the days that followed I had some painful revelations that have shaped my whole life. I learned that: 1. You must be fat because mothers don’t lie. 2. Fat is ugly and horrible. 3. When I grow up I’ll look like you and therefore I will be fat, ugly, and horrible too. Years later, I looked back on this conversation and the hundreds that followed and cursed you for feeling so unattractive, insecure, and unworthy. Because, as my first and most influential role model, you taught me to believe the same thing about myself. With every grimace at your reflection in the mirror, every new wonder diet that was going to change your life, and every guilty spoon of ‘‘Oh-I-really-shouldn’t,’’ I learned that women must be thin to be valid and worthy. Girls must go without because their greatest contribution to the world is their physical beauty. Just like you, I have spent my whole life feeling fat. When did fat become a feeling anyway? And because I believed I was fat, I knew I was no good. But now that I am older, and a mother myself, I know that blaming you for my body hatred is unhelpful and unfair. I now understand that you too are a product of a long and rich lineage of women who were taught to loathe themselves. Look at the example Nanna set for you. Despite being what could only be described as famine-victim chic, she dieted every day of her life until the day she died at 79 years of age. She used to put on makeup to walk to the mailbox for fear that somebody might see her unpainted face. I remember her ‘‘compassionate’’ response when you announced that Dad had left you for another woman. Her first comment was, ‘‘I don’t understand why he’d leave you. You look after yourself, you wear lipstick. You’re overweight, but not that much.’’ Before Dad left, he provided no balm for your body-image torment either. ‘‘Jesus, Jan,’’ I overheard him say to you. ‘‘It’s not that hard. Energy in versus energy out. If you want to lose weight you just have to eat less.’’ That night at dinner I watched you implement Dad’s ‘‘Energy In, Energy Out: Jesus, Jan, Just Eat Less’’ weight-loss cure. You served up chow mein for dinner. Everyone else’s food was on a dinner plate except yours. You served your chow mein on a tiny bread-and-butter plate. As you sat in front of that pathetic scoop of mince, silent tears streamed down your face. I said nothing. Not even when your shoulders started heaving from your distress. We all ate our dinner in silence. Nobody comforted you. Nobody told you to stop being ridiculous and get a proper plate. Nobody told you that you were already loved and already good enough. Your achievements and your worth—as a teacher of children with special needs and a devoted mother of three of your own—paled into insignificance when compared with the centimeters you couldn’t lose from your waist. It broke my heart to witness your despair and I’m sorry that I didn’t rush to your defense. I’d already learned that it was your fault that you were fat. I’d even heard Dad describe losing weight as a ‘‘simple’’ process—yet one that you still couldn’t come to grips with. The lesson: You didn’t deserve any food and you certainly didn’t deserve any sympathy. But I was wrong, Mom. Now I understand what it’s like to grow up in a society that tells women that their beauty matters most, and at the same time defines a standard of beauty that is perpetually out of our reach. I also know the pain of internalizing these messages. We have become our own jailors and we inflict our own punishments for failing to measure up. No one is more cruel to us than we are to ourselves. But this madness has to stop, Mom. It stops with you, it stops with me, and it stops now. We deserve better—better than to have our days brought to ruin by bad body thoughts, wishing we were otherwise. And it’s not just about you and me anymore. It’s also about Violet. Your granddaughter is only 3 and I do not want body hatred to take root inside her and strangle her happiness, her confidence, and her potential. I don’t want Violet to believe that her beauty is her most important asset; that it will define her worth in the world. When Violet looks to us to learn how to be a woman, we need to be the best role models we can be. We need to show her with our words and our actions that women are good enough just the way they are. And for her to believe us, we need to believe it ourselves. The older we get, the more loved ones we lose to accidents and illness. Their passing is always tragic and far too soon. I sometimes think about what these friends—and the people who love them—wouldn’t give for more time in a body that was healthy. A body that would allow them to live just a little longer. The size of that body’s thighs or the lines on its face wouldn’t matter. It would be alive and therefore it would be perfect. Your body is perfect too. It allows you to disarm a room with your smile and infect everyone with your laugh. It gives you arms to wrap around Violet and squeeze her until she giggles. Every moment we spend worrying about our physical ‘‘flaws’’ is a moment wasted, a precious slice of life that we will never get back. Let us honor and respect our bodies for what they do instead of despising them for how they appear. Focus on living healthy and active lives, let our weight fall where it may, and consign our body hatred in the past where it belongs. When I looked at that photo of you in the white bathing suit all those years ago, my innocent young eyes saw the truth. I saw unconditional love, beauty, and wisdom. I saw my Mom. Love, Kasey xx Source RE: Our concept of love and trust starts at home. - Plenum - 06-29-2013 yah, ; this is so true! Quote:18.8 Questioner: Then an entity, say, four years old would be totally responsible for any actions that were against or inharmonious with the Law of One. Is this correct? RE: Our concept of love and trust starts at home. - xise - 06-29-2013 Wanderers seem to have a very catalytic childhood. The relationships you've had the longest are the hardest ones to change. If you are attempting to change, it is important to get feedback in less intense relationships as well as the lengthy ones, because the lengthy ones are often the last ones to change. Or put in other words, many things have thier start in things that occur at home, but the home is often the last place to see that change until the change is one hundred percent complete. Ankh, your story hits home for me. Basically, almost word for word (though some issue other than being fat), my mother had a similar conversation with me that I can remember when I was around 9. It took me many years to forgive her and integrate the changes necessary to undo the beliefs set in motion by her comments, but all is well now! Thank you for sharing that story. Or, as is the case in my wandering, I am here to offer teaching and guidance to my parents...a very tall order! (06-29-2013, 11:09 AM)plenum Wrote: yah, ; this is so true! RE: Our concept of love and trust starts at home. - Melissa - 06-29-2013 Well, I love my parents, really. They both have been dealing with what I used to label as 'mental issues' for most of their lives. I feel like I've been parenting them for the longest time. At times it still infuriates me when they 'lean' on me with a whole bunch of problems while they were never able to (positively) guide me or my brother. It's quite challenging to stay grateful in certain situations. When my mother calls I sometimes want to smash the phone against the wall and scream that she has to leave me alone. Instead I don't pick up and vent a little by writing here. I remember hearing Carla talking on the radioshow about acceptance and forgiveness (self/others), that it is a daily task. Well, it sure is. Pfew. RE: Our concept of love and trust starts at home. - Ankh - 06-29-2013 Maybe it is like you, xise, said, that Wanderers seem to program a very catalystic childhood. My life changed drastically when I was 7 too. My hope is to offer healing to my mom. I love her so much. Maybe it will not be any kind of miraculous healing, but I see that just being together with her and spending time, talking and listening, is healing, for both of us. And as love/light said: The great healer of distortions is love. We may note that the distortion towards love, as you call this spiritual/emotional complex which is felt by each for this entity, will be of aid whether this is expressed or unmanifest as there is no protection greater than love. RE: Our concept of love and trust starts at home. - Adonai One - 06-29-2013 I will say that despite my original post, I consider my parents some of my best friends, haha. RE: Our concept of love and trust starts at home. - Jade - 07-10-2013 Childhood is probably one of the hardest traumas to heal, due to the length of time that has passed, maybe? I still have a lot of distortions in this area due to my upbringing. Some of it is difficult to be assured I've reconciled because I have a lot of dissociation/selective memory with my childhood. My parents are both rather unpolarized and what is clinically considered narcissism runs in my family. I was mostly neglected save for the verbal and psychological abuse of my mother, then stepmother. My father has been mostly emotionally unavailable. At this point I feel very much like a nonentity to both of them. A lot of the trauma caused by my mother especially was her rejection of my high vibrations. She would often hiss and curse at me from a very young age, insulting me and calling me names. This was fueled by drugs, and also by my little sister, who suffers from mood disorders and was also very abusive towards me, and a big stress on my family. I was often the whipping girl, the one safe one to displace frustrations upon. It was a pretty big burden to carry and now I've had to cut them out quite a bit, unfortunately. It's been necessary however to cut these ties because even at 27 years of age they are borderline abusive. I love them both and offer them my love and light only on the rare occasions that they do reach out to me, but they are still rather actively disrespectful to my husband, which has been nothing short of exhausting. I feel often that the further I get away from the/ the less of a bog down I feel on my vibrational level. Both of them take some "sinking down to" to communicate with. The conversations are always 100% about them and the traumas and catalysts they invite constantly and with great fury. I don't know if there's ever been a time where I felt emotionally supported by either of my parents; that has always been my job. I guess the one sad thing that rings in my head as a mantra of my youth from my mother is how she would constantly insist how I was "NOT Little Miss Perfect!" because she would so frequently be punishing my sister, I would face the brunt of the trauma as well to assuage her guilt. We're all perfect. My parents have always just despised me for what I guess is my high frequency. It's what mostly convinced me that I was a wanderer, along with one of my few affections from my mother: That my birth mark (gray streak in my hair) was "Where the angels kissed me when I was born". She's not spiritual at all, but it is something she always said throughout my childhood. That the angels had marked me upon my birth, and that I was imperfect in my benevolence. Well, here I am. |