We're All Lost

I was talking to my MNPD mother on the phone yesterday. Our relationship has had another bump or mountain in our road. I say “our” because we really are on this road together to find a place of healing and love. My mom received the devastating news last week (I think it was) that she has bone mets. She survived a bout of thyroid cancer in the late 1980’s and the doctor’s believe it has metastasized to her bones. The prognosis is not good. She was put on time release morphine which she takes 4 times a day, and 2 days ago they doubled her dose. She sounds pretty loopy when I talk to her, but much calmer. So now I have this difficult mom, who has been dying with her heart problems, and now definitely is dying with this new glitch. Her time is likely short and it will be painful for her. A real contradiction of feelings for me. Part of me is glad she will have pain like she caused us, but the empathetic person in me can’t bear the thought of her suffering. I cannot bear anyone suffering or being in pain. I have had thought such as “Karma is a bitch”. Yeah, it is, but who am I to talk when God’s word clearly states that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory that is Christ Jesus. I am certain that the word “all” includes me. You see, I have sinful, unkind thoughts directed to my mother as I still have unresolved anger.

Perhaps my anger is justified, but what does that mean? By holding on to it, it diminishes me as a person and causes me to feel and sometimes act hateful. I have come to understand my mom a little better and I am sad for her. She holds on to so much bitterness about how things should have been, or as she says “That’s not the way it was supposed to be.” She would say that over and over about anything and everything we talked about. Finally, one day I asked, “Well, how was it supposed to be?” Her answer both surprised me and saddened me. At the age of 79 she was still angry about her first husband and her dreams for their life together. In her words, “We were supposed to be a family. We were supposed to have a house, and celebrate birthdays, and Christmases. We were supposed to have happy memories of vacations together.” My dad and her broke up when I was 10 years old. My mom was 28 years old. So for 50 years she has been angry that things weren’t the way they were supposed to be.

In addition, she is angry at her mom. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Well, she does have every right to be angry at her. Her mother failed her in many ways, just as she failed me and I failed my children. You live what you know and what you have learned. That is why I am smarter now than when I was 20. She is angry that her mom treated her the way she did and failed her. When I ask why the answer is, “because, that’s not way it was supposed to be”. I felt her deep emotional pain and understood what she was saying, but at the same time it was so sad because she has never been able to move from that pain.

I got a little annoyed at hearing her say repeatedly that she wished things had been different because it wasn’t the way it was supposed to be that I reminded her of what my despised stepfather used to say all the time. I used to say, “I wish you weren’t so mad all the time”, “I wish I was better”, “I wish I was perfect”, “I wish I could make you happy”, and the list goes on. His reply was always “If wishes were horses beggars would ride.” That made me so angry. What did beggars have to do with my wishes to not be beaten or abused.

So, I reminded my mother of this, so I could be as kind as my stepfather had been. I was angry and was feeling as sympathetic as she and he had been in my childhood. She sounded wistful and replied “Yes, he did say that didn’t he? He was so cute.”

Cute? Really? I blurted out “Really? I wish the freaking horse would step on his head and crush it! I hated him and I hated him more when he said that!”

Mom, for the first time in my entire lifetime of knowledge of her was very calm. It must have been due to the morphine coursing through her veins. So very calmly she says, “You will not talk about my husband in that way. You will not disrespect him in my presence. He was a good man who provided for you and gave you kids many things you would not have had. You will respect him.”

I sat in stunned disbelief at what I just heard. My MNPD mother, even with her morphine had shown her true colors again. It wasn’t about me. It was about what she wanted in life. She wanted a provider, she wanted a house, she wanted things. She got them through this person, even if it wasn’t the way it was “supposed to be”.  I again felt beaten and humiliated. My mother had just told me to respect a man that molested me. I was nothing. I was lost. She was lost in the ‘supposed to be’; in her dreams that she never realized. My pain was nothing because hers was greater and she was so lost in it.

I retorted, “He molested me! I have a right to be angry at him! You should be angry at him! He touched your daughter. It should not have happened and I will not speak kindly of him. Not ever. How dare you even ask me to respect him. He was a child molester!”

She said, “I know, because you told me, but you should have told me then.”

So it was my fault. A beaten, abused, intimidated, broken child who was threatened almost daily with death was at fault for not telling she was being sexually abused. I know my mother. At that point in time she would not have believed me. She never did. She would have beaten me until I told her the truth she wanted to hear and then she would have made me apologize to him and hug him and kiss like I meant it. I want to be physically ill. I want to scream at the heavens for my justice. Yet I am not sick, and heaven sometimes feels silent.

We are both so incredibly lost in our pain and our suffering. May God reach out and heal us both.

But even though we all have strayed and lost our way at times, we can live in the knowledge that our sins are forgiven.

Isaiah 53:6 (NIV)
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

And he will find all of us who are lost.

Luke 19:10 (ESV)
“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.

I Have a Right To Tell My Story and to Use any Material that Reinforces the Veracity of My Story

Life, goes by with little markers that seem almost unnoticed. I quit smoking 5 years ago and the day went buy with a mention. In the beginning one day was a huge deal. A week, monumental! A month, well that could be worth a steak dinner. Your children pass their landmarks with cakes, candles, photos, and gifts. We pass the year marking the seasons and special days like birthdays, Easter, Christmas, Holidays, doctor’s visits, another year of life after my husband had his device implanted. Day after day march by in perfect formation and timing.

Another marker went by yesterday that I wish had not. The last time I self-harmed was November. I made close to a year. I made it 9 months. I fought it for 2 days and the succumbed. The emotional pain became like the steam escaping from a pressure cooker. It had to be released by the self-harming or I might have done worse. For me it is a non-event and brings about enormous relief, but does leave me with shame and self-loathing. I don’t hide it anymore but show someone. This time my husband who just put his harms around me and hugged me tight. No blame, condemnation, or accusations. But he can’t understand. How can he when I don’t.

There was a dialogue on a local FB site and they were asking about the use of cursing. I do not believe in cursing, escpecially the F-bomb as they call it. I said as much and attached an article from a Christian book about Profanity and the moral decay of society. I was flamed. Harshly. Told that if I practiced love I would be better. I was told to “get a grip lady”, and other things. It wounded my soul as I know I am a very loving, caring, and extremely compassionate woman. Too much so at times. I started to unravel. Why did I post it?

Well it talks about welfare and people not caring. We lived in small towns where many lived in welfare. I have many cousins whose parents were on welfare. Husbands were drunks. Mothers drank. Their existence was horrible. Many of their homes were hovels. Why would they care? 6 kids in a two room shack with no plumbing. 4 kids in a two room shack. Coal and wood stove. My mother was cruel. Others were cruel too. Some didn’t care and let their kids roam day and night. We were taught to steal. Anything was fair game. Anything you had and we didn’t have was fair game.

Men came day and night, and parties. We saw our mother and aunts in the act of sex. The husband or boyfriend came home and took it where he wanted it. Even if she said no. Even if all the kids where there. A drunken father would bring the bar home and sell his daughters to the drunks that wanted them. Would ask his boys if they wanted a try. Many were sexually active before 12 and married before 16. We saw men jumping out of the windows of my mom’s house and my aunt’s and cousins houses. In my own family there are six kids with the potential of 4 different fathers. I saw aborted babies pulled out of the toilet

Most of the girls were sexually abused by the time they were six years old. They were abused by brothers, sisters, fathers, grandfathers, and strangers. To escape the horror they would get pregnant, run away, take drugs, get drunk, get married. And the cycle would start again, but it would be worse. So much worse. It breaks my heart to know how worse.

And words. It’s a lie that words will never hurt you. It is such a lie. When the F word was said it was always connected to harm and danger. Strangers having sex with woman saying “I’ll F*** you if I want to you f*ing b****!” My mother swinging the conveyor belt and scaring my body with bloody welts say “If you weren’t f****** guilty you wouldn’t be f****** crying .” Only when I quite crying out of exhaustion or because I was at the verge of dying, would she stop. Belt buckles wrapped around the neck and teeth knocked out “You f***** asked for it”.  Always harm. Always anger. Never safe. Never funny. Never just a word.

This article mentions this. It goes on to mention disobedience of god’s laws resulting in crime, murders, car jacking, rapes, theft, homosexuality…..OOPS!  God and sexuality in one sentence. What a religious bigoted hater I am. Sad. I have two brothers who are homosexual. Scott Peck, MD writes in Children of the Lie he writes that the scapegoat son of Malignant Narcissist Psychopath mothers are frequently unable to have relationships with women. When I asked my brother he said he “F***** hates women”.

Hatred? Bigotry? Inability to Love? Are you kidding me? I don’t hate the people who did this to my family. I am not a bigot, I love everyone including the impossible ones. Oh course you must be kidding. I love my brothers with everything I have to love. He knows what happened. I know what happened. My brothers, sisters, cousins, all know what happened. The poor kids in my neighborhood and my mom’s neighborhood know what happened. Gosh, some of the kids took part in the wife swapping parties.

Someone is outraged because I posted hate? You need to be outraged because it is truth and it goes on far more than you know. That is the outrage. Not the mention of God or homosexuality, or the behavior and moral decline. I have looked into the eyes of men and women who have just given up and have no hope. You leave them a bag of oranges and they neither look left nor right nor at you to acknowledge you. Why? Because they know it doesn’t matter. Tomorrow they will be gone, and then what. So many nights I went to be hungry. Many nights a mead was macaroni with just margarine. If we were luck we had macaroni with ketchup.

I escaped. So many don’t but don’t get angry when I speak my truth. It might not be pretty, but I lived it and I have as much right to tell my story as anyone else. Much more right.The words written blamed and accused me for being something I was not. They caused me to panic. In my mind I feel the beatings. I feel the fear. I feel the hatred. I panicked and took down my posting and then was accused that I had done it because I knew they were right. My mother would say that when I stopped crying because I couldn’t cry anymore. I reached out to everyone I knew how encourage me. Then in the middle of the night my mother’s voice came to me “You now, you’d be better off dead. Everyone hates you anyway, and it would be better for you to do it than for me. You will be sorry if I have to do you F**** waste of space.” In the morning I slashed myself. I don’t know how many time. I have a road map to my pain.

My God weeps for the poor and calls me help them.

Psalm 10:14

“But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand. The victim commits himself to you; you are the helper of the fatherless.”

Psalm 12:5

“‘Because of the oppression of the weak and the groaning of the needy, I will now arise,’ says the LORD. I will protect them from those who malign them.”

Psalm 140:12

“I know that the LORD secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy.”

I hate this, I want it to stop, I don't want to remember, but I have to. I need to get better. I thank God for the people who "get it". The people who create fear in my, well I thank you too. It shows me where I still need to work on myself.

My Mama

My mom was born in 1935. The sixth child and the last of the three children that lived. All three were girls. Their mother was born in an immigrant Ukrainian family that had come to Canada at the turn of the century. My baba's dad came in 1901 and her mom and two brothers came in 1907. The settled in the Lethbridge are and guido supported the family by working in the mines. My baba was the 3 or 4th child born in this country as she was a twin. I don't know if she or her sister was older. Many more children would follow and my great baba would be the mother of 16 children that lived.

Baba was born in 1909. Just two years after her mom has arrived in this country. Life was very difficult. Especially with all those children. My great baba worried about her children and loved them. She wanted the best for them and when my baba was just 16 years old they arranged a marriage to another Ukrainian immigrant. He was good looking, had $150 in the bank and owned a house. Baba did not want to get married and she was so young. She did not like her chosen husband either. What her mom and dad did not know was that the charming husband to be was cruel. He was jealous, controlling, abusive, and an alcoholic. He beat my baba and her children all the time. He injured the back of my mama's eldest sister so she had troubles her entire life. Then one day he just disappeared.

My mama remembers then living in an apartment in a house in or near Lethbridge which was near the ice plant. She recalls being about 3 years old and running over to the ice plant in her bare feet with her sisters, to catch the ice that fell from the trucks and front loaders. She said they would suck on the ice like it was candy. Some pieces were so big and so cold that they had to wrap them in their t-shirts to hold them. It they got caught, they were punished, but the next time the ices was being loaded they ran back to get the ice.

The girls in the summer would get gunny sacks from their baba and walk across the prairie collecting dried cow patties for burning in the stoves in winter. They said it was hard work and hard to find the dried on. They would wander miles and the bag would get heavy as it filled.

My mama was a wonderful singer and every Saturday, her and sister would run to the radio station where mom would get picked to sing live on the radio. For doing so she would get a bag of porridge or cream of wheat. Mom said they would tear a hole in the corner to dip their fingers in and eat it on the way home. It was the dirty thirties after all. Poverty was all around and my mom and her sister were forever changed by that poverty.

Their mom would meet a man that had a house and a farm and they would get married. The problem was a little like like Prince Charles. You see grandpa loved someone else, but she was married. Grandma was second best and every chance he got he was with his first love. In a small town, everyone knows everything and people talked. People knew. My grandma was a proud woman and very beautiful. I think the talk must have broke her heart. I think her firs husband did as well as she could never please him. Something changed in my baba. She started to drink with her husband. She would go to parties, leaving the girls at home. Her and grandpa would bring the party home, and there would be late night drunken parties and fights. My mom would be woken up from her sleep and made to sing requests from the drunks. She would sit on their laps while she sang her beautiful songs and they would molest her. This went on for years.

While grandma and grandpa were gone and partying the girls took care of the farm. The animals, the house and if things were not done correctly, baba punished them very harshly. She was a cruel task masker. In later years baba told me that my mom was always bad. Right from the moment she came screaming out of her belly. Poor mama. She didn't stand a chance, did she?

What I see is a young girl, being raised by her older sister. A girl being molested while singing songs. I see a girl who wanted her mom to notice her, her mom to love her. She wanted her mom to be a mom.

Life was really hard for mom and her siblings. It was the end of the thirties and early forties. Many people were homeless, starving, and barely existing. It is the stuff that songs are made from and Woody Guthrie sang many songs about the era. My baba was forced to sell her mandolin which was a gift from her mama and had come from the old country. My own mama had a cow which was given to her as a calf, but it had to be butchered. They needed to eat. My mama never forgot and is angry still today over the loss of her "Joseph" who had blue eyes. She feels very bitter and says that had they not partied and drank, they wouldn't have had to take her cow. She loved that cow and sang to it all the time.

My mama told me she entered a singing contest in a neighboring town when she was about nine. She bought the certificate and ribbon home to show her mom who was proud at that moment, but then it was never mentioned again. Mom said that as far back as she could remember, she wanted to sing. She sang to flowers, to rocks, to trees, to her dolls, to the farm animals. She sang to the sun and moon and stars. "I only wanted to sing." A young girl with a dream that was ignored, smashed, and broken. In it's place was a broken, empty, and bitter being. Who broke my mama's dreams? My mama's heart?

My mom left her home when she was 16. By 19 she was married and there I was. A child born to parents who were both broken but good people. My dad was very musical and artistically gifted. He wanted to go to Art school more than anything in his life. His parents wouldn't let him and sent his brother to university for something more suitable. My mom only wanted to sing. Now she is married and has a child. Life is going down a different road.

She brings me to visit her mom one day. I am small and she is carrying me in her arms. She goes in baba's house and she hears yelling and screaming from baba's bedroom. She runs to the room and sees my grandpa pointing a rifle at baba's face. She is on the bed and he is straddling her and holding her down. All my mom sees is the gun at her mom's face. She leaves and runs as fast as she can to a neighbouring farm and begs them to come and help and to call the police.

When help arrives my baba and grandpa are having a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. They don't understand the fuss.

Gaslighting, something my mother did very well. It looks like she learned it from her parents.

 A form of intimidation or psychological abuse, sometimes called Ambient Abuse where false information is presented to the victim, making them doubt their own memory, perception and quite often, their sanity. The classic example of gaslighting is to switch something around on someone that you know they're sure to notice, but then deny knowing anything about it, and to explain that they "must be imagining things"when they challenge these changes.

 They blame my mom for lying, having a vivid imagination. When they left, baba got up and walked over to my mama who must be so confused, hurt, and wounded because she loved her mom. Anyway, Grandma walks over to my mom, who is still holding me, and almost spits in her face while saying with venom "Don't you EVER tell ANYONE what goes on in this HOUSE!" With this proclamation, my baba punches my mother and punches her in the face. She broke her nose and gave her a black eye. I can't imagine a mother punching a daughter, let alone a daughter who is holding a child, and a daughter who loved her mother and just tried to save her life.

This was her life, and it became my life. Broken can only create broken. I weep for the girl my mom was. The girl who sang to nature. The girl with a song in her heart. She must have been happy. One day it was punched out of her and there was no going back.


The Bible warns us about provoking our children to anger. I believe there is a reason for it for I saw my grandmother's, my mother's, my mother's siblings, my siblings, and my own children's anger. But I also believe that God forgives us, and can and will heal our wounds.

Ephesians 6:4English Standard Version (ESV)

4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.


And then we need to forgive. If we don't forgive the anger festers like a wonder until the pressure builds up and it explodes over innocent people. Forgive them so you have no desire to hurt them like you were. Forgive them so in your anger you don't hurt others. Forgive them, so you can shine love for the world and give the broken hope. Love the unlovable. The world has made them so and a kindness can change their world.


Romans 12:17-19
17 Do not repay any one evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.
18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord.

Afraid to Remember

I was watching Saving Mr. Banks this evening and Walt Disney is relating the real story of his life to Pamela Travers. He tells of the hardships he went through with a penny pinching and stern father. When he finishes the story he says, "But I don't like to remember it that way."

Nine words that struck at my heart and reminded me of how I choose to remember. I choose to remember my abuse as being not as bad as I remember it, or perhaps I did deserve it, or maybe I imagined it; anything other than what it was because I don't like to remember it the way it was. It is too painful, and so filled with terror that I currently cannot let my memory banks spill the memories into my conscious mind.

I have come to realize in the past couple months that I don't remember many things correctly, or with the intensity of the event. I have minimized it so I can bear it and write or speak about the evil in my life. I gloss over the real memory by creating a foggy image in my mind, and muting and muffling the sound. The picture and sound are at levels safe enough to see. Perhaps that is because of the dissociation at the time of the event and even now when I try to recall or talk of certain events. As I have been learning about complex PTSD these past 5 years I have been opening some of those drawers containing those painful memories. Many remain firmly shut and to even look at them causes intense feelings of panic and terror. There are moments when I want to beat at my head in panic, like a hoard of bugs has fallen on my head, and run screaming down the road. At other times I want to run to a corner and curl up as small as I can get and cover my face and my head. I have done both many times in my life.

There are memories that I have peeked at and they fill my mind with shadowy figures. Like looking at an old black and white thriller with someone looking at figures through a frosted glass. I don't want to see them because I don't want to remember what they have to say. I don't want to remember the way it was. I don't want to remember the real painful stuff. Yet I must if I am to recover completely.

I need to find my Mary Poppins to save the girl in the corner. The girl in the left side of the room that I cannot bear to cast my eyes upon. Not that I don't love her, or that she scares me. No, it is because she has the memories. I know if I look into her eyes I will know the entire truth. The truth that scares me. The truth that keeps a brother away from his family. The truth that has sent another sibling into a reclusive lifestyle. The truth that should set me free, may send me to a different prison. So, I don't want to remember it that way. It is safer to remember the way I do, but not healthier. What a dilemma.

I believe it is better to live with the truth than a lie. My Lord assures me that the truth will set me free. But what will it set me free from if I then run into hiding? Well, I have to believe that He will also heal me. Heal my mind, my heart, and my soul. I must put my fear aside and trust in Him for he loves me and will catch me if I should fall.

I will turn a deaf ear against the Devil who whispers those doubts in my ear. He has no power against my God who has spoken everything into being. Those that did evil to me, and those that wish to continue that evil upon me cannot stand against my God. They no longer have control over my mind. With the continued Grace of God I will continue my healing journey. One breath at a time.


1 Peter 5:7-8
7 Casting the [a]whole of your care [all your anxieties, all your worries, all your concerns, [b]once and for all] on Him, for He cares for you affectionately and cares about you [c]watchfully.

8 Be well balanced (temperate, sober of mind), be vigilant and cautious at all times; for that enemy of yours, the devil, roams around like a lion roaring [[d]in fierce hunger], seeking someone to seize upon and devour.

Psalm 147:3-6
He heals the brokenhearted
    and binds up their wounds.
4 He determines the number of the stars
    and calls them each by name.
5 Great is our Lord and mighty in power;
    his understanding has no limit.
6 The Lord sustains the humble
    but casts the wicked to the ground.

Nighttime

Nighttime. A time to say goodbye to the day. An ending with a promise of a new  beginning of a tomorrow. A clean slate to begin again. A chance to make things new. To get through it with mistakes. To love and be loved.
Nighttime, when the day light slowly slips away and leaves you in total darkness. Not unlike our lives, the life slipping away from us with every tick of the clock. For some they face the unknown darkness, and for others it is the promise of a different kind of day. A day when you really won’t make mistakes and you will be loved in an unimaginable way. A way we are loved now, but don’t always feel it.

Nighttime, when the shadows come out and the fear with them. Sometimes it is a game of “This Is Your Life” and you relive things you would rather forget. Yet every night the same re-run plays. It is because of the OCD. Obsessive thoughts brought about by extreme anxiety, which gets triggered by my C-PTSD, which was caused by abuse that many times I would call torture.

The night and the shadows scare me. The re-runs terrify me. They haunt me constantly and I want to find the off switch. Perhaps it will take until the day I stand before my Saviour for him to reach in and switch it off. I don’t know. I do know that I have taken every course, therapy, self-help, prayer, and then some to get rid of it. Exercise, medications, and diet but yet it remains. I have been informed many times that it will likely not go away. I will improve but not get better. The PTSD will remain and as I get into the emotional parts of my injuries it will become harder. What could possibly be harder? Those words scare the bones out of my flesh and leave me a bowl of jelly on the floor. Harder? I don’t know if I have any more “harder” in me.

Nighttime. Quiet. Peaceful. A time of rest. I lie in bed, still; and thoughts race around like a tornado in my brain. For hours I try to still them, but they come faster than I can pack them away. Like Lucy trying to pack chocolates on a conveyor belt. They come too fast and overwhelm me. Tears flow, my heart feels like it will either pop out of my chest or stop beating. I want a hug and to be held but I don’t want to upset and concern my husband who has his own heart trouble. This is not his battle, it is mine. He gets enough of the collateral damage of my life.

When I become exhausted, usually as the light starts to come up I start to drop off. That very moment when you cross that conscious state from being awake to sleep, everything in my body jumps. My arms, legs, and heart and I wake up with the fear that I am about to die or am dying. I have to bite my tongue not to scream. My MNM used to send me to bed and tell me to think of a good reason why she shouldn’t kill me in the morning since I was of no use to anyone. Give her a reason why I should live. I would lie in bed and think and all I could think of was all the bad things she told me and I knew that tomorrow I would die. That is what I believed. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t know any good in me that I could tell her. I would cry and eventually fall asleep. Then I would suddenly and shockingly be yanked out bed by my hair with her screaming at me that I obviously didn’t want to live. I would cry and beg her “Yes I do mommy, Yes, I want to live, please don’t hurt me, please mommy don’t hurt me!” She would shout at me and slap me and yell at me “Liar! You are such a liar! If you really wanted to live you would be thinking of a reason. Instead you are sleeping. You obviously don’t care. If YOU don’t care, why should I?” This conversation, if you can call it that; would go on for what seemed forever, with her slapping me, pulling my hair, and asking these crazy double bind questions that would get me in trouble no matter what I answered.

“If you wanted you live you wouldn’t be sleeping.”

    - yes, I want to live

“Then why are you sleeping. It must be that you don’t care or you don’t give a s*** about me?

    I care, I just fell asleep.

“So you care, then you don’t give a s*** about me! You should be proud of yourself. How can you say that to your mother!”   

    I do care. I love you.

“If you cared about me, if you loved me, you would listen to what I ask you. I asked you to stay awake and think of a reason why you should live and you couldn’t even do that. Why should I care about your life if you don’t? Huh? Tell me!”

    Mom, I just got tired and fell asleep. I don’t know why. I tried really hard.

Well, you obviously didn’t try hard enough. If you don’t care, I don’t care. You don’t care s*** about me since you couldn’t do one simple thing I asked you, so why should I care about you. Get back into bed and you know what will happen in the morning. And shut the f*** up or I’ll do it now. The choice is yours. What do you want? Now or in the morning.





The double bind questions kept coming. I didn't know what was real, or unreal. Day after day. Unrelenting. Fear. Confusion. Totally Controlled. Gail Meyer wrote a great article on double-binds.

These are the memories that come in my sleep. Sometimes I do fall asleep, deeply; and will wake up screaming, and in absolute terror. I’m surprised the neighbours haven’t called the police. My honey grabs and holds me and then I wake up and know where I am. I’m good. I can fall right back to sleep exhausted, but the house is in an uproar. These emotions are the ones I need to look at and they scare the spit out of me.

Last therapy I learned an interesting thing, and a very frightening one. It is the next door on the road. The emotional one. When I talk about my past I dissociate. I try very hard to be in the present but I go up to the right corner of the room. The left brain apparently controls cognitive thought, so by looking to the right I can access that memory vocally. The therapist mentioned that I always look to the left, but asked where “I” was. She said that my thought were there (where I looked) but where was I? I know that sounds all very freaky and strange but it eventually made sense. I stopped and thought about it, because I always thought that was where I was. Slowly the realization came that I was in the other corner. Laurel asked me if I could look at her and my heart stopped and my tears came. I had no voice. I put my hand up to block my vision from that corner of the room and turned my head completely away.

Later I tried to turn that way, but my hand stayed to block my vision and I shook, and swallowed and blinked back the tears that came faster than I could stop them. For the rest of that session I kept my left hand up blocking my vision from the left side of the room.

My therapist told me that the left brain contains the emotions, and the emotional me, with all the buried emotions was in the corner on the left. The thought of looking at her terrifies me. I have tried a number of times and I am awash in tears, fear, panic, and things I know I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to go there. I don’t know if I can do it. It was so hard to live it that I don’t know if I can or are willing to relive it. I am really struggling with this part, but I do know I will go forward. Only because God is on my side.

If God brings you to it, he Will bring you through it.
Happy moments, praise God.
Difficult moments, seek God.
Quiet moments worship God.
Painful moments, trust God.
Every moment, thank God.

And tomorrow will be another day in God’s kingdom. Either my temporary home or my permanent home. Either way, I am a winner.

Forgiving the Unforgivable

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is such a big word. Not just in the number of letters, but the conscious and purposeful decision to do something for someone else that you think they don't deserve. To forgive someone who has done something that you believe with your entire being is unforgivable is an almost insurmountable task.

I have heard it said many times that some things are not forgivable. They just aren't. Well, that may be true for some folks but for me it was not an option. I had to forgive the unforgivable for my own sanity. To be free of the woman who haunted my every breath, my very being. She made me want to die, and to attempt suicide. She barricaded us in rooms and threatened to kill us with knives, with rifles. She tied us to chairs and built fires on the floor. She beat us until we bled, and locked us in cellars. Unforgivable. I wanted her to pay and I wanted to be free. The only way I knew to be free was to set her free. To do the unforgivable and forgive.

I started to pray to God and ask him to help me to forgive her. I would feel physically ill and immediately tell God that I didn't mean a word I had said to him. That I didn't want what I had asked. That I wanted her to suffer and to pay for what she did. And then I would ask Him to make me willing to forgive her. I would clench me teeth and spit the words out. I would throw up. I would shout that I was telling him lies and would never forgive her, but always end with "Help me even though I don't mean it and don't want you to."

For years I prayed like this. It seemed like God wasn't taking me seriously, but how could he? How serious was my prayer? For me, it was serious. Deadly serious. I knew that God could forgive everything and that included me, who could not forgive. I read that we would be forgiven according to the measure that we forgave. Well now, that was interesting. I wanted to be completely forgiven of all I had ever done wrong, so I had to forgive just as he forgave.

I wrote poems, meditated, prayed, pleaded, bargained, and had tantrums. Somewhere along the way I began to soften. I didn't feel sick anymore. I could say that I meant it and I believed it. I would still get angry that I couldn't just forget about her. To lock her away where no body would be touched by the evil in her again, but I didn't really want that. I wanted to have peace in my life and to be happy, and I wanted the same for her. I really wanted that. Eventually I thought I had come to the place where I could honestly say that I forgave her. Most of the anger had gone and I didn't have that horrible bitterness and rage filled moments when I wanted to hurt her or worse. I had made tremendous progress.

One day, while in my car and listening to Praise Radio they were talking about forgiveness. The person being interviewed was asked how you knew that you had forgiven someone.  He replied that you would know when you no longer had the desire to talk about them in order to bring them shame. WOW! That was some food for thought. I still talked about my mom. I wore the stories like badges of honor. I still had some work to do. Back on my knees.

More years go by and my life hit some very bad bumps. I became estranged from my children. They were angry about my writing and the attention I had got. They felt I was just as bad as my mom and didn't deserve friends. They really have no idea, and they had no desire to hear my story. There life was not good. There father and I were alcoholics, and I had my undiagnosed anxiety, OCD, and C-PTSD. Not a good environment to raise children. I yelled a lot because of the anxiety. I quit drinking in 1989 and spent the next 20+ years doing everything I could to make it up. Everything. I apologized, wrote letters, spoke publicly, let them rage at me, whatever it took, I would take it, because they had deserved better. Until 2010 when I wrote my first story of my life and then my world went upside down.

It was at this lowest point of my life mourning and grieving the relationship of my children that I had given my life. I would have done anything to take the hurt away from them and make it better, but nothing I did was enough. They kept taking more and more. My psychiatrist said that sometimes children who grow up in less than perfect homes and one parent or the other sees the error of their ways and tries to make it up, well; it does something to the children. He said sometimes they become like loan sharks. They don't ever want the debt paid because they like living off the interest. Hmmm... He said close the bank.

From his words I see that I had started a pattern. Whatever they said or did that was hurtful, I let it be; because I thought I deserved it. Over 20 years it became a way of life. A very unhealthy way of life. I had to let them go. I wasn't willing to pay that price any longer. It still hurts very much.

So while in this place of deep hurt and deep pain, of feeling the loss of my babies, my children I heard God. Through my sobs of pain I heard God say to me that my mother was His child and he was crying for her, just as I was crying for mine. I felt his tears mingle with mine on my cheek and I cried for my mom. I cried because I really loved her. I cried and prayed that she would come home to her father, just as I wanted my children to come to their mother. I loved her like I loved my babies. I was free. Really free. Through my guilt and my deep pain God taught me love and real forgiveness. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Yes, all things are forgivable. You have to work at it. Even when you don't believe it and don't want it, because God makes all things possible.

You see, I was a slave to hatred, but now I have been freed to walk in love and forgiveness.

"You have been called to live in freedom. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. Walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh." (Galatians 5:13-14,16)

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins (Matthew 6:14-15)

A Delusional Mind and Truth

Truth. Didn't Pilate ask Claudia "What is truth?"  Is truth what we see in front of our eyes, or is truth something that awaits us in the future. Or is it both. Now and later. But what is truth if two people look at the same thing and see different things. Which of the two is viewing the truth. They are both experiencing their own truth, but only one is real. How do you let the one who experiences the lie know that they are not experiencing truth. I think it is so complicated.

My mom was talking to me on the phone yesterday. She has been in a great deal of pain with her heart and back and was an emotional wreck. Or at least that is how it sounded. With a malignant narcissist psychopath, you never know what is real and not real so I tread very cautiously. The previous week she had been in a similar state but had been talking about ending her life because she is so F****** tired of this she'd rather be dead. I reminded her that she had said she wanted to be with her daughters for a long time now that we were together. She paused for a split second to recover and tossed back "Well, of course I do, but would you want to live like this?" Of course no one wants to live in pain and mom's pain would be a lot less if she was in a home where nurses would help her. But she would rather play the martyr and get the attention for being a long suffering woman. To get the strokes that she equates with love "How do you manage?", "You are such a strong woman." She gloats in the light of the praising words. What they don't know is how abusive my MNM is when they leave. The air is filled with filty words screamed between clenched teeth. "Do that, do this, not that! This! Go here, go there, go get that."  It never stops. I told her she had to stop cursing. That she had wonderful people who are trying to move heaven and heart for her and she says the F word at them. She says, "I know, they just make me mad." How do they make her mad, how could they possibly make her mad I inquire. "Well, they just don't do the things they way I want them done and I get mad." That's her world. She has gone through 3 housekeepers in 8 weeks. They only come every 2 weeks, so that is an indication of how demanding she is.

So back to the phone call. And truth. She starts to sob an academy award performance of devastation and pain. I almost fell for it until she said "Now that I have found my daughters I don't want them to leave. I am so afraid you'll go away again." Then the floor fell out from under my feet. That whole statement was a lie. Anyone listening would have thought, "Oh that poor woman. How could her family leave her alone like that? Thank goodness she found them!" Anyone in hearing distance would be recruited as a flying monkey in my mother life of delusions. I wanted to pick up a pillow and smother her lying manipulating lips that sound like they speak truth.

The truth:

1 Now that I have found my daughters - She did not find us. A long-time flying monkey friend of my mom's get asking for numbers and addresses of her kids so she could contact us and mom kept saying no. This woman went through my mother's drawers and found an address book and was able to get in touch with my sister. My sister called me and I called my mom.

2. I'm so afraid you'll go away again - We never went anywhere. My mother moved and had an unlisted number. We knew the area she lived but did not know where. We looked and tried to find her but had no luck.

3. I don't want them to leave - Only when it suits her. I have phoned and her refuse my calls for up to 7 days. When I told he she was acting like a child she refused to call me for 3 weeks. She only wants us if we dance to her wants and needs.

To my mom, he statement is the truth. It is the truth because of her malignant narcissism. We are an extension of her being, her emotions, her thoughts, her brains. What she is thinking or feeling must be what we are thinking and feeling. If it is not the same, she is mad. Angry. She suffers narcissistic injury which manifests in huge, out of control rages. But to her it is real. She looks into her broken mirror and she sees the warped reflections of her brokenness and it is real. The rest of us look at the world and everything in and around it. We include others in our reflections of life and thereby come to a more comprehensive conclusion of life and situations. My mom's world is only her broken reflection, and to her I don't even exist. I am hidden behind the broken mirror of her life.

I went through the above with her. I sat beside her and held her hand and told her it was I who called her, that it was she who moved away. I waited for her to say something, and she said "Anyway, we're here now." Just a dismissal of the facts. Always the truth gets discounted, dismissed, argued, or raged away. Anyway, what is truth?

What is truth?
It is a hard question to answer, but Jesus said "I am the way the truth, and the life". Know Him and you will come to know the truth. Jesus also came to set the prisoners free. I was a prisoner of lies and deception for a very long time. The veils are being lifted and the scales are falling from eyes. I see my mom and who she is and I love more than I ever have. I have to. She is God's child too. Just like me. We are both in need of healing.