About my father:
It is intensely sad.
As a child, I couldn't accept that it was not about me.
As long as it was about me, it meant that there was hope.
As long as his lack of concern for me was related to something innately wrong with me, there was a chance I could fix it.
By admitting and completely internalizing the idea that it was about him and his issues all along, I have admitted that I can NEVER change the situation. I have no power over it. He will never love me as a father is meant to love his child.
I don’t think I could have survived that knowledge as a child, so I hid it from myself. It was right there in front of me all along, but I refused to see it. It's another "revelation of the obvious."
The fact that I can see it now points to the strength I have gained along my journey. It’s incredibly hard, but I will survive it. I can do that, now. I can live without that love because I am finding out how to give it to myself.
I was lucky enough to talk to a lot of people yesterday about all of this. I heard a lot of wisdom (and a little bit of crap – but sometimes you have to dig through that to find the real gems). I was comforted by how much people seemed to care.
One good friend, in the real world, gave me two important pieces of this puzzle.:
1) God doesn't tell us what to do. God gave us free will.Okay. I see. My father has free will. His actions do not reflect God.
2) It’s okay to be angry at God. God has big shoulders, and can take it.I took some comfort in that. Being angry at my father was never tolerated. Consequently I have had a lot of guilt and fear about my anger at God.
Last night, I finally had a conversation with God. I haven’t been able to do more than rant for a while now, but I finally broke down and put out there the rest of what is real and true in my heart.
I asked for help.
I asked for patience.
I asked for faith.
I don’t know what more I can do.
Now I am looking for those three things and trying to apply them to my thoughts as they come. I think I turned a corner last night. It’s still going to be rough going, for a while, I’m sure, but I have hope again.
That is the real difference.
Posts
i'm so glad you're feeling better, shen :)
ReplyDeletei was thinking about the second thing your friend told you about god. as you know, i don't believe in god myself. but as far as i would think, if there is a god, and god is the ultimate loving entity, then of course it is more than ok for you to be angry.
if someone you love is angry. then the healthiest reaction is to listen patiently, with open arms. to be understanding. and unconditionally loving. and accepting.
so whatever you think and whatever you feel should be welcomed safely. there is nothing you should feel guilty about feeling or have to hide. because you are loved.
that's what i would imagine from a loving god.
i'm also glad to hear you have so much support around you. and that you feel better about things with your husband. i do think sometimes we need to be careful about transferring our parental issues onto our spouses, or expecting them to right all those wrongs and give us everything we never got as children from them.
of course i think that we do get some of those unfulfilled needs met from our spouses. but i think we get it in other places too. from friends. and other loving support we experience in our lives. the hardest is learning to give ourselves love as well.
sending warm wishes :)
oh and one more thing i thought when i was reading what you wrote about your father. you said, "I can live without that love because I am finding out how to give it to myself."
ReplyDeletei was thinking also, that you can live without it because you've lived without it your whole life. you are such a strong person that you've lived your whole life, built your own family and done so much growing, loving and self-healing, all without the love of a healthy parent and healthy childhood of your own.
i think that those of us who were abused as children often don't see how amazing we are to have gone as far as we have without some of those experiences that other people take for granted.
it's like...
like how when a person is missing one of the five senses, other people might feel sorry for them and see them as "disabled." but you hear how people's other senses often become heightened and they adapt and cope. and don't feel "disabled" - because they don't know what they're missing. this is just the way life is to them. and they can do things other people can't do. because their minds and bodies develop other abilities and talents.
i think that emotionally and mentally, that's sort of what happens to us when child abuse has been a part of our lives. we may have heightened abilities that other people with "normal" childhoods don't have.
like really strong empathy and compassion for others. or really amazing abilities of self-awareness and self-healing power.
it's a stretch to try to find reasons to feel grateful about having been abused, so i don't like to put it that way because that sounds awful. but these thoughts have helped me at times. it helps me to counter the horrible internal message that i'm "damaged."
I really appreciate all that you've said, Katie. thank you.
ReplyDeleteA loving God - yes, that is how I see it. A God who can understand my anger and accept that it is what I need to go through and be there for me as I am ready.
What you said about having "gifts" because of what we've lived through, that makes perfect sense, to me. It is very much like something C has been telling me.
I'll be writing about that, as I'm able. For now, i am glad to have made it through the day. I had a lot of support yesterday, but was alone today. Tomorrow I have an appt with C... so it will be better.
hi shen~ i'm glad i wasn't out of line with the things i said about a loving god. not knowing from personal experience, i can only imagine how things might be or what might make the most sense to others.
ReplyDeletei was thinking more about this idea about the abilities we develop as abused children.
i envisioned something, which i think you might appreciate that i even did that. i don't usually do that kind of thing. i think your artwork has inspired me in this way. to come up with a visual metaphor :)
but i was thinking, for those of us who have lived our lives trapped in seeing ourselves through the eyes of our abusive parents, then not only did they never see the true self we are, but we don't see our true self clearly either. we see ourselves as damaged, as unlovable, as whatever our abusive parent may have communicated to us through their own skewed lens and warped vision.
it's as though we've gone through lives with our eyes closed. and we only see this mind's eye image of ourselves as something horrible.
yet once we are able to open up our eyes, and let go of that destructive self-image we internalized from our parent, we can see ourselves as we truly are.
and when i envisioned this, i saw a beautiful human being with a garden growing all over it. that may sound strange, but it's as though all the work we've been doing on ourselves has been producing results that we just haven't seen before. but all along new life has been growing, flowers and plants are budding and blossoming from our hands and arms and if we look we can see that there is beauty and strength and new life coming from us, from our hearts and souls.
we just had to open our eyes to see.
i don't know if that sounds crazy or not. but i thought it was a beautiful idea and wanted to share it with you :)
hope your session goes well tomorrow~
Shen, I'm so glad you are feeling a bit better. Interesting about the projection of feelings...I'm taking notes on this post. I could use some of it (w/o the God stuff...as you know - that's not a space I'm in right now.
ReplyDeleteThank you, also, for your recent comments on my blog. I know it must have been difficult for you to reach out and offer your words to me in the midst of your own pain.
Take gentle care, Grace
Katie, it is a truly beautiful image. You are exactly right about not seeing ourselves in a good light. C used the word "integrety" to describe me and I was shocked. Me? I have integrety? I told her it was like the word virginity... I didn't know I had that until it was gone.
ReplyDeleteGrace, I'm glad if my comment was helpful. I'm a little less out of it than I was. Along with that is feeling all of it more than ever, and that pretty much sucks.
It's been a long day.
Beautiful blog.... I will be reading more of you! Thanks for stopping by mine :)
ReplyDeleteShen,
ReplyDeleteWanting to do more I decided to go back and see if there was a post I had missed.
As I suspected there is.
In my experience, what you are having today Thursday, is the kind of reaction, INvoluntary response emotionally, I would be very prone to after the anger work you did at the beginning of the week and then the new revelations you were able to grasp after - - which you are writing about here.
You are doing great and marvelous work, I can envision if you could see the garden of you which Katie is speaking of it would be in glorious bloom after all of this work. I do know that for myself when I do great work the opposition kicks in quite forcefully. For me that would explain if I was having a day like you are today on Thursday.
Sending you hugs and hope.
Be Gentle with yourself.
Shen,
ReplyDeleteGod Bless you, and many many thanks for blogging your feelings, you are an answered prayer.
Knowing that God is ok with me being angry with Him was very freeing for me. It gave me the acceptance of my anger that I needed to let go of it. If God was ok with my anger then I could be ok with it too. Instead of using it to hurt myself by stuffing it, I was able to feel it and then let go of it.
ReplyDelete