Thursday, August 25, 2011

Dialogues With Dignity: Progress Over Perfection

Dialogues With Dignity is described as "A safe and dignified roundtable discussion among trusted friends" on its webpage which you will find posted below.

Progress Over Perfection was the topic of our discussion on Tuesday, August 23 when I was a guest on their show.  The discussion was between my friends Dan Hays, Ellen Brown, Stash Serafin and me, Patricia Singleton.  We discussed such things as letting go of perfectionism which can be shaming when we fail and beat ourselves up for failing. Expections and trying versus doing were among the topics discusses.  I hope that you will join me in listening to this interested conversation between four friends at the following link:


Feel free to leave comments here and at the website. Hope you enjoy the show. I know that I did.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Book Review of No Longer Silent By Author Tammy Gagnon

I just finished reading another survivor's memoir this afternoon.  I could relate to a lot of Tammy Gagnon's life as an incest survivor - the feelings of shame, no self-worth, fear of rejection from her parents especially her mother, anger at her abusers and anyone in authority.  I can understand the need for addictions to numb her feelings.  My addiction is food, even today.  I never did alcohol or drugs because I was too scared of getting caught.   

I can also relate to how Tammy finally had what she calls a "spiritual awakening" where she felt her connection to God, to her angels and finally to herself.  Tammy finally started to heal when she realized that she needed to love herself in order to make any lasting changes. 

The name of the book if any of you  are interested in reading it is No Longer Silent, written by Tammy Gagnon, Printed in the United States of America, 2011. In the Foreword which is written by Patrick B. McGinnis, PhD, he says that No Longer Silent "is a story of victimhood and recovery." 

Dr. McGinnis goes on to say, "A child who is sexually or physically abused suffers extraordinary additional harm.  Children who are traumatized by an form of abuse do not have the cognitive capacity to recognize that this has happened to them because the caretaker is ill or misguided, rather they come to believe that something is wrong with them; that something essential in them is missing, and they are damaged and not good enough. Some children believe they are incomplete and feel as if there is a void at the center of their being." (page 4-5)

I felt the void that Dr. McGinnis speaks about inside of myself until I started to love myself.  Many people, like Tammy, try to feel this void with alcohol, drugs and other people. Some teens have their own children early wanting to believe that a child will love them and fill the void.  Nothing fills the void until you learn to love yourself. Anything else is just a temporary fix.

I read most of the book in one day.  Tammy's book is about incest, domestic violence both physical and emotional, teenage rebellion through alcohol, drugs & running away to escape the pain of her life, having babies when she was too young, wanting to trust someone so badly that she fell for whatever lies the men in her life came up with, being hurt repeatedly by her mother whose love Tammy felt like she never had.

Tammy was taught before the age of six that her family had secrets that she wasn't supposed to tell anyone else because her mother cared more about how the family looked perfect than she did that her own daughter had been raped by her husband's father.  When Tammy tried to talk to her mother several times during her adulthood about the rape by her grandfather when she was six years old, her mother told her to stop exaggerating, that it happened a long time ago.

I want to thank Tammy for writing and sharing her story of incest and domestic violence, rape and abandonment and for sharing her story of therapy and jail time and finally healing through finding herself and loving herself. Tammy didn't want her daughters to repeat the same mistakes that she did so she decided to quit drinking and doing drugs and to be the role model that her daughters needed.  Tammy's story of incest becomes a story of triumph over tragedy instead. Thank you, Tammy for being brave enough to share your story.  You give other survivors hope that they can heal too.
Patricia 

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Grieving Is A Major Part of Healing From Abuse

To facilitate more healing on my part and sometimes just out of curiosity, I read a lot of blogs every week.  On Twitter, I found a blog article on grieving that is one of the best articles on explaining grief that I have read in a long time.  This article is entitled Grief Has A Mind of Its Own posted on soulseeds: SEED THE CHANGE blog.  The link for this article is here:

http://www.soulseeds.com/grapevine/2011/08/grief-has-a-mind-of-its-own/

This blog article was written by Ian Lawton who calls himself a "Spiritual teacher of inner wisdom, divine love, deeper consciousness, oneness, peace, and abundance."  Thank you Ian for sharing your thoughts on grieving.

Grief is such a big part of healing from childhood abuse.  Every time a loss of any kind happens in your life, you have to grieve the loss.  As a child of incest, I had a lot of grieving to do when I started healing. 

Another new friend that I have recently met through Twitter is Nancy Fox-Kilgore, M. S.   Nancy's blog is called Sibling Abuse & Bullies which you will find at the following link:

http://siblingbullies.com/blog/

Nancy's is a fairly new blog in the healing child abuse community.  I know that Nancy would love it if you would leave a comment on any of her blog articles. I hope that you will encourage her to continue writing and sharing her journey so that others can also start to heal by reading her words.  Nancy is an expert on Bullying and Sibling Abuse.  If you are ever looking for a guest speaker on either of these two topics, Nancy is the person to contact.  Nancy is a national speaker for the United States Department of Justice.  She speaks on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in rape and incest victims.  I wanted to introduce you to Nancy today rather than waiting for you to meet her in my next blog article.  My next blog article that will be posted here on Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker will be a Guest Interview with Nancy Fox-Kilgore.  Look for the post on either the coming Monday or Tuesday.  In the meantime, go to Nancy's blog Sibling Abuse & Bullies and become aquainted with Nancy and her mission to protect children from bullying and sibling abuse.  You will learn some things that you didn't know about the two forms of abuse.
Patricia

Friday, August 5, 2011

Ending Toxic Relationships And Forgiveness

How do you end a toxic relationship?  I know there are many answers to this question.  I have been finding my own answers over the past few weeks.  I sometimes forget that just ignoring a situation or a person doesn't end the relationship when the other person isn't willing to let go or if one of the two of us or both of us hasn't learned whatever the lesson was that we were supposed to learn from each other.

I know that neither of us is all good or all bad.  I don't see things as all or nothing, especially in relationships. If the relationship is toxic, I have played my part in the healthy and in the toxic parts.  I am not perfect.  I make big mistakes when it comes to relationships and feelings.  I am still learning my way with feelings, especially anger.  For the most part, I hope that I am healthy in feeling and dealing with angry situations but I do make mistakes.  I am not always right or always wrong.  Neither is the other person.  I always have room for improvement.  Where anger is concerned, I still don't always recognize what I am feeling and don't always handle anger as well as I wish I would.  I am human.  We all are.

A friend recently told me that I am not responsible for fixing other people and I am not responsible for protecting them either.  I know that I am not responsible for fixing others.  That has been one of my lessons this lifetime. 

Raised in a dysfunctional family with incest and alcoholism, my family role was that of hero and caretaker.  I was the oldest daughter who was expected to do well in school.  My parents had 5th grade and 7th grade educations.  I had to do well in school so that they could feel good about themselves.  I even majored in Special Education in college because it was my mother's dream.  My brother was in Special Education from 3rd grade on.  I think my becoming a Special Education teacher was to ease any guilt that my mother had toward my brother's special needs. I took years to realize that being a Special Education teacher was never my dream. That is why I quit college when my husband graduated. 

Early in my childhood, I became a caretaker of everyone in my family.  At three years old, I took on the job of protecting my mother from her feelings.  At eleven years old, I became a wife to my dad taking care of the house, learning to cook meals, and becoming the sexual substitute for my mom.  My mom unconsciously pushed me into that role.  My dad actively pushed that role on to me.  My feelings were never considered.  My permission was never asked.  I had already learned that their feelings, wants and needs were more important than anything that I wanted or needed.

As an adult, I continued the caretaker role in my marriage and in my friendships.  Anything that I could fix, I did.  Any advice that I could give, I did.  I thought that if I could fix your problems, you would like me and give me value as a woman.  Women were supposed to take care of everything.  We were the nurturers.  If I could fix you, I could feel good about myself.  What I didn't know was that I didn't have the time to look at myself and my own issues if I was busy fixing you and your issues.

12-Step meetings in the 1990's taught me that being a caretaker was not a good thing for you or for me.  What helped me to stop my caretaking was when someone said that when I was fixing you, I was also teaching you that you were too stupid to do it for yourself.  I didn't like that message and didn't know that was what I was saying.  I would never call someone stupid.  I know what that feels like.  My parents both used that word a lot. I am not stupid and neither are you.  Today I recognise a caretaker pretty quickly.  I learned that I don't have to take care of you in order to feel safe in my environment or in order to feel loved. Today I love myself and I feel worthy just by being me.

Today, I rarely give advice because of my caretaker days.  I know that you can find your own answers without my help.  If you ask my opinion, I will give it.  When I give my opinion, that is what it is.  My opinion is my truth as I know it.  I do my best not to be judging when I give you my opinion.  I can't say that I am always successful in not sounding judging.  

Recently a friend asked my opinion about a situation.  She wanted my approval for what she had said to someone else.  I disagreed with her.  I wasn't judging her but she read my comments as judgments.  I do my best to be discerning which is seeing things as they are rather than as telling the person that they are bad.  This person is very sensitive.  She is not bad. I didn't agree with her behavior toward another friend. In stating my feelings and what I think about a situation, I will sometimes trample all over the sensitive person's feelings, not intentionally, but I still do it.  My best friend helps me with this lesson.  She is sensitive when all I want is the truth, even when it is about me. I don't mean to hurt her feelings, but sometimes I do.  Together we are working our way through this lesson. I am far from perfect in this area. I constantly stumble and get up and try again. I am aware of this in myself and I am working on it.  If you are one of those sensitive people that I have done this too, I am sorry.  I am working on doing better. Being aware of how I act and react and changing how I react is my way of taking responsibility for my part in my relationships. 

I have spent the last two weeks working my way through this issue and looking at my part in the relationship disagreement.  This friend blocked me on Facebook and called me a stalker when I went to her husband's Facebook page to ask if she was okay and to let her know that I didn't intend to hurt her and that I was sorry that I did.  For myself, I look for patterns of behavior in myself that I might want to change about myself if they are hurting me or someone else.  I told this person about the possible patterns that I was seeing in her. I have friends who do this for me.  I don't see it as them judging me.  I see if as them helping me with some awareness that I might not have otherwise. I don't want friends who are going to lie to me about my behavior. 

I am not telling you any of this because I want your sympathy. I am sharing with you that this is how I process things for myself.  Because this is the way that I work, I never thought that the other person would see my words as a personal attack.  For that I am sorry.  I don't see these patterns of behavior as character faults in myself or in anyone else.  I just see them as things that I can change for me and you can change for you.  No, I don't see it as my responsibility to tell you about what I see unless you ask me.  If you ask me, I assume that you really want to know.

I have a best friend who will very quickly tell you not to ask Pat unless you want the truth.  I know that most truths are not absolute and that my truth may be different from your truth.  My truth is the only one that I have and yours is the only one that you have.  That is where awareness is key to healing.  If I am not aware of my patterns of behavior, then I cannot change them.  Neither can you.  It was from this space that I shared my opinion with my friend. As much as I didn't mean to hurt this friend, I did. This hurting will make me more careful next time if this situation arises again in my life.

I know that I am not responsible for fixing another person.  I do believe that it is my responsibility to protect those that are weaker than me.  Maybe I am wrong in that belief.  Some people are strong enough to protect themselves.  Others are not.  Maybe this is my belief because I wasn't protected as a child.  Even as a young adult, I didn't have any idea how to protect myself.  Until I did become strong enough to protect myself, people continued to come into my life who abused me.  I can't stand by and watch someone else being bullied.  If that is bad, I am sorry.  I think the strong should protect the weaker ones.  How are you supposed to learn how to be strong unless someone else shows you how?  I only grew strong enough to protect myself because of the human angels that God put into my life at each step of the way that I needed guidance and support.  My life would have been so different if those strong people had not showed me how to protect myself.

Out of my wanting to protect others and to vent some of my own anger over the situation, I went on someone else's blog where this friend had commented about the original situation on my Facebook page.  For that I am sincerely sorry to the owner of the blog and to her readers and commenters.  I should not have said the things that I did that told everyone exactly who I was talking about.  I should have come to my own blog if I was going to put it on a blog at all.  I made a big mistake in judgment in that area.  As I said earlier, I am human and I make mistakes and this was a big mistake on my part.  I am not trying to justify what I did.  I was wrong.  I have no problem accepting responsibility for my part in this whole thing.  I played the game even when I knew that I shouldn't.  I am not a good game player. 

I want the truth, not game playing in my life.  I haven't contacted this person since she called me a stalker.  I let it drop and was processing my part in the whole thing.  I don't want to react in this way again so I have looked at the whole situation and my part in it.  I can't change the other person.  I can change myself. Denial of my mistakes would change anything.  Taking responsibility for my part is all that I can do.

For me, the relationship with this person has become toxic.  I don't like drama.  I know it is a coping mechanism but it is one that I don't want in my life.  I am not saying that the person is toxic.  Our relationship, which we both created together, is toxic to me.  She is free to see it otherwise.

I chose to leave the relationship behind and to work on changing my reactions.  I didn't expect this person to take off her block of me on Facebook but she did this week so that she could send me a two-page expression of regret and blame.  I know where my fault lies in this relationship.  I can honestly say that I forgive the person for what she said.  I wish her well in the future. I can only hope that she will find forgiveness in her heart for me.  As long as either one of us is angry with the other, forgiveness hasn't happened. 

I can forgive without wanting that relationship back. A big part of my decision has to do with trust.  I don't trust her or myself to not re-enact or recreate this whole thing over again at some point if we remain friends. I don't need that in my life.

Over the past few weeks, I have gone into two major bouts of grieving the loss of this friendship.  Possibly for the first time in my life, I actually was able to allow myself to feel the heavy grief for a few days and then to slowly start coming out of it.  In that grief, I was able to look at how much I still want the appoval of my peers, my fellow survivors. I probably lost some of that approval because of my words on the other blog.  At the same time, the people on the other blog saw me at my worst with the mean little girl in control of my words.  I take responsibility for letting that mean little girl take control.  She is the one who feels the hurt and the grief of my childhood and she is the one who carries my anger.  I am not excusing myself for my hurtful words.  I meant them at the time that I wrote them.  I am not asking for approval or condemnation. I know what I did was wrong in identifying her in the way that I did. 

I am not apologizing for my anger.  I have a right to feel what I feel.  So does the other person.  I am sorry that I allowed my anger to hurt another person just because she hurt me. We were both wrong in striking out at each other on someone else's blog.  Her words seem more innocent than mine but they were not.  I knew where her digs were even though others never saw them.

Yesterday or the day before, I received two anonymous comments here on my blog.  Both were from this person.  To me, at this point the anonymity thing felt like a slap in the face to me.  I know who she is and she knows who I am.  I am being curteous here in allowing this person the anonimity of not using her name in my post because this post isn't really about her.  I didn't write this post to place blame. This post is about me attempting to figure out all of my stuff, not hers.  I am sharing this hoping to save someone else the pain that I have experienced with this issue.  I hope by sharing my mistakes with you that I may save you from doing the same thing in your life.  My blog has always been about sharing my journey to healing with you.  Well, the past few weeks have shown me some major areas that I still need to work on.

I am also sharing this so that if you have put me up on a pedestal as an expert or as the perfect way to do healing, please take me off that pedestal.  People keep telling me how I have a large influence upon others in the survivor community.  Well, here is your opportunity to learn from my mistakes and to see that I don't deserve to be put on a pedestal any more than anyone else does.  I teach by sharing my experiences.  Well, some of those experiences have negative consequences. I can't change what happened.  I wish I could but regret doesn't heal anything.

In case this person is reading my blog post, I accept your forgiveness in the manner than it was given by you.  Now, please leave me out of the drama of your life.  I have learned my lessons where you are concerned and I intend to move on.  I hope that you can do the same, just not in my life. I hope that you can one day forgive me for trespasing on your feelings.  Your feelings are just as valid as mine.  I won't invalidate what I feel to make you happy and don't expect you to invalidate your feelings for me.  With that said, I don't want you in my life. Thank you for what you have taught me about myself and what I still need to learn.  I always have the right to approve or not any comments that come here to my blog.  I welcome respectful comments. To save anyone from looking, I did not publish the two comments from this person. They were too personal and too shaming.
Patricia


Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Blog Carnivals Are Posted For Reading

The Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse - July 2011 Edition at the From Tracie blog is now posted at the following link:


This month's Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse had 21 articles submitted. With this carnival, you can submit more than one article at a time.  I usually submit three articles each month.  I have submitted as many as five a few times.  This month we didn't have a specific topic.  It is always good to hear some new voices each month.  I appreciate the courage that it takes to submit one of your blog articles for the first time to a new audience.  I hope that you will join me in going to From Tracie blog to support the bloggers who do submit articles to this very worthwild Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse.


The Expressive Arts Carnival No. 13: Group Word Cloud is also up and running for July at Mindparts blog.  This month's topic was word clouds done by 11 entries.  Each month Paul from Mindparts blog hosts Expressive Arts Carnival.  The 11 submitters came up with 33 words, to use Paul's words, "to write about someone who has taught you something about healing." using three words along with a color.  Below is the link for Expressive Arts Carnival No. 13.




I want to thank Tracie and Paul for both taking the time and effort to run these two Blog Carnivals.  Both provide very different ways for survivors of child abuse to find to express their feelings and thoughts about their experiences with child abuse and healing.
Patricia