Are The Effects Of Incest A Life Sentence For A Survivor?

Sharing some more of my Tweets on Twitter from several weeks ago. Tell me what you think.

The sad fact of my life is that at age 60, my abusers are all dead but the effects of incest live on in me.

I have done many years of healing work and am in a good to great spot most of the time with my incest issues behind me.

Even with healing, sometimes an issue will pop up and catch me by surprise and I find more grieving to do.

More grieving, more healing, more anger and fear to feel and then let go of because of the incest in my childhood.

A Survivor's work is never done, at least in my experience. Joy and peace do exist and I enjoy them when they are here.

And I still have those moments of fear come up when something triggers a memory or a feeling from my inner child.

I live with hope and laughter in my life and I still am a work in progress.


Tomorrow is my dad's birthday. He died January 6, 2000. Because of the length of time that he sexually abused me, I count him as my main abuser and most of the issues that I have worked on came from the abuse done by him.

My dad was born in 1931 as the 3rd oldest of what would become a family with 12 kids. He quit school in 5th grade when he went to work in the fields with his dad to help feed their family. I don't know if he had been a good student or not. When I was older, I realized that he could barely read or write. He could write his name. As for his intelligence, I don't think he was very smart. He came from a family with alcoholism and codependency in it just as I did. My grandfather when I was older would start drinking on Friday evening as fast as he could cash his pay check and get to the store to buy beer. When I was growing up, we spent lots of weekends at their house. I was always afraid of my grandfather because he was loud, a big man and a mean drunk. He would drink all weekend. On Sundays, he would drive back to town to buy more beer even though it was against the law back then to sell alcohol on Sundays. You did not want to ride with my grandfather when he was drinking. I rode with him one time with my siblings.  I cannot understand how he was never in an accident or stopped by a policeman for drunk driving. He was all over the road. Whatever direction he looked, the car went. That was before you had seat beats in cars. He never drove over 40 miles per hour. Neither did my dad. This was also before you had interstate highways.

None of this is told to you as an excuse for my dad's behavior but to give you a little bit of background to his life and mine. I can feel sad for the child that he was and I can see where some of his patterns of behavior came from. I can see why he grew up into a frightened man who felt that he had to control everyone around him to feel safe. I did the same thing until I realized that control didn't make me safe or make me happy. For awhile, I copied what I saw as a child. You have to have awareness of behaviors before you can change them. My dad never saw that he needed to change anything. I have learned that control hides fear - lots of fear.

When you face your fear, you can give up the need to control. Letting go of fear makes room for you to start to heal.
Patricia

Dreams About Tigers---What They Mean To Me

I recently read an article called "Talk of Tigers/The Tiger Unveiled" and watched a video about his dream about tigers that was written by Dan L. Hays at his blog Thoughts Along The Road to Healing. I ask that you watch the video first. You will find it at the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/user/fhs1968writerman#p/a/u/0/ary8eVG_e94

After you have watched the video, then go to the following link to read Dan's article about the dream:

http://danlhays.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/talk-of-tigersthe-tiger-unveiled/

Then come back here and finish reading my article. I will wait on you to return. Be sure to read the comments at the end of Dan's article and video.

Why is reading about Dan's Tiger dream so important to me? Because I have my own Tiger dream which started having sometime after my 7th birthday. How do I know how old I was? Because the house that is in my dream was the house that my grandmother lived in when I was 7 years old. She only lived there for a part of that one year.

Before I go any further, I want to tell you my Tiger dream. I have briefly mentioned it in a few of my past articles. Here it is:

I am about 7 years old and I am alone in my grandmother's house. No one else is around. I am frightened. There is a huge golden and black striped tiger walking around outside the house. As he walks completely around the house, I follow him from door to window to window watching him. He is talking to me as we both walk. He says in this really deep voice, "I am going to eat you." He keeps talking and telling me this over and over again as he walks around the house looking for a way to get inside. I make sure that each door and each window is closed and locked. I am so afraid. I don't know how long the dream goes on before I wake up terrified. I don't go back to sleep for a very long time afterwards.

I dreamed this dream quit often over the years of my childhood and young adulthood. I can't tell you when I had this dream last. It was sometimes after I started the 12-Step programs of Al-Anon and Adult Children of Alcoholics. It was always the same, never changing any of the elements of the dream. I was always terrified, even as an adult when I had this dream. I was always around 7 years old in the dream.

I know that for me to always be 7 in the dream that some kind of developmental stage stopped for me at that age. I don't know why that year is so important for me. I have always known that something monumental happened that year without knowing what it was. As I said in my comment to Dan's article, I can still see the dream in my mind so clearly after all of these years.

I never could figure out what the tiger stood for in my dream. When Dan said that his Tiger represented his rage that was buried way below the surface and was even hidden from him, I felt chills going through me. I recognised that as a truth for me as well. Dan said that the Tiger (his rage) was dangerous to him and anyone who got close to him. My rage was very much like that when I was in denial of its existence. I would suppress my rage as long as I could. Do you know how much of my energy was wasted suppressing that rage? Because of it, I was so tired all of the time for many, many years. As a young child, I knew what bone-weary tired felt like.

Dan said that his legacy of rage came from his father. I think that my dream took place in my grandmother's house because family was probably where my legacy of rage came from. My grandmother was a quiet person. My mother was in denial of all of her feelings. As a teenager, I figured out that my mother and grandmother were quietly angry with one another. I never knew why. If I had asked either one, they would have denied it. Do you know how destructive silent rage can be? I suspect that the anger had something to do with my grandfather. He died when I was 2 years old. My mother was the baby of the family and extremely spoiled and protected by her daddy. I wonder if the anger between my grandmother and mother was possibly jealousy because of that attention that my mother got from her father. All 3 are dead now so I have no one to ask about it.

The denied rage could also have come down from my grandfather and his parents. When my grandfather was just a baby, his mother left him and his father and ran off. My great-grandfather was so angry that he would never tell my grandfather his mother's name. He grew up never knowing anything about his mother or her family. When my grandfather would ask about her, his father would not answer. He refused to talk about her at all. When my grandfather was 10 years old, his father died and left him to be raised by neighbors who took him in. Since he died when I was 2 years old, I don't know if my grandfather carried the rage of his father forward into the next generation or not.

Just like alcoholism, which is rampant in my dad's family background, rage was be passed down the generations. My dad's grandfather was well known for being a mean S.O.B. He wasn't nice to his wives or children. His first wife died shortly after childbirth and he wanted to bury the baby girl with her. He apparently didn't think much of girls. A neighbor took the baby girl and raised her. His second wife divorced him and got a restraining order against him in the early 1900's. She kept the 5 children that they had together. My great-grandmother was his 3rd wife. She left him after he tried to poison her several times. When my great-grandmother died in the 1920's, both of their sons went to live with their dad. He was well-known for beating his animals also. Would you say that he probably had a rage problem too?

I know that I suppressed my own rage for many years, denying its existence in every way possible. I stuffed my feelings with food and still do to a smaller degree. I refused to acknowledge its existence. If you asked me, I would have said that I wasn't angry. Good little girls, respectful of their parents and all adults, didn't get angry, much less feel rage. My dad was a rageaholic. I knew what it looked like. I didn't want to feel that way too. It hurt too much. I didn't like my dad when he was raging. He was very abusive when he was raging. I didn't want to see myself as that way, capable of hurting myself and others that same way that my dad did.

As I have said before, I was like a pressure cooker who occasionally blew my safety valve when the stream became too great from stuffing the rage. When I was raging, like my dad, I felt no compassion for anyone. I took no prisoners. Fear was the monster that fueled my rage. Fear was also what kept me from facing my rage. I thought that anger and rage were the same thing and always very dangerous. My dad's rages were always dangerous. Rage always came with the threat of violence. For many years, I was afraid that if I let my rage out that I might kill someone with its intensity.

Except for in my dreams, I have never been afraid of Tigers. To me they are the most beautiful creature that God ever created. Have you ever seen a color more beautiful that they golden orange color of Tigers? Have you ever seen a creature more powerful and majestic than a Tiger? A Tiger reminds me of how powerful I can be as a creation of God. A Tiger bows down to no man. A Tiger is a victim to no one.

A Tiger, to me, represents the strength that I needed to overcome the effects of incest on my life. I have pictures and a small stuffed Tiger to remind me of the beauty and power of Tigers. As Dan said, Tigers spend most of their lives alone. I can relate to that also in that I have felt alone for much of my life, separated from others because of the lack of trust and fear of abandonment that I lived with for so many years because of the incest.

Thank you, Dan Hays, for your video and article on your Tiger dream. Dan and I have had a few conversations about the uncanny similarities between us that have come out from his sharing his Tiger dream. I look forward to reading more of Dan's blog articles and future discussions. I look forward to reading Dan's book The Tiger Unveiled when he finishes writing and getting it published.

Dan also has a Radio show called "Minute to Freedom" with Dan Hays that you can find at the following link:

http://www.radiokevin.com/minutetofreedom.htm

I haven't listened to any of the radio programs yet, but I am excited to hear them soon. Now I am off to read some more of Dan's blog articles. I hope that you will join me. Have a glorious day of exploring your world.
Patricia

Ripple Effects Of Kindness, Compassion, And Sympathy

Source: The New International Webster's Standard Dictionary, Trident Reference Publishing, 2006 Edition:

kind adj. benevolent, compassionate, and humane in nature (page 160)

compassion n. concern for the troubles of another; pity; sympathy -compassionate adj.
-compassionately adv. (page 73)

sympathy n. an agreement of feeling; compassion for another's suffering; agreement or accord; support or approval (page 267)


I left a comment on Lance's blog Jungle of Life recently that I wanted to share with all of you. You can find Lance's "Sunday Thought For The Day" on December 27, 2009 at the following link: http://www.jungleoflife.com/ . Lance's blog articles are always so uplifting to me. He brightens my world which usually needs brightening around the holiday season.

Here is my edited comment:
". . . Compassion is such a great lesson and a great way to move forward as a world. Compassion, like all great teachings, begins with the individual. As one person changes so do all of those around him/her causing a ripple effect around the world one person at a time. . . . Compassion starts with the Self."

The same can be said for kindness and sympathy when you reach out to others. The biggest lesson that I had to learn was that I needed to be kind, compassionate, and sympathetic to myself before I could be that way to you. Those of you who have been abused in your childhood may have never experienced kindness, compassion or sympathy from others so you weren't shown how to exhibit those qualities to yourself or others.

I don't do New Year's Eve Resolutions. I have tried a few times and they just don't work for me. I used to beat myself up for failing at these goals. You see no one ever taught me about goals. Resolutions reminded me of all of the broken promises of growing up in an alcoholic and incestuous home. I knew by the age of 6 that promises would be broken. I never make promises for that reason. This is an area that I can be kind, compassionate, and sympathetic to that little girl who learned the lesson that promises get broken. I can show her that I understand her fears and disappointments from the past. I can also show her that I will do my best to not disappoint her again. I can acknowledge that her fears and disappointments are my fears and disappointments and that together we can overcome them. We can move forward.

I AM going to be more kind, compassionate and sympathetic to myself and others in 2010. Happy, Glorious 2010 to all.
Patricia

Finding The Answers---Do You Have Them All?

How do you condense one very eventful week into one article and not have it go on and on and on? You start at the beginning of just one day. I am going to start with today, Sunday, March 15, and go backwards. On the surface, my week doesn't look eventful. I was sick with a stomach virus and diarrhea for 3 days. Where was my week eventful? In my mind and heart, I made several important connections this week.

This morning when I opened my emails, one of the first ones that I read was from Lance over at the blog, The Jungle of Life. Every Sunday Lance does a "Sunday Thought For The Day" article. Today's article was the words and a youtube video about the song "Circle of Life" by Sir Elton John. The video is of Sir Elton John singing the song "Circle of Life" while you watch scenes from the making of the movie "The Lion King". You can click on the following link and go watch and listen to the youtube video:
http://www.jungleoflife.com/2009/03/15/sunday-thought-for-the-day-43/
Come back here when you are finished.

Sir Elton John's music was a hit starting in the 1970's when my husband and I were dating and then married. He has always been a favorite of mine, long before he became a knight in England. When "The Lion King" came along, I watched it with my children. I loved it and the song "Circle of Life". Both are so metaphysical in meaning. Thanks Lance, for reminding me of all of these memories today. This was a great way to start a glorious day.


Next, on my morning trip to the bathroom, I read the December 28, 2008 (which was also a Sunday) article (Hey, so I am behind. At least I am finally reading it.) of Daily Word, December 2008, page 42. It says,

"I am grateful for the constant flow of God's blessing in my life.
Gratitude
I welcome this day with a thankful heart. Beginning my morning in this way cultivates an attitude of gratitude not only for special occasions but for every day.
As I arise from a peaceful night, I give thanks to God for rest received and for blessings to come. This sets a positive tone, one that attracts life-enhancing experiences to me.
Sharing a simple 'thank you' with others generates good feelings. My gratefulness is contagious and becomes a positive, attitude-changing influence."

Next, I read this morning's March 15, 2009 Daily Word on page 29. It starts out with the words,
"Trusting in God, I am fulfilled.
Centered
When events do not turn out as I planned, I don't let myself become bogged down in disappointment or allow my enthusiasm to wane. In prayer, I bring myself back to center. I turn my perspective around so that I see things in a new way and celebrate the good that is always there for me. . . . ."

"Turning around to face my good, I realize that what might have at first discouraged me will prove to be the dawning of a greater, more fulfilling experience."

I will leave you on your own to gather what the above statements might mean to you personally. If you want to share in the comment section below, you can. I am still sorting through my own stuff right now so am not yet in a place of sharing it with you.


On the past few Wednesday nights, I have gone to an Al-Anon meeting with my friend. When she asked me to go to these meetings with her over a year ago, I didn't realize that I needed the meetings as much as she did. I don't live with an alcoholic. I haven't since I was 19 and left home. What I do live with is myself and my husband. Both of us are adult children of alcoholics. Those patterns of behavior seem to be engrained within both of us and still get activated in times of stress like I wrote about in last week's article "More Patterns of Behavior Means More Awareness" which you can find at:
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2009/03/more-family-patterns-of-behavior-means.html
At this week's Al-Anon meeting which was on the topic of "You are only as sick as your secrets.", I was aware of a part of me that some call "the watcher". A part of me was watching and listening to what was being said and to my reactions to what was being said.

Usually as I am listening to every speaker, I am planning what I will say when it is my turn, rehearsing it in my mind. This time, instead of rehearsing, I touched the part of me that I have been holding back from the group. To a degree, I do this all the time. I think we all do. It is easier for me to do this because of the childhood belief that I need to protect myself from you or you will hurt me. One of my secrets that I got in touch with but haven't shared with the Al-Anon group is that they scare me still. (I haven't shared it because as I was typing the last sentence, I just got it myself. So you can see, I am still figuring out some of the lessons that came at me this week.)

What I did share with the Al-Anon group was that when I came into Al-Anon in 1989, I didn't trust women at all. In my mind, women were more likely to judge me harshly because of the incest than men were. (This was my belief. I don't know if it was true or not but it was my belief.) For awhile, trusting women less than men didn't make sense to me because it was men that sexually abused me. What I said in the meeting was that I thought women would judge me harshly because the women in my childhood were judgmental.

My mother who was always angry but rarely voiced it. Silence was my mother's weapon of choice. I have attracted people to me with that trait until I learned that their silence wasn't a weapon unless I allowed it to be. I also found out that if I didn't act out their anger, then they were more likely to voice it for themselves. Voicing it makes it possible to deal with the anger. With anger came judgments.

My grandmother and mother were always angry at each other since before I was a child. I could always feel the judgments going back and forth between the two of them without understanding what it was about. I know they loved each other and they were also angry with each other.

I think that I have probably shared the story about one of my maternal aunts telling me that I was going to Hell because I was wearing shorts. I was about 5 or 7 years old at the time. A part of that child must have believed her because that is still a strong memory of mine. She was never one of my favorite aunts. I was afraid of her as a child. As an adult, I felt angry with her for being such a religious fanatic. Now I can see how unhappy she was. I can forgive her.

I can forgive those women in my life who were judgmental and who taught me to be judgmental. For me to fear being judged, some part of me is still judging me or I wouldn't be afraid. I can take this a step further and forgive that judgmental part of myself. She is still a child afraid of being hurt. I can take her into my arms and into my heart and hug her until she doesn't hurt any more. Usually my solar plexus is where I feel all of this. My heart is what feels this and hurts for the little girl. I think that I need to go and just sit with this for awhile.

I hope that by sharing the above process it will help someone else to heal what may still need healing. As you can see, I still don't have it all figured out for myself. Isn't that what this life is all about---finding the answers for yourself?
Patricia

More Family Patterns of Behavior Means More Awareness

Who Would You Be Without Your Story? Dialogues with Byron Katie, Edited by Carol Williams, 2008: "If there's someone who makes your blood boil, thank him. He's showing you what you need to know to become a kinder person. He's doing the best he can, and so are you."

Those are the words that Byron Katie opens her new book with. It is the perfect way to start my story of the recent two day trip that my husband Daniel and I went on last week. I am not writing about the trip. I am writing to share with you what I learned about myself.

Daniel is an adventurer. He swears he has Daniel Boone somewhere in his ancestry. He doesn't. He just wishes he did. He just shares the adventurous spirit and the same first name. When you go on any trip with Daniel expect to be tired when you get home. When I was younger, I recuperated much quicker than I do today. He puts as many activities and miles as he can possibly squeeze into each day.

On our recent trip, we went to Fort Smith, Fayetteville, Van Buren, and Bentonville in northwestern Arkansas and from Bentonville headed northeast to Springfield, Missouri. We spent the night in Springfield so we could tour the Wilson Creek Battlefield and National Park to do research on the Civil War battle that took place there on August 10, 1861. It was the second major battle of the Civil War. Daniel had some ancestors that fought there. Because of his hobbies of genealogy and Civil War reenacting, Daniel has become a little bit of a Civil War historian. This was research for a book that Daniel is writing about one of his great-grandfathers who fought in the Civil War as a Confederate soldier from Arkansas.

When Daniel asked if I wanted to go with him on this two day trip, I told him that I would go only on the condition that I could be home to watch the TV show Ghost Whisperer at 7:00 p.m. on Friday night. He said we would be. We were home at 6:00 p.m. Friday evening but only because I threw a tantrum and held him to his word.

Here is what I learned about myself: I still want what I want when I want it. I can be unbending and unforgiving when I don't get what I want. I can still rant and rave to get my way. I can feel guilty about my behavior afterwards. I do know how to apologize even when Daniel and I both know it probably won't be the last time that I will go off on him.

When I saw and heard what I was saying, that is when the ability to change came about. I can only change what I am aware of.

I still don't like that part of myself that can throw a temper tantrum when she doesn't get her way. I also no longer beat myself up for the behaviour. I need to be able to bend more and at the same time not be a doormat to others. I also don't need to treat others as my doormat. I don't have the right to treat others that way. I do have the right to stand up for myself. I can also do that standing up for myself with patience and kindness for myself and for the other person. I don't have to beat the other person up with my anger and words. It is ok to be angry without acting on that anger.

I can acknowledge that, yes, I lost my temper again. I can look at the reasons for losing my temper. How can I change that part of me or at least change how that part of me reacts to stress and anger?

Why did I lost my temper this time? I felt disappointed at the possibility of missing Ghost Whisperer. I felt disappointed that Daniel wasn't going to keep his word. I felt that he thought his time was worth more than mine. I felt devalued as a person and partner in our marriage.

What childhood pattern did this come from? My parents would say they were going to do something and then they wouldn't do it. I never had a say so of any kind in decisions made about me during my childhood. Younger children don't need this as much as an older child does. Decision making is how we learn to make decisions while having the safety net of parents to tell us that those decisions are appropriate or not. If you aren't taught decision making, you don't learn that decisions have responsibility and consequences. Chaos reigned in our household. Nobody was dependable. Nobody's word meant anything. They never did what they said they would. They yelled and screamed when they got angry, which was often. As a child, I felt that I had no value as an individual. Everybody else had more value than I did.

What did I find out about myself on this trip? I still sometimes react like the child living that childhood. Do I have to continue doing it? No. Will this behavior of mine stop immediately since I am now aware? Probably not. Why? Because I am not the perfectionist that I once was. Each time I become aware of it quicker until finally I will stop this particular behavior. Writing about it helps to reenforce the awareness. Do you still have some behaviors from childhood that you struggle with? How can you become more aware?
Patricia

Genealogy Gave Me Roots And Patterns

Genealogy is one of my hobbies. My husband inspired me to give it a try about ten or so years ago. I never knew that finding out about my ancestors would really give me roots, a feeling of belonging to somebody, a history that could actually be traced through many people and to many places. I am excited by finding out about the famous, infamous and the common folk that I came from. I haven't actually traced my lines to anybody who is famous yet. Someone actually traced one of my husband's lines back to being related to most of the kings and queens of Europe in the 1700's.

Something else that I found from genealogy is that with some of the stories that my aunts have shared with me is how the line of abuse has come down from one generation to the next. With that knowledge, I can see why some of the abuse was done. It was what each generation before was taught.

Some things are passed down generation to generation. One good example of this would be the value of being thrifty that was taught by the generation that lived through the Depression of the 1920's and 1930's. I see this trait in my mother-in-law who was born in 1922. Thriftiness can be a good thing especially with the economic problems that the U. S. is beginning to experience today.

One of the things that I discovered is that the abuse didn't start with my dad or grandfather. It goes all the way back to my great-grandfather. It makes me wonder how much farther back the abuse went.

My great-grandfather William Thomas Caldwell was married three times. The first wife died shortly after giving birth to a daughter. At the burial of his wife, Thomas wanted to put the baby in the coffin and bury her with her mother. The baby girl was taken and raised by a neighbor family. I wonder if that baby girl was ever told the story of her birth. How horrible that story was. The first born son of this marriage was raised by the parents of his mother.

Next Thomas Caldwell married and had five children before the second wife filed for a divorce. This was in the early 1900's before divorce was popular. With the divorce, the lady also filed for a restraining order to keep him away from her and the children. I had no idea that you could even get a restraining order that long ago. I know this because I have a copy of the divorce papers that were on file in the Magnolia Courthouse from Columbia County, Arkansas.

My great-grandmother was the last wife of Thomas Caldwell that I have found evidence of. Someone at RootsWeb.com posted that Thomas went to Texas and married a fourth time while he was still married to my great-grandmother and that he got arrested for it. I haven't been able to prove this marriage.

The story that my aunts shared with me about my great-grandparents were that they separated when my grandfather was a small boy. The reason for the separation was that Thomas had tried at least twice to poison my grandmother. When she found out about it, she kicked him out. One of the boys stayed with my great-grandmother and the other one went with Thomas. A few years later, my great-grandmother died and both boys from the marriage to Thomas lived with Thomas. Thomas was my great-grandmother's second husband. The two boys from her first marriage were raised by her parents after her death.

The last time that my grandfather saw his father was on my grandfather's wedding day. The few times that my grandfather talked about his father, he didn't have anything good to say about the man.

I hope that you understand the reason for me sharing this family history with you is to show you that abuse can be generational. If it is, it is your responsibility to not pass the abuse on to the next generation---your children. The abuse can be stopped.
Patricia

Growing Up With Alcoholism In The Family

From "Opening our Hearts, Transforming our Losses," Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., 2007, page 60:

"Growing up with active alcoholism
Some of us who came from alcoholic homes feel that we grew up too fast. We carried a burden of responsibility that was too much for any child to bear. The mood of the alcoholic often became the center of our lives, determining whether we had a good or bad day. Each of us had different coping mechanisms. Some tried to be the best child possible, believing we could prevent the alcoholic from drinking, even if just for one night. Others coped by rebeling or acting out. This may have been the only way we knew to get attention, even if that attention was negative. Because alcoholism is a family disease, we may also have been affected by our non-alcoholic parent, siblings, or extended family members.

Some of us grew up with parents who were emotionally or physically absent, while others grew up with physical violence and verbal abuse. Some of us were sexually abused. Still others became our parents' caretakers. We may have become so accustomed to living this way that we didn't even know something was wrong. Others recognized early on that something was wrong, but didn't know what to call it or how to change it.

As children, focusing on the alcoholic and other family members helped us survive. As adults, we struggle with keeping the focus on ourselves. We may question our intuition and our ability to make good, sound decisions---whether we're choosing what we want to do with our lives or what to order at a restaurant."

My dad Raymond grew up with an alcoholic father and a co-dependent mother who secretly took money from her husband's billfold to buy food to feed her children. Raymond was the third oldest of thirteen children. I have been told that he helped take care of the younger children. I also know that he left school in the fifth grade to go to work in the fields with his dad. Raymond was never very smart. He could barely read and could only write his name with great difficulty. When I was eleven years old, I knew that I was more intelligent than he was. As an adult, I wondered if he had some kind of learning disability. Many children of alcoholics do.

When Raymond was fifteen years old, the family's house burned to the ground with all of their possessions and his fourteen-year-old sister Emma Jean still in the house. This was after she got their youngest brother who was just a baby out of the house. Emma Jean was home taking care of all of the younger kids when the fire started.

I don't know how much my grandfather drank when Raymond was a child. By the 1950's when I was born, he drank every weekend and was a very mean drunk. I don't know at what point in his life Raymond started taking care of his dad when he got drunk. During my childhood, we visited my grandparents almost every weekend. When my grandfather Jodie would get drunk, he would get verbally abusive. I remember some weekends where Jodie got physically violent with a belt and some of his kids would run away from home for the weekend until he stopped being drunk. The verbal abuse was the worst.

I remember that Jodie would be lying in bed and Raymond would be sitting on the side of the bed arguing with Jodie. Raymond would argue with Jodie attempting to calm him down so that the violence wouldn't escalate from verbal to physical. Jodie never got physically violent with Raymond. It was always with one of the younger kids. Raymond was always of the mind that he could control Jodie when he was drinking. I only remember one time in my childhood that Raymond got offended by something that Jodie said and we left and went home and didn't return to my grandparents' home for at least a month.

When I was a teenager, my grandmother Emma started leaving Jodie for short periods of time. She never stayed gone for long. One of those times when I was in the seventh grade, she and the younger kids left and Jodie came to live with us. At the time we rented an apartment in an old motel that had been converted to apartments. Jodie rented one near us. I remember that as being a very stressful time. My mother Cordelia then became Jodie's target for verbal abuse when he was drinking. Thank God that time with us was very short. I remember Cordelia crying several weekends when the verbal abuse would start. I remember Jodie and Raymond arguing about it. Finally my grandparents went back together.

When I was near the end of my junior year of high school, Emma and my youngest aunt Virginia who is only a year older than me, moved in with us for a few weeks. Virginia and I were both in the eleventh grade together. Jodie came after a few weeks and talked Emma into coming back home with him.

The point that I wanted to make with sharing this story is that Raymond grew up as a caretaker for his parents and that trait was passed on to me. I was taught to take care of Raymond's sexual needs and of Cordelia's emotional needs. These traits are passed down from generation to generation in alcoholic families.

I learned this when I started going to Al-Anon and started looking at my parents as people with childhoods of their own and issues of their own. Knowing all of this about my parents helped me to be able to forgive them. Each of us really does do the best job that we can raising our children with the tools that we have. Sometimes that job is just not good enough as in the case of abuse. Most parents don't intentionally set out to hurt their children. We all see and react to the world and the situations of our life through the filters of our own experiences. In Raymond's eyes, he probably thought that he treated his kids better than Jodie treated him.

The first time that a friend took me into a meditation that involved seeing my parents as loving me, I couldn't see it. My friend suggested that I see both of my parents as children and hold them in my lap and love them as I would my own children. With many tears flowing down my face, I was able to imagine seeing them in my lap as innocent little children. I could start to love them and feel love flowing from them to me with that visualization. That was the beginning of opening my heart to my parents.
Patricia

Related Articles: The following two articles explain why I have started calling my parents by their first names rather than by Mom and Dad.

Shame, The Abuser's Friend --- http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/06/shame-abusers-friend.html

Why Do We Get Stuck In The Blame? --- http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/06/why-do-we-get-stuck-in-blame.html

Family Generational Patterns of Behavior

Do you have any generational behavior patterns that have been passed down through your family to you? I do.

I remember, as a teenager, becoming aware that my mother and grandmother had a love/anger relationship. I knew that they loved each other and I also knew that they were angry with each other. The anger was underneath everything they said to each other. The emotion was never acknowledged by either of them. The anger remained unvoiced between them and some how that unresolved emotion got passed down to my daughter and me. I never knew why they were angry with each other. I just knew it was there. Recently, I may have discovered a clue to the cause of their anger. Since neither of them is alive for me to ask them, my discovery will just have to remain an educated guess.

I had my own unresolved anger at my mother because of my incest issues. For many years, I didn't want to know that I was angry at my mom. I loved her. Daughters---good daughters---if they were angry with their parents didn't admit it. How could I be angry at the person who gave me life? How could I protect my mom emotionally and express any anger toward her? I couldn't. My assigned family role was to keep my mom from protected from feeling emotional pain. I couldn't do that if I was honest about my anger so I denied it to her and to myself.

When I got into a recovery program and counseling, my mom thought it was all because of my dad's alcoholism. She could deal with that. She got angry with me because she saw it as criticism of her choices as a woman---she married him and stayed with him---and her choices as a mother---she stayed because of us kids. She told me that she stayed with him for all of those years because of us kids. Mom died in 1999 without ever acknowledging that she was angry with me for bringing things out into the open.

Several times over the past years, I have realized that the cycle of mother/daughter anger has been passed down to my daughter and me. My daughter and I have had several discussions about the anger that suddenly flares up between us.

I wrote briefly about my anger that would flare up whenever my daughter would get pregnant. You can read about that in my very first article called Three Of My Past Life Experiences found at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/06/three-of-my-past-life-experiences.html . My daughter and I have talked about it and we both now know where my unexplained, very intense anger came from. With my daughter's last pregnancy, I was at peace and did not experience any of the anger of the first three pregnancies. For me, discovering and acknowledging the source of the anger dissolved it.

Recently, in the Language of Mastery class that I took, I found what I believe is generational anger. Now, without my mother or grandmother alive to ask, this is only an assumption on my part. In the class, we had a writing exercise to do. I chose the relationship with my daughter as one of my topics to write about and discovered an "ah-ha" moment.

In writing, I realized that I sometimes feel jealous of the relationship between my husband and daughter. They love each other, as they should. That was part of the problem.

As I was deciding to write this earlier, I got another piece of the puzzle. My jealousy comes from the fact that I didn't have this kind of relationship with my dad. I always missed that healthy form of love from my dad. Father-daughter relationships are different than mother-daughter relationships. Because I never had that kind of love from my dad, I resented the love between my husband and daughter. I found another shadow part of myself for me to connect with.

How could this be a generational pattern? From the stories that I heard from my mom, I know that she and her dad were very close. My mom was the youngest of eight children. The closest to her in age was a 10 year old sister. My grandmother was in her 30's when mom was born and my grandfather was in his 50's. From what my mom said, she adored her dad and he adored her. In looking at my feelings of jealousy, I wonder if a similar feeling of jealousy was possibly behind my grandmother's anger at my mom? I can't ask either of them. I do believe this is a strong possiblity.

So here comes the conscious language:
I choose to release my feelings of jealousy and love my daughter unconditionally.
I love my daughter.
I am grateful for the loving relationship between my husband and daughter. Their relationship is healthy.
I choose to have a healthy, loving relationship with my daughter.
I release my feelings of loss with my relationship with my dad.
I love my dad.
I love my husband.
I love myself.
I love all the different parts of myself. I am whole and free of the past.
I choose to release any anger passed down to me from my mother and/or grandmother.
I love my mother.
I love my grandmother.
I replace jealousy and anger with love and joy.
I am love.
I choose to release generational patterns in any and all forms.
I embrace my shadow self and reconnect with that shadow self with love and forgiveness.
I connect with I Am That I Am.
I am whole.
I choose to feel all of my emotions. I choose to search out the source of all intense emotions and release them from my body.