Happy 43rd Anniversary Daniel

Happy 43rd Anniversary, Daniel. We made it through another year today with our usual ups and downs. Through it all, my commitment to our marriage has continued to grow. Looking back at our love shows growth year after year. Our marriage hasn't been perfect. I don't know of any that are. We have had our years of struggle and our times of laughter and joy. 

I found an article in my emails this last week that I want to share with you from MindBodyGreen entitled "38 Hard Truths About Relationships". The article is one that I totally agree with. Relationships and love are not easy. My marriage has taught me that. Sherryl Paul, the author of this article, talks about how relationships are not easy and that that require compromise. She says that the definition of love that our society gives you need to be redefined. I agree with her when she says that love is an action rather than a feeling. You aren't going to be happy all the time in any relationship. That is why I said earlier than Daniel and I have had our ups and downs. Our marriage has been full of compromises and change. 

Daniel and I both came from dysfunctional homes and therefore, our family was also dysfunctional. Today we are both healthier than we have ever been in our relationship and still neither of us or our relationship is perfect. Marriage and love takes commitment on the part of both partners. The initial feelings of falling in love are the best that I have ever felt but those feelings didn't last. The daily irritants of living with another person quickly wears away those initial feelings. You often find the things that attracted you to your partner are the very things that irritate you later. I love Daniel's quirky sense of humor unless I am tired and not feeling good. Then I have to look at what is really important. I don't want him to change his wonderful sense of humor just because I am having a bad day. You cannot expect another person to change just because you want them to. It doesn't happen. A person only changes if they want to. One thing marriage taught me is that the only person I can change is me. 

Ms Paul says love is an action and I agree with her. For me that action has been the decision to stay committed to my marriage and my love for Daniel over the years. Many people choose to walk away at the first sign of problems because they want the happy ever after of fairy tales. Happy ever after is a fairy tale. Happy doesn't come from another person. Another person cannot make you happy. Only you can make you happy. Happy is a choice. You can be happy or at least content in the worst of circumstances. If you aren't happy make changes. If you can't change your circumstances, find something good in each day to be thankful for. Change your attitude. I discovered some time ago that I can always change my attitude and change how I see my world around me.

I am not sure when Daniel and I will get around to celebrating our anniversary. Both of us have been sick the past few days. For me, I am not sure if I have caught his cold or if I am having an allergic reaction to a medicine that I was taking for a bladder infection. I do feel better today. So does Daniel. That is another thing about any good relationship is that you both need to be flexible with boundaries, thoughts and requirements. 

Here is the link to the article that I mentioned earlier from MindBodyGreen.

38 Hard Truths About Relationships @
http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-21222/38-hard-truths-about-relationships.html

Happy 43rd Anniversary Daniel. I love you more than I did last year. 
Patricia

Father's Day And Incest

I know that Father's Day, and Mother's Day too, for that matter, can be hard days to get through if you were abused as a child by your parents. You just don't have the good feelings that you would have if your parents were good at their jobs. You can even envy your friends who had good parents. You can take it so far as to resent that your own kids have good parents. No one says feelings have to be rational. They aren't always. 

I decided a long time ago, before my dad died, that I could celebrate the fact that my husband Daniel is a good father to our two children. I could teach my children to honor their father in the way that I can't honor my dad who sexually abused me as a child. 

Daniel is a good dad. He has always played an active part in the lives of our children. He changed diapers and cleaned up messes as well as being there for the good parts of being a dad. I was more the disciplinarian but most moms are. Daniel played with the kids more and made us all laugh. He has always been there for our children and still is today with our children moving into their late 30's. I think he has always tried to be the dad that he didn't have as a child. Daniel's dad was 55 when he was born and health issues prevented him from doing the recreational things that Daniel made sure that he did with our two children when they were growing up. Daniel's dad died shortly after retirement when Daniel was still in high school.

Neither of our grown children have had a chance to wish their dad Happy Father's Day yet because he went to a reenactment this weekend in Mississippi. He will be home around early evening probably. I know he had a good time because he and I have talked briefly a few times since he left but not today. I don't know if he realizes that today is Father's Day. I didn't until sometime Friday afternoon. 

Happy Father's Day, Daniel and to any of my readers who are good dad's to your children.

As I came on Facebook today and also checked my emails, I read other blogger friends' articles about Father's Day and so I am sharing those links with you here. They all talk about the mixed emotions that survivors share about their parents and why Father's Day is difficult for them.
Patricia

Fathers Day! @
http://speak4change.com/blogging/fathers-day/ 

Father's Day - Lessons learned, Love lost, Life Reclaimed @
http://www.mskinnermusic/home/fathers-day-lessons-learned-love-lost-life-reclaimed/ 

When Dad Enables Mom in Emotionally Abusive Family Relationships @
http://emergingfrombroken.com/when-dad-enables-mom-in-emotionally-abusive-family-relationships/ 

Incest - From A Pain-filled Past To Thriving

"We cannot change a pain-filled past. What we can do is change how it affects us. The past has already been written, but we have the power to write the future based on self-support and respect. We can write a future full of strength, peace, wealth, and love. All we have to do is what is right now."     
                                                                                        ---Iyanla Vanzant

Some parts of my journey have been painful in the extreme. Sometimes the journey has been exciting, filled with tears and laughter, blessed with earth angels and friends who have guided me and given me a resting place when I got tired. My journey isn't over yet. When I get tired, I take a break and then move forward again after a brief stop. I have learned to play and to love myself and my life whatever comes into it, even the struggle which tests what I have learned and how I define myself in the present moment. I love the search for knowledge and the wisdom that comes from experience. I love myself. I love who I have become and who I will be tomorrow. I would not be the person I am today without the struggles and incest of past years and the healing path that I chose to go down.

Everyone has the ability to change what they don't like about themselves. But no one has the right or responsibility to try to change another person. You can only change yourself. Even in a relationship, the only person you can change is yourself. I have learned to focus on my part of the relationship and let my husband focus on his. The strange thing is that once you change yourself, the other person changes too or they leave. I have seen it happen over and over again. If another person's decisions affect you negatively, you can choose to stay or to leave. If you expect them to change just because you want them to, you are fooling yourself. Until they want to change, they will not, no matter how much you want them to. Relationships are mirrors for each of the partners. The mirror shows what is good and also what you want to change about yourself. What I have learned is that in my connection to you, I learn more about myself.

I see myself as moving beyond survivor to becoming a thriver. Thriver is a new word that my computer doesn't accept yet as a true word. I think survivors who are beginning to see joy and peace come back into their lives maybe for the first time have started to use the word thriver to destinquish between being a survivor which is the stage where you leave your victim role behind and you have a lot of healing still to do. Today I have love and laughter in my life and I also have peace and happiness coming into my heart and mind. Happiness doesn't depend upon my circumstances. It depends upon my attitude and how I look at my life. Today instead of struggles, I see challenges. Instead of hurt and sadness, I see opportunities for growth. I have many moments of laughter in my life and in my home. I am not so overly serious as I once was. There is light in my world, even on the darkest days. To me that is the definition of a thriver. And there is always room for more good in my world. What stage are you at in your journey?
Patricia

Biography Of Patricia Caldwell Singleton, Incest Survivor

I am an incest survivor and an adult child of an alcoholic. My dad and my grandfather were mean drunks who influenced me to not drink because I was afraid of becoming like them.  I am also a survivor of domestic violence from my dad's rages when he was at home. Even when he wasn't raging, he was verbally abusive with name-calling and intimidation. He was a dictator with his controlling of the entire family. My mother rarely made an decisions and I wasn't taught how either.  My family was dysfunctional in the extreme.

I have memories of incest happening from age 11-17. The first memories were of being raped by an uncle on a fishing trip and a long weekend alone with him at my grandmother's. He lied to me and my mother when he said my grandmother was home. She came home on Monday afternoon.

A few weeks later, my dad decided I was old enough to take my mother's place working twice a day on weekends helping my dad out at the dairy milking cows. On my first night of helping at the dairy, we went to the hay loft to throw down hay bails. While there, my dad took his shirt off and spread it out on a bail of hay and told me to pull down my pants and to lay down across the hay bail. No explanation was given for his actions. I remember feeling disgusted and thinking to myself, "Not daddy too." That is how the incest started and went on for 6 years. Every time my dad left the house, I was sent with him and I would be raped before we came back home. Sometimes later on he would also wake me up early mornings before the rest of the family woke up and he would abuse me in another room of our house. Most of the abuse took place in the front seat of his truck. My mother sent me on many of those trips. She missed many signs that I was being abused because she didn't want to see them.

At 17, I knew I was strong enough to say no to the sex and not let my dad manipulate me into changing my mind. The sex stopped but the emotional and verbal abuse continued until I ran away when I was 19 on the day after I took my last test of my second year at a junior college. I packed a small shopping bag that I normally carried books in with a few changes of clothes. I gave my sister a note to give to my mother when I didn't come home that night and had my mother drop me off at the college on her way to work that morning. An angel of a friend who was older than my own parents picked me up and took me home and gave me a place to live and helped me get my very first job for the Summer.  After 3 days of my mother lying, she told my dad where I was. He came after me. I went home for the weekend and then went back to my friend's house on Sunday evening. I had broken away from my dad's control. That took more courage than I knew I had. If I had stayed, I would have had a nervous breakdown and would have lost myself completely. I knew that so I was strong enough to not give in to pleas and threats that my dad used to get me to stay.

I went away to college at the end of that Summer and as a Junior at 20 years old, I met and 8 months later married my husband. Before we were married, he knew he was not my first sexual experience but I could not tell him that most of my experience came from my dad. I was too afraid he would leave me. We were married for 8 years (1980) when I told him and my sister both about the incest. Even after telling them both the truth, I continued to pretend that the incest was not affecting my life. In my marriage, I became a controller thinking that would make me feel safe. It didn't. People tried telling me what I was doing but I wasn't ready to hear it until one day my husband came in from work. I got angry about something, I don't even remember what it was about. I do remember hearing myself screaming at my husband that I hated him and I hated everything about my life. A part of me was watching and listening and was in shock that I blamed my husband for the hatred and the anger when it wasn't his fault. I knew in my gut that it was me that I hated, not him. I hated myself for the incest. I thought I was bad because of it. Almost immediately, I apologized to him and started working on changing me. Our county library only had 3 books about incest and none of them offered much help. I started reading books on self-improvement and started working on letting go of some of my controlling behaviors. Small changes happened but still no work on the incest issues. I didn't even know I still had incest issues. I wanted to pretend that I didn't. Today I know that is called denial and it is very unhealthy. Denial keeps you in the hurt.

My real healing started in January 1989 with my first 12-Step meeting. Since my dad and grandfather were both alcoholics, I was considered an adult child. I choose to not drink because of the fear that I would lose control and be a mean drunk too. Thanks to a book called Adult Children of Alcoholics written by Janet G. Woititz, I looked in my newspaper and found an adult child recovery group. In my mind the alcoholism and incest were intertwined. I couldn't separate the issues even though my dad didn't drink all of the time that he abused me.

I used those 12-Step meetings to talk about the incest. Those caring people believed me and didn't judge me or tell me that I was bad. They told me to get a sponsor and to work the Steps. My sponsor should have been a woman but I didn't trust women. The women in my childhood were all judgmental. One of them even told me when I was 5 years old that I was going to Hell for wearing shorts. I picked a man as my sponsor who I felt safe with. Shortly afterwards, he had me start working the 12 Steps and, after finishing with the first three Steps, writing out a very long 4th Step which had over 100 questions for me to answer about my childhood. I don't remember how long it took me to write out all of those answers but I was healing thru writing for the first time. Writing has always been an important tool to my healing. In writing, I don't censor my thoughts. I just write the words and feelings come out with the memories. I still do this today even. Those 12-Step meetings and the work I did with my sponsor saved my life and my marriage. I learned about codependency and dysfunctional families and so much about myself. I also went to 12-Step meetings for families and friends of alcoholics and found out where so many of my characteristics came from. I have written about those 12-Step meetings and the healing that I did in my blog Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker.                                                       (  http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com  )

I do not remember who directed me to read The Courage to Heal written by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis but I am so grateful that they did. Not long after I finished reading The Courage to Heal, the workbook which was written by Laura Davis came out and I wrote my way thru all of the exercises in the Workbook. Those two books helped me to dig deep into the pain to start to do some major healing. I used those and other books and my 12-Step groups to talk, write and to heal my way thru the worst of my incest issues over the next 10 years. I was also in two different incest survivor counseling groups for a total of about 5 years. Because of the 12-Step concept of a Higher Power, I was also able to heal my relationship with God and myself. This was also the beginning of my spiritual journey.

In 2007, I got my first computer and thru meeting a new friend online who offered me much encouragement to write and share my story and also instructed me on how to set up a blog, my blog Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker came into being June 1, 2007. Its growth has been slow and steady as other survivors have found and supported my articles. Regretfully over the past two years, I haven't written as many articles because of health problems and more time away from the computer. I do appreciate all of the support of my readers. It is thru my blog over the past six years that I have come to know a community of survivors and have in the past three years thru my blog, the use of Facebook and Twitter, I have become an advocate for myself and for other survivors of incest, rape, bullying, sibling abuse and domestic violence. I have spoken on a number of radio programs over the past three years to reach out to other survivors and to tell my story so that others know they can also tell their stories and they will be believed. I am an advocate for children, women and men. I am so grateful that men survivors are now breaking their own silence of abuse. Now the picture will come closer to being accurate. Too many of us have suffered in silence. I want survivors to know that they are not alone. I and others are here to hear you and support you back to health and healing.

Quality of Relationship More Important Than Length Of Time

Happy 41st Anniversary, Daniel

I want to start out this post by sharing a quote from a friend of mine about relationships and marriage that I read on Saturday and liked so well that I requested the use of it in this post to my dear, sweet husband for our 41st wedding anniversary. Here is the quote:

"It is not how long you have been in your relationship or marriage that matters but how well. It is time to pause and think. How has this relationship affected your well being? Our well being is an important aspect of our lives that we must take serious. If our relationships affect our well being positively, we are bound to live life to the fullest..." Ebele Solu

Thank you Ebele for allowing me to use your words. As I get older, time seems to be going by so much faster. I sometimes struggle to keep up. Most times, I don't worry about it as I sit here in the safe home that Daniel and I created together and I love our life together. As I know I have said many times before on here as I have shared my healing journey, life hasn't always been easy on me or on our marriage. Our marriage has lasted thru all of the times of struggle, not only because we love each other, but also because we are friends. If we didn't like each other we probably would have given up when the struggles got near impossible. Daniel's love, strength and patience have gotten me through so many dark times. Living with an incest survivor is never easy, on so many levels, even one who is healing. Before and during the initial stages of healing, I was so angry, even rageful like my dad. I was in so much emotional pain that I didn't have an outlet for, that it came out as rage most often. I was so full of fears that I had to work at facing and cutting down to size. Daniel had to live with all of that pain while I healed it and learned to control, not him as I had done in earlier years, but my reactions to my fears. As you have read in my recent blog post after the fears that came up during our trip to and from Gettysburg, some of those fears are still with me and occasionally come up to be acknowledged and worked thru. 

You may look at what I just wrote and ask how can she call her marriage a good one? How has it survived all of that pain, anger and fears. My answer would be that we have survived as a couple partly because of God's Grace, I do believe that, partly because we are both very stubborn individuals who refuse to give up on our marriage or ourselves but mostly because we do love each other. My definition of true love is wanting what is best for the other person. Sometimes that love requires sacrifice and other times compromise. We have both done our share of those over the years. One very basic fact is that we trust each other. With that trust in place, there is no place for jealousy which I see doing so much harm in many relationships today. If you trust someone, there is no room or need for jealousy. Trust is a very big issue for me as an incest survivor. If I didn't trust Daniel I would not be married to him. It is that simple. He is a good man. I have seen that over and over throughout our years together. He cares about me, our marriage, our family and other people. He has a kindness that I have learned from. 

Kindness wasn't taught in my childhood home. Control, bullying, rage, fear were constants in my childhood. My parents were married for just over 30 years when they were divorced. Even though I had wanted my mom to leave my dad for most of my childhood, when the divorce was final, I cried. It meant the end of a dream that at some future date my parents would love each other and we would come together as a healthy, loving family. The divorce put an end to that fairy tale that my inner child held on to. Their marriage with 30 years had very little quality to it. Theirs was a marriage of domestic violence and the secret of incest. 

My grandparents had a long marriage that only ended with the death of my grandfather. My dad's alcoholism was passed down to him by his dad who got it from his dad most probably. The rage was also passed down from generation to generation. So was domestic violence within the marriages. These are my examples of length of time not being as important as quality in marriages and relationships. These examples of my childhood are why I am willing to continue to work on my marriage with the help of my husband Daniel.

I love you more today than I ever have, Daniel, simply because you are who you are and because you have stayed by my side and given me the space to do my healing. I hope that you agree with me when I say that our marriage is better than it has ever been. To get here today has been a mutual effort. I couldn't have gotten when I am today without your love and support. I would not have the full life that I do today without you in it. You have allowed me the space and time to grow into who I am today. You have loved me since before I could tell you the source of my pain. You have seen me thru the Hell of denial of the incest and the days of healing which in their own way were Hell too. Today I feel joy and peace. Laughter often rings through our home. You play a big part in all of that for me. 

I love you with all my heart, Daniel.

Happy Anniversary, Honey.

Pat

Helping Survivors Of Abuse Want To Change

I am approached occasionally by survivors who say they want help in changing their lives. For those survivors, I offer words of encouragement and hope. I listen. Listening is often all that is needed. I have also learned not to give advice. Most people don't want advice. They want someone to listen to their story and to validate their feelings. That is good. You all have your own answers anyway.

I belong to several support groups online. I love these groups because they offer me love and encouragement. Occasionally, not often, I will get discouraged with someone who says they want help, who says they want to change and the reality is that they just want to wallow in self-pity and they want an audience to do it. Self-pity is good, in that it helps you get in touch with your feelings, but it is not good when you stay there and do nothing to move forward. The "oh poor me's" don't help you heal. They keep you stuck in the hurting. Some people enjoy that hurting because it brings them attention from others. Some people equate any attention at all with love, even negative attention. That is not love.

If you are in a bad relationship, look at why you are staying. Is it fear of being alone, fear of the unknown? Is the pain you are feeling worth you staying? If the answer is no, then it is time for change. If you aren't tired of hurting, continue as you are. I can't change anything for you. You must be willing to make the necessary changes yourself, or not, as you choose. I can't change anything for you and I won't waste your time or mine trying. Change can only come from you. I will love you enough to let you make your own decisions. If you stay, I won't be there to watch your pain but I will be here if you ever change your mind and decide that you have value and deserve better.

You have to want and work toward having a better life. It is okay to wallow in self-pity for a little while but if you want to be happy, you have to change your attitude and learn to love yourself. I know that is easier said than done. I also know you can do it. I have.

For me, for years, I was stubborn and was so afraid of the unknown and change of any kind. The more afraid I was, the more controlling I became. I wasn't willing to change until I hurt enough that I would do anything to change. I didn't have a bad relationship with my husband. I had a bad relationship with me. I hated myself because of the shame and self-blame of the incest. When I hurt enough, I was then ready for change. The point in sharing this with you is to show you that I am not telling you anything that I haven't done myself.

I worked really hard first with self-improvement books and then finally when the world opened up and more people started talking and writing about child sexual abuse, my real healing from incest started. The work to change wasn't easy. Years of hard work were involved. I went from hating and blaming myself for the incest to knowing it wasn't my fault and I could let go of the shame. I found myself paying attention to the people that said they liked me and loved me. I wondered why? I tried to see me as others saw me. I decided if they liked me maybe I could too. I found books to read about learning to love myself. Once I started to love myself by using affirmations and getting to know my inner children, I grew rapidly.

Today I know and love myself and I know that you can too. I want the best for you but what I want isn't important. You have to want it for yourself. You are worth love just as I am. If you are unhappy with your current situation or relationship, you are the only one that can do something about changing your life. I hope you will take a chance on you. I am here if you need me.

If you are wondering what books I read that made such a difference in my life, here is the link to those books:

Resources For An Incest Survivor And Adult Children Of Dysfunctional Families:

http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2012/04/resources-for-incest-survivor-and-adult.html
Patricia

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

Movies, Dreams, Grieving, Books and Feelings

I haven't written a post since the end of January. I have been processing some of my stuff. For that, I needed to be quiet and feel what all of that means to me before I can voice it to you or anybody else.

I have been reading about homeopathy for the past several weeks and experimenting on myself with a few remedies that I thought might be helpful to me physically and emotionally. I started out by going online and doing a Google Search. Then I visited the two health food stores in Hot Springs. My reason for doing this is that regular medicines haven't been working for me for awhile so I need to find something that will work.

I found a remedy called ignatia amara which on the bottle says it is for "nervousness, due to everyday stress." In several of the books on homeopathy that I have read, it says that ignatia amara is for unresolved grief. For that reason, I bought it and have been taking it several times a day for the past week. I was not aware of any unresolved grief but wanted to find out if I had any that I was still carrying around.


I think I have mentioned that several months ago, I started going to a Grieving Class that an old friend of mine is teaching. Most of the information so far is not new to me. I learned it over 20 years ago from this same friend when I was in the middle of working on my incest issues and the grieving that work brought up. So far what I have discovered is how much I have changed and grown. Thank you, Jack. I feel like I am beginning to open up in this class. Feelings are beginning to come up. I keep going to the class because it feels like this is the place for me to be.


This past Wednesday night a friend and I went to the movies to see "The Lovely Bones." It was my friend's choice. She had read the book and wanted to see the movie. I wasn't so sure but went along with her choice.

I knew from the advertisements that a 14-year-old girl gets kidnapped and killed by a neighbor. The story is also about the struggles of the family to accept her death. The mother deals with her death by running away and the father and younger sister go after the killer and finally figure out who he is. In the meantime, the 14-year-old hangs around and watches them. There is more to the movie that I won't tell you.

It is a really good movie to watch. Still, because of the feelings that came up for me, I can't say that it was a movie that I liked. I will not watch it again. It was difficult for me, because of my incest issues, to sit and watch the movie. You don't actually see the violence of the young girl's death or sexual abuse. They are both implied by all of the blood and the secrecy of the scene. In some ways being implied is worse because it causes you to use your imagination. As an incest survivor, I can imagine plenty. I cried throughout the movie. The movie brought up feelings from my own childhood incest.


I went home still disturbed by the movie and my feelings that had come up. I went to bed and before morning had the following dream:

I was in a car by myself. Other people were around. I drove up a hill and stopped. Suddenly the car was rolling backwards down the hill. I knew, without seeing it, that a lake was behind me. As I rolled down the hill, I turned the steering wheel of the car until the car was turned around and facing the lake which I still couldn't see but knew was there. For an instance, I was sitting in the back seat with no one driving the car. Then I was back in the driver's seat still rolling toward the lake. I woke up as the car hit the water but continued the dream. I realized that the driver's side window was down. I had to choose to get out of the car now or wait for the water to start coming in. I decided to get out through the window instead of waiting. I used my feet to push off from the car. Then I realized that I still couldn't swim. That is when I stopped the dream.

I have had many car in the water dreams before but not one recently. I have even written on my blog about them. I knew that this dream was about the movie and my feelings about the movie. As a friend pointed out to me, in this dream, I turned and faced the water this time. That says that I am willing to face my emotions this time. Another first was the open window. I gave myself a way to escape from the car before it was completely submerged. For a brief moment I was in the back seat instead of driving the car. A part of me still feels out of control of the situation. Many times in the past, I have been in the back seat instead of being the driver. In the past, I would have waken up and stopped the dream the second I hit the water if not before I hit the water. For years, I would come to the edge of the water and wake up. It took years before I would allow myself to go into the water. I have had dreams in which I actually swam in the water. I haven't learned to swim in this lifetime and that sometimes carries over into my dreams but not always. In this dream, I remembered that I couldn't swim and didn't know who was going to rescue me so some part of me is still waiting for someone else to rescue me from the feelings which is what the water represents in my dreams.


On Thursday night, I went to the Grieving Class. We were all laughing about something that someone said and I started to cry. I did not know that I was going to cry. I did so silently not wanting anyone to see and at the same time hoping that someone would ask. There is a child inside of me that is still wanting someone to ask so that she can tell about the hurting. Why can't I just come out and say that I am hurting? Why is it still so hard to do? After the class, I stated that the house where the class is held is a safe place for me to cry. But I didn't stay and talk and cry. I went back to another friend's house with the intention of talking to her and crying but when we got to her house a friend was there so I turned off the feelings and the tears.


As my husband picked me up, my friend gave me a book to read. The book is called The Shack written by William Paul Young, In collaboration with Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings, windblown Media, Los Angeles, California, 2007. I started reading the book shortly after getting home. I read it and cried over the next three days. It is a novel that starts out with the kidnapping and murder of a six and a half year old little girl. The book is about her father and his struggles with her death. In his struggle, he gets a letter from Papa and an invitation to meet him at the shack where his daughter's bloody clothes were found. Papa is what his wife calls God. I won't tell you the rest of the story because you really need to read it for yourself. The subtitle of the book is "Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity."

The book is about how Papa (God) uses our tragedies to bring us back to our relationship with Him/Her. Papa actually starts out as a big black woman who is so full of humor and love that She is almost overwhelming (to me). This is a wonderful book about our relationship to God. It was a wonderful, very emotional end to my week's journey through feelings.

I still haven't figured out everything that is going on with me because of the movie and the book. I will continue to take the homeopathic remedy as well to see what else comes up. I just love the way the Universe works to bring up the stuff that I need to work with in a time that I am willing to look at it. This story isn't ended yet. I still have more to look at.
Patricia

Related Posts:
Dream Interpretation found at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/10/dream-interpretation.html

As A Survivor, I Had To Learn To Take Care Of Myself found at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2009/06/as-survivor-i-had-to-learn-to-take-care.html

Relationships And Trust

From Awakening, A Daily Guide to Conscious Living, written by Shakti Gawain, New World Library, Novato, California, 1991, Revised 2006, October 1 page:

"We need relationships

Our primary relationship is with ourselves, and ultimately that's the only one that can provide the foundation for wholeness. That's the place where we need to find integration and balance. And at the same time, we need relationships with other people in order to be happy and fulfilled in life. If we only look for wholeness and completion within ourselves, we disown the part of ourselves that also needs other people.

Human beings are social creatures. Physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually --- we absolutely need close contact with other people. We need love, support, understanding, recognition, and stimulation reflected to us by others.

I spend time cultivating my relationship with myself and time reaching out to receive what I need from others."


I recently picked this book up at a used book store. Years ago, I read a book by Shakti Gawain and just didn't connect with it at all. I am connecting with what this book has to offer.

As a Saggittarian, my natal chart shows me that this lifetime for me is all about relationships. My major work this lifetime has to do with all kinds of relationships. Maybe that is why the lessons have been so difficult with my parents. We often learn the most from our greatest struggles in life.

As an incest survivor, my early relationships were full of pain (physical and emotional) and betrayal. Trust has been one of my biggest issues that I struggle with. My newest relationship is with my Al-Anon sponsor. God has blessed me by putting this wonderful lady in my life. She has wisdom and years in Al-Anon that I don't have. That doesn't mean that she doesn't have struggles in life. She does. She allows me to see her struggles and that is good. I can see, first hand, how she handles her own struggles in life and therefore, I learn more by her example than by her words. I know that I can trust what she says because I can see her using it herself. When she is in trouble and overwhelmed, what does she do? She calls her sponsor and works her Steps in the program of Al-Anon, things that I am also learning to do.

It isn't easy for me to call another person and admit that I need help and that I don't have all of the answers. It isn't easy for me to show you my vulnerabilities because in the past those vulnerabilities were used to hurt me. It isn't easy for me to say, "I am hurting." In my childhood, I was shamed when I let it be known that I was unhappy, sad, hurting, angry, crying.....

So, how are your relationships going today? I am learning about myself through my relationships. I am learning that I have value. I am learning that I can care about you and not get hurt. I am learning that you have value. I am learning that I learn best by watching other people and seeing what works for them and what doesn't work for them. I am learning to love myself completely as I am. I am learning to love you completely as you are. I don't have to change you and you don't have to change me. As children of God, we are all perfect and that is as it should be. What have your relationships taught you?
Patricia