The End of this Path

This is my last post.  I won't be updating here again.  It's possible that I will start a new blog and leave a link here, but I haven't any plans to do so at the present.

I believe the posts here will continue to have life. The subjects I've posted about, Verbal Abuse, Physical Abuse, Addiction, Pornography and Personality Disorders,will continue to be damaging to our culture and particularly to marriages.

The process of making this blog was healing in a way that surprised me.  This was the place I left my sorrows, veiled in research, at the end of the day.  Here is where I struggled to make sense out of what only felt like chaos for too many years.  On these pages I got my feelings back and I uncovered some truth.

If you find yourself here for the first time, please run around and see if you find a post or a picture that holds your interest. It would be a great joy for me to think that someone found value here.

How my friends saved my life, more than once

                     Seriously, I just want to cry when I think about even writing this post.

 I feel a groundswell of gratitude when I recount the times my life was saved by a friend and I don't believe that any one of them knew how important they were to me. Certainly they didn't think they were saving a life, just being a friend.

Every gesture however small, given with an open heart, has eternal life between friends.  In fact the small gestures are the haiku poetry of my life.  If I could string them together in a painting, I would.

All I can do is stand in a state of grace in the presence of all that is greater than myself, and that's enough.

Friends

The Value of the Oldest Friendships

The early days which seem forever ago, and not too important at the time, later hold keys that are unexpectedly life affirming.

 This is my sixtieth year and although it is a year of new beginnings it is also the year that my oldest friendships have claimed their truest place of honor.   There is nothing so sweet as being in the embrace of  someone who knew you then.  When your lives were full of irreverence and health. Better still is having a friend with a good memory, even if it takes a few old friends to piece the story into a coherent tale.

The melancholy of aging falls aside to the sheer joy at recall.  Life makes more sense, is less disjointed.  I feel whole again with old friends in my new life. Part of the sweetness is the ease with which we express our loving kindness, eighteen or twenty one or forty years later.

I have been blessed with time and a full pantry of friends who waited patiently for this celebration while at the front line of their own lives. Thank you to everyone who has reappeared with insight and loving hearts.  This surely is our purpose here on earth.

My Heart's Desire

 We can agree on Maslov's hierarchy of needs to be sure. This diagram represents a kind of  Cliff Notes for the wealth of complexity in each of these needs.  My heart's desire lies in the need for Love/ Belonging I think. More specifically the need to be fully known and fully vulnerable (loved and unconditionally accepted) by another human being.  Not to be confused with the idea of having someone "complete me" (which I think is poppycock) or the idea of being made safe or worthy through a relationship with another (which I think is next to impossible).

I'm wondering if my heart's desire is an illusion and like so much else it is through Self Actualization that  I will create love and unconditional acceptance for myself.  At least before I expect to receive it from some one else. Is a Mother's Love the exception, or is that also an illusion? Perhaps a Mother's Love is the metaphor for my heart's desire.  Ok, I know it is.

In the meanwhile, again, I am blessed with the love of those around me and I'll be working on internalizing my Mother's Love along the way.

The Question at all Crossroads

I have asked myself this question, you have likely asked yourself this question too.  I quote from Embracing Ourselves, by Hal and Sidra Stone: "How is this person, or this situation, my teacher?"

Indeed, how?  Many years ago in a therapeutic session, after describing my interactions with a difficult person, the therapist said, "So he was your guru."  I was taken back and found a lot of clarity in that remark at the time.  Then there are other days, like now, when the thought of trying to discern what the lesson is just gives me a headache.

A few nights ago I had a lively conversation with a Dad of two boys, age 10 and 11.  He actually gave me the perfect  opening for my "pornified culture" launch when he made a remark about the current target age for Barbie marketing, which he claimed to be age 6.  This Dad told me that he and his wife worked quite diligently at helping their boys identify and express feelings to the point where one of the boys (and he mimicked him covering his face) responded to what must have felt like an interrogation by blurting out ,"I don't know what I'm feeling!".  Some days are like that for 11 year old boys, and 59 year old girls.

Tonight I don't know what I'm feeling and I have no idea how this person, or this situation, is my teacher.  We don't always have to know.

Thank You Judy Collins

After Shocks and Saving Grace

There are after shocks.  Small tremors that disrupt the everyday calm and are sad reminders of loss.  For myself it's mainly the loss of an intact family and the dream of a loving partner.  Women who have left abusive partnerships are left..with lots to sort through going forward. Not so much everyday but every now and then a tremor of realization.  It feels like throwing another shovel full on the grave.

This blog is my attempt at processing with the hope of helping.  Women like me are heavily invested in 'family'.  The abuser counts on that.  Most of us stick it out far too long and give many "second chances".  In my conversations with women who have left or are trying to leave I see so many repeated themes.  I'm certain that we are statistically alike. So our recovery takes a similar path. It's a mine field of after shocks as the result of trauma.  Falling down, getting up and doing better. We rely on and seek out the soft shoulders of friends and family and we examine our hearts in the solitude of our days and nights

Likewise, abusers are statistically predictable.  Most have ego issues (narcissism) that demand they  re-create relationships very quickly as their identities virtually hang on the narcissistic feed of a partner. This quick re-insertion into a relationship insures that there will be not one moment to risk falling into consciousness and their hell self hatred and shame for past behaviors.  Self reflection in their case is akin to suicide.  In complete opposition, self reflection by partners of abusers is our light of saving grace.

An honest video with insight

I have seen a few of this woman's videos and I'm struck by her honest look at the verbal abuse in her marriage.  If you are wondering about your own marriage this video might strike a chord.  She's unrehearsed and truly looking to understand. There is nothing like an honest testimony.

At the end of my long marriage of 33 years, I found and read books by the same author that this woman discovered, Patricia Evans.  One day I googled "husband gives cold shoulder", as it was the only way I could think to describe my experience, and Patricia's books appeared at the top of the page.   I was on the receiving end of Withholding for many years.  Withholding sex and withholding acknowledgement as a means to attempt to control me.  Many times my partner left the house or arrived back home without so much as a simple "hello".  Naturally in public settings he would charm others with his praise of me.  He made a calculated choice to bully (abuse) me in private or sometimes in public in front of strangers, like in an airport.  I'm certain that if you asked him he would accuse me of this behavior.  That's called Projection.

I was, of course, criticized and ridiculed for reading these books and for searching out therapies and workshops to help me (and us).  Abusers (bullies) rely heavily on control techniques with names like Deflection, Projection, Blame, and Withholding.  They count on their partners to stay in Denial and to be Confused.

There is nothing like an honest testimony to open the floodgates of understanding.   There is  language to describe verbal and emotional abuse.  Patricia Evans' books do a good job of giving partners of abusers the language necessarily to understand that their marriages are NOT normal.

How to read this blog, and a few other thoughts.

This blog was written sequentially over the last two years but it posts with the most recent entry first.  It occurred to me that although I'm grateful for you to dive in at any point, it's a good reminder to say that the earlier posts here will show the progress of my thinking (discovery) and of the research I've done.

Since my divorce was final six months or so ago I have posted less often.  I've been floating about and trying out life on my own. One thing that I have noticed is my awareness of my "critical voice".  You know the expression "if you lie down with dogs you come up with fleas"?  That's what I think of when I hear my critical voice.  Living with an abusive and critical partner of many years I now struggle to understand that voice that judges others and judges mySELF as well.

For now I'm glad to have the awareness even though I'm working on the details of whose voice it is, mine or his.  My hope is that I reduce that voice to a very low rumble that is barely heard above the empathetic vibration of my life.  I am triggered every so often also by events that remind me of my earlier self, the one who spent so much time enmeshed and preoccupied with the mind of her abuser. (which by the way leads to the perpetuation of abuse!)  I hope to identify them  earlier and cause less chaos in my interactions with others.

 I have started reading Embracing Our Selves, by Hal Stone and Sidra Stone.  Perhaps I will gain some insight there that I can share with you.

One Billion Rising

Happy Valentines Day

Better than Flowers or chocolate or Gems is the reality that the oppression of women through violence and abuse is getting the attention it deserves in our time.