Insight

I've had a light-bulb moment today.  I'm grateful.  

I've been struggling with my writing - difficulty with a sort of brain deadness!  I know what it is, but it has been frustrating.  So, I've been looking at this course at 'The daily Om.'  I've been wanting to sign up and take it for about two weeks now, and today I finally did it.  It is "healing your past through focused journalling"...  Well, any of you that read know I'm all for healing.  An I've been tossing and turning a bit in the mind as of late.  So, today I paid for it and began.  WOW.  As I had sensed, it is just what I needed - and right on time.  

Insight is a beautiful thing.  Perception or the change of our perception in our lives can actually be a miracle.  When we see something from a totally different perspective - it changes everything.  It changes our feelings, our attitude towards the situation, our reactions to it, and how we are likely to respond.  It makes the circumstance seem almost completely new.  Fresh thoughts rush in, new ideas, and completely new solutions.  Old patterns can be broken - or in my case, a whole new way of viewing a person can take place.  

I had something take place when I was small.  It was an event where I thought my Mother should have protected me. ( If you figure this out, that's okay, but for privacy's sake I'm not going to share this event completely. ) In my mind, my Mother, at that very moment proved to me I was worthless.  I suppose this is what my feelings/mind told me.  Based upon the situation and her lack of response, I did not have value.  Being that I continued to have to be in proximity to this individual over and over again - continued to validate my belief.  It was at this time when my memory began to get sketchy.  There is much of my childhood that is blank.  Now albeit, I did not have the healthiest of families.  There was drug activity, and alcohol use.  I knew what drugs were what by about age 10.  My middle brother would tell me what this and that was -- and I had consumed alcohol by age 11 and marijuana by 6th grade.  It was the latter part of the 60's - and I had two older brothers.  I grew up fast.  But I digress.

My feelings towards myself as with any child - came from my relationship with my parents.  Now I'm not totally blaming - not at all - but these are the major relationships in our lives.  They are the main mirrors from which we form all of our bonds.  Believe that or not.  I believe it because I've spent a lifetime trying to undo the past - and heal from it.  I perceived that day that my Mom did not care about me.  I had a difficult Mother anyway.  She was not loving, matter of fact she was pretty angry a lot of the time.  She was very self-centered.  She seemed to have time and love for my brothers, but with  me - I was more of something she seemed to want to 'show off'.  I was very almost painfully shy.  I was a pretty little girl.  Or that is what I was told.  Mom always seemed more concerned with how I looked than she ever did about how I was.  I don't think that was ever taken into account.  I was dressed to the nines and paraded all over.  Weddings, fashion shows, pageants - you name it - I was made to do it.  I can remember crying and pleading with her not to make me, and she'd say, "if you love me, you'll do it."  That was nice.  That gave me little, well, no choice.  I was I know now, an extension of my Mother - and not really her child.  She did not treat me like a daughter.  She never has.  I was more like a doll.  What I thought, felt, needed, wanted (emotionally), dreamed, hoped, feared -- didn't matter to her.  It wasn't about me -- it was all about her.  This is how narcissists are.  I know that now.  

Some of you will cringe.  Oh how could you talk about your mother that way?!  Well, I lived it.  Believe it or not, there are many women that have been through the very same experience.  There is a very good book out there than changed my life called "Will I Ever be Good Enough?" - and I don't have it right here - so I don't have the authors name.  If interested... comment and I'll get back to you.  I thought I was the only one.  We're never the only ones in life, there is always someone that has had or experienced what we have.  If you're thinking it, someone else has thought it too..  I've had therapists shame me over my feelings at one time with my mom.  I changed therapists.  I had to heal.  

One can easily see how I might have a duality in my mind when it comes to relationships.  Or hell, life itself.  My lightbulb moment today was -- even though she didn't protect me all those years ago - did not mean that I didn't deserve protecting.  Perhaps she just did not know what to do.  Mom was doing the best she knew how to do in life.  If I'd had her life, man.  The thing is, this event propelled a lot of feelings of self-worth or the lack thereof.  I really am at 50, tired of the old tapes that play in my head - the duality that I endure.  I'm tired of being afraid of love.  Being afraid that love is going to hurt me.  Mostly because of my beliefs.  Beliefs are like weeds in the brain.  It isn't that they cannot be changed, but trying to find the weed killer.  That one thing, or number of things that it takes to remove the faulty truths from your memory banks.  The quest of quests.  

I sit here now and I cry.  It is the only way I know how to heal.  I've never allowed myself to have feelings about this other than anger at my mom.  The fact of the matter is that I had every right to have expected her to protect me.  She should have.  I deserved it.  I've deserved it all my life.  I release the anger and just feel the hurt - and the disappointment.  It's okay for me to feel.  Just because she couldn't handle it does not mean I don't have permission.  I do, I can, and I will.  The things that have bound me all of these years will not bind me anymore - the denying of self and of experience.  I can accept her and  myself.  I'm going to learn how to live without this hanging over my head - and ache in my heart.  I'm going to learn how to stop being so distrusting.  

I'm excited about this course.  If the beginning is giving me this much - wow.  It was worth every penny.  I'm all for enlightenment and transformation.  I wonder sometimes, often times why I'm alone - but most of the time I know - this journey of mind is not over.  This solitude is a healing's way.  I'd not be able to grieve if I were in relationship, not like I can now.  This part of the path is not finished.  The transformation is not done.  If I got into a relationship I'd probably just mess it up anyway with the fears and blunders I'd make.  I do believe insight is a miracle.  To be able to see something from an entirely different perspective is priceless.  I look forward to unblocking patterns and shattering old beliefs.  These insights will be worth their weight in gold.