Liz Listens Your growth might make people uncomfortable.

Affiliations and Attachments

Because I was raised without healthy sustained connection with my care givers, I attempted to build an identity around attachments and affiliations-  which would not ever satisfy my need for safe and nurturing connection. I had no idea how to identify or participate in safe connection. 

My program of recovery is where I first was introduced to healthy and appropriate ways for relating and connecting:  to discern a standard for wholesome, benevolent, and acceptable conduct within non-essential relationships. 

By doing the work suggested by my program, I became able and willing to trade my sick marriage and family affiliation for healing and sanity: emotional and spiritual wellness. In recovery, my relationships were either fortified by my spiritual commitment–or they died natural but still painful, if not violent deaths. The losses of those affiliations and attachments were exactly as devastating as they were intended to be.  

An unshakable connection to my sponsor and a power greater than myself, allowed me to stay the course of recovery.  As it turns out, I am more driven by truth and connection than avoidance of pain and punishment.  This is what I have come to know as my Good Orderly Direction. My finding is that– the people who feel themselves in charge of pain and punishment are not FOR me.  I understand why my commitment to change agitates them.  My recovery fails to elevate them. In this way, I am rendered not only useless, but also offensive. They preferred it when I was losing my shit and yelling profanity in response to the pain they imposed. My inability to cope allowed them to continue defining themselves (and me) the way they need to.

In my 20+ years in and out of touch with my sister, I observed with a fleeting and pathetic sense of comfort (grateful when it was not me) and horror as she persecuted various females in the family– cousins, nieces, sisters in law, aunts— routinely mocking, gossiping about, and passively, if not overtly diminishing them. When I openly declared my refusal to engage that way, she came hard for me. Similarly, I watched in pain as my husband experienced alienation for his failures to comply in his affiliations with his sisters. My sister’s unsurprising alliance with my (NOW ex-) husband(a man who she knew to have harmed me) has forever compromised our ability to co-parent our boys. In her mind, I guess, she won. I don’t think he will ever admit it or do the work to repair his part in that, but I believe he recognizes the price to be paid for snatching at that lowest hanging fruit. The aim was to alienate me and boast attachment and an affiliation that would crush me. It did crush me and our sons.

Maryam Hasnaa Quote I do the inner work to be in integrity with myself not for others' approval. I will always work on myself and it will never ever be so that someone will love me.

Kindness Is Not Conditional

In relationships, if it is conditional, it is not kind. I can think of nothing more confused and distorted than my early ideas about kindness and connection. I literally, for more decades than I am comfortable to admit, confused kind people for people wanting to be in a relationship with me and non-kind people as enemies; out to get me. Painfully childish. But how could I have known differently?

I did not learn to discern kindness as a value practiced by some, and not by others. I understood it as something to be earned and withheld.

Recovery informed me about kindness and service as values and practices, choices to be made, daily. Today, I recognize how other people’s behaviors(kindness, or lack of) are about them. It is legitimately possible to not prefer or be pleased by a person—-WAIT FOR IT— and still not be unkind. I feel extremely proud to be mature enough to now practice and receive kindness, with grace. THIS was the beginning of self esteem and self-worth for me.

I am so grateful to finally know and do better. What a miracle. If you have not yet learned about kindness and service, you too, can reparent yourself with any of the 12 Step Programs. I cannot recommend them enough. There are actual steps to living your best life and people who are willing and eager to support you– free of charge and unconditionally.

I was only able to behave with genuine kindness after being encouraged and taught (for the past 10 years) to practice appropriate self care. I had to learn to be kind to me. Because… when I hate me, I probably also hate you.

To be clear, kindness and friendliness are not the same. Friendliness is how you appear. Kindness is who you are. I often experience friendly types, as enjoying and relying on gossip and flattery for social lubricant. While socially acceptable, I recognize these as unwholesome and unkind behaviors: Red Flags, for someone like me.

Some ecards Quote When we avoid difficult conversations, we trade short term discomfort for long term dysfunction.

Or Else — Bring it

Oh, Like a lightning bolt- it struck me, again. How much, extremists of any sort can not “tolerate” peaceful protest or resistance. To them– to not conform to the forced consensus or to resist their agenda– must be acts of hostility– a war. “You are either with me or against me. I will take you down if you get in my way.” EW!!!

In my family and marriage, it was not welcome/tolerated to openly resist or object to their status quo. Overtime, this made me increasingly hostile & reactive. I remained in a state of constant brittle agitation over having expression of my needs, experiences, and preferences treated as invitations to battle and debate or as purely inadmissible. War or silent dismissal–the way it is done, in each of those systems. Sickening. Literally.

How upsetting peaceful resistance is for entitled controllers. As they recognize that it is inappropriate to respond with their standard flexing: threats, big guns, and retaliation. So, they will escalate the situation to justify “any means necessary”. Righteous folks are quick to feel offended by an invitation to collaborate with someone who openly differs in mindset or belief. They will designate a confrontation as an attack or dismiss it entirely- refusing to engage as equals -EVER. They simply will not be influenced by or open to things, not of their own design or choosing. I understand that I am not qualified to diagnose, but everything I read indicates that THIS IS NARCISSISM.

I am mentally recounting in my head my saying no to things that did not work for me, requesting alternative arrangements- and recalling with full blown PTSD, the immediate blowback of having done so. It always was exactly this way. Shut TF up or else. Get in line or get small.

Only a badass will hold and respect clear boundaries. A coward (Cowards and bullies tend to be one in the same (I have first hand experience as both)) may smile kindly and say yes, while passively calculating ways to not do the thing they are agreeing to, or they will scheme to indirectly undermine the thing to which they have only mentally rejected. Open dialog appears to not be a possibility with the coward, the bully, the narcissist.

I am literally thrilled by all of the people uniting in peaceful protest- ALL OVER THE WORLD, right now. Fiercely courageous and willing to say and do difficult and scary things. I learned courage and willingness in my program of recovery. These two qualities have cost me relations with people who need to be revered as in charge or else. I say Bring it. I will always roll the dice on the Or Else. My reverence cannot be purchased, extracted, or forced.

My Brother In Law- the Trustee of my mother’s estate, has still not responded to my inquiry from 2 weeks ago. It feels as though my options are: to let my child go without what he needs or to ask again so that I may be told off or ignored. You can probably guess which I will do. Updates to follow. Fusho.

The similarities between the dysfunction of first my family of origin and then my very similar marriage and our current state of affairs in this country are undeniably parallel. I find this oddly comforting. “These systems are not broken. They are working exactly as they were intended to.” Not sure who spoke these words, but I love them.

Be The Reason

Seems as if stonewalling and gaslighting are techniques intended to erase a person, to obliterate their spirit.

Stonewalling is a tactic used by bullies to control a situation; to isolate, humiliate, and frustrate a target for attempting to address and resolve conflicts. Accusing the target of a mental deficiency, harassment, or even bullying are other methods of asserting dominance; intimidating the target and discouraging punishing objections to unkindness. Stonewalling is actively refusing communication, stalling, or evading, to avoid revealing information and to escape accountability.

Gaslighting is a manipulation tactic used to gain power by making someone doubt their own perception, memory, and sanity. Typically imposed by a person in a position of authority or trust, it may look like this: 

deception and misrepresentation of information

denying actions and words  

using sacred information or people against you 

inconsistent words and actions

triangulation

smear campaign

claiming to be a victim and feeling justifiably harmful

insisting that the injured/ persecuted person is overreacting or overly sensitive

Whew. This is a difficult week. So grateful it is a short one. I needed to contact my sister’s husband, the Trustee of my mother’s estate, to request coverage for bills from specialists for one of my sons. I also inquired basic information regarding the trust. No response, a very delayed one, or an unfavorable one seem likely. Historically, this is how my direct requests or assertions are handled.

I also communicated to my sons’ father some painful details and a plea for some parental participation from him. I texted on Saturday and have heard nothing. No response. At all. It seems they had hoped to erase me and to have the freedom to make decisions about my children and my mother’s estate –with me feeling too uncertain and unworthy, to assert myself.

There is no monster menacing enough to prevent me from advocating for my children. That unrelenting purpose helped me to forfeit my shitty marriage and family of origin. I work hard and daily to put God’s will first, and it seems there is an expectation that I must revere and yield to ONLY them. Why would I though? I can think of no wholesome reason. Not one.

My sister and ex (and his sisters, also) each assume icky gifter and punisher roles, to establish their authority (or dominance???). I will not engage that way– hustling for kindness, approval, or non-abuse. Possibility of gifts and conditional acceptance, mixed with indirect threats of banishment are nasty– AF. I am utterly unmotivated by that.

I did allow my ex to effectively erase me from my own life and then watched in horror as he joined forces with my sister to continue the efforts. Fortunately, I now rely only on my spiritual program, Sweet Greg, and Favorite to guide and support me — They never need me bossed, punished, or erased. Goodness does not do, want, or even tolerate those things. By the way, there is no such thing as a silent ally. When we don’t stand up to abuse, we perpetuate and enable it. Oh yeh—PS– #blacklivesmatter and #fuckracismandoppression of any marginalized person.

I am feeling super pleasant and relaxed today. Ha! Hopefully, I will shake this off and get luvvy for dessert and then dinner with my SG, tonight.

All mothers were summoned when George Floyd called out for his mama.

Mama

In their young efforts to address my George Floyd despair, my boys offered me this: “Mom, he did have meth in his system and had been previously arrested for armed assault using a gun on a pregnant woman”. I scream silently to myself in my head “So fucking what if he did”.

Deep Breaths. I am grateful for this opportunity to support them in a deeper understanding of injustice and cruelty. I was able to explain that even IF those things are true, they are irrelevant in the matter of this murder. Every single police man’s job is to uphold and follow the law and to protect THE people. It is wrong, for even a policeman to kill unarmed and unthreatening people. That is murder. And the murdering of black people has been allowed since before even our parents were born.

What I pointed out: George Floyd was unarmed when he was fully apprehended, incapacitated, and righteously murdered, for sport, on camera with three policemen standing by, unopposed— This is the same terrifying culture which shames victims of rape and abuse by white men –by bringing up something the victim may have done or not done, which somehow makes them them responsible for the behavior of an abuser. Abusers cause abuse, not the victims, ever.

I did not burden my children with cases of other unarmed victims of murder by our law enforcement officers. (Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Stephon Clark, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald) My two sons are still young and in disbelief over what lawless police are willing and able to do– to a person who is vulnerable, perhaps even a small child, and black. Yet, there is the cordial escorting of a white, heavily armed, mass shooter of blacks, to Burger King, for a goddam sammich.

NOW, when we see a black man, instead of worrying about what he might do to us, we will consider what might happen to him—just for being black. I realize that the threat is to all black and brown people, not just black men, but I also am admitting my own normalized fear of black men. To be honest, I have always been more afraid of redneck men. They are the scariest of all. But my fear of white men, costs them nothing and makes sense. My fear of black men was programmed into me by media and it is wrong and damaging.

My growing awareness for the privilege and safety of my non-black skin is intense and sits along side my acknowledgment that I do not have to worry for my two fair skinned boys, as a mother of black sons would. I cannot imagine the terror of sending black sons off to school, work, an errand…. Black mamas and sisters, I see you, too. #BLACKLIVESMATTER

what we are not changing we are choosing

What We Choose

My steady refusal of gifts and moments of staged harmony (in place of healing, repair, and honest connection) illuminated my unwillingness to bypass necessary mending. An offer to do the work of healing, would have been an admission of pain, caused or felt. Denial of pain, in my family of origin was intended to pose as strength and moral superiority. I no longer buy that. There is a lot of pain.

My mother and sister swiftly informed others of my unreasonable, grudge holding, and hostile abstinence– FOR why would I not bring my young and tender children to sit at a table with people who righteously slandered and diminished their mother, in front of me and to others? Who TF did I think I was– expecting something better? The use of my ex husband was highly anticipated – so very predictable– a betrayal and an emotional assault – the final revelation. Jen Hatmaker points out in Fierce and Full of Fire: Those who love us are never keen on our failure or rejection.

I actually felt the deep knowing, that upon finally meeting in 2015, they (my sister and my ex) would bond easily and surely collude, to put me in my place, and then to establish themselves as both saviours and victims. Always a claim to being one or the other.

The ways in which I experienced the first examples of love and women (my mother, her mother, and my female sibling) made me loathe myself, only slightly more than I did them. That may have been the thing we had in common. We hated me and all of my feelings. When I stopped doing that, we fell all the way apart- for good.

Unsurprisingly, I entered into marriage which mirrored this dynamic—just like home–only home was not a good place for me. I married a man, also with whom I did not feel good or safe and had mistaken for superior and strong, because of this familiar emotional vacancy. That marriage nearly destroyed me and ended up teaching me exactly what I had needed to learn about love and NOT LOVE. I finally understood….that I needed to heal. It was made clear that for me to prioritize healing, would leave me on my own. So be it. My first choice: to heal together. My second choice: to do it on my own.

Good God–I can not even imagine how much harder life would have been, without the privilege of having been born into a body which was thin and not black.

I continue working on myself one day at a time. Unlearning things I never even knew I thought or believed about people, god, love, connection, kindness, worthiness, privilege, shame, guilt, oppression, trauma, cycles of abuse, parenting, authority, responsibility, trust, truth, honesty, dignity, humanity, peace, justice, freedom, responsibility, honor, and integrity. I am a work in progress.

Torture

Torture (unlike abuse which is often spontaneous and unintentional, though still scarring) is pre-meditated and planned out. It is designed to methodically dismantle a person’s identity and humanity, destroying a sense of safety, and diminishing hope for community and connection. By this definition, our country deliberately legislates, legalizes, and exercises leniency for the systematic torture and terror of our black brothers and sisters. 

When the very people who are expected and paid to guard and protect, are also in charge of abuse, that in itself is a form of terrorism. Law makers, government officials, judges, police officers, prison guards.

Patrisse Khan-Cullors shared that definition of torture, illuminating what has been designed and prescribed for the black people (particularly the poorest and neediest) of this country.

I will continue learning from the works by Human Rights Activists of Color. Unlearning racism is another layer of my spiritual recovery. I have recently re-read White Fragility and The New Jim Crow, and am nearly finished with my first read of When They Call You A Terrorist, by Patrisse Khan-Cullors. What are you doing to learn more about and support Anti-Racism? Or oppose it?

MY White Privilege

I was born to un-white skin, a foreign name, one Middle Eastern Moslem parent and the other an Agnostic Jew. Later, bussed across town to the “black school” for the sake of segregation, I experienced the white people as rejecting me for my non-whiteness and non-Christian-ness, and from the Blacks- (What language am I even supposed to use here? Blacks sounds ignorant and racist, Negroes, to me, sounds removed and pretentious, and African American feels like an attempt at Political Correctness???), I sensed hostility for my whiteness. It was not uncommon to regularly be told “Ima beat your skinny white ass. You better watch it.” I was an asshole though, so it could have been that. Hard to know.

To be honest, I was prepared to hate on the black people, if it would have made me more seem more white or acceptable. But also, important to note: our house literally pulsed with bitterness and rage. This, for me, manifested in a fuck-ton of seething resentment– which seemed always to be seeking a host. For anyone other than me, to be under fire, seemed good. Because I descended from angry people who were not racist, I did not hate black people, I just hated. Period. But nobody, more than myself.

My wrathful mouth, attitude and antics, I see now, could have been fatal, had I been black. I always, unknowingly, have benefitted and been protected by my fate of having been born “not black”. For the record, I have never felt white—just non-black.

Brainna West Quote. You have an opportunity--What do I actually want to return to?

Things I struggle with

Yung Pueblo Quote Who I am is always changing, not because I am being fake but because I am always open to growth and transformation.

Twenty-five Things

Things I am good at:

Losing my shit

Apologizing

Wasting time

Getting difficult stuff done

Struggling with simple things because of associated historical feelings

Helping

Receiving Help

Self Reflection

Asking questions

Being Courageous

Being Kind

Being Harsh

Sacrifice

Compromise

Gratitude

Being willful

Owning my BS

Laughing at myself

Showing compassion

Offering a clear and direct “No” without volume, profanity, or apology

Sensing bullshit

Confronting non-truth and injustice

Receiving difficult feedback

Doing as I say I will

Trying

–Making useless lists, obvi. What are you good at?