God please help me set aside everything I think I know about myself, love, connection, and especially You: for an open mind and a new experience with myself, love, connection, and especially You.

Random Thoughts on Love, Parenting, & Truths

+++Love is inconvenient, often difficult.  And IT is much more than enjoying, being attached, attracted to or glad for a thing.  Love is a verb- evidenced by behavior that is benevolent, kind, accepting(of the innate value we each have as humans). Hate is also a verb— more serious than disliking a thing the most amount. To hate, is to desire tearing down and destroying. I believe both love and/or hate are first introduced and learned at home. AND can be unlearned later, in recovery, for those of us fortunate enough to find it.

+++I am still learning the difference between emotional resilience (“thick skin”) and allowing  my emotional reality to be negated.  Taking the high road has come to mean walking way from people who measure my strength and goodness by my willingness to stay and to take shit, while thinking I deserve it.

+++Me being a “difficult” child was not a test of me, about my lovability.  It was a test of and for my parents and relatives, guardians, and protectors.  It is not a child’s job to shape shift to make a parent more comfortable, to make their lives easier.  What I find interesting, is that my FOO would like to justify their hostile behaviors and diminishing messaging to me and about me (You are burdensome, alone, on your own, unewelcome and will be removed if….) by proclaiming my insanity. It is true. I was literally deranged, even as a toddler— from trying to cope with and mange the unmanageable. So, if I needed mental help, why was nobody getting me some? Where was the help for THE insanity and unwellness? I suspect that me receiving help, may have revealed things, not everybody wanted to acknowledge and address.

+++In recovery, we keep showing up to practice loving– even when we do not understand, approve, or enjoy a person, place, or thing.  To love— is to want and act in good faith, toward a good/ positive outcome, even when we don’t know exactly what that means.  Sometimes loving requires that we wait, ask hard questions with hard answers, listen, wait more, pray…. Love does not belittle, shame, banish and gossip, though.  Of this, I am now certain. That I get to practice good healing love with my children, Sweet Greg, and Favorite is a giant ass miracle of recovery. As I am being reparented in recovery, I cannot help but marvel over the things I am able to learn, about god, love, parenting, connection, and faith.

Lack of shame is my super power. Wholesome Badass

Why (subtext:You suck and are crazy and we disapprove of you)

Today’s rant is a follow up to my previous post regarding systems which do not allow for complex and uncomfortable feelings, having them, safely expressing them, exploring them, coping with and resolving them.

So, while all of the team players actively avoid honestly sharing or acknowledging their own difficult feelings, they also practice this other confusing(for me) line of behavior.  A calling out of others, for having a feeling.  Not curiosity or interest and desire to hear about it but a passive aggressive tactic meant to silence, shut down, and shame.

Example:  A conversation gets hot.  And the one managing to appear the least affected, skillfully demands of the the person failing to mask emotion, one of the following.  The question is never a genuine inquiry, but a condenscension/shut down, dominance tactic.

“Why are you so angry?”  (Look at yourself- get it together- You are wrong)

“Why are you yelling?”  (You look unhinged and crazy- You are wrong)

“What are you getting so upset about?”  (WE don’t understand and highly disapprove—You are so confusing.  Nobody gets you.  Check yourself before you wreck yourself- You are wrong)

“Why are you so emotional?”  (Ew- Shame on you- You are wrong)

My favorite: “What is your problem/ What is wrong with you?” (You are not worth dealing with- You are wrong)

My boys frequently ask the other why they have done or said a thing, but they are not asking. They are declaring: You failed. You are lame. You are wrong and bad. You are bizarre. Nobody gets you. WE all disapprove. Nowhere in the question is there curiosity or a hint of genuine interest. We discuss this. Of course. I explain that you can judge or disapprove, just be honest about it. Say to yourself, inside your head: “I am being judgmental and disapproving.” And then work on that.

We are breaking the cycles of toxic shaming. Sweet Greg knows exactly what to do when I try to pull that with him. Fuck— who taught him this wizardry??? I frequently will “challenge” him with a statement (judging and disapproving more than curious) that begins with “I don’t understand how(or why)……..” And he calmly says: “You don’t have to”.

Fuck that whole scheme of trying to make a person uncomfortable about who they are and what they feel and choose. Get curious or go fuck yourself.

Also, in my lil family, we are onto the people that begin their judgments in one of the following ways: “I am just confused that__________ or I am curious how _________”. Because they are not curious or confused, they are asking you to defend yourself and also not interested in hearing or listening.

Beware. Jilan Catherine Ghoneim

your basic needs will be too much for an emotionally unavailable person

Fight Starters 100% Guaranteed

When you go to therapy and the therapist encourages you to implement the technique of I statements, as an effective way to share your needs and feelings, definietly try that- ONLY- if you are approaching a person who is open and intetersted in nurturing, connecting, and healing. Otherwise, it will not work out, ever, at all.

Below are some examples of how some of the greatest rifts in my family and marriage began and left us always with nothing but eggshells and resentment. My spoken need,as a child,sister,wife— for assurance, security, and connection was NOT WRONG, but definitely unwelcome. I was loooking to the wrong people to provide that. And so what if I was needy and complicated, I still deserve those things. Those are basic needs. Going without, left me spinning and frantic, more so, each day. The consistent and collective efforts to silence me made me hysterical- very non silent and acty outy.

Maggie: I feel sad, uncomfortable, anxious, worried.   Them: Why must you make problems where there are none?  Can we talk about something else besides your feelings and issues?

Maggie: What is wrong?  Them: Why does something always have to be wrong?

Maggie: Are you mad at me? Them: Nobody is mad. Now I am mad because you wont let things just be.

Maggie: Did I do something to upset or anger you? Them: Do you always have to do this?

Maggie: Can we talk?  Them: Ugh. You always have to bring up something.

Maggie: What is going on? Them: I don’t know what you are talking about. Stop looking for trouble.

Maggie: What is the matter? Them: There is nothing the matter, except for you insisting that there is.

Maggie: Is there something the matter? Them: There is nothing wrong and nothing to discuss.

Maggie: Can we talk? Them: Oh, here we go again.

Maggie: I need to talk.  Them: Again?  What Now?  Jilan Catherine Ghoneim

How difficult would it be to say and mean: “Tell me what is going on with you.  I’d like to understand.”?There was one message for me: STFU—You are on your own. Literally nobody was interested, at all, in anything but me shutting up and getting small (wanting, feeling, thinking, only as they did). They needed me to be small and broken so they could righteously ignore, dismiss, punish and rescue me. Always the claiming to be heroes and victims of me.

Systematic shut down from those who hear everything as a criticism of them and not as a need of mine…like– if I need something which you are not naturally inclined to give, you are wrong or I am wrong and we must battle, to determine who is perfect, right, and a winner. I am certain I was none of those, ever, in my life. I am also certain that the assigned script was devastating for me.

There was a part of me which felt that I could not rest unless and until (the thing) had been shared, witnessed, affirmed, heard, addressed. …and my restlessness served only as proof of my problematic being. That is what we always seemed to be “debating” or feuding about- my wrongness. What a fkn gaslighty nightmare. I am grateful to be officially orphaned and divorced. I wished it were not true. But, it is very true. Holidays are really kickin up some dust.

Doing The Lord’s Work

This scene is beyond traumatizing for me. Righteous, evil, coward corruption….insanity. The hiding behind a facade of goodness to do the most monstrous of things, in plain sight of many. Same terrifying ego-maniacal scneario with Derek Chauvin looking directly into the crowd and camera, snuffing out a man’s life, with confidence. Very very familiar- Performative virtue- in which appearing to be acting in virtue, TRUMPS actually living a virtuous life. Jilan Catherine Ghoneim

Boardwalk Empire S01E11 Paris Green Clip

The right people will see you. The right people will hear you. The right people will feel you. The right people will do right by you. Surround yourself with the right people.

Not A Great Fit

My personality was not a good fit for my mother and since she had not ever considered choosing a thing(including me) which could rarely please or satisfy her-  I think this made her feel bad about herself (shame) which she could not effectively handle and so she off loaded that to me– to deal with. I think her inability to get me to be how and who she wanted (more convenient- less uncomfortable- easier) was upsetting to her and self reflection and adjustment by her had not been considered. One of us had to be wrong. Right?

The probelm was collectively, though probably subconsciously, designated: as Magda’s failure to please and satisfy her mother. BAD GIRL. I feel like in the reparenting I receive through my program of recovery, I have learned that a person’s inability to be loving is on them, that is their deficiency- and not a measure of another person’s (non)lovability.

The twelve steps and traditions teach me to choose a thing which may not feel pleasing or satisfying- because it is morally, ethically, spiritually a correct thing to do.  It is the mature and wholesome choice. And nothing made that more evident, than motherhood.

The messaging made clear for me and for my mother’s family that until I became satisfying & pleasing, I was to be NOT chosen.  I was not able to manage my painful and confusing reactions to that, as a child or even an adult -And then I found the rooms of Al-Anon.

I observed this same style of (dis)connecting (either favoring or NON-favoring) and banishing, in my mother’s mother, my sister and later, a person I married.  Though clearly, when I married, I was choosing what was familiar, rather than what was right, pleasing OR satisfying.  It was almost my final lesson! There was no sane or healthy hint of a good reason to have even gone on the second date. So cringey and sad for the lil Magda inside me, who did not know to do or expect better. Oh…. the gifts of low self esteem and self loathing, they really do never stop giving.

I now recognize that wanting to have, say or do a thing does not make it the right thing to do.  No matter how strong the urge. And no individual is wrong or punishable for failing to please or satisfy another human.  For so long, I had no idea. BUT –  literally IT IS nobody’s job or purpose to please and satisfy—unless that it is actually their job, like they get paid to do that and have knowingly entered into a contractual agreement to do so.

I cannot help but angst in observation of my boys’ confusion over and craving for healthy connection.  The fallout from their father’s joint venture with my sister to alienate them from me and me from my family have been devastating for them and their developing beliefs about being authentic v. people pleasing, family, closeness, loyalty. Where will they find and learn it?

I feel that I do, against all odds, provide good modeling for healthy safe sustained and deep mutual connections.  I am not cool or fun with money, toys, or means to do much more than provide a nice-ish home with the basics.  BUT– I remain faithfully and deeply connected to those with whom I do choose to be in relationship.  That could not be bought or faked(by me)- as I am financially limited AF, as well as a total failure at feigning happy-looking, fun-making, social staging, photo-oppy type moments.

Things Which No Longer Cause Me Shame- Maggie and Jilan Ghoneim, Catherine Whitney

Daily Reminders

I need daily reminding as I am fast to forget and even quicker to obsess over negative myths and programming. When I am not mindful over my beliefs, like vigilantly so, I fall deep into the toxic shame spiral.

While I no longer suffer shame over those things(in the photo), I am still unlearning and… have not forgotten. For nearly 11 years, I have been developing something not unlike pride (maybe self esteem, dignity, or self worth?), around the NEW codes of conduct which I get to learn and practice in recovery life.

For four decades I thoroughly believed in what a hopeless, pathetic, sorry human I was, and affirmed it often, with my ill-informed ways of coping. My belief was that I deserved, caused, OR imagined my abuse, because not only was I bad, I was crazy. I certainly grew to behave as if both were true. We learn what we live.

For 11 years, now, I have been exercising the practices of apologizing and amending, appropriately and promptly as called for.

I had always done a lot of saying sorry– but frequently for wrong things and in wrong ways for wrong reasons. The following behaviors had, prior to program, remained foreign (having not recognized those around me as doing or saying anything remotely similar) to me:

Accepting responsibility for my behaviors known to have caused pain; saying “I was wrong” and/or “I have caused you pain”. Expressing Regret: “I am sorry that I did or said X” without excuses or justifcations. Repenting: Offering to do better/differently with an expressed preference and value to NOT hurt the person again. Requesting forgiveness and another chance– calling on my courage and humility – willing to risk rejection.

I feel kind of great-ish about my ability and value, to now own and correct my unfortunate behaviors–like I may be the first EVER in my family to know and do these things. Revolutionary and cycle breaking! I have not witnessed or experienced this with any person to whom I have been genetically or maritally linked. But, today, in my lil family here, and with Favorite and Sweet Greg, we do these things. We choose making things right in our relationships over BEING RIGHT.

Be catuious of connections that feel like home if home wasn't always a safe space for you. Quote Photo Ales Myles

2021 Happy Birthday

I did it! I enjoyed a happy birthday and am pleased to have now officially wrapped up that part of the year. Sweet Greg gets that even the words: Happy Birthday can make me feel immediately stressed, like the historical berating of “look happy” godammit: Only losers & the ungrateful are unhappy.

To me, my birthday still feels like a marker of another year in which I have failed to no longer be depressed, failed to forget and just move on already from things which were shaming and harmful and unnecessarily adding to the difficulty of life as I expereince it. Just another year in which I failed to beCOME worthy, to those who have been consistent and steadfast in attempts to shrink, erase, and silence me- and also demand a performance of happiness by me.

Festivities for the week kicked off with a four day getaway, with only Favorite- to the beach. Just the two of us. Eating when and what we liked, laughing, resting, laughing, sunning, laughing, so much laughing, and nightly binge watching Breaking Bad. I enjoyed every simple minute, the most amount. The much needed vacation eased me into the week of my actual birthday which was punctuated by an evening of favorite things, but also things equally enjoyed by the people helping me to celebrate: Flank Steak, Roasted Broccoli, Parker House Rolls, Salad, Baked Taters, Berry Cobbler, Ice Cream, and We Are the Millers. We ate and laughed until our belly’s could take no more. It was all super connecty and fun and nobody was more or less important for the evening. We were a solid WE.

Favorite always makes more than enough so nobody has to be careful about “taking too much”. And nobody anxiously and resentfully monitoring other people’s plates and fretting a scarcity. We eat a lot. We just do- not greedy or assholey, just voracious eaters with crazy fast metabolism. Sorry not sorry.

Why would a person host a meal and not make absolutely certain to have enough of everything and spare themselves the angst of possibly running out and then judging the people whose fault that is, for eating how much they ate? Like, it is totally avoidable. Don’t host a meal with potentially not enough food, for family and friends. It is insane to create a scenario in which you become judgy and stressed by the quanities eaten by others. Right? It makes no sense, seems petty, stingy and non good-hosty.

I get that for non-family and non super close people events(like social stuff), we must be mindful of our portions and others. I 100% understand and respect that.

While I am deeply disturbed by throwing food away, I am more ok doing that, than not having enough for everyone to satisfy themselves. Ok, rant over for now.

I did receive generous and thoughtful gifts, reflective of my likes and needs and– I want and love all -my- shit. I guess all these words boil down to my realizing and needing to articulate my very basic need and(now) choice to feel seen, heard, safe, welcome, and included within my chosen relations.

EW- I am flashing back hard to birthdays past-rant resumed:

My thinking is that gifts for a special occasion should reflect an appreciation for the recipient’s unique personhood – specific to their likes, interests, needs. Yikes- for Items presented, with an unjustified expectation for a shared appreciation with the “giver”.  To me, these items, posing as gifts are actually assignments, asking a recipient to possess a thing which is not liked or needed, by them, does not reflect generosity or love.  

To be judged as miserable for dissimilar regard for the item is menacing. I am an a-hole for not liking a thing(which has nothing to do with me) or for not pretending to like it???? How about you keep your gift, since you love it so much. Thanks but no thanks! This type of gifting has been beyond stressful and unenjoyable, for me. And here, I am referring to people with close and frequent proximity to me, not loose social or work affiliations. Those loosely connected can feel free to gift or not gift however they like. I hold no expectation for them.

For anyone, posturing as a person of closeness, in need of assigning me an item of their liking as a gesture, feel free to do so on any day but my birthday or Christmas.  I can promise to arrange my face into a smile and fawn over an obscure item of your liking, presented in the form of a gift, on any of the other 363 days of the year.

But I did have a great birthday first with Favorite and then with Sweet Greg–with my boys present for each. Food, Laughs, Truth, Everyone equally wanted, needed, and welcome. This seems simple and basic. Like connection 101. And yet it remains new to me, only in recovery, and divorce from my marriage and FOO have I experienced special days in these ways. Jilan Catherine Ghoneim

YOu can choose what you do but you can't choose what you like to do. Quote by Gretchen Rubin

Choosing

Awwwww— a neeeeeeed to “make people smile”–sounds sweet, wholesome, benevolent. Right? Ummmm… I do not always perceive it that way. Instead, it has felt stressful…because that UNYIELDING NEED/REQUIREMENT typically, (to the smile extractor) implies that: if I am not smiling or overtly pleased, one of us has failed.  

It might be different if “smile patrol” manipulated on the DL, but frequent and open assertions of intent to MAKE EVERYONE HAPPY, with over the top exhibitions as joy maker/martyr, to me, come off as more self-seeking than generous –pursuing control, attention, and outcomes.  Makes me feel like an emotional hostage. How does a anyone relax with a person desperate to curate the moods and faces of those around them?

OH! I just had an idea: How about if we each manage only ourselves and let others be who and how they are?   And calm tf down when someone is not smiling; as it is not proof of defiance, anger, or even discontent.

On the eve of my birthday, I am as grateful as I am anxious about my dinner tomorrow. The anxiety is ptsd and historical -absolutely unrelated to my current reality. (I tried to explain to favorite recently, that depression and anxiety do not care about facts, and are often entirely unrelated to what is happening in the present moment.)

We are celebrating at Favorite’s house with only foods and people chosen by me. I still angst though, because, by nature, I am unsocial, preferring solitude, deep conversations or silence- the opposite of socializing and celebration. But when I am with people who love and celebrate me as I am, these are not problems or defects. Just facts. I am safe and loved. And I enjoy myself, laughing a fuck-ton and still not so much wearing a smile, as my natural facial arrangement.

I am high strung, intense, and deeply affected by sensory and emotional input…even on and especially for birthdays and celebrations, which can easily overstimulate me. Why would any accepting person expect or demand something other? Literally, the date on the calendar changes nothing about these things.

The commandments of a Narcissistic Parent

The Commandments

“You are overreacting, out-of-control and crazy. You should just go along with this and be OK with it.”

When you are on the recieving end of this for your formative years and more, it makes you lose connection with your inner compass, costs you your faith in your ability to perceive and discern. You become lost, all that you lose makes you a loser. Worst of all, you lose, first trust in yourself, and then also trust for and of others. What a sad mess.

Shamey gaslighty maneuvers which communicate the message: “You have failed me so drastically and I am now revoking every right you have within this relationship and family.  Including your right to expressing your needs and your feelings about it.”

“So not only am I going to be righteously abusive and shaming. You don’t get to have or share your reaction to that.”  I will see to it that you are neither heard nor believed. Your experience and feelings are inadmissible.

Decades of this dynamic leave me in obsessive rumination:  Was I born awful- bad at a cellular level?  Do I really make no sense at all to anyone and am I so confused and confusing?  Is my inability to please you due to my lack of capability, strength, and worthiness-  purely defective and perpetually unreasonable? Really? Or was it maybe never actually my job to PLEASE and satisfy you??? I remind my boys constantly that it is not their job to be pleasing. Only to be honest, kind, helpful, and seeking to know their gifts and strengths, and even their struggles. And then to honor them. Displeasing a person is not the same as disrespecting them, except to a narcissist.

I observe in horror as my boys’ father relies on this style of managing and messaging with our sons, accusing them of “not getting it”  “not making sense”  “not having common sense” when their initiatives or inquiries are not inline with his own agenda and desires.  He is attempting to train them to fear his judgment, doubt themselves, to first prioritize his approval/acceptance OR PAY.  I am sickened.  It is familiar(like literally of the family) and vile. We will disrupt the cycle, if we cannot break it.

Living that way did make me very out of control. I lost my shit, but I am getting it back one day at a time. Efforts have been made to silence me here. If what I say is crazy, who even cares who might see or read it, though?

Your sense of being ok as you are is drectly related to the degree to which yur family and community accepted you as you were.

Mental Health Awareness

October is the beginning of the hardest time of year, for me, the season of my birthday and all of the festivity and expectations for holiday cheer and joy. My depression is most clearly evidenced in my lack of joy and vitality. I have lived most of my life this way(though at times better able to hide it). Depressed and joyless, not entirely void of laughter, fleeting moments of pleasure or satisfaction. But without peace, joy, by this definition is an impossibility. JOY: The experience or practice of loving what is.

When you literally hate your most basic unchangeable traits and truths, as I had, joy is not a possible outcome.

What I came to hate, as a person in my family, and my town and my brain(The things I was taught to not accept or love about myself):

A deep sense of shame and guilt which I could not understand or change** my intense emotions** my name** the names of people in my nuclear family** my height** my weight** the clothing I was provided** my inability to feel or be perceived as pretty** calm** happy** pleasing** small** normal** quiet**uncomplicated**resilient**undemanding** the smells and foods in our home** the lack of a god whom I could follow or turn to** the active resistance by my parents, to traditional holiday décor and celebration** my fear** my discomfort** my anger and despair** my nose shape** the intensity of life at home which was rarely engaging and constantly overwhelming at sensory and emotional levels** my large appetite and heightened sensitivity to smell, texture, taste** my anxiety and depression (all of which helped me earn the labels of negative and impossible, making it safe and easy to target or dismiss me—CUZ if I am already naturally a piece of shit dumpster fire, that is on me and how could diminishing/negligent words and actions be responsible for that?)  I was an easy outlet for anyone with a negative urge or instinct.  My reactions to those initiatives made that reality exponentially more true.  My sister capitalized on this and literally springboarded off  of my issues, seizing each opportunity to exacerbate and then illuminate my struggles while showcasing her non-likeness.  As if her greatest achievement —would be limited to her not being ME.   

As an adult and a person in recovery I am now able to recgonize and choose sane reactions to pain and to exit optional dynamics and systems in which I am to hold the soul-wounding role of the thing that is not approved of.   I have found the courage and hope to beleive in and practice wholesome love and connection. Entanglement via genetics and marriage certificates are literally not foundations for sustainable healthy relationships. I had to let those go. Tragically, I hold tightly to much of the pain, grief, and shame of having had no better options. Letting them go did not release me from the effects of trauma, but it does at least create space and opportunity for peace and acceptance, and maybe even joy, some day.

My poor boys and sweet Greg will get to helplessly spectate another holiday season of me failing to love what is. I do love my home, my job, and all my guys, furry four legged ones included. But that love pales in comparison to the exhaustion of learning to regulate, rest, recover, to just be ok with what is.

I am never free from the worry of how the mental health of our family and the legacies of shame and despair are shaping my sons. In honor of MHA- week, I have sought a new counsellor, purchased the BIG RED BOOK, and have signed up for coaching support with goal setting. Survival is not a great goal. I am well practiced at healthier survival tactics and would like to experiment with some actual thriving. I am tired of circling the drain.