Posts exploring family scapegoating, golden child dynamics, sibling betrayal, protected family roles, triangulation, and the ways family systems can organize around one person as the problem while protecting another.
The messages of non-love which are cruelly and generously heaped upon my boys, by older members of their genetic families, require daily dispelling. The demystification is endless and I am…
Daily, I feel tormented by the notion that if I were JUST less sensitive and more forgiving we could be a happy healthy family. But this, THIS is the lie-the myth of the scapegoat and the messaging of abusers. Intense sensitivity is something, that as an adult, I have learned to understand, accept, and to accommodate without shame. My mental wellness requires that I offer space to anyfuckenbody who judges sensitivity and uses it as an excuse to be unkind–shaming. I do regret that I had nobody to teach me this sooner. Self acceptance, preservation, kindness to myself and to others—these things, they were first introduced to me as a 40 something woman, in recovery. And I forgive myself for not knowing what I didn’t know, before I knew it and I forgive myself for not accepting poor treatment as the price of membership for a club to which I clearly do not belong. And I forgive myself for not being able to forgive before I am able. (more…)
I have been finding healing and comfort in re-reading and listening to When Bad Things Happen to Good People( a book I first borrowed from my mother, after my father's…
You know, as I reflect back on my first 30 years, I no longer feel overtaken by shame. Shame for immense & unspeakable pain and my inability to manage myself…