Be Relentless: Eliminate the Poison in Your Life
We are not at fault, crazy, or wrong. We have a right to set boundaries and to insist on appropriate treatment. We can separate another’s issues from our issues, and…
Letter to Mom
Dear Mom,
I have confidence that you will find countless, possibly un or subconscious ways to reject me, put me in my place before you are finished with me. I find your support of my sister’s abuse from my earliest memories to be unforgivable. You want peace, maybe a single effort or word, authentically suggestive of healing would be a start. You denied me a loving and safe childhood and now knowingly behave in ways that diminish my serenity as an adult. If your passing, is the only thing to prevent you from harming me further, well that is a devastating truth. I will no longer allow you to cherry pick from my life- denying and attacking the parts you don’t favor and grabbing righteously at the parts that please you. “Low hanging fruits”–keeps coming to mind. (more…)
Silence
Not stoic enough to be silent or aloof, I am practicing saying and doing nothing in response to underhanded invitations to enter into indirect conflict. While I
now set boundaries for only myself, without arguing to be heard, my abstinence from standard entanglement is labelled abandonment—“cutting them off” because that is how silence is used in my family. I just say No. Or Sorry that won’t work until it no longer makes sense to say it again.
So, I have mostly quieted my mouth, but my head still spins with all the things I wish to say or stop feeling and thinking. Silence with a trusted other is golden.
Big Heart–Big Boundaries
Most of my life, I have wished for the ability to Act As If…
Being intensely feeling in an insensitive world does have a priceless upside: Informed and compassionate, I support my older son (S1) who is also highly sensitive with neurological differences making him more vulnerable to sensory input as well as emotional energy. Atypical wiring holds our Limbic Systems at full throttle 24/7 . A constant state of “fight or flight” causes fatigue, and lessens resilience to stress. In my family, two of the kinder labels for this, were difficult and thin-skinned.
Without familiarity, I would be unable, perhaps unwilling to protect and empathize as children deserve. S1 becomes emotional over perceived unfairness or unkindness occurring in those subtle and hard to name ways. His large reaction can steal the show and focus might be directed at teaching shaming him into gaining control of himself–purely to avoid punishment. With little inquiry or action around understanding the subtle or mistaken “offense”.
Whatever the offense, it will go dismissed unaddressed by those not wired to understand. Granted, there are times where he is overtired and ove
r-reacting…but not always the case. He recognizes the difference and we get to laugh later when he is ready to share without shame, that he was too tired to cope and had decomposed into crazy cryer. Demonstrating how it is real and ok to be sensitive allows him to know when it is necessary to seek serenity and safety (more…)