the-authentic -me

one perfect rose and a ding in my car

2008-06-12T07:41:00.003-04:00

what a metaphor for life....

I woke up today and sat down in the living room with my lap top Today is Danis' high school graduation. Its her day.

Most of the food for the small celebration I am having after tonights' graduation is done. And while I was pondering how I was going to decorate the cake I made, I looked outside and saw one perfect red rose.

for Danis' day

my enneagram

2008-06-05T12:46:00.006-04:00

Thats me...a 9.Receptive,mutable and anger avoiding.Makes sense to me. A father I don't ever remember anything about except the time when I was around 18 he found out I was having sex. he actually said "why by the cow when the milks for free". How fucked up is that? My mother I only remember being depressed and crying. I learned early on making myself invisible was the only way to survive. No needs, be quiet and keep out of the way. Don't ask for anything as you won't get it. And married someone who was constantly needy. His family too. When I was 6 months pregnant Stu through his back out and was flat on his back. Then when Dani was born, he was hospitialized when she was 2 and a half weeks old. No wonder I have felt like Cinderella. But for the first time during my enneagram I realized that Cinderella also got the prince.
And in Ever After my very favorite retelling of Cinderella....
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi4221894937/
not only does she get the prince, but before that, she saves herself

a feel a certain calm today

2008-05-21T16:34:00.003-04:00

pretty unusual for a Wed. Early Wed morning I see my therapist and the shit gets stirred.

Today was different..

It's pretty clear that my wounds were early on. Pre-verbal and in the womb.Clearly I wasn't wanted and the pregnancy caused much pain and hurt to my mother. No suprise that I am so ardently pro choice. Pregnancy is a gift.. my own was wonderful.

my mother...was haunted by the darkness that came over her. The same darkeness that came and eventually took Stu. I told Nancy today that my mothers suicide attempt when I was 7 or 8 was in the bath tub. Same place I found Stu some 50 years later dead.

I truly married my mother.

Nancy thinks that my wounding has to do with past lives. It makes me head explode trying to "understand" this. But my heart knows it to be true.

I trust the process. Thats where the calmness comes from.

the pain so much I don't know what to do with it...

2008-05-14T17:22:00.003-04:00

It's a combination. Not looking forward to the dental surgery and whats next. And Mary hit it on the head...it what comes up after. Looking for work, making a life for me all alone. No husband, and a daughter away at college with a life of her own.

I am fighting doing the exercises.As I am scared at what is underneath. I tried explaining to Cy that its the time of year. This time last year Dani was getting ready to go to Pittsburgh for 6 weeks.I imagine he had already decided to kill himself. My birthday is coming up and its this time of year that my mother attempted suicide when I was 7. In tn the bathroom, just like my dead husband.

emotional freedom techniques

2008-05-08T10:03:00.003-04:00

work in the invisible world
as least as hard as you do in the visible

from Work in the Invisible
by Rumi

Yesterday we started the eft techniques. Through muscle testing she decided my emotional traumas were acquired before I was born. No surprise there. My mother had 2 children before me and before I was born had an abortion. This was the 50s and abortions were illegal but apparently one of my Aunts arranged one for her. Well she got pregnant again (me) and for whatever reason decided to have me. Fast forward to years later when I was trying to get pregnant. I finally did and it sent my dead husband into the darkness. Just like my mother. I remember telling him I was going to have this baby regardless of how he felt. And I did. And my own pregnancy was one of the happiest times of my life. I worried no more abut my weight, I had no menstrual pain. And it was actually a good time between the two of us. But the darkness came again for him too. And two weeks after Dani was born he was hospitialized for the first time.

I feel like I have been run over by a truck.

2008-04-09T12:29:00.004-04:00

Boy she yelled at me...My therapist that is. I always thought that was a huge no no. Maybe it still is among the more traditional therapists. Anyway I'm ok. No one ever said this was going to be easy. Whatever it takes to move forward. And I am moving forward.Yesterday I got rid of the sofas that used to belong to Stus' parents. The sofas, that he slept on and left his glasses under when he walked in the bathroom to take the oxy contin and light the bbq grill to kill himself.

The yell fest had to do with my crossing my daughters boundaries. It's all so familial. The hardest part of today was not being yelled at, but the idea that i had violated her boundaries the same way that Rita had with Stu. God, she is the last human being on this planet I want to be like. She's like the mother Shelly Winters played in Next Stop Greenwich Village.Me??? I like to think of myself like the Mom in the Gillmore Girls. Young, hip and supportive. More than a little unconventional. More hippie than mommie dearest. In any event, I plan on apologizing to my dd when she gets home today.

I bought dd a card today..Below is the poem on the card. I have lived most of my adult life in the tangle of fear thinking. I am beginning to move outside

move outside the tangle
of fear-thinking

Live in
silence

Flow down and down
in always
widening rings
of Being.

author...Rumi

UPDATE....I handed her the card, told her my therapist reemed me todayy apologized for boundary violation.

more on the short story about my mother and family

2008-04-07T07:27:00.008-04:00

She mothered her baby dolls in the box Masha decorated as her doll house. its me, from my sisters story.Dolls were an important part of my childhood.

It's really my doll from my child hood the late 50s Cleaned up.Until last week dirty and damaged.Like me. I asked a new friend who is also a doll collector if she knew of a doll hospital. She took the doll, cleaned her up and put new clothes on her.

motherhood..in my 20s..I never wanted children. I tried to have my tubes tied.Planned parenthood wouldn't. How profound is that?? I have this incredible daughter about to make her own way in the world. I cannot imagine my life without her in it. Considering my own mother, its a miracle that I even knew what to do with my own daughter.

reading the short story written by my older sister

2008-04-05T17:47:00.003-04:00

I married my mother. Its such a fucking cliche...Like my dead husband, in the short story my mother used to bang her head against the wall. Reading this part of the story is so visceral I start to cry. I remember sitting on my bed above his office in the weeks leading up to his suicide. I hear him banging his head against his desk and I am not a 55 year old woman anymore but a child. A child who needs her mother, but her mother is depressed and selfish. Just like my dead husband.

homework assignment-for 24 hours don't talk about Dani

2008-04-04T08:23:00.004-04:00

for one day...it was amazing...I had time to think about me.

FYI.the font used in the no Dani graphic is the font Dani.

a poem after therapy

2008-04-02T12:39:00.001-04:00

who is me
maybe
YES