Yesterday I left off saying that today I would share how I responded when my adult child/ren wanted me to respond to their mini !BLAM!s.
Here’s how I went about it:

• NEVER said they were wrong in any way.
• I humbly and respectfully participated, thankful for the opportunity to have some healing taking place (even though at the time it was not easy to see.  This was something I had to know and trust.)
• I would cull out specific points to agree with and apologized for each error.
• I would take their specific points and detail how they were correct.  By stating how I could see their point because I have done this or that, in this way or that way.  Then I would reference one or two specific times that I remember that I had done what they had mentioned.
• I kept things BRIEF.
• I paid close attention to their body language to judge if I was being open and honest enough.*
• Didn’t take advantage of the moment to extend it any longer than “they” wanted.  When they were done, I was done.  When “they” had had enough “they” always told me.

*What did I mean when I said I paid close attention to their body language…
This process was tough at times.  I’m not going sit here and lie to you and say I waved my hand and said, “Ah it was easy smeesie seeing and admitting all I did wrong.  No problem…”
Because it wasn’t.
This was all on the fly mind you.  When I sat down with my child to have them !BLAM! me I had no idea what was going to come out. But believe me all kinds of things came pouring out.  Some in buckets and some in drops depending on how much they were willing to open up each time.  But either way “stuff” came out all right and if they wanted a response from me I was on “borrowed” time let me tell you.  There wasn’t any tolerance to me hiding my stuff or excuses of the mildest of form or any denial said or unsaid.  I had to be quick about it.  Quick to see my “stuff” that they pointed out and quick to own it whether I wanted to or not.

There were times when I was hesitating to really own something or I was admitting something that I knew was true but I was doing so in a coated manner.  I knew that it wasn’t going over by their:

• expressions or,
• how they shifted or sighed or,
• they would out right tell me

When any of those three happened it was a VERY delicate moment.
This was where I could make or break the moment with them.
This was when I had to shake myself and go for more honesty and really look at myself deeper.  So I had to swallow hard and press forward and say, “You know I wasn’t as honest as I could have been there, let me back up.”  Then fill in the needed information.  There were times, at the first attempts when I wasn’t so sensitive or open or willing to be seen as so wrong (which I was, it’s just owning it was tough) without mildly pointing out what they had done or that some thing they said wasn’t quite right and that ended it right there.  We were said, done, and over.
They were disgusted and moving on past me.  This was not good.  It felt terrible and I went off alone and cried.  Disgusted at myself for not being honest enough.  Not hearing what “they” were telling me and owning my “s***”.

More on this tomorrow…
Night, love ya,
Theresa Jane

So here’s how I RESPOND-sibilited .. for months…

BACKED OFF:

• Stopped calling.
• Didn’t take advantage of situations where we were in the same place, like in “their” father’s house with my other children, to attempt to engage “them” in conversation
• If “they” interacted with me I was careful with my RESPONDses, kept it to the reason “they” were talking to me and I only embraced that moment: I didn’t go on to look for any more from them, then or after.
• I kept my pain to myself and looked for nothing from them to ease it.  I had created it, I deserved what I got, I needed to be a big girl and swallow it.
• When there was opportunity I mildly suggested that “they” consider !BLAM!ming me.

Thankfully “they” have done mini-!BLAM!s a few times so far.
When “they” have I…

TOOK RESPOND-sbility:

• SHUT my mouth.
• Done my level best to not cry.  This was about them not me.
• I didn’t correct or interrupt.
• When “they” were done I would say:
  –”I agree with everything you said.  You’re absolutely right, I did do those things.  I’m very sorry for hurting you and causing you pain when you were a child.”
  –Another time “they” mini !BLAM!med me “they” weren’t so very upset and coming right at me with seething anger, so I felt I might be able to say just a bit more…so I re-said what I said above and added:
  “I’m thankful you told me this.  You’ve helped me see things about myself that I did wrong and can still do.   Now that I see what you’ve shared I can fix it and I’m going to.”
• In every case I asked, “Do you want me to respond or would you rather just end right here?”  I felt it important to ask this question.  To show that I cared about what they said and I just needed to know what they wanted/needed from me.

If they said they were done, I said, “Ok,”  and WALKED away.
WHY??
BECAUSE:

• What had been important was that “they” had done what “they” had needed, at that moment.   Expelled the poison.  Began to cleanse the toxins from their system.
• That was what was respectful.  How dare I arrogantly decide that this needed to be dealt with longer?  That would be being a bully and controlling, even though what I would have said would have been to have supported what was said.  Anything I would have said would’ve fallen on deaf agitated ears and only proved that I was all they said, I continue to be, I won’t change, and they are right to cut me out.

If “they” wanted a response.  I gave it.

Although they never said it I can tell you that they needed a response because they needed me to “prove” my WORDS: “I’m so very sorry for hurting you as a child.”
To hear and feel if I was genuine…

Their UNSAID screaming QUESTion was…
“Yeah! If you’re so sorry then PROVE it.
Tell me what YOU did,
support my points…”

So I did…
Tomorrow I’ll show how I went about saying more…

Night, love ya,
Theresa Jane
-whose wondering if anyone has their experiences to share in my comments???

I was going to write more about our evening, but then I watched one of the videos that my business partner, John Solomon, created and posted yesterday.  It compelled me to go in a different direction.  Because what’s more important than our relationship healing and improving is how we’ve been getting to the improvement.  If you’re in the same place I’ve been you want to know.  You’re desperate to know how to reunite with the child/ren you love and care for but nothing seems to work and everything stays the same.

It begins with…

PARENTAL RESPOND-sibility
is the straightest path to our children healing.
(And relationships mending.)

How do I know??

Well, let’s look at me. You can’t miss the difference between how I’ve related to my mother and step-father in my prior posts.

Then there’s my children. As I related in prior posts like this one: Click here. Let’s take the one who came over last night.  For over a year “this one” had issues that were growing toward me and I wasn’t sure why.  But that we were on a slippery slope downward had been obvious, till we reached the bottom and “they” told me, “I want to have very little, to nothing, to do with you ever again.”

A relationship broken
and all the kings horses and all the kings men
couldn’t put it back together again.

(And this was one of the children that I had had the closet relationship with through the years.)

Things were so bad, that honestly, I thought we were looking at years of NO relationship, if ever at all.   And if ever, then I expected it to be a fragile, delicate relationship.

Thankfully our relationship has recently been improving.  Little by little.  Baby step by baby step.  However it would not have unless I honestly took my responsibility for what I created.

So there had been hope.
There is hope.
It comes in the form of me
bearing my responsibility.
That has been creating (we’re still in process) the improvement.

More on this topic tomorrow.

Night, Love ya,
Theresa Jane
- by parental responsibility I’m not saying that we must take responsibility for their actual actions, but how they got there in the first place.  How we RESPOND to them.

Frozen Water Fountain

So why did mention in my last post that it felt like the Ice Age movie?

Well, in the last post I told about a conversation with John.  During it I had mentioned that there was a “crack” in me and that was what triggered it…
See, when it came to my mother, I knew, that when I was young, I had frozen into an Ice Queen.

Soooo mention a “crack” in me, and it was an instant carry over seeing myself in my own personal “Ice Age” chasing an acorn as it bounced off the frozen landscape of my hate.  I’d get a hold of it and lose it in the same breath.  But happy just the same to keep unconsciously chasing, feeling justified to not allow a single crack invade my perfect, shiny layers of ice that blanketed my being and kept me trapped in it’s frozen prison…

Course the problem was, all along the conscious and sub-conscious part of me wanted healing.  To have the true-freedom mentioned in Red Book and Cotton book that I had read and re-read.  So those parts of me were busy at work doing all they could to heal.  And because they were, one day that nut “happen” to fall out of my hands, tip down and pierced the thick ice with the tiniest of crack.  I may have been frozen solid but all I needed was the smallest of  “cracks” to appear…

“Great oaks from little acorns grow”
-OR-
Big explosions from tiny cracks begin…

You know, I don’t think it was any coincidence that the creators of the Ice Age movies have a squirrel chasing an acorn.  The acorn served as a symbolic foreshadowing of great things to come…Lions and Mammaths living together in peace.  I hope that for my mother and I, but intent to have it be the case within me.

The other thing… like the acorn, there are parts of me that must be buried in the dirt and DIE so I can be re-born.

Night, love ya,
Theresa Jane
-BTW the pictures of ice are as common as dirt when one lives in the North, which I did all my life till the last 8 years of living in Alabama, but down here you don’t see such sites.  It’s so rare that my oldest, John, took his brothers, Caleb and Daniel, and his sister, Grace to see this fountain, to walk across the ice, and pull chunks off the frozen waterfall, which resembled icicles, so that they could have this “common/rare” experience before it thawed.

Night, love ya,
Theresa Jane
-ya know what???  This makes me think of the movies: Ice Age…

John’s new video:

So picture this, there are three ducks.  One was walking, one was resting, and one was paddling her web feet trying to swim for all she was worth.

This was too much, I took my camera and videoed her to show my kids.

The duck walking on the ice walked straight at her looking like, “What are you doing?”  Then he turns and walks the other way.   Then the one resting gets up and the two walk away while she keeps paddling…  Going no where.

I couldn’t help but think…”There’s a message here for me.  I’m on my way to my appointment to deal with my “mother hate” issues and I’ve got a duck demonstrating Einstein’s definition of insanity:

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

So today’s message from my duck friends?  STOP DOING THE SAME THING if you hope to get off the “ice”/hate… heal my hate issues…
I’ve been that paddling duck.  It’s time I stop the insanity, be like the other duck… up, walking around, in charge, enjoying life for all it’s got to offer and even leading the other duck.  He was getting some where.   I went to my appointment with that on my mind and I’m glad because the appointment got intense…

The Appointment: For all I was worth I wanted to resist what my couch was trying to help me see.   But thank God I didn’t and I pushed through and as a result I’m coming more out of my “insanity”.  A chunk of what I came to see?  I’ve allowed my mother to control and have so much influence over me that she’s my god.  She possesses me.  She lives through me.   I fear her, I talk about her a lot, I can do things that she does: get cold, shut down, mean, temper…  All things someone does who worships someone or thing.

That was unnerving.  Tasted like vinegar and sent shutters down my spine.  But then I had to admit it’s true.  She’s my god.  This processing dislodged a memory: when I was a kid I used to always sardonically say, “My mother is God himself.”  Well, I took that a little too seriously…

After: I went to one of my all time favorite spots:  my library…  While there I found a book on CD: Dolorus Claiborn by Stephen King.  In all the years I’ve gone there and checked out books out on CD and, always look at the SK choices, I’ve never once saw this.  In the words of my daughter, “That’s crazy!”
So… I mean, really…
Did I have a choice about taking it out?  No!  I know you remember that it was only days ago that the movie version cracked me wide open showing me my hate for my mother. Click here for that post.
So of course I immediately popped it in when I got to my truck, I’ve got to see why this “coincidence” happened.  Isn’t life totally cool???
I’ll keep you posted….

Later: we had a terrific business meeting.  Exciting things to come is all I can say… 

Night, love ya,
Theresa Jane
-three hours later when I return home.  That duck was still paddling… four or five feet away from where she started and now she was moving in a circle…insanity…a reinforcement, keep pressing forward to “do different” or you’ll stay on “your ice”…made me shiver
Here’s my ducks…

If you get a kick out of them tell your friends to go to our channel: http://www.youtube.com/JohnSolomonSandridge and view them, who knows maybe they’ll go viral?!  Boy wouldn’t that be great for our business?

I’ve been so focused on where my life and healing has been going for the last month or so and there has been the need to fill my blogs with so many words just to cover that topic that I haven’t taken the time to veer into other areas in the effort to not overwhelm you with more to read.  So tonight I’m going to make my post about areas that I’ve neglected…my kids.

Interestingly since I !BLAM!med my parents there began cracks with the children that have issues with me, as I mentioned in prior posts.  Click here for those posts.

Of them I mentioned one wanted to have as little to do with me as possible.  And I’m happy to share that it’s been slooow going but we’ve progressed.  One night about a month ago, ‘they’ did let out about an hour of steam, in a calm fashion, towards me about the things that upset “them.”  ‘They’, in a sense, mini-!BLAM!med me.  I listened, apologized, and told them they were right.

Since we’ve inched along and I have to say Christmas was very nice, and surprisingly we even went to a movie together.  But today was better.  It was super really.  We talked a long, long time, two different times, like we used to.  And I’m thankful.  But I’m also wise enough to know that ‘this one’ still has things to work through.  Although matters between didn’t seem quite as delicate, there was a hint of it skimming the edges.  So, I respected the “edges.”  At the end of our conversation I again encouraged ‘them’ to do a full out !BLAM! with me.  I had shared during the course of our talk how liberating and healing it has been for me and that I wanted that for ‘them’.  I do hope that one day ‘this one’ will be able to do so.

Also, another adult child did !BLAM! me and their father several weeks ago.  Right after I had done mine.  At the time none of my kids knew about my !BLAM! with my parents, but I knew and I offered them the opportunity and ‘this one’ took it and ran.   ‘This one’ and I have talked on and off since, in small sessions, and I’m glad to say that this relationship is also healing.  I will also add that we both see the need for ‘this one’ to do it again.  That the first was only the beginning.  So when ‘they’ are ready ‘they’ have said ‘they’ will.

So that’s the fast forward catch up with my kids.  It’s wonderful and I’m thankful and am committed to doing all I can to assist them to heal, in as much as it has to do with their issues with me.

Now, for me, well, tomorrow is my “life couch/therapist/Naturopathic Spiritual Intuitive”.  And I have to say I’m locked and loaded.  I’m ready.  I’m sure there will be pain and tears as he takes me even deeper into my issues of unforgiveness and the hate I carry for my mother.  But I’m ready.  Today, I’m so ready.  I want to be free.  I’m going to be free.  I’m going to transform.

An interesting thing has taken place inside me since I… saw, then was honest and confessed the hate and unforgiveness I’ve been carrying…both have been deflating.  Like the helium that leaks slowly out of a mylar balloon.  I’m not going to even try and deceive you into thinking that “I’ve got this one”, but I can say that I’m not so searingly uncaring as I was.  It’s the honesty that brings that about, it’s sets a person free.  So tomorrow I’m going to be as honest as need be.  Because tomorrow I’m going to go about killing these “demons” a little bit more…

Night, love ya,
Theresa Jane
-above I have creative ways of not letting you know which of my children I’m referring to.  That’s out of respect to them.  I’ve not asked if I can share their names yet.  So for now they’ll be, ‘them’, ‘they’, and ‘this one’

In the Steven King movie I talked about last, there was a female character who was dying a terrible death.  It was made obvious that it was due to her holding on to hate.  Her line: “Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold on to.”

Translation: this was what allowed her to survive.

The movie shows us that she was obviously hurt in her childhood and then in her marriage.  Her “demons”, Bitterness and Hate, permeated her and in the end they devoured her with sickness and twisted her outside body into a terrible form reflecting what was inside… She wanted to die.  It was the only way she knew to “kill them off” and release her from them and her awful existence.

These “demons” we/I co-exist with exact a terribly high price to allow us to live off from/hold on to them…

I want to be released from my “demons”.  However I know that I don’t have to die to be released, but they have to.  I can go on to live a beautiful and peaceful existence after I’ve killed off my “demons” (my issues) and replace them with “angels”.  In this case “angels” of Forgiveness and Love for all people including my mother.

This is also the message of the book John Solomon wrote: Red Book and Cotton.  It is the entire theme really.  How to overcome the issues that keep us from “true-freedom”.  The man, Nimrod, had every reason to hold on to his anger and hate, he was born and raised an African American slave.  Who was treated worse than the slaves??  But in spite of his childhood and adult treatment and existence he was able to overcome and go on to live in not just the paper freedom that the government granted in his lifetime, but he was able to arrive at his true-freedom as well.  By learning to love and forgive those that had been atrocious to him and his people.

To me it has been a tremendous eye opener to how I needed to live.  His life story has played a very powerful role over the years to my inner healing.  Because if anyone “deserved” to hold onto to their hate it would have been him.  But he learned to let it go, “kill off his demons” and because he did he was able to experience true-freedom and this is the message to us that is in the book.  Through his life story we learn of his pain and traumas, the horrors committed against him and were all around him and then we are shown how he learned to free himself of the anger, hate, and unforgiveness he harbored toward the white people.

The book has been inspiring.  Provided me tremendous guidance and self-revelation to jerk me awake and to keep me on the path to my inner healing/True-freedom.  Read it.  You’ll be glad you did.  Check out John’s blog too, click here, it’s based on his book and the truths that lie within.

Night, love ya,
Theresa

That was last weeks appointment.  
From then till now other “boxes” have opened.  One contained the demon “Unforgiving.” It was a shocking but irrefutably true fact.  I can be mercilessly unforgiving.  When I saw it for what it was I was shaken to my core.

Then there was this other “box.”  I knew it was there.  I sensed something holding me back.  And I knew it was inside “that Pandora Box right there”.  “That” box remained especially impenetrable…  
I paced around it trying to figure how to open it.  Asked for help in my prayers.  Asked for dreams.  However it stayed shut till last night when a Stephen King movie, “Dolorous Claiborn”, rose up and axed it open… releasing an ugly, ferocious demon that came flying out and haunted me.
I didn’t sleep well all night.
I was facing “it”.  Staring at “it”.  Trying to see “it” clear.  Finally it did just that, became clear.  This “demon” was… “Mother hate”.

“No,” I said to myself, “that’s not so…”
Oh, I knew I hated things she had done or not done.  
I knew hate for her came when she’d hurt me but it had left…
Hate her?  Like constantly?  
Like cold blooded, raw, ugly, hate her?  
How could that be?  No one hates their mother… 
I didn’t hate my mother…
But then…there “it” was hovering over me.  Refusing to leave.  So I stopped judging and just looked at it.  Flash backs and things I said and felt flew across the pages of my mind.  Things she had done or refused to do anything about crawled out of my memories and pieced themselves together so accurately that I finally had to really admit, that things I had refused to allow myself to dwell on in the past had been true.  But although I hadn’t “allowed” it, I had boxed it up into a Pandora Box and shoved it into the depths.  So I knew.  I carried it with me.  Inside.  Then I allowed myself to really FEEL the truths I had avoided.  Feelings and knowledge I had shut down so very long ago blended and collided, the demon keep shrieking, and I finally had to admit it was true.
No argument…

I do.  I hate my mother.

I have been hating her a long time…
I really hate her.
There’s was so much that transpired on her end.  So much more than was shared in my video.  That I built shear hate for HER and didn’t even realize it.

Through burning tears I shared the memories, the truths, and the hate I have for her with John1 and he said, “Well, finally.  You finally admit that you hate your mother.  Now that you see it you can heal it and move on with your life.”
I was surprised that he had so clearly seen it and I hadn’t.  But that is how it is, others see what we can’t or refuse to see…

The other thing he said was, “What concerns me is you.  Your mother is living her life just fine.  Perfectly okay.  But not you.  You’re still complaining about what happened to you.  And most of all you’re afraid of your mother and she still keeps you in her clutches and controls you.”

Shocking but true.  A truth that got my attention.

John1 made another video.  He showed me it yesterday.  I know it played a major role in opening that “hate box”.  It prepared me for the SK movie I watched later that night.  It’s in the theme of the fear I still carry for my mother.  He says it moves him.  He wants me to be free.  He wants others to see it so that they might see themselves and free themselves also.

I’m going to close here and then put in the video, so…
Night, love ya,
Theresa Jane
-tomorrow…So where do I go from here??

Here’s the video, it’s called: 45 Years Old and Still Afraid of Her Mother’s voICE:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSE6kNGUv_g&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

In order to heal something you have to actually be able to see it first.  Otherwise you don’t even know the sucker exists.  Consciously at least.  Because it’s there… destroying your life.  But you have no idea.  Kinda like an ominous presence in a Stephen King novel…there’s something out there lurking in the dark, creating trouble, but you’ve no idea why.  Till one day during your healing process a Boogie Man jumps out of the dark, scares you half to death, and swipes it’s claws at you.  Wide eyed you stagger backwards, your heart pounding, and you keep repeating, oh my God, oh my God, that can’t be real.  Will it hurt me?  Should I run?…

The worse thing you can do is run.  You have to hold your ground.  You have to get a good look at it in the full light of day while you have your chance.  It’s where you can see how to kill it.

For years I’ve kept things that happened to me sealed up
and stored deeply at the back of the forbidden dark tower of my memories
and in the recesses of my bowels.
Things that happened and how I think and feel.
This is what you do isn’t it?
Your mother teaches you it’s wrong to hang your family’s dirty laundry
out for the whole world to see.
You keep family secrets.
You don’t even speak of them to each other.
It’s a shameful thing.
It’s the ultimate betrayal to so much as utter them alone in the dark of night…

Instead you keep them hidden… in the blackness.
Where they rot and fester.
Where mice infest and they leave stinking excrement everywhere and make nests out of the “dirty things”.
You learn to live with the filth.  The infection that sets in.  The fog in your thinking.  The demons that lurk and shriek sending your emotions out of control when you least expect and steal you of peace and happiness.

I’ve been finding powerful healing through my life couch sessions and classes.  The problem has been that I’ve dug deeply into the depths of unconscious and memory all the while either partially revealing or keeping a safe distance from certain “shut away things”.
Till the !BLAM!…
That’s when I let the vomit fill my mouth and evacuate my gut.
To purge the putrid rotting, infestation.

This tore at my stomach and sent a shutter throughout my system unearthing a good many Pandora Boxes from far reaching hiding places.  These boxes were left on the edge of my conscious and shook with the roar of the monsters that held them.
Their presence has been so frightening that I’ve no choice but to drive myself to find the key to open and unleash them into the world so I might see them for what they were and free myself.

This “drive” produced yet another !BLAM!ming however this time my mother didn’t hear it.  It was urged on by my life coach when he heard their roar.  He knew how to unleash at least some right then… I needed to say things that I hadn’t already.  He encouraged me act as if she were there and this time to call her names.

I tried.  But at first the words stuck firmly in my throat.  I stopped and said, “This is ridiculous I can swear a blue streak when I’m mad and even if I simply choose to, but without my mom even present I can’t do it. “So I took four slow deep breaths, closed my eyes, and tried again.  The words came out slowly, as if trapped by the bowel cramping the proceeds explosive diarrhea.  Then they released and poured out unable to be suppressed.  I called her every name in the book and let her know what I thought of her.  I was surprised to hear some of what I said.

I left feeling better.

But there were more boxes lying there, thundering with the earth shattering anger of the monsters they held…
That’s where I’ll pick up tomorrow…

Night, love ya,
Theresa Jane