I am happy about the progress with our business, a lot is moving forward.  More behind it.  More momentum to get everything launched so I/we can move from working a job to working the business as our source of income.

Had another interview with a family with two adorable 14 month old twins.  They need a short term filler situation for April and May.  I liked this family a lot.  Glad the gig with the last family I interviewed didn’t pan out because I had my reservations about them.  But this family, ah now I like them.  The mom, the dad, the babies.  Wonderful.  Easy spirited.  Fun.  So I’m hoping.  I’ll hear soon, they have another person to interview.

When I got Zac from school today went straight to my chiropractor’s.  I haven’t been there in nine months and it shows.  Left feeling a bit heady as my body shifted itself into better alignment.  When I haven’t been in in that long it effects me a lot.  So this effect was a lot.  But it will be for the better.   All the pain and fatigue will pass and I will be aligned again.  I will be going again on Friday.  And likely next week.  Got to get the knots and stiffness out.

From there to Zac’s home to fix lunch and then to work.  After I was done with work I didn’t have it in me to do a single thing due to the lingering effects of the adjustment/entrainment, so I went to see “Bounty Hunter”, which was different than I thought but still wasn’t bad. There was a line in the movie that I loved.  It went something like, “We live our lives being worried about making mistakes.  At death we wish we had made more.”  What a great thought provoking statement.  I have to say that for once in my life this is the way I’m living.  Well, I mean, not living.  I’ve stopped worrying that I might make a mistake and I’ve moved into the rehelm of risking making them with the business ventures I’m pursuing.

Came home got ready for bed and I just sat on the couch.  No TV, no lap top computer, no notes to go over, no checking my to do list.  Just sitting.  Thinking.  Thinking about that line in the movie.  Thinking about the issues that I seriously need to heal since yesterday, directly following work, I had another counseling session with my ex and I saw more of myself.  Stuff I’m not thrilled about really.  Unforgiveness.  That was big.  Big as the moon.  But this time I didn’t cry.  Nearly did.  But I didn’t.  I tend to be a tear fighter.  Have been since I was young.  That way of being took over and I stayed dry.  On the outside.  But cried inside.  Then bitched my way home in my truck, going over the entire meeting.  I can take tears and turn them upside down into anger…  Upset with “him”, upset with myself, annoyed at the couch.  But after I burned through the bitch, I was much better.  I do good to just get things out.  Right or wrong, I just need to say ‘em.  Even if no one is listening.  After I got ‘em out then I could focus more on me.  What I had been seeing since the appointment but that had had to wait for a bit, you know, till I was over my “annoyances”.  This whole counseling with the ex is painful and draining but it’ll all pay off.  I will clear myself of my issues that are blocking me and my life will open in new and difference ways.  I’ll be able to take that energy and use it elsewhere.  And I am certain that we will relate in a different way.  That of peace, understanding, acceptance, and friendship.

Then I thought about my blog and how I haven’t blogged in a couple days and decided I needed to get something out.  Chat with you.  So here I am, getting it out 

Night, love ya,
Theresa Jane

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?

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&]

When I went home to seek resolution with my parents a few years ago, my step-father was remorseful and changed…
So WHY did I !BLAM! him as well?

Well, as I said in my video I side stepped a lot back then, swept it under the carpet if you will.  I didn’t want to shove the past in their face, make them wrong…  All I really asked was that they admit that I had a reason to have cut them off for all those years because:  the past was horrible.  A nightmare…  And I asked that because my mother has always continued to be upset, and held it over my head that they were cut off for all those years and claimed cluelessness about the reason–God, sometimes my mother makes me roll and squeeze my eyes shut and my stomach to cease in knots . . .

Since then I have come to see that by not bringing everything out, my childhood pain and fears, the adult fears and pains and lingering effects… I stopped short.  Far short.  Which kept me carrying the burden.  A participant in hiding the past.  Protecting the awful that it was.  And although my step-father was remorseful and has changed, I really was left needing to express to them the searing pain and lingering effects I have suffered from their hands.
Get it out of me…
Bring to light what was in the dark…
Give the burden back to them…
Facing the awful makes it real.  Validates it.  And allows the person/people to become free.
Therefore when I called to !BLAM! it really needed to be to them both.

Night again, love ya,
Theresa Jane
-who just senses unasked questions  and wonders who is holding a question that they want to ask?  I say, ask away, I’m an open book and love questions

CONTINUED from yesterday, I said there was more that has opened for me…
The day before when I was writing about my thoughts on “The !BLAM!ming” (click here for the post) and stated that I was like a war vet suffering post war trauma, the strangest thing happened.  There were visions in my mind, like the Ghost of Christmas Past had taken me to when I was a child… I was watching scenes of myself in my parents home.  I was able to observe “this little girl”.  Bad things were happening and she was frightened.  Many scenes flashed as we moved through the years.

As I observed something came vividly clear…

I was able to see the connection between me and the war vet. People go to war healthy mentally and can come home very different.  They can’t help it.  They lived through horror.  They can’t stop the psychological traumas: The flash backs.  The fears.  Living on edge.  Waiting to protect/defend.  Watchful.  Suspicious.  And everyone including themselves know why they changed from the great person they were before they left… the effects of war.

This experience broke open an understanding why “the little girl” in the visions became the way “she” had.

How much worse for “her” then the vet?

She was 2 1/2 when her mother married “her” step-father. “She” was just a baby. Never even had a chance to develop healthy mentally. Her brain was forming. Her experiences with life were taking shape. The networking being laid was hard wired with traumas: fear, jumpy, hide, go outside…run, protect, shut down, defend, stop listening, be suspicious, be watchful, lie, keep to herself, no one loves her, no where is safe, stop feeling, don’t express “herself”, shut up, go away, do as “she’s” told, don’t question, “she’s” worthless, who would want to love “her”, look for others to hurt “her”, be: depressed, suicidal, pull away, ice over, protect, feel worthless, shut down, survive, defend, argue…

“She” suffered the effects of “war”/horror/violence inside “her” home. It’s all “she” knew. “She” couldn’t help it.  “Her” brain’s beliefs and patterns took over and “she” was stuck there.  In that past.  Hopeless… unless someone helped “her”.  Everyone, including me, should have known…

But I didn’t know.  I didn’t cut myself an inch of slack. All through my life I have been destructively self-judgmental and just plain self-destructive.  I curse myself. Put myself down. Call myself names. I’ve had no patience with myself. Couldn’t receive compliments.  No acceptance of myself unless I was perfect and my bar was so high I rarely, if ever, reached it.  And certainly never accepted my failures.

The !BLAM!ming freed up a ton of bottled up energy that I used elsewhere…

The other day was the first time I connected with the small child inside. The one that was hurt and scarred.  For the first time in my life I was able to understand “her“.  Except “her” faults.  Feel compassion. I wanted to pick her up, sway side to side, stroke her hair, and tell her, “It’s okay, I’m here now.  I’m protecting you.  I understand.  I’m going to keep you safe.  I’m taking you out of here to live with me.  You don’t have to stay.  You can leave with me.”  And walk off with her in my arms and not stop till we were in my apartment.

You know what?  That’s exactly what I’m going to do right now.  Spend time with the “little girl”.  Let her know she’s safe…

Night, love ya,
Theresa Jane
-Tomorrow… what the response from my parents has been so far.

Who knew that the project/business John1 and I started in August was going to go in the direction it has?  Not me.  Not him.  This is truly an organic process.  We followed a white rabbit and the hole keeps getting deeper, a little unnerving even, but we’re determined to keep up…

Here’s the end at the beginning…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3dcbzTwu7Y&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

So why did I do this?  !BLAM! my parents.  Here’s a little history to get to you there.  Sorry it’s so long.  But how do you condense 21 years any tighter?  Beats me, because I tried.  Spent about 2 1/2 hours getting it to where it is…

I have mentioned that the home I grew up in was a violent, scary place.  A war zone where I was robbed of any real childhood.  With a decision, initiated by my ex, we cut my parents out of our lives and asked that they respect us in this decision.

For 19 or so years we had nothing to do with them. (there’s a little more but I decided to cut it for space, basically my mother forced phone calls on me several years ago.  She called every few months.  When I took the call they were tense.  She was controlling.  Nosy…  I was reminded, “She is my mother…”)

About two and a half years ago, after years of work on my healing, I flew home to see my parents for the first time in about 22 years, to seek peace.  This I initiated.

Within minutes I nearly walked out on them because my mother said, “I don’t appreciate you not coming to our home and having to come to your aunts house.  I haven’t been in your aunts house in years,” she said scanning the house disgusted, “and here we are now because you won’t come to our house blah, blah, blah… I don’t even recognize you.  You don’t even look like yourself…”

My step-father said very upbeat, “Oh she looks just like Theresa.”
She glared at him.
It took all my healing not to end everything right there.  It was only my determination that this part of my life needed peace if from nowhere else but on my part.  So I stayed.  I told them I wasn’t there to make them wrong about the past, but I felt we needed to be honest and at least acknowledge that there has been a reason why they were cut out of our lives 21 years ago.  I was brief, but blunt…  Then I added we had no family to speak of.  Therefore no foundation to build from.  We needed to build a foundation.  That was what I wanted.  Not pretend that there was more than there was… let’s form a friendship. Go from there.

I apologized for how difficult I had been in my teens and asked them to forgive me.  My step-father broke down and cried.  This I only saw once, maybe twice before.  He said, “Of course I forgive you.”  Then his tears flowed, “I only hope you can forgive me.  I was awful.  Absolutely horrible to you.  I made a mess of everything and was terrible to everyone.  It was all my fault.”

I was amazed.  This was a basically a first.  I started to cry and told him I forgave him and it wasn’t all his fault.  My mother sat there.

I didn’t press her.  I started talking saying how we each played our role in the past…  she expressed disgusted I had been so forgiving to “him” when he had ruined her and her children’s life.  I pointed out that dad wasn’t the only problem.  She hadn’t been a silent lamb.  She was just as bad… she said, “I know, I was a terrible mother and cried.  Now, this is what my mother had always said.  It’s all she’s ever said.  And you have to hear her to get what I am saying… her sincerity is sadly lacking.  It’s like she’s forced to say something.  Like she wants pity.  She never says she did a thing to cause hurt or pain.  She was always a victim…I just want to hurt her, make her wrong…

Since the meeting a little changed.  In the beginning.  Shortly there after she started back to where we she was with me when we were on the phone…constantly reminding me I’m her daughter, she’s my mother, those are her grandchildren…  She gets testy, pushy, insulting, probing, wants me to live her way, I need to get back with my ex, the divorce upsets her so, am I seeing the children, it’s important that I do, if so when, “That’s all? How come not more…”, (for new readers, my children live with their dad, I see/have my children with me 4-6 days a week I have three right now, Caleb’s been with me since Thursday.) everything is about her…  I rub my temples.  I do all I can to be nice.  Ignore.  Not attack.  At times I’m direct.  Others we bicker.  She can get my father on the phone to “protect her from me”.  I was wearing thin to the bone.  I wanted to tell her that I didn’t want to talk with her anymore.

Then John1 suggested I try !Blam!ming them.  I had my doubts that it would work.  She never wants to listen.  She’s always defending.  Insulting.  Talking over me.  Accusing me of not letting the past go… and “John look what I had already done…”

But I decided that the business/project John1 and I were in had taken us here for more reasons then we had seen.  I needed this.  I had tried everything to gain peace.  To be respected.  To have peace.  To really heal inside when it came to my parents and well, it didn’t seem to be working most esp. with my mother.  I decided to try.  The above video is the super condensed version of me !BLAM!ming my parents.  When I first posted it it was at the bottom.  I re-thought it and decided it needs to be right there at the top, then give the history that accompanies it.

Night, love ya,
Theresa Jane
-long, I know, but it’s Sunday, even the paper is bigger, and I really couldn’t figure out where to split this. If you know what I could have said…it would take a book.  Oh yeah, I’m writing one!    (Also: John1 is so named because I have son named John and he works with us.  So John1 and John2:my son)

I’ve not had any particular path I followed these many years to achieve my goal of success.  It really has been a trip through my own personal Wonderland.  Following that white rabbit I spoke of in previous posts(click here for referred posts).  But I have done purposeful things. Such as…

On the personal level I’ve work consistently with my life coach and not quit no matter “how hot the water gets” and have taken his training courses, in order to heal my life issues that grew out of my childhood.

In the arena of business there’s been successes and failed tries.  Disappointment, frustration, loss, living close to the line financially and going without to get to where I am so far and where I want to be.  Here’s some of what I’ve done:

Went to college, for two reasons:

1. To carefully chose courses to carry me along on my intended path
2. To thrust me into this arena because I had never gone.  
I had side stepped.  For a few reasons: 
   a. It took so much for me to finish high school due to the nightmare I lived at home I was burned out on school and just thankful I had gotten my HS diploma
   b. I was so focused on my marriage I didn’t think I should go: stuck in the mentality: be a good wife, let the husband lead…
   c. After watching Scott in college I developed a lack of belief in my capabilities.  Since I recognize this flaw, I knew I had to face it.  How else could I go on to be successful when I carried a fear towards something as common as the college experience?

I took business courses, psychology, computer, English 101, speech, and writing.  I made the Dean’s list each semester.  After a year I stopped.  Why?  I didn’t want a degree.  Didn’t go to get one.  I wanted to write my story.  Publish my book.  Form some type of business around it.  There wasn’t a degree for that.  I had gotten what I needed.

I assisted a few friends with the different businesses they had.
I did this for very little financial gain.  Because I wanted/needed training.  I did things right.  They complimented me.  Annnnd I messed up.  Screwed up.  Two removed me from various projects and threatened to never let me do anything with them with business again…  All three said, “I had been a housewife too long.”  They wondered if I could ever come out of that way of thinking and be in business for myself.  Thankfully they relented and allowed me to assist again because, “you have potential…”

I helped John1 edit, line by line, word by word, Red Book and Cotton three times.  I charged nothing.  I believed in the book, he needed assistance, and I wanted experience.  To sharpen my skills.  My first time through paled in comparison to the third… John said, “Your editing skills are incredibly good.  You’ve come a very long way from where you began.  Your input has helped me make the book better.”  The last time I was his main choice to assist going through all the individual editorial comments made by the publishing company’s editor before sending it to print.

Today I’m in business with him.  Successfully.

Night, love ya,
Theresa Jane
-I think my first post in this series came off wrong.  In my effort to condense, I left too much out.  So today and yesterday have been the fill in.  Tomorrow I’ll get to where I wanted to be when I began.  Thanks for your patience…

Overcoming worthlessness is a journey.
I’m on it, with my eye on the prize.
I want to heal me.
I want to do what I can to assist healing for what I’ve caused in my children’s lives…

So here goes… a story of when I sort of won in the battle against worthlessness and really almost not at all…

My adult child that wants little to nothing to do with me, much to my complete surprise, showed up in the same small shop that I was in.  I was ignored.  Others, that we both knew, were spoken to with niceness– with me a few feet away.  Then I was approached and asked, “What are you doing here?”  With a slight edge that implied I was purposefully intruding and had no right to be there.  Startled I said, “I have things I need to do.”  Then, feeling rather blank I reached for all I could think of and tried to be chipper/silly and said, “What are you doing here?”  I was given a look of puzzled disgust and a very short mumbled sentence I couldn’t make out.  Then I was left, for the “other” people, in another area.

I began to slip that mask on the moment she walked in and ignored me.
Shame.
Humiliation swept in with WORTHLESS on their heels.
I felt the age old feeling, that until recently couldn’t have formed into words: worthless.
Followed by: Worthless people don’t have their children love them…
Tears sprung to my eyes.  I blinked them back.  I tried everything I could to balance myself.  To distract myself.  Tell myself that I caused this.  That I need to be loving.  Keep my distance.  This may aid the situation.  It may create some healing… Just take care of my business and not let this get to me.  But that mask settled on all the more in spite of my efforts.  I was looking down, unable to hold my head up.  I felt anger at myself.  Anger that I created this.  That I did things to deserve this.  The very thing I swore I would never, ever do to any of my children.  The tears threatened to overflow my eye lids and the breath in my body ceased.

After “they” left through the heavy glassed door and disappeared into the night all I could think was: the worst part is that one of the things this child can’t stand the most about me is that I’ve functioned from the place of worthlessness and messed my life up.  They don’t want me poisoning them with my mentality.  And the entire time I battled that very thing…

The only reason I can say that I sort of won was I really applied myself to coming out of the depression that worthlessness sweeps over the person it torments.  I made myself smile.  I talked to my friend rather than just leaving.  I called my friend after I left to continue in conversation in order to not sink any lower.  After I kept reminding myself I created this, I can uncreate it.  All is not lost we have good days.  This is just a bad one.  It’ll pass.  Maybe the next will be good.  I have value.  I have worth…  Maybe this one will get to where they can really let me know what has hurt them and do what John and I are calling Blamming.  Now that I know will help.

Night again, Love ya,
Theresa Jane
-tick,tick,tick goes the clock, it’s 2:39 a.m. good night I was going to get to bed early…