Oct 27 - Rising Above Toxic People In Your Family

It is full moon and the toxins are rising..and I have an angry, heartbroken, daughter.

It is easy to say we walk away from toxic people, but, once they get their hooks in you, it is difficult to withdraw, especially if they are family and were/are best friends.  Family can be the hardest hook of all.  It becomes all the more complicated because family is intimate and we tend to give second chances to them.  It, also, becomes a net where everyone in the family gets dragged into the complications.  It, as I said, is very complicated and full of a great many family hidden things.  How do we deal with it?

First of all, it is not ALL about you.  It is difficult, but try not to take their sickness to heart.  With family, you will feel both responsible and attacked at the same time ( think abusive relationships).  Try to get to your own understanding of why that family member is the way he/she is.  If you look deep enough, you will understand his/her anger and hurt that he/she projects on to you. You will feel guilty for walking away, but, sometimes they give you no other choice.  Stand your ground for your own sanity.  Then, simply turn away and try not to interact with them any more than absolutely necessary.  Keep in mind, this business affects everyone in the family.  The family knows him/her as well as you do.  Show them you really are above all this.

Secondly, do not try to fix things for this person.  After so many tries, you come to realize that they are who they are and most people come to know them for who they are for their whole lives will project their hurt and anger and will have been benefactor of their toxicity/ meanness.  They need to fix themselves and, perhaps, they are not ready to accept their own truths.  Leave that to that person and his/her own path to healing.  Sometimes you just have to say to yourself that that person is who he/she always has been and accept that they choose not to be in your life.  Perhaps they are so toxic that they cannot change.  Expect nothing less from them.

Do not allow them in your space if history repeats itself over and over.  I remember telling my kids that we could talk about anything except their father or religion, otherwise, it is all fair to talk about.  I simply could not be hurt by him and that religion ever again.  Deflect topics that would drag you into their drama or simply carry a mantra ready to use (Not your business!  Not my business...not my circus, not my monkey!"  Some topics need to be off the table.  To do otherwise is to be attacked, to be dragged in, to be emotionally hurt by them ...much to their delight. 

If you are being told things by others, about the toxic person or about what they might be saying, keep yourself from flight or fright lizard brain reactions.  Try to keep from feeling defensive.  (As a mother, this is wicked hard, for we are used to standing up for our own truths).  Try not to feel a loser or a winner.  Simply stand your ground and speak your truth.  Remember, you are most important to yourself.  Be that!

You need not bend over backwards to fix things nor do you want to fix things for others.  Fix things for yourself in toxic relationships.  Your well-being means that you have risen above family conflicts.  Be that!  Set boundaries around this person.  No one is entitled to your peace of mind and your truths, unless you invite them in.  Know who to invite.  Realize that you are not the only one they try to drag in.  Refuse to be confronted, to be challenged, to be incited, to be aggravated by such toxin.    Surround yourself with those who are your supporters, who you love and who loves you so much that they are a place you go to for compassion and understanding, love and a peaceful place to fall when toxins surround you.  Do not look for loyalty, look for the love that has proven itself.  And, if you are hurt, find a place to go for relief, to that place where you know your own truths and are at peace with that.  Let them not make you bitter or wounded.  They are hurt people who hurt people.  Know that and be a peace.  Rise, my dearest, rise!

©Carol Desjarlais 10.27.18

Muddied Sense of Soul

“Spirituality is not taking shelter under religions or prophets but making deep union with the God that exist in every heart.”   ― Amit Ray, Walking the Path of Compassion

The Moon shows her full face, her Hunter's face, and Aries rises to teach us about courage.  Tension will come full force in relationships for this moon. Patience is required to wade through the mud of relationships that are toxic and to avoid quarrels and frustration.  Know when to walk away from the mud and know when to compromise.  What muddies relationships is that we have old wounds we may not have dealt with yet.  Remember your personal power.  You do not have to think or dream anything you do not want to.  You do not have to inhabit that muddy arena of old memories that do not belong in your today.

Our spirit/soul belongs to no one but ourselves.  We only allow others to affect our central place of goddess-within.  We need to strip off our muddy old robes and liberate ourselves.  Our fear comes from all the outer talk, not the inner talk.  You can say you believe in God, that we were created in his image, but then we treat ourselves as if we were garbage.  If you believe in karma, then know, the ancients wisdom returns again and again, to us.  

Get out of the playground of childhood, youth, young woman conditioning.  It did not work for earlier generations; it does not work for ours, if we do not bathe ourselves in remembering (not the miserable stuff we often choose to remember) that we are Co-creators... imagine, Co-creators, with the Creator.

Watch that you do not love your past and your misery too much.  We may have been stained, but we were not gored.  We may be scarred but we are not rotting.  We may be mourning, but know what you are mourning for.  Look to the key triggers of your feelings.    We are not here to please people.  We are here to become so in tune with our soul that no others can think, or allow us to think, they own it.  We are not here to allow injustices, either.  We do need to take a stand.  We do need to shout our truths from mountains, betimes.  

Try hard not to be one person in public and another when we are alone with ourselves.  That is not authentic.  Try to connect with others who are walking on the similar pathway to yours.  When we get stuck in quicksand, they can help us out and vice versa.  Take your own healing with high purpose.  Do not stay so raw that you are hyper-sensitive (oh this is so me).  Try to work hard on not feeling guilty because someone(s) thinks you should feel that way.    Work on gaining trust with the Universe, with a Creator, with others.  To not trust is to sit in a pool of self-isolation. (This is also big for me).  

The Hunter's Moon asks that we seek out those shadowy, muddy, places within.  Air them out, dust them off, shine them up so you know them intimately and nothing can muddy your belief in how truly precious your soul is to you.

©Carol Desjarlais 10.23.18

Mystory, page ten- Croneship

"Life isn't about the destination but about the journey."

You know, the older we get, it seems the freer we get.  We, older women, have learned and lost and survived and made awesome mistakes and succeeded, and we can truly KICK BUTT.  We have had things scare us that you would not believe.  We have gone from dirt roads to pavement.  We have gone from late night kick the can until someone's mother tells us to go home, and we have made it through the unsafe communities where we cannot even talk a late night walk.  We have lived through floods, through tornadoes, through fire, through Nor'Easters and Hurricanes, and wars.  We have found and buried more loved ones than we thought we could handle.  We have suffered nearly unbearable pains.  We have had more "Me Too!" times than we care to remember.  We got our newly budding boobs poked by boys running down the hall and lived through it.  We fought with our mothers, hated our sisters, beat up our brothers, and still loved them and they loved us.  We have been physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually abused and here we are!   We have stared death in the face and we banished it...and survived it.  We got this!  We are Crone's and we are pressed diamonds of life and some of us lie on the ground, forgotten.  But, oh, what you are missing that we have gained as gray-haired wisdom.

We were told to sit and be pretty, and we did and we didn't.  We were told to "hush up!" and we did and we didn't.  We were told to "not talk like that," and yet, we did.  We were told "What will other's think!" and we cared and we didn't. 

We have baked and bottled, gleaned and leaned into our harvests.  We have seen things that could have made us blind, but it didn't.  We have whispered and swallowed our stories and not have them affirmed.  We have told our little truths and not had them believed.  We have stuffed and sorted and forgotten more than you can hardly learn in a lifetime, but we still do and we are resurrecting memories of our whole lifetime.  Look, here is our wisdom, rolling off our hands, from our tongues, from our eyes.

We have known sunshine and shadows, light and dark, and days that were so foggy we could not see our hands.  We have dine in other countries, we have dined at stranger's tables, we have shared our dining table with anyone who came for a quick visit.  We have quilted and hoed rows, we have pushed and pulled to birth our babies (and other things) the hard way, and we have expressed and repressed things that could have turned us inside out, but didn't.

We swallowed, and spit out, gospels and gossip and goodbyes and 'good griefs'.  We have sworn like fishermen's wives and crooked our little finger over tea.  We have worn blue jeans and sweats to church and been dressed like Shirley Temple with our curls bobbling in all their glory.  We have gained hair on our bodies and lost hair on our heads.  We have lines and crooks and crannies we never knew we had.  We have been stifled and silly, we have been gorgeous and grungy, and we have slathered on makeup and polluted the air with sprays, but we are still here.   We ate friend food and fudge and toffees and homemade caramels, and boxes of mandarin oranges at Christmas times, until we puked.  We are all of these experiences.  We are Crones.

We have been skinny and fat, we have been dumpy and dowagery, and we have had the passions of youth and midlife roiling through our veins.  We are passionate about what we are passionate about.  We are explorers, adventurers, bakers, chiefs and thieves.  We have stolen away from, stolen towards, and from in so many ways that were not even criminal.  We know 'stuff'.  We ARE stuff!  We are risk-takers, we are lifesavers.  We are mentors and teachers, and learners and incapable of figuring out new technology until it sets your teeth on edge.  Life has initiated us.  We have been self-sabatoging and saved. 

We have been misguided and misled.  We have known great intimacy and great sorrow at finding we have not connected deeply enough.  We were invalid and learned to validate ourselves.  We can be brutally honest, or, brutally quiet.  We have been in dire circumstances, and still might be, but we are rich beyond compare.  We have the kind of strength that you cannot buy. 

Our souls are precious gems with many facets.  We know no one can own our spirit/soul.  We have the light of conscious and compassion.  We recognize the sacred things of life.  We have learned, or are learning, to give away and to receive.  We have been enslaved to so many things and yet we are liberated in so many other ways. 

The one blossoming, beautiful thing, is our soul.  You cannot own it, buy it, tempt it, or treat it as unworthy.  We are Crones.

©Carol Desjarlais 10.22.18

This page in MyStory is done with inks and napkin collage.  I have left lots of space in order to add in some of my own more persona story of being a Crone.

Body, Mind, and Heart Drain

"Memories are just a way of your mind dragging you to live clinging to the past.  As long as you are living in the past, especially revisiting traumatic times, you cannot enjoy the present.  The only way you c an deal with debilitating, painful, draining memories is for you to be aware and understand their futility

- @AVISiswanathan

So many cliches about letting go.  And, I have let go of so many things, I should have, I did not want to, I would have, and could have.  As I age, and age has its way with me, I realize I STILL have danged cling-ons. 

Long ago, I let some things, people, places go their way, and, yes, I struggled, with some, but, eventually, life helped me not miss them.  Some made me stronger for the going.  But, some things get stuck in my craw.  It is like holding skeletons and they have rotten down to the bone as I held on.  I am stubborn about some things.  It is like I want it all to be my way, not the highway. 

I have a strong sense of justice, a sense (I think) of what needs to be done to or by it/them.  I have a hard time letting others fail me.  I tend to believe in the good of others (the potential for good).  It is there that I tend to get stuck.  I spent years allowing them their own stuff, wishing them well, and walking away. 

I, as well, have struggled with feeling like I could have done more, done right, done better for/to them/it.  I can spend a great deal of energy and time trying to right things I feel like I should.  Most times, they/it did not deserve any of my extra time and energy.  It resolved nothing by letting go, it feels like because I carry those old bones, waiting for some kind of resurrection that is never coming.

At times, I have dug around and figured out why I could not let some things/them go?  It was like I was beating myself up with it/them.  I got used to having them drag me down.  Sometimes nightmares come and I waken and realize how deeply someone else/it has been allowed to dig in.  It is for me to dig them out and bury them/it.  They/It does not care that I am carrying my own mock supposition of who them/them are.  It is not even them/it.  I am lugging around a cloud of self-absorbed fantasy of what is present and now, and authentically, me.  It has nothing to do with them.  I have allowed abuse/abuser to continue on long after they are gone to dust.

By focusing away from myself, tucking the wants, needs, wishes and dishes of what I pretended was right or wrong with it/them, I did not have to seek within to find out what it was in me that I need to change.  In any relationship... we, so often, look outside of Self.  We blame others for the whole of a bad situation.  When, really, we can compassionately look within and realize our own part in it all.  It is scary to look at our dark side, especially, when we feel/were the victim and someone/something else WAS out of bounds.  The problem is, if we continue to see Self as the victim of something/so0meone, we may, me included, remain a victim to it.  It takes two to tangle.  Always.  It just looking outward to find the reasons is never the whole truth of the matter.

Sometimes we just cannot figure out a reason why there has been a problem with it/them.  Our sense of what is just and right is insulted.  The problem is, if we are looking outside for answers, we miss it completely and it does not get resolved.  The answers are within.  We know the answers, most times, bu5t refuse to acknowledge it.

Letting go is an emotional thing.  In some relationships, we become so enmeshed that we cannot figure out the "I" within the "WE"/"IT".  Rationale is more than emotional.  Sometimes our soul just cannot accept when things need to be let go.  It can make us angry, bitter, and/or closed.  To do this is to shut yourself off from feeling deep emotional ties.  While we are hanging on to dead things, we may miss the living.

I realize that I still have so much work to do.  Sometimes eternal hope is a crazy thing to have.  I suppose the death of the dearest soul I ever knew helped me understand that sometimes we walk on alone.  Have one daughter shut the door on me due to her mental issues, and having another shut her own door due to addictions, can really do a number, and did do a number on me.  But, losing someone to death;  well, there were no second chances, no being worthy, no being good enough, could ever bring him back.  Sometimes you have to let things die. 

Today I am going to begin work on simply letting things be.  I drain myself of those heavy things that have weighed on me.  When I meet my Creator, I want to be free of hangers-on that I have not drained from my psyche.

©Carol Desjarlais 10.21/18