I’m fighting a monster I’m determined that you’ll never see. One of the worst compliments I can get is when someone who knew my Mom tells me how much I resemble her. While I am in agreement that the Universe is inherently lazy and reuses faces generationally, no I do not look like my mother. Not even a little bit. Let me explain. My mother for all her bad traits was a good person. My Mother for all her toxic habits, meant well. My mother simply lacked the tools, training and skill set in addition to a supportive nurturing environment to display love properly towards me. This is simply a fact of my existence on this planet. I don’t fuss or spend too much mirror time. The resemblance between my face right now and hers is breathtaking and startling. It’s like we’re some sort of evil twin matched set. The Good Angel and The Bad Angel but you can’t tell who’s who because we have the same face!! The same face. I was issued her face on this mission. I would wear my tormentor’s face throughout this escapade. I’m grateful that Post Malone is so well received for I see facial tattoos in my future so folks can no longer be confused. She was cruel, I am kind. She hated her kids, I loved mine. She withheld food for her kids, I probably gave too much. She didn’t run and play with us at all… it’s all we did, was run and play. Where she laid down, I got up. Where she shouted, I whispered. Where she scowled and disapproved I smiled and laughed. So, no, don’t tell me how much I resemble my mother. I don’t resemble her at all. Not in lifestyle, not in family, not in character and certainly not in love. So if your superficial self only sees a copy of her, keep it moving fam, this show’s not for you. Peace.
I’m hoping to find Peace with my face. My face isn’t her face. It’s my face. I carry the Face of Peace. She carried the Face of Terror. We are not the same she and I. Merely reflections on painted glass and nothing more. Her life was a fantastic illusion and delusion. My life is vibrant and contains no guile. No guile is how we all should endeavor to live.
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You know when you're a kid life's already pretty intense. But then, just for laughs, throw a set of insanely abusive parents on top of it and drama is just the order of the day. How does one alleviate dramatics? By choosing to be melodramatic instead. Look, historically, abuse cases are already dramatic by thematic element. Then throw childhood on top of it and you get a very dramatic encounter that you hope in time mellows. Mellowing is exactly what I have done. Would I? Could I be so dramatic had been treated more kindly by my parents? I would like to think so. I'm pretty quiet and low key when given space and freedom to be myself unbridled. So my personality is not given to dramatic vibes beyond the palette and the party decorations. Okay, the music might get dramatic. I'm a living example of MY OWN EXPERIENCE of childhood terror at the hands of my parents. It's really who I am. I get that might be a hard swallow for some people. I do get it. But it still doesn't mean I'm going to be reducing my existence one whit further just to make you feel more comfortable in my presence. If you don't feel comfortable, leave. Wherever you are, whether it's a podcast, YouTube video or text message. Whatever makes you uncomfortable, you don't actually have to stay and participate. And call party foul. "I've begun the process of overlapping my old trauma with fantastic new life experiences with my own children and grandchild. I've replaced horrible childhood memories of being mocked and ridiculed to tears with beautiful ones. I took memories that saw me storming away from a table in not just defeat, but also family rejection for being "stupid". I wasn't supported or coached in my game play. They were simply thrilled to have one more agent to practice their winning moves on. I was no more than one more game piece. Except they decided to take it up a notch by intentionally humiliating me in front of my entire family until I fled in tears. The new memory still has me losing the game but winning the confidence of my grandson. We didn't play an adversarial style game. Instead I opted for kinder gameplay that supported his decisions and questioned his motives. We openly discussed strategy. I asked his opinion and he played as fairly as he was capable. When I caught him cheating, I let him know and the game continued forward. No one disintegrated into screaming, crying, gameboard tossing. Those were elements we simply left out of our time together. We are learning to play fairly instead of a cutthroat style my earlier family preferred. It wasn't something I wished to carry forward. So that style of gameplay dies with me. My children weren't taught that and neither are my grandkids. We took a bad bad thing and we turned it into a super positive style. So not only have we stopped a horrific practice in our family, we've been able to shift the strategies of future generations. Making them allies in the great fight instead of adversaries. It all begins there. In the games. What is "fair"? I coached my grandson to the meaning to a "Party Foul". It's important to develop those connections that goes beyond the surface of life. Letting kids know when something isn't cool with code language. Two simple words "party foul" have such an impact in my house. No one in my castle wants to ever hear those words. So we let them in on it. What constitutes a party foul. We have defined and will continue to define it in terms he can understand because he can actually understand. I was talked to like an idiot by most of the men I've met in my life and more than half the women. I get treated like I haven't a brain more than I get treated like I'm ugly. That's actually only ONE time and truly I also felt bad for her ugly ass too. So know her Karma was matched on the spot! My point is that kids don't know what's cool and what's not. They are simply sponges that when squeezed, whatever is put in is what will come out. So if Johnny is cursed at and screamed at during the tense moments of life, when things get tense he will curse and scream. It's basic math. Garbage in, garbage out. We've all heard this a thousand times. But if Monique is taught to center herself, ground, clear and summon her highest angels when things get tense... What does she do when things get tense? What we put into our families matters. It's doesn't need to be religious. Jesus didn't teach kindness. I'm not Jesus. Jesus taught tolerance. Marihemp teaches kindness. Kindness must begin the family. In the center of the home. Parents, kids, grandparents, siblings... kindness is the currency that most of desperately need. It really is beginning with us as the world restarts with fewer people in it. Will people hear and be kinder? Or will they scream and only worry about their position on the board? Flipping the board at their convenience. I'm telling you, if you're a screaming board flipper, I'm out dog. No games for you. But if you play nice and support your fellow player in quality play, I'm in every time!
Back into self surgery I go. For the past three days I’m haunted by a conversation I had with a friend. It’s taken time first to stop being “mad” at her and the things she said. It’s also taken time to examine why I’m still hurt by her words. That means since I am incapable of simply moving forward from where I was, I do actually need to a deep moment to look inside and look back to examine my past and see what’s causing this simple interaction with someone I care for to cause me so much pain. First off, let me qualify by saying I don’t blame the person who speaks revealing words to me. I do in all fullness believe the Creator is using my Sisters to divinely guide me to my truest most inner healing. At times it can appear like the one who said “such n such” was the one causing pain. Which is true on one manner, but not the origin of the pain. Simply the uncoverer of past trauma’s suffered by me in my youth. So we will be excising blame and it won’t be a necessary ingredient in healing. The friend forgiven the day she spoke, doesn’t even know she caused the revelation of deep pain. I’ve no plans to run to her and tell what happened. If she reads it here someday may she know I never stopped caring or blamed, but simply turned inward to discover the root cause. So let’s dig in and discuss this. First, what was spoken? My hair. My hair was the topic. I was asked about my hair after being told how beautiful it was. I’m already aware that my hair was a source of pain for me in my childhood. Having been born without a penis, the hair becomes the greatest asset a female child can have. My mother hated my hair. She didn’t know what to do with it. She hated my hair so much she tried to hurt me by pulling it. Only her ministrations of terror didn’t work on me as I’d been born “tough”. She could pull, tug, yank and jerk my whispy mess all she liked and it just didn’t hurt. It hurt her more to know she’d attempted to harm me in this way. Once mother learned that torturing me with violence towards my head didn’t work, she had it chopped off. Dorothy Hamill was all the rage and her cute pixie cut was what my mother decided I needed. Again, born without a penis, I wore a boy’s hairstyle in 5th grade. Where the pulling didn’t hurt, the boycut did. It dug in so hard that I cannot bear to look at any of my photographs with that cut without crying big, fat, hot tears. It was really a time of deep inner loathing as I was aware I was male with no penis. I could see it now. No penis, no hair, no loving mom and definitely not an interested father. I don’t even remember one time where ribbons were bought. No barrettes, no pretty curls… only blankness and pain over which gender I represented. I knew at age 3 something was missing. And now as a blooming adolescent the pain of gender remained. In highschool I began to regrow and bleach my hair in order to find cohesion with my emerging gender. Or should I say breasts. Bleach blonde, as it turned out, paired really well with a set of knockout tits. I went with it. If I couldn’t be the male I felt inside I would at least solidly represent the female I was clearly presenting on the outside. It wouldn’t be until I saw my first drag Queen that I would find myself on the gender spectrum. You say “Queer” and I say “Queen” either way it’s pretty much identical in my book. I’m fully male on the inside and presenting dope ass Queen on the outside. It is what it is and I am what I am. Fast forward to my lessons. My studies would take me solidly within the metaphysical circles where I would learn about, in particular, the Crown Chakra. I do vibrate purple/violet on the inside. I have seen my inner self align with my outer truth. I have watched the evidence stack of a royal heritage that presents both male and female genders. I have watched as my abilities and strengths emerge in time that indicate that yes, indeed both genders are firmly represented in my human form. One seen and one unseen. Both are clearly visible if One should peer closely enough and listen long enough. Catch the vibration and you will see for yourself this to be truth. So when I learned of the Crown Chakra I began to see the relevance and the gravity of respecting the Crown. Such as, I get very stiff if strangers attempt to touch me on the head. Remember, My own Mother used to try to abuse my head. So strangers being impudent enough to think that the can ever touch my head has an immediate trauma response. This is something I am attempting to rectify in time but it is a bold move of anyone to ever think they can randomly touch the sacred crown of a stranger. It smacks of immaturity and lack of understanding to what the head, Crown represents to the individual. It’s the height of arrogance to think that you know what’s better for another sentient being, than that own being. One is responsible for One’s Sacred Vessel of Light and Love. So why would you think you could touch that? Especially if you’re already dancing in the metaphysical kingdoms of Love and Light? It feels almost the season of admonishment for me. Not for me in particular. While yes I’m feeling admonished (and rightly so, much overdue) I’m also feeling as though my tongue is unleashed to admonish those making rookie mistakes with “loved ones” and allies in the fight. Why would someone be so bold as to believe that they could even touch someone’s head from ten states away. Meaning the One who gave me so much unsolicited and thrust upon advice about my emerging hair lives in Florida. So absurd was the exchange that at some point during the inquest I was told to “wash your hair outside.” I felt, at that moment like I was speaking to a small child. Dear Small Child, (bear with me I have to get this out of my soul) I live in Wisconsin. You live in Florida. Florida is considered warm and sometimes even hot at times by almost anyone on Earth. Think of your coldest day in Florida. Now, make it colder. Colder. Now, turn on the wind. Windier. Good. Now, add snow. More, come one, you’re still not thinking cold enough. Now walk outside and wash your hair. Small child I love you. I really do. But this exchange with you was strange. It tells me how much you don’t know. How stuck you are. How much you are where you are and if your thinking and processing how the world works, you might be stuck there a long time. I think I’ve paid attention to you enough to be able to understand you wish for something different than you have now. Well if this is true, you’re going to have to pull yourself out of your own box long enough to learn that in the state of Wisconsin we don’t ever wash our hair outside on purpose unless something is tragically wrong. One more thing, (you knew this was coming baby) don’t tell people what to do with their head. You concern yourself with your head. Your suggestions while endearing and thought provoking are simply out of their league until your comprehension of the world expands. I’m not sure what your life experience has been that would lead you to believe it’s okay to behave like this. It’s not. Stop telling people what to do. So, now my body thinks you’re a miss bossy pants and wants me to stay away from you. The Creator wants something different. She tells me you’re actually here to hurt me ONE MORE TIME! Like the whole Jesus/Peter/Rooster triangle. The thing is you asked me about my hair first before you told me what to do with it. After you asked me, you rejected my process. You did. Out of hand, without any dialogue as to why my process is what it is. So to your benefit, I abstained from the part you suggested I shouldn’t do… and you know what. For two whole days my hair was a shitstorm mess. Let me repeat so you can hear me better. “After following your advice my hair was a shitstorm mess”Today I rewashed it using my own techniques and yes…. It did turn out beautifully. To me, that’s sabotage. Sabotage is the process where one attempts to undermine another for personal gain. If this is true, then after the third time I’m onto you and get to cut you loose. It’s been a pleasure getting to know you Sister. I’m going to wish you well before it’s over. But when it’s done, it will in fact be done for good. The Creator is specific how this should feel. And you made me feel in a way that’s contrary to the mission at hand. And for me, my Love it’s mission first. I will always love you and send you good vibes. It is good vibes going forward. I guess I just couldn’t reckon I needed to say “good bye” to one more friend. It is though and I’ll see you 30 years forward. Love, Marihemp Personal breakthrough yesterday. I was finally able to open up, in a grown up dialogue kind of fashion with my grown daughter about what happened with my parents (her grandparents) during my childhood. Even telling her about this blog was difficult. Once I upload this entry, I will share with her the link to read for the first time. My hope is that she will see how I was able to find the power to heal myself within myself by taking time to myself and research who I was in order to learn how to become who I will be. The most difficult part was starting the discussion. I had been trained to shut up, be silent and say nothing my entire life. I was called “mouth” and shamed for speaking truth during my entire existence with my parents. Being forthright, honest and open about our life experience wasn’t my youthful experience. Leaving young, setting out on my own to fly a solo existence gave me an opportunity to decide that openness was creed. That honesty wasn’t a boogeyman at all but in fact Truth would become Savior to my soul. My Mom had embraced religion and the concept of forgiveness before I left for the Air Force. Forgiveness and the art of forgiving is a concept rooted in religion, dictated by men for the purpose of glossing over personal crimes against humanity. Forgiveness is not a concept that includes contrition, penitence and remorse. Forgiveness is bullish. It’s abrasive and simply forces the wounded to cry “Uncle” as their arm is twisted behind their back to forget the crimes perpetuated against them. True forgiveness is actually for self. With forgiveness of self comes confession. The ability to vocalize to another the crimes that were perpetuated or experienced at the hand off another. Mom wanted forgiveness but she didn’t want to confess, or be contrite, or make amends. She only wanted forgiveness for being “sick”. Well I get “sick” too. I cry too. I also scream, yell and throw tantrums. At times I feel as though I’m not myself and something else has taken over. However, when that happens, I own my shit. It’s still MY Body and I’m responsible for myself. I have found the power, the will and the sheer magic within myself to see myself for who I am and to heal those parts of myself that unseen by others. Telling my daughter about what my mother (and father) had done to me as a child was a big first step in generational healing. Their secrets are no longer hidden. Yesterday I had an opportunity to spend some beautiful time with my beautiful daughter in a beautiful place and tell some of the horrors of my childhood. It’s impossible to tell it all or write it all down. I didn’t want to make my children do the heavy lifting of my healing as my parents tried to make me do with my mother. My mother sat down and simply read her bible and expected to be forgiven. That was all she knew. That was all she was ever going to know. There wouldn’t be more to her healing than that. She would get to the cross and stop. I’m not stopping at the cross. I passed the cross. I kept going. I didn’t sit down to stop. I might, from time to time sit to rest but until breath leaves my body I will keep going. I don’t wish to pass onto my future generations a legacy of sickness and brokenness. The legacy I and my daughter will leave this planet is one of healing and wellness. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be heard, to be loved, to be felt and to be acknowledged and seen for who I am. I’m aware as I grow older than I resemble my mother greatly. This is superficial and an appearance thing only. For I am not her and she was nothing like me. It’s perhaps the reason we clashed the most. We were different. And for this, I am grateful.
I’m more aware than ever before that each and every family is sent a Davidic healer to heal their family line. At least as far as the Davidic are concerned. I’m certain that each segment of esoteric worship also has a designated healer that is sent down through the line to correct, audit and adjust to get the family back on track. It’s not right that an abhorrent genetic anomaly should continue if it only leads to pain to suffering. We were not created to live such pained lives. We were designed for Joy. Our entire genetic expression is for the purpose of connection. And when we separate ourselves and isolate ourselves or one another from each other, the aberration begins anew. It’s essential to interrupt this isolation and cure it, then heal the isolation incident… completely.
I sincerely believe that each of us who is on this journey is gifted the measure to accomplish these healings if we are persistent and diligent. It takes persistence and diligence to overcome it all. And there will be a lot to overcome. Daily a new memory surfaces of an old pain, hurt and trauma. I think “will it ever end?” Will it exhaust itself? I have to console myself with “Yes, keep going for it does eventually end.” It is the only self consolation I know that is based on any experience. My latest memory recall left me reeling for a whole day. They are so difficult to talk about. Each memory is an expanse in and of itself. For longer ones, ones that lasted more than a day or extended to a segment of days, weeks, months, years… there is a odd hollow quality to these memories as they seem to often not have an ending date. The latest memory recall was one of these. Earlier I had uncovered the memory that I had been imprisoned in the attic of my childhood home. A door had been erected and I had been removed from the family and isolated for a period of days in a hot, bare wood attic to be punished. I was above the family kitchen with a faux ceiling where I could still hear and listen and even somewhat observe (through ceiling tile cracks) the comings and goings of my family while serving my sentence upstairs. What was my crime? Who knows. My crimes never stayed with me as I was not given to overt mischief. Often I was a player in a play who simply got punished for playing along with life. It was routine to be punished in some harsh manner. So to be punished, not unusual. But to be removed from family life, locked away in an attic but still given the position of hearing all and seeing some…. Unusual. And this was for days…not just a solitary punishment with a strike to my face or a belt to my backside. No. This was really unusual. Even for them. Since then I’ve gone back to heal and reheal this punishment trauma. I even rescued myself from the attic once with large wings on my back and with my dragon breath, burned a large hole in the side of my childhood home so that I could never get trapped there again. Yet the attic plagued me anyway. Like a ruthless giant it pursued me to the point of exhaustion. Mine, not it’s. So why? Why couldn’t I get out of the attic even after I rescued myself from it? The answer would wait until my Mom finally passed through the veil to the other side. Once Mom died the flood gates of memories came through like a parade. One new every day. Some days I need to wait until tomorrow to see where it goes next. The happy part of the story is, I got out. I got all the way out. That’s the happy ending. I’m not still in the attic. The attic is still there though. For all to see. And that’s why my thoughts do go to fire. It’s so shameful to think that they did these things to me not just once, but then over and over and over. For the punishment in the attic was not a one time deal. No deal. It was an event. It was a thing that began and started and would go on for a season in my life. I don’t know how often I was in the attic as punishment and when it went to full time. But at some point, the stint in the attic became a full time gig. See, my father had built me a lovely room. He built me a lovely room in a lovely home. Then he built me lovely furniture to go into my lovely room. He painted it, decorated it and then…. After sixteen years, he took it all away. He took away the room. He took away the furniture. And he took away my access to his home and sent me to live full time in the attic. I’m not sure if I was in the attic a week, a month or years. My memory won’t tell me the whole story. I only know it was all taken away. So this is where I am. With it taken away. I know at some point it’s given back because I can recall me being in the room at high school graduation and as I prepared to leave for the Air Force. I recall being in my room the day Challenger exploded for I was laying in my pretty bed, in my pretty room in my pretty house the day I cried fat hot tears when the Challenger team gave their lives for the exploration of space. I was already signed up for the Air Force and had my enlistment date when that happened. I was already back in my room. So I know that part of the story ended well. It’s just that, that part of the experience left a deep mark. And that leads me to my own daughter. For as I look back on my own poor parenting decisions as a parent I know now that the awful things I did to her, such as removing her door to her room, were meant in love. It just couldn’t have felt like I loved her when I treated her like that. And I do have regret over the way it worked. That my actions as a parent, weren’t loving to her but painful. To make her feel unloved, isolated and rejected and for that I am sorry. I’m not sorry for my own isolation anymore but for hers. I see how my constant desire to run away from “these people” built into her a genetic response to run away from me. So I take ownership over my misdeeds. I recognize I can’t heal what’s not mine to heal. But I will continue to show up and heal the parts of myself that require, nay demand that I heal them so I can move forward towards the things I have so much hope for. Since my mom died, I haven't lived one day without an intense pain. Today the pain has shifted to a dull ache. It's not necessarily painful, as I've grown accustomed to a certain amount of pain. I went after my body, to heal the damage to my brain and to my heart with vigor and enthusiasm.
Since I began practicing Self Love I learned to mend my vessel swiftly yet thoroughly. It's not something I need to think about much anymore. I love myself and since that's settled, other's love for me isn't such a driving force in my existence anymore. You do, in time, get used to others deciding they don't need to have to love to extend to you. It happens. But how it happens is different for each individual. The approaches to needing love and not feeling filled, much less depleted and emptied are as varied as we are. I asked someone who I love for help in a deep dark moment when I needed a lift up. Instead I was handing a bomb and blown up. When I took a moment to really look shamanically at what happened to me, the picture was perhaps more devastating than perhaps I was prepared for. I know that I'm being prepared to see things no others can see. I have understood this for a very long time, decades. So when I saw my heart in my daughter's hand... and I saw the look of angry, vile and fury as she hurled my broken and bleeding heart at my head.... and my heart exploded in a shower of sparks as it hit my head... left with two gaping holes in my existence and my blood on her hands... blood she tried to wash off but couldn't. Long ago I had taken down a manager who was stealing from the other employees and paying an employee who wasn't showing up to work. The day I "took him down" I couldn't seem to stop washing my hands. Like a macabre act straight out of MacBeth I washed my hands so relentlessly that I would need weeks of lotion therapy to heal from the experience. I can't imagine that my daughter feels any different than I did. I don't blame her. I probably ripped my own mother's heart out of her chest and hurled her heart at her head leaving her also thusly exposed and hollow. I imagine her healing being painful as she didn't posses any healing tools in her wheelhouse. The difference between my experience with my child and her experience with me is... My daughter infant bonded with me. Then my sons infant bonded with their sister. We all infant bonded as a circle. Dad included. I never infant bonded with my mother. I didn't infant bond with my father and I didn't infant bond with either of my brothers. There is a huge difference. And I trust this connection. I trust the energy and the vibrations between us. I am not my daughter's inner moral monitor. I'm her external support only to the decisions she makes. It's not my purpose to look at her life and cast judgement on what I think about her performance. Each of us is allowed to make our own judgements about our own behavior. It's part of the free will package our creator intended. I don't actually believe that daughters and mothers are supposed to be tied to one another so strongly that they cannot form significant bonds with other humans. It's essential to disconnect from the mother in order to connect with other worthy higher beings. It never means we don't love our mother. It simply means we recognize that connecting with her might not be in her best interest or even in our own. At the end I saw that it was best for her overall well being for me to stay home. I saw that loving her meant distance. Loving her meant praying for her while being a different room. And it also meant not judging her based on her path. She had choices that were much harder than mine. And she lack the strength needed to live with the kind of choices I face. Choices and decision I made based on my strength, which was greater than my mom's. My own daughter is stronger than I am. She proved it early, she proves it continually and I have zero doubts in her ability to out pace, out distance, out think and out feel me and all I've been able to experience. I'm already feeling an improvement in my head and my chest today as the lingering soreness of my brain and heart event heal. I did let my kids know what happened and just asked for peace. I've been asking for peace from people since 2006. It's really all I want. I'm not even asking for a place at the table. My table will remain set for those wish to come and sup with us. As this chapter winds down and the new one begins I'm grateful to have learned that Anger deserves a place at the table. The unforsaken deserve a place at the table. And grief will forever be served if it shows up. Two days ago something inside me exploded. I felt it happen. I had to go lay down when it happened and it didn't feel right. Even as I sit here writing, a recent story that I hope to link to in this blog entry explaining my position. But I felt something snap inside me, like a tiny explosion inside my chest and inside my head. Something blew up. I didn't know what it was. Last night I got a message from my sweet friend Candy. She said I sounded hollow and took a moment to look and see. I guess now that I take the shamanic head turn looking back I can see two large holes in my being. One is in my center, a liquid metal terminator style wound but with flesh and gore instead of shiny metal. The one is much smaller and harder to see. It's actually under my hair and barely perceptible but it's there. In my head. It missed my crown, my face, my eyes but it is still there beneath the hairline... Had I been bald it would be visible. So, what happened? I lost something. Something died. A part of me experienced a life altering event where I was powerless. A life event I was forced into having against my will. Like being force fed shit and expecting to swallow. Instead of swallowing my head and my heart exploded. I can only guess that I had a significant brain event. That something in my head was injured as a result of emotional brain trauma. How do I know? I felt it. I paid attention to it and myself while it was happening. I didn't cycle over and over again in the traumatic thing that happened. I simply did things that brought me the most pleasure in my daily activities. I did things that my hands were memorized to do. I showed up to my life and I soldiered on giving thanks for my food, my breath and my existence. I gave thanks for Pablo, for friends and even those who sent me harm, I sent Light. I laid down on a magic carpet I had crafted while first exploring the healing arts. It was a chakra alignment blanket I made for just such healing occasions. I laid out the reiki cot I'd purchased in anticipation of practicing reiki. I went instantly into the gods healing chambers and summoned my ancestors to counsel. I did not petition. or lobby. I simply showed up. I stood among the greats and saw the other ganja goddesses and knew once again that this was my time. I knew that I needed to face this mission an intact being and not war torn apart by a clay family that was dancing on strings. My strings had been cut. I felt them go. The strings that tie, the strings that bind, the strings that bring us over and over and over again to the same horrible conclusion. "They don't love me." And the heart is forever broken. Or, is it? Scientists have recently discovered that the act of heartbreak is a physical one. Breaking someone's heart has a lasting impact on their emotional wellbeing. A heart's strings, the strings that hold a heart together can literally burst and rupture. That's the pain we feel. In time, through diet, mental exercises and good nutrition plus a very healthy dose of regular demonstrable love heartstrings can regrow. They can. They don't actually stay broken. A heart, can be restored. It takes time to regrow a heart. Truly... no one can expect a star fish missing a leg to regrow one in a day. So I'm going to need a minute. You often hear the phrase "BARREN IS MY FIELD OF FUCKS" and that's code for "back off motherfucker, my heart is broken it's going to take me time to grow a new one". Heartbreak, whether it comes from a parent, a lover, a child or even a career can have devastating effects on people's physical and emotional health.
While I don't have all the answers on the how mend your broken heart, I can say that spending time in the counsel of noble and trustworthy beings has been essential to my recovery. No. My heart won't stay broken and I will regrow fresh heartstrings once more. For the very person who broke the last ones. But I'm trusting that her breaking and my rebuilding is making me stronger with each round. Each time I come back I have a little more mass and a little more muscle and the fibers are getting to the point where they are harder and harder to break. But they could still be broken and therefore they deserved to be broken and replaced with a much stronger model. We're going to need stronger hearts for the coming days. It's the only way our species will survive. We are lost without love and we are lost without each other. Take heart and don't give up hope for yourself. You're there, where you're supposed to be doing the do and showing up for the really hard stuff. You might not be getting all the dance moves right yet, but someone is giving you Grace. And you are learning. Keep learning and don't beat yourself up for things you didn't know yet. Remember Ecclesiastes 4. Seasons come and seasons go. This is the season for an echo chamber of a heart. So you can make room for the stronger one you're about to regrow. I love you. For anyone who's ever tried to make bread, we all know that the key ingredient is yeast. But what happens when we don't have yeast? What happens if we have it and simply forget to add it to the bread. Do you even know what happens? Certain recipes require exact and accurate measurements or specific ingredients or the baking project falls flat, never rises and never achieves the desired result. The opposite can happen if too much is added or too much time is allowed to pass before baking or punching back down. I once awoke to a completely full oven of expanded dough after either using too much yeast or waiting to long to bake. What a mess!
Family is no different. When a family fails to use Grace or operate in Grace with loved ones the family itself begins to fall flat. Neglecting familial relationships because of hurts, slights or perceived infractions can take an otherwise thriving family and just nose dive. Grace is the secret ingredient in life that allows us to forgive. It allows us to move forward without injury or slight. It helps us recognize the soul we're dealing with is human. That the soul in question is not ours to judge. The judgement is reserved for a more supreme being of light and magic and not one who is made of breakable clay and other delicate materials that shed tears and stomp off in heated anger. When we ask ourselves how we wish to be treated, most of us would ask first that we be treated fairly. Most of us would wish that we could be heard. And most of us grow up expecting that we'll have a spot at the table for the rest of eternity. We don't expect not to be heard. We don't expect that we will be forced from our families simply because we too have an emotional heated moment when the pressures of life (pandemic and a raging dumpster fire that is 2020) gets too be too much and we pop off. Do we really expect that we will be excused from our entire life simply because we had a bad moment and maybe didn't handle it with the dignity, class and grace that we might often always do? No we do not. We actually believed at some point that someone would hear us. Yet time after time Grace is completely absent from the recipe that is family. Family expects, no... demands we rise to every occasion in perfection. Family demands that there never be a tear. That there never be an injury. That it is always right and always perfect. And those who fail to live up to these lofty expectations of perfection with an imperfect recipe are excised and exiled from family and the reality they had grown to know. At some point during the pandemic my father called my daughter and suggested she commit fraud at work. At the same time this was happening, my daughter had just had a pretty bad car accident, also at work. My sweet Paul had a stroke and there was a world wide pandemic raging outside my door. I snapped. I couldn't take the treachery anymore and I was so done with all the noise of the bullshit my father continued to perpetuate on a family he was excluding from his life. My daughter couldn't see how excluded she was. She continually blamed herself and suggested it was all on her and all her fault for not being included in family occasions. Little did she know that over the years my parents had taken to communicating with a great number of folks, most of which they weren't related to. They talked on the phone, mailed packages, sent letters and cards. She couldn't see that they weren't communicating to her at all. That they had allowed the bulk and weight of their relationship fall completely on her. My experience with my own grandparents was vastly different than hers. My grandparents wrote, called and even arranged to visit on one occasion. There was no heavy lifting on my part, it was tandem. I gave, they gave. I wrote, they wrote. I called, they called. Yet now the burden has completely fallen to the youngest generation to hold the sinking ship together. Yet one by one the beams have been removed. Grace is a structural element to a family the way large beams were the back bone of old sailing vessels. Without the beams to hold the other planks in place the ship would have no stability in open or rough waters. It may casually hold it's shape for awhile in calm seas but the moment a large wave or god forbid a large storm come along the vessel will be blown apart by the water and wind. Grace is essential to the structure of the family. An absence of grace is an absence of structure. This is not to convince you but simply to inform you that without Grace a family cannot and will not survive. I don't know how to get the message of Grace across to these people. It's simply a concept that escapes even my daughter. She is content in her long windy speeches where she doesn't ask me questions or hear me out. She can send paragraph after paragraph telling me how utterly wrong I am and how could I expect them to treat me better than I have. How? HOW? Grace. That's how. But she's not listening. She's not involved. Without her seeing that it was her who came to me with the issue and when I in turn asked for her help said "I am not involved" while standing clearly in the middle, being way more involved than she can ever see. I don't have answer on the how. But I do know the what. I can only hope that in time she will see that she was missing something. In time perhaps she will ask what really happened. In time she will understand that without grace for her own mother she can never expect her own child to have grace for her. For Grace is a gift that we pass from generation to generation. It's a gift we mete to one another in times when we might be hurting so bad that we experiences a traumatic brain injury and aren't thinking the most clearly. When children, even adult ones, lash out in anger, pain and suffering there is always reason. And to fail to take a moment to look at the reason why and hear the other party out and make snap judgements at the wrong moments without allowing all the parties to weigh in is.... immaturity. Maturity is coming. Maturity will come. And when it does, hopefully Maturity will bring a fresh lesson of Grace. For grace first begins with ourselves and once we are full and have forgiven ourselves for the crimes we perceive we committed against others then and only then can we have grace for those we claim to love. Until then it will be my job to continue to hold space for grown children who won't hear me out. To have grace for the people who are blaming me for my own abuse. To have grace for the ones still willing to talk to even if they aren't yet talking with me. There will be a day too late when all becomes lost after failing to listen, hear and understand. We could do a lot by saying "I wonder why she reacted this way." instead of the popular "I can't believe you did that, you deserve to be treated badly." I'm here to tell you that no one deserves to be treated badly. No one. And to think otherwise, deserves Grace and a big fat lesson in Grace. My face is hot and my head hurts. I didn't feel this way when I woke up. But this is not an unfamiliar feeling. The last time I felt this way that I can intensely remember was walking home from the late bus. Today I was ripping out my old garden decorations and cleaning up outside for winter. Winter is coming. I'm not afraid of winter like the other kids.
See, what happened to me was, I wasn't picked up like the other kids. When it was snowy and like a blizzard, I was forgotten. They were on the phone or something, drinking after a long day and smoking talking to their best buds. While I stood in the frozen tundra that is Wisconsin waiting for rides that were never coming. The other parents would be there waiting in warm running cars for their kids. Not mine. Sometimes I would try to call for a ride and if I was lucky and no one was talking on the phone I might be able to snag a ride. This wasn't typical if they weren't waiting for me. There were times I caught a lucky break and Mom would be getting off work at the same time I got off the bus and she'd be waiting. One time it was really bad. It was too terrible to walk. I wasn't sturdy enough and I began to panic. I stood in a phone booth at the Cherryland Airport terrified and freezing, desperately calling and calling to get someone, anyone to come pick me up. It just didn't happen. And in a last ditch to not freeze to death I kept moving. I walked the frozen mile from that phone booth to my parents front door on Deer Trail. And when I got there, everyone was home. I walked in and nobody said a word to me. Nobody noticed me. Nobody said anything. I'd been cold before, having gotten stuck once when I was around 9 in high snow and remembered how they refused to hear how scared I had been. I was always told how good I had it. I was always told that I had so much better than such n such and so n so. It was a mantra to my mother to exclaim at any objection I had at anything. So as I wandered past my unconcerned family I retired for the evening to my room. My face was hot. I was tired and my head hurt. I remember having nightmares after that. Bad ones. The long cold walk would stay with me and from time to time it surfaces in my today through a feeling, like my face being hot after working outside on a cold day. I'm healing this today. My journey isn't meant to hurt anyone, least of all... me. I am aware that this healing is causing pain to those who might close to me. It is their choosing to stay gone and broken or come forward and be healed. It's not my choice to force healing on anyone who wishes to remain broken. Maybe I was arrogant to wish such goodness on such people. Maybe I was disillusioned. Whatever it was, I have and always will be prepared to admit my errors. Believe me I've been practicing apologies for decades. But unless it's backed up by changed behavior none of the apologies in the universe are sufficient to restore such a shattered family line. It will take cooperation and the putting aside of yesterday. Until that happens I can't stop healing. Harm was done. Painful harm that was passed along. Let's stop the harm. I'm calling for a truce to harm. I got sad over the size of my font today in email. I loved my Mom so much that at the end I had jacked the size of my font so she could read my messages. I had never changed it even as things deteriorated and I stopped hearing from her. It had to have been personally painful to her to realize what she had done to me as a child as she aged. She never could confess or be contrite about pulling my hair so hard that a normal child would have cried out. But I’d been burned by the stove. Burned by matches and hurt in so many other little ways that by the time it came time for her pull my hair… there was no pain in her actions. I remember how shocked she was when she realized it didn’t hurt me. It was the last time she would ever pull my hair again. Instead she had all my hair chopped off and I looked like a boy until my breasts finally moved in and took over my face.
I think back to the day she pulled my hair that hard. Now I wonder, did she take pleasure in it and when she learned that pulling hair didn’t hurt me, her pleasure in violently combing my hair was diminished since there was no real harm done? I recall my first edict upon becoming a White Witch was “Do No Harm”. It didn’t matter that her violent hair combing didn’t hurt me every time she perpetuated her wrath upon me. What mattered is that she took pleasure in the torture and abuse of a child. I was told that my faith was “radical” after I shaved my head. I learned recently that a Jewish tradition is to shave a bride’s head after her nuptials. I married Christ in an effort to get closer to her. To get closer to God. But I only succeeded in getting closer to myself. How radical I must have seemed in wanting to bring pleasure and joy to my children’s lives instead of pain. How traumatizing it must have been for her to witness the goodness I bestowed upon my kids while she chose malice and pain to bestow on hers. I can see why she needed Christ and hoped for a life of Joy. For it was not Joy she impressed upon me. It was something far more dark and sinister. And it began in Illinois. My first memories of being burned with a match and bullied over board games was in Illinois in 1971. |
AuthorMarihemp is a Mystic Archives
January 2024
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