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I am taking a day off today to play. Am traveling with my new friend into a nearby town to have lunch, meet some new people, see the scenery. Wonderful desert rain last night so it is a new world today, and a beautiful one. I will do my best to be a part of it.
I woke up thinking about ‘comingled feelings and states of mind’ in relation to the book writing I worked on yesterday. Part of what I can so clearly see is that to my Borderline mother ALL her children, and in some important ways her husband also, were extensions of my mother herself. In her writings she attributes thoughts, feelings, beliefs and needs to her children that CLEARLY in fact belonged to her.
She didn’t know the difference between her own self and her children. Some could say we were all projections of one part or another of Mother’s internal state as she projected herself out onto us. What really happened was that we were INCLUDED within her own mind-being-self without distinction except we had our own body and our own name. As she contaminated OUR reality with HER reality we did become no more than ‘multiple parts of her own personality’ — for good (my siblings) or for ill (me).
I am thinking this morning again about the ‘anger issue’ as I realize clearly that I wasn’t BORN into this world to be an angry, hate-full person. If I allow those feeling states to swallow me up now — well, those are NOT me. They are NOT who I was born to be although like every other human being I have the capacity to experience those states along with all the other shared human states. But it is clear to me this morning that if my mother had NOT been so terribly sick she would have parented her children differently. We would then have grown up being (as children and as adults) more truly who we were BORN to be.
I work on being that person I was born to be NOW — and I was not born to be an angry hate-filled person. So I do choose not to be one — and for one reason or another I made that choice all along through the 18 years Mother so abused me. As I see it now I didn’t even know then that I HAD the capacity to be angry at her. I often think that by the time I reached my teen years if I had EVER felt my own anger to equal the trouble she caused me, I would have killed her. That was the only available escape route open to me as a child.
NIX on murdering my mother, too!
I know my anger is available to me, but I don’t ‘go there’ and hope I never will. At the same time I choose not to pick up hate and anger at her or at my father, I can focus on my own self in the middle of the hell I grew up in and realize that even then I was reaching from my own self-soul for SOMETHING else — and what I reached for was good.
I didn’t step off of my own path into my mother’s reality THEN and I won’t do it now. That doesn’t mean that I am freed from the powerful affect that her words, her continual verbal, emotional, psychological, spiritual and physical abuse didn’t weasel its way into my brain-thoughts (cognition). All of this DID not only change my physiological development so I could endure and survive that terrible trauma, it also changed the very foundation of how I THINK.
Working with Mother’s written words in the same book as I am writing my own story in is fascinating. No child truly understands the world of parents — their stresses, their desires, etc. But no parent has the right to usurp their children’s life like my mother did. But it happened. Now I work to find out more than I have ever understood about what happened to me as this happened.
I might add here: The level of severe infant and child abuse survivors of deeply disturbed Borderline Personality Disorder mothers know is beyond the current ability of most people to understand or comprehend. It is critically important that we tell our stories!
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Stop the Storm 
Again, your comments hit home. I very clearly remember loving and even admiring my mother, who was witty, funny, and morally upright. She consistently believed throughout her life that I hated her and humiliated her behind her back because she weighed 400 lbs. Nothing could have been farther from the truth — my friends knew not to make fun of my mother in my hearing, because they’d get a verbal beatdown.
She never could just believe in the purity of my love, because she despised herself so thoroughly. It led to her abusing me, and of course, became a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. I always loved my mother, but gods, did I ever hate the way she treated me.
My only hope has been that she has had the capacity, after death, to see the truth of my feelings, and to heal her own shattered psyche somewhat. We’ll see when I pass on whether that was the case, I suppose!
I do a LOT of thinking about my mother — and my enabling father — and today my thoughts became even more crystallized.
I am fortunate to have recently met a woman who is already a dear friend. I traveled with her on a day trip today and had a fantastic time! One part of our journey today was to stop by a long term care center to visit an 86 year old woman with renal failure, dementia, and stroke damage so that she can barely speak.
The woman was holding a turquoise fluffy bunny rabbit that had a baby bunny attached to its body with thread so it couldn’t fall and get lost. Joan talked in her own way on and on and on to that bunny and its baby!! At the end of her very full and very active life dedicated to caring for, loving and assisting many people this woman has returned to her childlike state — and still shines with brilliant smiles.
Seeing her I thought about my parents and what I believe. Loss of consciousness through sickness and physical illness and deterioration diminishes the power of the human soul to operate in the body in this world. That does NOT mean, however, that the radiant brilliance of a person’s soul itself is diminished (I don’t think) in the slightest.
There can be barriers in the body that BLOCK or all but obscure the wonderful gifts the human soul is designed to reflect from God. All kindness, love, caring, compassion, gentleness, humility, sincerity, generosity, true wisdom — ALL of humanity’s highest abilities for goodness happen when God’s light shines His qualities onto a purified human soul — that can then shine that brilliance in their life.
I believe for my parents that the depths of the suffering and trauma in their earliest years of life so changed their physiological development that their ability for CONSCIOUSNESS was seriously obscured. That’s just how I think — that once their body died all the impediments to their TRUE reality died with their body and on the other side their souls were greeted with love and understanding and forgiveness.
If humans are here to grow spiritually, then I suspect neither of my parents — because of the trauma changes to their body-brain that happened when they were very young during their most critical stages of development — were able to make the kinds of spiritual growth strides that they could have made if their body-brain had not been trauma changed. That means to me that on the other side mercy, grace and forgiveness is allowing their SOULS to grow up on the other side — that their spiritual advancement they were deprived of here due to sickness is happening there — in the same way I believe it happens for infants and children who pass through this world so quickly they do their growing-up on the other side.
I believe God hears our prayers for our parents — if they are in this world OR in the next. Both of mine have passed over — but I pray for them daily, just as I would want my children to do for me.
Sometimes as I am working with my mother’s writings I wonder, “Can she see me? Does she know now what she did to me? Is she sorry?” And at the same time I KNOW I don’t WANT her to be sad — so I offer a prayer for her healing wherever she may be.
actually its listed under:
daughters of moms with borderline.
You are incredible! I applaud your daily strength to get up every morning and create a new day. Speaking of creating…I have created my own blog just what you described at the end. The importance of sharing our stories.
it’s called.
daughtersofborderlinemoms.wordpress.
Your stories are encouraged and affirmed. I hope to hear from other daughters
Wonderful!!
Here is the URL address to this rising shining star in what can seem like a dark, dark sky
http://daughtesofborderlinemoms.wordpress.com/