JUST GIVE ME ONE THING I CAN HOLD ON TO - THE BODY NEVER LIES

The post title's first half are words from the song used in the video, Angel from Montgomery and the second half is not only true, it is the title of Alice Miller's wonderful book, The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting.

................................................................... www.youtube.com/watch_private?v=jiLPuXYPZqs&sharing_token=juM6OGQUx-OZsQXf5YwtbQ ...................................................................

Please, let me know if clicking the link above doesn't take you to the video at youtube for the poem Brave Truth

This youtube video was uploaded as "private". I have done this before and found my "private" video uploaded on a website. I am hoping this doesn't happen for this one. Edit: Feb 5, 2022: Temporarily, I made this video unlisted to make certain one young woman can see, as I share the link: https://youtu.be/jiLPuXYPZqs

https://ilovemylifebrothersandsisters.blogspot.com/2010/01/just-give-me-one-thing-i-can-hold-on-to.html

I was starting to go through my computer, preparing to back-up everything for a major repair and found some things in the wrong place. One of the things that I found is this poem written July 27, 2008. My life changed from the exchange that I refer to in this poem. It is then that a weight lifted and soon after I started blogging, I chose the name ilovemylife as a direct result of this exchange. I continue to process the experiences of a lifetime. Clarity and sense of ownership to my own perceptions have freed me and continue to move me in that direction. My post Moments of real versus a lifetime of pretending speaks of Alice Miller's book, The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting . Another of her books is The Truth Shall Set You Free. Alice has written many books about the childhood trauma many of us have had and continue to be affected by throughout our lifetime. Her website: Alice Miller The following is a letter from her website: readers mail Dear Alice, I stopped seeing my mother 7 years ago, because I always was afraid of having deadly illnesses after the weekly phone calls with her. Because I couldn’t cope any longer with these fears, I decided I had to have a time out and I told her I didn’t want to have contact for some weeks. She was very angry and wanted an explanation. I told her that I had the feeling she never loved me. She was very angry: how could I say that she did not love me because she and my dad paid for my study, and when I was I child she could not sleep because I was afraid during the night and crying for her attention, and when I was very ill when I was a baby she was visiting doctors with me. She was so angry that she told me that she will advise every parent not to visit a doctor with a little child. She told me that I had to apologize for saying that she didn’t love me; else she didn’t want to see me. In the first 2 years my father was visiting me every 6 months and was asking me to apologize; that would be better for the whole family, my mother and him and my two sisters and the daughters of my sister. He stopped visiting me when it was clear to him that I was not going to apologize for something I was feeling. I’m still seeing my sisters. We never talk about my parents, but I know that they do not understand my decision. “Because my parents are old people now, and they had their faults but now we are adults and have to cope with our problems ourselves”. My two sisters are very close. They never contact me, I always contact them. The youngest has two little daughters and it’s nice seeing these little girls. That’s why I want to have contact with my sisters and also because I’m very afraid of not having family at all. But the contact with my sisters is not satisfying, because the youngest sister is never ever interested in me, never asks me a question and is only talking to me about her life. The eldest sister makes me feel very bad; she tells me that a lot of things happened between her and me when we were children and that that’s the reason why our contact will never be good. I told her that the things that happened between us as little sisters is not because we were bad children but a result of the treatment of our parents. Since I am not seeing my parents any more it’s going very well with me professionally and personally. The only problem that persists is that with friends it’s hard for me feeling comfortable; I’m often feeling overwhelmed by them and afraid that they don’t like seeing me anymore. But with my sisters it’s not going better, even worse. It seems as if they are not interested in me and I always feel very bad after having contact with them. But I’m afraid stopping contacting my sisters, because then I am totally without family. And I’m thinking maybe it’s true, that I’m bad and that I have to try being a better person. Last night I had a dream. In this dream first my youngest sister had informed my boss that I was a very bad person. My mother was laughing. I was afraid because my boss didn’t tell me but it was clear for me that she agreed with my sister (she changed in her communication to me). Then my other sister with a youth friend told me angrily :“that’s the same thing you did in “ city X””. I was totally in a shock, I haven’t ever heard of the name “city x”, and what I did wrong. I panicked, could not breath and awoke crying…. I’m afraid of not having family anymore, but I’m afraid as well that it is not healthy having this kind of relationship with my sisters and always have the feeling that they don’t like seeing and talking to me. Seven years ago it was very hard for me to come to the conclusion that I had to stop seeing my mother. Now I’m very, very glad because I lost a lot of irrational fears. But now it’s even harder to know what to do in the contact with my sisters. Thank you for your wonderful books and website! End of the Reader's Mail letter on Alice Miller's website There are more letters: Alice Miller Readers Mail Click on the post title and it will take you to the amazon page to purchase the book. I get nothing for recommending this book. However, I recommend it. I find it very validating.

MOMENTS OF REAL VERSUS A LIFETIME OF PRETENDING

I choose the moments I have left to be moments without pretending.


When Death Comes

by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

from the book Ten Poems to Last a Lifetime
page 111-112

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I am reading the book The Body Never Lies by Alice Miller. And it is so helping me. It says things I have already learned, but find it so helpful to see in print the words. It validates and gives permission to really believe things that have so rung true in my search for living a life fully, free and unencumbered. I have colored the sentences that just made me pause and drink it in.

If you click on the post title, you will go to Alice Miller's website.

From chapter 10, The Body as Guardian of the Truth
a story of Elizabeth from pages 121 - 123
...But, as always I managed to ignore my own feelings and adjust to her mentality...All I had to do was to listen to my own body, because in all the encounters with my mother I was invariably afflicted with severe physical symptoms as soon as I started repressing my feelings. My body appears to be completely unerring in this respect, and my impression is that it knows my truth very well; better than my conscious self...

It would be nice if I could find someone who would let me be as I am, let me say all the things I would like to say, who would not force-feed me with moralistic homilies. This might help me intregrate my painful memories....I am closer to my own feelings than I have ever been before. I can express them...Since I started doing that, my physical complaints and my depression have more or less disappeared.

...I haven't seen my mother once this year, and I do not feel the need to do so. The memories...protect me from any illusions I might have and also from expectations, that she might have something to give me that I missed out on so much as a child. Even though I still miss it from time to time, I now know exactly where there is absolutely no point in looking for it. ...I feel no hatred in me. I do not need to hate my mother because I am no longer emotionally dependent on her.

...failed to understand that. She wanted to free me of my hatred and did not realize that she was unintentionally thrusting me into that hate, which was an expression of my dependency, a dependency she would have created all over again...Today, I no longer need to suffer from pretending that I have feelings for my mother. I don't. That is why there is no hatred left inside me.

And this part I was really grateful to read:
It does not matter so much whether we have to break off all contact with our parents or not. The process of separation, the path from childhood to adulthood, takes place inside us. Sometimes breaking off all contact is the only way in which we can live up to our own needs.

Form Chapter 11 ~ Can I Say It?
page 127
I can well remember the fears that haunted me when I was writing Thou Shalt Not Be Aware.
...I knew quite definitely that I had chanced on an unwritten law, the devastating exploitation of children for the retaliatory needs of their parents and the taboo placed on that reality by society. We shall not be aware.

Did I not risk incurring the severest of penalties if I insisted on breaking that taboo? But my fear also helped me to understand a lot of things...

p 132 -133
...When their parents lie dying, they desperately hope to feel, at the very last moment, the acceptance and confirmation that they never felt in the presence of their parents throughout their whole lives. Dagnmar writes:
Every time I talk to my mother I feel a poison flowing into my body and forming an ulcer there. I try not to see it like that, because seeing it like that gives me guilt feelings. Then the ulcer starts to suppurate, and every time I lapse into depression. I try to admit my true feelings and tell myself I have the right to feel them, to see the intensity of my anger. When I admit my feelings, although they are not always good feelings, I start to breathe again. I start allowing myself to stay with my true feelings. If I succeed in that, I feel better, more alive, and my depression disappears.

...But, how can I respect myself if I don't take my true feelings seriously? If I don't do that, I don't know who I am, I don't know who I'm supposed to be respecting.

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See the comment section for personal writing

MY INTERNAL WORLD OF GRACE

Without even going out of the door
One can know the whole world.
Lao Tzu

I like to write. When I write about my internal world of feelings, confusion and need for understanding ~ I find healing, clarity and comfort just by finding ways to express my rawness. What I have learned over the last couple of years is that finding truth in my personal life is hard. Hard because what I always believed about my most important contributor to my life was simply wrong. I am wrestling with the depth of the feelings and trying to integrate the revealed with what used to be my internal world. Just because I don’t want to believe that it was false ~ to have been operating with the assumption that I was unconditionally loved by the one who brought me into this world ~ doesn’t change the truth.

Just because someone says “I love you” ~ it doesn’t make it so.

I have come to believe that I can make it without the unconditional love of someone else.

I am not a victim. I choose to live in personal truth. There is nothing more important than truth. Unless it is justice. But justice needs truth.

I take comfort in knowing that what I am is someone I could spend my whole life with. I know how ridiculous that reads. But I love my own company. I love my sense of humor. I love my spirit for life. And I love the joy of being me. I love that I am not pretentious. At the end of all endings, none of us has anyone but who we are. And if you can like yourself and how you have treated others and how you have stood for truth and justice, then that is a pretty good place to be.

I have been going through the foundation of my life. This search has been amplified by the death of my dad May 10, 2007 and finding myself letting the grieving out. It has shaken my core but I haven’t found it discouraging, but a lighter load to carry.

My dad had a diagnosis of Alzheimers Disease, but he and I communicated to his last breath. To me, he had some memory problems, but his spirit was always in tact and very present. My dad had my forgiveness for all the past rage and leather strappings during my childhood because in the end I saw the man for whom he really was ~ gentle, compassionate, loving and tactful. My dad gave me the personification of integrity and being genuine. With me, he showed a sense of humor in his last year. I consider it a gift.

It has been holy work to figure out my family. I have been so moved by the sweetness of my dad. I am aware that the last time we were together was a spiritual experience not only between father and daughter, two human beings, but with Life itself in an all encompassing way. It was a religious experience for me.

What more could we possibly be than sweetness in another’s life?

My roots will be constantly reaching for my father’s fertile ground of strength, fortitude and joy of life. Plant your tree where the ground is best for you.

“We think of religious activity
as directed toward God
- instead of man.

We believe in someone divine
rather than in ourselves.

Maybe we have turned religion
inside-out.”

From the book Please Touch by Edwin M. McMahon and Peter A. Campbell

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“What though the radiance
which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass,
of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.”
William Wordsworth

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The Rose sung by Bette Midler
Uploaded by DarkLady77

If I had wings no one would ask me should I fly
The bird sings, no one asks why.
I can see in myself wings as I feel them
If you see something else, keep your thoughts to yourself,
I’ll fly free then.

Yesterday’s eyes see their colors fading away
They see their sun turning to grey
You can’t share in a dream, that you don’t believe in
If you say that you see and pretend to be me
You won’t be then.

How can you ask if I’m happy goin’ my way?
You might as well ask a child at play!
There’s no need to discuss or understand me
I won’t ask of myself to become something else
I’ll just be me!

If I had wings no one would ask me should I fly
The bird sings, and no one asks her why.
I can see in myself wings as I feel them
If you see something else, keep your thoughts to yourself,
I’ll fly free then.

Lyrics of If I Had Wings as sung by Peter, Paul and Mary