Behind Blue Eyes: A Little Girl's Shame

Originally published on 2/8/10

I had other problems before I was molested. I had a terrible school phobia for a couple of years before it started. If all conditions were good, I seemed to be alright – something like a normal person. Something would always tip the scale, and to be out of balance even a little, I felt like the side of the balance I sat upon had fallen into the depths of the earth. And I just “knew,” in my little five year old brain, that there was something very dreadfully and inherently wrong with me. I was different in a very bad sort of way. Though my heart’s desire was to be perfect, I was helplessly, hopelessly bad. I already knew the language of shame.

I was drudgery for her and the bane of her existence. She’d wanted a boy to name “Darin” or "Darren"....  She says that as an infant, I screamed for months, drove her mad with sleep deprivation, and these were only my first actions that would slowly kill her alive by ruining her life. I was helpless to do anything other than ruin my own in turn. She would… I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. I loved her and tried so hard and failed so miserably always. And I loved her, and I know that she loved me. That’s what makes it so hard. That’s why I hated myself for so long. The love was there, and it wasn’t for lack of love. It was life that had been unfair to her and unfair to us. Unfair to me.

But the sexual abuse certainly didn’t make things any better. I seemed to need absolutely no help to feel horrible about myself. With all the mixed and confused feelings of an eight year old little girl, there were things about it that were… well… frozen. I can’t move and I can’t escape… Going back to the memory, a journey that feels like walking down a dark spiral staircase that is narrow, takes me to the place where it happened and happened and happened again. And I feel… dead. I feel dead calm and it is dead silent. I am powerless to do anything. I wiggle away and can’t get away and I remember being afraid. Then nothing. I remember, but I think and I feel nothing when I try to remember when I was just a little girl. I feel dead, like my life and my body were nothing but flat photographs. I wonder what my face looks like as I write this? I imagine that it looks dead, but an emotionless, sad kind of expression. Death would have peace and comfort, but that is not like this. My death is empty nothing

I just wish that I could go on feeling nothing… But feeling comes back. It hurts deep and vaguely in my belly…. Then it is like cramping very low in my stomach…it feels empty as if my body is not there at all, but hurts around the edges of the emptiness… Sick, sick, sick… I’d rather feel nothing. When people ask me now why I didn’t tell anyone then, I don’t remember any thoughts. I remember the familiar pain that travels and takes over my tired, disgusting body that doesn’t even feel like my body anymore. I’m too afraid to really remember and too sick to really forget. I don’t remember thoughts or details, especially in the beginning. I remember feelings of sickness and almost like my soul died inside me with my body still alive, going through the motions of life. The world never stopped going on around me, but I did. I felt dead. No one listened. No one heard.

Little girls should be good and kind. They should be seen and not heard, packed full of sugar, spice, and nice. They should have no needs, and they should be helpful. What’s the use, then? I’m ruined, so I just don’t think about it, and I don’t know what I’d say. Do dead girls talk? Little girls should love everyone and only feel good feelings toward others, particularly adults that they should respect. Only love. Love your enemies and bless everyone, especially those who hurt you. Heap burning coals on their heads by loving them. I think of the red hot coals that burn in the furnace in the winter. I don’t want to burn anyone. Well, at least he loves me. I have to love him and respect him as my elder. I have to obey authorities and they know better than little girls, especially very horrible little girls. Oh, but I hate… the smell of him? The… I can’t even tell you... I feel horrible! Something is very, very wrong. Good girls don’t get angry. Maybe good girls die instead.

Then I became pretty compulsive. Obsessive. Driven. Restless. Lusting after justice and wanting to understand the truth about what was right and wrong. I would determine to do the right thing, and then I would be whole. They would see that I meant well. That would make it okay if I could just… Oh, compulsion soon rules me with an iron fist. I feel lust, but it is lust for justice for others who are mistreated, and maybe I’d find a little for myself.

I didn’t need any help feeling terrible about myself before the death that part of who I was. I don’t even remember who I was or when I was innocent. I only remember feeling very bad and always guilty from the very beginning. Everything bad in the world that happened around me happened because of me, but the world never took notice of my death. And then I woke up to anger, but I couldn’t let it be anger because anger was bad. It was anger I wasn’t ever allowed to have. Inconsistencies brought more anger, and anger brought more shame. That brought more compulsion that seemed to operate in slow motion.

More than thirty years later, I find myself remembering, remembering, while watching the Superbowl XLIV Halftime Show. The Who sings “Behind Blue Eyes,” [LATE ENTRY: in the preliminary acoustic set the did before the game] and I remember when I first heard this song and understood what had happened to me. I’m flooded with memory and the feeling of waking up from my deadness as a young adolescent to feel shame and anger and even more disappointment. Townshend wrote this song as the anthem of an evil bureaucrat cog on a wheel in a totalitarian machine for a rock opera that no one could understand. They only ever recorded a few of the better songs from the opera. But I understand the anthem well. I like another remake of it that I saw on the “Gothika” DVD a few years ago, wept and sang the song for days thereafter. Like wringing a dishrag, I rang out my heart. I have blue grey eyes, I love the arpeggiated accompaniments in both renditions, the chords are beautiful, but the new one holds much more melancholy for me. Add the content of the “Gothika” film in context if you are familiar with it, and it might make even more sense. Everything about this haunts me tonight.

Behind Blue Eyes

No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes
And no one knows
What it's like to be hated
To be fated to telling only lies

I am bad and sad, and no one knows. My eyes are blue and I look like a normal little girl, I think. But I am hated everywhere and my mother has claimed over and over that what happened to me at school today could not have happened. I know I’m not lying, but she doesn’t believe me. I either get laughed at or punished at home. When it becomes known that I didn’t lie, the vindication doesn’t seem sweet. I don’t remember them talking about me being right all along. If they apologized, I was so afraid that I don’t remember.

[Chorus:]
But my dreams they aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free

[When you are dead, you stop dreaming for awhile. Well, not really. I don’t know what you do when you are dead. I stopped having good dreams for a long time. I had nightmares, and my mother’s answer was to give me a copy of C.S. Lovett’s “Dealing With the Devil.” Oh, this is fantastic reading for a nine year old! (If you’re unfamiliar with what is known in evangelical circles as ‘deliverance,’ take a look at “Pigs in the Parlor” sometime. The book I read was a shorter, do-it-yourself version of that book.) My dreams were full of shame, being chased by floating baseballs that spoke condemnation that followed me… of dripping faucets that I could not stop… the dripping of my endless shame and inadequacies that never stopped.

My deadness was like the empty conscience in the song. Why didn’t I react differently? Why didn’t I seek out help? But who would have helped me? They didn’t believe me about how people pronounced their names or that I’d not done anything to “instigate” ridicule, save to act self-conscious. I would tell them this?

When I became a teenager and old enough to start processing what had happened to me, the overwhelming anger that I could not acknowledge made my conscience feel empty. I didn’t feel anything. I think that the shame deadened me. The deadness was emptiness.

I would, however, sometimes sing my own version. Well, I found myself singing my own version…

“BUT my dreams they ARE as BROKEN

As my HEART now seems to be…”

I have hours, lonely hours, with my secrets and my shame. My love is a lust for justice that is never satisfied despite all of my striving. That sounds much to me like “vengeance that’s never free.” Love is about performance. I’m trapped and helpless.

No one knows what its like
To feel these feelings
Like I do, and I blame you!
No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through

My parents don’t know because I fear my father would murder the man in anger. He wasn’t born again then, and he could go to jail, to the electric chair, and then to hell. Then that would be my fault. It is all my fault. But, then I awaken to the first blushes of womanhood and talk of purity, and I know that I am hopeless. Anger tries to find an outlet, but I hold it down until I can crush myself no more. Until I am old enough to drive away in a car. Until I am old enough to pay my own way well enough to leave. None of my pain and woe can show through, and I do bite back hard. I bite back through striving to be good, and I am still never good enough. I developed a lust for justice. One day, I must be able to prove that I have not been as horrible as they think. And then the panic that I used to have that if people looked at me a certain way, they would see what had happened to me. If they saw me naked, they would know. The more of me they could see, the more they would be able to tell. But I had to see to it that none of my pain and woe showed through.

Anger comes, and I am still struggling with it today, watching the Superbowl in 2010. Anger is a sign to us, not a sin. It tells us that we’ve been threatened or that we are in pain. It is protective. But I had no right to protect myself, and the double messages and double meanings swim in my head. Anger at me, at my mother, at my father. And at him. Though I didn’t really mean it, for awhile I’d hoped that the man was rotting in hell because of what he’d taken from me, but I’d given it willingly because I had no option. But I don’t really want to see anyone in hell, yet this blame rests with him. And the blame of who I am to my parents rests with me.

Then came my realization of spiritual abuse. My self had been shaken to the core. I’d been unfaithful to God by serving the church and the acceptance of men in the church. Idolatry. Idolatry of seeking my parents’ approval. Idolatry of acceptance. Idolatry of perfectionism. And my anger reared its raging head. I couldn’t choke it back or “bite back” on it anymore. I’d stored a whole lifetime of it, and this receptacle was full.

No one knows what its like
To be mistreated, to be defeated
Behind blue eyes
No one knows how to say
That they're sorry and don't worry
I'm not telling lies

The isolation that comes with this kind of thing is horrible. I have blue grey eyes and things look pretty normal on the outside. But the traumas happen while the world keeps on moving around you, like in some movie special effect. I’m in this world but I’m walking in a universe just a few breaths behind the real one. I’m isolated in defeat and unjust treatment. To be mistreated, to be defeated, behind blue eyes. I remember once saying to someone who was encouraging me to take better care of myself that it seemed like “spraying perfume over a cesspool.” They looked at me in shock and surprise… because no one knows what it’s like…

For a very long time, I’d hoped that those who had hurt me so deeply by rejecting me and expecting me to be perfect when I was tiny and helpless would come and say they were sorry. I wanted and needed comfort. But my story fell on deaf ears that couldn’t even process the horror of it. They don’t express sorrow for me – but they accuse me of more lies. It’s no different when I’m 23 or 33 or 43 than it was when I was five. “We don’t understand, we are uncomfortable with what we don’t understand, so the path of least resistance for us is to call you a liar.” The bad one. The sad one. Behind blue eyes that fill with tears until no tears even come anymore. But I’m not telling lies.

[Chorus:]
But my dreams they aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free

No one knows what its like
To be the bad man,
to be the sad man
Behind blue eyes.

I’d hoped for a long time that all I would need was prayer and my Bible to heal. And then the Holy Spirit. Then maybe some deliverance. Then, if I mastered spiritual warfare. Then, maybe, if I could get friends who would love and help me. If I could just get out of the house. If I could learn more of the Bible. If I married. If I could have a baby. If I could get far enough away from it, in time…

Some of these things did heal me, but I could not do it on my own. Some of the deep pain required someone who could love me through sessions of talking about my pain and my grief. I found a therapist who showed me the comfort that she’d received from others in the Lord. She encouraged me in love. She taught me and helped me find the way out of the Valley of the Shadow and the long, dark night of my soul. My faith in Jesus was enough to heal me, but I needed another to come along side of me. I needed someone to sit valiantly and patiently beside me while I vomited up the grief and sadness and pain of my dark night. I needed Jesus to extend love to me in a very specific and expert way, and He did that through someone else. The Lord will help you find healing. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it comes in time and through looking into the mirrors that other people provide us in their loving honesty. It comes through His Word, given to us so we can see what He sees in us.

Tonight I’m haunted. I don’t live in shame anymore because I’ve finally started to learn about the courage of unconditional love that I’ve begun to learn to extend to myself. But Superbowl Half-time has me teary eyed a little, grieving the things I barely remember having but feel a full portion of the grief of the loss. I feel heavy in my body, but not sick. Just sad. And it is sad.

I pulled up this video after half-time. Then I journaled. I didn’t weep on the outside, and I felt sad on the inside with a sense of sweetness to realize how much I’ve healed. Now I am weary and will sleep. Tomorrow is a new day and I will rejoice in it. I will look to find the joy in the morning. And the sadness will go to sleep for a few years until I’m reminded of this song and the sad memory of loss that it brings to my mind. I will remember and grieve and feel the sweetness again.

Purge me with hyssop and I will be clean

Wash me and I will be whiter than snow

Ps 51

Fear Mixed with Dutiful Obedience ~ An Unsatisfying Counterfeit for Trust and Love

[Many people] cannot love and honor their parents because unconsciously they still fear them.

However much they may want to, they cannot build up a relaxed and trusting relationship.

Instead, what usually materializes is a pathological attachment, a mixture of fear and dutiful obedience. . .

Individuals who believe that they feel what they ought to feel and constantly do their best not to feel what they forbid themselves to feel ultimately fall ill --
unless, that is, they leave it to their children to pick up the check by projecting onto them the emotions they cannot admit to themselves.

Preface, pgs. 14-15

Excerpt from
Alice Miller
The Body Never Lies:  The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting
WW Norton, New York, NY (2004)

How Enmeshed Families Affected by Both Patriarchy and Personality Disorders Can Benefit from the Literature Concerning the Concentration Camp Survivor

More About Borderline Parenting Styles

The previous post discusses the primary characteristics of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and how it affects the children of those affected by the disorder (abbreviated as “BP” which stands for “borderline person”). In “Understanding the Borderline Mother,” Christine Lawson presents four different “character profiles” of affected mothers, one of which she names the “Witch Mother.” Please note that BPD can affect both men and women, and in terms of how the example of BPD relates to patriarchy, it should be noted that the father can be substituted wherever “mother” appears in these posts to make it even more applicable.

Note: [Bracketed terms] in any excerpts were adapted and added by this blog host for the ease of the reader of this post in order to abbreviate the terminology which was explained in the context of the book (in terms of character subtypes) but is beyond the scope of this post.

BPs that Lawson identifies as the “Witch” variety wrestle with annihilating rage, and this kind of BP mother believes deeply that she is evil and must compensate for an inadequate sense of self. When she feels threatened, she becomes predatory and demands submission as a means of medicating her own emotional state at the expense of her children. She often singles out one of her children as the receptacle for her self-hatred, though she may show this side of herself to all of them. The message she communicates to her children is that “Life is war.” This is also the rarest of the subtypes Lawson describes, and quite often, this type of mother tends to hide within another BP persona or apparent competence until something triggers the predator within (pg 38).

Borderline mothers can be difficult to recognize (pg 38) because BPs:

• Seem normal to casual acquaintances
• Have unique symptom clusters
• Are different with different people, including their own children
• Have different external or public personalities
• Function well in structured environments and specific roles

More Similarities Between Behaviors in Dysfunctional Stay-At-Home-Daughter Families and BPD Parenting Styles

Parents who follow Botkin-style patriarchy sometimes manifest these same traits or variations of them, and in the previous post, I explore several other similarities between parenting styles within these two groups that both manifest enmeshment. The reader should understand that this post draws a comparison between the common features of both groups in order to help children of enmeshment both understand dysfunctional families and thus move through their pain into wholeness. 

Though I believe that the ideology of patriarchy lends itself well to those with personality disorders which makes those who do have such a diagnosis more protected within these patriarchal systems, I am in no way contending that parents in patriarchy suffer from BPD. The followers of patriarchy sometimes behave very aggressively with critics, showing intense anger and demeaning those who do not meet their expectations, both inside and outside of their families and groups.  Like the high functioning BP who keeps more unpleasant matters well-hidden by showing only a careful façade to most others, patriarchy follows a very obvious rule: the parent can never be wrong and fathers can never be criticized.

Those who follow the Family Integrated Church (FIC) system see each individual father as the gatekeeper concerning doctrine and related practice for his own family, and in many FIC churches, men are even discouraged from talking directly to other women concerning conduct and doctrine because it is interpreted as interfering with the authority of the patriarch as independent prophet, priest and king over his own family jurisdiction. The FIC system itself tends to naturally insulate against criticism, inhibit legitimate concern for members within a family, and the system itself is quite punitive and intolerant of deviation from its narrow standards.

 Often in the same manner by which parents with BPD use their children to bear and contain their negative emotions, parents in patriarchy often objectify and scapegoat their own children to preserve their devotion and high regard for their ideology, the leaders they follow, as well as the outward appearance of the family. Also noted in the previous post, dysfunctional families spontaneously and unconsciously assign identified roles to family members, and one individual tends to be labeled and serves the family as the primary scapegoat. Because of the inequitable balance of power in families (favoring the BP and the patriarch), any subordinate within the family system can be blamed, however. Black and white thinking fosters this response in both BPD and cultic families where ethical issues as well as dynamic people reduce down to static elements – objects of use – which are understood through narrow predefined prejudices.

Drawing Insight from the Personal Accounts of Concentration Camp Survivors

Lawson and other authors concerned with child abuse report that enmeshed children and adults often find value in reading literature concerning concentration camp survivors. Many report dreams about captivity themes because they feel guilty, falsely condemned, trapped, and hopeless. Many of these things reported by children of BPs and abuse victims echo the statements and feelings of those who grew up in spiritually abusive patriarchy. As so many in patriarchy profess to be acting in the best interest of their children by following the prescribed paradigm, something the loaded language of this cultic group describes as “shepherding” or “protecting the hearts” of their children, BP mothers also feel entitled to their duty to dominate their children as a part of their role as parent. They do so because they believe that this treatment is “for the child’s own good.” When confronted by therapists, the BP becomes very defensive because they do not recognize their behavior as destructive. Lawson states,

Having been raised by parents who demanded absolute loyalty and obedience, the [borderline] mother wields her power as blindly as she once relinquished her will to her own parents. Denial of her child’s pain comes as easily to her as denial of her own pain. The [borderline mother] projects the war that rages within her onto the no-good child (pg. 273).

Many people who did not grow up in dysfunctional homes often question why people remain in destructive and demeaning relationships, and this is very true of people who do not understand BPD. Likewise, people who do not appreciate the concept of “bounded choice” do not understand the plight of the children within Botkin-style patriarchy because they do not understand the subtle dynamics and complex pressures upon adult daughters within the patriarchal system. But the survivor of a concentration camp knows deeply and intimately what the ill-affected daughter in patriarchy faces, something Lawson in particular points out as true of the children of BPs in “Understanding the Borderline Mother.” This kind of degradation at the hands of a parent is vastly different from that which comes via a stranger because the child builds their own identity upon that which the parent gives to the child. If this is based upon denigrating shame, it has a devastating affect on the child.

From Lawson, Pgs 273-4:

The words of a concentration camp survivor reflect a child’s blind faith in the parent: “Why did we not fight back? . . . I know why. Because we had faith in humanity. Because we did not really think that human beings were capable of committing such crimes” (Klein ["All But My Life"], p.89). The [borderline mother’s] children, too, fall victim to their own faith in humanity and therefore repress awareness of their mother’s destructive power. . . Children have faith in their parents and believe in their greater wisdom.

In his book on moral life in concentration camps, Todorov ["Facing the Extreme"] (1996) observed, “In the totalitarian ethic, loyalty to the leader is a fundamental obligation” (p. 189). Young children need to believe that their mother knows what is right and good. Their trust and loyalty are truly blind, for they have no other experience by which to assess her judgment. They believe in her basic goodness, more so than they believe in their own goodness. It is safer to accept the view that they are evil than to consider the consequences that the mother is evil.

Just like a survivor of a Nazi prison camp, the child of a BP must realize that if they do not take responsibility for their responses to their captivity, they run a great risk of becoming like their captors. This is very true for those in recovery from spiritual abuse who must address the lure of the benefit that they believed the ideology offered to them, because they are also at high risk for allowing their devotion to idealistic virtues serving as justification for behavior. They must make peace with their former abusive leader and work toward forgiveness, one of the long-term goals in recovery that occurs in the final stages of healing after steady progress and perseverance. They must also admit to themselves that their former ideology was flawed, just as the recovering BP parent must perform a painstaking moral inventory in order to take the first steps toward their own healing. Lawson quotes Todorov saying “Someone who sees no resemblance between himself and the enemy, who believes that all the evil is in the other and none in himself, is tragically destined to resemble his enemy” (p. 200). For me, this echoes that “if we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us” (1 John 1:10, KJV).

As a part of working through their trauma, it is essential that those who have been hurt by any trauma, be it spiritual abuse, a personality disorder in a parent, family enmeshment, or Botkin Syndrome must be able to express themselves as they make sense of their experience so that they can progress through it into full healing. The silence must be broken regarding the silent suffering of Jesus’ little lambs. Lawson quotes another concentration camp survivor concerning the importance of telling one’s story to encourage healing.

Pg 290:

Those who experienced imprisonment . . . are divided into two distinct categories . . . those who remain silent and those who speak . . . those who remain silent who feel more deeply that sense of malaise which I for simplicity’s sake call “shame,” . . . The others speak . . . because . . . they perceive . . . the center of their life, the event that for good or evil has marked their entire existence. [Levi, p.149]

Lawson concludes this chapter by pointing out again, that like the BP parent who is often difficult to recognize and mistake the child of the BP as the problem in the family, concentration camp survivors were not believed at times. History has documented accounts of many who escaped camps in the early phases of WWII who were not believed when they escaped to tell the horrors of what they endured. For the adult children of patriarchy, this is absolutely true in many cases, because it is painful for people to be shaken out of their comfort zones to consider a very disturbing truth. Things aren’t always as they seem, and few people often believe what both the children of BPs and the children of abusive patriarchy have to say.

In conclusion, I would like to offer the footnote on page 290 of Lawson’s book:

Primo Levi (1988) writes in The Drowned and the Saved: “Almost all of the survivors, orally or in their written memoirs, remember a dream which frequently recurred during the nights of imprisonment, varied in its detail but uniform in its substance: they had returned home and with passion and relief were describing their past sufferings, addressing themselves to a loved one, and were not believed, indeed were not even listened to” (p. 12).

Lawson also states that,

“Pain that is expressed, heard, and believed is not experienced in vain. Pain that is heard can then be tolerated and healed” (pg 290) . . .Children need to be held, to be mirrored, to be soothed, and to be given some control throughout their childhood, but especially following separation and loss. Unbearable pain that is expressed, heard and believed becomes bearable (pg. 304).

It is my great hope that the daughters and sons of patriarchy can speak the truth about their experiences and also see them for what they are. I pray that they will be able to separate from the oppression they endured, can forgive their parents for their shortcomings and what many experience as spiritual, psychological, and emotional abuse. I pray that they can see themselves as good and can trust in their own personal goodness, no longer serving as a scapegoat and source of blame for the family. Exploring some of these writings about the plight of the concentration camp survivor as well as the child of a borderline personality can offer helpful encouragement to the children of enmeshed families.

Without intervention, their emptiness, hopelessness, rage, and fear will be passed to the next generation . . .

Borderline mothers are not evil; evil lies in the darkness of unawareness. They cannot see what they are doing.

Those of us who can see must shine the light of our understanding like a beacon guiding a ship to harbor, or share in the responsibility of allowing mothers to drown their own children in a sea of despair.

(Lawson, pg 307).

  -->

Excerpts and adaptations from

Christine Ann Lawson

Understanding the Borderline Mother:

Helping Her Children Transcend the

Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Lantham, MD (2004)

Oxford (2000)

Quoting

Primo Levi

The Drowned and the Saved

Vintage (1989)

Quoting

Tzvetan Todorov

Facing the Extreme:

Moral Life in the Concentration Camps

Holt Paperbacks (1997)

Quoting 

Gerda Weissman Klein

All But My Life

Hill and Wang, expanded edition (1995)

So Easy to Blame

Christians weighing in on Botkin Syndrome:
Excerpts from"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves"
by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.




From pages 246 - 250:


Sometimes we blame others as cover-up for fear, fear of punishment, embarrassment, responsibility, and the like. Self-protection is a strong drive in all of us.

At the most basic level, our tendency to blame others probably stems from our fundamental conviction that we ourselves are blameless. Isn’t that right? We might never come out and say it, but deep in our heart we know that we are just, honorable, and upright. When things go wrong, it must be someone else’s fault. Surely it couldn’t be ours ...

Face it: we want to blame. When we have been hurt – or think we have – something in us wants to place the blame somewhere (usually on someone else). But the more we blame, the farther we walk down the dangerous path of bitterness. The path never leads us to health and happiness, only to deeper distress...

Do you see where this leads? Eventually we get all the way back to Eve – who, as we have seen, shirked her own responsibility as well. In other words, the blame game leads nowhere. All it does is prove that we are all flawed, imperfect people living in a flawed, imperfect world where “stuff happens.” So why bother playing it at all? Why not get off the path of bitterness and get on the path of forgiveness?

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

Blame Game

From Harriet Lerner in

“The Dance of Anger”:

This is the who-started-it game – the search for a beginning of a sequence, where the aim is to proclaim which person is to blame for the behavior of both.

But we know that this interaction is really a circular dance in which the behavior of one partner maintains and provokes the behavior of the other.

The circular dance has no beginning and no end. In the final analysis, it matters little who started it. The question of greater significance is: “How do we break out of it?”

(pg. 56).

Jesus Loved Women by Adele

Another entry from Adele Hebert, Independent Scholar.

Jesus loved women so much!

Thank God no woman was made mute.
Thank God no woman decided to kill innocent baby boys.
Thank God no woman was ever rebuked harshly by Jesus.
Thank God no woman was ever called a name by Jesus.
Thank God no woman was ever silenced.
Thank God no woman ran away.
Thank God no woman denied knowing Jesus.
Thank God no woman
was ever predicted to be part of
the plot to murder Jesus.
Thank God no woman pronounced Jesus death sentence.
Thank God no woman was part of the beating, mocking,
whipping, or crucifixion.
Thank God no woman ever hurt Jesus in any way.

Jesus loved women so much!

Thank God one woman said, Yes! (Lk 1:38)
Thank God another woman said, No! (Lk 1:60)
Thank God a Mother named her son.
Thank God for women prophets, even an old woman,
not ready to die telling,
telling all those who wanted redemption
Thank God women told and retold and retold their stories;
they were given a voice.
Thank God for the caring, nurturing, generous women who followed,
fed those men three years.
Thank God for the timid, trembling woman who dared to touch his hem.
Thank God Jesus called women forward to receive healing,
then gave them a voice.
Thank God women few words are recorded.
Thank God for the bold woman who asked for crumbs, was then
commended for her great faith.
Thank God Jesus defended children, called them,
hugged them, blessed them.
Thank God for the nameless voiceless woman who kissed Jesus feet,
anointed them with costly ointment, wiped them with her hair.
Thank God Jesus offered a woman living water.
Thank God the woman told, told her whole village.
Thank God for the named raped women in the genealogy of Matthew.
Thank God we are now called daughters, sisters, and friends.
Thank God children shouted, Hosanna!
Thank God Jesus said not to worry about many things.
Thank God even tears were treasured and recorded.
Thank God women were encouraged to sit at Jesus feet.
Thank God Jesus touched women,
even those with blood, even a dead girl.
Thank God Jesus made us equal in marriage and divorce.
Thank God Jesus forgave women, even for adultery.
Thank God the Holy Spirit is feminine.
Thank God for the parallel stories about women.
Thank God for servant girls speaking, and pregnant women praising.
Thank God Jesus wept.
Thank God for the woman who dared to share her dream.
Thank God Jesus uplifted widows for what little they can give.
Thank God for the nameless, voiceless women, but not forgotten.
Thank God Jesus revealed his being the Messiah to a woman!!
And the Resurrection disclosed only to a woman!!
Thank God women were honored, uplifted, blessed, healed, and heard.
Thank God Jesus gave women a voice!
Thank God women and children were precious!
Thank God Jesus consoled, comforted women who wept.
Thank God for the faithful women who were there under that cross.
Thank God the women took note of the tomb,
and how Jesus body was laid,
wrapped.
Thank God for the women who bought spices to anoint him,
the only funeral he would have.
Thank God the women went to the tomb that early morning.
Thank God Jesus chose a woman/women to be the first
to see the RisenLord!!
Thank God Jesus chose not to reveal Himself to Peter
at the tomb ut to meet the men over there in Galilee.
Thank God Jesus chose a woman/women to go and Tell!
Thank God she/they ran and told and told and told!
Mary Magdalene Beloved Disciple!!
Mary Magdalene Apostle to the Apostles!!
Thank God women were there in the upper room.
Thank God women received the Holy Spirit!!
Thank God for the women who had the first churches, in their homes.
Thank God women were teachers, co-workers, and apostles even martyrs.
Thank God women are still hearing the voice of God.
Above all, Jesus gave women a voice!!

Thank you Adele!

Want to read more from Adele Hebert?

LINK HERE

Adult Children Learn to Assume the Blame

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.


From pages 246 - 247:

We regularly see an interesting phenomenon occur among adults who were abused as children. Thy experience an overwhelming need to cast blame somewhere. Because of the dynamics of childhood – where adults are bigger and more powerful, and therefore perceived as “always right” – abuse victims invariably place the blames on themselves.

But they soon start accepting the fact that they were only children, innocent, unable to either chose or prevent the things that were happening to them. “For the first time I realized that I wasn’t to blame for all the problems that existed in the world,” one woman said. “I felt I had to blame someone. I couldn’t blame the adults, because after all, they were adults. So the only one left to blame was me.”

Once this realization hits, they often start blaming others with a vengeance. Some are simply programmed to blame others for everything. One man named Jerry, remembers growing up in a family where everything was regarded as someone else’s fault. He can remember times when they hoped for a sunny day and it rained. His father would say, “Even God is against us today.” Jerry grew up very confused about the matter of responsiblity. If he himself didn’t bring about the wrong, then he had to point an accusing finger at someone else.

A more mature understanding of the world tells us that sometimes things just don’t work out the way we hoped. There are disappointments, unexpected developments, changes in plans, that are no one’s fault in particular... Being able to accept this reality, without always having to point the finger of blame, is an important component of personal maturity and emotional health.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

. .

Recognizing Anger: Essential for Forgiveness?

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.

From pages 223 - 225:

Would you agree or disagree with the following statements?

• Without anger, most forgiveness is superficial.
• Genuine forgiveness almost always includes anger.

Long experience helping people deal with dysfunctional family issues lead us to agree with those statements. However, many people are bothered by them. They tend to have a certain amount of mistrust concerning anger, and are especially uncomfortable connecting it with something like forgiveness. But the fact that anger and forgiveness tend to be intimately connected. In most cases, we cannot really forgive until we have dealt with our anger. To put it another way, working through anger is often a crucial step in the process of forgiveness.

A lot of confusing ideas circulate about anger. Many of us were brought up to believe that all anger is wrong, even sinful. But anger is a fact of life. It happens to us. We experience it. What do we do then? Many of us play word games with it. We say we are “a little irritated,” or “out of sorts,” or “a bit upset.” We go to great lengths to avoid coming right out and saying, “I’m just plain mad.”

But the fact is, we often are just plain mad – and there is not necessarily anything wrong with that. The emotion of anger, in and of itself, is not wrong. Let me say again, to make sure you get it: the emotion of anger, in and of itself, is not wrong. It just is. It is part of the “standard equipment” that comes with being a human being. It is what we do with our anger that makes it either right or wrong, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy.

We can use our anger wrongly, or express it in unhealthy ways. A simple example is when we “fly off the handle” at someone we love without good cause. Unhealthy anger separates us from people we love and want to be with.

But we can also use our anger for healthy purposes. For example, anger can energize us to overcome some challenge or obstacle. Who among us has not had the experience of “getting good and mad” at some stubborn problem, and finding that the energy produced by the anger gets us over the hump?

Anger can also alert us to the need to set boundaries, or limits, with other people. It is one of the ways we protect ourselves.

~~~~~

Lewis B. Smeades in “Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve”:

Healthy anger drives us to do something to change what makes us angry; anger can energize us to make things better. Hate does not want to change things for the better: it wants to make things worse. (pg. 21)

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)