Dear Tee:

I wish you did have your own, private pool. As far as your concern in regard to hygiene in a public pool, I thought chlorine took care of that..

I wonder how you’re feeling/ doing today/ tonight..?

“The idea is to push those horrible, shaming words out of your personal space and your sense of identity. Pushing them out, rejecting them, becoming free from them… Yes, perhaps you could recall those false accusations/qualifications that she was hurling at you, and then counter them with true statements. I’m not sure how best to do it, but I wouldn’t even say her false accusations out loud (not to give them power), but only your counter-statements, affirming the truth of who you are.”-

I am a good little girl. I deserve love and appreciation. I always did. I was always a good little girl. I deserved acceptance, acceptance of the human body I found myself in, living with it in peace. I deserve gentle coaching, being taught how to live, how to make choices, to have agency in my life, to love myself and hold myself accountable for my words and actions today and every day.

And you too, Tee. You deserve acceptance and appreciation, peace within your body, agency, hope.. and your own private pool 😊

🙏 🤍 🙏 Anita

Dear Tee:

“Actually I was feeling quite good yesterday, not too much pain thankfully. It’s a good feeling to be pain-free, or almost pain-free in my body, even if it’s just for a short while. So I appreciated it. 🙏 Let’s hope today will be similar 🤞😊”-

I do hope so! 🙏 🍀 🤞 🍀 😊

As I read the above, I noticed that it’s a good feeling to be tic-free in my body.. even if it’s just for a short while, and to breathe comfortably (not holding my breath).

“I’m sorry that no one acknowledged your pain before… I can imagine people back at home told you platitudes, like ‘your mother did the best she could, she sacrificed so much for you, you should be grateful to your mother, your mother loves you’, and stuff like that, right?”- Right. Again, it’s like you were there.

“What about later, in therapy? Have you talked about your childhood in therapy?”- Yes, I did share (2011-13) and I received enough support from my therapist at the time to decide (2013) to end contact with the mother. But what happened next was very disappointing to me, almost heart breaking: he did not support my decision. He was neither for it or against it. He definitely did not express approval of it. So, I thought: if he agreed with me about how terrible it was, why wouldn’t he support ending contact with her?

I interpreted his lack of approval and support as.. a repeat of any of the messages you listed above, as well as this message: Mother is Always Right (even when she is wrong), and A daughter Must Never End Contact with Her Mother No Matter What.

Shortly after, therapy ended as I left the State to another.

“Yes, I really do. I hear you. I believe you. I trust that it happened. And that it was horrific 🙁”- Thank you, Tee. You are the best ✨ ✨ ✨

“I’ve received a small portion of the similar type of shaming from my mother too. It wasn’t nearly as extensive, but I’ve never felt good in my body. I felt ashamed of myself, and that included my body too.”- I am sorry that you too suffered this kind of pain 🙁

“I can imagine how painful it was for you to hear those shaming words.. I’m now thinking that she used to bathe you and dress you into your teenage years. Is that when the body-related shaming started?”-

The body related shaming started way earlier. I just remembered something I didn’t think about for a long time. I was in the bathtub. It wasn’t a big bathtub, quite narrow. It was me (I was skinny) and my sister lying down in the bathtub, so I think I was maybe 7 or 8. This is what I remember so very clearly: when the mother entered the bathroom, I was alarmed and immediately turned over so that my back was facing her. I didn’t want the front facing her. I didn’t want my back facing her, but of the two options, her seeing my back side was preferrable to the front.

She shamed everyone’s bodies, meaning, in her conversations with her sisters, mostly on the phone, she’d gossip a lot and talk in derogatory ways about women’s bodies, how faulty they are (for not being model-like perfect), how they should be ashamed of themselves for not adequately covering their imperfections with loose/ modest clothing & such. There was a whole lot of such talking that I heard second hand. She used very vulgar words for a woman’s.. private part in her conversations. And there was no way to not hear her talking because the apartment was a very small 1-bdr apartment.

As a child and onward, I knew about neighbors’ and cousins’ sexual practices because she talked about such on the phone. A lot. And there was a lot of shaming involved. There was absolutely no censorship in her talking to her sisters on the phone (or in person), considering there was a child present. I remember seeing the people she talked about in real life and having the images in my mind of what they were doing sexually. It was very unpleasant for me to have those images.

As far as the bathing as a teenager- that was excruciating. It was traumatic. To say NO to her didn’t even cross my mind. Not an option. But at one point on, I negotiated and was allowed to wash parts of me on my own. And at one point on, I was to be in the bathroom alone and was myself on my own, then call her to come in and wash my back and head only(she said I couldn’t do it right on my own). So, I’d wash, call her name, she’d come in and I’d cover myself with 1 or 2 hands I had available. I had to choose what to cover. I didn’t want her to see anything of my body, but had to choose what to prioritize hiding. I was very uptight the whole time she was there.

I clearly remember her hands scrubbing my head, digging into my scalp so hard that it was painful. I remember making a noise, a quiet noise indicating it was painful but it didn’t help. She washed my head as if it was a very dirty appliance that needed to be scrubbed hard.

After the ordeal, I remember being very clean and in pajamas and feeling so relieved that I was finally covered, safe within the pajamas, nakedness unseen. I don’t remember until what age she washed me and how it came about that she stopped.

All this part I just shared, I didn’t share it with my therapist at the time.. or if I did, only a tiny bit of it (don’t remember at all)

“It’s not too much, Anita. I’ve experienced a small portion of it myself, so I understand.”- I hope it’s still not too much. I would very much like to read your thoughts and understanding of al this.

“What is more challenging to me is how to help you, since I’m not a therapist. And so I’m thinking that I should refrain from suggesting various corrective exercises, since some of those might be triggering for you.

“I’m almost sure that you would benefit from some type of somatic therapy, e.g. Somatic Experiencing (which I think you mentioned in a response to a member a while ago). Because it involves working with the body (where the trauma is stored), but in a very gentle, gradual way, so that you never get overwhelmed. I think somatic therapy involves various corrective exercises too, but again, it happens in an orderly way, tailored to each individual’s needs.

“So I’m a bit reluctant to suggest those exercises, because I’m not an expert, and trauma healing is best done with expert guidance..”-

I think you are very correct here: I would benefit from somatic therapy/ experiencing. In the context of self-help (not therapy), if you feel comfortable, you are welcome to suggest a small, mild exercise for me..? I would like that.

“Those are all very good affirmations, Anita. Just one observation, if I may: I think that from the perspective of the inner child, you don’t even need to put a stress on holding yourself accountable. Because being a child is primarily about feeling loved, cared for, and care-free. Holding yourself accountable is more a feature of your adult self.

“So perhaps your inner child – little girl Anita – should simply be loved, nurtured, gently held, soothed… (by your adult self), without any expectations on her, including the expectation to be accountable for her words and actions.

“Expectations come later in life, but as infants and toddlers, we should be mostly just receiving, without being expected to give anything in return (now it occurs to me that it would be the closest feeling to unconditional love, I guess: just receiving the goodness, soaking it in, and not being expected to earn it in any way). What do you say?”-

I say: you are correct, Tee. I agree. I didn’t notice this point, so thank you for bringing it up (and for doing it so thoughtfully and gently).

When I read the word “receiving” in “we should be mostly just receiving”, as in, the inner child receiving.. I felt alarmed, as in receiving the mother’s hands on my naked body, or receiving her hands scrubbing my hurting scalp..

Thank you, Tee, for being a safe place for me to recall and share all this, safe, supportive, intelligent, understanding.. amazing ✨ ✨ ✨

❤️ 🫶 ❤️ Anita

Dear Tee:

I am transitioning from having this other person (mother) move from being the focus of my life, the one on center stage=> to the sideway, while I (inner child & adult) take center stage.

Decades of dissociation, self estrangement, alienation, not knowing myself.. shifting to =>

Here I am, the forgotten one!

The forgotten Anita.

All that mattered before was: she, she, she.. she she she… this other person.

This other person, a combination of full blown borderline, histrionic, paranoid, obsessive-compulsive.. (Covert) narcissistic.. all of these 24/7 personality disorders- and me (the forgotten one) growing up (inward/ dying) with all of that.

And now, today, while on my uphill walk outdoors, irl.. things shifted from dissociation/ denial/ auto pilot (as if I wasn’t there all along, absent.. not there), to=> it really did happen.. It did happen to me. It REALLY happened.

This multi-faceted trauma, day after day, night after night, year after year, it really happened: I was really there. And here I am.

All along, I was in the shadows, all I could see was her on center stage. Her pain. Her everything.

On the walk today, I saw ME on center stage. She wasn’t there, on center stage.

I don’t want to think about her anymore, Tee. Here is me, The Forgotten One.

Here I am, the person I never got to be.

This is real here, Tee.

This is real.

It’s .. the focus of SIX decades been the wrong focus.

Seems like everything a mother can do wrong to a daughter, she did.. every single thing except for.. literally breaking my bones, or .. well, she did penetrate my body.. there, with her fingers. Just to check, she said.

It was truly a nightmare, Tee. Truly a nightmare.

It’s like.. well, she left nothing innocent within me, nothing untouched by vulgarity.

Me on center stage. Me, good.. not vulgar. Me, good, clean. Me, no more her, that contamination.

May I live clean, pure, untouched by vulgarity.

(This all may be too much..? Yet true.. truth of my life, nothing I chose).

I hope this is not too much for you, Tee. If it is, and if you don’t respond further to me, I will understand.

Anita

Dear Tee:

The first smile on my face took place when I read on the other thread that your pain being practically gone 🙂 🤞

I am reading your two posts a part at a time, quoting & responding before I read the next part.

“That was a wonderful corrective exercise: you treating your younger self the way she should have been treated: with respect, care and consideration, taking her needs into account, not violating her personal space and her boundaries. I loved reading it, and I hope you feel some positive change from it?”-

I just experienced the 2nd smile when I read “I loved reading it”. Also, when I read “the way she should have treated: with respect”, the word “respect” stood out to me as something starkly absent from how she treated me, I mean, ABSENT, alarmingly not there.

“Your mother unfortunately violated your boundaries, not only emotional but physical too. It seems she felt like she owns your body and is entitled to do with it whatever she sees fit, including penetrating it (to check for virginity, I guess?). Which is a horrible sexual violation and I think would qualify for taking the child away from her.”-

I remember the feel of her fingers washing me there, in the shower. Just like she scrubbed my head hard to .. remove all the dirt, and I could feel her fingers scrubbing my scalp, she washed me similarly elsewhere, penetrating a bit deeper than the surface, or so it felt. I think/ hope that was pre-puberty. I remember the penetrative feeling of her fingers as I am typing this.

I remember the burning feeling of soap (maybe cut a bit by her fingernails, maybe not), and I was scared I was dying.. and she insisted on having to look there in full light. That was post puberty and the shame on my part was immense.. That was one traumatizing moment.

So, no, it wasn’t to check for virginity (throughout school, all the way to graduating from high school and after, I never had a single date, or being alone with a guy. So, no suspicion of not being a virgin.

Oh, I just remembered, and I think I shared about it long ago in one of my older threads that when I was in my early 20s and did have a date, she waited for me to return at night, angry, and she said: “You are with him because he has (male organ), and I don’t?”

What do you think of that sentence, Tee? I never quite understood it, but it was one of the many traumatizing moments. I never received anyone’s thoughts about what this sentence- question means.. ownership? ..?

“That’s good. I think one of the key preconditions for healing is to stop wanting to save her. In this latest corrective exercise, your inner child felt the need to save her, but you, the adult Anita, told LGA the truth:

‘She needs to hurt you. I don’t want you hurt anymore. I am here to help you, I need to help you. I need you helped, not hurt.”

‘I want you helped, I want you safe. I am your new mother, the one who knocks, the one who asks, the one who offers.. the one who’s gentle.’

“That was beautiful! Indeed, you need to help yourself and LGA to heal from the trauma your mother inflicted upon you. Your mother doesn’t need saving. Instead, you need saving from her. What I mean is that you need healing from the legacy and the false conditioning your mother’s abuse left on you.”-

Thank you. It isn’t and shouldn’t be the Victim’s responsibility to save the Perpetrator. To feel such responsibility and to act on it is sickness, it’s upside down.

“Yes, the focus was on pleasing her, making her happy, and saving her from her misery. Now, the focus should turn to you: healing yourself from the trauma she’s caused you. Reclaiming your purity, innocence and goodness – reclaiming that which she so violently and callously took away from you. Taking your inner child under your own wing, like a small innocent bird, or a puppy (if you’re inclined to such imagery), and nursing it back to health, so to speak.”-

Reclaiming purity… To see my body as something pure or innocent or good would be a new experience for me. See my body like an innocent bird’s body.. or a puppy’s..? Maybe I will do a corrective exercise using these images later.

Indeed, she was violent and callous.

“I want to stress one thing: your innocence, purity and goodness are still there, intact, but you need to claim it. You need to start seeing yourself as pure, innocent and good – and treating yourself like that. Purging your mother’s false notions of you, her lies, her intrusions, claiming your mind and your body for yourself.”-

I’m definitely going to do a corrective exercise on the matter 🙏

“Slowly but surely, since it can’t happen over night. But little by little. The goal would be to purge yourself from her false imprint and be reborn into a new identity. Be your own person, free from her toxic influence. That’s what I see as the goal of your healing and the path forward. What do you think?”-

I agree, whole heartedly 🙏 ❤️ 🫶 ❤️ 🙏

2nd post (next submission)

Anita

Tee: “I want to stress one thing: your innocence, purity and goodness are still there, intact, but you need to claim it. You need to start seeing yourself as pure, innocent and good – and treating yourself like that. Purging your mother’s false notions of you, her lies, her intrusions, claiming your mind and your body for yourself… Slowly but surely, since it can’t happen over night. But little by little. The goal would be to purge yourself from her false imprint and be reborn into a new identity. Be your own person, free from her toxic influence. That’s what I see as the goal of your healing and the path forward.”-

Anita: My own person, free of her toxic messages (feeling angry)

Trying to not intellectualize.

(Whatever comes to mind, let my heart speak):

To remove the massive toxicity she had spread all over and inside of me- so generously, day after day, night after night, decade after decade.

Try not to rationalize, stay with how it feels, with how it felt all along.

The tic in my left (and right) shoulder, it’s like my body is trying to exit itself.

The nightmare of being trapped in a deplorable, condemnable, hated body.

Needing to be something, someone else, something deserving life.

She scrubbed me like I was dirty, impure. And her words made it clear: that I am dirty in each and every way.

And there was no one to tell me any different.

Society 4 Mother- no matter what. A child is her mother property. She birthed it= it’s hers.

I remember the first time I came across the book “It”, or “A Child called It”- I knew right away: that’s me, “It”.

The basic truth of my childhood and onward, her message to me, the way she felt about me- was that I was an It.. and a dirty, hateful It.

Tee: “claiming your mind and your body for yourself.”- claiming my personhood, me as a human. Ahh!

A human, that’s a start, a person, one with own thoughts, feelings.. opinions, an inner life.

An inner life uncle Morris asked me about.. Ahh!

I have no desire to ever love that mother- monster.

Those dark, black eyes of hers, the smile on her face detecting my pain.

Ahh.. Why did I hold on to her for as long as I did???

Trying to not intellectualize/ rationalize. Go with how it feels:

As a teenager, I said to myself (not to anyone else because no one was there to listen- uncle Morris would have): she is my private Nazi; living with her is my private holocaust. Half a century later, I say the same.

Peel the Nazi off of me.

No more empathy for Nazi, no more.

Tee: “You need to start seeing yourself as pure, innocent and good”- Starting with seeing me as Human, not a thing to be scrubbed hard, to be clean of dirt, to..

She.. She.. (Whatever comes to mind):

She flattened a 3-D person to a 2-D thing. The tics in my body are trying to exit the trap of a two dimension.

My 3rd dimension is trying to erupt, to exit the constraint of 2-D.

Before good or bad, there’s this one thing: to become a 3-D human.. No longer a 2-D object to be scrubbed, shamed, beaten, slapped, kicked, invaded, hated, hated, hated, tortured.

AA: Tell me more, LGA.

LGA: She.. She’s not for me, she’s not.. for me.

She’s not my friend.

She’s been my biggest enemy ever.

AA: You don’t want to save/ help her anymore, do you..?

LGA: No. No saving the thing that wanted to destroy me.. for so very, very long.

AA: “the thing”?

LGA: The dark, black eyes, the joy of seeing her words land, pain in my face= smile on her face.

She is not my Ima, never has been. Only a wish, a dream. A fantasy.

I never had an Ima.

Will you, AA, be my Ima?

AA: Yes, I will. I am. I am your Ima. I promise, no more 2-D LGA. Breathe. Let the 3rd dimension be. Feel, think, be.. fully!… Sh… I am here for you, my 3-D, human little girl Anita. I am here for you my 3-D little girl. Breathe. You are safe now. You are safe with me. I am your Ima.

LGA: I don’t want to ever mention her/ it again.. My Nazi, my Enemy.

AA: Let us live, 3-D, clean, un-scrubbed, un- cruel-ed, Let the Nazi of our life Go, let that go.

Dear Tee:

Using my phone, so it won’t be long. Yes, healing is happening, and truly, I couldn’t do it without Tee, the Inner Child Chamion and Expert 🧡

👧 Anita