Dear Tee:

Thank you for letting me know about your health and feelings about it 🙏 🫶 🤍 🙏

“Not exactly, because I haven’t achieved success in life, at least not material success, so she didn’t say those things to me. But I saw it in various YouTube videos, the experts on narcissism were good at portraying how a covert narcissistic parent would react to their child’s success.”-

Like you, Tee, I would never know for sure how she would have reacted to what I have never achieved (and don’t care to achieve anymore), but I have no doubt that material success wouldn’t have changed her brain structure and chemistry, that is, her personality disorders combo wouldn’t have been dissolved by money and luxury.

“Right, I totally understand that you didn’t thank her in general, for giving you life, but in isolation, for those material things she gave you. But they were always contaminated by guilt-tripping, and it’s hard to be grateful for a poison-laced cake..”-

Exactly, totally true. Cake, delicious food, toys.. in isolation would have brought me joy, but in real-life, they brought me guilt, a depressing sense of being indebted to her, trapped, unable to be free (until such time that I paid her for all the money that she spent on me since I was born, plus interest and lots of extra. So, no, I withdrew my gratitude for these “gifts”. They were definitely not freely given. There was an invisible but real price tag attached to each and every “gift”.

“As for being grateful for being born, there are spiritual teachings that claim that we (our soul) actually choose our parents. Because we need to learn certain lessons. I’m not opposed to this theory, because for me it’s easier to think that in the big scheme of things, I’m not a victim, even if I’ve experienced abuse. Of course, it doesn’t exculpate our parents from bad parenting, but it helps me see everything that’s happening as somehow necessary for my soul’s growth.”-

I respect your beliefs, Tee. I am a witness and a benefactor of your soul’s growth since your very first post in the forums 🙏

“But I also understand that some forms of abuse are just too much, and I have a hard time accepting that it would be necessary for anyone’s growth. So yeah, it’s a mystery to me, but I find it easier to believe that I’m not a victim because it helps me not to get stuck in the victim mentality and actually do something to help myself..”-

Please do everything possible to help yourself!

“That’s great that you can have an honest conversation with someone at the taproom! I guess it feels good to feel understood and validated..”- Yes, it was, an empathetic woman. That was the most I shared about the mother in real-life. I hardly ever share anything about my childhood IRL.

“Okay, so you’re not on speaking terms at the moment? Or just the perfunctory greeting, but nothing more than that?”- I friendly with him, just not as friendly as before (I was super friendly and supportive before). And in turn, I think that he isn’t as friendly as he was before.. but still, quite friendly. I don’t really know what he’s thinking. There’s guessing/ assuming on my part, don’t have any confirmation.

“Yes, you did say that the winery felt like home to you. Working there gave you fulfillment and meaning, I guess it met some of your core emotional needs? You said wine helped you talk (and dance)- so as you socialized with people in the winery, over a glass of wine, you felt free to express yourself and less afraid of their judgment – something you never had with your mother?”-

Right. Her judgmental nature did so much judging of everyone. And of me, of course. So, as a result I shrunk myself, denied myself, suppressed my emotions on a regular basis, became as much of a non-entity as I could. Less of me = Less to judge. And that became a habit when away from her as well.

“haha, thank you, Anita! 🙂 Actually, for the longest time, I had a problem understanding the Buddhist concept of non-attachment… I think attachment is the cause of suffering if it is unhealthy – if it means clinging to something that cannot be, or to ego-driven goals. But it’s not unhealthy to be in a loving relationship, which is actually based on a healthy (i.e. secure) attachment. So I think attachment is not always unhealthy, but clinging and grasping is.”-

You are welcome! There’s a tendency in religious communities, just like anywhere else, to take things to extremes. Balance and nuance are essential to correct understanding, and you practice both so well. I am getting better at it myself 🙂

🙏 🫶 🤍 🙏 Anita

Unearthing more of the Suppressed

If only Expressing can ease my tics and the ongoing tension in my body that goes with the tics.

Maybe. There’ll be a relief with more Expressing? Whatever comes to my mind:

I just noticed the date, 12-12.. hmm.. I have a thing for numbers and acronyms.

Expressing: Being so closed-in, repressed, suppressed, day-in, day-out, year after year, life put on hold decade after decade.. Fifty years of that before I showed up on tiny buddha (May 2015)

I feel younger tonight than I felt as a child and teenager. I spoke- in real-life- to a young man last evening, Joe- he could be my grandson.. Yet, as I spoke to him (not seeing my own face, only his), I FELT his age, felt 20 something. It’s because, truly, my life has been put on hold, frozen.. decades of Frozen, and then a recent thaw.. And..

No way, whose this old woman in the mirror (don’t like the mirror).

If the lights are dim, I look young enough.. Youth by Dim Light (YDL)

Truth is, I AM young, youth thawing.

Time at the taproom, Tee, was good last night (Closed to public tonight). Taproom owner and I were fine and dandy last evening.

An unexpected visit at the taproom last evening.. The most adjusted, mentally healthy, a newly retired professional woman my age showed up with her devoted husband, a quite wealthy couple who just entered a comfortable retirement phase.. Only she unexpectedly got an aggressive form of cancer.

I saw her leaning on her husband, very thin, approaching the taproom, I rushed to open the door. Sat at the table where she sat. I told her she looks so good, like a girl.

And she does, so thin.. like a girl. She knows the aggressive cancer took hold. I said: This has to be scary. She said (no words): I am dying.

Yet, she looked so YOUNG last night. It’s like the cancer ate away her old age, and what’s left is a young girl with white hair and a big smile.

I took photos of her smiling. At one point, she asked her husband to put his coat over her because she felt cold. She was eating ice cream, trying to gain weight. And all along, she knows she’s dying.

She’s a high level nurse, recently retired, well off.. and then, out of nowhere, unexpected- BOOM. I could see, it was clear.. Being a high level nurse, she knows what’s literally eating at her.

How strange life is.

Anita

How EXCITING! I think that this is the first time in the forums that you used Dear.. and just for me. I am honored! Thank you for bringing the first smile to my face this Saturday morning 😁

Dear Alessa:

Your understanding, empathy and support mean a lot! I will continue to express 🙏

🤍Anita

Dear Tee:

“I’m so happy that I could support you and help you realize some things, and perhaps reach a measure of peace and acceptance around your mother. And I’m happy to see that you’re doing better, that you’re acknowledging your own worth and accepting that you’re a good, worthy person.”- I am eternally grateful, Tee 🤍 🙏🙏🙏

“I do have health limitations and I’ve also got some projects that I’d like to tend to, and so I might reduce my participation on your thread (and on the forum in general), i.e. reply less frequently. But I’m interested to read about you, so please do keep sharing, do keep expressing yourself, and I hope to chime in as I can. 🤞 🤍”- will do Tee 🙏🙏🙏

And I keep praying for you every day, and wishing you well on your projects 🤞

“It’s good to read that you could speak openly to Byron about your judgmental mothers. I hope you can keep talking to her and perhaps even help her (in case she has issues with self-esteem and is still expecting her mother to validate her?)”- Thank you, Tee. I don’t expect to see her often because she lives an hour away (by car), but yes.. she has had trouble with her mother (so many of us do).

“I am so sorry about that lady, the retired nurse, who is sick with cancer 😢”- it was a shock to see how much thinner and physically fragile she looked.

“Sorry, didn’t understand: so she openly said it: ‘I am dying’?”- no, she didn’t say those exact words, she did say that the kind of cancer she had was not curable, or terminal. Her husband said the same at times when he was at the taproom without her. Neither expressed hope or even the possibility of healing.

“If so, I guess the treatment isn’t working and she knows there’s nothing else that she can do? 😢”- seems like treatment is about slowing down the cancer and getting relief from pain and discomfort, not reversing it 😢

“But I’m happy that you’re feeling young, finally after all these decades. I say, better later than never 🙂”- Yes, indeed!!!

“And I say: enjoy your newly found feeling of youth and joy for life, even if your face isn’t young anymore. But your body is still healthy and agile, and your spirits are high. You feel good about yourself and optimistic (if I got that right). And that’s all that matters. That all that one needs for happiness, in my humble opinion..”- I am finding myself smiling as I read your words 🙂

“So please do enjoy it the best you can, move, dance and feel life flowing through your veins… perhaps for you this is a new spring, new awakening, represented by all the wonderful life-affirming emojis that you sent me: 🌸✨🌈🌿”-

It’s been a while, a long while since I danced (since the last live music at the winery, which is now closed). I would like to let you know when I dance again, somewhere else 💃 🕺 🪩 🎶 🎵

“I wish you all the best, Anita. And I’ll be here on your thread, sometimes lurking, sometimes writing… but I’ll be here 🤍 I hope to read more about your victories, as well as your challenges (hopefully more victories than challenges 🤞) Please take care of yourself and keep dancing! 😊”-

Thank you very much, Tee. I’ll keep posting, keep sharing, keep expressing.. and keep praying for you evert single day!

🙏 🫶 🤍 🫶 🙏 Anita

Expressing, night time: I was an adolescent- teenager when I watched “meathead” (Rob Reiner), Archie Bunker’s son in-law in All In The Family. Today, he was murdered.

Watching the show was one of the bright spots in my week back then.

Murdered along with his wife at 78 and 68 years-old, in their home in LA, a result of a break in. Details not known. I will miss “Meathead”!… News: their son (drug addicted/ homeless..?) killed both his parents.!

Also, earlier today, in Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia, following an antisemitic terrorist attack (by a Pakistani father and son), 15–16 Hanuka- celebrating Jewish people were murdered, and around 40–42 others were injured and hospitalized.

An Arab Australian fought against the son, got shot but will survive, a HERO!

So much wrong being done in our world, which brings me back.. to my mother. To state facts: I’ve been suffering from significant tics and bodily distress every single day, 6 decades- because my mother (Jewish..?) tortured me.

To be true to truth, my mother was my personal, private terrorist, my “private Nazi” as I referred to her in my 20s. She repeatedly threatened to murder me, and herself (separate threats), literally terrorizing me, causing great somatic tension/ tics every single day in my body for SIX decades.

She beat/hit/slap/kick me and shamed me and tortured me.. whenever she was moved to do so.. Not all the time, only when she needed to, when she “had no choice” (her words) but to protest against what she claimed I was doing against her (her paranoid personality disorder part), so she tortured me and felt justified, she felt victimized by me while victimizing me.

It may take me a whole lifetime to come to terms with the real, unusual abuse I was handed by she/it, my private Nazi.. It takes a lifetime to FULLY process it.

She told me, “I know I’m wrong” (to abuse me), “but what are you’re going do, you have nowhere to go”

It’s bad when one’s Mother is one’s Personal, 1-2-1 Terrorist.

So, the two Pakistanis in Australia were terrorists.. and so was my mother- in MY life, and in the lives of a few others. Didn’t gather publicity, and yet, it’s as real as real can be. May the tics and tension ease. (I just tic-ed, as I do so very often.. and again while typing these words.. and again, and again).

That’s her terrorism in my muscles.

Truth is trying to make itself FULLY known, it says to me: Yes, she (that mother-thing) was no Mother, it was a Terrorist. Accept this truth. Truth says- Don’t fight it anymore, don’t dilute it. Heal from.. Maternal Terrorism (MT). Yes, this newly coined term sounds just right, as accurate as accurate can be.

Never occurred to me as clearly as this. Now.. any more empathy for my Maternal Terrorist.. wouldn’t be appropriate, would it..?

Anita

* Clarifying Note:

When I call her “my personal Nazi,” I’m not making a literal comparison to history. I grew up in Israel in the 60s and 70s, surrounded by Holocaust education—films, school lessons, stories. Those images shaped the language of fear and oppression inside me. So when I describe my mother’s abuse this way, it’s because that’s how it felt to me as a child: relentless, terrifying, and dehumanizing, like living under siege.

This metaphor is my way of giving voice to the extremity of my experience. It’s not meant to diminish history, but to express the depth of my own personal reality.

Anita

So attached to tiny buddha- internet, and about to lose it for I don’t know for how long.

No hot coffee tomorrow morning either.

I noticed the new winds tonight, it doesn’t take much to knock out a power line.

Still having internet for a little while. Soon there’ll be Nothing, nothing but the silence of the night. There’s candle light and wood stove fire that was thankfully started before the outage.. And wine that makes my body warm regardless.

I am hearing the winds right now. Strong.

I visited the taproom tonight there (7 miles away), before knowing of the localized electric outage here. It was a good time, good conversations.

So, I’m here, warm, fire in the fireplace (smile).

The winds right now sound so persistent, threatening.. Now eerily quiet.. Now again LOUD, threatening. I can’t repeat that sound.. preverbal DESTROY sound.

I will post again if possible.