Dear Cali Chica:

Because the second chapter of our work is about you telling your story in your voice, I will attempt to retell your recent two posts in your voice and would like you to edit my attempt or re-do it altogether so to voice it indeed in your own voice. This is only an attempt, no expectation on my part that I am using Your Voice, so do correct me:

S has free time and I don’t. That makes me angry. I want free time too! It is not fair that she has free time and I don’t! I wish I had my evenings free to myself. And having all that free time, she dares take my time away from me! How selfish she is and I am sick and tired being unselfish! To top this unfairness, I have no interest in her small talk. I have more important things to do!!

So this voice in my head tells me I am bad because I don’t have free time for a small-talk boring friend- this voice makes me so angry! And whose voice is it, mind you- this woman-mother *&**. I don’t care that S is a nice person and loyal and whatnot- she is boring, she doesn’t understand what is important to me!

When my mother pressured me to be nice to friends- I hated it.

Thing is,  I get angry at so many people, I can’t not have friends at all. And it is not fair to not be a friend to a nice person, is it?

anita

Dear Cali Chica:

My personal ROAR was in my attempt. Better I don’t attempt this again. What is your feeling in “Farewell, CC and S of the 20s”?

anita

Dear Cali Chica;

Your posts to S read very kind and assertive, diplomatic and honest at the same time, disciplined. I see it as your disciplined voice, thoughtful, skillful. It is a mature voice. True to yourself. Not guttural/ straight from the gut, but authentic.

– what about the guttural though, the raw emotions?

anita

Dear Cali Chica:

Excellent. Not that I recommend you sending the latter to S. Your previous honest and diplomatic message to her was excellent to be sent to her. But here, on this chapter 2, in communication with me, I want to read/ hear your guttural feelings.

Let’s say you are perfectly diplomatic in the morning- fine, excellent time to communicate with people where diplomacy is required. You are calm enough and fresh enough to make it happen. But later in the day, when you are tired, when you had your fill of distressing events- it is the guttural feelings that will take over and bring you misery and dysfunction.

So, better do the guttural here. Tell it like  it is. The last sentence above: “Not to day I am better than you at all”- why that qualification, I wonder. It takes away from the guttural. What if you do tell her (not send her) that you are better than her because truly you think you are and in certain ways at least, I do agree that you are. So tell her that you are better than her, maybe?

anita

Dear Cali Chica:

Excellent, no apologies for your anger, no compromising your message. Not here anyway. Often the apologies or qualifications are meant to appease her voice. No place for her voice here!

Are you done with the S guttural exercise. Do you want to address someone else and tell them the bare, guttural truth of what and how it really is!?

anita

* I love the edit, just read it, excellent!!!

* It just occurred to me to suggest that if you prefer to do any part of this on email, privately, we can do that. And go back here for less-private matters.

anita

Dear Cali Chica:

You write so well. I will read (from email) and comment as I read: “my mother.. she doesn’t look like the person she embodies, a middle aged woman with a great figure”- to the child the mother does embody perfection, a god, beautiful, strong, wise.

“she states how her body is ruined by her daughters”- so they are guilty soon after conception, there in the womb- her complaints against her daughters start when they are fetuses.

Think of it, if she blames a fetus, how can you ever give any credit to her blaming anyone!!? Surely a person who blames a fetus is cognitively a suspect and whatever they say from that point on needs to be examined before it being accepted as the truth.

“Always talking about dreams that were lost. Oh what a shame- mother could have had this or that if only others didn’t ruin her life”- but she did have “this or that”- she had two daughters, two dreams that if she valued them, these two girls could have made her life beautiful. But she considered these two dreams as things that ruined her life.

“my sister appears very young and thin here, childlike.. very youthful. Mother- She looks like the kind of a villain in a Disney movie.. like ..the evil stepmother, she gets larger and larger, her cackle gets louder and louder. The good innocent little victim or child figuratively gets smaller and smaller as this evil being gets larger and larger and taking over the whole screen”-

– this is what our Chapter 2 is about: resurrecting that very young child, hearing her voice, making space for her on the screen while making the mother smaller and smaller and her cackle finally silent.

The way it is supposed to happen: a young child sees her mother as god, follows her, finds safety with her, learns about herself and over time becomes capable and less needy of her mother, so she sees her mother differently, sees her as a human, not a god. But what happened with you (and me, separately) is you found ourselves with a bad god who persecuted you, her child. So the persecuted child, a victim, doesn’t get to develop and see herself as truly capable and her mother as human, less capable than god. The mother, in the mind of the persecuted child, remains a god, taking the whole screen. And as the child becomes adult, her mental screen still has this “evil being” at its center, large and loud, very visible and very audible, while the adult-child herself continues to be very small on that screen, hardly visible and hardly audible.

“mother.. She is powerful and in charge of her little victim”- this is the story of child abuse. The parent sees this weak, needy child and perceives it as an opportunity to feel powerful. And as she feels powerful, we feel weaker and smaller.

“At the age of 34 I am still trying to find my voice”- many people never find their voice, or if they find it, they get scared and forget about it, keep hearing the god on the screen of their minds. It is a wonderful thing to find one own’s voice, speak it and hear it. To find that little child in the corner of that screen and give her center stage.

S, this woman in your life, a few years older than you, “I actually think she is an idiot!”- similar to what you think about your mother (you are having an idiot as a god, taking that whole mental screen!)

“(S) is an idiot who really has no idea what she’s talking about, but goes on and on about and thinks she does”- just like your mother.

“(S) has complained about certain friends over and over for years, but never makes any changes in her approach or opinion, or speaks up sometimes still idolizing them… she continues to have the same comments year after year… she thinks of things in a very adolescent way. High school drama-esque”- just like your mother.

“(S) is not as smart as I once thought”- neither is your mother, you thought she was very smart in the beginning (as all children do), but she is an idiot.

“Other people my age would have figured that out a long time ago, knowing their true voice- and would limit their conversations with her”- or have none at all. Thing is, other people don’t have an S in the center of their mental screen. S is not their god. My point is that through no fault of your own, you have an idiot for a god. Well, had an idiot for a god. Chapter 2 is about demoting the idiot and removing her from your mental screen.

“(Mother) didn’t raise us at all actually”- she used you.

“there was so much of my own will that led me to be where I am right now”- when we are born, we are not born like her, we are born like the billions of people and animals that preceded us in the evolution of life- we have their genes. The world didn’t start with her, this one mother, the blueprint of who we are.

“Being “raised” by an enemy”- a title of a book, I imagine.

“I simply don’t have the energy left anymore. My memory is so much worse”- it can return to you, the energy and the memory, and it will return as you change what is on that screen, place you in the center of it, and the demoted god, no longer there except for a bad memory.

“I watch so much stuff about women in prison on Netflix.. my mother. She deserves a spot there too”- yes. She definitely does not deserve any spot in your mental screen. She does not deserve to be your god. Or anyone’s.

“when I close my eyes right now, I think of my mother as a Disney World Villain… If I conquered Ursula from the little mermaid, who can be so scary? Who is going to beat me down every day?.. Who is going to have so much power over me..? No one. No one at all.”- not your mother, not S, not any idiot. You have power over you, right there in the center of the screen!

anita