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- This topic has 1,633 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 5 months ago by Cali Chica.
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April 5, 2019 at 10:44 am #287791AnonymousGuest
You are a good little girl, Cali Chica. You love your mother very much. You want her to be happy. You want her to be lucky.
Is it okay for you to be happy when your mother is not happy, or do you have to wait until she is happy?
anita
April 5, 2019 at 10:48 am #287793Cali ChicaParticipantdear anita,
i am usually happy. sometimes my mom talks a lot about all bad. but i don’t get sad all the time. i go to the store with my mom and we have fun, and we ride my bike.
i don’t get sad that much Anita – my mom gets sad
April 5, 2019 at 11:01 am #287797AnonymousGuestDo you get sad sometimes?
anita
April 5, 2019 at 11:46 am #287809Cali ChicaParticipantDear Anita,
(5 year old me answering:)
i don’t know
April 5, 2019 at 11:48 am #287811Cali ChicaParticipantDear Anita,
I know one thing, India is happy. America is sad.
In India all the kids play outside, they have so much fun and love. In America, everyone is sitting inside lonely. No one cares and they are not loving.
India is happy. America is sad.
April 5, 2019 at 11:58 am #287817AnonymousGuestDear Cali Chica:
Let’s stop the exercise for today and continue it tomorrow or another day when you feel like it, post at that time and we’ll resume.
Notice this: “Do you get sad sometimes?”- “I don’t know”.
Yesterday you wrote: “I do NOT see myself as fragile”- and you don’t see yourself as sad.
Yesterday you wrote: “I have become ‘hardened’ and lack some of that softness… I don’t see myself as fragile at all- but instead, hard, harsh, angry, stern, severe”-
– already as a child, early on, from one point onward, you rejected your own soft feelings of sadness. You took on angry and rejected sad.
The young child that you were felt very sad and then… what happened?
anita
April 6, 2019 at 7:53 am #287879Cali ChicaParticipantDear Anita,
I feel calm this morning, and am proud of myself for cleaning my Saturday plans. I am allowing myself a day to just be. Hasn’t happened in a very long time here in NYC.
i read what you wrote and I am seeing this. That I rejected my soft feelings of sadness from early on. I don’t recall vividly the memory of being sad. But I of course became sad from time to time. I know that when this occurred (I know this as an adult) that if I was distressed then my mother would be distressed and she would blame me for hers.
I would like to continue the exercise some more if you would like to as well
April 6, 2019 at 9:50 am #287899AnonymousGuestDear Cali Chica:
Yes, I would like to continue the exercise, tomorrow or next week will be fine, whenever I am on the computer and you would like to. I will soon be away and back in about 21 hours from now. I may post shortly in a couple of hours and then gone for the rest of the time until Sunday morning.
anita
April 7, 2019 at 8:41 am #287959AnonymousGuestDear Cali Chica:
“I don’t see myself as fragile at all- but instead, hard, harsh, angry, stern, severe”-
The child in you, the child locked within you, she is soft and reaching out for love. She is hurt.
The hard, severe person you have become is a role you took on, without planning to, it so happened. You lived three decades or so in this role, the soft child locked inside the harsh personality.
Having her locked, keeping her locked does not allow a calm living, a peace of mind. The gap between the child and your personality/ role keeps that anxious baseline going and going.
To free that child, we can come up with a poem about that, but in real life, it is a long process that takes courage. It is about experiencing yourself in a third dimension unfamiliar to you. Freeing that child is not an intellectual event, cannot be. It will involve you feeling again the hurt you don’t want to ever feel again!
When we talk, in the exercise I hope to resume with you, let that child come up, bit by bit. Let her out of her locked room, gently invite her to play, to talk, to express. After doing that for a long time, she, the child/ you.. she will feel that excitement, a joy, that will give you the courage to experience that hurt of past. It will make it worth it to … become soft again. It will make it possible.
anita
April 7, 2019 at 9:24 am #287965Cali ChicaParticipantDear Anita,
Thank you for your analysis and insight. It is a lot to absorb because it is complex and so well thought out. I see that you can come to these conclusions and understandings after getting to know me for over a year now. I commend this ability in you, and I am glad to have this increased understanding now as a result. When we continue the exercise I will hopefully slowly allow that child to release, at first it did feel difficult as I don’t seem to have so many memories of being that child, it is also difficult for me to differentiate what is a memory of me being a child, or what is my adult comprehension of what I think I was as a child. Regardless however, the exercise is helpful, and it digs deep. It is for sure true that from a very early age, I had to hardened any of that softness. This wasn’t of course by choice, it was forced, beaten out of me, whatever you want to call it. Sometimes I feel that Don’t realize that softness is gone, because it does come up in certain ways. Compassion for patients, being a good friend, etc. But I see now today that those things are not softness, they’re just having some kind qualities, not being a mean person. Being nice at times. Being soft is an entirely different route home. Having soft Ness is the opposite of having hardness. This is difficult to quantify in my actions, interactions, or speech with others. It is truly something that is felt. And it is absolutely true, I cannot tell you the last time I felt any softness, not even a distant memory.
- This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by Cali Chica.
April 7, 2019 at 9:32 am #287969Cali ChicaParticipantDear Anita,
Thought of something else after I submitted. Recently you asked me if I had renewed contact with my parents, you thought for a moment that perhaps my new distress, or increased thought patterns were because of a new contact. When you asked me that at first, I didn’t realize why, but I let it sink in, and it made sense. I mentioned to you that recently I feel like I am at a plateau of healing, there is the next step of the mountain or journey to climb, but I am slightly at a standstill, either not having courage to go to the next uphill section of the mountain, feeling that I don’t have the strength, wondering if it is worth it, not knowing how. Or on the other end not even realizing that there is that next portion.
What we spoke about just now, in my previous post and yours really sums it up for me. There is something missing, I have recently focused and equated this to being kind to my husband. And this is true and of utmost importance. I have felt recently in the last month or so or during the time that we made the plan of no attack, and that this will be very helpful, not just to be kinder to my husband, but for my healing. But something still felt that it was missing. And this is it: I was attempting to do all of this, be kinder be more patient be more calm, continue to heal, without accessing any softness. I was going along my normal way, with the hardness. Expecting to heal more or feel different, or even approach my life differently, including my husband. But it wasn’t working, it’s not working. It’s a pause. The softness is missing, the softness is buried, it will be a major feet and task to uncover that softness, yes. But that process has not even started, until our conversation today.
- This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by Cali Chica.
April 7, 2019 at 9:47 am #287973AnonymousGuestDear Cali Chica:
The softness… here is the problem with accessing that softness, it will include you feeling again softness toward your mother because this is what the young child that you were felt, softness for her mother. I don’t think this is something you want to feel again. I wasn’t able to bring that same softness to my own awareness until I felt confident that this softness will not move me to renew contact with my mother. I promised the child within me first, that no matter what, I will not bring her mother back to her life/
Feeling the softness to your mother will motivate you to reconnect, to tell her you love her, to want her to love you back… this is my concern.
anita
April 7, 2019 at 10:59 am #287975Cali ChicaParticipantDear Anita;
I do know what you mean by the softness, in fact about two years ago when I first started speaking to you I did have a degree of softness, perhaps this was softness interlaced with blindness. But more softness nonetheless. I remember feeling quite bad for my mother, quite sad, feeling that her life and her circumstances were unfortunate, and of course it was my duty to alleviate her suffering as much as possible. As time went on the alleviation duty subsided as I realize this was an impossible goal. And with that said the softness, and someways I felt like I had to be angry and hate my mother to be able to move forward but in other ways I see how this led to a lack of softness overall. I can’t say I truly hate my mother right now, I honestly feel a little more and different than anything, hate is a strong term. I will say though that in general when I think about my mother or any people that are similar, narcissistic, selfish, not self-aware, using others to get ahead, stomping on people to feel better about their own self, I am filled with anger and frustration. Even one small thing is,, a fun being flaky, or some small circumstances that I have talk to you about hearing for over the last year, it’s never a place of softness he usually comes from a place of hardness.
At this exact moment my parents are out of the question, and renewing contact with him is not in the realm of options, not because I am not allowing it, but more because their existence no longer fully occurs to me. I think that your concern is valid, the concern that if softnesses front back, it will motivate recontact, it will motivate renewed relationships. But I do know in my heart that this is not the case. I know one thing for sure I have so much healing to do, I know that I still suffer day in and day out, but I also know that the journey and the healing path is relatively new. I don’t have any expectations outside what I am experiencing now, I am humbled by the journey.
I know I have to access softness. And I know it is not simply uncovering a blanket of hardness and finding soft. Just like that. Nope.
I know that simply non attack of my husband is not enough – I know it is simply not enough and there is so much missing. True empathy love and softness is missing within me. I know it.
I’ve asked you in the past, I’ve asked you many things, but I remember asking you am I just like my mother, perhaps I am self-centered and selfish. Perhaps I am not capable of true love for another. We went back and forth about this for some time. And we concluded that what I am missing is that softness. It comes up there again.
The truth is that I am not worried about renewing contact with my parents. It is not because I am aloof and unaware of the possibility It is also not because I am naïve to what uncovering softness may lead to. It is because I know that this is the next step of my journey, not because I am hoping to conquer it as an achievement. It is because I know that it is necessary for my growth personally and as a wife. I will not survive the trips and tribulations of life if I lead with hardness. “Survival” living is not the goal. To sink and savor. To love and feel. Is the goal. I am so incredibly hardened that I may not even realize it. But I am slowly. Today. And I know that nothing will get in my way in the next step of my journey. I also know that I have love and empathy deep down inside. Even for my mother and slowly I, we will uncover it. For the greatness of all.
I would like to continue with our dialogue when you feel you would like as well
April 7, 2019 at 11:51 am #287977Cali ChicaParticipantDear Anita,
My previous post has many typos as I was having computer difficulty with this website. I will type again to make it more succinct and clear. Sorry about that.
April 7, 2019 at 11:58 am #287979Cali ChicaParticipantDear Anita,
I am 5 years old and I am sitting on my porch (in reality I am sitting on my terrace savoring the spring day, haven’t had this much sun in a while)
Mom, it is so nice to sit outside in the sun. I feel sad when it is not sunny. In India it is always sunny I know, but not here. Here everyone closes the door and sits inside all day by themselves. They don’t want to be nice or include me. No, that is sad. It makes me sad.
Sometimes I go to play with my neighbors, they have lots of brothers and sisters, 5 or 6 i think. Boys and girls. 2 of the girls are my age.. They are lucky that they can always play with each other. I don’t have anyone to play with. It makes me sad. My mom said it is sad that we have to be alone. Other people always have each other.
When I went to my cousins christmas party, no one played with me. It is because they have jealousy. All of the kids play together and get gifts. but not me. I watched them from the stairs, and I know my mom was sad.. She said its okay if the adults are mean to her, but it is bad to be mean to a kid like me. That is sad to be mean to a kid. They are very bad and it makes me sad.
I don’t know why they are so bad to my mom. She did not do anything wrong. It is because of bad luck and jealousy. Some people have that. My mom has that. I have that. So we are sad.
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