Dear lovely Anita,

I am responding to your two most recent posts here.

“I didn’t know until you shared today that you spent so much time with your grandmother: how did she treat you?”

I have very fond memories of my grandmother. Although not one for emotional support, but I don’t recall asking that of her. My relationship with her was being treated like her little girl. She brought me everywhere she went. We gardened together, she took me to Winco to recycle cans and camping to volunteer with our church. My uncles however, I have various memories with. Her youngest son, now one of my best friends, teased me and quite obviously because his mom was more lenient with me than him. He would try to tattle on me but she never blamed me for anything.. Him and I also got along on and off. The other uncles, some of them took it upon themselves to “teach me” things. If I didn’t say “please” or “thank you”, I would be pinched, hard. If I didn’t say “uncle” before their name I would be tickled to tears, void of breathe and bruises. The older ones taught me chess and took me to movies! One of them was in to Taekwondo and taught me, I enjoyed that. Sometimes I was ignored by them, other times doted on. My grandpa was never home. When he was home he was stingy and rude, but also a social butterfly and philosophical when he was in a good mood. My mom was the elusive older sister that they all loved cause she brought them food and took them to the pool with us. And my dad, the elusive brother they respected. What an era of my life that was! Thank you for asking me this 🙂

“the part of me that is disturbed by my mother’s shaming, judgmental and accusatory voice (a voice regenerated and expanded by my brain), is the part of me that believes that what her voice is telling me- is objectively true.”

I read your post yesterday because I was too curious, but was too tired to give the response what it deserved. This is something I thought a lot about in the past 24 hours. I think this is why we help eachother understand ourselves, because we have a very similar voice in our heads. What do you think?

“Instead, it’s about transcending it, meaning, to no longer Fight it, Flight it (run away), or Freeze.”

In moments of fight/flight/freeze I have always been such a fighter.

“But that’s not what I heard when I first read it (and for some time later). What I heard was you saying to me something like this: anita, you suck, I have no regard for you and what you want to say to me, you are of no importance;  this is why I would love valuable, important people to reply to me.”

You are so humble, self reflective, and amazing for admitting this here. I know you know the truth, so I won’t spend too much time defending it, because I think it is probably more powerful for you to realize yourself, that this is so far from the truth behind my words. Me telling you is just a bandaid, right? This is another part of your post I thought a lot about in the past 24 hours, perhaps the hardest part for me not to single out and respond to right away. On one hand I find this old interpretation validating… (might be the wrong word) because I don’t feel like I am the only one who does this, as someone trying to heal and be better I still slip and knowing you do too makes me feel… not alone. On the other hand, it is disheartening, because as someone I look up to, someone I see as farther in her healing than I am, the fact you still experience and give energy to this voice… that means that voice still tries to attack even later in my healing journey as well. I want to rid it for good!!

“You believed your father’s voice when he accused you of not caring about him, of being selfish, unloving…and when you didn’t otherwise make yourself perfectly available and attentive to him when he was home…Believing his accusations caused you lots of distress. Fast forward, living with a boyfriend, your father’s voice was interpreting your life situations for you…Maybe, having taken in (internalizing) your father’s accusations, you proceeded to project them into your boyfriend. So, when projecting those, you were temporarily free of them, free of the distress that accompany believing that you are selfish and uncaring, a bad person, that is. And this became a kind of an addiction, an addiction that exhausted you. Maybe. ”

I think maybe=yes. I feel like I even saw this in myself, as in my last forum we spoke a lot about how I was projecting my dad into the relationship, onto him, then when it wasn’t on him it was on me, and I was my father. The bad guy was always my dad. If he did something I didn’t like, I saw him through my dads perspective of me, “you are not attentive enough.” If I did not make him feel heard, I was what my dad said I was, “you are not attentive enough.” Take out “attentive” … “you are not enough.” The voice within me is “nothing is enough.” … Hence my fear of being disappointed! So to heal I need to believe, everything is enough the way it is.. ? I wonder where “nothing is enough” comes from.. perhaps “I am not worthy of enough.” Seeing life through the perspective of my dad is a miserable and exhausting lens. I wonder if having compassion for his undeniable misery and exhaustion, can be helpful to me in some way..

The addiction exhausted me and my third eye.

“right here, it reads like you have a core belief (a belief formed early in life) that you are a bad person who hurts other people, who needs validation that you are not hurting people, a core belief that your father instilled in you by constantly calling you selfish and ungrateful: two adjectives that amount to being a bad daughter=> a bad person. … but my authentic self is allegedly bad, so how can I be okay being my authentically bad self?”

Exactly. I have had many people in my life tell me my authentic self was selfish. My dad, my ex, my sisters, and now a childhood friend, P. When I spoke with P she said I lacked empathy for her ADHD that caused her to talk over me. And that I lacked empathy for her relationship situation.. which I do because I cannot understand why she entered into such a terrible situation with someone I knew was not a good vibration the first time I met him. First time I met him I knew and then she stopped telling me how he treated her because she knew what I would say, then she proceeded to sign a year lease with him, now wants my empathy for her being stuck living with him… very hard for me. But she accused my authentic self of being un-empathetic because of this. Something both my ex and my dad have told me at some point too. Am I just suppose to not believe them?

” at 25,  still trying to get your father to say that you are a good daughter, a good person.”

At 25 I want all the people who said my authentic self is bad to see that it is not and to tell me that it is not.

” his legacy in your life has been the formation of a false core belief, which is that you are a bad person.”

This makes me angry and confused. My soul is so beautiful but he put this huge scar on it that makes it hard for me to fully express myself.

“I am guessing that behind his email is that you being so careful to replace the food in his frig, etc., made him appear- in  his mind- like a stingy person, a scrooge who does not allow his own daughter to eat his food, so he reacted to that image of himself”

I think so too.

“We still want to believe that we are good people, and we want others to believe it too.

Let’s believe it about ourselves and about each other..? “

This is why I do believe I have a beautiful soul, and so do you! I think we both know it and want to see it so badly, it is just hard to see with this scar on us. We will never see ourselves as good if we look through their lens. But you can look through mine if you want 🙂 I see a deep bright purple light so full of wisdom and strength I am in awe 💜

As I searched the purple heart to copy and paste online, there was an option to see what the purple heart means! My curiosity clicked and it read “It is commonly used to represent love, support, close bonds, and admiration for things that have some relation to the color purple.” 🙂

With love,

Seaturtle