Daughter; I have moved on.

Daughter, I no longer cry.  I no longer mourn.  I have moved on.  
I have accepted that you don’t want me, like me, accept me, love me.  
I have accepted that what you do want to do is manipulate and control me, 
You want to tell me how I must be to earn your version of love.  

I have learned that love is not something we bargain for, 
Only people who are deeply self-centered and entitled feel that 
They have the right to manipulate others into patterns of being 
Expected ways of serving; to be deemed to be worthy of being given love.

I have learned that my boundaries, my saying no to your abuse
Made you angry because I was no longer controllable, 
I cut the puppet strings you wished me to dance to, no longer did 
Your bidding simply to feel some tiny reluctant scraps of love from you. 

Daughter I have moved on.  I have learned what it feels like to receive love
From those who give love freely, with no strings attached.  
I have learned what it feels like to be supported, honoured and accepted
Simply for being the kind and good hearted person I am. 

I have learned what it feels like be in relationship with people 
Who don’t feel the need to tell me what I ought to do to be “enough”
Who showed me what it feels like to not be shamed into giving,
And giving and then giving some more while I am bleeding on the floor.

I have had the support of therapists and healing groups
Who taught me that I am lovable simple for who I am.
That I don’t have to do more and more and then some more
To be deemed worthy of someone’s acceptance and love. 

Daughter, I have forgiven you, not because what you did was acceptable,
Your actions were and still are cruel and unkind and I did not deserve them.
I have let go of thoughts wishing you to receive your just karma. 
Your actions are a reflection of who you are not of who I was or am. 

I feel sorry for you and my compassionate heart feels for you
Sadly, it is you who continues to live with your hatred and the anger 
Which festers in your heart and these negative energies are tangled up
In your life, the weight in your unconscious is yours alone to carry.

Daughter, I live without regrets, as I know I always did my best.  
Not that I think I was perfect, but I was never cruel or intentionally unkind.
Your unkindness was intentional, purposeful, manipulative striving to feel your superiority
Someday you may regret what you threw away, but that will be your suffering.

My suffering and my grieving is done; I have moved on.  
My heart is filled with love, kindness, caring and compassion.  
My energies are light and positive.  I even radiate joyfulness and laughter.
I give and receive love in a new way now, one that is more fulfilling. 

But I have a final thankyou to give you, your actions opened up my eyes.
Your rejections sent me on a learning journey, a path of healing which
I did not even realize I needed!   I learned that I do not have to beg 
To be loved nor be a doormat to be accepted. Thank you for the awakening.

Renate Dundys Marrello 
2022 – 01 – 20

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Happiness is….finally being able to look back and say; “I did a good job!”

source unknown 

Today marks 45 years since I gave birth to my first born.  It marks the day I became a mother. 

It marks the moment of greatest hope that I could be adequate to the job of helping a new life reach maturity and become a kind and loving person.

Today I celebrate my motherhood.  The hard work and effort I put into doing the very best that I could.  There are some that will say I did not do good enough.  All my life I have been plagued by people telling me the many ways I failed to be good enough. 

Today I fight back, it is not that I did not do good enough, it is that my best was not appreciated enough.  It is easy to find fault in hindsight.  It is easy to pick another person apart.  What is hard is picking up the pieces and learning that one was actually perfectly adequate, even when no one else appreciated that fact.

When one is in the moment of making choices one makes the best choices one can with the tools at hand.  If I had had better information maybe I could have done better.  But the information I had was flawed, and the people I had around me were also flawed, which they demonstrated by undermining my confidence and my strengths.

I did not have people encouraging me or supporting me.  I had people doubting me and second guessing me.  Telling me what I was doing wrong, never celebrating what I was doing right.  So always I had to make decisions based on what I was able to do within the confines of being told I was inadequate. 

Is it any wonder that I look back and see my own shortcomings?  I have been taught to look for shortcomings in myself.  All problems were related back to my shortcomings.  No one else ever took any responsibility for their negative contributions.  It was always heaped upon my shoulders.  What is amazing is that I did not break under all the weight of self-doubt others burdened me with!

The good news is that I am learning to see that those opinions are what kept me trapped in feeling inadequate and not good enough.  Those opinions are lies.  I did a fantastic job under extremely difficult circumstances and I did it without encouragement and without the support of a pat on the back, without a word of praise, or way to go!   

I never purported to be perfect.   I am human and as a human I have made my share of mistakes.  However, I did a pretty darn good job under the circumstances.  And I did it while I had an audience who constantly let me know that they thought I would fail. 

 Happiness is….finally being able to look back and say;  “I did a good job!”   

Renate Dundys Marrello 

2022 - 03 - 06 

P.S.  Today also marks 13 years of being estranged by a daughter who told me over and over again how badly I failed to be the mother that she wanted.  She focused on my failings, and totally overlooked my successes. (of which there were quite a few!)  That is her prerogative and her choice and I am finally in a place of being able to accept that. 

With joy I see her successes and I am thrilled that she is happy in her life.  However, today, for the first time I can also say that she; in her choice of actions has failed to be the daughter I had hoped for.  And that too is okay.  It was not our destiny to be friends or friendly.  I am sad,  but I have also made peace with what was not meant to be. 

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Memories: Endings and beginnings in Scotland

Ruins of Lawer

One of the interesting things about looking back at memories is that we see things differently in hindsight than from what we appreciated in the moment.

For example, during my stay in Balloch I arranged to meet a facebook friend.  I had made part of my travel mission; to take advantage of opportunities to meet and have coffee with people I had met on social media.  But this was different; it was the first time I was meeting up with a man.  Woman meeting woman is less complex, for obvious reasons, but a woman meeting a man in a platonic / friendship kind of way is a different thing.  The usual fears run through the mind, fears that are perpetuated by the events enumerated in the news.  Even though I knew D.G. for several years and we enjoyed chatting about our mutual interests in nature and hiking, meeting in person to go for a drive and a hike was a new adventure for me.  At age 59 I put on my brave face, reminding myself that the vast majority of people are good people and that only a few “bad apples” spoil it for the rest of us, I looked forward to this meet up.

It was all that one could expect from meeting a friend!  We enjoyed conversation and a drive into the Highlands, we saw waterfalls and drove beside a loch.  I got to see mountains (Ben Lawer) and walk in the Scottish countryside.  The walk we took together was to a now abandoned village of Lawer by the shores of the loch.  Once again, a place I would never have found on my own, but was able to enjoy because of the kindness of a friend.   As we walked through this now overgrown, devolving back into nature place where people used to live; we mused on the way of life that is being lost to the world as everyone races to live in cities and built up areas.  The ending of an era has been slowly encroaching upon humankind in the past 100 years as fewer and fewer people have any desire to live the “old ways” existing by the strength of their brawn and ingenuity in the bosom of nature.

So as I look back on this day in my memories I am reminded that endings are a way of life.  Whole villages have ceased to exist because of changing times just as relationships change because of changing circumstances.  

Endings and beginnings are simply part of the ever changing fabric of life.  We don’t really have it in our power to alter endings, they happen usually because of things outside our ability to control.  We do however have a say in new beginnings, they only require us to look closely at our fears, ascertain their veracity and then choose to act in such a way as to explore the possibilities.   

Healing is like that, overcoming the fear of what we might become when we choose to become other than what we are. When we choose the unfamiliar as the direction we are willing to explore, we become open to the possibility of new beginnings, even when those new beginnings arise out of the ashes of inescapable endings.

My happiness memory, aside for all the beauty of that day of adventure, is my willingness to embrace the new while at the same time embracing a longing for and a mourning of that which has passed.  Happiness is the ability to embrace change; the sadness of that which is over as well as the joyful anticipation of that which is yet to be.

Renate Dundys Marrello

2019 – 03 – 18

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My Daily Reflections: Do I miss you? or Do you deserve to be missed?

One of the healing forums I attend asked this question:  do you miss people when you are not with them?

I pondered that question because I find that there are people that I do miss and yet there are those that I don’t miss, or rather that I have learned and accepted that have not earned the right to continue to be missed.   

I do believe this is an important question to ponder because there is something to be learned here about relationships and why some relationships make us feel more comfortable than others.  Why some relationships build us up and others tear us down.  Why some relationships feel like a duty and others like a joy.

As I heal I am learning that I don't miss "some" people.

I have learned, during time spent in introspection, that the people I don't "miss" are the ones that have / had a track record of "using me".   

• Those people who whenever I was with them, I came away feeling emotionally drained.  
• Those who left me feeling exhausted and I felt relief to get away from!   
• Those where the time apart is restorative and so I remained relieved not having to deal with them.  

Those are the people that I have discovered that I don't miss them when I don’t see them.  Not only that when I do think about them I feel this negative shudder about anticipating seeing them any time soon.

I do miss people who behave in such a ways that makes me feel loved or accepted or validated because in their presence I am authentically me and that "feels good" so I miss the "feel good" when I am not with them.  

I struggle to accept myself just as I am.  I worry that I am not good enough, that I am not lovable. These are the false core beliefs that I am constantly working on.  As I think about this aspect of myself I recognize that those people that most help me on my healing journey of self-acceptance are the ones that I miss; for they reflect back to me what I am striving so hard to feel about myself.  Naturally I also miss them as a person because they are the kind of people that lift others up.  They get joy from making others feel good.  They don’t need to put others down to feel good about themselves so they spread good feelings to others.  They feel like souls at peace.  I miss being around souls at peace because they show me what it feels like to be a soul at peace myself.  They show me clearly what I am striving for.

I do think that all this in some way also goes back to attachment issues.   What I know so far is that attachment style reflects what we learned about relationships as a child.  

I believe I learned early that relationships are unsafe.  That sometimes I was wanted and at other times I was in the way, a nuisance.  And I was confused about what was expected and when; and so I learned to withdraw.  

But it was a withdrawing accompanied with thoughts such as; “what is wrong with me now that they don’t want me around”.   

When I am with those people who send me this subliminal message; one that I receive on an intuitive level, that “sometimes I am a bother in their lives, or that I am not meeting their expectations in some way", I feel distinctly uncomfortable.  It is that subtle pushing away that I sense, and I have come to believe that this is what contributes to my discomfort when I am around them.  They reinforce my “unworthy feelings”.   So when I am not around such people is it any wonder that I don’t miss them?  I don’t miss the way they make me feel inadequate, their words, their tone of voice, their looks and even their thoughts seem to penetrate my intuitive awareness leaving a dark cloud of disappointment.

I am new to working out my attachment style and my attachment issues; but I think the bottom line is that I am tired of trying to attach to people who are not good for me.  I am learning that if I don’t miss someone when I am not with them, then subliminally I am getting the message that something about their behaviour, their character is not a good match for mine.  And I am learning that when I feel that way, such a person must be put in the acquaintance category rather than the friend category and I must have higher walls of self-protection when I spend time with them and above all, I can’t trust such people with any vulnerability. 

These are the kinds of people that use vulnerability to manipulate and control.  They are fine to be around for some lighthearted moments but they are not the kinds of people that offer emotional sustenance.  I no longer feel any guilt or regrets over not missing such people when I am not in their company. 

When I spend time with people who see good in me, who encourage me when I have moments of doubt, who express their joy of seeing me as much as I feel joy at seeing them, I feel I am in the company of people of good character, who have done inner healing work.  It is reflected in their body language, in their words and the tone of voice and their actions. When in the company of such people my intuitive awareness becomes filled with light and airiness.  My heart and spirit feels light and buoyant in their presence.  And when I am not with them I miss how two light souls interacting with each other feels.  

These are the friends that I find are in my thoughts regularly and I look forward to seeing them again and I miss especially those who live so far away that I rarely see them.  These people are showing me, teaching me, what healthy attachment feels like.

The more I attach in a good way to the right kind of people; the more I miss not being with those kinds of people....and conversely the less I miss those people with whom I was in an unhealthy attachment relationship with.

I would love to hear from you dear reader, about how you feel about missing or not missing the people in your life. 

Renate Dundys Marrello

2019 – 01 – 18

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Post Estrangement: the Hazards of Being Dutiful

Quote:  
“Distance yourself from the people who; lie to you, disrespect you, use you, put you down.”

Permission to distance myself from those who caused me harm never occurred to me until I was well into my healing journey of recovery from being estranged. 

Looking back now, I think one of the root causes of estrangement was that my estranged daughter saw how I tolerated the subtle abuse from my family; the little put downs, the jabs at my ability, the condescending remarks, the barely hidden sneers of derision, how my efforts were not appreciated etc.  

She saw the pain I experienced at family events, where I was taken for granted, ignored, pushed aside, laughed at, teased etc.   She learned that I tolerated abuse and thus she had no reservations about emulating that behaviour and becoming the same category of abuser, the subtle kind, the paper cut kind, the kind where you don’t bleed to death but you do bleed and hurt with each cut.

Maybe if I had been less ‘duty bound’ to stay loyal and obedient to family I would have set a different example.

It is one of those things that I am learning in hindsight; it is not always best to do the ‘duty’ thing believing that it is the right thing to do.  Being obedient to duty alone does have repercussions because in showing what we are willing to tolerate for the sake of family; we teach our offspring that we don’t value ourselves.  They learn by watching that in not respecting ourselves we don’t demand to be respected, and they learn that they don’t need to respect us either.   I have come to believe that maybe if I had had boundaries and knew how to communicate those boundaries I would have set a different example. 

I often hear estranged parents say "why do my children do this to me when I stayed loyal to my family of origin even though they were not a nice family, I did my ‘duty’ why don't my children do their duty?”  

I tussled with that for a long, long time.  I stayed loyal to my abusers because I did not even realize I was being abused!  That is how normal that kind of talk and behaviour was in my family.  It was so normalized that I thought I was deficient and therefore deserved to be spoken to that way!  I never realized that there is a down-side, a hazard to being dutiful! No one talks about this!  They only talk about how important it is to be dutiful! Being dutiful is praised and glorified and because of this we never look at the dark side!  I challenge you; find a single quote that warns about what negative side effects being blindly dutiful might incur. 

And because I thought it was ‘normal’ I allowed my children to watch me being abused!  Was that really the outcome I wanted from staying loyal?  Did I really want them to learn that you stay connected to abusive people?
Of course not!  I thought I was teaching them family values; that you love family even when they misbehave.  I thought I was teaching them that love means you accept people’s negative personality traits by overlooking them.

Of course that is not what they learned at all.  What they learned is that the peace keeper, the people pleaser, is receptive to being mistreated, unworthy of respect. What they learned is that I tolerate neglect, thoughtlessness, criticism in silence.  They thought that my acceptance of such treatment made me weak.  They did not see loyalty, they saw weakness.  And they chose not to be weak; they chose to follow the example of the ones they saw were in their estimation the 'strong ones'.

That meant that they felt they could get away with being mean to me.  I remember well being afraid of my own children when they were in their teens. I was afraid of their anger when they did not get their own way.  I was afraid when they hurled abusive words at me when I set guidelines for their safety or for cordial behaviour.  I continued my learned pattern of backing down instead of affirming boundaries because I feared losing their love.

Instead I lost their respect.  How can you respect a mother who appears weak to you?  How can you respect a mother who tolerates put downs?  How can you respect someone who is kind to you even after you have pointed out to them that they are inadequate?  That is how my children treated me throughout their teens.  And I accepted it because I thought that is how I showed them my love!

Early estrangement cut me off from all three of my adult children.  They agreed that I was the problem.  They agreed that there was something wrong with me, that I insufficient, that I was not enough, that I was unworthy of their love.  They already had no respect for me, so why should they love me?

Over time, 2 of my adult children changed their minds. They started to see what I put up with, when the hurtful behaviours that were always my lot were now also extended to them.  They started to experience the judgmental and critical side of our family. 

They made peace and reunited with me.  Interestingly; once the healing work I did included having boundaries, once I started sticking up for myself, my relationship with my returning adult children improved. To what extent, it is still too early to tell. But they do know that I no longer tolerate abusive comments to be directed at me, and their behaviour is changing in response.  Instead of toleration; I now see glimmers of love and respect in the way they treat me.    

To me this serves as a reminder that as we change due to our healing process, we also affect a change in others.  We inevitably push away those who resent the changes in us, those who resent that we no longer are a push over; and we draw in those who appreciate the kindness that lead us to being such a push over in the first place, who now find a new reason to respect and love us.  

Renate Dundys Marrello

2019 – 01 – 13

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My Daily Reflections: Beware Glib Avice!

Often we read quotes and memes these days and we can see a kernel of truth, something to live better lives by if we take this advice to heart.  And yet at other times, the advice that we are given seems to actually cause us harm if we apply the advice without a good measure of common sense as well. 

For example this is the quote that started my train of thought today.

Quote:  Go and love someone exactly as they are. And then watch how quickly they transform into the greatest, truest version of themselves.  When one feels seen and appreciated in their own essence, on is instantly empowered.

~ Wes Angelozzi

On the surface nice friendly advice to be less judgmental, to be more kind and loving right!?  But dig deeper as I did today and there are some significant concerns. 

Here is my thought process:

What if your natural state is to love people exactly as they are without reservation and without boundaries?

What if because of this nature, you enable others to continuously use and abuse you and you constantly forgive them without holding them accountable?

What if your silence about exposing how they have hurt you is seen as acquiescence that you are okay with being treated badly on a regular basis?

What if you one day wake up and recognize that this is not good and you create boundaries and you do have reservations and want to hold them accountable?  And you start to have expectations of them that they could be better people if they learned to treat others with compassion and kindness.

Does this quote then imply that you should go back to allowing their abuse because you accept them for who they are? Do you accept their meanness,  do you accept their verbal abuse, do you accept them treating you badly all in the name of loving them as they are? 

Don’t I then empower bad behaviour in the name of loving someone just as they are?

To me such advice, given in a statement of “this is what you should do” is very confusing and even challenges all that I have learned on my healing journey. 

It implies that I should accept harm doers into my life and that my “loving them” will somehow magically encourage them to become good doers.  This has not been my experience.  

Rather what I have learned is that when I accept harm doers into my life, they feel they have the right to continue to be harm doers because I have not protested and I have therefore enabled them to continue doing the same harm over and over again.

Also, it seems to me that the very people who should be taking this kind of advice to heart are the very people who think it is their right to control and manipulate others with judgmental comments, criticisms, implications that you are only worthy of love if and when you change.  I find it interesting that these are the very people that eschew such advice claiming that they don't need to accept people as they are because they have the right to tell people how they ought to be.

Renate Dundys Marrello

2018 – 11 – 16

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post estrangement: confronting the "toxic normal"

Quote:  “what you allow is what will continue.”

What if what you have been trained to allow is not in your best interest?  What if you have been taught to accept “toxic” as “normal”?

I think this is the dilemma that faces most people who are forced on a path of emotional breakthrough!  We walk around for most of our lives allowing others to disrespect us, to put us down, to tell us how we ought to be, and what we ought to do to make others happy. 

And we think that this is how relationships work simply because it is all we have ever known. 

We accept the negative comments about us and assume that we are at fault and that we deserve it because of some deficiency in ourselves!  We strive then, to fix our own inadequacies to meet the standards that others imply we are not meeting!  And we fail over and over again.  We begin to believe on some level that we really are the problem and that if only we could get it right then we would be treated better.

Usually the reason we set out on a healing journey is because some incident happened in our lives that made us say “stop, no more!”

I know that is what happened for me.  I was in a situation where all the issues were my fault.  Everything, that was wrong and every problem was because of my inadequacy.  I was to bear the full burden of being not good enough.  And then, instead of talking to me about how to resolve the problem (which would have meant listening to my side of the story), it was easier to discard me.  That was the beginning of my estrangement journey. 

Being totally broken and abandoned and told that I was defective is the rock bottom place from which I had to pick myself up from. And now that I am this far along in my healing journey, the saddest thing is knowing, that I allowed it to happen!  

I allowed myself to be disrespected in little ways dozens of times for so many years that disrespecting me was considered normal.  A normal way to manipulate me into doing what others wanted of me. A normal way of demeaning me so that I would always see myself as the problem and not the hurtful words of the other person.  I had been conditioned to accept toxic behaviour toward me as normal! 

For me; what others claimed was me having a break down (because I finally said no you don’t get to treat me like that) was actually a break through!  

For the first time in my life I questioned the toxic normal that I had been conditioned to believe in!  

I was able to start to hear other kinds of input about what normal ought to be!  And the process was then of breaking down false core beliefs based on this new insight!  That changed what I was willing to accept.  I was no longer willing to allow myself to be treated in the fashion that others had conditioned me to accept, I was no longer like Pavlov’s dog salivating to the bell sound.  I learned to hear the bell instead as a warning to look for the sting of the subtle criticism, the innuendo of insufficiency, the toxic barb designed to keep my compliant.

I think that one of the biggest lesson that I have learned in my healing journey is that I no longer have to accept when others seek to push me into that old compliant mold.  I can’t of course change those who conditioned me, nor can I change those who discovered how to use that conditioning against me.  My power is recognizing and understanding the behaviours for what they are, (attempts to control me); analyzing what  the implications are for me should I comply, and then responding in a way that preserves my dignity based on how I deserve to be treated or spoken to. 

“You have zero control over anything or anyone in the outer world. Your power lies in understanding you have 100% control in how you respond to everything, what and who you will allow to occupy space in your mind and life. Choice is your superpower.” ~ Barb Schmidt

I discovered my own power when I realized that all I had to do was choose how I allowed myself to be treated. When I stopped allowing people to speak to me with old toxic normal vocabulary, I changed the way I responded to the same old patterns. 

Of course changed responses created changed outcomes.

There were two kinds of outcomes. 

The first is the positive kind, the one where the person confronted with what their words actually conveyed were jolted out of their complacency and recognized that their choices were actually demeaning and that they wanted to change because that is not what their intentions were.

The second reaction is the negative kind and for a time this one surprised me until I started to understand the game of control better. 

I learned that some people are assertive and mean no harm; they just have a different, also faulty message that they learned and were conditioned to utilize. They also were not taught how to consider other people feelings in response to their words. These patterns worked for them so well that they simply continued to use them. There is no malevolent intent, just lack of awareness.  When made aware of these patterns, they respond with acceptance, gratitude for having been given an opportunity to change, and they then start the process of change.

And then there are some people who learned that using their assertiveness to control others was in their own best interests.  They associated with the power this gave them.  And they don’t want to give up that power.  

These are the people that doubled down and insisted that  I was the problem and that if only I would allow myself to be disrespected then our relationship would be fine.  

These are the people that I discovered would rather stop interacting with me than accepting that their words had been toxic and negative. And more interestingly I discovered, they would rather play the victim, insisting that I am at fault for not making the first move to reconnect.  Implying that I ought to condone their behaviour, overlook their behaviour and even allow them to get away without apologizing, thus ensuring that they could repeat the same bad behaviour again whenever it should suit them.

Once you break the cycle things change.

Once you stop going back willing to accept more mistreatment through negative words, you get either people who are willing to work with you in a relationship that is growing and changing and becoming more healthy, or you get people who would rather remain estranged so they don’t have to confront their own misdeeds and acknowledge that in some areas they too need to change.

I am glad that I have broken they cycle.  I am glad that I am no longer conditioned to accept disrespect as toxic normal.

Renate Dundys Marrello

2018 – 11 – 06  

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