Dear Anita,

It has only been about one week since I have posted on here, and it feels much longer.  Since then I have celebrated my 2 year anniversary, been to yet another wedding, and have had very important/deep/serious conversations with you on email.

I am ready to return on here, our ritual of speaking on here.

The title of my post today will be:

Keep the peace.

If you go on this website, or any other meditation/wellness website, there is often a central mantra of: keeping the peace, and choosing happiness.

I would read these and gloss over.  Choose peace and happiness? Ha! Of course I would love to, good luck doing that when my mind is infected with poison – and there is the omnipresent mother voice.

I am not avoiding the questions and talks we had via email about my marriage, its just that – as you aptly realized, there was another direction that was necessary to discuss first and foremost – negativity.

My seeing the world and people as monstrous, seeing, as you stated, seeing my mother in those people.

The best thing you could have said to me this weekend was the following:

Peel of the badness from others and gather that badness to where it belongs- your mother

This is everything.

I notice that my negativity, is directly related to attacking – among other things.

Let’s take this wedding on Saturday for example.  Aside from the general reasons it was fun: small wedding, beautiful weather, Manhattan location – here are the specific ones.

I know NO ONE there – minus peripherally knowing the groom, he is my husbands friend from high school and they have loosely kept in touch – I hardly knew the couple.  It was relaxing for me to sink and savor and enjoy being a guest without having any true involvement, as you know it is easy for me to go into SCC role with people I am close to, jumping to help or be over involved, leaving myself to be emotionally exhausted.  Nope none of that.

The other reason, unlike some other weddings we have been to, there was no pre-conceived notions about any person.  Remember the horrific wife from fourth of July, well she is in the friend group of many of the weddings we have been in.  so of course entering those occasions, a tinge of negativity around that person can entirely affect my behavior more than I realize, and lead to negativity towards my husband, whether it be subtle or not.  It can lead to a domino effect – and if I am feeling this way PLUS feeling exhausted, well bam – recipe for attack.

Recipe for attack, a concept I shall keep in mind.  To understand the roots.

So keeping the peace.

Being a warrior SCC leads to negativity that affects who? ME.  No one else.

If I was to call that cousin today and tell her off – what would happen, let’s assume…she would get angry or offended, may tell her mother.  It would involve my mother in law lets say.  Next family event..Thanksgiving.  There would be awkwardness.  It would harm myself, my husband, and my in laws.

A lose-lose situation.

Who suffers, me.  -and those who matter to me.

Instead, if I keep the peace, as in this:

The cousin sent my husband and I a text last week, she sent us some pictures from the event in Maryland we missed at the beginning of the month, and wrote “we had so much fun, but missed you guys – here are some pics, see you guys soon”

I was annoyed, understandably so – look at her acting like she didn’t just act  very meanly towards me…

But what did I do?

Nothing.  No reply.  I didn’t give her a fake one, bc that wouldn’t be authentic, or a mean one.  Nothing.

I kept the peace.

Fighting, going to warrior – always having a ROAR disrupts whose peace? Mine.

It leads to more recipes for attack. Recipe for disaster.

As you mentioned, I am holding on to negativity and seeing people as worse than they are sometimes.  Placing so much emphasis on how bad they are, allowing it to perpetuate the negativity cycle that is the mother voice.  Perpetuating the mother voice.

I know that by doing this, it is surely not helping myself, and surely not helping my husband who is already not able to be as positive and resilient as usual.  He does not need more negative fire in the air.

This was a great lesson and I am glad to have this in my repertoire, I am sure you will remind me again in the future when I tend to see people as perhaps worse than they really are.  And hopefully I can gather the hate and direct it towards where it belongs- my mother.

Glad to be back writing on here.  As you said, we can utilize email when we have more private matters – and of course a great way to keep in personal touch in general.