Continued (using my 📱):

I have this one vivid memory when I was maybe 5, and it feels like it happened only yesterday. Actually, it feels like it happened every day since that yesterday.

The memory: little girl me was running 🏃‍♀️ toward my mother on the street at night 🌙 with so much unhindered joy in my heart, so much relief, an exhalation of tension (prior to this scene, in the small apt above the street, she announced that she was going to kill herself and she left to her death, I thought)-

I found her alive on the street and ran to her with outsretched arms, screaming Mother, mother, you’re ALIVE! Wanting her to pick me up and hold me tight.

Her reaction was anger, accusatory anger, a condemnation. I’ve done something wrong by running to her.

I held my breathing ever since, still holding my breath, scared to relax & be unprepared. I buried feelings, went quiet, invisible (except for the disturbingly loud and visible tics I couldn’t control, tics that started about that time).

Her reaction that night was not a Reward but Punishment. So, yes, authenticity, need and love can be punished, with harsh consequences.

But now, there’s no more a 5-year-old running. My mother was 25 back then. She’s 85 now and I have no contact with her. And never will (I just noticed sadness about what I just wrote, so.. the little girl is still running deep inside).

I can feel this sadness now without collapsing and needing to suppress that sadness (and hold my breath). I can feel it and exhale (exhaling).

Back to my reward/ punishment thoughts: at this time, if a person does not respond to me being open and.. loving, I suppose I’ll feel sadness, but it’s not a matter of life or death. It’s not catastrophic.

Hmm.. so, there’re always rewards (positive, heart-warming responses), or punishments (lack of positive reactions, rejection, even anger, real or perceived)- it’s just that I can carry it for a little while and then let it go.

There’s a movie I watched long ago titled “Waiting to Exhale” I don’t remember anything about the plot, only the title.

There’s a book I read, “Stolen lives”- I remember nothing about the book, only its title.

I am exhaling, I am reclaiming.

🏃‍♀️ 🐣 Anita

Hey Peter:

Of course it’s okay that you share more of your thoughts on The Parable of Talents. All your thoughts are welcome here 🙂

That something I wrote brought tears to your eyes, that.. I don’t have the words.. it feels like we’re talking irl and I see your tears and you see mine and no one gets scared or runs away.

I didn’t pay attention to the wording and what it means (her rage made her God to me) until you reflected on it in your first paragraph.

She was God to me and I saw God everywhere.

The first words of Genesis come to mind (in Hebrew), translated and rephrased: In the Beginning, there was mother, and mother was tohoo-vavohoo (chaotic, messed up, upside down.. volatile), and she created the sky and the earth of my life- in her tohoo vavohoo image, and darkness was over the abyss, and the spirit of (the unmasked) God floating above the water.. wondering what went wrong 🤔

Oh, is today Good Friday? I didn’t know.

I didn’t read all of your Good Friday post and would like to do so later.

One week to Easter thenou: I did notice more rabbits around. Bogart the beagle (my first ever dog) is trained to track rabbit scent. It’s funny how yhey’re running in front of him but he doesn’t 👀 them because he’s locked into 👃 smelling them.

🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇 Anita