SA Trigger Warning

Dear Tee:

At first this morning (before getting to the computer), I thought to myself that I wished to end our conversation and exploration in regard to her and what happened with her. Next, as I turned on the computer and saw your relatively short message and was concerned, thinking that you are withdrawing from our conversation, particularly when I read the 2nd paragraph about you not necessarily being able to help me. But when I read the last paragraph about continuing our conversation, I felt better.

“how are you feeling today? ❤️”- First, I would like to continue our conversation and not end it just because it got.. well, the word that occurred to me just now was that it got “dirty”, or “nasty”.

Second, I feel better than yesterday. I feel a renewed hope of further healing. I feel like going through- emotionally- what I need to go through. I slept better last night.

* As I just wrote “slept” right above, I felt like it could be thought to be referring to something sexual (because it implies lying in bed, I suppose), same as earlier in this message when I wrote “I felt relieved”, then thought “relieved” could be misinterpreted as something sexual, and therefore I changed it to “I felt better”.

“That was a pretty shattering revelation yesterday, and I can imagine it caused all sorts of emotions in you, including a part of you not believing that it really happened.”- yes, and a feeling of being.. dirty. And a feeling of hope.

“I myself am quite taken aback by these new revelations. You’ve asked if it’s too much for me. It’s not too much for me to hear it and empathize with you, however I might not be necessarily able to help you process it in the best way, since I’m not a trauma therapist. So my ‘skills’ may not be enough in this particular case.”-

This is what I wrote to you late last night in a post I did not submit to you: “You’ve been giving your time and attention to countless tiny buddha members in these forums for years! Your time, attention, superior intelligence and unending generosity have paid off when it comes to me, in practical terms. No one bothered to pay attention to my words, my story.. And then came you.”.

I’ve seen four therapists in my life, don’t think either one was a trauma therapist. The first did nothing but listen or appearing to listen, but wouldn’t say a thing, even when I asked him to say something. The fourth was the most helpful and the one I saw for the longest time. And yet, in my ongoing conversation with you I revealed the most and you have helped me more than any therapist did.

You are not just a person appearing from nowhere, you’ve been in these forums for years and I read each and every one of your posts over the years, and following your forgiveness and returning to communicating with me, my pervasive suspicion and distrust of people turned into trusting you, and this trust makes my healing with you possible.

“I’m just saying this to let you know that I would like to keep supporting you, however I wouldn’t like to cause more harm than good.”- You are very responsible for bringing this up, reminding me that you are not a trauma therapist and that you wouldn’t like to cause harm. Thank you for that!

I trust you to not cause harm and I know that no one’s perfect (including the therapists I did see), but.. sincerely, I can’t think of anyone more perfect than you for this kind of discussion and exploration.

“Dear Anita, it’s normal that we as children and beyond suppress things that were very painful, because that’s how we protect our psyche from being overwhelmed. Perhaps now you feel strong enough to take it on, to look at it, process it and start healing from it?”-

Yes, dear Tee, I do feel strong enough to take it on (but I keep having these sexual interpretation of my words after I type them, as in “take it on” meaning something sexual)

“It’s certainly very painful to be faced with that kind of betrayal by your own mother. There are no excuses for her behavior. The only ‘excuse’ (which doesn’t exculpate her in any way) is that she might have been sexually abused herself as a child. Alessa made a good point about it: ‘there is a link between people being sexually abused at a young age and then going on to perform the same behaviour themselves. Of course, not everyone does. But for some people who cannot accept their abuse seek to normalize it.'”- I suspected long ago that she was sexually abused as a child or adolescent.

“So it’s possible that she went through something similar and ‘acted out’ on you. But of course, this doesn’t excuse her and doesn’t diminish the incredible pain that she’s caused you. Regardless of what her reasons might have been, you have been abused and hurt, and you need to go through a healing process. You need to have empathy for yourself, not her.

“I’m waiting for your input today, hoping you’re feeling not too overwhelmed and that we can continue our conversation, if you find it’s helping you at this point ❤️”- Yes, please, let’s continue!

After I submit this post, I plan on responding to your yesterday’s post.

❤️ 🙏 🫶 ❤️ 🙏 Anita

Thank you, Alessa. No worries- you’re good at talking about this and your input is welcomed!

I will continue to add the SA Trigger Warning.

I am not very focused.. What a day! What earth-shattering revelations for me.

It’s early afternoon here, but more than 8 hours of being awake.

I don’t intend to be back to the computer in the next 8-10 hours.

I hope you sleep well, Alessa ❤️

Anita

SA Trigger Warning:

The insidiousness of it, part of me does not believe me.

No, no, it says, Mother is a good, lovely person, misunderstood, no.. no.

She didn’t do anything overt, everything can be explained. She is good, good, good goddess of mine.

No, no, no.

No.

I see it now the way it was.

I’ll write more tomorrow. I’ll be okay, thank you Tee (feeling well enough to fetch a few emojis)

❤️ 🙏 🫶 ❤️ 🙏 Anita

Continued:

“I meant, she felt threatened by female sexuality, because seductive, sexy women took away her father, and also took away her husband from her. So I meant in that sense, sexuality was a threat.”-

As a result of our talk, Tee, I feel less shame, less body shame, so it’s working and I want to continue to draw the connections between what she did and my early life onset of body shame.

The shaming of my body started early on with * the forceful scrubbing of my body, I still feel her fingers digging into my scalp, and I remember thinking at that time something like: this not normal, this is weird.

She scrubbed me like my body was very dirty and needed hard, prolonged scrubbing.

Then there were * the vulgarities she used in referring to body’s private parts (called “private” for a reason, it just occurred to me), associating great shame with those parts, so much so that these didn’t feel like body parts, that is, normal body parts one is born with, but like a curse sent by the devil, contaminated-parts that need to be removed so to restore purity, or cleanliness, to a genderless, forever-child body.

And then * the way she walked naked in front of me, no shame.. but almost enjoying me seeing her naked.

Of course, I always hid from her and never, ever felt okay to be seen naked. Never (in my whole life) has there been a brief moment of no-shame at the idea of being seen naked, let alone any pleasure in it.

Her pleasure, her smile at prancing around naked in front of me felt incestuous back then.

A thought just occurred to me for the first time, that maybe (I assume that she was) very ashamed of her body in the presence of my father, but free of shame in the presence of the non-threatening, controlled daughter.. so, that’s where she experienced a sort of sexual freedom, to be seen naked and enjoy being seen.

A pleasure I just felt.. vicariously through her (Embarrassing to express here, just now).

So, yes, I trust the explanation right above, this is a connecting line in the picture that had too many blanks before.

I see the Incestuous Factor quite clearly now for the first time in my whole life: she was too timid with a grown man, an adult; too inhibited, but inhibition loosens up in the presence of her “it” child, her daughter.

Her pleasure at being seen naked by me was a sexual pleasure.

And this is the ickiness I felt around her a lot, the feel of her hand over mine on the way to the airport, that wasn’t a mother’s hand, it was a hand carrying a long history of a covert sexual interest.

Did it really happen? That memory or dream of me lying in bed and a hand touching me for a long, long time, felt like a cat walking softly all over me, but there was no cat in the apartment.

I remember feeling awake but keeping my eyes closed, waiting for the cat walking all over me to be done walking.

Could have been a dream that felt awake, could have been her touching me.

Back to the quote I started this post with: “I meant, she felt threatened by female sexuality, because seductive, sexy women took away her father, and also took away her husband from her. So I meant in that sense, sexuality was a threat.”-

Her sexuality was threatened by anticipated rejection by an outside adult, but not by an inside, controlled.. not sexy child- “it”.

I hope this is not too much for you, Tee.. This is major healing for me, right here, in this post. There’s a bit of an embarrassment talking about this, but a much greater liberation in bringing to light what’s been covered in darkness for so long.

Anita

Hi dear Alessa:

Good to get your message but sorry to read that you are sick again ❤️

I think that mutual trust is super important and I am willing to have a relationship with you based on mutual trust.

Trust has been very, very difficult for me since I was a young child. It’s only recently that I am making a breakthrough in my ability and willingness to trust people.

.. On my other thread I’ve been discussing inappropriate sexual aspects of the “mothering” I received that remind me of what you shared in regard to the “mothering” you received, so I figure we share this type of trauma, and you are the only person who shared this on tiny buddha, nor did I hear any such sharing in real-life.

I am mentioning this because I am currently, with the huge help from Tee, working on it in my other thread. If you’d like to talk about the topic here, if it’d be something that will help you, we can. But again, only if it may be helpful to you, not otherwise. I know what a sensitive, troubling topic it is.

It is Sun morning here, I got up too early, still dark outside, drinking coffee. Later I will attend a Friendsgiving potluck which is a few days before (Family) Thanksgiving. I will spend Thanksgiving itself with people who don’t want to spend it with their families 😊

Please take care of yourself, Alessa ❤️

❤️🙏🙏🙏