Still learning about Love

For a single person I love Valentines's Day. Why? Because I get to love myself. I bought roses for myself. I did candle magic last night about love and relationships. I bought some special food - red of course. I even go those valentine decorations you can put on windows and mirrors. I now have pink and red hearts all over my apartment. I pink/red/purple xmas light that help magically light these cold days. Over the week I kicked of my LOVE celebrations with a friend, celebrating being cancer free by sharing a bottle of bubbly. Yesterday I cooked quiche, took a long hot bath (more for my aching knees), did a little shopping as I walked down Broadway in the freezing cold. And I watch Pride and Prejudice with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson - just magic. Tonight is our Vagina Monologues fundraiser and tomorrow I see my therapist, which I see as a loving activity for me. I haven't had a chance to work on my heart project so that will fill the evenings for the rest of the week - I will send you pictures. I even buy myself Valentine cards - write inspirational things in them, and then send them through the mail to myself!

While I am very cheerful today the last week has been a difficult one. I have been looking honestly at my childhood - and trying to sugar coat it anymore, or make excuses for why what happened, happended.

It actually helps to write it here - to look again - with not so much hurt - to get it down in writing and out of the hiding, shame, and excuses. I think part of this is putting the anger, hurt and victimhood in it's proper place and working on loving and forgiving myself for what I thought I should have done but could, and facing to really how lonely I was.

A couple of things that struck me over the weekend especially. I was watching the DVD of the Vagina Monologues. One section chronicle the stories of woman from either the Rose Bud or Pine Ridge Reservation. One statement they made that stuck with me - "It is like we are invisible". Now I know this statement as a feminist in an intellectual way - but that statement stuck me much closer to home - within the dysfunction of my own family - I am invisible - or I feel invisible in my own family. In my family I think all of us are in some degree - we are invisible to each other.

The second ring to the soul was at church yesterday. The day's sermon topic was families. Different kinds of family. As the minister moved through the sermon, she talked about what made successful families. She sighted a study from the University of Nebraska.

Of the 6 components for a successful family 3 of them weren't around, at least when I was growing up - they where 

1.Appreciation and affection: People in strong families deeply care for one another, and they let each other know this on a regular basis. They are not afraid to express their love.

I know my parents loved me - but they rarely expressed when I was growing up. 

2.Positive communication: Successful families are often task-oriented in their communication, identifying problems and discussing how to solve them together. Perhaps even more important than this, however, strong families also spend time talking with and listening to one another just to stay connected. Some of the most important talk occurs when no one is working at connection: open-ended, rambling conversations can reveal important information which helps smooth out the bumps of family living. In the family I grew up in we didn't discuss how to solve problems. Mom and Dad decided how it was handled with little or no input from me.

3. Successful management of stress and crisis Strong families are not immune to stress and crisis, but they are not as crisis-prone as troubled families tend to be. Rather, they possess the ability to manage both daily stressors and difficult life crises creatively and effectively. They know how to prevent trouble before it happens and how to work together to meet challenges when they inevitably occur in life. This dovetails in with #2 - with out the positive communication stress doesn't get managed - rather it gets stuffed, turns into anxiety about how I am going to handle this because no one else is.

Well, there I sat in church crying. My family wasn't successful and I was one of the few people who didn't raise my hand indicating if I had a happy family life. Luckily I have friends at church and I cried on their shoulders. I even shared with my minister that I was one of those that didn't have a happy childhood. I am telling the truth and letting the story out. I feels like I am telling this story in different ways to different people and it feels good to just tell the truth and stop hiding behind some made up facade of a happy family.

So all of this eventually comes back around to "well now what?" - Loving myself! As I go back - I talk to Little C (my nickname for myself) and tell her I love her and hold her and go back to those wind swept grass fields I would sit in under the afternoon sun. I love myself by celebrating LOVE week. This where I am right now and that feels okay. It isn't all in it's place and in the past, no longer a present day trigger, but by letting it out I know I am getting there.

Here is the link if you want to take a look.

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1282&context=extensionhist