Women have been conditioned for centuries, and still teach young girls to compete against other young girls. Men encourage this competition. These young girls grow up into women and compete against other women.
I remember shortly out of a safe house for abused women, waiting to pick up my 5-year-old daughter outside of her school when a woman came up to me and told me to stay away from her husband. She proceeded to tell me, that just because I am young and from a broken marriage doesn’t give me the right to break up another woman’s marriage.”
She had assumed I wanted her husband, and I had no idea why? I didn’t know who her husband was, and I had just survived a horrific marriage. In fact, I was just climbing out of that nightmare, still suffering from anxiety with regards to men. I had no desire to date let alone marry again.
This memory has not left me in over 35 years. Partly because it happened many times over the years. I could never figure out why women believed I wanted their men. When I did begin dating, I had rules, no one who even smelled like they had another woman…. And then I made them prove this…
The fear of other women taking from us runs deep, and I pondered this a lot. Being raised in a house with 3 sisters were bullying and competition was rampant in every way. We were taught to throw each other to the wolves. In survival, one can expect nothing less. We were masters at survival, we are all still here, we made it out of our conditioning alive, or did we?
Not learning how to communicate, the wounds keep flying back and forth.
The most recent is; “The wound of Exclusion!”
Do they know they are excluding?
Do they recognize the pain this is causing?
Do they convince themselves they are honoring another’s wishes by not including?
When trauma is all you know, you are not able to see how you are affecting others. When you are so consumed with survival, others need become stressors.
The current experience has cause old wounds to surface.
There was a huge cavern of trauma that separated the mother and me. this cavern was created before I was born and grew consistently through out my life. Her trauma being so deep and so hard to bare it exploded on everyone around her. I am not saying I had it worse than anyone else, I am saying it broke me. By 13 the streets were safer, I wanted out.
In her explosions words to me were “I will sell you to the highest bidder, I have buyers!” or she would drive by an orphanage and threaten to put me in there. Statements: “do as I demand, or you will suffer, I will get away with it, I have before!” Beatings that had no cause for left me desolate and alone. At nine I attempted suicide. I wanted out. How I survived that attempt I still do not know.
Over the years I have tried to build a bridge over this cavern only to be sliced open and left bleeding by her need to show me how she was treated. To blame me for the atrocities that she had done to me.
I would overhear statements “Myrna is just jealous; she wants to break up the family!” My parents both would say this to my sisters, creating a deeper desire in all to exclude me.
The most profound experience in my childhood was when I knew at 13, I was getting out of the mother’s home. A few days after I was informed of this wonderful news, I was elated and completely packed to go days before my departure. I knew I had a week to go, but I was out of here! This was profoundly hopeful for me, I had never experienced hope and I liked it. Hindsight reveals that this could have been interpreted as arrogance. A 13-year old can seem pretty snooty. I was watching TV in our TV room when all my sisters that were still living at home came into the room laughing and joking. They were sharing cheezies I think. It was clear they were not sharing them with me, as they offered them to each other, not to me. Comments like: “we need to stick together; we don’t think we are too good for each other. These cheezies are for those who don’t think they are better than anyone else!” my name was not said, it did not have to be.
Exclusion is extremely painful; my sisters were participating in this form of bullying…. I know it was for their survival, and I think I knew it that day. If they did not side with the mother, they would suffer the same treatment.
I remember the mother entering the room, not certain if it was that room or at that same day, her words never left me: “I am done with you! You have been trouble from the moment you were born. You are no longer part of this family!”
Hearing this at 13 in front of my giggling sisters tore my soul open. Compartmentalizing is a strategy necessary for survival. I shut off the pain and carried on. Yet all these years later, constantly working on me, bettering me for my own good it still bleeds.
I am 55 years old and have never heard my mother say, “I love you”, I never will.
I am no longer in the need for something I never had, a mother’s love. For many years now I saw her traumatized life and released her from my need to be anything to her, hoping for her to experience peace. Coming from this place of healing and gratitude for teaching me so much about the need for compassion and showing me just how horribly she was treated. I saw her one more time a short year before she passed. Once again, she showed me how horrible she was treated and how she resented me for not allowing her to continue to show me this. This experience brought to surface a final “mother wound”. It surfaced as a physical lump in my left breast. Being forced to dive in and mother myself through this deep wound, experiencing a painful biopsy that clearly represented the pain I had lived not being wanted or loved by the mother, revealed to me that, not being loved formed the very core belief that drove me in and out of unhealthy co-dependent wounding in the worst relationship with myself.
To discover that:
I needed to mother myself.
I needed to love what the mother could not love in me.
I needed to love what the sisters could not love in me…
My sisters were only showing me how they were treated. All women were only showing me how they were treated. When women treated me good, I didn’t believe it was genuine, it may not have been. I only knew competition. I am just as guilty as the rest of competition; it is what I was taught.
Deep searching along with deep integration and healing assisted me as I pulled in Divine Love… and released the mother wound, finding myself surrounded by a wound just as big, just as painful.
The Exclusion…
They were only showing me how they were treated.
They were excluded also and in order to not be excluded they had to join in on the side of the Exclude-rs.
I recognized my past behavior and had to forgive myself for the atrocities of excluding others.
I had released the mother and myself seeing her passing as an act of grace for her. Setting her free from a lifetime of trauma and pain. There was nothing unresolved for me regarding her and a month later I recognized this was the first birthday where I was not waiting for my mother to not say happy birthday to me, just like it had been for over 40 years. I was free of the waiting for proof that she did not have it in her to love me. I forgave her, and myself for waiting. I knew we both were free of each other, in the most liberating way possible for her.
Unaware that the wound that surfaced was deep filled with razer sharp edges, that cut me wide open, the exclusion…
Seeing a “Go-Fund-Me” add for the 3 daughters of the mother broke open this wound revealing a depth of pain I had been running from my entire life. The fact that it was public and seen by the world exposed my exclusion…
Did they want to do this?
Did they see it?
Did they care?
I was not financially able to go to the mother’s bed side, so I contributed to the sisters going…. Not once was I offered a chance to go, nor was I included in the go fund me add. I was clearly not one of the mother’s children or their sister. The mother had 3 daughters not 4…. This was clear.
At this very time, I receive my results of my DNA. Discovering everything I had ever heard about my race, was misconstrued… I do not have any “Black” blood in me, either I am not part of this family, or I have been lied to all my life. The not being part of this family would explain why I have been so excluded all my life. Exclusion reminds me that never has anyone come looking for me, after I ran away to heal. Exclusion tells me; no one has cared if I was part of the family or not. One sister reached out to me once over the 11 years I had been away, not asking to reconnect, even though I knew that this is what could be desired...
This is how trauma continues, through the generations… when asked if I wanted anything of the mothers, I responded with “I would like to look!” there was an aspect of me that was looking for a connection to the mother.
I saw how the Exclusion continued as I was led to look at the leftovers, everyone else had looked and picked and removed what they wanted. I was not given an opportunity to see if there was a connection. Picking up a tablecloth to look at, while considering the red one on the table “I will keep this if its not wanted” words out of the sister’s mouth told me I had better not ask for it.
Is this what she meant?
The wound of exclusion would say yes….
The wisdom of my healing and my training shows me that this was grief , in grief we are unable to see how we are affecting others. to them they lost their mother, not my mother.
It keeps the ability to see anything other than the pain of exclusion blocked. As this review of the leftovers was in process conversations of a birthday for the father revealed yet again, I was not invited. I was not given the opportunity to choose to attend.
A year of inviting the sister for coffee and attempts to keep the relationship had stopped me from even asking for the sister’s time. Another sister deleted me off Facebook without telling me why, I had had her and her husband out for dinner, she never invited me for dinner. I had reached out for almost 10 years before I stopped and now, I am shown they don’t miss me.
I must ask myself what I am doing forcing myself to be repeatedly shown I am excluded…
I remind myself that they are only showing me how they have been treated, and I know I have partaken in this treatment of them….
This does not release me from the pain of exclusion.
I pray to the creator for guidance.
I don’t want to harm them, by telling them how I feel, yet I am torn.
Walk away or speak up…
All my life I have walked away and “the family” doesn’t seem bothered by this…
It’s been 30 years since my father said happy birthday to me…
Is he waiting for me to ask him to say happy birthday to me????
Exclusion says; “YUP!”
In the depth of this wound, regardless of the outcome…
“I bless them with all the love their hearts desire and the grace to move through their journey."
I call in grace as I find my way through the wound of exclusion with these words:
Women please stop teaching your girls to compete with other girls.
Teach them to compete only with themselves.
Teach them to support other differences, and achievements without dishonoring themselves in the process.
Mothers stop teaching your children that the color of one’s skin makes a difference… It does not!!!
Another person’s achievement is not an attack on the many other achievements in that area.
Women please stop competing with other women, stop watching those “housewives” shows that support this.
This is archaic and not for the highest good.
Women please change the way we are with each other for the success of our race and our sex.
Love each other, be kind rather than judgmental, show acceptance regardless of the differences.
Show others who have never seen what “kindness between women” looks like, show them a possibility, give them a measure of hope…
I say this with all the love and grace I can possibly offer…
Mj
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