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Open Eyes · Aug 23, 2012, 02:20 PM

"At this point, I have learned and gained so much from everyone here that I am at the "trying to move on and not letting it upset me" point. I mean, frankly, I am an orphan now with no family (yes, I am a grown up. boo hoo....me )" Quote Rose.

(((Rose)))),

Well, one doesn't have to be a "real orphan to be an orphan without a loving family". I hope you are seeing that in your time here at PC.

A grown up boo hoo me? Oh, that is not being fair to "Rose". It is "not" unusal for someone to be "grown up" and come to see a reality that is "very upsetting" and worthy of "grieving". I am going through that myself and I have been a grownup for longer than you, and so have other members been experiencing this as well. You truely deserve to be validated for growing up in a "loveless" environment regardless of the materialistic things that were present. I certainly woud not want you to feel that "you don't even deserve to "grieve" Rose. In fact the stage you and I are in in our PTSD healing "is" the "greiving stage". So you have to allow yourself to grieve and be ok with it. And it has nothing to do with being "grown up". And the length of time this stage takes place depends on what each person has to "recognize" and finally "grieve".

What I am doing myself in this stage is not only seeing the reality of what environment I grew up in, how I was abused as well, but also how that became a part of how I interact and am as a person in the now. There were things about "me" that I just did to self protect, but I never understood "where" that came from. There are standards that I have as well that I had to understand how those came to be. And I have "genuine" weaknesses and I can now see "why" I have these weaknesses. And it is "sad" when I think of the "whys" and also think of the child in me that had to find a way to deal with things she just had no way of understanding how to deal with and what it really meant.

For as long as I can remember people have asked me "why I care when I see someone being hurt, lied to, bullied, selling an unsuspecting young girl a bad horse, a trainer that is being too hard on a student, someone who is cheating at a show, and there are plenty of people that would wonder why I would care about helping people on a site that I will probably never meet, why waste my time? they ask. My own husband says, "you care too much". Well, I do, and I didn't know why until I went back and realized how that happened. Honestly, I could not understand how a bus driver could watch my brother being bullied every single day on that bus and NEVER SAY ANYTHING.

Well, here I am in my 50's, all grown up and FINALLY the damage this causes is being recognized and why? Because children are taking their lives because of being "bullied". And that is the ticket, it is often only "fixed" and "recognized to be harmful" when someone "dies" because of it. And then what I think of is that that every day treatment disturbed my brother so much that "it may have caused him to be so angry that he seriously hurt me". I had to live like that for "most" of my childhood. So why to I care? Hmmmmm let me just think about that one.

And somewhere in the mix of my very troubled childhood, I knew my mother loved me, I was the favorite. But that didn't buy me safety because I was afraid to "tell" because it would only punish my brother more and to this day I know my mother would be mortified if she found out. And that is one of the biggest reasons why I didn't have the personal damages put into my case. I didn't want my mother to get hurt and I also knew that because I worked with children it could bring in a strange uneasyness in parents. And I love every child I work with and do my best to have them leave me with a real "sense of self esteem". I respect them more than many of their parents do.

Boo hooing is finally allowing yourself to have permission to grieve something that hurt you and you felt you had to hold it in somehow or that you didn't deserve to feel upset. So if you need to Boo Hoo, you have my permission with all the respect I can give you to do just that. And then I am also saying with all my heart that "it is ok for you to love and comfort yourself" and give yourself permission whole heartedly to heal as well.

And that is what the next stage of healing through PTSD is all about. It takes all the hurt and new knowledge about who we are and why and we learn to utilize what we learn and gain new tools to continue on in a "healthier" way. And that doesn't happen overnight either. It all depends on the person.

So your brother just sent a picture of his car huh? Well, men do love their machines, it is just the way they are, there are male members here that have pic's of their "babies" or "she cars". You can still say, "nice car brother but I prefer a solo pic of you smiling, that is more impressive to me" because I love you.

The key Rose is that just because your mother or others can't express "love" it doesn't mean you can't be the healthy one that "can say "love". There is nothing wrong with having the "guts" to slip that in, even if others don't know what to do with it. They may just appreciate that quiet message more than you will ever know.

(((Nice big hug for you Rose))))
Open Eyes