Hi Rapunzel Thank you for your input on this thread. Like you, part of the reason I went to college was to learn about what has created my own dragon and what ways I might be able to use that knowledge to heal myself and the circumstances which created my depression. Your next class definately sounds applicable and the opportunity large to expand your understanding and responses to your past. I think it's great you're doing this, for yourself, and your children, and like Sept., performing emotional alchemy on yourself. I believe writing a book is a great goal and I wish you luck and offer my support.

I'm not sure I can offer any insights on your answers, but I will respond with sincerity and hope there is something within you find usable.

Validation of emotions has always been a huge issue for me also. I would search for people who could identify my feelings so I could confirm I was not a psychological mutant. Just one person who said I understand, I don't blame you, you're not wrong to feel this way would have made so much difference. Instead, I felt like it was only me who was missing the point, like there was a great secret everyone knew but me.

The dynamics in a family relationship are truly interesting, and yes, can be devastating. Siblings often struggle for attention and place, and don't possess the compassion and empathy that misfortune teaches so well. When we're still involved in that struggle, a weaker / dominant relationship develops. It happens in adut relationships as well. Those who "win" the dominant role proscribe to the essentiality of the struggle. They have not been granted the lesson of compassion. Their lesson is to fight for what there is available. Life to them can be takers, and losers. The parents may even encourage this form of "success" and attempt to motivate the less dominant child to increase their competitive character. The underlying statement is "others deserve to lose what they cannot protect." Are we raising children to be aggressive to a point of anti-socialism, and labeling it the socially acceptable terms of opportunistic, achieving, and successful?

I have a question. Is your sister older? What is her physical appearance in comparison to yours? If you are the second child, your parents may have compared you to her. As an older child, she would have developed in advance of you. Able to perfrom smaller tasks and help mom and dad, and therefore more useful. She may have been assigned the role of taking care of you, getting you dressed, tying your shoes. This responsibility would have made her feel superior. Timing can make so much difference in our lives. We hardly take time to consider it's importance. How different it might have been if you were born first and the roles reversed (assuming you are the younger).

If she was physically more attractive, that also has an impact on how your parents might treat her, even unintentionally. Their friends and nieghbors might have commented how cute and lovely she was, and having used their limited vocabulary on her, there was little left to validate you. Uncounciously, your parents would respond to the positive statements made in reference to your sister. Have you ever looked at something, maybe a car, or a horse, or a dog, and seen just that, a car, a horse, or a dog. If someone comments that it is a noice car, or an ugly car, did you re-evaluate your perceptions? Would you have the car a second look if they hadn't said anything? When you see that type of car again, what are you reminded of? Does the statement "what a nice car" come to mind? Unconciously we do the same with people.

It was important to your sisters self-identity that you stay in your lower place, just as it was important to your school-mates. Keeping you locked in lowest position prevented anyone else from being demoted to that role.

It's understandable that you created a screen to mask the very real cruelties you endured. And why not? What other escapes were available to you? Even if you built the inner belief in yourself, those in your environment would make extra effort to put you back where you "belonged."

Your cloud may have become a safe place. You could make the rules there, you were welcome there, you could disclude any one else from entering. I think we are all born with a capacity for love in a quanitifed amount that may grow lager, or lessor as we grow older. At your age your love needs were not met. A pressure to have the love returned to you caused the inner disappointments to create a space capable of providing you the comfort you needed. The place was of adequate size to fulill your needs at the time it was created. Life did not ease and the space may have become inadequate, and in it's confinement, the cloud burst from it's place and affected your concience more and more.

We must recognize the cloud / dragon is demading retribution. Not from us, but through us. Giving permission for the cloud to exist is a first step in healing it's wounds. We don't look at a physical wound and try to cure it by hiding it. We examine the depth and the severity. We determine what treatment or ointments are needed. We apply those ointments and we attend to it's progress.

Misery and pain are emotions we would rather avoid. Like the physical wound, we must examine them. We need to know the depth and the scope before they can be treated. Like the physical wound, maybe we were careless and put ourselves in a dangerous circumstance, or maybe, someone elses carelessness caused the wound. We need to learn the cause, not just treat the problem. With this knowledge, we can learn how to avoid recurrance, and also teach the lesson to our children and others.

In this way, the cloud is redeemed. It's gift of knowledge and love has been recieved and enacted. We can release the misery when we've gleaned the most from the clouds lesson. We can and should feel a sense of reward. The misery has been transformed to wisdom. Wisdom we should share and lend to all. The experience has gone full circle. Without discovering the clouds message and purpose, we are doomed to suffer it's wrath. We are prevented from becoming fully functional individuals, and because of our non-development, the global community suffers as well. We've failed in our purpose to humanity.

Some people say there are two kinds of people on earth. Winners, and losers. We "losers" have a valuable lesson to impart. If we can rise above our defeats, our lesson for the world is of compassion. As we watch the world continue to spin, controlled by the opportunistic achievers, we watch as every living and non-living thing in their path is not safe from extinction. I feel it is our responsibility to learn our lesson from the dragon / cloud / inner child, and exert our voice of compassion for humanity, nature, peace, and honor of the individual.

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but rising every time we fall." Confucius