Tag Archives: guilt

Death, Emotions, Healing, Life, Pain, Personal Memoirs

Part 2 – Thirty Years Later

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I woke up in Recovery Room to a familiar face.  I told her I was glad it was her.  I was exhausted.  I was sad.  I laid there thinking of all the women who I had cared for in that Recovery Room who had also miscarried.  Never again would I not be able to relate to their experience, the hormones, the emotional and the physical pain.  Looking back, I now realize the sheer volume of spiritual pain that many of us carried, hidden, behind our shame, our guilt, our self-blame.   We mothers so easily carry a universal-type Eve complex.  It’s our fault.  :-(  From now on, as a professional nurse, I would realize that tears or no tears, the information swirling around in the heads of women is often more than they can bear.  Of course, often, those who believe in God also believe that God won’t give them more than they can bear.  Or so that’s what everyone tells them.  Not true.

I learned from the nurse that the baby and the amniotic sac were all in contact.  From the surgeons eyes, he saw nothing wrong with the baby.  But of course, the baby was dead.  And yes, I called it a baby and to this day I still call it a baby.  The umbilical cord, for whatever reason (and I would later blame myself for this) fell apart breaking the connection between baby and me.

My stay in the hospital was brief.  Both my doctor and surgeon discharged me the next morning.  One told me to take the night off from sex but then I could get started right away and try again.  The other told me he didn’t want to see me for at least three months.  In other words, don’t get pregnant for three months.

The surgeon made note that he expected me to be sad and very upset the morning he sent me home.  I looked at him, brushed it off matter-of-factly . . . I had slipped back into nursing mode.  It’s okay, I’m fine, miscarriages are a dime a dozen . . . I was in another kind of shock and as well, I had started into that belief that God had allowed this to happen to get ahold of me again.  I had also started to believe that the miscarriage was my fault.  The level of athletic activity before I miscarried was heavy.  I believed I had not taken care of my baby by selfishly participating in a rigorous sport.  I shut down my feeling side and believed that what I was enduring was what one should expect.  I blew it, I deserved it, so there.

Then I went home and I went to bed and I didn’t cry until two days later when from the living room my husband heard my sobs.  Rushing into the bedroom and coming to my side he gently said,  “I wondered when it would come.”  And so I woke up for a bit and mourned the loss but underneath I was seething with self-blame and shame.  I named the baby, giving it a unisex name, not knowing whether the child was a boy or a girl.  I wrote a poem and held my own memorial service.  I pictured my little one floating in a specimen jar in the lab, along with all the others whose destiny was to float in a toxic chemical the rest of their non-lives.  I was horrified.  I believed though, that the child was in heaven and that gave me great peace at the time.  I understand why mom’s need a heaven.  (Dad’s do too by the way, but right now I’m writing about me as a mother.)

 

Emotions, Life, Secular Wings

Suffering

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There was a time when I thought Mother Teresa was a saint.  Christian, Muslim, or whateverist, anyone who worked in the slums of India must be a saint . . . right?  This article HERE is an excellent read on what one young man experienced while volunteering alongside the Mother Teresa charity.  It’s disturbing on so many levels.  Like me, most people I know that are Catholics have romanticized this nun and her charity.  Some would say, ‘Well, better Mother Teresa than the streets of India.’  Really?  I don’t know about that.  Maybe dying on the street provided more dignity than dying en masse in an institution that supposedly offered hope but ultimately neglected individual and collective human rights.  I’m guessing all these neglected Indians at least died Catholics . . . and perhaps at it’s core, that was the mission?  At least they died Catholics, last rights and all.

In my mid-20’s my husband and I took a trip to the Caribbean for our first official out-of-country vacation as a married couple.  I had finally worked a year full-time at the hospital and was entitled to a weeks vacation.  As well, it was likely that we’d start to think about starting a family soon, and better to travel now then not be able to travel later.  So, off we went to the island of St. Lucia.  Hot concrete.  My first impression as I stepped off the jet.  Hot airport as we went to check our luggage.  Hot bus as we took our seats on a not-so-luxurious bus that would take us to our luxurious hotel accommodations for a week.  Hot, hot, hot.  Don’t even ask me about my armpits.

Shock.  After hot . . . shock.  Speeding down what was not a road, but apparently was a road, we bumped and jostled our way and my very heightened anticipatory fear was sure we’d hit the animals and small children that meandered along the road oblivious to the next round of rich vacationers from a land far away.

Poverty.  Unadulterated poverty.  I had never seen it . . . not like this.  This was poverty.  What I saw indicated suffering.

The bus now pulls up to the luxury hotel and I’m moving from shock into sorrow.  I’m speechless and Biker Dude hasn’t caught on that I’m about to collapse in our room in despair.  He opens the door.  I walk in, sopped in perspiration and tears . . . I collapse.  Biker Dude thinks maybe I’m laughing about something but then he sees I’m crying.  More like wailing actually.  Face in the bed covers, shaking with horror that what I saw in the 30 minute bus trip was the reality of the native people of St. Lucia.  Biker Dude must have thought I was naive not to know life like this existed on the planet.  Oh I knew it, I just hadn’t really witnessed it personally.  And then I started to speak . . . more like an oration really.

How in God’s name was I going to relax and enjoy myself knowing that down that dirt path they called a road, children were hungry and would never have an education?  How in God’s name was I going to frolic in the pristine Caribbean knowing that these children would never posses wealth enough to have the choice to vacation outside their own island?  And, by God, how dare I come into their space with my money, with my possessions and flaunt what I have when they have not?  I shouldn’t be vacationing.  I should start a mission!

Needless to say, Biker Dude did NOT plan on spending the first few hours of his vacation counselling me on the bed in our room.   I did not plan on having red, itchy, swollen eyes for our first meal in our swanky hotel.  Good God, the guilt I had for having when others had nothing.  I still struggle to this day with guilt.  I’m out of country, in the southern U.S. for three months.  People call it a vacation.  It’s not a vacation to me . . . it’ s more than that, it’s life.  I am fortunate to be able to do this, but I keep quiet about it, even in my own home town because so many people are suffering and can’t afford to do what we are doing.  I see it in their eyes, their faces, their body language.  I can barely look at them.  Most think that we are bloody rich.  That we somehow inherited a bunch of money.  Well, we haven’t inherited a dime.  Our parents are still living and happily spending our dimes!  :-)  And, they should.  When we married I worked for about four years and after that I was a stay-at-home mom.  Biker Dude had a secure job which he loved and we had benefits and a pension to look forward too.  Being a single-income family had it’s challenges but we did it and now we are able to enjoy getting out of the frigid cold and living in the light and warmth, while others grumble through another cold winter.

Biker Dude is pragmatic about all of this.  We worked hard for what we have now.  By the way, we are not rich.  We are not the 1%.  He’s not going to agonize over what we are able to do.  He loves life fully.  If he dies young, he dies with no regrets.  He’s like that . . . cup is full.  Me, I live in a constant dichotomy.  The days the glass is half-full, I still can’t stop thinking about those with an empty glass.  The days the glass if half-empty I despair that I should ever feel it’s half-empty when I am so blessed.  Though we are not rich, we are . . . if you know what I mean.  I am rich compared to those I’ve left behind that look at me as if to say, ‘Don’t leave me.  How can you live so fully when I cannot?’

I look away.  I hide who I am, what I’m thinking, how I feel.  I’m never comfortable being me.  Always this underlying guilt lives with me.  How can I live so fully?  I don’t.

Spiritual Abuse

Leaving a toxic church

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Recent reads & discussions have given me pause to reflect on some past church experiences.

Namely, leaving the church.

[Edited to add:  Paragraphs removed for personal reasons.]

Leaving church is never easy for a variety of diverse reasons.  It doesn’t matter how you handle it…if you are in an unhealthy, toxic, legalistic church there is no easy way to do it…you just do.  Be prepared though for all kinds of lies, gossip, rejection & attack.  It was truly overwhelming to me as a person & it affected my health in every way.  We never ended up resigning our membership.  But, clearly as a result of the way they handled our letter we knew we could not return to this church, so we simply didn’t go back.  Which meant they never did follow the rules of their so-called church constitution.  No surprise really.  They only followed the rules when it suited their agenda.  So, about 6+ years later we get this phone call on a Sunday morning as we we’re on our way out to this other church asking us if they could remove our membership.  Sure, thanks, yup, bye.  And that was it.

If I could say one thing to those in the same boat, don’t waste your time trying to tie up to that dock anymore.  Let yourself drift away from the dock.  I don’t care whether you go to another church, chose another religion or leave belief all together.  That’s not my call.  What is my call is this…you can waste time & energy on something you probably hate anyway.  What is freeing or saving about a religion or a pastor or any leader that tells you when to jump & how high?  What is life-giving about people who tell you what to believe & how to believe?  Don’t you hate to be controlled?  Then why stick around for further manipulation & intimidation that serves no other purpose then controlling you?

Be aware that we can’t control their response to our departure.  But I urge you to put their response in perspective & not take it personally.  They are still stuck in fundamentalism &/or legalistic belief.  They will only respond likewise.  There is no other way for them to respond.  You may think that you can rationalize with them, but it won’t be their strong suit.  They run a tight ship & in order to keep it tight they will tighten down the hatches even more.  The only thing they can rationalize is that you are accountable to them.

My advice goes further than this.  Don’t let them steal your heart away.  I don’t mean that as a figure of speech.  I mean, don’t let them steal your heart away, your health away, your mind away.  The stress that can come through this kind of experience can affect every part of your body, mind, spirit (whatever that means to you).  If this happens, they are still controlling you.

Let them go.  Let them say whatever they want, they will anyway.  They’ll soon get things back under control & you’ll be forgotten.  The last thing they will want to do is bring up any truth that may shine on their lies so they will quickly seek to sweep you under the rug.

Look, I know it will affect you emotionally.  You are only human.  The thing is, work very hard to not take it personally.  Write about it, talk about it, get therapy for it, paint about it, knock the fuzz off a tennis ball while playing tennis…do whatever you can to assist you in your healing regarding it…but don’t let it abide longer then necessary or it’ll waste away your adrenal system…you know, the old ‘fight or flight’ system.  We need our hormonal system.  While healing & going through some of the stress you will encounter try & find ways to nurture yourself.  In my opinion that’s one of the ways to break from the fundamentalist control/brainwashing some of us were under.  Take care of yourself.  That was one of the things we were taught was selfish.  Nonsense.  Take care of yourself.  Listen to what you know to be true from within yourself.  I know, it’s been a long time since you’ve listened to you because like me you were probably told that listening to you was dangerous.  I mean, how in the world could we listen to such a sinful soul/heart…right?  And oh yeah, how could we ever know whether that voice we were hearing inside was that of Satan’s?  Horrors!

Just stop, slow it down, breathe.  If you are leaving church for what you have discerned are well-founded reasons just take your time through it all.  Your heart will be glad you did.

Originally blogged in 2007.

Leaving Christianity

Pumpkin guts

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The stinging tears welled up in my eyes & I thought for a moment the dam would burst. As we walked in the warm fall night the young Trick or Treater’s made their way door to door as we made our way along the road, this last night of October.

I shared this information (Focus on the Family article on Halloween no longer available) with hubby as we walked & overwhelmed I said, Imagine telling young children they’re full of yucky, sticky, smelly stuff (pumpkin guts)…good for the self-esteem eh? Then it hit. The wave of emotions, the tears…hubby sees them & he comforts me.

I hurt for ever teaching some of what I once taught in the church to children & to my own children. My heart breaks for them & any damage I may have done in teaching some of these same kinds of lessons to children.

If there is a God, who is in charge & weeps at such teaching, all I can say is … forgive me.
It’s easier for me to ask a “maybe” God for forgiveness then to forgive myself.

Originally blogged in 2005.

Heretic Years

The Bandages of Fundamentalism

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“My brain had been bound as tightly as the feet of a Chinese woman, and I had read that when the bandages were taken off, the pain was excruciating. The restraints had been removed too late and she would never walk normally again.” – Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase, My Climb out of Darkness.

When I read this, I put the book down, took out a writing pad, grabbed my pen & wrote two pages of thoughts. All sparked by this one passage in Karen’s book.It jumped out at me immediately. To read the context of her comments you’ll have to read her book.

What jumped out at me such that I literally stopped reading, was what I saw as a perfect analogy of what happens to one’s mind when immersed in the culture of fundamentalism.

Whether at first, you jump in with both feet or are slowly drawn in, one foot at a time, eventually, the brain becomes so bound with the restrictive bandages of legalism born through literalism, leading to extremism…that one has just lost the ability to think or believe anything independently.

For women, it is especially difficult. Karen mentioned the binding of Chinese women’s feet. I learned recently that this practice of binding the feet of these women started when they were little girls, the age of two. The practice involved the breaking of every bone in the foot, then wrapping them tightly. Small feet were seen as noble I guess, as well as stimulating for the men. As the procedure was explained I started to cry. I turned to my husband & said, “Why were women so hated?”

How is it, we take little girls, break every bone in their foot, wrap it so tightly that when she is old, you can hardly distinguish the evidence of toes as they are now all molded together, no longer independent, forming this fleshly peg at the bottom of her leg?

This reminds me of the trampling/bandaging of women’s spirits within fundamentalism. The persistent, subtle wrappings/reminders that they are all Eve’s…deceived by the evil one…responsible for Adam’s fall, the death of Christ…and not worthy to teach, lead &/or preach…submit woman & be silent!

People who mercifully escape fundamentalism or perhaps are even rescued out of it, often find the process of unbinding their brains, very painful. Some find it so painful they fall into deep depressions, some even consider ending their lives & perhaps some do…it hurts too much. Others may not fall into deep depressions, but struggle with emotions such as, sadness, guilt, shame, fear, rejection, and anxiety, to name a few.

Taking the bandages of fundamentalism off, hurts. I’d like to think that it’s possible to “walk normally again” for those who have had the bandages of fundamentalism removed.

Originally blogged in 2004.

Imagine

Parents: Today is the day we take our beloved daughter’s feet in our hands in order to do what is best for her. We want to honour her and give to her all that she can possess. At this tender age we will break every bone in each foot to take away its created form. This is the time to begin. The bones are no longer the soft bones of a baby, nor the rigid bones of an adult. They are just right for breaking & malleable enough to mold into its new form by wrapping the bandages as tightly as possible.

Today, we begin to restrict her growth. It won’t be easy. It will take years of persistence to achieve our desired goal. She may complain, ask “why?”, and question the traditions…but we love her, we know what is best for her. We know this is right. There is no other way.

Me:  So, the journey begins for the beloved girl. Those who love her believe that her little toddler-sized feet need to remain toddler-sized. Her feet must intentionally be repeatedly broken & bound tightly with bandages in order to keep them from growing. Tiny is best.

The little girl has no choice in the matter. She does what she’s told & believes what she’s told. Early she is broken. She doesn’t know that her life has permanently been changed. She does not know the consequences of being broken.

There are grown women who know. They remain silent though. They were broken, too.

Originally blogged in 2004.

Heretic Years

Another conversation

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My musings…from another conversation .

There isn’t one solution. The nature of our individualism/diversity and the complexity of the problem can’t support one solution.

I suppose, the Christian could claim “Yes, God is the solution.” Thing is, isn’t this where it all began, that is, the issue of “false teachings, abuses & harsh task masters?”

God is…this, this & this.
God is now…this, this & that.
God is now…Jesus Christ.
God is now…Jesus Christ who is this, this & this.
God is now…Jesus who is this, this & now that.
God is now…Holy Spirit who is this, this & get my point?

God is the solution? Looks more like God is the problem. Please note, I am not saying God IS the problem, just that God LOOKS like the problem.

It is far easier to define the problems then it is to name the solutions. Solutions may vary, the problems are often the same, they are always on-going. Like disease. Doctors define/diagnose the problem, may offer 2 or 3 solutions, there’s no guarantee though. What works for one, doesn’t always work for the other. Doesn’t mean we don’t attempt a solution or two, however, there is really no one solution/answer.

As for abuse within the church, rising above this cause of anger is indeed a difficult thing to do & actually I wonder if in general, it is dangerous to not be angry at what takes place.

Having been a member of spiritual abuse forums for years I can say that, there is no end of those who continue to come, to ask, & who are searching…it is easier to listen, affirm & validate their trauma then it is to offer solutions. Offering solutions, especially Christian solutions can often trigger the wounded & send them away. If we rush to heal the wounded with quick solutions, we often cause them to suppress their emotions & rush them to healing before it’s time.

It has been my experience as one who comes alongside those who are hurting & validating their experience/trauma, I too may appear to be in a state of perpetual anger. I do step into a type of anger, some call it “righteous” anger as I come alongside the injured & abused. It’s an anger that won’t let me forget. However, it is not a consuming anger.

I believe it is possible to be angry & have risen above the cause of the anger.

Fear, guilt & shame…lined up, one after the other, they come, embedded in the very DNA of their beings…getting all that out is not easy…who wouldn’t be angry?

Thanks for letting me preach to the choir! :)

Originally blogged in 2004.

Christianity, Politics

Dobson on Obama

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Good article on this over at Church of the Churchless.

There was a time I’d try to write an article on this situation, but I’m getting so tired of it all.  For instance, I use to think Dobson was a great spiritual teacher and leader.  Now I wonder, what was I doing?  What was I thinking?  Now I just feel embarrassed that I ever believed like he does.   I feel guilty that I ever raised my children in this environment.  I listened to Dobson’s radio shows.  Read his books.  Got his magazines.  I never followed him verbatim, but still, I looked for answers and wisdom for life inside this kind of belief system.  It wasn’t until I stepped out of it, that I realized the anger and arrogance within it.

Maybe Dobson thinks Obama is the anti-Christ like the Christian emailers sending out their fear mongering propaganda?   You know, you’ve got to wonder why if it’s true that Obama is the anti-Christ their Bible speaks of, why in the world would they fight God’s plan?  Shouldn’t they be jumping up and down with joy, knowing soon, Jesus will return and rapture them away and soon set up his kingdom on earth? 

Talking with a friend yesterday, I mentioned some of the Christian emails going around.  She said, “Zoe, you just have to laugh at them.”  Then I started to cry.  I said, “I can’t, they are not funny.”  Which got me to thinking, how is it that people do laugh the crazy emails off?  How does one get to the point that they can just laugh at it all?