Where Have I Been All My Life

Hold onto your hats, girls and boys, because there's a lot to talk about today. It might go on for a few days, who knows... all I know is that a very long stasis has shifted and I have seen a new light, a new direction and am invigorated by this influx of new creativity that has resulted from it.

Hence... hang on and follow me through the murky depths of my mind over the past little while. You'll be glad you did.

Oh... first... listen to this to get into the mood... CLICK HERE for a sweet snaky groove to set you into the right frame of righteous mind.

It all started a few days ago when one of my wise sistren suggested that my tears be tears I weep as my mother's tears. That really set the grey matter reeling as I am always trying to come up with ways of helping myself get past some rough familial shortcomings back when I was a little girl. I've come a long way and healed a lot, but having an abusive mother who is still alive and still abusive, and basically out of my life for my own sanity is nothing easy to just put behind oneself, so when the words 'cry my mother's tears' crossed my retinas, I had a HUGE AHA that saw the sense in it immediately. AHA! is right. My mom was so fucked up by the time she was the age of my girls, at a horrible time in history, right in the middle of war torn Poland/Germany that she never had the luxury of tears. She never knew how to not be cruel because she was so turned off and tuned out to compassion.

Other than this photo where Mom is showing love to her oldest daughter , I have one letter written in the rare moment when she was in her right mind, in which she stated that she 'loved me'. Her love was highly conditional.

Through my flu days, I had weak moments, I cried now and then, and I would think 'I'm crying my Mother's tears'... I would then start thinking about celebrating the years my mother didn't dare show weakness, didn't dare cry, and I would let 'er rip. Flooding my cheeks as I sat there silently gulping and marvelling at the power in it.

Flash forward to yesterday, as I found an incredible book at the local thrift store I introduced Shirley to, the book, 'Women, Food and God' by Geneen Roth ... When I find books at thrift stores that are still available on the bookstacks at Chapters, for full price, and the universe lands that book in my clutches for $2.25, I know its a pretty good hint to read it. I listen to those hints.

My former employer, Michelle Morand, wrote a book in a similar vein, entitled 'Food is NOT the Problem: Deal with what is', which I got quite a bit out of, and have found it pivotal in my healing, not from having a food disorder, but in general, coping with the tragedies of my life...

On one hand, I bought the book because at over 300lbs, I need to lose weight, but I am wise enough to know that dieting is not an option. And since I tore my knee in '04, menopause has hit, changing my metabolism, as well as the kids leaving home and my larder full with a lovely man intent on pampering me, I have much to blame for the fact that I've put on over 40 lbs a year over the past few years, what I have is psychological damage to overcome for sure, but its not an eating disorder. If I ate junk, I would be twice the size I am, but I eat discerningly, food doesn't control me, nor do I use it to cope, but I know that there is more that I'm missing, hence I bring home the book.

This morning, I read the first half. Holy moly, does she strike home again and again. Simply written and easy to cruise through, following first the author's story and then the wisdom from her experience, I had aha after aha moment, but then the big AHA hit.

Michelle, over the past two years, alway says that we have deep seated issues that cause the disordered responses and until we deal with those issues, no diet in the world is going to keep our weight down... Geneen takes it one step further in Women, Food and God when she says that we who have been badly hurt as children tend to never get over it and the phenomena of that is, we shut down, and all our lives, when we find ourselves in scary situations, we revert to that shutting down mode instead of sticking it out to experience whatever it is. She calls it 'bolting'.

Like I said. Holy Motherlovin' Moly.

Not one month ago, Ron and I had a misunderstanding and grouchfest that left me feeling like I had nothing left to do but to leave. Ron had stormed out and I took a few grocery bags, randomly packed a few days worth of clothing I loved and headed out in there car, fully intending to catch the last ferry to Saltspring, to lick my wounds with my daughter Grace at her home there with her father.

I got about halfway to the highway when I was driving down a rainy street, in the dark, in the cold, with my bags crammed angrily in the seat behind me, when I realized that this wasn't ME the grownup, running away, but the hurt little girl in me was shuttin' 'er down, I remember thinking that I was BOLTING, to protect myself from having folks who I loved abandon me again.

Another example arose just last week when I took an email from my former employer to mean something that she certainly didn't intend, and I found I was unable to go to my old office to get my belongings, to clear out. I shut down. I mailed in the keys and I just couldn't bring myself to say goodbye to the place that had been so dear to my heart these past two years. The two women I worked with, counselors both, were wonderful loving role models who I will miss a lot and I just lost it. I shut 'er down and used my anger as a shield to keep from feeling the disconnect, something my hurt little girl takes as reenactment of all my former abandonment.

And there I sat in my bed, the duvet tucked under my chin, tears rolling down my face, crying my mother's tears, marvelling at how I was turning a corner that helped me to run to the roar, to face my demons and to not shut down when I feel like bolting.

Geneen Roth says that when you stop bolting, and you stick it out, you rage, you cry, you hurt and then you move through it. And then you grow to appreciate life that much more because you DON'T have to be that hurt little girl any more.

That's when another truck with AHA on the grill hit my forehead, as I realized that part of my hurt from how my mom was to me, left me reenacting her behaviours that I admired because I certainly wasnt going to reenact the behaviours I abhored... the image of her sitting in the living room with her knitting needles, her cup of coffee and her smokes brings up good feelings and minus the smokes, that is my iconic position on most days. I am realizing that I have tried to stay 'safe' and 'protected' by repeating a dynamic that is foolproof safe to me, and hence, I tied my ass to the couch, becoming that memory of my mother, in order to heal, to find comfort that was independent of the rest of my life.

Giselle Annaliese Budeweit. 5'10 of seething hostility and defensiveness. My birth mother.
Born June 15, 1933

Well.

Life is coming at me pretty intensely by this point, wouldn't you say? But wait... there's more...

As I mull over the words that my retinas have seared into my frontal lobes in the background of my day, I decide that it would be a perfect time to see the new movie Burlesque, with Cher and Christina Aguellera (sic). Here's a little back story. In the early 70's, I spent a few years travelling a circuit between Nevada, California and Hawaii, as a Burlesque artist in a dying trade, with a few costumes, some bump and grind routines and a 3 piece band. In the 80's, I dressed the peelers that evolved from burlesque clubs in the new 'strip joints' in Alaska as well as a few other bar related jobs.  I thought that the movie would be a trip down memory lane.

Hoo... boy...

'Where have I been all my life' is a line from the movie, and as I sat there with my mothers tears just streaming down my cheeks from the emotional punch of the film and the talent of the performers and the beauty of the music and the memories, oh my memories, that line just burst into brilliance in my mind... and I asked myself... just WHERE have I been all these years that I didn't cry my mother's tears, that I kept myself small and hidden away, being the 'good version' of my mother instead of being myself...

Hard to figure out on the drive home if there was more water inside the car than on the outside as I cried and cried and cried when I realized that my time in that frozen prison was over.

All my life, I have been larger than life. At almost 6 feet, and certainly well over 6 feet in the 4 inch heels I used to wear, I was 'Big Bird' and 'Christine Towers ~ The Amazing Amazon'. Now, I'm 6 feet tall and 6 feet around as well, bigger than ever. And I am thinking that it is time to figure out where I've been all my life... and most of all, to find out who and what I am. Maybe dare I say, it's time to throw my 'weight' around a bit...

Christine Towers, Reigning Rampaging Amazon of the Burlesque Circuit
Circa 1971 Compton California

My love, Ron sees more potential in me than I have been seeing and no wonder all the jobs I applied for have been dead ends with no responses. I'm meant to do a particular thing well, not any old random minimum wage thing, but something that I've spent years at. Something that utilizes all my skills and has  me at the helm. I realize that with the exponential growth of human intellect and technology, there are developments in the education of women around our changes that allow for a much more effective distribution of the kind of skillsets that are critical to healthy womanhood. I see a web of sisterhood on my facebook developing, and I'm suddenly so invigorated to have their kinship support me as I figure out what it is I am meant to be doing. I do know it relates to all of it somehow.

It's time to take my walking papers in hand and move out of this self imposed prison, one of flesh as well, and get off the couch, too. I'm not my mom, nor can I ever be. I'm just now realizing that I am me. It's ironic that I'm the one that says we do no favours to anyone by making ourselves appear small, yet here that's just what I was doing all these years.

And then in the blink of an eye, when all the factors come together, at 54, I'm finally free.

 And that's where that song comes in... here... have another listen...

Snake woman, beginning again...shaping, changing, renewing again... Snake woman shedding her skin... to everything there is a season, for every change, there is a reason...

The spiral of life bends and turns~ rearranging...

There's a new woman on the scene... maybe she's scaly, maybe she's green, she might not be sure where she's going, but she knows where she's been... and look out now. She's not reining it in any more.