shame - always revisited

Hi Maggie,

I'm glad you are feeling better.  I'm really glad you figured out that you weren't feeling great!

Has your son considered some of the alternative schools - like Evergreen?  or School of the Atlantic? or even Guilford? They rely less on traditional ways of evaluating students, I think.

We were not safe at home, and so we don't have a concept of safe.  Everything seems okay. Or, maybe, we simply don't have boundaries. Maybe our lack of ability to set boundaries stems completely from this truth of our life.  We don't know we are allowed to say: no - no further.

I always felt like Dad was ashamed of us, of me...You damned kids.  I had the feeling, well, because he verbalized so clearly. that I was not worth much.  And I felt like my husband and his family were ashamed of me, also.  There was definitely a level of classism there...Poor Sonny and his flaky, dirty hippy girlfriend.  And sometimes I wonder the same about my kids.  Am I an embarrassment? I don't take care of myself. 

There is a theme in my life, I see.

It seemed to be hitting me today. I was getting ready for a shower and glimpsed myself in the mirror and said something disgusted and unloving to that image. And then, somehow in the shower, I started letting those unkind words rinse away.  I started thinking I deserve to be beautiful. I deserve to live in a beautiful place.

Then I started wondering what beautiful meant.  Leave it to me to turn everything into a logic assignment!  Is this going deeper?  Or escaping the fearful words?  Formal Latin, bellus, was used for women and children and insulting for a man. Even then it was lesser to be female.  The definition I liked best was being in balance and harmony. 

I read a little about a researcher/writer named Elaine Scarry who said that being vulnerable to beauty will lead you to see beauty in everything. Sort of sounds like being in love...the initial stages, which my oldest has termed "pink cloud land."  I am wondering if it is possible to have that, that infatuated bliss with the world, and therefore with self...to maintain it, yet balance in harmony and bliss.  She also said that beauty restores your trust in the world. 

This is thought-provoking, because it bypasses the physical expectations lumped on us by current culture and current media.

Yet, I noticed I was watching something on the internet, and found myself studying eyebrows and thinking about beauty.

So I'm weird today...what is new.

Right now I am thinking that my beautiful body needs to be fed only the most beautiful, nutritious foods...but give me a day and some nicely addicting chocolate, and this will pass...

Hope all is well with you this evening...

Love and hugs from Clare