Be a gift to yourself

 I was never seen as a child who would grow up eventually but had to be the mature one as my mother simply treated me as an infant who refused to give up the trauma and the overwhelm of delivering a baby without her husband by her side (and her having to bear the weight of pregnancy all by herself with my father's sudden demise during her first trimester) was something I could get to experience long after that episode had occurred and if I had grown up much more than the infant she still wanted me to be -  all easily manageable and pretty perfect when she used to go to office while the caretaker took care of me as an infant. But as I grew up and had a and still have high sensitivity as in bodily and also emotionally, she found that to come in the way of her functioning as an office goer smoothly and without any stress, and she made it a point to complain before everyone (her brothers wives with whom we both lived in a joint family) and made it a point to get sympathy for the situation she was in whether I had migraines, fevers, abdominal pains during pains and so on, her constant whining and feeling frustrated that she had to take care of me all by herself made it hurtful, confusing, and I started to feel more and more abandoned and wanted to remain invisible as a way to cope up the way my existence, my life was being projected as if I was a constantly repaired toy that she was really fond of but was irritated that it gave her lot of stress for being the way it is.

I could relate to myself as an 'it', as if an object which needed ultra high protection, but was treated like scrap whenever ironically I was feeling well and didn't have health problems as she would never bother talking to me any more than few lines of formal, courtesy questions just to check on me.

The how's of learning to love myself was something I looked upto from my mother and felt more disappointed, drained, confused, sad and so on as she could like me if not truly love me for who I was without any health issues, and this hardly happened even if I tried to suppress how I genuinely felt about anything in my life as I thought by suppressing any health problems, I would be better accepted.

She made me feel stressed for being who I am in whatever form of health that be and this truth I could not understand as I was not that aware back then and just tried my best to cope up with the circumstances.

She was in fact inadequate emotionally with her (im)maturity as she was not working on preparing herself to grow along with me and I had this unspoken sense of not able to be a child but to have to step to be grateful, obedient, and physically healthy in order to try to fit in into the shoes of my growing up years. I got stuck in those shoes and that affected my steps forward as it deeply affected the relationship with me and how much love and support I could provide to myself through organic self love.

Self love would only manifest if I give up the need to feel small, believe I am wrong and responsible for other people's mindsets, and genuinely let go the many layers that I had surrounded and engulfed myself in which is a constant state of disbelief for loving myself for who I am as I believed all my life that I would be loved only if I am so and so. 

And so self love is such an ignored, abandoned concept that I had disconnected from that I didn't realize that I would self sabotage my health, mental wellbeing further with one foot ready to move forward with the next steps towards my life advancement and another holding me back that it's too effort consuming, energy consuming, and that I am already sensitive and somewhat weak and so removed myself from investing myself into anything constructive for my life and wellbeing.

The intuitive nudge came in 2019 when a voice from within said that I was not true to myself and from there on my efforts started to come together but without genuine self belief and kindness towards myself, I just did the inner work of actualizing my suppressed feelings and blocks but had a lot of anger and sadness attached to it. 

It was only gradually and some 4,5 years into truth seeking that I could get a sense of how far I had moved away from myself and how important it was to move closer to myself and no amount of closeness to divine energies and gurus was enough until I felt deep down good enough about myself and had more strength in my faith.

Faith is your true and open love to your inner self and the God who lives in it and the more I started looking inward, the more it made sense that truth helped me bridge all those parts that I was disconnected with and also helped me reconcile truthfully that there's only so much I can mind and that I am not some repaired toy to be frustrated and criticize about the way my mother behaved with me.

I am a separate self, an individual who has her personal space, her energy boundaries, and there's no better way than to tend to it, take care of it, and be there for it more than trying to adapt to being there for others in order to perform as a daughter, as a niece, as a cousin, as a granddaughter, as a friend and so on which I was doing and living this way in a loop until recently. 

I do feel bad for this younger , innocent version of me who felt under pressure to be, to perform a certain way so that I could get accepted for who I am. I could never accept me for who I am without seeking validation from others. But this is a thing of the past and all this has been possible owing to my sensitivity and intuitive nature which helped me connect back to my inner truths and it has been a life changing and beautiful turn of situations, circumstances and also my choices which have all added up to becoming more and more self aware and kind to myself. 

My being open and kind has been a precious gift  which I have either given away unthinkingly and has been a thankless job, but the more I stay true to it with awareness, sensitivity and kindness, the more this gift is what I feel good about and proud about. 

Karmic Teacher

 My mother-in-law's toxicity and inner garbage has reached all new heights of psychological pollution for those around. She resists being the disinfectant that she can be and is so consumed by her own addictive need for dramatizing her emotional baggage that others can't bear weight of anymore and sends dense vibes effortlessly which others including me wish to keep away from. 

She is the pest in the garden of acceptance, forgiveness, and letting go because she can chew away on all the supportive manure and leave her root to rot and expect other flowering plants to sympathize and stop their individual growth in order to support her. She can't support herself let alone enable others in their growth. A damage beyond repair is the state of her inner emotional and mental damage and she is responsible for it.

She resists inner introspection, honestly asking herself about her behaviors, thinking patterns, and wants others to dive and sink with her in her shallow, dark insecure, moldy waters and that's really not possible, and she knows all too well but cannot resist drinking and spilling over from those same waters even if many a pot has broken completely, unable to carry the weight of her stuck emotions, mood swings, vengeful tendencies, comparing and belittling others and playing the victim card herself - I wonder how less perturbed can one be and not get overwhelmed at all by the grossness of her past traumas which wouldn't have trickled down to the gross level had she developed and strived for refining herself and seeing herself stronger and inspiring in her own way, rather than proving a point or two or more about being the victor in the victimhood and expecting her family and relatives to sympathize with her over and over.

Her traumas from her past have hardened her to stay stuck within an angered, helpless, victim mode rumination which she has not snapped out of and is a negative source of energy wherever she goes. She looks at life from her own lens and can never look beyond and see bigger at others struggles or even bother knowing how others cope up or had dealt with their respective traumas, because there's almost everyone under the sun who has gone through challenges and traumas and it's the way each of us responds which makes us who we are from within. 

And so challenges are not given to corner you or anyone in particular, but it's life's way of testing your resolve, your strength, and in helping through them for your soul to take home lessons and experiences.

My mother-in-law has been a challenge and a pain to me but has been a karmic teacher in her own way for giving me the above lesson on inner strength, as it took a lot of it, trust me, to see her for who she really is and not get infected by her toxicities.

Reconnect with your soul

 My connection to how much I made believe my lies to be true and self gaslighted into victimhood expecting freedom from her trap from those she made herself feel small with in order to adapt herself with others and that means literally everyone. I didn't know the first thing about being myself and was neglecting that until it gets invisible for me to really tune to so that I can let that slide as if I don't matter yet again all over again for all these decades of experience of doing that to myself.

It got so thick and numb in me that I just couldn't cut the layers, the root of those layers, and the space that it took within me eating my insides out as if an infested bacteria that was feeding off my emotional pain and physical sensitivities. It was as if I just had to give in in order to stay true to adapting to this self created limitation pattern that got woven into how I was looking at my life, and so much of it seeped into past wounds as if they have been empowered to define me. And the real pain was that it had stopped hurting - it stopped hurting to not be genuinely myself, my moods, highs and lows, frustrations, fears, anxieties and so much more.

What truly stood out for me was how many times I had gotten saved, cautioned, protected, guided, reassured and so on through divine interventions -  just quick, clear messages coming straight out of nowhere and landing when I really needed to hear, feel, or see them, but it took me long to realize that I was not willing to see how close I was to the spirit world and was seemingly burying myself with the smallness of my adapted limitations that I had repressed myself to fit into.

There was nothing new about my life and I had taken chances to try something new but only to want to have the old patterns of thinking and old habits to stick through for me as if they had to be my close friends to see me through. And they did do that but there's only so much that old friends can come along specially ones who are not good enough for you and you are just holding onto them because you think you need them, and they have just pushed past your boundaries to indulge, utilize and misuse your big, giving, creative, kind space.

It's true then that it's not who you were that matters now but who you are and who you want to be and become that matters. It's just work in progress and at whatever timeline that really kickstarts doesn't matter as long as you keep going and are sincerely committed to it.

You can restart your connections - what makes you feel hopeful, feel like your heart expands in joy, like your tears wipe out the dust from the limiting layers collected from the past, like you can trust to talk, to cry, to open your heart to your God, your guiding energies, your higher self, because you deserve to have a moment or two of quiet, of truth, of love, of gratitude, if you really mean them in any particular order that maybe or even not and have a bone to pick with, but truly spoken from the heart, from the crust of innocence, from the clear voice of your inner child, is all that matters. The validation that you are heard, understood, loved, protected is a beautiful gift and not something to let go of if you discover them from deep within your inner core, from your God within.

It's just one life we have got we think or we maybe like this from many past births, but not being the same old self making the same old mistakes and feeling like nothing new is happening is a loop we can break free from at least in this lifetime. We can recreate ourselves if we allow that to happen by willing to change how we see ourselves, what we think of about ourselves, and what are the words, the inner chatter we go through to create the narratives that makes our life stories what it is in our minds. We can if we put our hearts into it change our life narratives and take immense pride, responsibility, and trueness to this purpose if we channelize how to delimit ourselves, how to reconnect with our soul, our inner soil, and grow fully, unconditionally, and with all the love that you choose to nourish it with.

Forgiving myself - a big bucket list 🙂

 To forgive myself - the hatred I had harbored for my body because it was/is "too sensitive".

To forgive myself - for seeking constant approval for my health conditions and emotional support for helping me regulate my emotions and feelings.

To forgive myself - for abandoning my true feelings, frustrations, emotional pains, sadness, anger, hurt and adapting to environment by repressing them.

To forgive myself - for not trusting my inner strength enough and seeking validation from others for who I am, my personality, individuality, and weak boundary setting, and giving in easily my will power by not working on my resilience and constantly staying in a state of numb repression and robotic way of functioning on day to day basis.

To forgive myself- for thinking I can't put forth my opinions and shutting down on my individual voice and just obliging with an ideal picture of myself in order to adapt to others expectations.

To forgive myself - for lying to myself every day just so that I can stay in the victim mode and keep expecting empathy or understanding from outside world and form judgements that I stubbornly stay stuck to.

To forgive myself - for depriving my self of genuine self respect and trying to justify others definitions of who I am and who I should be.

To forgive myself - for not honoring my life space and taking control of my life as my responsibility and choosing to disconnect, stay indifferent at the cost of my inner growth as a person.

Self forgiveness through Ho'oponopono

 We are not victims bound by life, we are our mind interpretations of how situations, context, people in it are received by us through the mind based projections -  the mind has a looping into truth make believes which seems to stick to the web of our karma (either from past births or from present). We exist not because of our mind's perceptions of what life should be, but how many unresolved emotions and unrealized feelings and experiences it had amounted to in spite of our mind and its cognizance of our reality through stacked up memories which need to be lived through and connected with in order to live our lives fully.

We need the past until we free up our consciousness with release from triggers, traumas, and silent sufferings which continue to haunt even in the present and while being technically alive physically at one level, but keeping the portal of the past open much longer than what's needed is a stumbling block in the flow of individual consciousness.

Ho'oponopono, a Hawaiian practice of forgiveness and healing is the point of conjecture where things, memories, triggers, hardened emotions, and stumbling blocks that need to be diluted, let go of to facilitate the flow in the present is enabled through chanting repeatedly "I am sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you," in order to receive clarity for what can be done today and how to be at peace with oneself.

After all it's not what hurts or who hurts that matters but how long do we hold on to it that does. It saps the energy, the vitality, the vision for our lives from us when we get so stuck on how we should have been treated, or how things should have turned up as per our expectations, and in short all the heavily weighing down rotten fruits of our individual life trees that any how will drop to ground lifeless along with shedding leaves shrouding them as blanket, but before that a small bucket full of ripened life experiences need to be held on to. And all this if we stop looking at our life trees with regrets alone but take pride in how far, how long we have come and how tall we still stand in well earned pride for who we truly are and for what fruitful experiences we bring to this earth.

Ho'oponopono is the mantra of loving release from the grip of unconscious mind as and when it's applied to challenges and problems that are not toxic as we make it out to be, but needed uplifters, blessings in disguise to stir us up and wake us out of the thoughts template that we become accustomed getting stuck in thinking.

The prayer for loving release, seeking forgiveness from our inner child, from all those tightly held memories, dense emotions, echoing triggers and so on is what this ancient Hawaiian mantra is all about. The simple act of self forgiveness for depriving ourselves of embracing our inner truths however unexpected, ugly, too realistic, and utterly simplistic it may be, but the more that we bow our heads in humility to our guiding truths which are our inner wisdom to help us navigate better and travel lighter.

The mind tries to call it the shots as it stages what it perceives as right and does so as a victim, as a bitter, negative, suffering, disappointed role plays and enjoys all the attention it gets by mere daily rehearsal of these on day to day basis as we end up doing and enable the mind to direct us as people and  direct our lives.

We choose to helplessly watch as audience as our life unfolds as the mind takes over and performs for garnering all the pity, sympathy, attention and throws light on others by blame shifting, manipulating, slandering others name and fame, harboring jealousy, greed, and so many other twisted facets that keeps the mind at work under wraps while life happens to us and not through us.

We forget that we are not here for long but hold on to our past negative memories as paraded on centerstage as if our feelings about it is the only important thing that exists and nothing or no one else other than our narrative and projection counts for anything.

Our feelings and emotions around it matter too but the longer we wish to justify hanging on to it and get stuck by not letting go, the harder life feels. Life is here for us and we are here alive participating in it and it's not against us - all it wants from us is to allow for genuine truths to surface through the debris of our echoing shadows, to listen and acknowledge it, to allow the light of our inner wisdom through expanding on our truths guide us far and beyond what the fearful, conditioned mind can conjure up. 

And it's a start of sorts to unwrap the gifts of your life with gratitude because you earned it, because you are grateful for it, and it's a lifetime like no other.

Life unfolding

 The disintegration that has led my self get so fragmented and so "other" centric and less focused on my real self has been a lot to process and accept as my programming, and I cannot go back in time to "fix" this and have no choice but to accept this truth. I have had a broader sense of me as placed in the flow and energies of others and making way for them and allowing for them to determine my adapting to them as if I don't have a will and boundary of my own to determine. 

Making way for others is so much part of me that it becomes detrimental to my self growth and the more I have learnt to do so as means of coping up, as means of my laziness, as means of giving in to stronger willed and controlling people, the more I thought I fit in with the joint family set up that I was a part of. As long as people approve and appreciate my efforts in doing so, then that much I feel validated.

The root problem is my very own ill self validation and lack of vitality and allowing myself to rest and get used to this feeling that this is who I am anyway, all thanks to the physical health issues I seem to have gone through and just giving in to my mother's narrowed way of looking at my health and wellbeing as a way of being loyal to how much money, materials she had brought for me and just repressed my true feelings to come out for decades together.

To become the 'other' in my life is something I am so used to doing and so much so that I completely dissociated and felt forced to want to be alive in the body I am given which I seemed to despise, all thanks to the fears, insecurities, ego, will, possessiveness of my mother that I had absorbed and was attached to and didn't know how to break free from this absorption and enmeshment.

My mother saw me as damaged goods much similar to how she saw my father in the same way and because he had passed away leaving her pregnant with me, her anger, disappointment, a sense of betrayal just took another form while seeing me grow up and having "over sensitivity" and "weak health" as she was apparently frustrated, belittled my health problems in front of other family members, made me feel guilty for being sensitive, and her anger spilled over as no matter how much she tried to control my sensitivity, she couldn't, and I just felt more and more anxious and worried about my next health episode which may again upset her.

This got repeated so much so that I didn't realize I had abandoned my self  and left it in the dark so that I can satisfy my mother by being "good enough" for her. Not wanting to discover my true feelings, moods, and my likes, dislikes and so on became my pattern of living and just numbed myself to adhere to becoming the other in my life.

I had to make way for my mother, I had to stretch my personal space to empathize with her and so much so that my personal space became a territory that she could walk in and out of on her own will and wish and even if this were some years ago, but it hurts me, saddens me, as I feel so exploited, so manipulated to give in to her controlling my life as if it were damaged goods that she can poke and prod into and try to fix it and made me feel as if I had no say in it by the way she made me feel.

These are pieces of my fragmented life and I need to acknowledge them as they have made me who I am today -  someone who has mourned her past, who still mourns for it, who is trying to forgive herself for who she thought she was and for absorbing and taking in my mother's projections on me more seriously than what I really thought and felt about myself. Mourning also for feeling disempowered as a result and even if my bouts of anger, sadness, breakdowns have come and gone, I just wish to acknowledge that this is still my life whether I felt like I had any say in it or no, and daughters who are born to such controlling, clueless mothers whose words, deeds, behaviors have a huge impact on their daughters that it's still not too late to wake up and take control of your life in your hands the same way I have done. 

To come from past shadows into one's own light is painful but totally essential to move on with your life because no matter how much the past might have defined me and all the "over protection" of my mother might have confused, made me feel belittled, lost, and broken, but the essence of who I am as a human, as a work in progress is open until the end of my life. I need my backup, self motivation, and lots of downtime, sleep, nutritious food, laughter, good company, silence, meditations, walking, sunshine, nature and so much more to help integrate my essence into my being which is unfolding beautifully one day at a time.

Find your voice and have a say in your life

 Children of narcissistic mothers yearn for true, accepting love from their mother and what they instead find is a person who has no idea where she starts and where her children end. She has no idea of what her identity is outside of manipulating and controlling her children and conveniently wears the disguise of victim just to invoke sympathy and attention from others.

The narcissistic mother may not have been secure and loved for who she is but since her ego has unmet needs and a tendency to want to prove others wrong at the cost of earning her rightful place which she assumes is by projecting a false sense of self and brainwashing her kids to hero worship her while slips her true personality under all the drama which she creates over and over until people believing that it's true -  the truth is that they can't stand to face themselves and need others shoulders to push their responsibilities on and if they don't seem to match to her expectations, then guilt trip them and keep them in the fog and blames them for lack of their responsibility to take better care of her. She intentionally does this so that her own children get projected in the wrong way so that she wins this battle, this competition, this war, so that she survives by wearing her children out, by dehydrating their spirit, and keeps score of how much to give back in unnerving, destabilizing, and overshadowing ways in case she senses that they are on the winning side and have control in their hands, and all the while living in the pretense that she creates that she is quite adaptive to her children's decisions and will support living with them.

She cannot live apart and needs her children to live through them. Narcissistic mothers need to feed off their children's open mindedness and has to find a way to fit in even in the smallest spaces that separates her from her children. Children of narcissistic parents need to develop more self love and empathy for themselves for coming so far with their mothers that all the time, opportunities to explore and have fun in their own ways separate from the intertwined web of living with their mother seems to have gone and there's nothing that could have been done to undo all the time gone by.

The inner landscape of children of narcissistic mothers is a dried and saturated space which has their mother's presence written all over it -  narcissistic mothers can exploit the concept of motherhood to get what they want and go to whatever extent they want to make sure they stay in the center of the child's attention span. The children have to become the grownups in order to accommodate their narcissistic mothers at the cost of giving up on experiencing their childhood and all those precious experiences which would have made lovely memories that go well into adulthood and beyond. 

Being securely attached to a narcissistic mother is next to impossible as she needs you, your innocence, your energy, your trust, your spirit, your attention, your kindness, your time, your life, and your everything in it to sustain her. Feeding her off off you is going to disempower you as the child of such a parent and the more you step into your gut instincts, your intuitions, your nudges, your restlessness, your spontaneity, the better chances you have to organize your life around yourself. You need to keep reminding yourself that your life matters and your priorities in life are different than what she leads you on to believe. 

Let her live under the impression that she is your omnipresent, omnipotent God, and she has gone through whatever she has gone through to make your life what it is today, but never allow her to soften your will. Your will is your power. Don't let her break it and use it against you. The trauma is not in the weakness she makes you believe you have(be it physical, mental, financial health) but in your losing your clarity by being attached to such a toxic attachment and allowing her to win, to control, to manipulate your life and which only adds up to losing a sense of your self, which is a far greater loss than any of these.

Narcissistic mothers need boundaries while you need your balance. Your perspective of what life is for you matters and not their defining you on their basis of what they see is fit and right for you, because what was right for them at some point in time need not be right as time progresses and you start to grow -  not for them but for your highest good which would ideally make them feel good and not the other way round -  using their children's will manipulatively against their knowledge to get what they want and grow off their separate roots and make them become dependent on them unconsciously.

Living for yourself is not a crime and so don't feel guilty if you begin doing so. Self love is not an antidote against narcissistic mothers, but a healthy means to gradually and slowly connect to oneself piece by piece day by day.

You don't have to pay the price for being created by a narcissistic mother, but stay enough motivated and energized to want to invest in yourself and your dreams no matter how small or big it may be. Because it's finally your life and if you don't get to have a say in it, then who does?