Our souls are fragile and it is fine to see later all the ways we can adjust the dynamics.
My quote

"it is fine to see later" by this I meant "all too well" later to process ways in which we can let others see that what they do is not acceptable.

I dont feel I play any game.In training for TA Counselling we were taught that there are no winners in game playing.

I disagree that we cannot heal the cracks others inflict.We can use grown up thinking to try to understand from a here and now perspective.There will be reminders.But always a new day begins.
So you and I see things from differing standpoints.
Mountain ash

MA, I can't play games either. I don't have the energy to pretend, I don't have the energy or will to maintain personnas (having a poor memory helps, because I can't keep track of which personnas I have to play with which people!)

Do you think that all cracks and damage can be mended? Are there some wounds that go too deep into the very foundation of our being - inflicted at such an early age that the tendrils of that damage were able to grow and spread until they eventually obliterated the original "work of art"? Can we ever truly and completely untangle the complex mess of tendrils to unearth the original essence of "us" (without inflicting further NEW damage in the untangling itself)...or is the answer to acknowledge that we can never go back to being who we were before the damage occurred, that who we are "here and now" IS who we are, cracks and all...and when we come to terms with THAT, do we find the power to rise above the damage and be the best that we can be with who we are here and now?

That was a rather tangled question, wasn't it! Like Gims, I'm searching...I think the answer is not to go back and try to recover the parts of us that were damaged beyond repair, but to repair ourselves to the point where we can decide that who we are now is enough and good and worth being.

I believe that wounds that affect us in core decisions are very difficult to heal as we ourselves replay them in our future dealings with others.
Self fufilling prophacy.
But when balanced say with a good teacher minister or other family we visit we dialogue internaly and may even go on to have well chosen values.
By core decisions I mean kindness..regard.. respect and love for others.
eg..my aunt giving me underwear wheras she gave my cousins trinkets was balanced by another aunt who gave me books (yet knitted items as well throughout the year.and made me feel special involving me in style and colour.)She must have realised what the other aunt was doing.Remember that at family gift sharing we children were opening gifts together.
In turn I treat children sensitivly and did so intuitivly remembering my own childhood.A balanced decision .
My issue is trivial compared to abuse and lack ...but I share it as an example.

As a foot note This first aunt spent a lot of her childhood with her own Granmother. due to the aging Granmother needing both company and a young abled bodied helper.running for shopping and almost a servant.She replayed her own issues perhaps unwittingly.
When I realised this (in maturity)i felt compassion for her.as see it as I do re.those children who are carers today.This was a Eureka moment fo me.
Imagine a pendulum which swings between the painful issues and contentment and perhaps between is a middle road which is where thrive.
My belief is that it takes a village to rear a child.Meaning all early experience is valid and important.So in my case there were many who shaped me and still do.
Mountain ash

Mountain Ash, this brings to memory an experience from my years as a day care teacher. The school was in a very poor part of the city, the children (18 months to 4 years old) often came without breakfast...those were the days before the breakfast programs. My co-teacher and I used to have cereal and fruit waiting for them, paying out of our own pocket, because we knew how useless it would be to try to teach children whose tummies were grumbling.

Anyway, we had one little girl, afraid of everything, terrified of getting dirty, etc, etc, etc. One morning, we invited her mother to have breakfast with us. She ended up pouring her heart out to us...she had been physically/verbally abused by her own mother and grandmother, and she could see herself going in the same direction with her daughter - we noticed it often, but especially one day when she raged at the child for getting her socks dirty. She told us that she wanted be a good mother but didn't know how.

Well, we decided to help her by asking her to help us in the classroom. She wasn't working at the time, so we knew she had the time. She was delighted. Over time, as we nurtured her, she learned new ways to nurture her daughter. We showed her how to prepare healthy inexpensive meals, we got her finger-painting (and foot-painting as well!), playing at the water table with the children, cleaning out the sand table, playing tag at the park, and mopping up everyday spills - just to show her how ordinary and messy and "okay" it all was. After a few months, she felt "mended" and decided to move on...found a good job, a new apartment and started living a healthier lifestyle. Years later, I ran into her and the child on the street...both of them looked amazing, she was a whole new woman and the daughter was a laughing, healthy - and very caring - child. The bond between them was tangible and lovely.

So this experience reminds me that there IS a way to thrive beyond the damage...as you say, it takes a village to rear a child, perhaps it also takes a village to mend and nurture each other through the rest of the journey as well.

EH, your comment about it taking a village to mend and nurture each other while on our journeys struck a cord with me.

I recently joined a local book club because my midlife woman friend said she needed to take care of herself by engaging with other women. I think it's brilliant. We need one another at every stage of life!

Eagle,

Just wanted to send you a great big hug!

Having gone through what I have in the last 2 years losing my marriage of 21 years, losing my children in my life....

There's a part of me that can relate with your grief.

It blows my mind how grief can overtake me at the oddest moments. I'm at "mama mia" with my guy - I see a young male, and I begin to cry, grieving for my 17 year old son. (I cry right now even thinking about it).

I'm in my car driving - thanking GOd for my car, my jobs...and I begin to grieve because my children are not in my life.

I have not experienced true grief until this life changing event occured. It has made me more aware and more sensitive to others grieving! A new connection of sorts.

Eagle,

You are loved deeply and appreciated. You have brought so much to the BWS forums! We will always be here to listen to your stories!!!!!

Great, big, boomer hugs,

danita

p.s. have you shared your receipe for meatloaf on the forums? I would love to have it!!!!

Danita, it still amazes me how the jagged edges of profound sorrow can poke through every attempt to move on. What really gets me is that expressing gratitude seems to be one of the biggest triggers of all, because as soon as I begin to thank God for the wondrously good things in my life, I'm hit once again by the reality that my loved ones aren't here to share in those wondrously good things in my life anymore. And then it all seems so empty - I would give EVERYTHING away just to have my family back.

BUT, we do have to move on. And gratitude is a positive path forward, even with its painful reminders...there are such tangible tensions/contradictions pulling us apart when we've suffered terrible losses in our life - nothing is ever as simple or secure as it was before the losses. So that when we feel joy, we also feel sorrow; when we feel gratitude, we also feel emptiness; when we feel any exhilaration of life, we also feel the agony of absence of loved ones to share that exhilaration with.

I would love to say it gets easier, but after your own experience, you know that it's not as simple as that. You cannot throw cliches into these kinds of wounds, the cliches just don't take us anywhere except into an even keener sense of loss (at least that's my experience) because we've lost everything, including the ability to neatly package the grief into a tidy box and pretend everything's normal.

I've been experiencing strange triggers just in the past few days, right out of the blue. I let myself cry, but am able to rise above it now and not let it take me too far down. And I'm even to feel moments of stand-alone-joy (ie, without the shadow of sorrow dulling the edges) now. That's a welcome relief. But there are still moments when I feel like a totally deflated helium balloon and wonder if/when I'll ever truly feel full again.