My Freedom ROCKS!!

I have decided to throw my Freedom Rock in the pond in our pasture right here on our farm over 1800 miles away from the child abuse that I suffered but where the emotional abuse of my childhood continued even as an adult and where my depressions increased until I no longer believed there was any hope for me. This is also the place where I did my healing. This is the land that I rode my horse on for hours and days on end, walked for hours meditating and contemplating what had happened to me and the false messages that I believed because of it. This is the land that I raised my kids on and the land where I took my life back.   

My freedom ROCK is going to be based on the following quote by Alice Miller

“The way we were treated as small children is the way we treat ourselves the rest of our lives; with cruelty or with tenderness and protection.” Alice Miller

I made a decision quite a while ago that I was done treating myself the same way that I had been treated by others. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Enforcing that decision that I was “done discounting me” has been a whole other ball game. In the beginning I came to realize that I had put myself last so much and for so long that I never even considered what I might have wanted and when asked I didn’t have an answer. The learning curve on this one has been huge for me. Even in wholeness I didn’t listen to myself, just like I had not been listened to. I had to learn to listen to myself and validate what myself was trying to tell me. If I was tired, I had to learn to let myself rest. If I was hungry I had to learn to nourish myself with healthy foods. I had to learn to “catch” the con job that I was doing on myself, telling myself that something good, was not so good.  

In the process of emotional healing I constantly had to reassure myself that I was on the right track. I had to validate that I had been mistreated. (I had been blamed for my problems for so long that I believed I deserved everything that happened to me.) I had to convince myself that I deserved better than the ways that I had been regarded and disregarded for most of my life. I had to start the healing process validating that there was damage that I deserved to heal from. I had to learn to treat myself according to the true definition of love.

And that is a process that I also had to learn to apply to the way that I regarded and treated me.  

I love chocolate and potato chips and convinced myself for years that they were a treat and a comfort that I ‘deserved’. After I ate them however, I never felt good. My reward was really a punishment and I could see flashes of the past intertwined with the ways that I had learned to treat myself. Many of the “rewards” that I had received in my childhood were actually punishments too. Rewards that had “obligation” attached to them and rewards that had a price tag caused me to get my definition of “reward” mixed up. Sometimes rewards were a payment to make up for something bad that happened or a pre payment for something bad that was about to happen. Compliments used for the purpose of grooming me to be compliant made me very wary of compliments; even compliments from myself.  All these things went into the grid of my belief system.  I learned to treat myself the dysfunctional and disrespectful way that I had been treated by others.  I broke agreements that I made with myself, I lied to myself and as a result I no longer trusted myself.

This past year I have been getting deeper at the roots of the trouble I’ve had with self care. I have been looking at where it all began and my own history with “self love and self care”.  I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the way I’ve treated myself and the roots of that treatment and my belief system around that self treatment.  I noticed that I broke agreements with myself. I became aware of how often I lied to myself, conned myself or convinced myself that something that wasn’t good for me, was really not bad for me or that there was a “good reason” to justify it. I saw where I had learned to treat myself that way. I realized that just like with everything else in my life, I had learned it very young. I learned to discount me, just like I had been discounted. And I learned to try harder with myself just like I always tried harder for everyone else but in the end I was never good enough for me; in the end by my own actions, I didn’t show myself love.

About seven months ago as a result of paying closer attention to the way that I regard myself, I started to make some changes in the way that I treat myself and I have been learning to listen to myself when it comes to self care. In the first couple of years of recovery and emotional healing I learned to re-parent myself. I am taking that process to a deeper level now because my understanding is at a deeper level.

SO, my freedom rock is going to be about nurturing my relationship with me in a deeper way and letting go of “self abuse” and self disregard. I am going to take my rock and write my vows to me on it. I am done with discounting myself and my needs. I am going to continue to listen to myself and keep working on regaining my own trust.  

I promised myself that I would finish my book and create a companion work book so that I could generate an income from the full time work that I do here in EFB. The first book has been sitting on my desk waiting to be sorted through for almost a year because I put this website, my blog posts and answering the comments BEFORE myself and my needs. I take breaks when I am burned out instead of before I get burned out, and I spend over $200.00 a month out of my own pocket to support this website. I always told myself that it is my passion for wholeness that drives me to do too much and put the bigger projects that I always had in mind on the back burner but in fact it has been my expectations of myself that have gotten in the way of my completing those projects like my books. It is putting others needs before my own needs, just like I was always trained and taught to do in the past. It is a “left over false belief” that my value can be “proven” by my actions.

One of the readers here shared that she was going to draw a “box” on her Freedom ROCK to represent that she was no longer in it, and she was throwing that BOX into the deep. That really resonated with me as I so often talked about “the box” in the first few years of my emotional healing and could really relate to having been in the box that abuse, neglect and unreasonable expectations from others put me in for most of my life.

I am going to draw an empty box on my Freedom ROCK too.  My box is going to represent “the part of the box” that I still had part of myself in even in recovery. It is going to represent the letting go of unreasonable expectations of myself. It is going to represent that not only have I empowered myself to stand up to abuse and refuse to accept not being treated as equally valuable FROM other people, it will also serve to remind myself that I won’t accept it from ME anymore either!

My freedom rock is going to represent MY declaration of freedom and Wholeness when it comes to self care and self love!

Please share your thoughts and your Freedom ROCKS stories here.  If there are freedom ROCKS stories shared on other freedom ROCKS category posts I might add them to the comments in this post so that people can come and read them all in one place.

Inspiring hope, freedom, wholeness and celebration of life!

Darlene Ouimet                                                             

There are some great ideas for freedom rocks shared in the following related posts and their comments; Freedom ROCKS about page

The Motivation behind Freedom Rocks by Mimi 

What freedom rocks means to me by Lauralee

Freedom ROCKS

Our survivor and EFB global community event “Freedom ROCKS” will this coming weekend on May 12^th and 13^th.  Today I am happy to have Mimi share her story about what Freedom ROCKS represents to her. I hope you will consider sharing this no cost virtual event with others. For information on how you can get involved see the Freedom ROCKS about page here. ~ Darlene

 The Motivation Behind Freedom ROCKS! By Mimi

Hello Everyone! My name is Mimi, and I am excited and honored to celebrate “Freedom ROCKS”.  For me this event will represent taking my life and power back, once and for all. I am 43 years old, and for the majority of my life, I’ve been in the shadow of my abuser; under her thumb. I have continually tried to fit into the perfect little box she designed. The box had very rigid walls and came with fine lines and stringent expectations. Nearly every decision or thought of my own has been run through my internal filter that separated out ideas or actions that would be viewed as impressive, acceptable, weak, wealthy, good enough, strong, mentally ill, poor, unacceptable, trashy, classy, lazy, smart, foolish, stupid, entitled, guilty, judged, loathed, an embarrassment, dependent. The list goes on.

There has been a black cloud over my head that enveloped all these implications and consequences for as far back as I can remember. The cloud has prevented me from living a life of independence, self love, self acceptance, self esteem, affection, freedom, equal value, and that list goes on as well. It meticulously dictated a life of anxiety, fear, depression, self hatred, self injury, rage, mental illness, addictions, withdrawal, social fears, phobias, uncontrollable emotions, and an overall sense of being caged up. I’ve carried this baggage along in life and it has affected every close relationship I’ve had, my professional life, my decisions, and my education.

I was not the same as my siblings. They somehow managed to stay within the lines most of the time. They were high achievers. I was a disappointment in every way I can imagine. I consistently made poor decisions according to my abuser. I was bullied, verbally, and emotionally abused, and neglected because I couldn’t measure up. There were a few times I was physically abused as well, but for me, that didn’t leave the marks on my soul quite like not being good enough, or loved and accepted for the person I am. I was the scapegoat. I was brainwashed to believe that my abuser came before me. Her emotions and her pain were more important than mine. I had no value. I was to put everything aside to attend to how things affected her, even when it came to my own illness. My thoughts and feelings meant nothing, and I was trained to believe that. Until last year, I did believe it.

The rigid rules were established to maintain appearances, at all costs. If we were well dressed and closed mouthed, all was well. It was called tough love by my abuser. The mixed message was, there was no “love” in it; only “tough”. My life has been absent of affection, words of love or encouragement, support, and acceptance by my abuser. If child rearing and/or tough love means providing a roof, food, and clothing, then my parents did a stellar job. (my father was a raging alcoholic who left when I was 11. His only representation in the family dynamic was one of alcohol and violence). Affection, human touch, acceptance, and loving words and hugs were replaced by insults, demeaning insinuations, lies, gossip, manipulation, triangulation, projection, brutal consequences, and confirmation that I was a big nothing on a direct flight to loserville. In the secret dialogue within the walls of our home, my abuser convinced me that she was all I had, that her opinion of me was accurate, and that all of my family, extended and immediate, agreed with her. I had no one to turn to who would believe MY story. I have finally learned that the only person who needs to believe my story is me.

The key attached to my freedom rock represents a locked door. Behind that door is a closet that holds all of the insults, manipulation, lies, gossip, abuse, powerlessness, false beliefs, pain, and every self abusive thought or action they represent. Attaching the key to a rock means it can never resurface. It will sit at the bottom of the lake drowning out all the whispers of disapproval, lack of acceptance and love, and it will drag the black cloud down with it.

Please join me and others in the event that will symbolize our freedom. Knowing we’re all doing it together forms a network of strength and support for each other. Together we can celebrate freedom, because FREEDOM ROCKS!!

With Hope,

Mimi

As always please feel free to share your comments with Mimi and I and the other readers here. Think about what Freedom ROCKS could mean to you.  For more information about Freedom ROCKS and how you can participate see the Freedom ROCKS “about page” here. Stay tuned for more posts and info. You may want to sign up for updates in the right side bar. (look for the confirmation email when you sign up)  There will also be updates on the Facebook Page for Emerging from Broken ~ Darlene Ouimet, founder of Emerging from Broken.

Related posts ~ Going forward; Looking back ~ the process of emotional healing

Not being Heard and finding my Voice

Who says it wasn't that bad?

It wasn’t that bad. What happened to me wasn’t “that bad” and I told myself that for YEARS.  When I was in my early twenties and struggling with trying to quit the coping methods of alcohol and drug use, some of my memories of child sexual abuse were coming up and I was trying really hard to get rid of them without resorting to alcohol or drugs. At that point in my life I had never told anyone (outside of family but they didn’t validate the abuse OR me) what had happened to me.

One day I was having coffee with a friend of mine who I had met in a 12 step program. In an attempt to mentor me and validate an issue that I was struggling with he told me that from as young as he can remember his parents sandwiched him in between themselves while they had sex. He told me that he can never remember a time growing up when he didn’t have sex with both his parents. He told me that by the time he was 5 he liked it and by the time he was a young teenager, he loved it. He didn’t know it wasn’t “normal”.  It was his normal.  And now he was struggling to learn what the truth about “normal” actually was and to overcome the damage that had occurred in his life. He was having all kind of relationship problems as a result of child sexual abuse.

Although I felt extreme compassion for him, I didn’t hear any of what he was trying to communicate to me. He was trying to communicate that it wasn’t his fault and that his body reacted to being sexually stimulated. He had been sexualized from a very young age. All I heard was how horrible his childhood was and how horrific the child sexual abuse that he endured was. And the biggest thing I “heard” was that what had happened to me did not compare with what he had survived.

 I remember thinking “what the hell do I have to complain about? It wasn’t that bad for me.”

I found so much comfort in that statement.  I told myself things like “at least my parents didn’t do ‘that’ to me.” It was as though I believed that because they didn’t take me to bed with them and have sex with me from as young as I could remember that the things that did happen to me were irrelevant. I could just forget the abuse I suffered because it wasn’t “that bad.” I could just be grateful that “that” didn’t happen to me.  I used the extremely abusive and dysfunctional family situation that my friend told me about to cancel any right I had to feel hurt by the dysfunctional family situation that I had lived in just because I decided that it wasn’t “as bad” as what he went through.

I told myself in an almost reprimanding way that If he lived through that, then I can live through the “little bit” of pain that I had in my own childhood.  Every time I thought about my own childhood and the abuse I suffered, I thought about his situation of horrific child sexual abuse and I minimized what happened to me. And I used his situation to trump mine and to discount and discredit my pain and my hurt. I used his story to invalidate my own story.  I told myself that I was a wimp, told myself to suck it up, told myself to be grateful that what happened to him didn’t happen to me. I invalidated my own rights, so I could stay in denial of the child sexual abuse that DID happen to me. 

I told myself “But it wasn’t every day”

I told myself “But it wasn’t both my parents together

I told myself “But there was far more emotional abuse than any other kind of abuse…”

I told myself “But it wasn’t “violent” sexual abuse”

And I told myself “but I deserved the beatings…

But but but…

People comment on this blog all the time saying “Oh my gosh Darlene, it wasn’t that bad for me.” Sometimes people tell me that they don’t think they have a right to call what happened to them “abuse” or that they feel as though they don’t have a “right” to feel as though they had been wronged in childhood. And these feelings are common! I had them all too. It wasn’t “that bad” for me either. In fact even today when people write to me saying that they are grateful that their lives were not as bad as mine was and go on to tell me of their childhoods, my first reaction is “WHAT? You think what happened to me was worse than what happened to you!!”

 Denial is a funny thing. Denial enabled me to avoid facing the damage that happened to me. Denial was one of my favorite survival tools.  When I hear these kinds of statements today, I think about my friend who told me his story of family dysfunction, incest and child sexual abuse and how I thought the same things. That it wasn’t “that bad”.

Most survivors of child sexual abuse, domestic violence, and psychological or emotional abuse will all say the same thing when reading about someone else’s child abuse stories. They will say to themselves or to the other person; it wasn’t that bad for me. It wasn’t “that” bad. 

It was when I finally faced what that statement was doing for me that I reached a new level of healing and understanding.  Like a coping method, that statement allowed me to stay in denial of the truth that I had been abused, devalued, discounted, not protected as a person.  I had to set aside the story about my friend and the child sexual abuse that he lived with almost daily, and validate my own life experience. I had to face and validate that what happened to me was just as damaging to me as what happened to him was damaging to him.  It WAS that bad.

Abuse is abuse and for the record, emotional abuse, verbal abuse and psychological abuse is no less damaging then physical abuse or sexual abuse; the damage is done to the person ~ the value of the person being abused is diminished. The value of the “victim of abuse” is defined as not worthy of more, not lovable, not important.  The self esteem is squashed, tarnished, broken, harmed and torn apart.  And it is the damage that has to be validated and faced in order for healing from that damage to take place. 

There is no “not that bad” when it comes to being devalued or discounted. There is no “it wasn’t that bad” when it comes to helpless powerless children.

Please share your thoughts on this topic.  It might interest you to know that even while I was writing it I was still reminding myself that what happened to me WAS THAT BAD.

There is freedom on the other side of broken;

Darlene Ouimet

Related Posts ~ Sexual Abuse ~ Devalued, Discounted and Unprotected

I organized my world around trauma and abuse

Also see the colored words within the body of the article for other posts

I convinced myself of many things in order to cope with child abuse, emotional abuse and being defined as less important than others in my life.  

I was unable to cope with the truth so I changed the truth to suit me. I learned how to view “unhealthy attention” as though it was healthy and validating in order to cope with my dysfunctional world the way that it was and by doing so I was able to pretend that my world was actually functional. I found a way to believe that I was special.   

But in order to feel loved and to believe that I had at least some degree of self worth, I had to change my understanding of the word “special”. I had to warp my definition of that word in order to fit it to the actual circumstances.  The things I accepted as “proof” and validation that I was “special” became pretty sick and unhealthy.

I remember when I was about 13 or 14 years old, my mother started commenting about the way men were looking at me. I remember that it was embarrassing to me. She would whisper to me in the grocery store “Darlene, did you see the way that man looked at you??” She told me that I was attractive to older men as though this was some great gift I had.  I felt uncomfortable about it, but at the same time I felt validated by my mom. I felt like “finally!! I have done something right!” She looked so happy when she told me these things. She looked pleased with me. It was important to her that I was attractive and she was saying that I was. I found some value for myself when she commented on these “older men” who were looking at me with appreciation.  

I thought I was special because my mother wanted to take me out to bars with her to pick up men when I was 17. I thought that meant that I was attractive; SHE thought I was attractive. I thought she was validating me and I longed for her approval and acceptance, so I accepted this as the way I could get it. 

I believed that I was special when I was sought out by older men when I was too young to be in any kind of man/ woman relationship with them.

My mother usually took me to hotel bars; bars where men were staying on business trips. The men that hit on me in the bars I was in with my mother were married men. In my youth and naive way of thinking I thought that I must be “really special” if they were giving me attention when they were married. This kind of thinking sounds really sick now but it comes from the situations that I was put into without knowing that this kind of thing was not “normal” or right.

I remember the duality of the way that I processed this kind of dysfunctional relationship that I had with my mother and the men that were hitting on me. On the one hand I thought I was special. On the other hand I was scared of what might happen.  One night this man hit on me and it was clear that he was married; he was wearing a wedding band for one thing.  But he asked me to go out to the lobby of the hotel with him.  He made a phone call to his wife while he had his arm around me. I was SO uncomfortable. I wanted to run. On the phone he asked his wife about her day and about the kids while he was stroking my arm and rubbing my hip and he kept smiling at me.

Thoughts were firing through my mind at warp speed. I didn’t really know what the hell he was doing and I felt dirty, but there was the thrill of danger, mixed with the relief of acceptance and approval. At the same time I was wondering why my mother wasn’t worried about where I was. I felt sick to my stomach and I felt powerless. I felt like a hooker, but somehow the whole thing felt like a compliment. I felt special; I felt like I had some kind of exotic power that this man would take this RISK “for me” in that way.  At some level I knew he was using me but I was too young to understand the cheap thrill he was getting talking to his wife with a 17 year old girl tucked into his side.  He winked at me which scared me and reassured me at the same time. I wanted to walk away but I didn’t think, (didn’t know) that I had a choice. When had I EVER had a choice? How would I have learned that I had a choice? I didn’t want to be rejected by him; I didn’t want to disappoint my mother. Where the hell WAS my mother?? 

And under all of these thoughts, I had just a whisper of a feeling that I wanted to avoid feeling more than anything else. I couldn’t face the truth that both this man and my mother had absolutely NO regard for me at all. I was just a means to an end for that married man. Perhaps he thought he would get me in bed at the end of the night? I was nothing to him. I was nothing. I was just some object some “thing” to distract him from the tedium of being on a business trip out of town with nothing to do in the evening. I was just a good story to tell to the boys at home. He had to have known that I was just a kid; even though I was in a bar I could not legally have been less than 19.  

And to my toxic mother I was just someone to go to the bar with. I was likely a good man magnet too. What did she care about what could happen to me? As an adult it took me YEARS to face that what my mother was doing was wrong (not to mention illegal!) and that her actions showed how little regard she had for me. This was all about her.

Talk about an example of dysfunctional mother daughter relationship.

The world might have judged me accountable for being in this situation if the world had known about it so to protect myself, I couldn’t tell the world. I had to keep it to myself. In my world the girl always got blamed. That man was married and fooling around on his wife but I would have been labeled as the tramp that had enticed him. I would have been judged as a home wrecker and a slut.  I knew that stuff already so I went along with him… smiled at him while he sweet talked his wife as he winked at me somehow knowing that I wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t expose him and that I would submit to this objectifying treatment.  In order to comfort myself, I told myself that this defined me as “the special one” in the situation.  

By the time I was 18 years old I had lived without value long enough to believe that there was something wrong with me. I was full of shame and disappointment; full of self loathing, full of self disgust. I wasn’t even legal age yet and I believed that no one would ever love me. And even though I believed that all I needed was to be rescued by a man, I didn’t trust them anymore.

This story represents the how I took a situation and broke it down in order to understand my belief system and how it formed and how this situation resulted in being one of the ways that I came to view myself. Because of circumstances that I didn’t know how to process, I decided that I was special because my toxic mother thought that I was attractive enough to take to bars when I was underage. This conclusion was a lie. That didn’t make me special at all. Believing that I was special because a married man was attracted to me and therefore used me to boost his ego was not a healthy self view and it was a lie about me. The way he acted didn’t define my value in a good way at all. I was coping with the fact that my mother was using me and putting me in a very dangerous situation by reassuring myself that her actions defined me as special. And the pain that I had to face was that her actions defined me as nothing. Not important, not worthy of respect or protection, not loved, and certainly not special.  The truth is that my mother and I had an extremely dysfunctional mother daughter relationship.

~Just a little more context ~ Although this was nowhere near the first time that my toxic mother had taken me to bars with her, (she had started doing that when I was still living at home) I was living with my boyfriend at the time of this occurrence and on this night he was in jail serving time for impaired driving. I told myself that my mother must have thought that if I was old enough to live with a man then I was old enough to drink in bars with her.

But here is the funny thing and the conflict that I never saw the truth about; the reason that I was living with my boyfriend was because my mother had told me to get out of her house for staying out too late twice.  I wonder why I wasn’t old enough to stay out late, but I was old enough to go to bars and help her pick up men?

Like I said, my mother and I had an extremely dysfunctional mother daughter relationship.

Please share your thoughts on this subject of the fear of not being special and switching the truth around in order to avoid the truth and cope with the pain.

Exposing Truth; one snapshot at a time;

Darlene Ouimet

For Related posts on Mother Daughter Dysfunctional Relationship or Toxic Mother Daughter Relationship please see the “Mother Daughter Category”  ( also see links (the words) in highlighted bold print throughout the article)

Seeking understanding and validation from the WRONG people

When I grew up however, nothing changed.  I had been taught compliance and subservience and I didn’t step out of that role just because I became an adult.

I wasn’t heard so I stopped expecting to be heard. I was not “allowed” the impact that I saw other people had. I had to listen to what everyone else wanted, but I was not given that same consideration. My opinions rarely had any impact. I sought out friends who were similar to me in their own victim mentality and found fellowship with them but I continued to have bosses, parents, boyfriends who communicated that they were more important than I was.  Once again with those types of people in my life, I stopped trying to be heard. I accepted that I was not going to be heard and that my voice didn’t really matter. Not having a voice and not being heard had become “normal” to me.

That was the beginning of my depressions; that kind of “acceptance” was really like a kind of “giving up”.  It was a giving up on me.

My childhood relationships taught me not to expect much from relationships in adulthood.  No expectations equaled less disappointment.

Keep in mind the false definition of relationship that I had learned; I still thought that if I did what the other person wanted, then I would be loved so I kept trying harder to achieve love by “compliance to others wishes” And other people lived by this false truth too, enforcing my belief that I could “prove love” by compliance to their wishes however it was never enough.

Accepting that I wasn’t heard was a big problem when it came to my personal journey. Not being heard and accepting this “lesser value” had a major effect on the way I viewed myself and on the health of my self esteem. 

Not being heard and not being allowed to have an “impact” on the people that I believed were important in my life, is a common part of growing up with emotional neglect and psychological abuse. (And a part of every other kind of abuse.)

It is a very big part of the grooming process to be taught that (my) opinions, feelings etc. are not valuable. It got me “out of their way”. It got me to the compliance and obedience stages that they wanted me to be at. It got me “respecting” and sometimes even “worshiping” the very people who were causing me the most harm.  I didn’t question or oppose anyone as long as I accepted that my voice didn’t matter.

In the emotional healing process, I realized that in not being heard, I had also become the invisible child. Accepting that “I didn’t matter” defined me as unimportant. Not important enough to be heard made me feel invisible. Does a person who doesn’t matter, really exist?

Being the invisible child had its good points when I looked back through the grid of “survivor mode”. Being invisible seemed to be the right choice if I was going to stay safe. I realized that being invisible had served a purpose for a long time in my life, and when I began emotionally  healing, being visible was frightening.

I had to look at this conflict within myself.

Once I started to heal, being invisible and not being heard became a fear trigger that I didn’t always recognize or understand.  Being invisible was invalidating but being visible didn’t feel safe. I found my voice and was finally using it but I was not used to being so visible. It didn’t feel “comfortable”; being heard and being heard (visible) was really unfamiliar. 

Once I began to heal and validate my right to be respected, loved and my right to have equal value I found that I reacted to people who ignored me as though I was insignificant. I wanted to fight against being regarded as insignificant. But at the same time, being invisible was the only way that I had felt safe in the past so it was somewhat of a “default mode”. I had always lived by the thought that “if ‘they’ don’t notice me, ‘they’ won’t hurt me”.  When I took my life back, I wanted to be seen and heard. I had something to say and I had a right to say it. I wanted to have some impact on others but at the same time I was afraid of the rejection that was forthcoming whenever I had tried to have a voice before! It was complicated to realize both these thoughts/beliefs were operating simultaneously. 

I would say that learning to listen to myself and giving up on being heard by the people who silenced me in the first place was foundational in my healing. Finding my voice did not mean that I had to be heard by those that refused to hear me.

It was through looking at the history in my life that I was able to see all the aspects of these fears and overcome them. There was a reason that I was so shut down.  I was groomed overtime to “accept” that I didn’t matter; my voice was not important and my needs/wants were invalid.  Overcoming that false belief was only the first step on the road to emotional healing. I went on to realize that “invisible” had become something I hid in. Invisibility felt safer than visibility. Invisible no longer served me because I no longer needed to live in “survivor mode”.

Embracing equality and owning that equal value was for me too, was part of how I finally found, validated and reclaimed my voice.

Please share your thoughts through the comment form about losing or finding your voice or whatever stage of that process that resonates with you. Remember that you may use any name you wish if your privacy is a concern. Only the name you use will be public on this site. The optional URL spot is for if you want to share your blog or website.

There is freedom on the other side of broken,

Darlene Ouimet 

Peace through Truth by Theodora MacLeod

I am an advocate for truth. I am an advocate for the truth that leads to freedom, wholeness and healing. I am an advocate for the truth that leads to healthy self esteem, the true definition of love and equal value for adults and children, bosses and employees, teachers and students because in the eyes of the truth, we are ALL people with equal value. Although we may have more authority in some situations, we do not suddenly reach a certain age or status which gives us more value than someone else has.

I will no longer do what “they” have decided is best for me to do or what “they” think I should do. I will do what I believe is right and best for me. When others tell me what to do or what I am doing wrong according to them, my ability to make decisions for myself is insulted and that kind of put down is devaluing.

I am not going to be who others say I am or who others want me to be. I am who I really am. No one else can define me. When I am defined by others I feel judged and unappreciated and it stifles my ability to be who I AM.  

Taking my life back means that I am in charge of it now. I am the captain of my own ship. My happiness does not depend on someone else’s happiness anymore.  In learning what was best for me and living in that definition, I empower all those around me to live their best life as well. I am no longer that puppet allowing everyone to pull my strings and I don’t wish to pull anyone else’s strings.

I was always in a situation where people communicated that it was BEST for ME when I did what they wanted. That communicates the message that I have no gift or purpose outside of serving them and it discounts my life and my purpose. Everyone has a gift to offer. Everyone has equal value in this world. By communicating to me that I didn’t know what was best for me but that they knew better, my individuality was stifled and my self esteem was thwarted.  

 I do not live by the false definition of love; the false definition of love exists to serve the unhealthy (and unloving) motives of others. When I was taught that love was compliance and obedience I thought my best contribution to others was my compliance and obedience and that I was to serve them no matter what motive they had.  I don’t agree with that definition of love anymore. It is dysfunctional and it is wrong. That is not love and I don’t live within that box anymore.

I do not give up my life anymore. I was lost because abuse defined me. By the actions of others I was told that I was not worth protecting. I was taught that I was not as valuable. I was taught that “the real me” was not good enough and that I had to try harder. I had to find “ME” and I had to validate and empower myself.

I am not silent and will not silence my own voice anymore. I found my voice and I broke the silence. I don’t respect the reasons for keeping the silence anymore. The reasons for keeping the silence are wrong. They are damaging to me. They are rooted in defending abuse.  

Healthy relationship is mutual; Mutual respect and equal value for all people in the relationship.

Respect means treating me as an individual with my own thoughts and my own opinions and I will follow that same definition of respect. The truth is that we are ALL individuals. If we don’t agree on something, that does not mean I don’t love or respect.  I had to look at where my fears in relationship came from in order to understand the way other people reacted to me.  I had been taught that compliance was respect. Obedience was love. If I didn’t like what an adult (or even someone else) was doing, too bad.  I believed that I was “loved and accepted” when I agreed. SO, when someone didn’t agree with me, I thought the relationship was in danger. My definition of relationship was all wrong.  And because of my nature, I was the one who back downed in compliance and obedience first because I thought it proved my love.  BUT that is not what love is. I had to get this straight before I could move forward with the life of freedom and wholeness that I had begun to believe was possible. I realized that other people were reacting out of their own false belief systems. They had their own false definitions of love and respect.   

I had to stop trying to figure out how to make everyone else happy and concentrate on the truth about why I was so unhappy.  I had to find my own value and define myself through the grid of truth before I could stop jumping through the hoops of controlling and manipulative people.

Freedom and wholeness cost me a big price and disregarding the things that were so hard to learn for the sake of keeping a dysfunctional relationship would be like throwing away all my hard work. Working on a relationship with someone who disagrees with my value, is counterproductive.  Working on functioning within dysfunctional parameters is the exact relationship system I worked so hard to escape.

Please share your thoughts and examples of dysfunctional relationship through either the false definition of love or the new grid of looking at the truth.

There is freedom on the other side of broken;      

Darlene Ouimet

See the freedom and wholeness category for related posts

Trust

I found it easier to understand the concept of Trust, by looking at what I had been taught about trust. It was the experiences that I’d had to do with the word and definition of trust that were at the root of my understanding of the concept and meaning of the word trust.

I remember being scared half out of my wits while being yelled at “TRUST ME, I know what YOU need”. (which translated to me that I “needed” the spanking, the strap, the punishment)

I was told to trust teachers and leaders who were bullies and predators simply because they were “my elders”. Being taught to blindly trust only taught me that I was not worth much. Being “told” to trust people who were not trustworthy left me very confused about what trust really was.

I had a boyfriend who accused me of not trusting him when he was driving drunk. I felt shame and guilt even though drunk driving is illegal, I had been “groomed” to believe that questioning someone meant that I didn’t love him or her.   He went to jail for impaired driving.  

I didn’t make the connection that trust has nothing to do with love. 

I had another boyfriend who accused me of not trusting him when I found a girls phone number on his dresser. Once again I felt guilt and shame because as I already mentioned, I had been taught that if I didn’t trust, I didn’t love.  It turned out that he was cheating on me, just as I suspected. I didn’t find out for a long time because I was too busy trying to prove that I “trusted” and “loved him.”  I had several boyfriends who accused me of not trusting them. I don’t know why it never occurred to me to admit even to myself that I didn’t trust them.  There were reasons that I asked the questions I asked; questions such as “where were you all night?” “why did a woman phone for you?” Why didn’t you phone me to say you were going out with the boys?”  

By getting angry and accusing me of accusing HIM of something and trying to “control him” he got me off the actual subject and put me on the defense where in the end I was assuring him that it wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, it was that I just wanted to know where he was but that question never got a real answer. He deflected it by accusing me of not trusting him! And I spent all my time and energy making it up to HIM that I had made him feel like I didn’t trust him!  

This “rabbit trail” that we went down was about how it was MY fault we had problems because **I** didn’t trust. And I was told that if I didn’t trust him then I mustn’t love him. If I didn’t love him then he would leave me to find someone who WOULD love him. And love meant trust so back to square one; I trusted him, he cheated and did what he wanted and I stayed in the fog of dysfunctional relationship feeling guilty for not trusting him and making him feel unloved.   

 I was accused of not trusting and totally guilt tripped and reprimanded by those people only to find out that they were actually NOT trustworthy, just as I suspected.

I was told to trust abusive manipulative people while they were hurting me, all the while “soothing me” in quiet “loving” hushed tones with “trust me, I won’t hurt you”.  “Trust me” I am doing this because “I love you”.  My definitions and understanding of the words “trust” and “love” grew from these false statements from others. Seeing where they were rooted and the lies that grounded them was huge for me. I was told by other adults that I was wrong to be afraid of these “trustworthy” people who were hurting me. When stuff like this happens, it is no wonder why our definitions and understanding of words like trust get confused.

Having the false definition of the word trust in my belief system made it easy for manipulative people to get away with many things without question.  I was caught in the spin of feeling guilty for NOT trusting them without a “real reason”.  The spotlight was always turned back on me and I found myself drilling myself with accusations like “what is wrong with you Darlene, why can’t you trust him or her?” I had learned and in fact been taught to ignore my intuition until it was way too late.

The spin around this whole false belief system was huge!

In that false normal system, trust meant that I had to let someone hurt me and pretended it didn’t hurt me. Trust meant that I didn’t tell on the person hurting me because if I told I would damage the trust and especially the chance of “love” in our relationship. Physical, emotional, spiritual or sexual hurt, it didn’t matter. Trust meant that they were right and I had no rights.

Should trust, must trust… WHY? What does that MEAN? When there is a history of damage around the word trust, that damage has to be faced and the “action” of trust needs to be examined for what it really is.  By understanding how my belief system falsely formed about the word trust I was able to heal from the damage caused by living under the control of that false definition.

Trust is earned over time by each person and in each individual relationship. Trust takes time to grow and being uncertain about to trust or not to trust is not an indication of suspicion or accusation.

 And the action of trust needs to be examined for what it really IS NOT.

Trust is not a right. Trust is not love. Trust is not letting someone devalue you to prove love or loyalty. Trust does not hurt. Trust is not mandatory!

In the dysfunctional system that I grew up in, trust meant that I didn’t count. Trust meant that I protected the very person who was mistreating me. Trusting him meant that I “loved him” or so I misunderstood because that was what I had been taught and how I had been groomed. 

I was taught that I had no right NOT to trust. That version of trust was another false teaching that I had been taught that in the end meant that I was not worthy. I was always wrong. I was always the problem and I was responsible for the success and or failure of ALL relationships. 

See how mixed up “trust” was in my belief system? Can you see why I had to come to understand how I had been taught the wrong definition of trust?

In my case, having so many mixed up and false understandings of so many words and concepts I had no choice but to disconnect and dissociate more and more. I withdrew into the “fog” and dissociated from life in order to cope, in order to survive and in order to carry the burden of all these dysfunctional and often toxic relationships.

What are the trust messages that you have received?

Please feel free to share your thoughts. Please remember that you are welcome to use any name that you wish when you comment. Your identity is safe here; only the name you use will be seen by the public.

Facing the truth on the road to freedom;

Darlene Ouimet

see links in colour and bold print for related posts  Emotional Healing and Busting through Brainwashing

More Related Posts ~  

It was her turn to be right; her turn to have impact and her turn to be heard. 

Abusers believe in the system and very often victims believe in the system too. The sick dysfunctional family system seems to have “worked for their parents” so why wouldn’t it work for them? It was the best that my (dysfunctional) mother had to hope for, but only because she didn’t believe there might be something better.  She accepted the reality of the cycle of abuse, psychological abuse and dysfunctional family as “normal” and functional exactly as it was presented to her and the cycle of generational abuse continued. 

She communicated to me that it was my job to restore her life and her self esteem; her mother had delivered the same message to her. I wanted to “save her” because I believed that if I could prove that I “loved her” then she would love me.  This cycle of generational abuse stopped with me when I no longer accepted the role of victim but I also had to stand up to the myth that I could be the savior or hero to these dysfunctional and abusive people in my family.

My mother’s actions and behavior indicated that she thought being my mother gave her certain “parental rights”; the right to disrespect me and the right to disregard me; the right to push me around and be unconcerned with my feelings. And this was not only about psychological abuse, but about all types of abuse. My value was not equal to hers. Since so much of the world operates from this belief that children don’t have rights in the ways that adults do and since this was also the way she was raised, she didn’t question her “right” to devalue me and regard me as less important than her.  She learned this from her own abusive childhood. Everyone had rights over her when she was a child too.

My mother, who was a victim to almost everyone in her life, needed a victim too.  Out of her victim mentality, she believed having a victim of her own would “prove” her worth. She believed (just like her mother believed) that if someone was compliant and obedient to her, she could feel better about herself.  If someone jumped every time she asked, that would be “proof” of their love for her. She believed that compliance and obedience was proof of love. The more I “jumped” the more I must love her. The more I “put up with and accepted” (sometimes mistakenly called “respect”) the more “proof of her value” she would have.

This is the depth of the false definition of love. Victim mentality and the message that my mother got in her life taught her that “the one with the most power wins” and she never “won” or felt her own worth until she could push someone else around.  In a dysfunctional family system, winning is about overpowering. Winning is about forcing someone to comply and making them jump to requests and wishes without question and without concern for personal values or boundaries.  And winning is mistaken for love. If I comply in that world it “proves” my love. In that world, “love” is compliance and obedience and putting yourself last.  In this dysfunctional family system, “love” is living in service to someone who doesn’t love you back in the way they believe love works.

 AND because this is not actually love, the victim can never comply enough. It is never good enough. The psychological abuser or controller needs MORE. They needed more and more proof of love. The empty hole inside of them is never filled so they ask for more respect, more compliance and more “proof”.  Sometimes the requests get more and more bizarre as the controlling person pushes the victim farther and farther for more “proof” that they are the most loved and important person in your world. I was expected to morph and change and never show any of my individual thoughts or personality because independence is the opposite of dependence.

But these controllers and psychological abusers (this applies to all types of abuse and abusers) don’t prove or even show their love for the victim at all because they are exempt from their own “rules of love”.

Victims and survivors of this dysfunctional family system grow up going one of two ways OR as in the case of my mother, going both ways;

a)      they believe that they can BE loved by being compliant and proving love to some people, and they believe that being loved is compliance and obedience from others.  My mother made me jump through her hoops just as she jumped through everyone else’s hoops. (This is exactly like a pecking order system; think about who your oppressors, owners or captors are willing to serve.)

b)      Others hang on to the belief that compliance and service is love, and they give in to their own children’s every whim falsely believing that doing that will ensure their kids love them. (which is a type of neglect)  But because that also isn’t love, that doesn’t work either.

All abusers come from abuse. All abuse has its roots in victim mentality and abusers abuse out of that victim mentality. The cycle is repeated because it is the accepted definition of love and many devalued children like my mother, learn to wait until they are adults so they can feel “loved” through expecting and forcing someone else’s compliance and obedience.

In the dysfunctional relationship model that I learned from them, I was expected to save them (by proving my love over and over, thereby validating them) and I believed that I was failing to do that. I believed that it was my role in their lives to do it so I believed it was my failure that I could not.  And I believed it was my job to do it because that is what I was taught.   

I had to let go of those false beliefs.  

I learned to let go of my belief that I could actually help them by loving them “the way they wanted me to.”

One of the major freedom keys in my recovery was realizing that the definitions of love and relationship that were taught to me (by example) were wrong.  The key was to realize that relationship conducted that way is dysfunctional and is never going to work. As long as I tried to function within that sick dysfunctional system, I could not heal. And because I could not heal, there were parts of the cycle of abuse still being passed on. I had to face the fear of standing up to it. If the truth was going to set me free then I had to find the truth.

And I did; that is what this entire website, “Emerging from Broken”, is all about.

Please share your thoughts on the cycle of abuse or on whatever this post inspires you to share.

Exposing Truth; one snapshot at a time;

Darlene Ouimet

More related posts (also see links via colour bold words within posts)

~ “Emotional Healing does NOT depend on…”

Dysfunctioal Family Law

for more on “the cycle of abuse” see the wiki

Darlene and Rocket

When I was a kid my parents got us a puppy! Although I only have one memory of playing with the German Sheppard puppy that one memory is a happy one. 

I have very strong memories however of how much my mother hated having the puppy. Long after the puppy was taken away, I heard her complaints about it.

The reason that they puppy had to go was not because my mother hated it though.  The reason that the puppy had to go was because both my oldest brother and I were allergic to it. 

My mother had an uncle who was a dairy farmer in Quebec. I have a few memories of visiting the farm, of the cows, the milking barn, the orchards my great Aunt and Uncle and their two hired men.  I remember the smell of the big kitchen, the fresh baked pies and the fresh garden food that we ate every time we visited. 

My father LOVED the farm.  He has spent summers there as a teenager.  My mother hated the farm and didn’t make much of an effort to try to hide it. I think she went there out of family obligation and also because my father loved it there so much. 

After I got so sick in grade 5 and developed asthma as a result of being so badly emotionally abused by my teacher, the pediatrician told my mother that I was too weak to visit the farm anymore because of my asthma and allergies.  I was 10 or 11 when this news was delivered.  I remember feeling really badly because my father (and my brothers) would have to miss out on the visits to the farm all because of me.  I don’t think my parents would dare go against the Dr.s orders when the same doctor had threatened them with a court order if they didn’t get me out of the teachers class. 

We moved to another Province the following year and my parents split up, so going to the farm or not, never came up again.

When I was all grown up and moved away from home I ended up marrying a farmer myself, this time on the other side of the country from where I grew up. I married a beef cattle rancher; we had lots of cows, I brought my horse with me when I moved in and pretty soon we added a dog to the growing list of live animals.  My husband also puts up a lot of hay and grain, something else that I had always been allergic to on my Uncles farm. 

My mother didn’t try to hide her disappointment that I married a farmer. She even made a bet that my marriage wouldn’t last 5 years. (Another way she defined me, but that is another story) It started to come out how much my mom hated “the farm”; our farm, my home.  I started to remember how much she hated her Uncles’ farm… and one day she told me that her Uncle got in bed with her when she was a kid and tried to press his erect penis through her legs from behind. (So now I knew why she hated “the farm” so much.)

But here is what I am getting at; One day when I had been married a few years and at least 2 of my children were born, my controlling mother made a comment about how she had made all these “sacrifices” for her children and what a “slap in the face” it was that my older brother had 2 German Sheppard’s in his house, and I lived on a cattle and hay farm and had a horse and a dog. I gapped.  She added that she “had to give up HER dog because of us” and that “she had to stop going to her Uncles farm” because of me.   

I reacted like I always reacted ~ with a whole bunch of explanations about how I had to wear a mask when I groomed my horse, and how I had to wear gloves when I rode. I defended myself with the fact that our dog (a scotch collie) had a double down coat that was the least allergic for me, and how my allergies were MUCH better now than they were when I was a kid… and on and on.  I was so used to having to justify every decision that I ever made that went against anything my mother wanted or didn’t want. The truth is that it was NONE of my mother’s business where I lived or what I did anymore and I could have just told her that instead of defending myself out of guilt and shame every time she brought it up.  The truth is that she only mentioned it because she saw a way to get a dig in against me. And as always she hit her mark.

Today I realize that this is a great example of how manipulative people will use whatever information they have to point a finger and “prove” that the problem is you and always HAS been you; YOU caused the problem and of course YOU OWE them for all they have done for you. This is “the message” that causes so much damage.

My mother sacrificed for me?? I guess she didn’t think I would remember how much she hated that German Sheppard puppy dog and how much she hated going to her uncle’s farm.  The situation had worked in her favor, but she used it against me anyway; she used it to prove how hard life had been for her and that I was failing (as usual) to make it any easier. 

This was one of the things my self-centered somewhat narcissistic mother said that was so telling and so revealing about the lengths she would go to blame me.  This was not the only incident of its kind.  When I started to come out of “the fog” I realized just how pathetic it was that my toxic mother pulled this particular card; SHE hated that dog and she hated her Uncles farm! She should have been thrilled that I was allergic to both! I also realized how pathetic it is that abusers and controllers (owners) will always push to see just how far they can go to get you back in line with what they want you to “do” and how they want you to feel.

Among others things in the dysfunctional relationship with my mother, I learned that LOVE does keep a tally. I learned that (in spite of all the sayings about love) the love that I was taught has to do with a life time of gratitude and obligation.  I learned that according to her I always make the wrong choice and never do what is best for me and that only she knows what is best for me. She knew so much better than me that she insinuated I married the wrong guy (a slap in HER face?) because his profession involved things that I was allergic to! Those messages are not anything even remotely related to love. Those statements come from dysfunctional family belief systems. They show examples of dysfunctional mother daughter relationship. They reveal how my toxic and manipulative mother regarded and defined me as stupid, unable to take care of myself and disrespectful to her wishes and her “sacrifice”. They are related to manipulation and control over another person; me. And the highlight the sneaky ways that psychological abuse work.

I am extremely grateful that I learned that the LOVE I was taught, is not love at all. The false definition of Love had to be replaced with the truth.

P.S. Interesting that although I do have that one happy memory of having the puppy, for some strange reason I am very afraid of German Sheppard dogs to this day.

Please share your thoughts on these kinds of controlling messages from controlling manipulative people.  

Exposing Truth, one snapshot at a time;

Darlene Ouimet

Related Posts: To heal from the damage, Know what the damage was

More on Mother Daughter Dysfunctional Relationship

Darlene Ouimet ~ Smile

One of the biggest uncomfortable and reoccurring memories that I have is of constantly being told to smile. It was not encouragement, it was a directive. I didn’t realize it at the time, I was too young when it started but today I know that it was a judgment of me. It was said “as a judgment”  

I wonder why no one asked me why I was so unhappy. I bet my mother would say that she did ask. But what I remember is her asking why I didn’t smile more like this; “Why don’t you smile Darlene… you always look so sullen.” That was a rhetorical question.  She didn’t want an answer. She was not concerned. She just didn’t want me to look “sullen”.

It is important to keep in mind however, that it doesn’t matter what her intention was. It was what I heard that matters because the message that I got from this “request” or “judgment” is the damage that I had to overcome. The message received was the damage. That is what I am talking about when I talk about overcoming damage and having to find out what the damage actually was in the first place.

I was extremely quiet. Perhaps “withdrawn” is a better word.  Didn’t anyone think that there was a reason for that? 

I heard the whispers about me. I heard the question “what is wrong with her?” many times. I don’t think that statement or question helped me become the happy child that they “wanted” me to be. It made it worse.

I overheard a conversation once between my mother and her sister (my Aunt) when I was somewhere around the age of 8 or 9.  They were discussing my “sullenness” and my constant headaches. It was not so much that they were concerned about me that struck me, but they were trying to decide what was WRONG with me.  I connected the word sullen with the smile directive and put all those messages together. My belief system had already begun to form that something was wrong with me and this conversation just added another layer to it. (I did not think about “why” I was so withdrawn. Only that they thought something was wrong with me)

I was getting worried about me too.  Something was “wrong with me” and nobody knew what! My grandfather got sick and he had cancer and was going to die.  Perhaps that is what was “wrong with me”. Maybe that is why I had so many headaches. 

I had heard about kids who were “different” at school; kids who were born “not normal” and I worried that maybe THAT was what was wrong with me.  I had to find out what was wrong with me so I could overcome it, fix it or hide it.  If I didn’t figure it out, I would never be acceptable ~ never be good enough and never be loved!

I heard my Aunt say that perhaps my difficult birth and the fact that they Doctors used forceps caused more damage than anyone had considered. She said that perhaps the Doctors didn’t know there was damage because I was just a new born baby.  The message that I got was that “what was wrong with me” may have been caused at birth.  Can you see how this false message began to form a “belief” in my belief system?  

Hearing this stuff made things far worse for me. Hearing their judgments increased my fear of being rejected and of being thrown away. Hearing this stuff confirmed that something WAS wrong with me, (just as I already suspected) and that I wasn’t good enough or worthy enough.  If only I could just pretend to be happy and remember to smile. I couldn’t force myself to smile and that make me feel like a failure. My belief system was well on the way to cementing the self blame.

When I was in my twenties I overheard another conversation; I heard this same Aunt telling someone that I had brain damage from the difficult birthing experience.  Now, the “perhaps” part got dumped out of that story. (because my mother was not part of the conversation). She could say this “behind my mother’s back” and because it was so “normal” and common for me to hear this kind of “backstabbing” I didn’t really think much of it.  The way that I processed it was to feel sad that people were still wondering “what is wrong with me” and I was still wondering what was wrong with me too.  I believed that I had “failed” to HIDE whatever was wrong with me.

I was labeled “sullen” but no one wanted to know why. No one was interested enough to dig into the where that may have come from. How does a child become so unhappy and withdrawn? I was content to believe that something was simply “wrong with me” and I was born with something wrong with me. Even I stopped questioning why I was so withdrawn and tried to accept that I was just different and likely defective.

Maybe they already knew why I was so unhappy, but pretending that our lives were “normal” was more important than doing something about it.  OR maybe they were just as unhappy as children and they thought that all children are unhappy. Or maybe the accepted that life is really not a happy journey and why should MY childhood be any different than the one they had themselves?  None of that matters though, because the damage from the message is what I had to face in order to overcome it.  The damaging messages that now lived in my belief system had to be discovered at the roots and set back to the truth.

No wonder so many people question the meaning of life. The cycle goes round and round ~ passed from generation to generation.  No wonder there is so much depression, anxiety, addiction and overall coping when most of the world is resistant to looking at the roots of where it began. It is easier to accept a mal functioning gene; I know.. I accepted that for many years too, but it was when I faced the real roots of my belief system that I found freedom. It was when I began to understand where these false beliefs originated; where and how my belief system formed, that I was able to see the lies and overcome those false beliefs.

There was nothing wrong with me.  I was withdrawn because I was being abused; I had endured (and was still enduring) sexual abuse, physical abuse and emotional /psychological abuse.  I used the fact that I didn’t “smile enough” as one of the many answers to the question, “what is wrong with me” because that is what survivor mode is all about.  We take the blame on ourselves because we are too young to know any different. Taking the blame (self blame) is part of the coping method. Imagine the fear and hopelessness if we blame the adults in charge of our care. I had to find out the things like this “smile example” that I used to confirmed the lies forming in my belief system in the first place.  

Today I smile! My smile is natural; not something I have to think about and not something that I am EVER reminded to do.  My smile is born out of freedom and wholeness and from living in the truth. My smile comes from inside of me and shines through. I like my smile. I FEEL my smile in my heart as though it is a live part of me.

Perhaps after many years of not smiling, I had a lot of catching up to do!

Please share your thoughts! I look forward to how hearing about how this article will impact people.

There is Freedom on the other side of Broken

Darlene Ouimet

related posts see highlighted words in colour  also see: Manipulative and Controlling people and some control tactics

Beleif System Formation via the message Received in Childhood