Most people believe that denial and lying is primarily within the purview of the addict. However, lying and denying is for everyone! What sets the addict apart from the liars and denyers is what they believe in – not how honest they are. They say that an active addict has two core beliefs: 1) I am not an addict and 2) I can control my use. It is these core beliefs that make an active addict an active addict. Really though, how different is that than someone who is sick saying “I am not really sick.” How different is this than someone who is obese saying “I can eat ice cream, it won’t hurt me.”
This self-deception is pervasive in our culture, while you may say that it is an addict who is “unwilling to see those I hurt”, I have to say it is true of everyone! Who admits to hurting those people that they love? No one! Your behavior can be the nightmare of those you love. Know it.
I’ve written about this concept before. The concept of being challenged, the concept of feedback dished out and either received or not received: can have a profound effect on my life. I wrote about it when I wrote “Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely”. That story heralded the ending of some childhood idealism. Idealism that I had no idea was following me around. So here I am again pondering the idea of denial and how our loved ones play a significant role in sustaining and maintaining the denial, OR making significant disruptions by puncturing the denial with truth.
There is some science that says folks who don’t have severe hangovers are more likely to become alcoholics. Well I’m one of those people who have severe consequences and I just cannot drink. So addiction to alcohol – or really anything- has just not been my thing. However, I can say that the disease of denial has firmly entrenched itself into my life, in oh so many forms. One, I am guilty of believing that I KNOW how to raise kids and there is this specific formula that is correct from diaper to college and only I have the formula. I developed a know-it-all attitude that in spite of feedback about my attitude, I would say things to myself like “yes they have a point, but I AM doing it right”. So I’m not really addressing my parenting skills here, or even addiction, what I am addressing is my forcefulness about being absolutely right about everything I do and say.
Now the truth is, we as humans, will only think and do things that we believe are right. In all of those TV shows about criminals, you will always hear some justification from the criminals for their horrendous acts. That is the mind manufacturing evidence to justify their actions. As humans we want to be right. Being right allows us to march on continuing our activities, good, bad and ugly.
I have brought a “force” with me to everything I do. I needed that force when I was raising all of those kids. It takes tremendous strength and energy to herd so many young people around. I needed that force to be a fierce protector, many of those years I was a single parent, so strength of will was critical. That “force” is all unnecessary now. These people that I was raising and protecting are all grown up. They actually need to spend some of their time protecting me… So here I am with all of this righteousness and force with nothing to apply it to. I don’t even know how to raise children anymore. My kids, who have kids, are teaching me a thing or two about the flexibility of parenting. They are demonstrating to me cool new ways of raising kids that do not require many of the things that I absolutely insisted on. The sky is not going to cave in if a child drinks some Sprite, hell is not going to overflow with brimstone if the laundry is not completed on schedule. Most importantly; learning to trip, fall and cope with it is a necessary basic of becoming adult. I know that I preached allowing consequences, but that’s where the denial is hot and heavy for me. I wanted to protect my children and I kept on holding their hands, trying to ameliorate any hurt and remove any obstacles to their happiness.
What foolishness I have practiced. It’s not like I wasn’t challenged. Those who challenged me received such angry rebuttals, because of that “righteousness” bubble that I have resided within. I see now, in the 20-20 hindsight type of vision – that people will only challenge me because they love me. Who would tangle with the tigress if they didn’t give a damn about the tigress?
Like the addict living through the intervention, I have clawed and maimed the people who love me the most. I can’t completely surrender, because living through what others think of my life is just not my style. I do have to come to grips with this new perspective. People who challenge me do it out of care and concern for me. If the same theme repeats itself over and over again with different folks the probability that I am living in denial is close to 100%. So, was I wrong all those years utilizing my “force” to raise kids? No! Things change, time changes, raising children right now is very different than raising children 25 years ago. We did what we did and these new parents are doing a darn good job.
My place in the universe is different, it is I who must move on and let go of what was. That requires that I hear the challenges that others throw my way and that I respect that only those who love me will throw those challenges at me. I don’t want to be like those people I know who – in positions of power – surround themselve with sycophants who wouldn’t dare give honest feedback. I want to be surrounded by people who love me, who will challenge me and who will keep me out of denial and firmly fastened to the path of truth and honesty.
Today is overcast and wet. Not quite raining, more, just wet. It is not a life-changing funeral for us. I send a prayer to the heavens for that.
Gulf of Corinth by Mary Newbold Sargent
Nevertheless, it is an important funeral for us. My husband’s best friend is being laid to rest today.
It is a tradition that I agree with. I believe it helps us with our many and varied feelings about life. We need the time to work through our relationship with the person who has passed away.
For some, it is an interruption in a conversation. The interruption could have been a furious argument, or it may have been a soul-searching declaration of love. For any interruption there will remain a sense of incompletion.
For others it is an end to a time in a life. For the child of, for the spouse of, it is an end to a time. It could be the end of a certain structure, a way of a family’s life. A central figure in the life of the family is gone and the family doesn’t know how to proceed.
For others it can feel like the end to life itself. Nothing will ever be the same again. Life is unalterably changed, different than it has ever been. And these are those who suffer the most with this grief, with this moment in time. These are those who have lost it all. Most can recover, some will not, instead will follow to the space of darkness, never to return.
We make the journey to meet all those affected in each different way. For us it is a struggle with mortality. Must death always win? Sometimes death comes with a plan, but other times it is all so sudden and cravenly wrong. Death can steal life in the brightness of day with no warning whatsoever.
We come to make our peace with the dead man. For this time, we are the lucky ones. Our life will not change with the passing of this man. He will be missed, but the missing will make no change here.
This funeral demands action
What we must do in this moment is to grapple with mortality. We must see our own death and our own plans for the day that we pass and thus change our family completely.
Mrika Selimi from Unsplash
The finality of death looms over us. It changes our experience of life. If we acknowledge death, we must admit that our denial and anger separate us from each other. Our separation becomes a decision that must be reviewed. Can we really live this life in full resentment of each other? Can we really abide without ever having a conversation with our loved one about our relationship or our pain?
We have to review our relationship decisions. We must acknowledge the gravity of our treatment of each other. It is a thoughtful time. It is a time of grief.
It struck me the other day, as I was scrolling through Facebook, that my friends who have dared not to move past their family of origin culture are the ones who are enamored with Trump. It’s a well known fact that the “less-educated” are statistically more apt to be Trumpers. But I never connected the dots in real time.
And then it struck me as I was scrolling. My girlfriend Debbie from 6th grade, back in Fruitville, shared some trump propaganda on my feed. Debbie has never left the life we led back in Fruitville. I don’t mean that she didn’t move, I mean that she stayed in the backwoods persona of the Florida girl. She never left the old neighborhood and the old culture.
Now it is true that the not-educated white people have a reason to be disenchanted with politics as usual. America is in the worst place it has been in a hundred years, both politically and economically. I am with them on the idea of getting rid of the same old rhetoric that has controlled our congress for a hundred years.
Trump is not the answer and to think he is the answer is to be an anti-intellectual. Debbie is the kind of person to vote for Trump because no one has ever crossed her path in any way that challenged her way of life. Whatever beliefs her mom and dad passed down are still stuck there in her and her family’s head. They are resisting computers, they are still fishing in the Everglades and they are all still beer drinkers or pot smokers. They don’t like reading, except maybe the newspaper, and never made it past high school in any meaningful way. She lives in the Fruitville culture cozy. There are a lot of people who are satisfied with life as it is. There is nothing wrong with this culture, it is simply stagnant. Thinking doesn’t happen, it’s a culture of thoughting. Everything I think of today, I also thought of yesterday.
I began thinking about some of my other friends who publish Trump propaganda and realized there was this common thread. They are culture complacent and culture cozy. And as is true to form, not college graduates either. They stayed in the same place, no matter how many years past high school they are. Some are literally, in the same place, they were forty five years ago.
To a great extent, these friends never realized that they were having life NOW, many of them planned for later and in their complacency, later never came. They are solid Trump supporters because for some reason, they believe that the man will help their situation. I’m not sure how or why that was supposed to happen, but I hope that they realize that it did not happen. Trump did NOTHING for the little guy. Trump never helped human rights, he never decreased taxes for the poor or middle class. He literally did very little for anyone other than himself and the wealthy during his presidency.
Because the uneducated can be *practiced* in denial, they are often caught arguing for Trump, when there is nothing to argue for. Trump’s policies did not, in any way benefit the poor in Florida, or in any other state. Unless you believe that the ability to carry an AR-15 is somehow important to your liberty, Trump did not help you.
I am disgusted by anything Trump. However, this country cannot continue to get away with raping the poor to the benefit of the rich.
TAX THE RICH — AOC by Nina Westervelt with New York Times
It just cannot continue. The middle class and the poor must have some breathing room. We need a raise of the minimum wage. We need free college education, free pre-k and free health care. We need to give Americans some of the same benefits that most western countries enjoy. Our country is poised for violence and hate, and it is armed to the hilt. As ignorant as Trumpers are, they are part and parcel of a group of people that are tired of being used by the big corporations and the billionaires.
The next uprising may be more violent, and believe me, if it happens, we will think that Trumpism was a walk in Central Park.
Have you been in situations where you are consistently ignored? You can be sure that those who are ignoring you have dismissed you. You have no importance to those who ignore you. They can’t be bothered with what you need. They actually cannot be bothered with you at all.
Make no mistake, those who ignore, also dismiss. Dismissing makes you less than human in the eyes of those who ignore you. This also makes it easier to ignore you. If you have no value, you can be pushed aside.
How is this interaction created? At what point do we allow ourselves to dismiss other humans?
Many people actually do believe that they are superior to other humans and so we don’t have to explain for those. We know why the “superiors” ignore human beings. They are often people who don’t recognize their own bad behavior.
For those who love and support others, why would they ignore other humans? Talking with others, I am told that often, people don’t have time for everything that they need to get done. Thus, they run through their days only focused on what they must. No one gets a pass for this busy person. They can only focus on the things on the list.
Others; simply do not have the energy to give another. You will find them ignoring others as a matter of survival.
It’s the first group that deserve disdain. Ironically, this is exactly their treatment of others and should be our treatment of all those who believe they are “better” than others. “Superiors” only concern themselves with self. They could care less what feelings they are causing the ignored person. They usually have no reason to believe they are superior – and believe it anyway.
Our minds love to be righteous, when we have a belief about superiority, we will find ways to confirm our belief. I’ve heard the arguments: “She’s ugly, he is clumsy, look how stupid they are!” On and on the arguments roll and they include no self reflection. They are simply expressions of the baser parts of the human brain.
If you are being ignored and dismissed, you can make some choices. You may know the person who is ignoring you, if you do, you may know if 1, 2 or 3 is the source of the ignoring. It helps to know, and it does make a difference to how you respond.
To respond to #1 which is the most insidious of moods of Americans, is to be aware that you are with an extremely rude person. Treat them so. You don’t have to do anything, in fact, perhaps you can ignore them back.
To respond to #2, you can be respectful with your interruption. This person is struggling.
To respond to #3, don’t.
It really is awful to be ignored. Dismissing is a way of telling some one “you don’t matter to me”. Don’t be this person.
It’s the New Year and we are all ready to change our lives! I’m making 2020 the easiest year to change your life by giving you 20 Ways to make it happen.
To change your life, say yes to Love.
Love centers every interaction with calmness. When you love everyone, it changes how you think of them. It changes how you think of yourself.
To change your life, say yes to Abundance.
The world is full of abundance and anything you can wish for is available. Believing in abundance gives you abundance. Commit to challenging and changing beliefs that limit you by being about scarcity.
To change your life, say yes to Honesty.
Lies are obvious, you must be in denial to believe them. It is hectic and stressful to sustain lies, even if you are the receiving party. Honesty is easier and healthier. I dive deeper into honesty in this article, or refer to this book on the justification of lies.
To change your life, say yes to Responsibility.
Responsibility will bring you security. When you decide on responsibility, you give yourself a home and something to build upon. Do your part for those you love. If that means doing dishes, or picking up your dirty socks, do it!
Mermaid Walking
To change your life, say yes to Action.
Procrastination stops you from accomplishment, why indulge in procrastination? Step out of your own traps and complete your chores. Adopt the mantra “20 ways to change your life in 2020” to combat procrastination.
To change your life, say yes to Boundaries.
When you work, work.
When you play, play.
Circumscribe your activities with purpose.
Consciously choose what you absorb.
Focus on the moment, in the moment.
To change your life, say yes to Relaxation with a purpose.
Find your relaxation response, explore meditation, or yoga, or massage and acupuncture. Whatever your relaxation response is, use it.
To change your life, say yes to Yourself.
If you need to rest and recuperate, “No” is a complete sentence, say it.
Darkness is for Resting
Say yes to getting rid of your mad.
One event deserves only one mad: spend it wisely.
Don’t regurgitate your mad over and over and over again.
Once you have completed your mad, move on and don’t dwell. What you pay attention to absorbs your energy. You don’t want anger to be your calling card.
Where your attention goes, energy flows.
To change your life, say yes to Forgiveness
It has been said that unforgiveness is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die. Science tells us that unforgiveness leads to bitterness and that bitterness kills. Emmett Fox is the spiritual thought leader with extensive writing on forgiveness. If you want to explore the idea of forgiveness more, check out his book on Amazon.
To change your life, say yes to Self Love.
Be loving to yourself in thoughts, words and deeds.
Do whatever it takes to remind yourself that you matter and deserve love just for being you.
Don’t deny your true worth.
Do what you know is best for you.
To change your life, say yes to Self Care.
Stay on top of your stress, be aware of consequences of stress and take measures to ameliorate your stress! The 20 ways to change your life in 2020 is all about self care, you can incorporate any one of the ways into your self care routing.
Self Care
To change your life, say yes to Respect for yourself and others.
All interactions become positive with the addition of respect.
To change your life, say yes to Oneness.
Allow yourself to see that your spirit is a part of the whole; when you see this, your place in the universe becomes infinite and purposeful.
To change your life, say yes to Non-Violence.
Violence can be verbal, physical, mental or emotional. Leave violence behind to live longer and to keep your loved ones close. Violence separates humans from each other.
To change your life, say yes to Integrity.
The definition of integrity is the state of being whole and undivided. How wonderful it is to be clear and purposeful about your decisions in life?
To change your life, say yes to Imperfection.
Perfection will cost you your peace of mind. Allowing yourself to embrace the ups and downs of life will give you freedom.
Accept that you are perfectly imperfect.
To change your life, say yes to Communication.
Don’t leave relationship pain hanging. Pain leads to bitterness and we already know what bitterness does to us.
Unknown source
To change your life, say yes to Present.
Say good-by to the past. Science tells us that our memories are unreliable; it just doesn’t pay to look back and second-guess yesterday.
To change your life, say yes to Sleep.
Put your phone in the kitchen every night. The only exceptions are family member hospitalization, stock market in Japan or teenager out at a party. These exceptions are singular in nature, you can still place your phone in the kitchen at all other times.
Love centers every interaction with calmness. When you love everyone, it changes how you think of them.
Say yes to Abundance.
The world is full of abundance and anything you
can wish for is available. Believing in
abundance gives you abundance.
Commit to challenging and changing beliefs that
limit you.
Say yes to Honesty.
Lies are obvious, you have to be in denial to
believe them. It is hectic and stressful
to sustain lies, even if you are the receiving party. Honesty is easier and healthier.
Say yes to Responsibility.
Responsibility will bring you security. When you decide on responsibility, you give
yourself a home and something to build upon.
Say yes to Action.
Procrastination stops you from accomplishment, why
indulge in procrastination?
Say yes to Boundaries.
When you work, work.
When you play, play.
Circumscribe your activities with purpose.
Consciously choose what you absorb.
Focus on the moment, in the moment.
Say yes to Relaxation
with a purpose.
Find your relaxation response, explore meditation,
or yoga, or massage and acupuncture.
Whatever your relaxation response is, find it and use it.
Say yes to getting rid of your mad.
One event deserves only one mad: spend it
wisely. Don’t regurgitate your mad over
and over and over again. Once you have
completed your mad, find a way to solve your feelings and be committed to your
resolution.
Where your attention goes, energy flows.
Say yes to Self
Love.
Be loving to yourself in thoughts, words and
deeds.
Do whatever it takes to remind yourself, that you
matter and deserve love just for being you.
Don’t deny your true worth.
Do what you know is best for you.
Say yes to Respect for yourself and others.
All interactions become positive with the addition of respect.
Say yes to Oneness.
Allow yourself to see that your spirit is a part of the whole, when you see this, your place in the universe becomes infinite.
Say yes to Non-Violence.
Violence can be verbal, physical, mental or emotional. Leave violence behind to live longer and to keep your loved ones close. Violence separates humans from each other.
Say yes to Imperfection.
Perfection will cost you your peace of mind. Allowing yourself to embrace the ups and downs of life will give you freedom.
Accept that you are perfectly imperfect.
Say yes to Integrity.
The definition of integrity is the state of being whole and undivided. How wonderful it is to be clear and purposeful about your decisions in life?
I’ve recently read some statistics that say that anxiety in America is at an all time high of 20%. Think about that, that is one in five people.
In this country, the poor far outnumber the rich. To make matters worse, we won’t admit how poor we are, so we deny the reality that lives here in our country.
I think America is so much better off than any other third world country – no question. It’s just that we don’t admit to our frailty, and our love for the feudalistic system of the Dark Ages. The rich ravage the poor and own everything worth owning.
Americans pretend that we are all well off. We are so good at pretending. Fully half of our retail system is built around the concept of false wealth and looking like you have it, when you don’t.
We pretend we have power, we don’t use. We pretend we have money we don’t have, we pretend that we are smarter and better, we are not. We have been sold out by Madison avenue. Let’s be clear though, we are the ones who bought into this falseness.
The truth is that we are embarrassingly poor and poverty stricken in this country. We actually don’t realize how much money our society wastes on non-humanitarian endeavors. We don’t need any more nuclear bombs, but our country has committed itself to continually enriching the one per-centers. It’s the one per-centers who are bomb makers, and oil company owners. You and I don’t have that kind of influence and money.
HOWEVER, we want to pretend that we do have that kind of money. We want to be on the Trump side, because that’s the side of the wealthy. Ivanka sells bracelets for $10,400.00. Isn’t THAT the group that we want to be part of? The heavy hitters who can afford anything?
In the meantime, I struggle to pay for healthcare. Yes, I have health insurance, yes I have an Health Savings Account, and still, because I am sick, I can barely afford my healthcare. I have to buy a prescription that is compounded and because it is compounded, my insurance won’t cover it. My physicians are specialists, so I must always pay the higher rate to see them. My procedures are always paid at 80%, and any SMALL and SHORT procedure costs us several thousand dollars.
Republicans talk about how Social Security is not enough and Americans should be saving for retirement. To keep myself working, I have to spend approximately $500.00 to $1,000.00 a month for health care. I have been spending this much for about five years now. How do I save money under these circumstances?
It maddens me that at least 30% of this money goes to enrich healthcare executives. It’s not for healthcare, it’s for profit and for the greed of those one-percenters. The reason for this is that our Congress in the United States of America, is for sale. This congress are retiring as millionaires because the healthcare industry has paid them off. After all Viagra is very, very lucrative.
I don’t understand this. What I really hate about it is that in other countries, politicians and capitalist executives are likely to admit that they work together. It’s only in America that we pretend that capitalism is a good thing. We need to admit that although capitalism has value, it has run amok in America.
Back to anxiety and the prevalence of anxiety in America. Americans may be in denial, but something inside (intuition) is telling us the truth about capitalism in America. We are all an inch away from being homeless and America has no safety net for us.
Because our culture believes in “rugged individualism”, most Americans believe that if you don’t work hard and pull yourself up by your boot straps, then there must be something wrong with you. Because we believe this about ourselves and others, it can be devastating to lose a job. We believe that this is our own fault. More devastating still is the idea that we cannot then find another job to replace the lost job. America is changing rapidly, printers are out of business, paper newspapers are out of business, factories that make records, tapes, and CDs are out of business. Americans blame it on themselves when they cannot create financial success, even when the entire industry they work in has been demolished by change.
We know, we Americans know that nothing will save us. There is nothing in America to help people survive. Churches are trying and don’t make the mark. Food stamps have always had limited application and now trying to attain them can be a nightmare. Americans are dying at the rate of 5 per hour because of lack of healthcare, tens of thousands of Americans are homeless and our own children are often at risk of hunger and going to bed without dinner.
We have anxiety. We know that we are not okay. We know that we are at extreme risk. America is brutal unless you are wealthy. Comfort is difficult to attain, often, it is only the young who have not the left the security of their parents home that feel comfortable and live without anxiety. The only other source of comfortable is for the wealthy or the ignorant.
Being aware of the brutality of our home country is a source of anxiety for millions of Americans.
We have to find a way to regain our hearts and souls in America. We must regain a safety net. If we can’t do it politically, we can do it by stopping blaming ourselves for things that are so much beyond our control. We can take back America by believing in ourselves and by supporting each other in our best efforts. We cannot do this by being “rugged individuals”.
We can be more realistic about our beliefs. People with money are not necessarily smart in any way. They haven’t done anything better or more meaningful than anyone else in America. The single difference is money. Then one must look individually for other differences and put all presumptions aside. Let’s not give away power and wealth by allowing this country to be managed by the greedy and the cheaters. Let’s reclaim America.
If you have experienced the death of a loved one, you know what dying means. We instinctually know that death is the end. Nothing goes past death. We can remember, we can believe in heaven and the afterlife. However, for us, the living, death is the end, life is over. You get no comfort from your loved one. ever. again. Your loved one will never touch you, talk to you, smile at you or laugh with you. It is a daunting reality. No wonder that we indulge ourselves in denial. No wonder that we walk around referring to our loved one as if the one is still here and alive. We cannot, do not accept the absence of the one we love.
As the days and the years run forward, reality rolls on and you experience more and more the absence of your beloved. You cannot deny the absence as years go by. You cannot deny the ending of what was once a beloved life. You must surrender to the ending. You must surrender to the absence of your loved one.
So many try to pull the life forward, as if pretending the loved one still exists on earth will keep the loved one alive. I don’t believe that sentimentality helps. I saved many, many of my mother’s things after my mother died, only to relinquish bit by bit, painfully spreading out the separation. My grief kept me from living in the present. I lost myself in the grief. I just did not want to let go of her. I mistakenly believed that her things would transmit a piece of her heart to me. It took a long time to separate her things from her. It took a long time to know that she really was gone.
I do not wish to have done anything differently, the death of a loved one is ‘life interrupted’. There is nothing you can do to change the reality of your grief.
I just know today, that nothing could be different. Not any amount of bargaining, denying or trying, could make my mother’s death different, nor could it have made my grief different. My resistance did not change anything. Hanging onto my mother’s things did not sooth my loss. My loss was my loss.
Today is the eleventh anniversary of my children’s father dying suddenly of his one and only heart attack. I hope that my children are not bargaining, denying and resisting the truth of today. I hope that they can embrace the grief of the day and then walk away from the day.
It is as if, there is shame in weakness. Worse yet, illness is a condemnable offense. I don’t understand this, because as mothers, we realize that there are good days and bad days. As mothers, we don’t hesitate to provide love and care to our family members no matter who and what they are, or how they behave.
My challenge is this: why aren’t we women defining society? We understand, we acknowledge the different faces of the human condition. As women, we should be defining the societal structures of being human in America. It’s ok to be weak, it’s ok to be sick, it’s ok to be ignorant, why add insult to injury and shame those less capable than the strong?
This strength thing has become its own illness, in the sense that lots of people say and think, “I don’t need anyone and I don’t need anything.” This can go past the point of wisdom and could even cause self harm. Look at those who die after refusing medical help, or women who are murdered by a husband or boyfriend because they refuse to go to the police?
This norm of strength is fostered by our society. Perhaps it is the pushback from the way people are treated when they are in economic need. Our society is not very nice to the poverty stricken, but again that is because we all believe in this notion that strength is enough to overcome anything.
Needy people are normally put down, made fun of, ostracized and of course, they are deprived of very real and very normal opportunities. This can become a hamster wheel of frustration along with denial that keeps those in need – in need.
How do we balance all of this out? Strength and weakness, need and satisfaction? How do we ensure equality in spite of the fact that not all humans are strong? Those that are strong, what price do they pay to exhibit that strength?
