Sisters, Sisters, Sisters,

There were never such devoted sisters

Never had to have a chaperone “No, sir,”

I’m there to keep my eye on her

Caring, Sharing,

Every little thing that we are wearing…..

This is the song from White Christmas and a while back it kept popping into my head so I took that as a hint from my guides about some emotions that were coming up for me around friendships, particularly women so writing this helped me explore it a bit more.

If we believe we are all children of God, all men are our brothers and all women are our sisters. So when I refer to sisters here I talk just not of biological sisters we may have had, but also about our friendships: an area that has been a challenge for me all of my life.

All relationships have been a challenge for me, but those with women I have found difficult in ways I can not describe fully yet, as I am still investigating, still feeling through painful emotions and I have a way to go yet.

I find it hard to believe I am accepted and loved. I feel rejection in all sorts of scenario’s: an anxiety and fear that does not actually relay the truth of the situation – it is often just my fear and I live in it still and in the last few years it has got worse. Of course it has: I have not felt the causal emotion – the reason it all started.

The words to this song, from the movie White Christmas, intrigued me years ago: I had never had a friendship like that. I had had what I thought were close friends, but they didn’t seem to last. When I was a kid, we moved around a lot, so I made friends and then I would be off. One year I left a school, then plans changed and I was back there in September, but off again within a few months. I remember my discomfort at having to return after having said goodbye to everyone. I felt like everyone thought I had lied about leaving. When I was 12 we moved to Devon and I did stay in the same place for 6 years but by that time I was already uncertain and unsure of myself. I still made friends, still giggled together with others on the bus home from school, still compared notes on boys, but never felt that closeness with one particular friend and even if it started to feel like that, it seemed to change. I often felt like a strange creature with a secret world that no one understood or knew about: I often felt like an observer of my own life. I would relate to a certain point, but mostly I felt so utterly alone, in my thoughts and behaviour and with my feelings. My only true friend became the ocean, where I went to talk, cry, sing and write poetry: its strength, beauty and far out horizon gave me space to feel and express myself.

I moved away from the ocean when I was 18 and my tentative relationships with women continued. I would seem to make good friends but they only lasted a few years and then they were gone. We would lose contact or something would happen and we no longer had anything more to say to each other. One friend ended our relationship because I was “too thoughtful.” At the time it made no sense to me and I learned to trust or like myself even less: not knowing when I was giving too much, which sometimes led me to feel worn out and resentful if it felt like others were just taking and not giving: not understanding what I had done “wrong.” If problems arose in friendships I would often bury my head in the sand: not answer calls, pretend not to be in, panic if I bumped into them, or pretend everything was fine, but retain feelings of anger, confusion, fear,sadness and even devastation within.

I was too scared to speak up in case I was not liked anymore: I averted disaster to avoid the pain of rejection or judgement or punishment. The truth is I had become ashamed of myself, unsure, and certain I was not truly liked, that people would find out in the end how awful I was – that the real me was a bad, unlovable person.

Naturally, it was not just that I moved house a lot: in fact the constant moving, the never asking how we children felt about it was just a clue to the fact our feelings or the effects of the changes on us were never considered. I still have huge blanks in my memory, but my feelings tell me that everything was about the adults, especially about my mother. She was needy and narcissistic. Her own childhood, her own family history created a parent who really struggled to be a parent at all. How can you love your children when you do not know about love? When you do not know how to love yourself? All you do is believe that the world is against you and you fight in whatever way you need to to get attention, to get “love”. For my mother, the need was so great, the pain so deep, that she used her children to meet her emotional needs, which is very damaging.

The most painful emotional event for me was how my mother would pull me closer, tell me I was her favourite (which didn’t make me feel comfortable), get what she wanted from me, which could be any form of caring for her – either emotionally or physically. Then I would not do something as she expected in some way, if I didn’t make her feel better, if I didn’t stop her pain, didn’t do enough chores, didn’t listen to her enough, she would push me away – tell me I didn’t know what she was going through, that she “had sacrificed everything for her kids” and that we were ungrateful and I was a terrible daughter.  I would stand confused. I tried to please her more and more. I would get her breakfast in bed, I became an entertainer to make her smile. I feared her wrath. I feared the uncertainty of her moods and the events it created. I feared rejection and abandonment.

I became a carer, a people-pleaser. I had been taught my emotions didn’t matter and in fact to express them was “selfish.” I learnt that love meant I had to earn it, I had to be perfect: in this way the love I dreamed of became unattainable.

My fears became so great I suppressed them hugely and many times my own law of attraction brought me events where I was rejected by friends. Of course this is God’s law working with love to help us feel and release the painful emotions – but that is something I have only understood in the last couple of years. Most of my life I have continued to suffer and hide my pain, my aloneness..

Rather than face others judgement I judged myself first and have self punished myself in many, many ways all my life: through food, through poor self-care, through relationships, living in fear and not following my dreams and desires. I gave myself the slap before others did – it seemed the easier option. It is a route many of us take. One that imprisons us in fear and suppression. A prison cell that only we have the key to.

Of course I never did reach the perfection I felt  my parents wanted, no matter how hard I tried, particularly with my mother. So I mostly felt unloved and unaccepted.  The rest of the craziness of my childhood led me to feel invisible and insignificant.  Most of my life I have felt that no matter what I did or who I was, I could not be loved.

So why would I believe that a friend could really love me? Every other minute I wait to be “unloved”, rejected and alone. How can I trust my sisters, when the one big sister ( my mother) who was meant to guide me and teach me about love and trust, manipulated and hurt me. It may not have been consciously, but it happened. My hurt happened, as it has for so many of us on this planet: living and in spirit.

This is a fear, covering up a huge amount of grief and what is particularly painful for me right now is that it blocks me from receiving God’s love. I find it nearly impossible to connect to the feminine aspect of God. I often call my Father, but I can not say Mother to God without that sick feeling in my belly: an indication of my fear, blocks and pain. I have found the most incredible teachings of God’s truth and yet I can not fully embrace them whilst I block the most powerful love in the universe through my false beliefs and emotional injuries.

I recently wrote to Mary and Jesus and Mary said my unwillingness to feel my fear was blocking my progress. I totally agree and so I have been praying and letting myself start to feel some fear – it is a tiny trickle at the moment and sometimes I still revert to anger to avoid my fear, but I will keep going as what I do feel now is the pain of my suppression. I feel like an immovable rock and it hurts: it feels heavy and yukky. My body talks through pains in my shoulders and back: it tells me that my suppression is a burden, a heavy sack of “not love.”

I am also taking steps to not live in my fear: I called a friend I haven’t seen for a long time. I suggested to someone at work we go out to a cafe one day for a drink. I felt my fear when confronted with a woman at work who scared me. It’s amazing when you do feel your fear: everything changes. She is now more respectful of me and friendly. God’s laws working perfectly. The power of emotions to change our soul, even if it is just a little bit, which then in turn change our life. So if I start to feel more, my life will change more. These little steps out of my fear may seem silly, but for the last 3 years I have been a bit of hermit – avoiding situations where I might feel unaccepted, judged, or have to face angry women: avoiding friendships. Even when I write to Mary I feel my neediness – “love me, love me” as I seek approval. It’s sad and it’s also an unloving demand to Mary or anyone else I project it too. If I just feel the emotion that will stop. I have been in huge denial, and I at least hope that is changing.

Mary wrote some great stuff on fear and how to “jump from the plane” on her blog and she herself is a great inspiration as to watch her change throughout the videos on the Divine Truth website over the years and it has increased my faith in the process God has provided to heal our soul. To see her and Jesus, increase in love, increase in joy and passion touches my soul and provides hope and an example for us all: they really, really walk their walk.

At the moment I am still standing near the door of my plane (metaphorically) and starting to feel what the worse thing that could happen is if I feel my fear. I could die, I could go mad in the terror of my fall, but then I remember there is no death: then I remember that God loves me and wishes me no harm and I have daily evidence of that. Yes the fear I need to feel may be a castle of terror, but it is holding me back, locking me up and these days my desire to be free is starting to overtake my desire to be “safe.”

So watch out sisters, I may be coming out of the woodwork. I may even start to feel you like me: I may even start to like me myself. It doesn’t matter: all I know is it’s time for a change and it’s time to discover more about myself. Praying to be braver, more humble, more loving and more truthful: one step or one leap at a time.

Maxine

An Aside:

•  I will put a link to Mary’s blog in the Extras section of the website.
• Please note my previous posts are all below this one. You have to scroll down. Until I get the finances to upgrade it is a little fiddly, but I hope you find it worth it. 🙂
• I am going to start adding books that have helped me too.