posted May 05, 2004 01:34 AM         

Let me give you a little advice, that I found very helpful:
I think that you shouldn't be looking for explanations and hidden reasons. That just makes everything more complicated for you, and it rarely makes you feel truly better.

Concentrate at your good qualities, your friends, find comfort and love in the fact that you are too lighted to abuse or hurt anyone, be glad that YOU are a good, human person, that will give his children warm and safe home, and feel their lives with love and joy instead of fear and darkness

posted May 06, 2004 11:29 AM         

I feel robbed. I should be able to tell my kids who my Kindergarten teacher was. I can't even muster up a visual image of her.

So... ultimately, I'm trying to understand what I cannot even remember. I've thought about hypnosis at great lengths. Something about hypnosis that makes me a bit nervous about it is the fact that they can also create false memories. I surely don't want to come out of this thing worse off than I when came in.

I've read elebenty-billion self-help books, meditated, talking therapy (with friends and "qualified" therapists and psychiatrists), and now I'm here wondering if Karma can help me understand me. If Karma is the key to this cycle of abuse (that very well could be continuing on through out eternity) maybe I can break the cycle from here on out.

I suppose what I was really hoping to read as responses to my post would have read something like: "Even Karma wouldn't allow this to happen to a child. You must be innocent. Obviously you're not capable of abuse." Since that's not what I got at all, I'm inclined to believe it must be true.

posted May 11, 2004 06:15 AM         

May I ask you 1 question-What are you doing to break the cycle?

posted May 11, 2004 03:34 PM         

Also, thanks for the help in numerology. It's funny that you would use 29 as an example... that's exactly the number I was confused by. It came up in a name, and also my birthday is the 29th.

Yang ~ No offense taken what-so-ever. I agree with you. Especially when it comes to my mother. I think I must have really neglected and mistreated her in another life.

To answer your question about what I'm doing with it now...

I think in some ways I got more of a "heads-up", so to speak, on parenting from my mother's terrible parenting. I REALLY understand how important it is to children for their care takers to be nurturning and tolerant.

I am a mother of two and draw most of my parenting ispiration from knowing what not to do from my mother's example. I have shortcommings as a parent, but I know in my heart that I'm a very strong and loving mother. I could never abuse anyone, especially my own children. I can't say that would have necessarily been the case if I would have had a loving and nurturing mother.

Also, I tell my daughters that it is our job as mommies to grow up and be better mommies than our own mommies. I want them to be better mothers than I am by having learned through my mistakes as I did with my own mother.

posted May 11, 2004 08:18 PM         

As for your mum, I am in a similar situation where I feel if I were to have children, they should probably not associate with my parants, but I'll cross that bridge then.

posted May 12, 2004 03:24 PM         

i think you're doing the best thing possible in loving your children and teaching them to be aware of their effect on others. they're lucky to have such a strong and beautiful mom!

love to you,

posted May 17, 2004 03:40 PM         

I, too, stumbled onto Lindaland recently and have been perusing the topics with interest and awe. Your post, however, drew me in and I felt I should offer another perspective. Food for thought, if you will.

Karma is basically about the wheel of debt and repayment. You asked about future incarnations, whether this pattern could be continued? Yes, I believe so – IF you choose to keep the issues unresolved. Because you are seeking right now, I feel you are going to make your best effort to change and break the cycle.

With regard to your parents, it’s important to understand that they were doing the best that they could with the resources they had. It’s terrible that you went through the abuse. You may not be ready to do so, but it is important that you forgive your parents for what happened to you. It’s not important that they know that you forgave them, but that you do.

An example: My father was abusive as well. His was passive aggressive and did me personal harm. I believed I hated him and knew I wanted nothing to do with him at all. Luckily, I was able to find the right people at the right time in my life to help me see the bigger picture. What they helped me to understand was that my dad was doing the best he could with the resources he had. Doesn’t mean that what he did was right, but he didn’t have better resources to draw upon. It seems rather simplistic and there’s more to say, but that would require more disk space. This is the biggest and highest chunk if information I think would help to start.

So I went through a journey of forgiving him. As I was on my journey of forgiveness, I had no expectations that my forgiveness would be acknowledged, and I let go of any expectation that he would ask for my forgiveness. It was important that I go through the process of forgiveness, even if one-sided, to give myself peace so that I could move forward. And I was able to forgive him, as well as myself, for what had happened to me. As I went through this journey, I didn’t tell him I was working to forgive him because I was doing this for me.

Well, one of the sweetest and most precious things happened to me 3 years ago, a few years after I had begun my journey and worked out many of the issues. (It’s an on-going journey). My dad, who NEVER apologized for anything before, asked for my forgiveness for what he had done to me. And I was able to tell him, with all the love I had nurtured and grown inside of me for many years, that I had forgiven him a long time ago for what happened. Our relationship took on a whole new level of understanding and respect from that time on.

So can you see how the “wheel” could work? What you put out there comes back to you.

I can’t say that this could happen to you – having your parent(s) ask for your forgiveness. It may, and it may not. Let go of any expectations. It’s perfectly appropriate to heal yours-elf through forgiveness and love your parents from a distance.

So what am I trying to say, here? It all begins with YOU! If you are able to forgive people (your parents) for the wrongs (debts) they have done to you, with God’s pure love in your heart, then you can make miraculous changes in YOUR life. And that’s the whole point, isn’t it?

It is a journey, and in my experience, it took some time. Believe me, you can break the cycle of karma and create a better future and future lives for yours-elf and your family.

posted May 18, 2004 01:07 AM         

My mom, I love her, but I don't like her. I was rasied in a family of alot of drinking,physical abuse,mental and spiritual also. When I turned 21 years of age I was very confused and didn't know which way to turn so, I what to my first psychic. She told me that in a past life time that my mother would have been servant to me and I abused her. Like if she didn't bring me a egg in 3min.s, I would have had her badly beaten. I was also told that I was in a possession of power were I abused it also and how did it feel in this life to not have it. I always wanted the very best for me and others, so it didn't make alot of sense until I really looked into it. I stopped talking to my mother for about 5 years at that time and wrote a many letters, that I stuggled to write and never sent. Then one day about two weeks before x-mas one year, I find my-elf writing a letter to my mom as I was trying to fall asleep one evening.I got up and wrote this letter and mailed it to her 3 days before x-mas. I felt a big bag lift off of my shoulders it this time. I told her the over all picture of how she had negatively affected my life and how that brought me to the person that I am to day. I thanked her for these painful lessons and said if only she could of got it her-elf. We haven't talked in 9 years now and I don't miss her, but think all the time about how much I have learned and continue to learn about me and relationships because of her. I'm truly thankful and was able to forgive my-elf because of this.

I have a Prayer that I say nightly when I didn't feel good about someone. It goes something like this.

I forgive my mother for not being the way I would have wanted her to be.
I forgive her!
I release her!
I set her free!
I forgive Me! By Edger Cayce

posted May 18, 2004 09:18 AM         

The tricky thing about karma, imo, is that is presupposes that time is linear, and I'm not convinced that it is.

Yes, I do believe in a balance in life. I don't necessarily believe that this means you abused your parents in a 'previous' lifetime.

What I do believe, is that on some soul level, you all agreed to this lifetime together, knowing that abuse was one of the possible paths you would choose to walk. You felt it necessary for what we like to call advancement of the soul.

Free will...your parents might have aspired to what we here like to call a 'higher level,' and not abused you. You can aspire to the same higher level, and concentrate on you, making the right choices for you.

I believe in the Yin and Yang of life, the balance, as Meili put it. In lightness there is dark, in darkness there is light, and all must and will exist for balance.

The answers you receive here are a simplification, but not everything has to be complicated. Break it all down for yourself, find what resonates to you. You want sanction for your existence; it's yours for the taking.

I am also willing to concede that everything I think I know is wrong.

posted May 23, 2004 12:35 PM         

I feel like I'm on the right path. I've been diagnosed with PTSD. I am undergoing EMDR therapy to try to help me comfort that scared little girl inside. My psychologist thinks we should be able to get a great deal of my memory back. I really don't have any memories of my life until around 2nd grade. I know the horrible stories of my past through things I have been told from various family members who would come get me and leave my teenage mother there to deal with her mess. "You made your bed, now you have to lie in it" sort of attitude. Hell, they probably said that to her.

Becoming a mother has helped me to understand my mother in a much different light. She was 15 when I was born. I was 21 when my oldest was born. I think that is young. Being a mother is hard work, especially when no one taught you how. We both have that in common.

I feel confident that I am going to heal and learn from these experiences... I just feel a little lost along the way sometimes. My children are my little rocks. I know I have to do this for them too. It's my job to make sure they are better mommies than I was... and they must make sure their children are better mommies or daddies than they were. Is that not how the species evolves?

posted May 23, 2004 06:51 PM         

i think you're doing it. going to therapy. having compassion for your mom, love and support for your children, acknowledgment of your own pain - that's it. not blindly repeating and giving back the hurt you got - that's the path out of the karma this life has posed.
someone may have said this already, but forgiveness doesn't necessarily mean you absolve the perpetrator of harm - it can sometimes just mean that you're not holding on to the hurt as a weapon against that person or others. forgiving another is freeing yourself from the ties of hurt that person created. and building new ties of love and understanding. or not, in the case of your dad. he has his own karma to work out. your mother also has to come to terms with her actions - all you can do is mirror your own growth and let her see what can be done when the focus is on learning and healing rather than staying in a negatively repeating pattern.

you're not alone. keep talking - it's good to listen to your own heart, but sometimes others can give you a perspective you're too hurt and damaged to get to yourself.
have you ever read any books on art therapy, or have you tried using creativity as a healing tool? it's sort of like dreams, sometimes you come up with stuff that has such deep symbolism for you it can't be put into words - hence the art part. it's also a good way to let the hurt two-year-old talk.

libra is about balance. use whatever tools you have to create that balance - that means not burying or getting rid of the bad, but making sure it doesn't outweigh the good. taking the bad and turning it into a positive force. perhaps you will become a teacher or counselor and model growth for others who've been through similar pain. perhaps that is why you chose this life.

love and light to you.