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Beautiful and heartfelt writing. Thank you so much for this ! It sounds like we had very similar families growing up and that we have both sought a path of healing to learn how to process the trauma.

I’m pretty sure my mother has some kind of a cluster b personality disorder, either narcissistic or borderline. Either way she loves to lie, hurt and manipulate and it’s really maddening and damaging to be around.

Something that has been pleasantly surprising to me over the past couple of years is doing a meditation that is recommended by the Thich Naht Hahn books where I imagine my parents as 5 years olds. They were once fragile and easily hurt and they passed their suffering down to me like their parents passed their suffering down to them.

That meditation has helped me not take the trauma ( especially from my physically abusive father) too personally and has gone a long way to helping me let go of the notion that any of that awfulness ever defined me.

The things that happened to us do not define us. We are part of a river of suffering that we can learn to bear witness to, so to transform the suffering into consciousness and compassion.

It’s really inspiring to listen to you transform your and your fathers suffering into love and compassion. Much peace and love to you on your journey and thank you for sharing your insights. 🪷

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Hello, Joy. Your response is so beautiful and likewise heartfelt! My sister and I have talked about have been lucky that our father wasn't abusive, beyond absence and, as mentioned, that suppressed rage from fear and inadequacy that was coiled in side of him.

My mother – and I'll do a 'Dear Terry' letter in the coming week – was so good you didn't know she was lying or manipulation. My eldest sister, when she was in her late 40s, after a 20+ year similar gap from 'the mother', recalls watching with shock and awe about a cult, and saying out loud to her husband, throughout the film, 'That was us! That was us!'

When our father graduated with a BA in Russian history, she organised a celebration. And took praise with the family friends for having got our father the degree while he sat in a chair. And no one questioned it!

I remember with rare clarity, how he sat and I know now, with awareness, that he was in a state of nervous breakdown at that time. That is another story, perhaps. Lol! Not a 'I', 'me', 'mine', story!

And I know that Thich Nhat Hahn meditation. I came across it this summer. Wonderful.

Thank you for your connecting heart observations and so wonderful to read that you have been on a similar path of healing.

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Nov 8, 2022Liked by Guy Duperreault

"The things that happened to us do not define us. We are part of a river of suffering that we can learn to bear witness to, so to transform the suffering into consciousness and compassion. "Love that. I agree.

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That is so beautifully expressed. Thank you Joy and T&J for highlighting it.

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Nov 8, 2022Liked by Guy Duperreault

I enjoyed reading that, thanks. I think it helps to write these things down, it's cathartic, it helps release the anger.

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RemovedNov 8, 2022Liked by Guy Duperreault
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Slavery as root or one of the branches off a deeper root/trunk combination.

I'll read your link later today. Thank you Art. I love the reference to 'zombies', a noun I have often used to describe our state. And which I think that the intuitive artists a few years agoe were intuiting about the near future is now situation we are in. Gracias.

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