Hi! Great, I will read your posts too! I rarely meet another B+ especially here in Maine.
Nice to meet you.
Reviewing my posts.
IH- results, calm, centered and quiet but receptive to conversation, people want to talk to me
IS/B Giggly. active, happy, busy, not sexual response though for me ( perhaps because my husband was not here)However I think my husband would like me this way, relaxed and care free.
IS/B and Shine: Too much, made me ditzy, perhaps too large a dose.
IH and IO both are very relaxing, calming and good for me and for my interactions with others. I am naturally a bit shy and quiet and although I don’t get more chatty I am still somehow more open to meeting people. However I don’t seem to feel the need to share information with people on IH and IO. This journal is a different story because I do not see the people reading it and can distance myself from it. Hey, I should change my picture so no one who knows me can tell who I am! Now showing the construction I am doing and having done on our house, a bit of my flower garden and my best buddy Ty.
I need to try shine again, small dose.
I am going to try Instant Openess today.
application IO 2x version 1.0
shower, 9:am, two sprays torso
self effects: smell spicy, but not offensive, strong to me. Over time the smell gets less noticable.
feel calm, centered, relaxed, happy, much like IH. I will have to try them one after the other with the same people before I could distinguish a difference between IO and IH in my response. Perhaps other people will respond differently to me though.
10:00-1:30 PM
Went out to look for a second hand playpen and toys for grandson’s visit, saw an ex co-worker at the store,who walked up to me and gave me a big hug and after she asked me what I was looking for she generously offered to loan me a playpen for my grandson! Unusual in that we were aquainted only through work in a school and friendly in the way I was friendly to other workers but we never went out together as friends,talked much or know much about each other. How nice! IO is not stressful at all, I just feel centered. I don’t feel the need to chat but I feel receptive to people. I tend to be quiet at work, friendly but distant, and professional, I think both of us were surprised that she offered to loan it to me.
I feel quite a lot like the IH with the IO, still calm and centered and quiet but friendly. Still shy, but not uncomfortably so.
8:30pm did not do much interacting with strangers today, was home from 2pm on, very hot out and relaxed.. Will report tomorrow
6:am
IH and IO two sprays each, torso, wrists
a social day at mall with family and with some new people I do not know well. Grandson is such a relaxed and calm baby, and has her eyes and his nose. His eyes are blue like mine but look like they will change to a light hazel. He is active and sweet and mellow. He was fine with me yesterday, he missed his mom a littls sometimes but is an easy baby and never got overly upset. Swelteringly hot which is why we are all going to drive an hour to be someplace air conditioned. I hate malls but we will have lots of fun beeing cool and walking around. Wish my son was here too.
7pm great day, relaxed and had fun all day with people I hardly know, that makes this a sucessful day. IH and IO seem to make me relaxed enough to feel comfortable and social. I did notice that people smiled at me a lot today, more than usual. Perhaps because I felt happy. IH and IO are going to be useful for someone shy like me to feel more comfortable with new people and in crowds of strangers. It also seems to make people friendlier to me, perhaps because I am less uncomfortable. So far it is good to have around!
people kind of group themselves by neighborhood, there’s definitely a sense of “eastside vs. westside” and people are very territorial about where they live (even within those two regions). but people don’t really know each other, or have each other’s backs in that way, they just sort of talk about their neighborhoods. haha! there’s always something going on, but just the same it can be very lonely without anyone to go with to these somethings… i am still not sure of how to make friends outside of work (which is going very poorly for me as of late - i might go write something in my journal on this). i don’t miss home very much, it was not a very nice place - lots of drug addiction, little value on education, etc… but i do from time to time miss the places i used to go there (as everyone does).
i’ve never lived anywhere small enough for people to really take care of each other in that way… i never thought of the cold creating that kind of unexpected bonus, ha! it’s interesting, the kind of paradox you speak of, between a lack of diversity but a general hands-off approach to it as well. usually i feel like with the lack of diversity comes a lack of open-mindedness, but then, that can happen anywhere with any level of diversity (just look at the attitudes towards hispanic people in the southwestern US!). the northeast to me seems to be the most forward in gay rights, and general equality for the LGBT community, so it’s interesting to see that carry over to even small towns with strong conservative influences. i remember singing the messiah in high school choir; they could barely get 120 high school students who had been in music classes for a year or more to read the music well enough, an entire town!!! i would love to experience that.
I wanted to ask you about this previously, but didn’t know how to do it sensitively. So, apologies in advance: What do you mean specifically by that bolded statement? If you don’t want to post it or want to tell me to STFU; please do so in PM.
I am first generation American on fathers side, second on mothers. My father is a Sephardi Jew who survived Holocaust in Austria when he was 13, (I am 54)his father was adopted but his side looks very Arabic, his moms side Sephardi and his grandfather? who knows. most likely some white in my grandfather as he is fair,blue eyed. Relatives were scientists/musicians
My moms side is more a mystery,Moms great grandfather was Scotts/Irish/British/Dutch wealthy living on family money. Family lore:my mothers great grandmother was a great beauty, charming, educated, bright and she had a dark, warm complexion, sorta coffee and cream but golden too and her hair black and straight but coarse, dark brown eyes. I was told she was descended from freed slaves on one side, and one side Asian but that is family lore, I have no idea what mix she was. I just know that the parents of my great grandfather considered her a native and not white. I was told he went to oversee his plantation met her and fell in love and married against his parents wishes. Two hints I have are that I get keloid scars, which more people of color get than white folk, and I have asian folds to my eyes, as does one of my sons who also inherited golden skin and coarse black straight hair.
Family disowned moms grandfather, but took care of him after his parents death, he was very well educated, given money, banished to Austraila by relatives because he was not white. he mined opals became very well off, became gentleman, moved to America, went to college, passed as white, married white, produced my grandmother, who was was coffee/cream colored and looked french and who was very very upset when my mom married a Jew , strongly antisemitic and banished my mom. Never accepted us grandchildren. So it goes!
That’s quite some legend! The bolded statement is because this is an American thing. According to practices, customs and traditions - religion runs through the mother. This is consistent with ‘civilised’ world; and I do mean world. I’m not talking about Kalahari Bushmen, or East Irian cannibals; but this does include most ‘underdeveloped’ countries.
It’s also how so many during WWII ended up in camps unaware (when they married outside faith this became common) that they were, by tradition and technicality Jewish. Your grandmother was disowned for nothing. This is the entire reason British princes have to choose carefully who they marry. Can’t have the mother of the next ruling monarch outside the national aristocratic religion. Also my theory on Diana.
Me? First gen Oz. And the wrong kind of white for the anglos. Was told to “go home” most of my life there. Both of my parents are / were Croatian. But since my mother and biodonor separated when I was 2; I was raised by a Hungarian stepdad. My mother - as the Oz say: Couldn’t lie straight in bed. The family that I thought existed of a couple of individuals turned out to be a couple of hundred - extended.
The grandmother was married 3 times, lied about her daughters - different fathers and maintained that they had the same. The whole family lies so badly, there’s no straight of it to be had. I didn’t find out until 2003; that a cousin of my biodonor lived in Melbourne. I met her that year before I came here.
I only have the tiniest of accidental truth in my knowledge and no proof. Those families can keep their lies and I have nothing to do with any of them. I was completely outcast to the point of family scape goat. Ironically enough, I’m also the only (to my knowledge) healthy one. Both of my natural parents come from families of odd, unusual and straight up bizarre cancers. I only have 1 half sister. That I don’t know where, how, what or if any are dead or alive tells you how close we are. And I’m thankful to be here and not anywhere close to any of them. The family that was best to me was my stepdads sibs and mom, who we visited when we did the roots trip because my great grandmother was dying - of a bizarre cancer. As an adult, I have 2 people here. 1 of those was kinder and more loving to me in the first month of my arrival than any of the alleged relatives to date.
I have no legends, no genealogy (it would be a grape vine and not a tree anyway ) and put no value on any of it, since I’ve believed in Re-incarnation since I was a child. My stepdad was all I had growing up. You find family where you find it. I’m also fussy. AND I have found some absolute treasures of people that have been and still are my privilege to know; let alone call family. I probably would have missed out on them completely - if I’d been obsessed with the impossible task of dealing with my “family”.
Yes, almost like a soap opera, and even today people in America have thought I am Jewish by birth. When a child I went to a Catholic Priest who told me I was Jewish and then a Rabbi who told me I was not. Was very confusing to me.
As for race, it has only been an issue for me for two reasons. One of my sons looks sorta like he is Puerto Rican or Arabic , and when we lived near Chicago I moved into a house before I found out the neighbor was a nazi, he had seen me and husband and thought we were white till he saw my son and had a nasty and awful screaming bout, my son was just a toddler. we moved away. The other times were always about antisemitic stuff from people who thought being Jewish was a racial thing.
9:am
shower, Instant Shine 2x 2 sprays, Instant Openess 2 sprays
Beautiful day, sun alternating with rain, went out with family to eat lunch and fuss over baby and have ice cream, we wound up sitting for hours just watching the baby be cute and playing with him and taking turns holding him, daughter in law having lots of fun with old friends and family fuss over her and the baby. She has a huge extended family who are all coming out in droves, She is doing the impossible and is trying to find a way to see every one who wants to see them. baby is being wonderful, so used to people passing him about now that he hardly makes a fuss at all.
If there were effects from pheremones it was simply a happy, calm and contented environment and a fun visit, but I am sure our natural pheremones are in play too. What is more beautiful than a mom and baby together? who could resist a toothless grin.
OMG, I know how that is. Ugly, black hearted people. My stepdad is Hungarian; but so dark olive that he’s darker than most of the African Americans I know. Lots of ugly comments made in our presence about which side of the Mediterranean he was from. You idiots - Hungary is landlocked! Most don’t know that Oz had a “white only” immigration policy until 1975. Lots of ugly, ugly comments from the anglos about dad’s color. My half sister has the keloid thing - she’s olive with platinum blond hair and blue eyes. Apparently that combo generates 5 times the necessary keloid amounts. I on the other hand, don’t scar unless the flesh is removed. Doesn’t matter how deep or wide, if the edges meet, I won’t scar. Convenient for the abusive parent.
My mom was mentally ill. I think she was schitzophrenic, but I dont know what illness she had. However she would have periods when she would talk to herself, see things, be paranoid, be angry, leave for days at a time, do strange and scary things. My dad left when I was eight. He took my two brothers and I never got to know them well. In those days child services did not step in as they would now. My mom could be awful but she was sick so it was not a betrayal of trust when she did awful things. I learned to accept it although it was a very difficult child hood, sometimes dangerous, often hungry. I raised myself mostly.
However, in some ways I think it is easier to have a mentally ill mom than one who intentionally betrays your trust like your mom did by all the deception. because your mom had a choice to take care of you and to love you and chose to alienate you. I read that sick families have a scapegoat so they can take all of their frustrations and fears and sickness and pass it on to someone, and take the focus off their own problems, if that is true perhaps you were a scapegoat for them so they can keep the focus off themselves.
I also think that it is hard for women to have messed up mothers, because it makes it very hard for them to trust other women. Of course children need their fathers but the most basic human relationship is started between a mother and baby, and when people dont have that it seems as if a wound is left that never heals.
most of my adult life-almost 30 years, has been focused on work and art and my family. I had few deep friendships, my deep relationships were with family and a few very special friends. I have more room in my life now my kids are almost all grown. It is time for me to make more friends but I am cautious. I want friends that are adult, smart, healthy emotionally, and able to bond but not dependent. I tend to look to women and gay men for friendship, because it is just easier for me. I tend to be motherly to young men and flirt with men my age, and it is harmless but just easier to avoid any complex stuff when I avoid friendships with men. The one exception is online, where it is easier to befriend both men and women.
Wow, nasty people and good that you left them. Strange to me that someone who was hungarian was considered somehow 'less white" and you experienced a form of racism too. I guess people need training before they can be civilized, lots and lots of training. By nature, we humans have some nasty traits that cause us to gang up on outsiders unless taught not to. I had lots of anti Jewish comments and once someone left pictures of the camp survivors on the table open at work with nasty comments beside it In Chicago. When I was a girl my mom took me to the deep south several times, I was so frightened. They had segregated water fountains and bathrooms and I didnt know which to use, and was scared someone would look at me and tell. So scared I didnt drink at all and held out as long as I could before using the (white) bathroom. Thought I would get caught and punished or even lynched, though I was treated as a little white girl.Also had the Klan there who hated people like me. Very scary times then, I was born in 57 so it must have been in the sixties then.
The comment 'convenient for the abusive parent" gave me chills. so very very sorry if that happened to you.
With dad slaving to try to appease the mother’s lust for money; time with him was - at certain times - limited. Mentally and emotionally I fended for myself, mostly. The focus had to be scattered - Heaven forbid you be responsible for your own actions! It’s always someone else’s fault. I, by the way, am personally responsible for all the evil in the world. lol.
I don’t trust easily. Broken trust is hardly ever mended for me. But hey, so do lots of other people. Wound? For me, no. I’ve never looked to replace something I never had. It’s what I know and I’ve always been ok with it. I’ve always understood that wasn’t something for me - this lifetime. It confuses me that people don’t understand that. For what it’s worth, I don’t have a single problem that can’t be solved with money. Bills n stuff. The rest is good. As my sig says, I just realised the other day - I’m doing OK!
as for me, I am wounded, but not in a way that makes me awfully messed up. I am by nature a pretty mellow person, and thank goodness I did not inherit my moms mental illness, nor did my kids. However, I have a piece that is broken. It does not mean I cant have fun or feel joy. I can and do. But part of me is always on alert, because I had to be always on alert with such an unpredictable and dangerous parent. I can not relax well, need to sit with my back to a wall when out in public, need to watch the door, jump over a foot when startled, have strong flight reflex. also have a very low tolerance for people who need to create drama, cant stand it. Life is hard enough without adding to it. Still, all together have had a good life as an adult.
I’m sorry!!! I didn’t mean to wig you out! The upside is: in 2007 a workplace accident had my right hand mangled for a minute (polisher accident) and the pain was horrible. I thought I was gonna throw up, faint, collapse, throw up in this ridiculous roundabout for about half an hour. I had the head jeweler trying to wash the polish off my hand and take the tape I used to protect the fingertips off under cold running water.
I kept saying “I’m gonna throw up, pass out . . .” you get the picture . It would have been hella funny to see in one of those wrong comedies.
My boss told me a couple of days later; he’s never met anyone with such a high pain threshold. Says something, then, when I say my back’s been in chronic pain for the last 3 years. 
This is exactly why when I was 16; a 6’ 5" massively burly English/Welsh born, Oz raised hippie called Pommie John pinned me up against a wall and ‘shotgunned’ me with “things” until I was well and truly baked. An hour later, I was mellow and could feel my body heavy. I was so stunned, I just blurted out “oh, is this what you mean by being relaxed?” I was so ‘high strung’ no-one laughed. I was 16 before I experienced relaxation. Things literally changed my life.
Pommie John made it a thing to always have enough “things” to get me relaxed while I was in their company.
After I left her domicile; I took up meditation. And all the other pursuits that go with that. Following my own natural tendencies.
Drama is only for TNT. I loathe it and distance myself from drama queens of both genders. AND I try to not watch dramas. I don’t find violence funny - nor the demeaning type of humor. Been put down enough to know how that feels.
And I most certainly have no tolerance of those who presume to know me or my issues. I took the spiritual route for dealing and closure. Without sounding completely vain; in a nutshell I’m smarter than most counselors; can outmaneuver psychologists easily and shrinks just don’t stand a chance with my lateral thought processes.
They also have no clue about truly vicious individuals in everyday life. Generally speaking.
I find it hard to make friends too. I am quiet and shy and serious , although I try to not be. If people sit and chat about clothing and gossip about other people I lose interest in about fifteen minutes and hope for some real conversation. I would rather have a few good friends that are like minded then have many superficial ones.
I wonder if it has to do with the Unitarian Church, which has had an influence in Maine thinking and culture. I was just thinking about our senator Margaret Smith, who stood against McCarthy when no one else would, wrote her declaration of conscience which really was the beginning of his end-it brought him down. He tried to label her a communist, and she just laughted at him, and Maine people were too down to earth to believe him. That story really speaks about Maine to me.
Not everyone sings, the Messah, some dont come, and some just eat the potluck food we all bring, and babies and kids just wander and get passed around and listen but it sounds great and wonderful traditionfor those of us who love it. we meet in a building that used to be a water run mill and is now a home, and people bring chairs and are squished together in all of the rooms and some are outside just talking, we meet New years day. I wonder if someone posted this year on youtube. would be really fun to hear us. Our town is tiny, so it is really a mix of people from about seven towns. We all have the music teacher in common because the high school students in all of the towns are in the same district and all go to the same high school. So the people who attend are the hundreds who have known him and the parents and relatives and fellow teachers,
So really really interesting. I have these things in common with you- both on high alert from dealing with a messed up mother. Both hate drama, and also I hate violence on TV, and do not find violence or demeaning humor funny, because I know how that feels too. I stay away from counselors, ( I am only sharing stuff online because I feel somehow it can not harm me and would never share this stuff with any one in real life)
the last time someone who was a counselor looked at me with pity when my mom was messed up, I had a quick series of feelings- rapidfire, first, I felt good- oh, he actually seems to care and not judge me? next I felt scared, what is he up to what does he want, finally angry- I thought" why are you wasting my time trying to earn my trust when I am not here for me but here for my mother, and I cant possibly share with you my thoughts and feelings and I am a kid and cant even afford a therapist so you are cruel to even smile at me and offer me any compassion at all because it is temporary, what are you playing at?" and glared at him. He flushed red and walked away.
but I dont want therapy, I already know what happened and why I reacted to it, it was just a bad childhood, I can not change it, but am not unhappy with life or crippled.
Finally and most importantly, I totally agree, most people don’t understand what truly evil people can do, never had experienced it. They have no idea. They can not comprehend that some people simply have no conscience at all, like to hurt other people and would do anything at all.
Not in common? the use of “Things”. I would never allow myself to be vulnerable. Once as a kid mom had friends over who thought it funny to give me acid blotter. I slid down wall and faces melted and I passed out. I was scared that I had no control. I went to store and bought a key and eye lock and locked my door as a kid. There were drugs and drinking and crazy people at home, I never knew what would happen next.I wouldnt ever want to be vulnerable or drugged. When having a glass of wine on occasion I stop at two at most at home, I do not drink more than one glass away from home and then I am fearful. But I was a quiet, well behaved, non rebellious kid who wanted teachers to like me and to fit in and do well and please people. Still it is interesting because without a doubt I am a relaxed person, as described by myself and others, the one to go to in emergency, the person most likely to wait and listen and think first. Perhaps because I am used to being on alert it is not as uncomfortable to me, and I can wait and think instead of panic when something happens. I dont know. Or I wonder, perhaps I am fooling myself and am less mellow, or perhaps have an enormous stress tolerance so life feels easy
With my mother being healthy, and the British tradition of minding your own business; people watched while she committed violences on me. Heard my screams down the street and just ignored it. No-one stood up to her. Silence is consent, people. If you’re not part of the solution you mos def are a bigger part of the problem. I know what happened. A counselor at a hospital (ER) started questioning me once. She was terrible - no subtlety at all, and at 7, I knew better than to say things that would trip alarm bells. The idiot doctor had seen me 3 times in 2 months (dad took me) and told him that if I came in again; he’d call Child Services. That moron guaranteed that I wouldn’t get medical attention for any damage inflicted by her.
Later on, as a teenager, I went to the hospital to visit a friend of the family who lived there. While lunching with her, she asked how things were and I told her. A doctor behind us then butted in and started asking questions.
In my “home state” (joke ) you can have someone committed with 2 doctors sigs without a hearing for a year. He offered to have her committed for a year. I asked him what did he think that would do? Ensure she came hunting for me once she was out? Ensure she did kill me when she found me? What and where was my half sister supposed to go? Dad was working in the middle of nowhere - 2 weeks for snail mail. He couldn’t just come back and the state wouldn’t have let me stay with him, anyway. This was the only professional that wanted to help. The only other person was the idiot counselor who didn’t want to believe what she probably knew to be true.
I don’t hurt. I’m hurt reasonably easily tho’ and I never forget who and how the pain was inflicted. I forgive everyone - sooner or later - but have no inclination to keep those in my life. I’m kinda broken. But I hold to my own standards. I don’t go inflicting pain deliberately. I know how that feels. I don’t like drama, lived with it for too long. I don’t play games - doesn’t mean I can’t. Fuck with me and I’ll walk away. Corner me (and some assholes like doing this with all of us ‘weaker’ individuals) and you will see just how much I learned at the torturer’s hands. Bring game to my face that I can’t actually get away from? Make sure you know how to play. I’m the wild card. Just because I don’t play doesn’t mean I can’t. And when I play, I play dirty. If I’m playing serious life games with you - it means that I don’t care what happens to you. You’ve edited yourself out of my life.
I am so sorry. That was awful and unfair. It is so very hard to get help and also to stay safe and keep your family safe too. But your father should have stepped in.
My mom was violent with me and did evil things too. But I can blame the illness for most of it. Not all of it, she was mean too. I used to go to neighbors to get food sometimes, a girl named Kathy was a friend of mine when I was young, she used to give me sugar and butter on bread to eat for dinner. her mother knew my mom was ill, and did nothing, even though she knew I went hungry. all the neighbors knew and left me with her. Worst was my father who left me there, and didnt want to believe she was sick. I never once had a professional want to help me, not one time. When I dropped out at 16 ( mom walked out on me and I had to fend for myself, as adult got GED and finally graduated from college a little while ago) the school didnt even ask why, and I was a good student most of my school years. Never asked why I missed school, was dirty, had no food, was so quiet. I used to wish they would have asked me, wished a teacher would adopt me as a kid, used to dream of it, but never spoke out. I would daydream that someone would some how know I needed them. Kids will often protect their parents when they are afraid or feel as if they deserve it, that is just how it is.
I am so glad my kids are Ok and loved and we love each other and the worst they can say is I focus on grades, nag about college, ask they cleaned their rooms, nagged about consequences… normal mom stuff. The abuse stopped here, this generation, and no craziness or mean stuff, just normal stuff. I have only the 17 yr old left at home, and his worst complaint would be my not allowing him to use the computer all night, or taking it away when he does not do his homework, or not wanting to do his chores. Lightyears away from real drama. The older kids are on my side now, tell him that he is lucky to have me! any way my joy is that I have them and they are OK.