A quote that grabbed my breath...

[alphaomega]

"The humanism bypass. I did it for years. I saw glimpses of someone's potential, their beautiful soul, their loving heart, and told myself that this was who they truly were, ignoring all the rest. But the rest was what destroyed. The rest is where they lived most of the time. The rest was no illusion- it was them, too. This self-destructive pattern was birthed in two places: (1) my deep desire to see the best in my difficult parents. Not for them, but for me. I needed to believe that there was something kind and caring living inside of them; (2) a misplaced projection from my own self-concept work. I held the belief in my own potential, as a way of overcoming the shame I carried. But I made the mistake of assuming that everyone else was just as eager to find their light. Of course, we all have glowing potential. At the core, we are all magnificent beings with profound capacities. But how many of us fully actualize it? At this stage of human development, not so many. The trick is to hold the space for two things at once- a deep belief in everyone's possibilities, and a deep regard for your own well-being. It's okay to pray for everyone's liberation without joining them in prison. Pray from outside the prison walls, while taking exquisite care of yourself. It's okay- you can't do the work for them anyway. Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries... don't leave home without them." Jeff Brown

I will be following him on FB now and reading all his works...

XO AO

[SunnyMeadow]

This really spoke to me! How I wish I knew about boundaries when I was a young teen.

Thanks for this alphaomega.

[athene1399]

This is wonderful. It's good to remember that you can't change people, but you also shouldn't let them drag you down with them. Thank you!

[sandpiper]

Thank you for sharing that quote. 
I remember in my early days in T, someone in group said their therapist made them draw up a pie chart of how often you saw all the endearing sides of the abuser and how often they abused.
It made me think differently about Mother's FOO because I realised that however *nice* they seemed with their white picket fence marketing image, in every single interaction with them there would be some kind of 'sting' in what they said to me.
I came to think of it as razors baked into the cherry pie.
Yep, it looked good but you never knew when you bit into it if something was going to cut you.
And it was that sense of 'waiting for the other shoe to drop' that made me realise that even if the pie does seem good and wholesome, but you know from experience that someone has worked very hard to make this amazing, nutritious thing, and then they've hidden a weapon inside it - well,  .
Abuse wears many masks and sometimes you have to step back and consider 'how much damage does this do?'

[Hattie]

Wow, what a great quote. I definitely do that. I will check his stuff out too.

[lemondifficult]

Great quote and I love the pie chart analogy. Very useful when you are giving your self a hard time thinking about the 10% of the time when you have pleasant interactions with a parent and how maybe it could be like that more often if you could only find a magical way of interacting with each other!

[sandpiper]

Lemondifficult - yes it's a good one.
I love the hive mind at these boards, I've learned so much over the years from the collective wisdom and compassion here.