Families Who Hate One Another

Recently I found out that my Aunt Mary died 11 days ago on September 7, 2010. Then as I was searching for her obituary, I found out my Uncle Duane had passed away in 2007. I did not know any of this until last night. It had been many years since I talked with my Aunt and not since all the family crap erupted back in 1991. Right now, tears fill my eyes because of not only the loss but the connections to pain within the family that it brings up.

It is sad that through a second hand person, my younger brother and I just found out 11 days after this happened. I cannot piece together in my mind just how much hate keeps someone in my immediate family from letting other family members know someone has died. This is too much for my mind to comprehend. It is too much hate.

I so badly wish I could have talked to them one last time and asked them questions that carry secrets of a life time. I doubt I'll ever find some of the answers to the questions I have in my mind but it would have been nice. Both my aunt and uncle were always nice and treated us nicely. I only hope that I can still connect with some of my cousins and my other Aunt before it is too late. If any of you are reading this, I would like to exchange hellos.

I remember many times how my Aunt and Uncle would drive down for an afternoon visit and often we would go up to their house for Thanksgiving. I remember the big pool table down in the basement of their house and the TV blaring with whatever football game was on. I remember spending a 4th of July with them watching fireworks.


Duane Earl Kammerdiner
June 17, 1927 to Oct 3, 2007
Memorial Site







Mary Belle (Haynes) Kammerdiner
July 15, 1928 to Sep 7, 2010
Obituary







There is one important thing that I remember from my Aunt and that is the picture that is posted at the top of this entry, the red bull. While it may seem like just a stuffed animal, I felt so happy the day she gave it to me. I think it was one of my cousin's stuffed animals but I can't remember which one. My dad of course did not like the fact that she gave this stuffed animal to me as he thought it was childish or whatever else went through his pitiful mind. Anyway, I took it home and had to hide it because if he found it, he would have taken it away and destroyed it. It has remained tucked away into a box in my closet to this day, safe and sound.

But the more important part here is the sadness I feel for my family. There is so much hate and secrets that have permeated every aspect of not only my immediate family but of those that I am related to. I so badly wish I could wave a magic wand and wake up from this nightmare I have lived through. I keep thinking that one day, I will wake up and realize this has been a bad dream. It would have been a very long bad dream though.

I still remember when my Dad would cuss and swear that we were always going to love each other as a family no matter what. Of course, the things he did to tear the family to shreds did anything but keep us together. He of course will most likely never admit to these things and neither will my older brother. If they ever do, I will probably die of a heart attack from shock!

Today, I have no idea how a family is supposed to be or how they work. I barely know those that I share the same name with or a common blood line with. We are related but yet we are strangers. Most of the time, I feel like we are a million light years apart. All because, our family was so messed up and the horrors we faced robbed us of normal elements in life.

I'm not only sad and full of grief today but I'm angry at what I've had to deal with in my own family. It would be nice to find a way that carries me past all of this but I know that without the biological connection, it leaves a gaping hole in one's life. Sure, you can do all kinds of things and connect with all kinds of friends, but there is still that gaping hole. That biological connection is a stronger bond than anything we know in this world.

While I realize I'm not the only one that has endured toxic family situations, I feel some days like I have been given more than I can possibly endure. All of this almost brought me to my own death with the paralysis several years ago and I've had to climb up the steepest side of the mountain to find my way back out of the hole.

Families can be so hateful and cruel to one another. It all comes from what we are shown and given from the moment we are born. If we are given love, than it is love we are filled with. If we are shown hate and evil, than we are born into a world of turmoil and pain. It isn't easy to come through or heal from either and some times it is tougher than anything I have ever faced in my life.

So today, I honor the lives of my Aunt Mary and Uncle Duane who were bright spots in my days as a kid growing up. I will never get to say goodbye to them but I will say goodbye in my heart and in my mind. Today, while I reconnect with the grief, the pain, and the tears of all I have endured in my life, I will hold the stuffed animal as a sign that there is still love in this world. I have very few of these treasures that remain so I cherish each one.

Is it too late to see a family heal and admit to what was done? I don't honestly know. Right now, I see no possible way of that ever happening. I just see a family who hates one another and hides the secrets and the skeletons of life in a closet.

Maybe all of this will become my own motivation to completely rid myself of the influences of evil that I was controlled and manipulated by. Maybe out of my own life, there will come great positives that will help others. I can hope with possibility that amazing things can happen.




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Shine The Light Of Truth

If you sweep the dirt under the rug, it doesn't mean you've swept the floor.

One of the things that I am passionate about in life is exposing the secrets that we learned growing up, and the secrets that we harbor as we get older. We all do it for one reason or another. Part of it is human nature and part of it is our coping mechanism in life. If you are reading this and don't think you push things under the rug, please begin watching this in yourself from the observer viewpoint instead of through your own eyes.

Of course, I know that many of us have been through many experiences in our lives. Sometimes we wish to remember them and often times we want to forget them. It gives us a temporary high, a temporary feel good type of feeling if we just forget them and try to put them outside of our view. However, if we attempt to do this, it does not get rid of that which we don't want to see. It only puts it out of our immediate view.

Why humans continue to do this, I don't completely understand. Of course, I did it for many years. Hoping that with time and thinking positive thoughts and just trying to avoid it all, things would just all be zippidy doo dah happy go lucky! I tried for years to just avoid it through various ways and means. And for many years, I successfully just blocked it out, but that doesn't mean it was gone! No sir! It was still there just like it was before. It wasn't until life almost came to a final farewell for me that I had to make a choice. The only choice I had in those last few moments was either to continue hiding from all the shit in my life or to open my eyes and begin to deal with it.

Granted, it is easier to just hide from it and shove it down under the rug far from view -- or so we THINK it is. In all reality though, the energy that it takes to do this robs us from so much in our lives that we cannot even see in the moment we make that choice. It robs us of fully being human and being all that we can be. If we allow it to hide from our view, it will eventually come to terms with us. We cannot escape it forever because it will catch up with us in one way or another. Mark my words!

I'm not making this up because I know first hand what it does to your physical body. Many walk around with these things each and every day of their lives, oblivious to the fact. There is freedom from it but it requires courage to face it, not fear to run away.

One of the things that I have been confronted with all my life is when I know something is true and I try to share it, write about it, or say it, there are people who feel I need to stay silent. Of course it is not stated that way. They are well intentioned people, but the effect of their words and actions is not positive. And yet, it continues to take place, time and time again. If I earned a dollar for every time, I was pushed to stay silent, I'd be a billionaire by now.

How do people request me to be silent? This happens by making sure that they tell me to think happy, positive thoughts and just move on with life. They want me to think about all the good in life, and none of that which I've been through. They want me to focus on pretty, happy things while ignoring what is currently going on. I even see people write about this on a daily basis claiming that you can just change your thoughts and outlook and poof, all of this will be magically better. I agree that positive thinking and changing your thoughts does go a long ways, but there are much deeper things at play than this.

Of course, I know that if I write, or talk about those things that have caused intense pain from my past, that it is going to make people reading it that connect with the words, feel uneasy. They would rather not be reunited with those thoughts, because there is still a strong source of pain from those experiences. There is so much fear locked up within these events that by shedding any lights whatsoever on them, the monsters appear in attack form. I can understand all of this, but continuing to hide from that which is able to help someone grow and release these things, seems to be like a terroristic activity on one’s self.

I've seen with my own eyes in my own physical body, just how much the body and the subconscious mind holds. It is through the fear that is locked within those events that we try to stay disconnected from them. I've witnessed this in others more times than I can even begin to remember. And yet, the energy that is driven by the fears of these events is forever robbing us of being as human as we can be, and it is robbing us of our complete and perfect health, physically in our body, our mind, and our spirit. There is so much more that so many of us do not realize is possible in this world and yet, when we let the fear consume us (even if we don't realize we're doing this) we are not being all that we are intended to be.

When I was lying in the hospital bed at 25 years of age wondering if I would ever walk again, talk again, sit up in a bed or be able to function as a normal human being, it changed my life completely. Neither myself nor the doctors understood how to treat this, and it was many weeks before I even knew the name they put on the condition, which was called a conversion disorder or hysterical paralysis. I wondered how I would ever overcome this, and all I knew was that in order to do it, I had to have the desire to do this. The path ahead for me was unclear, and I learned then that I could only take it one step at a time, literally. I had no clue how to talk better, walk more than two steps or even sit up in bed. I had no clue how to get my memory back past knowing my first name. I had no clue how to get beyond where I was at in life. It seemed as if I was trying to climb the highest wall in my life.

The thing I did know was that as I began talking about things, life began to change and I began to walk, taking my first steps once again. As I began to go deeper and uncover more, I gained more of my physical body back. Sure, there were tough times and times that I almost wanted to give up, but I knew that if I did not keep going, my life would most likely come to an end as it almost did. I had been given another chance at life and believe me, I was not going to throw this one away.

For much of my life, I have had to stand on my own against all odds and without anyone being my support and backing. There were times that I knew things, but no one could corroborate or help prove that which I knew. There were times that I learned things that no one I knew could even begin to understand. Fortunately, I met some people along my own path, that have helped give credibility to what I know and what I've learned. As hard as it may get, sometimes I know that I do have to stand alone and apart from most of the world. What I know to be true is not something I read in a book or what someone told me. It is what I have experienced first hand. It is what guides me further into my own healing and discovery. For that, I will never apologize if my passion runs high. I do not wish to run and hide from that which I am or all I am trying to become. All my experiences, even the rough ones are part of who I am. To deny those, I deny myself.

So when I write, it is often that I write out of discovery and from my own processing of events current and past. It is my way of learning that I share with the world, hoping that someone out there begins to connect and understand what it is that I'm trying to share. When I write from my heart and experiences, it isn't that I want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, because I usually try to write from what I have personally experienced. If someone finds what I write to be in disagreement with what they believe or feel, my only request is that you will question it within yourself until you either find a home for some part of it, or you dismiss it because it has no place. However, if what I write invokes a strong reaction in you, please don't dismiss that but look at it through the observer’s viewpoint and see what you may learn from what I am writing. I try to do the same and learn all I can from these interactions.

We are all more than we currently are and the fears of the old often hold us back. More times than not, we cannot even clearly see and identify the fears, but they are there. Let each one of us have the courage to go in and face the fears with the knowing that as we do this, we will be reclaiming so much more of ourselves and offering ourselves much more freedom and choice in the days ahead. That is my hope for everyone that reads anything I write or hears anything I say. There is nothing higher in life than the true discovery of ourselves, as we shine the light of truth into every nook and cranny of our lives.

Images used courtesy of NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org