Hi Hopsy,
Hope you are still around enough to do some reading of your thread. I have been off the board for a long time now, but I usually sat down with my cup of coffee and read a few posts in the morning before I headed out for my day. I think that what you are searching for is balance and that is a good thing--and it will come with the break you are planning.
I left the board about three conflicts ago!
Yes, they do happen over and over again. This will definitely not be the last one! The point at which I left, I had too much going on in my 3D world to manage the relationships here.
Frankly, we are a very complicated bunch and there is no way to keep each other on the periphery of our lives when we are here to share our hearts. So when things get intense around here, we may or may not have the emotional reserves to handle it.
Healthy is when we pull back and take care of ourselves instead of reacting against the other hurting puppies here. There's been a lot of reacting in the last week from emotionally drained individuals.
I find that in every single area of my life, it is when I hit the wall that I am about to do some major quantum leap in growth. I never, ever, ever, ever grow before the hit-the-wall-point. Well, maybe I am growing all along--or setting the stage for growth--but the major push happens when I crash and burn. I think that there are some members here that are crashing and burning and that it is not a negative thing at all. They are crashing and burning on their way to a lot of insight. That's a good thing. Painful to watch though.
The title of this thread is Healthy Community. I like to think about that. I have spent my life thinking about Community and what it looks like and what it means. I think that at the end of my life, I MIGHT have figured it out. Sheesh. One thing that I read that has always stuck with me was by Scott Peck. He claimed that there is no such thing as community until you have had your first conflict. No one is being real if they are trying to avoid conflict--and it is the handling of conflict that forges the community.
How about that????
Conflict is, by its very nature, confusing and unpleasant. No one looks forward to it, no one looks back on it fondly. But without weathering it--without wading into it with hip-high boots and dealing with it--there is no community. So, there you have it--for the last week, we have been forging community. Healthy? Hmmm. Well, none of us is terribly healthy--so no surprise that we have some unhealthy aspects to our community.
Just because everyone in the community is not behaving well, doesnt mean that the community itself is unhealthy. There is no question that some of us (maybe all of us!!!!) is forging out their recovery by using others of us as surrogate FOO. If you go back and reread several weeks of posts, you will see how obvious that is. I don't think that any of us can work through our FOO issues without engaging in do-overs--recreate the problem relationships, even if it is only in our own minds, and then put ourself in the hero-role instead of the victim-role. Every one of us has been a colossal pain in the butt when we have done this.
This week's conflict has been a major pain-in-the-butt. Maybe just admitting that is the most we need to do.
Ami said something on another thread that I think was a sobering thought for all of us. She was thanking the people who agreed with and supported her and commented that if it had not been for them, she would have believed the lies that her mother told her about who she was. How many of the rest of us have that same thought pattern? How much of the choosing of sides and rallying on one side of the other, is born out of the desperation to have that voice in our head silenced?
Chances are we ARE, to some extent, who our N's said we were. Our N's were able to wrestle us to the ground and make us cry uncle--not because they were speaking lies about us--but because they were speaking half-truths. Or quarter-truths. Or eighth's-truths. And we chose to believe that small part about us, was all we were. We are so much more than that.
What's wrong with admitting that we are selfish, self-absorbed? That we gossip sometimes? That we arent completely loyal friends? Why do we feel as though we have to prove that we are perfect in order to be accepted? I have been, I have done all those things. But it isnt the sum-total of who I am. I am bigger than those things. I am constantly turning a corner in a labyrinth and coming across something unexpected. I am dirty and I have skinned knees. I have a bloody nose. Sometimes I hurt people coming around the corner, sometimes I help them up. Sometimes I dont realize who I ran over until I look back. Jeez, I'm a mess.
So are you...and you... and you. Healthy isnt being all cleaned up. Healthy is recognizing that in each of us.
CB
