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And of course, this all opens up a new remember for me...
I am remembering a time just after my ex left, when I was feeling particularly overwhelmed by all i needed to do, and wanted help from my sons (then 17, 15, 12-3, and 7) and I was, in my less balanced state, asking for their help while making them feel terrible for the way that they did not, and do not help...and as I am a skilled debator, I had all my evidence of their lack lined up and ready to deliver....

And when I'd finished, I asked if I was wrong in my perception...if there was something they were doing and I wasn't giving them credit....The response was... Silence...
Which set me off, because it was how my ex had always avoided talking about anything .... Silence...
"I don't know what to say, Pen"...
"You may have a point, Pen"...
He never engaged. Nothing ever changed, except that I would have let go of some of the energy that was spiralling around inside me, and could then find balance in my unbalanced world again.
I labelled it later, passive aggressive, and I may or may not be right about that...it makes no difference...

My response to the silence was to ask if they truly had nothing to say...if they didn't even care enough to answer me...for now I see that I saw that lack of engaging as a sign I wasn't worth the effort to engage with....

My eldest showed his bravery that day...
He said...
"Mom, when you are like this, it is really hard to answer you, because anything we say will have no weight against what you've lined up to counter it. I have things to say, but I am too overwhelmed to be able to say them at this time."

I cried.

I cried, because he cared enough to be brave enough to face me down in my full "warrior" (for lack of a better word) mode.
I cried because he loved me, enough to engage me, when engaging me was a scary thing to do.

He won that day, just by saying..."I see you, even if I can't respond to you, I see you."

I think that I've known a lot of Warrior wannabes in my lifetime, and that I've never actually met one who was willing to love me enough to face me down. Maybe that doesn't make any sense. English leaves a lot to be desired. My Dad can't hold an argument, because he gets unreasonably attached to a point of view that can't be defended. My ex, didn't engage...made him uncomfortable....My poor sons, are always going to be my sons, so my position as 'Mom' makes it difficult to take me on, as an equal.

My youngest did too...a few years back, over marijuana. I'm against it....vehemently...
My sons all engage. I caught my youngest smoking up at age 12 (a joint he'd stolen from my next oldest son). He was devastated and promised me he would never do it again, EVER. I remember looking him in the eye, and telling him, not to make promises that would be hard to keep...that I'd accept a promise that he wouldn't for a year, and that we would discuss it before that changed, but to promise never, left him breaking a promise to himself, as well as to me, and that that would be more damaging than smoking up, in my eyes.
The next year, we discussed it, and he again promised me a year. (he was still growing- and he wanted to be tall, so my best sales point on abstention was it interfering with the maximum height that his body might attain, given he was poisoning it at the level of breath)...
At age 14 and 6' tall, just before his 15th birthday, he informed me that he would smoke up, if he wanted to, and the opportunity presented itself.
My arguments hadn't changed, he acknowledged their validity...and he was going to do it anyway.
I was so proud of him. Not for the decision...I still think it sucked...but for the ability to look me in the eye and disagree with a position I'm very firm on.


I admire the Masculine in any gender that can do that...My best friends do it. (Doesn't come up much, but when it does, the three of us disagree, and agree to do so, and it doesn't effect the relationship, the respect, the love at all).
I've been looking for that in the Masculine all my life...
I think maybe, I'm just finding it now within myself.

MonSnoLeeDra2, I don't know if you come here, but I see that same thing in you....and I'm so grateful for having been given the opportunity to engage with you. To learn more about who you are. To see a Warrior on a Warrior's Path and recognize it, in its balanced form.

Munay