Sandy,

You are too funny. Tunafishy? I think you coined a new word.

First of all I said "to put them to rest"---the tradegies and hardships in our life---not forget them or the lessons they taught us. But what good would it do me as a woman in her sixies, for example, to keep dwelling on childhood sexual and physical abuse that happened to me? Or to dwell on prejudice that I experienced all through grade and high school? I chose not to let those things have power over me. I chose not to let those things color my life in negative ways. I don't label that choice 'white washing my past' or 'denial.' I know those things are in my past, I've worked through them decades ago. I'm not going to let one spoiled apple in my memory basket spoil the whole bunch.

I do, however, know people who can't let go of past pain---maybe this is not you---and they do use the wrongs done to them like a shield to keep people away, like armor to keep others at arm's link so they don't have to gamble on trusting and getting hurt again. To me, that is mentally not healthy. Of course, we have to talk degrees of pain here, too. Certainly the person exposed to daily sexual or physical abuse or less subtle forms of prejudice have a harder time of moving past them than someone who has had isolated incidents.

This is an interesting topic; we are all so different. But I still stand by my orginal opinion that it isn't right to put someone down because all the memories they chose to write about in a "I am from" writing exercise are good ones. Those exercises aren't about soul search from a psychiatric point of view. They're not about anything else but the writer's view of their own personal life. They're just typical, common 'learn to write' exercises for people who like painting word pictures. Somewhere in the directions that Slowe blogged it even talks about the poetry that the exercise format tends to bring out.

Jean

Sandy, this is one of the times I agree with you. (BTW, please send one of those tunafishy sandwiches here when you are feeding the NYC Public School kids)

Isn't remembering part of acceptence, Jean? What is so terrible to remember, but not dwell? Yes, dwelling could be bad, but ignoring is worse. JMHO, perhaps not as well put as I'd like.

Phyllis,

Okay, if a person is brually raped and she choses to remember the details of how everyone helped her afterwards instead of replaying the actual rape over and over in her mind then she is doing what I said....knowing what to remember and what to forget. It's not ignoring that the situation ever happened. It's not saying that she didn't go through a process to get to the point where she could put the ugly details out of the forefront of her thoughts. Denial has nothing to do with it (me saying knowing what to forget and what to remember is a good thing) but it does have everything to do with survival of the soul.

I've been doing those sort of "I am from" writing exercises for decades and have been in critique writing groups and I have never once ran into anyone who didn't respect another person's right to view the world from their own unique vantage point, at the particular time in their life. I still don't think it's fair of Sandy to trivialize other people's results because they write about happy memories. (The exercise didn't set a criteria of emotions that had to be covered like some of them do.)

Maybe when others on this site wrote their "I am from" exercise they were just taking a mini-vacation from their daily struggles when they wrote what they wrote. Maybe they aren't willing to share the deepest resesses of their soul with all of cyber space. Those sorts of exercises are suppose to get your creative juices going. Period. They aren't meant to be a bilography you hand to Saint Peter at the Pearly Gate. A person shouldn't have to defend their right to have good memories!---especially on a site where sharing good memories could be a much needed diversion from daily stress.

Jean

Jean:

I don't know about sandy but I agree with what you said completely, what's the point in dwelling over past, my hubby says forgiveness is key to happiness, and I believe whole heartedly, as I think everyone has different outlook on life, for example sandy thinks growing up in projects is some sort of downgrade thing versus I grew up similar kind of apartment buildings in India think as luxury thing compared to so many people living in slums, or guttor pipes. I guess every incident in our life has 2 sides to it, which side you want to look depends on your personality. I really like to remember my past with fondness since there was nothing horrible happened except money problems in my childhood

Asha

sandy thinks growing up in projects is some sort of downgrade thing

(i love this quote thingy!)

asha

where in any of my blogs HAVE I EVER SAID THAT?????

that must be a projection of either 1) your feelings about growing up in a project; 2) your feelings about me; 3) all of the above.

take a seat on my couch, we can explore this further.

as for me, i LOVED growing up in the projects. where else would an only child with little family have so many playmates? i can tell you funny stories about growing up in the projects until next Monday, or until you'll die of boredom. my projects even has its own website (ENY projects), its own reunions, its own memory and flame-keeper, etc.

as the guests on Jerry Springer say, asha, you don't know me.

sandy :giggle: :giggle: :giggle:

Sandy:

you are right you haven't said, I presumed it based on my own little knoweledge of projects in NYC, the thing protraied in TV, and movies, yes I should not make any judgement call on anybody. I m sorry, please forgive me.

Asha( the person who first thought whole america is like jerry springer type, after staying and working in professional field realised that's not the case)

once again sorry u big sister Sandy.