in for a penny

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "no win, no how":

Either you are an incredibly self-centered individual lacking all compassion for others or you are just totally ignorant of the disease process of dementia.Do you,and your fanclub,realize that you "can't get through" to a person suffering from this brain condition? Do you have a clue,or even care,that she is afraid,betrayed by her mind? Do you blame her for her anger? You sound so trite and cold,and you use her very real suffering for your own glorification,taking a private tragedy and asking the public at large to judge you the longsuffering heroine and your grandmother the ungrateful object of all of your devotion.You can't even allow her the dignity to not hold her up for display,like some blogger's sideshow.I,too,practice the craft and let me tell you,sister,you couldn't pay me to take the karmic debt you're gonna pay for this.

imagine my surprise when i found this waiting for me after a fairly pleasant afternoon's visit with my grandmother.

i doubt Anonymous thought i'd publish the comment... i doubt Anonymous thought i'd make it the subject of an entire blog. but i don't mind negative feedback - in fact, i rather welcome it. i think it's the celt in me that likes a good brawl, or maybe it's all that bad "karma" im racking up.

and so, dear Anonymous, since you so graciously took the time to offer your opinion of me, let me respond openly to you... i don't step away from negativity - rather, i embrace it.

first of all, no one has diagnosed my grandmother with dementia. the episodes of dementia that she has exhibited at all seem to be linked to urinary tract infections. it is absolutely possible to "get through" to my grandmother because she is quite cognizant of her behavior. and her behavior is not unfamiliar to me. she's been behaving this way for the last seventy years - according to my mother, who is now 73. so unless you want to assume my grandmother's been demented her entire life... no, Anonymous, considering i've known her for nearly fifty years, and you haven't - i think i can safely call her mean without incurring the wrath of Karma.

and there, "sister", we come to the second part of my response. you must have a kindergarten understanding of what karma is and how it works if you think that my sad little rantings on this silly little blog amount to a speck of flyshit on a camel's ass in terms of karma. there's nothing wrong with the expression of human emotion. this little piece of the web is mine and i get to say anything i want any way i want. if you don't like what you read for some reason, don't come back. but don't think that you are going to cow me into silence for speaking out about a very subtle kind of abuse that infests MANY mother-daughter dyads in MANY MANY families. i was never one to suffer in silence, either. i learned the hard way what THAT gets you.

you see, grasshopper, in terms of karma - it's what we DO that counts. it is in ACTION that karma is invoked,earned, expiated and expunged. words are clumsy things - the invention of the left brain to capture the unspeakable that the right brain knows. if you don't want to read my complaints about my slog up the hill with my particular albatross, as i said, please... don't come back. but i'm entitled to my complaints. if you think they're cold and trite, i think you're rash, shallow and judgemental. i don't know what kind of "craft" you think you practice, but it clearly isn't anything close to the one i do.

because what i see you are, more clearly than anything else, is a coward. only a coward leaves an obnoxious judgemental comment like that behind the veil of anonymity. speak your truth all you want, but claim it as YOUR truth. otherwise, don't bother to say it at all. because that's how abuse gets spread from generation to generation. it hides in the shadows and it wears different names, and any time you call it for what it really is... it pokes back and makes it YOUR fault.

so feel free to say, think, or judge what you want, Anonymous, but at least be witch enough to own it.