So this morning I’m watching my teenage son pick himself up from some of his personal struggles and a new grief and I am in awe. I made that, but nothing could prepare me for the privilege it is to watch him grow. And if the events of this past couple of years didn’t happen, I might have missed it. That would have been tragic.
He’s so beautiful. Learning to be himself, and so are you Christina. My friends would say that, because they often see me better than I see myself.
I am coming back to life. I am breathing life into this home that felt like a tomb housing all my dead dreams. But nothing died, life just adjusted me back on my path.
A dear one sent me a Jay Shetty podcast where he was interviewing Martha Beck and this quote is what began it, “The variety of an ordinary life is infinite and precious.” Yes yes yes! She talks about what integrity means in the sense that she knows it. Which is when we are aligned with our true nature and purpose and whole versus when we are divided by being what society wants us to be. And the sheer difficulty of this because biologically we are wired for belonging.
For me, never having felt a secure beginning of belonging the only thing my frightened mind could do was focus on that pursuit and then society came along and caused people to judge me, knowing nothing of my origins or my pain.
Recently even a family therapist has contributed to some of this shaming, without realizing it. It has shown me how easy it is to shame/judge another, when what they need to grow is understanding, acceptance, and support.
It is so easy to say what a mom should or shouldn’t be while never even knowing her story. You cannot give what you do not have. And I’ve spent my life making sure I got it so my kids could have me available to them. Ironically that path and financial scarcity created the opposite. I’ve been in a hurry to become someone they needed. I did it without being given it naturally. I’ve been doing the impossible for a very long time. Defying gravity.
This has been challenging my approach as a counselor as well and there’s a shift happening in me. Moving towards the natural ability to nurture and support. One I always felt I was and would forever be without.
It is grief itself that has softened and humbled me into a calmer more loving person. I think of that anxious terrified girl who looked so strong and intimidating clothed in her defense mechanisms. A scared child, and easily irritated adult. I just want to hug her, she is me.
Witnessing how much suffering a human heart and body can endure is truly humbling. And our culture says just keep going. And yes we need to keep going, but at what cost if we leave ourselves behind by not acknowledging our own lived experiences fully.
Acknowledging, knowing, is the sweet spot between blame, shame, and or blindness and numbing. Acknowledging allows us to see what we are working with at full value and adjust accordingly. But for intolerable circumstances we make up stories about what’s happening subconsciously in an effort to feel better, but what that does is make us even more locked inside ourselves.
As I get to know myself I realize how invisible I’ve been to me. I’m often surprised when people say something that reflects they see me, and I see it so differently.
Learning to be Christina….
My relationships with my children are evolving, repairing, it’s slow, but it’s happening all around me. The realization of how much beauty I will get to experience as I get to watch them become. I could not have asked for a better life. I say that as if I did not create every second of it. See invisible.
Lately I’m filled with love…. There isn’t a part of this last time that I regret any more because understanding wipes that away. It’s exhausting to fight your own path, your own self. Especially now that I know my own heart, and have a new understanding of how my early life impacted me. It is not and will never be an excuse. It is reality. I was so so hard on myself.
Something I’ve unwittingly ingrained in my children, and now hopefully as they watch me change that, they can heal also.
I think of that feral self I was, and have so much compassion for her pain.
Martha Beck describes so eloquently the pain one can experience when divided and I was divided from self and any family system and I’ve been rushing to get to a place where I can enjoy my children and be connected to them and me, but that journey never looked like that to the naked eye, because you would need a deep understanding of brain, behavior, biology, and my story.
I am working on that last part now, the claiming and the telling….
Anyway it’s time to shower and counsel humans (my greatest privilege), and then have my own counseling. Just a typical Tuesday. I had so many thoughts as I always do, but lately it’s the quiet of my mind that I marvel…..
💜