“A healthy woman is much like a wolf, strong life force, life-giving, territorially aware, intuitive and loyal. Yet separation from her wildish nature causes a woman to become meager, anxious, and fearful. The wild nature carries the medicine for all things. She carries stories, dreams, words and songs. She carries everything a woman needs to be and know. She is the essence of the female Soul. With the wild nature as ally and teacher, we see not through two eyes only, but through the many eyes of intuition. With intuition we are like the starry night, we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes.” ~Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes
I just had an epiphany as I’m doing my morning pages and watching Dr. Ramani videos and procrastinating the exercise my body is so desperately craving. Dr. Ramani Video here
She said a line “an asshole is an asshole”, and it brought me back to a time and place where someone said to me “you’ve never had an asshole before have you” essentially that is what was said. It makes me shudder that at the time excitement trumped logic. That I remember every single moment of that day. And that after I shouted over and over that I never needed another one, and about justice.
I shouted that to the person harming me. Not only deaf ears but more power to use against me was the result of that. The epiphany is that to empower ourselves we stay in our truth. I had to confront my own incongruence rather than shouting and begging them to confront theirs.
Stay in your own lane baby girl, and on your own path.
I’ve spent years in hell, begging to be listened to, seen, understood and shown up for by every imaginable variety of incapable unavailable person you can think of. The addict, the manipulator, the Pollyanna, and a lifetime of that for the narcissist. The full blown empty eyed pathological husk, that both of my parents were. My beginning…. The song sum of our parts comes to mind by Mary Lambert. This is why I cry the minute she sings.
They gave up. In one way or another. They gave up on themselves so they for sure couldn’t have been anything to or for me.
And damnit if I will not give up. If that becomes my only super power as a mom. Never settling for unhealthy, especially my own, and never giving up trying to do better. THIS IS ME! And the right people have always seen that light, some have wanted to bask in it without doing the work themselves, they use the excuse the gaslight that they don’t move at the pace I do. Bullshit! Not doing something at all, and not doin it fast enough are two very different things.
Bullshit and I am angry. But not so much more at anyone else than the life that set me up to accept below sub zero of what I deserve. So this is me reclaiming my security and my ability to feel capable, loving, worthy, beyond every persons hurt words that have scathed me, when they always had the opportunity to keep showing up just like me.
There are those that judge those doing the work with bitter anger at their own lack of courage and there are those doing the work. Know the fucking difference Christina. Never, ever accept less.
You hide behind your manners, your ideas of right and wrong based on religion, and the opinions of people who have never walked a mile in either set of shoes.
I will never again share my resources, my heart, body, or mind with any variety of ostrich with their head in the sand who relies on shame and moral principles to comfort their days. And I refuse to betray myself with those judgments either. Fuck that!
I’m so mad at the criticisms I have allowed myself to endure at those jealous of my courage. I sound like a narcissist right ?! You either do exploit people continuously and purposely or you don’t. That is a black and white issue.
I will no longer shame myself for my creative attempts at survival that had a lot of blind spots and a lot of casualties including myself. I’m not responsible for anyone else.I intend to be responsible to and for myself. If you weren’t just as lost as me you wouldn’t have accepted a half person and called it whole either.
I have been a ball of great ideas and enthusiastic energy, but with no grounding, and no relationship with myself. A Tasmanian Devil, a whirlwind, but I keep living. I wasn’t living responsibly to myself. Do you know how much pain it has caused me to deeply invest my entire being in another hoping to make home with them, only to find myself empty.
Do you know what dying over and over feels like? Stumbling into pools of reactivity, wild eyed, seeing red, feeling threat everywhere and then shaming yourself on top for reacting to mistreatment, neglect, and abuse.
Do you know what it feels like to try and get back up after each fall through the crust of earth and down through hell. And how a drop of attention however misguided feels like a well in the desert, only to realize it was a mirage?!
Unless you know what that feels like don’t you dare judge me. Anyone too faint of heart to see my whole story when they look at me, beneath, and between the lines, will not ever bathe in the light that rises at dawn. The nights are dark, but the light always rises in the morning.
I used to be so anxious I would shake like a leaf at the smallest social interaction. My face would get red and hot, I would have panic attacks and I’ve been plagued my entire life by painful and stressful physical symptoms that I got shamed for. I didn’t know trauma lives in your body the way it does. And no one was brave enough or curious enough to want to put two and two together and see me.
I was seen generously because I was being generous. Bestowing into others all I ever wished I had received, but I wanted that back as well. The dance. A little give, a little take. Givers have to have limits because takers never have any. We all fall into traps that are the lull of security when our lives have been characterized by scarcity #metoo. But without your own work it will never have any permanence.
And that doesn’t mean it isn’t or wasn’t authentic. It just wasn’t sustainable without your entire participation! I’ve been this self sustaining island entity trying to use creativity and passion to create a life, but what I wasn’t using was the confident security (because how would I have had that) of self knowledge and true awareness.
Grounding without ground.
Awareness and hyper-vigilance are different. Did you know that? Because I’ll tell you I didn’t. Hyper-vigilance seeks constantly specifically for a threat. I called what I had self awareness and then expected unrealistic things from myself and others. What I had and was doing was scanning for disaster and quickly seeking shelter. Again I’ll ask. Can you imagine living that way for nearly 41 years ? Can you ?
Can you imagine not having a home? Even in the form of soothing family traditions that remained the same each year. And if you want to learn you have to try different things, if you want different results. I knew I had to do different, but I didn’t know how to organize that and then more shame as I come to terms with how difficult that has been for my children. And finding understanding for myself, while they aren’t at an age where I can have any from them.
No external validation or security. Truly doing from scratch.
Who am I? I’m a feral child who made her life on her own. Creating a human being so difficult to understand and love, because I never felt safe. My whole self became a self fulfilling prophecy of abandonment and rejection. Round and round and round….
Lost. Found. Invisible to myself. Dependent on the opinion of others whether I could be loving that day or not.
A beautiful complicated simple tragedy.
My story will be told and there will be no more assholes, and no more addicts unwilling to admit their problem to themselves, allowed in my sacred energy as I am nothing if not willing to look at myself and make changes. I have always been solidly that. That I can trust in. I will always do the work.
You can spend your life trying to control how people perceive you, but the consequence is that your life will never be your own. That is a tragedy I’m not willing to risk.