I woke up grumpy this morning. It’s a long day ahead, many bills to pay, many admin issues that need addressing. Ones that are intimidating. I’m tired. My b12 has been low, and I’m getting weekly injections. All of my therapies while deeply helpful, leave me gutted of energy by the end, and that leaves me fallen behind in other areas.
I’m mortal after all, not a God.
My tone inspired by the finishing of The Song of Achilles this morning.
Then as I’m in the bath attempting to rejuvenate my spirits and soak my sore body, I hear twin B singing of all things. I’m just a small town girl….. living in a lonely world…
It immediately lifts my spirits. I smiled from ear to ear. Then even more she texts requesting some time with me. I know it is backwards to need love from your children, (or is it just human all too human) but they are my only flesh and blood connections, and the only ones that have been my motivation to fight so hard against the dark experiences that marked my beginning.
I was waiting to enjoy them…. Wish I knew I didn’t have to wait. But I did. I had to connect with me first and that was nearly impossible.
We have had a turning point in family therapy. And even if it’s just a glimmer of hope (I think it’s more, that this is real), I am overjoyed with it.
Finally all being clamped down in our own story, corners, and pain…. It is relenting…. The icy grip releasing.
Could this thaw too?
It must Christina. You did. So how could it not? Remember what it took to get here.
The pool is getting fixed in the next couple of weeks. If nothing else to preserve the value of this home as improvements continue. A trip to a hot tub store in Milford last week ended in us getting the motivation to clean the thing out. I’ll have to post some before and after shots as I learn how to make the pictures blog sized and not make the whole post not work.
I can’t believe we cleaned that thing out. It has sat for four years and I thought there was no hope. That sounds familiar. Then you give a little time and attention and look what happens.
Look what a little presence does…..
Magic
Not a story, with intensity and a movie like script that must be followed or it can’t develop but everyday magic. These little moments….
I’m watching my kids become me in certain ways, and also them of course, but seeing my strength in them is exciting, and of course that I have not done every single thing wrong. The tale my mind so often weaved. Painful. Excruciating really.
Sometimes it really is all in your head. And that doesn’t make the difficulty any less or it any less real.
I spent my whole life running from my pain. Willing it away by just good ol’ elbow grease. I’d create a family. It’s just that easy. I was naive and foolish and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I had ideas, ran with them, then those ideas crashed and burned painfully. Being redirected was not my strong suit. I would stand defiantly arms crossed and be stubborn against my own behalf and not even know it.
It’s interesting to think now that all my rushing for self work was exactly what I needed to be doing because I could have missed out on connections with my kids. I think I just barely made the boat. On real live ones, not trying to figure it out cognitively, but feeling them in real time.
I have come back from the dead. I was dead inside. All the feeling parts. Maybe not fully dead, almost dead, almost lost, only a small part of human left in there. I had to fight myself, my mind, all while simultaneously figuring out how to support myself, to have healthy relationships, to choose a family for myself of people who show up for each other well.
I had to do the opposite of what I was… to slow down. To show the pain, so it could be seen, so I could be helped. Masking was suffocating me.
Last family therapy session I feel like I breathed for the first time ever. My first breath of oxygen as a flesh and blood human, not a robot who just works constantly and can’t feel.
It’s the most beautiful thing, but I’m also the most exhausted I’ve ever been and the most emotionally raw. And this of course coincides with a busy client schedule with some major shit (shifts) going on in the world, that people are feeling.
And some are not making it. Children taking their own lives, and how to hold space, but also not get trapped in the enormity of that reality.
To just smile at dinner or focus when earlier you sat in this pain with someone and your mind is beckoned to go there, and to the possibility of that happening to you.
I thought I knew what heart break was until I recognized how the very thing that saved me was keeping me emotionally distant from my children. That is heartbreak.
I just expected myself to exist without my story attached, without even speaking of it. I didn’t want it Or me, or my mother to hurt them, but It was always going to pass down to a degree. I held it back with everything that I have. Carried it really. Until I recognized the heaviness was crushing me, and that wasn’t serving anyone.
Now that I’ve set it down I don’t know that I’ll know what to do, how to be. I’ve been existing this way a long time. In reality I’ve been setting it down piece by piece and I’m getting to the part where I’m starting to feel naked without it. To shiver and shake with the new.
When it comes to new and trauma survivors, good or bad doesn’t matter, new has a high threat quotient.
Settle…. Stay…..ground
You’ve worked so hard to be here
Home in a heart that is warm despite the amount of cold it has felt….