Tag: #carryonwarrior

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Food is love, and real love sets us free…..

Food is love. Wednesday night and last night my neighbor and her son fed me such nice dinners and we watched movies together. I felt loved and part of a family. I realized that I can have that without being in a relationship with someone. Go figure.

I had a dream last night I was pregnant and it was lucid I felt all the nuances of pregnancy. This isn’t the first dream like this. In this one my water broke and the cramping begun. I swore I’d wake up and have wet the bed it felt so real, thankfully I did not. I never got to hold or see the baby. When life brings you to your knees …..

I’ve always gone hard at everything I do. There was never an in between. But what I wasn’t able to do was see the good in me, this. Last night I saw it in the portrayal of a character in a movie. We watched Freedom Writers. My neighbor’s son’s recommendation. How have I not seen this movie. It’s akin to Dangerous Minds. I have long lurked and noticed it but never committed.

I teared up often during the movie and the fact I was cuddled by dogs and fed such a nice meal. I saw the scarcity, and I saw the abundance of that moment. As I watched them have a banter you only do from a lifetime of affection. Their affection for one another, each knowing the others quirks and flaws and being able to acknowledge and make light of them.

There was no threat. They relayed a story of being at the other son’s for the holiday and a tense moment at the table and immediately I thought that could have been my table. I have been so tense with fear and anxiety and loss and all the things I never had. So full of fear.

This belonging even for an evening made me feel so warm and loved. An older version of me would have been too preoccupied with only achieving one main goal I desire and then emptied and having to start again. The way I am able to appreciate now is priceless.

Her son made a comment about he was glad he could show me something new. And it struck me as interesting how he sees me from saying that. I suppose as someone who is worldly and has lots of knowledge. I only ever peek out from the frightened child’s gaze. Split. I became split from my authentic self when I needed to perform and protect any tender being inside. I kept her on ice, and now as I forgive myself my transgressions and sit with my dark side, I am thawing. This thawing is the product of years of grief and acknowledgment. If you had any idea.

Last night I was thinking of who I am, at my core, the things I’ve always been. I remember reading the star fish story as a child, and how I wanted to read it to everyone and be brave enough to suggest we use it in a work meeting later in life. I was always bullied, called corny, torn down one way or another and I just instantly internalized more shame. I would always rather take it on than anyone else be hurting.

I had a therapist last October or so tell me I am a warrior. I am no man left behind at any cost. That is me. And with the right tools and a person equally as committed to seeing the unseen and understanding it will be a lasting partnership.

I often minimize my accomplishments and self so much that when I’m backed into a corner I try to spew my worth and I’m acutely aware of how I look in that moment without anyones understanding of my scarcity. I needed my own understanding, not just a harsh iron will and drive, moving at warp speed. To be fair I do have a mission, but I never had me on board so I had to keep going back and getting her.

The star fish story is about a man walking on a beach when the tide is going out, he comes across another man picking up all the stranded star fish and tossing them back into the water. The man says what are you doing, this is happening all over on beaches everywhere, you cannot possibly make a difference.

The man picks up a star fish tosses it back into the water, and says to him “made a difference to that one.”

I think of how never enough I’ve been to myself. How I rarely actually acknowledge what I do and that I’m impacting generations through deep individual healing. A ripple in the water. And that I’m dedicated and what I have sacrificed to stay committed to my own work. All while being my harshest critic and immediately taking those hurt by me opinion straight to my heart and halting my own joy and progress in life.

I thought I needed to do more. What I’ve really needed to do is see what I’m doing and who I am now. I thought of the domestic violence survivors I see in my office that begin with shattered minds and selves, so anxious their eyes dart all over during session and they stare off into the distance because they are too ashamed to be seen. I’ve thought of their transformation as they realize what’s happened to them, and that it isn’t their fault, and that there are explanations and tools to heal and help them in their grief.

I’ve watched people afraid of their own shadow, riddled by anxiety, transform right before my very eyes. I’ve watched them stop relying on their own abusive tactics with themselves and their children and start to claim their own right to exist. I’ve watched the rewire and the rise. I’ve watched the sparkle return to their gaze and them hold themselves confidently. I’ve watched them get careers they feel fulfilled in and treat their bodies and minds with a respect they had never known.

I have warriors in my office and it’s the greatest honor. I don’t need to write a book or post videos or be discovered or seen for what I can do. I know the difference it has made in a life. To be seen and understand for what has happened to them and how it impacts their life now.

I was thinking of my authentic self. My capacity to learn and apply what I have and what a gift that is, to be able to lift myself out of my story and my suffering. To have that ability, not everyone can. I was remembering one of the only handful of memories of my mom speaking about who I am. She always said even as a toddler once I was told no, I never did the thing again.

I sit here and think how interesting that is for the person I am today how stubborn and persistent and I realize that was born out of trauma, not being heard or seen. Before that I was extremely responsive and had such a desire to please my loved ones. And as an adult when I returned to that it ended up being used against me in so many ways.

So then I had to return to the adolescent who shouted to be seen and got into fights…. I became at war with myself. When I watched Freedom fighters I realize that war wasn’t started by me and I cry for that little girl. The battles were unyielding and all the time I spent trying to make sense of what happened to me, without any support, in fact the opposite.

The world telling me I was too serious, just relax. Are you kidding me? That was not the answer.

Later after the movie we all talked about passion, and her son said something about it being my real life story, and I didn’t even share anything really. How did he see me? You mean people can see me? I’m always shocked to this day when someone thinks anything good about me. That’s how painful and deeply ingrained abuse is. It doesn’t matter how many people tell you you’re marvelous, if you’re split from yourself it’s the loneliest existence imaginable.

You run around begging and scrambling for a crumb. These days I’m fed whole meals. I got brought flowers on thanksgiving when I spent the day alone, from my found father. These days I cry over a shared meal and an ounce of warmth, being invited in from the cold.

I could never get warm before, nothing worked, and then I got accused of never enough. It wasn’t enough of the right stuff. I didn’t have enough information about my trauma and my needs and wants. I lived to please and love, just to catch a glow, but I couldn’t rest for even two seconds, or it would go away.

Losing it all and myself along with it, has allowed me to rebuild to my specifications, and while it’s a challenge to even identify what those are, my recovery is delicious even when it’s hard.

I can’t wait to watch this movie with my kids and anyone who will watch it with me. Through their stories being seen they transformed. For me that is something to believe in, and now rather than automatically believe in anyone else above me, I am learning to believe in myself.

I was never asking for too much, ever. For food, and love, and belonging. I wasn’t exploitive, I was adaptive. I shamed myself for the things I did to protect my children until I could figure out how to not repeat.

Always

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I didn’t belong to myself….I could never belong with you.

And all she wanted was for someone to deeply understand why she loves comfort sad movies on repeat and music. Not merely to comment, certainly not to criticize, but to truly grasp and understand how that is soothing to her heart. Before you can learn to self soothe you must be soothed from the outside. I stayed trapped there. D

Desperate with that need. I tried to distract from that pain, with everything. People, food, drink, everything, everything and nothing was sustainable until I could sustain this pain in ways that are healthy. I’m not there yet, but I’m on that path. That gives me hope.

When I met my formerly referred to wife I was watching the movie Me Before You and Under the Tuscan Sun quite often. I still like Me Before You so much. It holds me through the storm. I would get so excited about love, but the truth is I didn’t know very much at all about healthy love, and knowledge from the outside wasn’t enough.

It’s the pain that has broken me into being a better human being. And staying the course of not fixing it with anything outside of me. Is that even within a human capacity? So I’d say I’m being hard on myself and try again and again meeting love from the outside, not having it inside. It feels impossible. I’m possible.

Then there are these people that show up and love me so unconditionally for free, not because I do anything. And that is teaching me about real love. The power of sight. It feels like I lost the best part of me is the song lyric on now. I never even got to see the best part of me through anything other than other peoples eyes. The pain is crippling.

Pathologically lonely.

The glue that held me together has been the moments I felt a sense of belonging. I’ve done this in a variety of ways, primarily loving others, and not myself. In that way I didn’t know anything about true love, and how would I. Trying to figure out how to be true love by feeling truly loving, but it could never sustain….I could not sustain it without equal reciprocity and investment, from self and other. Neither was in alignment.

I am hopeful for my future and for my present.

As an adult I stayed trapped as a child. The good aspects of this was childlike enthusiasm and dreaming, the bad is that I’m prone to childlike behaviors. Yin and Yang, light and dark. I am now beginning to hold space for both.

Recovery feels mostly dark, but there’s so much light to be found in the process.

My therapist said to me the other day about a talk she had heard. The gist is that if you were born blind and learned to rely on many devices to do things that might be normal for someone else, and suddenly were restored to sight, would you not use your new sight from then on. Versus relying on what you were used to. I received the message.

I could only love others and want to be loved by them, what I couldn’t do was love myself. And now I’m beginning to…. It’s the beginning, not the end. For that this Thanksgiving day I’m forever grateful.

It’s a tragedy when your motivation for learning what love, is primarily kicked into high gear from not being loved. when your unspoken vows and contract include meeting the needs that were not met so long ago.

Being the one who speaks the unspoken is an unspeakable burden. Thrust into loneliness again. Over and over, stuck in the spin cycle. Dizzy and anxious in an unforgiving prison.

Feeling like the mind is a prison feels an insurmountable chore. You never know when it’s complete and even if you’re moving in the right direction because your mind is constantly berating you with old messages. It’s telling you you’re blind, when you can see perfectly fine. The ultimate gaslight.

“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” As excerpted from a recent gift, The Emotionally Abusive Relationship by Beverly Engel. No one ever tells you the ultimate of this is your relationship with yourself. People aren’t even taught to think about this, the most important of all relationships, and by the time this information reaches you most likely your nervous system will be shot to shreds.

Your concentration and spirit so broken it seems irretrievable. I am here to tell you this is another painful lie. Anything that’s lost can be found. But something that’s never been wired in, can that be created. Research suggests mostly no.

Years ago another gift told me I defy gravity and it was true enough and a trusted enough source that I learned to believe it’s possible.

Healing is always possible. It’s hard, but not impossible. This is my personal mission in this lifetime. Heal other, heal thyself.

Not for the faint of heart and I am grateful that of all things I am not that. My skin is worn thin, but I won’t let that stop me. Don’t let your limits hold you back. Push through them because what’s on the other side is quite beautiful. At this point it’s mostly an occasional glimpse, one that I’m never sure is an exhaustion induced apparition.

That’s where faith comes in. This is the one area I’m learning it’s necessary to believe exists from without, and that everything within still always holds a Devine compass that will guide you if you choose not to stay blind.

I’ll stay the course, but I won’t do it blind.

Trust me I need all the help I can get. Most days I can barely breathe. But there is always hope.

Today I am grateful for hope…. And for the privilege of the pain so many share with me that I am able to learn from and the lessons applied are truly transformative.

I am grateful for transformation even when it is one tiny thread at a time. This is going to be one hell of a tapestry. Stay tuned. Stay grounded and grateful, stay loving and courageous.

Stay

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George Michael said You Gotta Have Faith…

My faith wires were crossed with control and terror. Rewiring is not for the faint of heart

It comes together and it falls apart. Life. The self however I don’t think should come together and fall apart so often, that’s supposed to be stable I would imagine.

I’m reading the book Everyday and it’s so staggeringly relatable I’m not sure what to do with it. It’s about a person who wakes up in a different body everyday. The person finds a feeling for a person and begins to break all of their own rules for this feeling. The person (who is genderless, their name is “A”) calls it the enormity, which I interpret to mean something beyond themselves.

A finds understanding of others through their experiencing of someone and describes concepts like depression and also many family dynamics. One day they wake up in the body of Rhiannon the person they love. To me that’s exquisite to imagine. It is unfathomable. And as a person who has always wanted the most full experience possible to get as close as possible that would be a dream.

In fact I think that’s the question I always asked as a child, what is it like to be that person. What’s it like to have a penis as I don’t know that. What’s it like to be adored by parents. What’s it like to be a star athlete. What’s it like to be stunning. What’s it like to be controlled by a wanting that supersedes all else whether that be a chemical substance or a human. What’s it like to be popular.

I don’t have to wonder about things like what’s it like to feel awkward and not belonging. What’s it like to be terrified. What’s it like to feel not only unwanted but also “bad”. What’s it like to be a product of and then bathed in fear.

In the book A ends up in a body that he doesn’t get home in time and so the boy wakes up on the side of the highway in the morning having no idea he got there. A tries to cause the least amount of disruption in the lives of others and has a code of sorts for himself to achieve this. He abandoned this to see his love, and as a result the boy ends up harmed.

Normally A clears his browser history of an email he uses to try and keep some memories of the self inside the bodies. He forgets in haste this time and Nathan writes him that he knows who he is and believes he’s been possessed by the devil. He spreads this all over and believes it so entirely that it consumes him and separates him from others.

To cling to a belief system for the security of whatever is secure about that robs him of so many moments and connecting with others. He’s angry and damaged by something since he can’t make sense of it, he comes up with something.

It’s an interesting part of the plot.

It’s no wonder I always wanted to like books, was attracted to them, even if I could be still enough to hardly ever read one. I’m working on that now and they are portals into human experiences that don’t cause harm. A safe resting place for a weary yet still curious heart. Calm and safe yes still being adventurous.

Why would I want someone else’s adventure. I always wanted to create my own. That was always my story. But I think there needed to be down time in between where I spent time with carving out what I wanted and needed. How does one do that with only a set of survival mechanisms and no stable set of traditions etc. without a system what is a self?

What parts are created and what parts are the enormity, the things beyond us that speak to us and pull us. To answer those calls and why or why not. The big questions that the great philosophers and the lowly authors have always tried to tackle.

A life lived in my own way not on anyone else’s terms has always felt important to me, but the how was a much more difficult aspect. Like a car without fuel. How can one exist in this manner without the fuel that is love, affection, belonging, and that from someone somewhere some form of that is unconditional.

I can’t change or want to change any of my path. But maybe I just need to believe it’s for a reason because that comforts me and there really isn’t any reason at all. That Pink Floyd has it right when he says “all you’ll touch and all you’ll see is all your life will ever be.”

I can’t have all the lives. I’ve almost had them really. But the one I never had is the one that looks the finest in the eyes of society. A long and consistent marriage that is celebrated… and I could go on… but I won’t at this moment, because I always wanted that one person you go through everything with and they are a constant. I made that a dream about love, but it’s fairly obvious that’s supposed to be a parent.

In the absence of certain core things I believe we can spend our life frantically searching or eternally unhappy no matter what, and the only thing that soothes is the story. I’m not willing to manipulate myself to feel better over finding the truth.

But finding my truth was always more important. This excavation process of finding pieces of me, and simultaneously trying to do that through relating because we see ourselves more clearly in relation to others. But that relation also changes us as we go.

The self evolves rapidly I find, or it can if that is the desire. Most people it seems are terrified of evolution, I suppose I’m not separate of that, but my enthusiasm always outweighs my fear. That is a piece of myself that is consistent. Would you look at that.

How do you get excited about being brave when sometimes being brave causes harm. The self versus the system. I’ll always be someone who has to know. Now I’m working at what do I want to know and why and being more responsible with myself first. To and for myself having a loyalty I didn’t have before.

If there’s no loyalty to the self there can be no loyalty to another because there’s no stable ground under the feet. You can circumvent this by religious beliefs and or adopting a set of family values, but what cost to a soul and why?

What I do know is I won’t regret chasing my dream. I know who I am. I know when I’m sorry I mean it and a swift change follows. I know once I know that I’ll enact change. I know my heart.

I didn’t know or trust those things before.

I know pain causes massive transformation if you sit with it and stay….

I am here with me…. Holding me, figuring out what comforts me. When I hear lines in this book about skin on skin and the enormity that exists between two people the tears start to slide immediately: I cannot change this looming winter into a permanent fall and spring, nor can I change the seasons of my existing.

I can only seek meaning from the experiences now that I’m not controlling them with every fiber of my being in one way or another. I’m being in control of myself and accessing my knowing and that’s the still I will stay in and the faith comes in believing I’ll have another season where I can connect this self with another self in a safe, healthy, equitable, and most importantly fulfilling way.

For now friends and love can be found everywhere as I’m willing to look. Rather than trying to change a season with my will surrendering to faith.

💜

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Nightmares and Dreamscapes of the Shattered Mind

“It’s never too late to be who you should have been”

The pain has woken me up. Or maybe it’s the words that woke me up. Or did the pain wake me up to the words.

Until the events of the past couple of years I never realized how much pain I was in all the time. I wouldn’t have realized anymore because I fashioned a soothing and capable self for others as a means of survival. I must have found it made the pain stop.

I had an epiphany as I was awoken at 4 am out of a dead sleep that as I only had myself to rely on I decided to make her so attuned and soothing to others because that also made me feel safe. As I soothed another I was soothed, and I recognized they were comforted, but I couldn’t recognize myself.

I’ve lived my whole life trying to make the pain stop in what I thought of as a healthy way. And perhaps it’s a lot healthier than where I could be. I’m driven intensely almost all the time to find ways of existing that make the pain stop. The anxious thoughts, the many physical symptoms I deal with regularly. The fact I can’t concentrate to save my life and my mind feels broken.

I found ways around the shattered self that lives inside to the point I was afraid I was a sociopath. Because I carefully select an emotion based on practicality before I’ll let myself feel it. I need to know if it’s safe and acceptable to others. If it will bring me belonging or desertion, warmth or isolation.

Are there others like me? Where are the other people who raised themselves, lived through terror constantly, and made a strong self in the outside and spent their life afraid they were bad or wrong? Where are the other people that coped the way I have ?

The things I found to make the pain stop weren’t numbing, they were the opposite, tuning in not tuning out. I wanted to make my mother’s torment stop. I knew that. And my aunts and my grandparents , and my little brother’s, and all the other chaos that swirled around me. I was determined. I am nothing if not determined. I clamp down like steel, my iron will and my nostrils flaring. I was years before they ever did so in a calm primal manner that meant anything but terror.

The problem with fashioning a self out of many trial and error tries, to make sure you don’t become what you’re from, is that your true self is lost. Many people don’t have their true selves in tact for one reason or another. I’m far from alone in the pain of being pathologically lonely.

The problem with all of this above is you can never really trust what’s real and what isn’t. And you’re vulnerable to the same fantastical thinking that probably took you to a safer place. See how I slip out of first person when it gets close to the wound?

My beautiful writer and dreamer mind, the childlike one preserved on ice betrayed me a couple of years ago. Is this real is the first thing I asked my therapist in the first session. The one where I would ask if I had to choose between passion and safety and what each of those things meant. What I was referring to was a feeling that shook the tectonic plates of my world.

The feeling was as real as you and me. What meaning I attached to the feeling and why was the ultimate betrayal. Escapism at its finest. Why couldn’t I just be a gamer at this point. That wouldn’t have cost me my sanity. Or maybe even an alcoholic. The jury is still out on if that would have.

I think I was trying to recover a sense of faith in something along the way, and I really clung to spirituality. Everything happens for a reason I bought into that when it came to this. And as it turned out it did, but the reason I was so very wrong about. And once you’ve felt so very wrong so many times and for so long, the joy, the manufactured joy, begins to get further and further away.

The only thing that brought me relief in childhood was being brought into other families and feeling seen, and the possibility of belonging. I became childlike and wide eyed. So when I attended a couple of family events and felt I belonged there, with someone telling me also that I did, and they wanted and saw me, I became attached to that notion and all of the players involved.

The intoxicating mixture of the words expressed and the want coupled with the family gatherings at the right time of loneliness and the hook was set, and the story was laid down, and I wanted to believe that magic more than anything.

As it turns out when you set out to find what to believe in, and it’s never in who you are, you’re in for a lot of pain. No foundation for me knowing who I was got laid down. So I’ve flitted from here to there trying to make the pain stop.

The thing that does that the most for me is touch. Touch forces me to be reminded I exist and I’m less likely to float away in my mind. It grounds and comforts. It is something I spent a long time not understanding why I didn’t care for it when I longed so much. These days I can be touched by kindness, even a smile and it gets me through.

And once I did figure that out nothing was going to prevent me from that joy. I was determined and racing through life because I wanted a story book story. The years together, the wedding where I am celebrated. I am never celebrated anywhere. It was the opposite. So when the attention is on me in that capacity I wriggle with discomfort, but also desperately want that, with the wanting of a child.

Whenever I started to get serious with someone and attempted to piece together some of my memories to explain to them my life it always felt unreal. Like a lie. I felt like I had made it up. I know I didn’t, but even the telling feels like that can’t be a thing. It must have made it up it must be me. I felt like snakes were crawling all over my body and I was going to vomit. And desperately I wondered if they were going to want to choose me once they knew. so I stopped trying. It’s too dark and I know instinctively people don’t want to believe things like that exist. Conceal don’t feel… don’t let it show. A child knows who the world (parent) needs them to be. We are much more attuned.

I never even got to know that because I moved things along so quickly out of panicky desperation every single time, all the while looking exactly the opposite on the outside so sure. Is it any wonder I can’t trust myself.

Part child, part adult…. My own personal science experiment. Let’s try this or that and see how it feels. But I don’t know how I feel. Let me look at how other people seem to feel is that how I find out?

Why am I so different from other people? I’d imagine the answering of this question will be a part of my work. I feel like my therapist would say Christina you know why, and I’d stare blankly that way I do when my brain runs out of knowledge and explanations and I long to just feel.

I very much veered off of the poetic musings about pain that my mind made me wake up for. That post would have been beautiful. It split immediately off into my thinking mind grappling to explain it make sense of it, and left the feeling.

I’ve lived my whole life trying to make the pain stop while also “being a good person”. Or feeling like I needed to feel like one. As it turns out I’m all too human to be a good person all the time. I’m a person who feels the feelings of others when I’m at a comfortable distance. As it turns out once I’m up close the stakes are too high on that and I can camp down immediately and be completely blank, and therefore banish myself from my own graces as a result, rather than trying to understand. U

nless of course I can be soothing to that person, then it’s the perfect drug for the both of us.

In my life time bridging the gaps of understanding for others split off from themselves or their loved ones…. It stops the pain. When someone outside of you sees you with the most generous perspective and truly understands, it lets the pain out. The pain of not being understood. I put the words together to help the person understand how their coping has been shaped and how their trauma changed their stars, and how to find meaning in that, that at bare minimum can lessen the pain.

The scarcity I’ve lived with is trying to get the pain to stop, and the irony is to become connected to myself so I can have a foundation I’ve been tasked with being directly in it until I become real.

Until I become visible to myself, and develop my own consistency outside of anyone else and my own self. Not develop that’s what I did before. Uncover what was already there. “It’s never too late to be who you should have been.”

Pain itself has changed and shaped me in so many ways, as well as the things I tried to do to get the pain to stop.

I have learned if you get or are in enough pain for too long you’ll do almost anything to make it stop. There’s no calm reasoning and then you lose faith in yourself to be consistent and dependable and it’s just a cycle of pure hell.

I’m in so much pain it’s like being burned alive, and you’d never even know if you looked at me, although I’m quite sure I look different now, that now it’s beginning to show in the lines of my face and in my weary bones.

It wakes me up and memories float in and out without my consent. I can only sift through the ashes, as the tears make them stick to my face. I toss and turn all night some nights and others I sleep soundly and it is the day that is the nightmare. A gauntlet full of memories that pull me back to a place that harms and I have to start all the way over.

One little fragment at a time I recover myself from all of this, all the while having no idea who I’ll be and rather than the idea of having a solid foundation being exciting, I just get to be viciously aware it should not be happening at this time in my life. That I’m all out of order, because I get to live seeing that confusion and loneliness on my children’s faces. They’ve had to fashion selves too, in the absence of me.

What’s normal and what isn’t during this time ? How do I relate? What’s safe and what isn’t? What’s right and what’s wrong? Chaos and anxiety.

These days my strategy is finding calm and soothing from inside myself. Finding the impossible.

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What Kind of Writer and Life will Emerge from All of This….

All the intellectualizing falls away and only I emerge. A singular woman with simple details and a complex set of coping strategies.

Life is simple right now. I sit on my couch and marvel at how on fire my mind was and how on edge all of my senses were a mere year ago today.

Today I watched Bourne Identity, with my son, after clients. I ate comforting fall type food. I stayed comfortable, and I napped hard. Hard deep sleep. I browsed hotels for the girls and I since the air bnb cancelled, annoying, but not life altering. Something better must be out there.

I sift and waft through memories, but no longer do I feel the battles and emotions of life and death. What is this variety of living. This might be my heaven, even in the absence of all I thought I wanted.

Utter groundlessness. Only moments of impact. I am just calm. There is nothing else. When I’m not calm, I’m really not calm. I’m a triggered frantic wild primal animal. Thankfully I am rarely that anymore. Life doesn’t burn as bright either, however it’s settling into something real, something spherical, no jagged edges. Something wholesome and good.

An assassin of the senses who is finally allowed to retire. “It’s over”. What is it? Possibility? Is that dead? No! But all possibilities thats are not healthy and transparent and what you see is what you get. All of that is over.

I’m also reading, because of course I am, a book called Every day. And a part I just read inspired this post. “I have to decide the importance of each and every memory. I only remember a handful of people, and in order to do that, I have to hold tight, because the only repetition available- the only way I am going to see them again – is if I conjure them in my mind. “

“I choose what to remember, and I am choosing Rhiannon. Again and again, I am choosing her, I am conjuring her, because to let go for an instant will allow her to disappear. The same song that we heard in Justin’s car comes on – and if only I could, I’d make a deal with God….”

“I feel the universe is telling me something. And it doesn’t even matter if it’s true or not. What matters is that I feel it, and believe it. The enormity rises within me. The universe nods along to the songs.”

In some ways I feel like I’m office space that I have been hypnotized. I just walk around dazed wondering what to do next. Unable to get extremely stressed about details, and also unable to feel intensely good either.

I look out over the landscape of my life, At everything I’ve conquered, every possible ending beginning and everything in between.

I live in the present now, which means I live in moments rather than in stories. I look around most of the time and can’t even believe the possibilities or that this is my home and I have the means to make any decisions. I forget that when I become instinctively overwhelmed from old programming. When I forget that I have stability and options.

I’m working on refinancing this home: I can do that now. I’m looking at the possibilities more than the devastation and somehow that doesn’t feel real. I must be missing something. This is all mine. I created it and it’s stable. If I need a new refrigerator I can pay for it in full. I don’t need to take out a line of credit and wonder how I’ll pay the bill.

I must be missing something. I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it probably will, it just won’t be what I think. It won’t be what’s on the radar and that’s scary.

Deep breath, and one at a time.

What unforeseen thing will happen that is unimaginable. It isn’t possible that fairy tales exist, only moments, and I’ve already had so many. Could things actually get good beyond my wildest dreams, as I do.

If you had seen what I came from. I never imagined I’d have all these adult choices to make, or that I’d even live this long. Now my overwhelm is from abundance and not scarcity.

Now I can what if over all the choices and no one to bounce it off of. Why is it so impossible to believe I’ll do a great job, beyond great even.

I’m getting sleepy now. I didn’t expect that because I napped. I’m so tired lately. I do need to move my body and get some energy, that’s highly out of whack right now, but I will.

I have this beautiful home, these beautiful children, and this whole world, and life says that could change at any time. I can’t be too fragile for difficult circumstances, however I can also still believe in dreams.

I think of the things people regret, and I’m listening to that in the Midnight Library, and of course it’s having me take inventory. I realize in my life there’s very little to regret. I was so lost in all of that. I’ve made mistakes, I have issues yes, but nothing so much worse than anyone else.

In my 40 years I’ve become a mother, on that first day, those first days, and every day after. I didn’t wait for perfect conditions. And for better or for worse I’ve left a legacy. I’d like to think better. I’ve gone after a meaningful career and found my way to something I love doing, and it’s in no way over. I can still do so much with it. And love I’ve worked as hard as any human ever has to crack that code, with all my attachment wounds.

I’ve done therapy. I’ve lived in many different states. I’ve met people. I’ve taken risks. I’ve tried and failed at many things, and succeeded as well. If I were to get that phone call tomorrow, no portion of my live is unlived. Nothing has stopped me:

The rest of this is literally just getting to choose what I want and having that choice and being capable to make it for the right reasons and in the right ways.

Everyone is all strapped in tightly together and come what may….

Come what may.

There isn’t a single stone of my soul unturned. I am not afraid. I have comforts. I am not dying any longer burning alive in fear alone in this over sized bed. I can go to bed at night and be comfortable. Don’t get my wrong it’s not my preference, but I also don’t need to abandon any parts of my soul to go after what I want.

Empowering.

I went back and got all my childhood pieces and United them, and I don’t need anyone to understand this journey, because the right people already do.

Watch me live now…. My life is beautiful. I burn off insecurity by the second. There is nothing left to fear but fear itself, which sucks the joy out of life.

💜

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Casi Sielo: I Was Blind but Now I See….

“Oh thinking about the younger years….” a little Bryan Adams this morning. Appropriate…

I’m in a blog writing mood this morning. Now that I feel alive after another death. Which was probably just raging hormones. Isn’t that supposed to stop at some point? Let’s play is it trauma, depression, grief, or hormones. Do all 40 somethings play this or just ones with significant trauma history? I’d like to speak to the person in charge please. Of the Universe ? Yes exactly. Always take it straight to the top.

I guess I’m a little punchy this morning. That makes sense. Last night was the first satisfying night of sleep I’ve had in what feels like forever, but in reality is about a month now. A month can sometimes feel like a year.

Yesterday was one of those days where I felt like a lead block and numb and like it was too much work to breathe. I woke up like that. And just kept thinking this feels like dying to be that low. I’ve been scary low lately. I’m lucky to be aware enough to know this is truly un-becoming. Lol not in the sense of not attractive as my father would have used that phrase, what is and isn’t becoming of a lady. Vomit. But unbecoming in the Paulo Coehlo sense.

Nobody warns you how truly excruciating this process is. Burning off old patterns and coping mechanisms and re wiring. Everyone outside of me keeps saying “I’m doing the work”, for me it just feels like dying of terror over and over and beginning a new day to do it again. Doesn’t that sound like fun guys? Now I know why the “enlightened” are so popular, and also why not many embark on this.

Listen I’m no guru or saint, most days I feel like a lost soul, though everyone tells me I’m not. I was for most of my life. Once was lost and now I’m found, …. Amazing Grace. Holy shit (lol) now I understand that song I heard a million times in childhood. Religion another story to comfort our weary souls.

Funny I should mention comfort. I’ve lived my entire 40 years begging and striving for just that. And my whole life feeling unsafe and scrambling for security in any shelter possible. Anything that could bring my nervous system relief and then I’d try and try to maintain it, having none of the knowledge or tools to do so.

I’m not a victim I’ve hurt people along the way. There’s hurt that’s been burning inside of me that I didn’t ask for. This is trauma folks. People often judge and shame, too much, too sensitive, too intense. What they never did was understand and connect the dots to why someone is being the way they are. That simple inquisitive nature inside of me has saved my soul, and I’d like to think the sharing of this knowledge has and will save others.

Sound dramatic? Yes it is. It doesn’t sound dramatic it is. If you could see it on a screen you might understand a little better. I used to say all the time I wish I could just show movie clips of my life, because I desired to be understood.

The thing about trauma is you have to be responsible for something you never asked for, for the rest of your life. You have to carry it whether you want to or not. And most trauma survivors spend their life running for it, for shelter, punching the air, crawling underneath something and hiding, or frozen and staring into space, imagining fantasies of grandeur and someone doing nice things for them or coming along and offering support and comfort.

I had a client say to me the other day that they know they won’t reach the potential they would have without this “brain damage”. And my heart broke. And as I watch myself as a counselor I scramble to fix it, but what I did on the way home was think how I don’t want to jump so quickly to do this or do that, I want to truly keep holding space and validating. You’re right and you deserve to be as angry and sad as you want about that without anyone giving you directions how to fix it.

They are correct their potential has been changed and it often feels an uphill battle. The only thing I would say is you don’t want to keep a story you don’t want to be shackled by. I can’t buy that my life will be less meaningful or I won’t reach a full anything and rather I choose to believe it is significantly changed by my trauma, but I refuse to let myself be lessened by it. And I acknowledge that it tortures me daily.

A tortured meaningful existence huh? Did I not read the contract? of course I didn’t I was never afforded the privilege to concentrate long enough.

So here I am and I really how much over the last couple of years I’ve censored myself. How much shame has kept me from truly bringing my story to the table. And in the coming time I’m not going to do that. I will get comfortable with my uncomfortable feelings and stay in my truth and my course, and burn off shame and put down the burden of any terrible stories I can tell about me, for how I’ve tried to survive.

I never intended anyone harm by rushing for comfort, and each person is responsible for their own choices. AND I’m sorry more than can be seen from the outside for pain that was caused from the coping mechanisms that came from my trauma. From me having been separated from any sense of self in childhood. I need to own and stand proud in this story and hold my ground.

I’ve been like a wild frantic animal for all the years of my life and keeping all of that tame for everyone else so I can still try at a life and try to love. I didn’t even expect to be loved. I don’t ever expect it. Why would I? I expected myself to work really hard at love, and believed that was the way.

But I couldn’t work really hard at everything all at once, and I couldn’t have this without that and I scrambled and scrambled. I’m egg at this point.

And now I am still and forging a relationship with myself that refuses to be anything but healthy no matter how tiring, boring, etc, that is.

This is me….

So yesterday I moved my therapy appointment to make sure I got to my daughters soccer game. They are on varsity which means they often don’t get to play. Which breaks my heart for them, but hopefully they know they are an equally important part of the team. I hope they get their shot soon. We won 3-1 against North Haven yesterday.

I arrived early to the game. I was numb and lead and could barely keep my eyes open. So despite the late of it all I went into Starbucks. It’s a place I still love. There was a time I couldn’t go in there, but I’ve returned to allowing love, as I have the solid trust I’ll never allow anything to let me betray myself.

I’m allowing all the love I feel for all of the people in my whole story. Anything else is manipulation and I’m not doing that to feel better or stronger or for any other reason.

So in the calm waters of this new phase of grief I bought myself a tall half sweet caramel machiato which I thoroughly enjoyed sipping while talking to a soccer mom from way back, and a LB of 2021 Casi Sielo. Which means “almost heaven”…. I think I’ll take that as a sign of the direction I’m going. I drank a little black, a learned behavior, the student is also sometimes the teacher. And I allowed myself a moment of sadness that I had no one purchase this for me, and also joy that I can enjoy buying it myself and wafting through the memories old and new.

And that in my life there is no need to deny any part of my story, or to manipulate myself or anyone else. That my friends is freedom.

I allowed my Apple Watch to flash me pictures I hadn’t been able to look at in a long time. I took screen shots. I sipped my warm life giving beverage and I burned off some more shame.

Now I am organizing my life, finding my priorities, planning vacations with my children and feeling like I’m safe to do so. I believe I’m capable of these things, things I thought I couldn’t do without another human being. Because I never felt safe. Imagine spending 40 years not feeling safe?! Imagine what that does to a person. So I’m not going to be ashamed for it any longer.

I’m so proud of myself for staying in this pain long enough to find the truth of who I am, what I need, and what I want, and never to settle for anything less than my entire story as is without shame.

This is me…. 💜

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The Courage of the Noticer Attending Weddings and Funerals

I have so much to talk about right now it’s hard to know where this will go. I was going to say to know where to start, but that’s actually not hard anymore, I just do. Progress over perfection.

So let’s start with this morning. I went to a funeral. An all day long funeral. This is something I typically dread. The first reason I dread it is because I’m a special breed. I’m not only highly sensitive as a trait, but I have come to fully embrace that I’m an empath. Anita Morjani describes it best in her new book Sensitive is the New Strong.

The type of alien I am actually has a description. High sensitivity is sensory and perception, and empath actually feels other people’s feelings with them, sometimes before they do, and we have a sixth sense. Deep intuition. Sometimes I talk directly to people’s higher selves. When I describe this it’s hard not to feel grandiose or self important, however it is the truth.

So needless to say being crammed into a hot room with many people feeling big feelings, especially some I care about tremendously, is not easy for me. Since I don’t have much family I’ve been fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to not have many to attend.

Complicated grief. Is there a simple grief? I think so. Complicated grief is not even knowing if, when, or how to grieve because there is no familial or other structure.

As I sat and listened to people describe their loved one, particularly as a mom here were some of my thoughts…. Besides being present of course because I was, but it also creates my own thinking. What will people say about me. Will anyone besides primarily my clients (if that’s even a thing) be there to say anything. Now I used to think these things much more bleak and not have answers: today was actually not so bad. Immediately as I hear the good things said I think my kids wouldn’t be able to say that about me, and I want to fall in despair.

Then I bring myself back to how I arrived as a guest at this celebration of a life and the integral part I have, and I try to look at some different things, primarily myself differently. But what sticks is how alien I feel and truly I know hardly anyone that has my situation.

Even children who are given up for adoption have some kind of structure. I slipped between the cracks, and the only way I was even visible is when I was quiet, accommodating, and useful to others. I was loving and engaged and would go to the ends of the earth, and it’s easy to see why I don’t expect reciprocity in this area now, because there wasn’t any. That expectation was never set. (It shall be from now on)

So then the preacher man laments about how 40 some years ago he had also married that couple, and my despair grows deeper. Here are the good and better people, the ones who got it right and come from good families and Christina you don’t belong here. That’s what it feels like. No need to feel sorry for me, no one wants that, it’s just the truth.

I literally burst apart with their pain of separation by death that is spoken of on that day of vows and how much sooner it came than deserved. I was present for them as well, but I am human, so these events bring forth my story as well.

The persons children spoke, and I wondered what mine would say. We all know mom struggled a lot. Is that what it will be? Is that all I am? Struggle? Why do I have such a distorted view of myself. I know why.

This funeral made me think of weddings, my last one in particular. In my living room w my kids and wife only, a fact hidden from her family. We hid in shame. I hid in shame. I’ve been fucking ashamed my whole life.

Today I recognize why there’s never an event where someone has something to say where they know me well, I want to say I never stay long enough, but my god that’s being hard on myself.

I try with my whole heart to do so many things at once so my kids didn’t miss out on anything, and so I had ground under my feet to love from. I tried hard and I tried fast the best and only ways I knew from my life and I got shamed and faulted for it. Where was someone to ask what happened to me?

Where was that person who saw something seemed not quite right and it wasn’t a fault or flaw in me, it was something fundamental I never even had and I’m still trying to live like and with those who did! Where was the one to say I see you, and the wisdom to help me feel secure.

So I became that.

I think of how I didn’t know I deserved to wait for someone to see me and take that time with me and that it does exist. I think of how you promised me a family and how opposite that was and how now when you post videos of blending families and relationship articles it’s so bizarre to me because those people are transparent, genuine, congruent, honest, considerate, brave, etc that’s how that works and why that works. I think of how you try and make it seem like it’s me, and how that doesn’t work anymore.

I wasn’t the one you needed to talk to about cohabitation and outside the box situations so I could accommodate. That was what you were supposed to be doing in the therapy you said was for co parenting. That was your job to do with your ex partner and family to lay that groundwork and communicate with me, and everything would have been on the table, nothing to hide. You post these things that you aren’t living congruent with. I am not the issue, and you know it. Blame isn’t my thing. Growth and forward movement is and we both know I’m perfectly capable.

And how if you had done that work, any of it, you wouldn’t need to try and manipulate me from a blog, it wouldn’t even be a thing. We would already be living it. I think of the emotional black mail, and how that has nothing to do with me. I’m light years beyond that and open and free to have a loving and fully invested relationship when I find someone willing to show up their whole authentic selves and be all in with me.

I think of how I know it exists now even when I’m in dark and lonely moments, which are often as of late.

So this evening I came home and wanted to write, but first I listened to an episode of a podcast and it also made me feel so many things. The link is below. Hearing Glennon and Craig talk to one another makes me wish that I had the wisdom as well as the support to have had this grace with my ex husband and not taking everything so reactively. I mean he had his part, but my biggest threats were tapes I played on repeat, of my own creation.

Glennon and Craig talk about divorce and co-parenting

Sidebar what I found most wonderful of the many things in here was the idea of everyone having a voice whether things were agreed upon or not. Our family therapist brings this to my attention a lot during sessions, very strategically I might add. And I recognize that by fighting against what their dad thinks of me, I shut those voices down, because of my own ego and my triggers and I regret that deeply. I’m working on healing that now. So they feel heard and deeply respected by me, and we can have the relationships we all deserve.

Attending family events has always been bittersweet for me. It’s so validating to hear many clients with difficult trauma histories like mine, share how difficult events like this are. How many feelings it brings up. Today was no exception. But what was remarkably different is that I didn’t want to crawl out of my skin and leave as soon as possible.

I didn’t feel so awkward I could barely breathe, and I didn’t feel I didn’t belong: I knew I did.

I thought about my last marriage a lot this morning and at the event. The last funeral I went to after all was her fathers. A father who refused to acknowledge who I was to her or hardly at all. I never became part of that family in any real way. The closest I ever felt were with an aunt and uncle, and her cousins.

Don’t get me wrong no one did anything wrong. They did the best they could in general, all of them. But I never knew where I stood, and I’m still trying to sort out what might have made that gap bridged differently. But they weren’t my family to know that about. We showed up around one another, but never knew one another that well.

I think what were we thinking getting married so fast. Why? Why didn’t the one w a family think maybe we should get to know my family first. I mean if didn’t decide and create it all myself right ?!

I think of the line in The Little Prince it’s the time that you spent on/with your rose that is special. And that any amount of investment is never wasted, however I am exhausted of starting over. I don’t want to. I never did. But I was always going to need to be in the equation and what I’ve gotten good at over the years is being invisible and accommodating and ok with that.

I’m not ok with that. I’m as worth getting to know, for a willing partner and family to be enthusiastic about, at a realistic pace when the time comes.

But here is what I’ll never be again, anyone’s dirty secret, anyone’s lie, anyone’s anything that needs to be hidden, and I don’t need to make myself into something for that to happen. It was never supposed to be that way.

I am on a journey of not hiding how I feel, think, my wants, needs, emotions, in an attempt to not lose something or to get something. I will not be modifying, disappearing, shrinking to fit, pleasing, hiding, or any other thing.

This is me…. I exist and I’m not going to try and earn my existence or explain it away by my efforts. That is exhausting.

I don’t know if I’ll ever have a wedding again traditional or otherwise. I don’t know whom will be in attendance or what will be said at my funeral,

But I do know from this time forward I will know I am worthy of belonging somewhere and to someone, or perhaps everywhere and to everyone….

And that makes all the difference as to what you accept and what you don’t…..

Onward as Beautiful Liz says….

Onward

Ps my kids have been gone and will be back tomorrow, it’s so strange being in such a silent house. They have my car so I’ve been rocking the silver civic, Louis ha. I haven’t been sleeping much this week, totally unlike me. Oh also I realized during the funeral I have never really mourned the loss of the babies we lost. I did just like I’ve always done and tried to just keep going. I thought about how we honor our losses, and that for her and I we didn’t even honor our union by having family and friends present. I never felt worthy, and that’s a lot to sit with.

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Tattoos and Transformations

All I know so far….. “you throw your head back and spit in the wind…. Let the walls crack because it lets the light in. “Perhaps this image will go on my upper arm in portraiture. Hmm

Good morning. So as it turns out I’m way more of a bad ass than I thought and at this point a lot of the habitual anxiety that I carried with me throughout my life is free to go. Thank you, but your services are no longer needed.

I’m working on a tattoo sleeve and in many ways not even sure how I got here. To be getting one. I’m a naturalist and I love the look of natural skin and I can be judgmental of myself while loving them on other people. What even is that?! Fear? Yes fear. That absolute asshole that separates us from a bold expressive existence that is our own. I have lived riddled with it, and it has obstructed so much of my joy.

These days what I am trying my hardest to do is honor and acknowledge what happened to me in a way that encompasses a wide range of compassion for my needs and desires. I was talking to a friend yesterday morning, my dear Mary and Pippin, outside in her beautiful oasis of a backyard, and talking about the difference between needy and needing. Lately I’ve been using this re-frame in my office. If someone says oh they are so needy, or oh I am so needy, my immediate question is: what are they/you needing? And it immediately changes the energy.

It’s literally astounding to the person asked that it could be seen any other way.

I am astounded by my life right now, and many days I’m not sure whether that’s a positive or not. It is not at all where I imagined I would be, and some of that borders on the miraculous and some if I am not careful threatens me with an impenetrable sadness.

I am deeply lonely right now, and also so far from alone. I’ve never understood things more or been closer and connected to ny loved ones. I am literally surrounded, and I can feel it and be present in it. It and I, are not invisible. That is priceless. I sleep well, for the most part, although this week has been riddled with anxiety and restlessness. I was so so anxious about this tattoo.

And I’m so grateful for that because it has shown me I am thinking less impulsively. Did you hear that? Not only thinking but behaving less impulsive. It felt impulsive or a mid life crisis. What a judgment there right ?! Who am I to have art on my body that is sacred to me if it means I could be judged or worse judge myself.

I looked at an arm that was not my own this morning and keep getting anxious I’ll reject it or won’t like it like that. It’s new and permanent, and it’s making me think of Attachment. I am continuing to read the book Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. I have been reading, absorbing, life rafting with that book for months. I believe I can finally mark it read soon. And not be so far behind in my reading goal in Good Reads.

The truth is I am slowly ever so slowly reading and writing more now. It has snuck up on me, this ability to attend and be still in a moderate way. Learning my way out of all or nothing, fight or flight, into real relationship.

The days that led up to my tattoo I was anxious for three nights, waking up all the time, strange dreams, and I’m remembering my dreams lately. The morning of (yesterday) I was nauseated with it. It’s insane to feel things this much, but I am beginning to embrace it.

In 2016 I got my et lux intenebris lucet (the light shines out of the darkness), Viktor Frankl quote on my inner left arm. I was so anxious I thought I would drop dead, pass out, get an infection. My intrusive thoughts were insane. My threat level was at a constant defcon 5! I didn’t realize even then why that was. So now in 2021 to have sat for 3 plus hours and got more done than I imagined. A half sleeve well underway. And I enjoyed it. Relaxed. Learned more about the guys at the shop. We shared trauma stories and I love them. Connecting. People stopped in and cared for me, my children got excited for me. I am literally surrounded by love and affection.

I noticed that I still want to ask other people, do you like this or it and go with what they say. It is still my tendency to be anxious and want approval, but now I pause and land on how do I feel and do I like this and I find my knowing. That is priceless.

Navigating anxiety, rather than it controlling me. I am driving and anxiety can be in the toddler seat, buckled in, where it belongs. I never even knew it spent most of my life driving me. I breathe a sigh of relief and the tears roll down. I am unashamed of the things that I’ve dealt with, and that make me me.

I am unashamed of my softer forty year old body, that’s sometimes hard to love. The changes in my skin, somehow slacker, and more lines than their used to be. I can’t even get lost in that because my eyes dance and are alive and not darting nervously, wanting to crawl out of my skin. You can’t unknow once you have decided to love yourself with the same ferocity and unconditional nature you would bestow upon someone else.

I am going to have fun with the images I put on my tattoo sleeve, the represent my life, my pain, my joy, my story. Sitting and having them emblazoned on me, is time and attention I deserve to bestow on myself. It is not an act of rebellion, it is an act of love, and I don’t need anyone to understand it.

But only to gravitate toward those who are gracious with their time and attention and desire to hear my story and appreciate it. and to let the rest burn. Not rejected, always redirected. Always path….

It’s Thursday and I love Thursdays because I get to have the best dinner company. I love it because I’ve never had anything this consistent in my life and it teaches me about love and life. It has stabilized me over the events of the past year and a half, and for that I am forever grateful. Does the man with the sad eyes and gigantic heart know that I don’t need to be walked down the aisle or spend every Christmas with him to understand that “because I knew you I am changed for the better, for good.”

The characters in my story are brilliant and I am loved, and I love them immensely and forever.

It is as legitimate as anything else in life. It doesn’t need to fit a traditional box and neither do I. I don’t need to be outside that box either to be validated.

Just walking that line of bravery between belonging and creating…. I love learning to walk that line. And the very act of living and creating an epic story with every moment of my life…..

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Magnolias and Scripts

Love my smoothies by the water and the magnolia trees in bloom right now. Simple pleasures when life is so complicated.

My boundaries suck. I fancy myself to be someone who strives to be impeccable with my word and yet my trauma threatens to undermine me in this area all the time. I resent my codependency. Do I really deserve to suffer like this the rest of my life? Like a trap I can’t get out of. See the codependent victim right there.

Telling everyone else what they should do with their life, when I’m not getting paid for it 😉 No Christina. Here’s what I’m responsible for my boundaries, how I feel, and sharing that clearly and concisely after I have sorted it, and the most important part following through and sticking too. That’s my fucking job right now.

The stakes on my recovery are too important so I shall continue to be transparent about my struggles and leave other people to theirs, unless I’m getting paid for it.

How much can I actually modify about this rabid out of bounds “fixing”. That’s frustrating. Lately when I’m quiet it’s because I don’t trust what will come out of my mouth. That I won’t go on and on in my process until I stick my foot in my mouth, or burden others with responsibility for my emotions by sheer panic of it all. 🙁 ugh! Charlie Brown! I’m a block head.

Say what you mean and mean what you say and take time to think about it before you say it are words I’m living by right now. And follow through. I can preach it but I find when I’m most frustrated it is because I’m not in fact practicing it. Humbling.

A comfort I can find right now is I’ve finally become strong enough to sit in these realizations without excusing them, etc. if I stay in them, stay acknowledging, then shifts are being made. Shifts are being made and it’s exciting. But it requires me to keep leaving behind things I once loved because it doesn’t work. And previously I would have just tried harder and fought and now I’m forced to let go if we don’t meet up naturally with where we are in our work.

That sucks !

I’m grumpy today. This overly heavy period with an impending medical procedure to remedy it, doesn’t help. I’m anxious that at any second I’ll be in a very uncomfortable situation, and I’m exhausted as a result.

I’ve been doing administrative work today and that never puts me in a good mood. It’s that itself that may shift me in a different direction career wise at least with how I structure my operation. I do not want to be beholden to anyone and I want to create my own way of doing what I do. I’m not sure yet whether this will require RE branding or what I will need to do to figure it out. But the winds of change are blowing.

I already have my own way of doing what I do but I don’t have any structure into explaining what that is. I don’t know if I need to, but it’s probably delicately intertwined with my writing and the next direction of my life.

I’m worried about my health insurance, worried about all the up in the airs right now. I have literally no idea about a lot of these things and I have lots of steps to take for right now. Financial advising, because there are lots of answers I don’t have with regard to what I have and where I need to put it to be secure. What I can allocate to where. I’d say this is a good problem to have considering the scarcity I’ve been in most of my life made that not even something to worry about because there weren’t those choices or options.

The paradox of choice… the more we have the more overwhelmed we are. And overwhelmed and I are not good bed fellows. No one likes it but for me being overwhelmed on an already overtaxed nervous system puts me over the edge so easy. I resent that. More grouchy.

Recently in my own therapy a topic is how to share with my kids some of what my life was like in a constructive way. My therapist has suggested I rehearse the following until I can say it without becoming emotional. I resent being asked not to become emotional about such things, but she knows I don’t want to dump my emotions all over my children so they feel they have to carry them.

So I am to recite the details clearly and concisely like this. My mother was mentally ill, my father was a little in and out until he wasn’t (with no explanation just a lot of speculation), I was Dcf involved and removed, I was put into the care of my grandparents who didn’t want to be raising anymore children, and was frequently reminded of this fact. I spent the rest of my life trying to find somewhere I could belong and be safe and that process was not easy.

As a mother I’m still trying to figure this out and my role. What I have done and been committed to is providing for you as best as I could while figuring this out and having only good people around you. Those were my primary focuses while I’m trying to find out where I belong and who I am in all of this.

Well when you put it like that.

Say that without feeling any emotions or going into the details to try and recover my feelings. Sure. Easy peasy. I’ll get right on that Rose.

Well if my mood was going to be helped it would not be from that, but I’ll keep reciting it and doing the work and looking for glimmers. The little things that shine through that show the work is working.

Work work work work….

Trying to not feel shamed or a victim for the things I chose to focus on to survive.

It’s not easy…..

Nothing good ever is….

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I will fight for you

I talked the talk but I had never walked the walk. I was a walking talking coping mechanism. A projection of an idea of how to do life. Ahead in my thinking, behind in my development, the chronology of me is a many scattered thing.

It’s Sunday. Glorious Sunday. And I’ve had some lessons as of late. I thought it would never happen, that I would never be on the other side of the immense painful losses I’ve been wading in. Now don’t get me wrong I’m no where near finished with this journey, we shall say I’ve turned a corner.

What has broken through is not being able to keep the habits of thinking that have been deeply embedded. The sheer terror my mind goes to at the first sight of anything, and how I try to find myself wrong or bad as a means to force the humanity out of myself, so I can be a good little soldier.

My eyes are welling as I write that and of course that makes me nervous that I’ll have another migraine. Yesterday was the first day I’ve been migraine free this month. It’s interesting to be full circle on truly realizing and not just theorizing the toll that trauma wreaks on a body.

All my old anxiety symptoms resurfaced. The last time I was feeling like this I was in a relationship that wasn’t meant for me, but was again so good for my kids that the only conclusion was I had fucked it up. I can look back and see that wouldn’t have been a good situation and I did the right thing but all I’ve done as I’ve attempted to carry my trauma flawlessly all these years is internalize more shame due to its impact. Wow I really just said that out loud.

After a year of intensive therapy two times a week including emdr and energy healing as well, and music therapy.

I now have a clearer picture of the impact on me, and not just the impact of me on others.

The toxic shame is finally lifting if even a little so some light can come in. Not a distraction or addiction but some actual light.

As it turns out staying a course consistently does do what they say. The mystical they. There is something other than just darkness and fear on the other side.

What’s on the other side? Compassion and the ability to value myself. Holy shit! That can’t be a real. Ok now I actually am crying.

It’s surreal.

I can be embarrassed at the way I’ve operated, ashamed, self flagellate. Or I can in the words of Elizabeth Gilbert kiss my tiny hand and forgive myself.

Elizabeth Gilbert who told an intimate story at the international women’s summit two years ago of how she was to take care of her partner Rayya as she was dying. And she in her overwhelm wasn’t removing the sticky film on her pain patches so her partner was in excruciating pain for days before they figured out why. The moment they figured it out she looked over at Rayya who looked her with compassion, knowing she would feel terrible. And Elizabeth was unable to receive that, as she was being so hard on herself.

So the story she told was that so ashamed was she that she took herself into the bathroom and cried and rocked. She then thought of a friend who had turned her back on her toddler for a second and the child got into an accident in the home and died. And she thought if she could be able to forgive herself for that that she must. So she kissed her tiny hand and emerged.

She of course told the story much better. She hugged me that week after a luncheon, after reading some of my words. I’ve had encounters with her before but was too scared to bother or approach her. This time with a little help I was able to have the courage.

She didn’t let go first. She hugged me. Not like a fan that she had to hug it was genuine and it was life changing. I went back to the room and sobbed and literally couldn’t focus on the rest of the workshop. Elizabeth Gilbert via Eat Pray Love was the first person who ever gave me permission to be a messy human and still love myself.

So it makes sense she also taught me one of the best lessons on mercy, which was a theme of the conference. On what it truly means to live.

So as I sit and find mercy and compassion for myself from this last year of my life and reflect on the work I’ve done and how that is revealing the quality in my life…. I am in awe.

I never thought it would get better. And here we are the kids are thriving and it’s not the worst thing in the world. It has felt like it, and that resulting attitude and behavior was the bad part. Once I dropped into my heart everything began to shift, and I couldn’t have done it without my children (my greatest teachers), my friends, my therapist, my energy healer who is amazing by the way, my piano teacher, and my clients.

My clients being brave is often the thing that inspires me most.

It’s humbling to realize I thought I could fix my past just by being a counselor. I hadn’t even scratched the surface on my own work yet. I had myself convinced I had. And that was part of a carefully crafted defense mechanism made by my childhood. I came with a lot of those, that operated completely outside my consciousness. I wanted to believe otherwise. Denial is a powerful powerful seductress.

So if you want a realistic account at least from one persons journey of deep healing work. How it really works is so slowly you can barely notice. Unnoticeable shifts…. so slow that sometimes you fall into despair because you feel it will never be better, and sometimes epiphanies are like a fireworks show big and bright and exciting.

Staying the course of having my own back, and getting out of toxic shame. If you’re going to live a courageous life you will make mistakes. I believe it’s what you do with them. I believe in more of an embodied way now because I lived it. It’s not just some theory about behavior spewed forth. It became a journey.

I never had pieced together all of my health symptoms to my trauma. I was too hard on myself and too determined to make it my fault or something else. I couldn’t even be in public without severe anxiety. That’s how bad it was. Without flushing episodes and bizarre symptoms. It was allergic reactions. It was anxiety. I’ve carried crippling anxiety and my entire trauma history with me into everything I’ve ever tried to do. And instead of realizing it I made myself defective and tried to hide. I was ashamed of my own symptoms. They were inconvenient and I thought no one would love me with them. So I tried to will them away. Tried to hide away.

But life kept throwing things at me that made me face all the pain I’ve been carrying with me. My past has been living in my body. Ravaging it from the inside out.

It was time to let go of these stories I had about myself and find new coping mechanisms and a new way of life.

I am hopeful now someday that trauma won’t run my life. That I won’t keep running with my mind or my feet and I’ll allow myself to live. Which is simply as I see it to be present.

For a trauma survivor to be present is a privilege. Our entire bodies hijack this away from us. When being present was too painful our bodies create a system to manage. I’ve been living with a system override that has made living so painful for me.

Coming to terms with that is life altering at best.

Be still and at peace Christina. You’ve worked so hard. Now feel what security feels like without wanting to crawl out of you skin.

This has been my song to me as of late: Don’t give up on me…. my 2020-2021 theme song

Always,

C