I was called to my water to write this morning. I just got waxed, ow. Sometimes I feel half my life is concerned with hair removal. Did you chuckle ? I did. But for real it’s not even about how I look, it’s a sensory thing.
I am finally accepting my high sensitivity and empath ness and trying to work with it rather than deny, minimize, outright reject, or attempt to reverse the adaptation that’s about being adaptable. Ironic isn’t it.
A barrier to this was always worrying about being grandiose or the way some people use being an empath in toxic ways. As always if you’re worried about it it’s probably not something to worry about.
So can I finally accept my birthright and my gift and use it to help me achieve a better quality of connection to myself and the universe.
That’s a resounding yes !
Speaking of ironic Alanis and the episode of we can do hard things on high sensitivity! Boom. It is ironic oh yes I really do think.
Time seems my most elusive currency lately. How lucky am I that my life is one where I want more time to do and experience the things I love.
How lucky am I that I’m working at better understanding myself, and having a healthier relationship with me.
It turns out I’ve been looking for her in everything, and everyone, and everywhere she’s not.
Inside of me.
So that’s what I’m spending the most of my valuable currency on.
Writing my poem, my story, my lyrics, my melody, my script and on and on.
I have so many things to write about, but sometimes once I open the post I just relax so much nothing intelligible comes. It’s when I don’t have the pressure of the page that my thoughts float gently to the surface of my consciousness and tickle my fancy.
My fantasy
Lately I’ve been loving the lyrics of Zach Bryan. My girls led me to him. Some of them are just well wow. Your head in my neck is weightless.
This morning I’m re reading The Highly Sensitive Person I love and it’s already blowing my mind, in showing my experience to me with a lens that helps me cope.
Deep and profound love is often the kind that doesn’t last, and then there’s the kind that does that is also those things.
I was trying to crack the code on love using logic. Now that’s ironic.
Now I’m using all of it, and most often working to get the story straight, keep it simple and direct, and develop a consistently healthy relationship with myself.
The work is delicious, no longer a burden. I am blessed.
The work takes the charge out of the pain, rather than rivers of it threatening to flood at anytime. I’m building a dam. Speaking of that I’m often thinking lately of slowly doing more DIY things. Like fix the drywall in my basement. I’m not sure yet whether that’s an idea and my schedule and sensory stuff means it’s not really conducive. Stay tuned on that one.
I’m watching this is us, and oh my god the triggers and the insight and bliss. Kevin’s twins being born and just watching the trials of these three’s lives. The nuance and the variety of topics covered in this way.
I’m enjoying it immensely….. not have I enjoyed a timing of a show to show me some things since Six Feet Under. This one is a profound love.
I’m reading Dune which is so odd for me. It is and it isn’t. What I appreciate is being attuned to intuition and that that is real.
I want my dreams back, and to be connected. I am figuring it out. Softening, thawing, warming, while also reinforcing my non-negotiables and boundaries.
It’s absolutely pouring.
The waves are crashing around the cement dock that I’ve walked to the edge of so many times and felt like I was standing in the middle of the ocean. Like I could walk on water. Don’t worry no delusions of grandeur here.
Anyway I have more to say later probably or tomorrow. I’m needing woods and water and empty hours.
I’m having a mad love affair with the song evermore this morning. I want to touch the keys of my piano and tune my ear to the sounds. The ones that make people feel. Rhythm that can’t be ignored. A siren call. Satellite call.
So many empty hours before me wanting, needing.
No desperation,
only stillness.
I’m learning a course in miracles, lesson 8 this am is about how the egoic mind clings to the past and creates it to replay over into your present unless you become aware of this.
The only true thought is that the past is no longer present: makes room for new creation.
New lessons,
rather than loops of old ones,
chasing your tail.
I’m getting used to these orthotics. Right now arch support feels like arch assault. But I think ultimately the whole posture is positively impacted by the right nurturing. Isn’t that about right for a metaphor for life.
I saw killer of the flower moon yesterday. The new Scorsese film. Really eye opening. So much to unpack there about manipulation, privilege, and a whole variety of things.
I enjoy seeing movies in the theater. What I’m really finding important about this now is not multi tasking. Just being present and absorbed into someone’s creation. So many pieces went into it.
How good it feels to be with the present moment. And there are many ways that’s hard also. The losses creep up and haunt.
While what might have been no longer consumes me, it’s sometimes a bitter pill.
This is where faith is really important. And letting go of control.
Allowing
That’s my current mission.
Tonight is family time at the Figg cooking school.
A friend is visiting. I’ve known him since way back, he visits every year, and every year it’s a motivator to plan things together. Kinda sounds like family right ?! That elusive promised thing, that was so missing for so long.
But look at me I make one wherever I go. I create family easily, and that requires an open heart. Before it was at times a desperate act without enough thought to not also create harm. I’m sorry.
No
I’m really sorry.
Sorry doesn’t cover it. For irresponsible actions on my part that caused pain. And I’m also aware if we are going to risk anything in this lifetime hurt will happen. I will not use that as a justification, but I will use the understanding to allow healing.
That’s where I am right now.
I walk, I think, I read, I love, I understand…..
Funny Miley Cyrus is now singing I miss me more. May I everyone find that really important aspect of love.
In balance with one’s own desires and destiny if you will. If you won’t that’s ok too. My beliefs are solid and also open to modification as I understand more.
Two miles, that’s good for now. I have admin to enjoy doing, and some chores.
I love being in my office. It’s my own home within my home. Sacredness is in there. People come there to heal, to feel their hurts, and I do too. Beautiful love and life.
Tomorrow I write. I can’t wait. I’m waiting breathlessly for that ability to be fully me, to fully express everything anything I want.
Writing is safe.
It’s my constant loved one.
Consistency is so nice these days, but also not rigid or caged within it. Consistent forward movement come what may.
I realize it’s been too long since I’ve written in here. Beginning again requires no grand gesture, except to splay my words upon the page.
Life is so different now than it’s ever been for me.
The kitchen window is open. I can hear the cars splashing through the wet pavement on High st. There’s a bathroom window open, and it’s making a door creak slightly every so often.
I’m reading Stephen King’s Needful Things. Marveling at how he takes a concept and a belief of his, sets it to quirky characters. Creates a setting based on a place he loves, and takes his shot. His art. How small town washed up people become prone to obsession over items that bring them nostalgia or comfort. What they are willing to do to anyone, to be able to feel better.
In the movie, a young Ed Harris plays Alan Pangborn, the town sheriff. The book is better of course.
I marvel at how I can read a chilling description of two women killing each other and not be kept up at night. Perhaps my ability to find the art in this fiction stays my traumatized mind from its post. I typical do not like to fill it with horror. I have enough reels of my own, should I want a chill during spooky season.
I’m mostly focused on being present. And realizing how much I wasn’t. How unwell and dissociated I had been a lot of my life, without really being aware of it. That has been a slow burn. Burning off shame. Shedding self-consciousness ,and seeing what lies under all of that.
That’s where I am.
It’s a process that requires time and cultivating, and I’m committed.
I’m still figuring out balance with that regard.
Since I’m forty I moved wrong the other day. I am now on steroids and doing physical therapy two times weekly. Lol. So that’s happening. I used to freak at the smallest setback physically. So now I just allow life to pause me when needed.
I began working with a new client last night. They work in a profession I’m intrigued with. The person was very solid and grounded, and my energy matched suit during the session. The person is in their 60’s so that makes sense. Of course that’s not the only factor. But I really enjoyed holding space for their story, and having the privilege of them entrusting their heart and pain to me upon our first meeting.
People’s beautiful resilience and heart captivate me in such a way. I am starting to be able to believe I could be captivating too.
Without being constantly pushed by any force to get out into the world, I now believe it is beginning to happen naturally. And I believe those that have told me the world needs to hear what I have to say.
So I’m working on gaining security behind my voice. Peeling back layers of shame and trauma that attempt to sabotage my goals and dreams.
I read, I walk, I write, I counsel, I love, and therefore I am.
My relationships with my children are healing nicely. It’s still a lot to be with the ways I’ve caused them pain from my own ignorance and my own traumas. I have to continue to make amends and forgive myself, and that’s no easy feat.
I love my clients past and present. I think about them in my daily life and send them love and light.
I think about my life experiences and those I have loved deeply. With every part of me, and how those experiences have shaped me.
I’m doing a course in miracles.
I’m about to go on a cruise to Bermuda. Only slightly nervous about the possibility of motion sickness, as my body likes to feel firmly planted and in control. Ha, what an illusion. I don’t know if that, or the fact I won’t work for 8 ish days is the more frightening prospect. Both are uncharted territory.
Which is a theme lately in my personal counseling. I am in uncharted territory my counselor said to me the other day. Mostly outside my pattern in most way, maybe some days slipping inside it a little.
What can I say I’m a work in progress.
I’m really happy I wrote this post and I’m hopeful I’m ready to make this a weekly if not a daily practice.
Oh and I’m obsessed with learning Spanish on Duolingo. I marvel at how my brain can recall so much and it’s just there without even trying. I often struggled at age normative times to learn another language. And it’s thrilling to realize that was likely because so much space was taken in my brain by hyper vigilance.
I marvel at the gift of being able to be understanding of myself now, and to be able to communicate in a way I feel understood, which is the real magic.
My heart is continuing to open. I’m more consistent with so many things, and that’s a path I’m very grateful to be walking. No longer beating myself into submission. Less remissions, sparsely placed omissions. Oh there I go rhyming. Can’t help it.
I remember it all too well and Taylor Swift’s Clean were on repeat this morning.
Despite the repeated migraines, nausea, joint pain, and other afflictions, I had to get out and walk this morning. To move some energy. My thoughts were dark and intrusive. I’ve been clenching my jaw and tossing and turning.
There’s a combination of distressing things happening currently, and all around that is regular every day life. Life that I love. The distress threatens to swallow, but it can’t with this spirit. It’ll never break my spirit. Et Lux Intenebris Lucet.
An ex lover and partner’s mother is actively dying. In one year’s time cancer has ravaged her. I had no idea how something like this would feel. The memories it would walk me through. I’ve never been so close to death before. I never realized how entirely I love, and that no longer being connected to the people never removes it. It just exists there.
It helps me to experience myself as loving and I need that right now with everything else I’m going through. The threat of parental alienation is real. I was programmed to always believe it was me, that’s bad, wrong, causing things. And while I’m by no means perfect my perception of myself has been the biggest battle in my life.
It’s plugged right in. People have plugged right in to my trauma and taken over where the previous left off, and the worst part is it felt like home. Love that wasn’t love at all, but a mask for insecurity, a bizarre attempt at control, a lot of things. But not love.
The impending loss of this woman who was a mother to me, one of very few, surrogate mothers. Who cried as I wore a wedding dress. Who loved my children and I…. sits like a stone in my stomach. I am heavy, foggy, and struggling with focus.
I burst into tears to her and her husband when I asked permission to marry their daughter and I meant it. I meant it. I didn’t mean to be the way I was, to not have room for anyone else’s feelings to exist. To be consumed inside my mind. To not stay. Those I didn’t mean. There was a lot I didn’t understand much less meant.
She is happily married now to a person who is well suited and she’s happy. She still loves my children and her partner holds that connection sacred. So they visited a few weeks back. I was nervous and they handed me their little one. Welcoming. Another baby I wasn’t able to have with a woman.
They are about to have their second, any day, while any day the glue and the matriarch will take her last breath. Vibrant, laughing, alive, kind, loving, Karen. It is unthinkable. I cannot even think it because what comes with this will be all manner of intrusive thoughts of myself or my loved ones going like this.
I stare numbly at the wall.
It’s almost show time. The time I show up for my client’s and give all I’ve got until I run out. My energy, focus, love, wisdom. What meaning would my life have without this exchange. It is not a question, it’s a statement. It’s everything. The sharing of knowledge that could make a moment of passing even a tiny bit lighter. I hope..
I hope for the family who is saying goodbye that the new lives beginning, at times provide temporary anesthesia for the pain.
Mother daughter relationships are complex. I’m struggling immensely in my own right now. This morning my mind is busy sending it’s energy to my former lover and friend because I know what that connection means to her, and what losses she’s already endured.
In some ways this is one of my first. The first up close death of one of my surrogate mother’s, and a loss to people I love deeply.
When love is true it still exists whether near or far. There is so much of that in my heart right now. Love and loss, the full spectrum.
I am learning it’s just still all right there. Ulay Ulay….
I am grateful for my deep connections and all of the love that’s helped me get connected to myself, every thread is honored.
Twin A begins college today…. Twin B prepares to move out West, a one way ticket for now with so many possibilities, my family is changing. It is a beautiful agony. One that I don’t know if I could have ever prepared for.
There will be a funeral soon. Life is just an endless cycle of birth and death I suppose after all, and this clinician is most concerned with the meaning between the lines and what’s beneath the surface. It’s not a bad way to live. It’s not too shabby.
Remembering and forgetting moments all while simultaneously creating new ones, because never give up is something that I live by. For me there is no other way.
Will you hear my heart tearing when the plane takes off, and the last breath is taken? You never know the last time you’ll see someone, hug them, appreciate their laugh. That’s a lot to be with, that reality.
What I do know today however is that real love never dies. It only transforms and is transforming. What a comforting sentiment amidst all of this existential suffering…..
Christina Aguilera Just a Fool is todays angsty song …..
Random thoughts before I begin my client day. I’m out walking around the green. Looking longingly at benches to read on. Longing….
I’m contemplating words of an ex partner, some of the worst that could ever be said to me. We all become our parents in the end was the gist of it. I vehemently disagree and in my case I’m no where close, but being accused by scorned lovers when the relationship died was very unpleasant.
I went to lunch at Edge of The Woods yesterday. Their wraps have really gone down hill since the pandemic. The experience was lovely though. Exploring and finding new things.
I’m in the midst of discovering and becoming, finding the kind of adventures I want. Without that being daunting and feeling filled with land mines.
The sun beats down on my skin….. sweat drips down the small of my back and my neck and I love it. Primal.
Peaceful and primal is possible? I should think yes.
I bought a gardens something protein powder yesterday and I’m excited to make a smoothie with it this morning, even though it never tastes like smoothie king. Oh well. Drip drip….. sweat.:.. music…. Movement…: dreams!
I’m craving and pursuing health in all matters and as a human that’s hard. Consistency is hard, but I love the fruit of this labor. The flavor melting in my mouth. Descriptives.
So I wrote this the other day and didn’t post it. And now I’m in Asbury New Jersey. Joisy. Sun, sand, walks, reading, kiddos (little ones not mine), and just observing life.
And now this is weeks later again and I’m home on another adventure. I have a date with twin A today. My eighteen year old beauty who loves horses, and has a gigantic heart. We are getting lobstah rolls and then let’s be honest probably icecream. Mmmm.
It’s a Friday, therapy in the mornings, often a client or two peppered in to offset the ending of financial support from the other parent, and then an endless span of hours that’s usually filled faster than they can unfold. Today is pest control (mice ick), and notes, many many notes.
I bought a microphone, the one doctor Ramani has, lol. On Amazon Prime day of course. Will it be another item in my collection to dust, like the video camera and pulse oximeters to do Gottman therapy with. Sigh. Will I have a podcast? How can I choose just one thing?
Where is there room for me in my life. It’s all about you, the critic from past relationships gone bad chirps. Everything is always about you. Nothing was ever about me. Cognitive dissonance. Trapped, in the past, in the future, inside a coping mechanism.
Caged
Free
All or nothing
This is me….
I was talking to my therapist the other day about how I had imagined my life. As it turns out my first divorce still haunts me in the form of how that has effected my children’s lives. The way things were dealt with or not dealt with.
Anyway, I was telling her I had always had a dream of being with that one person your whole life. Knowing them in a way where you know all their selves. Where you grow together. I was devastated by divorce and realizing I was gay, it was a betrayal of everything I had dreamt of and everything I set out to do.
(Everything after became a dissociated blur in so many ways. In such a hurry to correct. To still have that with someone while my kids were little. And all the rushing was always the thing that made life the hardest. I had no discipline or no secure foundation to know that. To know there was another way. I didn’t know. Can you forgive me? Can I forgive me. Please.)
Which was to create a family that stayed through it all.
Now I just try to find where I fit ….into life, into my self, into another person, another family…. It’s often overwhelming, it’s often beautiful.
Mostly lost, a little found, inside a life where insecurity used to abound. There’s a budding security.
She reflected that I had that with my kids, but it doesn’t feel like it, because I was always desperately searching for my lost self.
I was
And desperately seeking to be loved, and more to be understood, when I didn’t understand myself.
And maybe that means they were searching for me…. That’s heartbreaking, but when I go back and look I held, I read, I snuggled, I was right there. I had the privilege of being home with them their most formative years. Do their little bodies remember? Will my painful mind?
What do I do with all of this now?
I get up and try again…. To be more loving, more present, to listen and hold space. To believe it’s not too late to be the mom I dreamed of having and being. It’s much more difficult now as I have to translate this to a template where they have their own lives and need me differently.
I want to go back and also I don’t….
I keep moving forward….
Being the change
At the conclusion of this post, which is now, I’ll be full circle to where the post began. Feet hitting the pavement….. pounding.
A childhood memory. There are very few. My skin sticking to the leather in summer. Before seatbelts were a thing. Listening to Robert Palmer with the woman who gave birth to me. I thought she was so beautiful then. She was everything. Oh so cool. Beautiful. The Sun shown on her regardless of how dangerous she was for me.
This morning I’m thinking about addiction and how it eats everything in it’s path.
I’m thinking about my own propensities towards it, and the differences between those with the actual gene and me. The ones I believe to be true anyway. I’m not sure if I have it too and I’m just committed or if I truly don’t understand the disease.
Well that’s not entirely true as I work myself through. We still have the power of choice and no one said those are easy. Not easy but still a choice to get help and stay a course that leads to feeling better in the bigger picture versus the moment. God it takes a lot of work.
I watched 28 Days last night. They do such a good job portraying the blur and how easy it is to not care about those around you while in the throes. God it’s painful. For the person struggling and their loved ones.
Today in therapy I will be working on some of my own triggers around addiction, and I’ll go see Julie after my traditional therapy to bolster that work. My energy healer. I don’t know what I would do without both, all of my therapies. I’d be lost. I’ve been lost. It isn’t pleasant.
My triggers. The sights, smells, sounds, the tiniest Indication of addiction in so many capacities. Even the attitude an addict has. I have no patience or compassion in this area. I know I’d be told by loved ones that I’m being hard on myself.
Let’s see if I can walk myself gently into my own truth. A favorite form of healing. By being able and courageous enough to write out my truths, even if they could hurt someone else.
Addiction has affected my life so profoundly and from a young age. I’m not alone in this. In fact it probably has most people in one way or another.
I’m honestly not sure how mine compares, but I am sure the comparing doesn’t matter. So let’s find the facts if I give myself permission. My predatory father got my younger mother into cocaine. I know that. I was born a product of that. An unhealthy unbalanced relationship between an older married man (as I have been told) and a teenage woman raised Footloose religious style.
What I remember of this was the powder on the mirrors with the razor blade. A blur of drugs and alcohol and bad men, and my mother being wildly unpredictable emotionally. The scars are immense. The triggers that I don’t even know when they happen. They take me over emotionally. It feels embarrassing and shameful to have things inside that can be activated without your consent and make you react so intensely and then be ashamed about it.
Shame is the ultimate addiction isn’t it? Along with co dependency. The attempt to distract from all of this by focusing on what other people should do to get better, to the exclusion of the self.
Sigh. How does anyone figure this out.
I get easily addicted to comfort, after having gone without so long. And sometimes it blinds me to my own higher truths and I have to force myself outside it so I can balance my reality and get a clear look.
Clarity is something I often focus on in my energy healings. My lens is often dirty with the carnage that the triggers leave. It’s so desperately painful to live like this. It’s also infinitely beautiful, the awareness and gratitude it creates. That alone leaves reasons for living when so many from my background succumb to addiction or take their own lives eventually.
They remain haunted and often don’t find ways to cope that are sustaining or healthy.
God I hope my nearest and dearest find their way through the dark wood. I don’t want to have to do life without their smiles and hearts warming the way. I don’t know what I would do.
I am in many ways finding mine, but I am committed to awareness and not repeating my mistakes. That I will say. When there’s always so many new ones to make it would be boring to run on an infinite loop. But patterns themselves are heavily woven into the dynamic.
Anything can be addicting. Grief. Pancakes. Dogs. Sweaters. Books 😉 I mean I could go on forever. It’s harder to see where we don’t need more of a good thing. Notice I did not list cats 😉 a trauma trigger in and of itself.
The only thing you can do with someone struggling with it is love them, never withdraw love, but have radical boundaries so you don’t explode with anger and resentment daily. That is what I’ve learned most recently about the beast.
To take care of yourself even better, battle your own demons with even more passion, so you can show the way. Showing the way is much more productive than telling it I have found. Practice more, preach less, and just be in your own integrity. And to do that you can’t get caught up in the emotional traps the dynamic sets up. Anger, resentment, rage, futility, draining of energy.
All of that merely feeds the disease.
I am learning…..
The first rule of addiction is don’t lie, to yourself or anyone else. Don’t lie about anything ever. Lying lowers your vibration and takes you out of your integrity. I would say lying is the hallmark of addiction. Withholding, shaping the truth to try and reduce shame.
I can feel a lie immediately. I feel it in my bones, and even when I believe the best in things the truth eventually accumulates and rises to the surface.
I can’t think of anything more painful than a lie. It causes so much destruction in its wake for so many. Lies are felt whether they are discovered or not. I cannot abide a lie. There are some special rules for the people who have been neglected and abused in childhood. You cannot lie to one of them. They had their soul stolen at a young age, they cannot tolerate anything else. They should not have to.
I should not have to. I cannot.
If you break my trust you break my soul. If someone I love breaks my soul, that is the one thing that can lead to giving up on myself, which is addiction. Depression. Giving up.
My heart can handle breaking. It’s not ideal, but I can understand the natural changes of life and human nature. It’s understandable. Someone that says they love you lying to you, that isn’t.
I’m not interested in excuses. Mine or anyone else’s. I’ve been accused of being hard on people, but I do not believe this is too much to ask. To choose to be surrounded by people who show up for themselves and live in integrity.
That is my expectation for my one precious life and I won’t back down from that.
“And you call me up again just to break me like a promise So casually cruel in the name of being honest I’m a crumpled up piece of paper lying here ‘Cause I remember it all, all, all”
Let’s just see what comes. It’s time….I always think. And then I get busy and don’t let the wings of inspiration take me to that special place. Home.
Speaking of home…. I bought one. Mine. A redo of sorts. There will be a house warming, why not, really because it’s already a warm home. This time death or any other death will not cloud my accomplishment or my joy.
I often just marvel and awe at the fact I am able to own a home like this just in my name. I can’t tell you how much work it has taken to get a healthy relationship with money, or anything really. I could just cry thinking about it.
I am finishing books, the most recent of which is Momma and The Meaning of Life by Yalom of course. And I’ll post some excerpts from it that I love! Prior to that was the Honey Bus, I related to that one so much, and found parts of myself that may have never been recovered without it. I’m also working on Hillbilly Elegy, The Tender Bar, and East of Eden.
East of Eden I could take a lifetime to read as one page is so delicious I’m description, metaphor, and insight…. That it’s too good not to savor slowly. It’s the kind of book that you drink in every word, and pray it lasts, because you never want it to be over.
I am blissfully present most of the time these days. My brain no longer on fire. Sure the spirals occasionally threaten, the over thinking my brain is so naturally programmed for, but it’s not natural for me any longer. Peace has taken over.
I lived as a walking talking trauma response for almost 40 years before I became aware of how severe my own was. It’s like working with clients was always walking me towards that truth gently at a pace I could tolerate. Funny as I would often see myself as not gentle with others, because my style is very direct and protective and I’m sometimes too full with knowledge. Who knew there could be such a thing.
Sometimes it isn’t knowledge that does the most healing, those words are hard for me to say without choking on the resistance. I have learned the heart had the most healing power, once you can figure out how to get the guards to stand down.
We are all in this together, my defense mechanisms and me. I thank them for their service daily and also let them enjoy their retirement to a degree. They will likely always carry and always watch carefully, but peace is their main objective.
I have learned peace is just another way to protect oneself. Peace of mind is a powerful ally.
Being so disconnected with myself and keeping away from my children while focusing on providing has taken its toll and given me a fair amount of regrets. Fear is a great thief. So much pain is caused with it being the guiding force. I wade through it daily in my work, and as I process my life and the meaning of it.
My mind is an interesting force some days it can remember everything and some days it can’t even catch a thought. I used to become so disturbed by these inconsistencies and now I attempt to embrace them and it with compassion.
The truth of the matter is I live daily with a lot of psychological pain. It’s a fact. I asked Melissa (my therapist) the other day how sick am I? She worries it was self deprecation I’m sure, and I assure her I need it for understanding and validation of my pain. We explore for curiosity at first because she can’t answer without context. We can’t answer without context, could be disastrous.
Later she concedes that I am very traumatized. It’s a fact at this point. It’s a fact that I lived without the knowledge or language for my entire life. Just stumbling through it in excruciating disconnection from myself, and being able to access stable logic to balance me…. Keep me floating steady.
I use my trauma daily in my practice, to inform my care that I give, and to help others like me connect dots to understanding themselves. And while I’m working the pain eases. It returns white hot in almost all other times, but while I’m using my pain to help it all but disappears. This is the point in Man’s Search for Meaning. The light that shines out of the darkness. To be a light in someone’s dark, lights my way as well. You cannot share light without also being in its glow.
This is how I survive my painful mind, that looks for threat everywhere. That causes so many triggers and flashbacks that I must manage daily. I must manage myself and not turn that into a negative view about myself. That’s a lot of managing. Never mind the raising of children, the keeping of a home, and owning a successful practice.
I have so many triggers. It’s so easy to distort reality and it’s taken a lifetime to admit that which feels like defeat or failure, when it is actually a very real disability.
It is brain damage. All of those times I was teased or insulted for not being able to concentrate, or why I can’t remember how to get somewhere even after twenty times of driving there. The worst of which is that my kids feel like I don’t care when my mind drifts when they wanted so much to talk to me about their day. My mind was thinking about our next meal, money, how I was going to feel any acceptance or belonging, but for them I was just absent during all those times.
It never was a lack of caring. That misunderstanding cuts so deep. The misunderstanding of myself as bad, wrong, deeply flawed has been my dark passenger all of my life.
This is the first time I’ve ever lived without it as much as humanly possible. There will always be a tendency, but I’ve gained control of my own mind using awareness. and tons of trauma work.
Melissa decodes me to myself each session when my mind attempts to twist things into a narrative that makes sense, a battle. She helps my mind make a peace treaty before the troops are even on the field. Their uniforms are getting dusty, they are getting out of shape and playing cards, but they will always be waiting if I need them. Security.
If I don’t get a dose, my mind starts to become cluttered with intrusive thoughts and I start to fall back into triggers. After two years I moved to one time weekly and sometimes I’m barely breathing with the rally of the troops just before Friday mornings. I have held on so tightly until I can understand myself and others in a better light.
I breathe with relief after a session…. Even the heaviest of sighs are with so much lightness Of being. It burns off, the anxiety eventually burns off with enough exposure. It’s walking through the fire that’s tricky.
Anyway I promised some Yalom, we are almost there. Some details before…. Twin B also has Crohns disease and is on Humira. Not the thing I wanted to pass to my kids. It’s heartbreaking. 🙁 it’s interesting watching her navigating this and everyone just says she’s lucky to have me, and that’s still hard to accept as true, though I’m much further on that journey.
My girls are days away from high school graduation. They are strong, kind, insightful, warm, and I could not be more proud, and my son as well. He’s sensitive in the best way, though that also sometimes turns against him. I hope I’ll be able to help with that, just by showing up. I am finally able to enjoy my children without being terrified of fucking them up, since I already have of course.
But finally I can see more good, than the bad. More good in me and from me, and not hold myself in contempt for the ways I learned to survive. For how my mind became programmed. It truly wasn’t my fault, and I truly have always taken responsibility for my own healing. It’s just been a very long road.
I am tired. I am so far beyond tired. Yesterday I walked almost 7 miles working on being healthy and today I woke up sore in all my joints, and aching. Every attempt I make seems to end in punishment, but I don’t choose to keep that narrative. I take deep breaths, pauses, ask for what I need, and keep showing up.
I stretch. I cry when I need. I say how I feel. I am learning and teaching and living. I appreciate life as a gift, even amidst pain. The pain comes and goes and there are moments in life so sweet that all can be forgotten and I’m blessed with so many of those.
I didn’t realize how shaped I am by the theories that resonate. Yalom is in so many ways my guiding force. “Dr. Whitehorn genuinely wanted to be taught. He was a collector and had in this manner accumulated an astounding treasure trove of factual curios over the years. You and your patients both win he would say, if you let them teach you enough about their lives and interests. Learn about their lives; you will not only be edified but you will ultimately learn all you need to know about their Illness.”
“By allowing the patient to teach him Dr. Whitehorn related to the person, rather than the pathology, of that patient. His strategy invariable enhanced both the patient’s self regard and his or her willingness to be self revealing.
Yalom is honest with patients in a way that at times makes me cringe with imagining. We are not supposed to say something that will hurt them, and god forbid it’s not socially appropriate. One of the vignettes is about a client of his who hears his honest thoughts about her accidentally on a recorded tape he gave her. She never reveals this to him, but finds ways to make it as if she’s found out other people have said this and asks him if he feels she’s this or that.
He is never dishonest with her, and so even with that level of a breach the work becomes successful because her anger at his words motivated her to truly look at herself. The truth itself is what motivated her, when nothing else had budged.
An honest look is worth its weight in gold as far as transformation, and it’s one of the hardest things to do.
All this time later I can finally hold space for the ways my trauma has hurt my children and me. I can operate from a softer space, and from this place worlds open up to me.
I can feel in real time, not only think about how I should feel. That is something that I’m still only getting glimmers of, but it’s a beginning and it will grow.
I have a patience I never had before, mostly with myself, and It has given me a new world to explore within myself and how I see others.
I guess I had (have a lot to say) no surprise there. Where do I start, where do I stop, what goes where? Finally that’s not so overwhelming that I don’t move. For now I’ll just speak, the work will organize itself once I trust it enough.
I cry for how long I’ve judged my process and my decisions and choices. I cry for how hard I’ve been on myself when I’ve been surviving my whole life. Just because no one could see it. Judged for the ways I chose to save myself. Because I’m a mother, these choices meant I was selfish. The worst part is I allowed myself to believe those criticisms and as a result pulled away from my children.
I pulled away because I didn’t want to infect them with my particular disease. Survival is a great burden, and it’s hardly understood, except by those who have had to. I didn’t want them to understand, and then to feel close I needed them to. And that too became and unrealistic demand. I judged myself so harshly, and held on tight to that.
Holding on and letting go. Figuring out what to hold on to and what to let go of. The stakes feeling so high. I’ve softened all of that. Mistakes are the portals of discovery. In fact some of my most recent joy had so many in the beginning and that is what has made it feel perfect. The imperfect.
Because it’s real. You know? 😉
This morning on my sacred Sunday I am reflecting and wafting through my life. I’m listening to Exile by Taylor Swift and Bon Iver. I am just overwhelmed by the abundance I’ve created in my life by the self-work I’ve done. I’ve done the impossible, changed my wiring in so many ways. People don’t do this, but I am. And I’m fucking proud.
I’m so emotional lately…. That is when I can stop holding my breath. I still do that. I hold on and wait for the bottom to drop out, but I know when I’m doing that, and when I’m not, and it makes such a difference and when I’m feeling safe, when I can reflect, the tears immediately come. The gratitude. The joy.
I made it out alive and I kept my self on ice, ready for exploration once safe. Now I’m here, and so often I’m overwhelmed that it feels like I won’t get the experience in some way. Even when I’m right here in it.
This is a journey not a destination. This journey is so beautiful it brings me to my knees with emotion. The good, the bad, and everything in between.
I ran so fast and so hard. I ran on empty so long, that it’s hard to know how to operate on a full tank, and not just keep watching the gauge. No matter how many times I check, it’s full, won’t stop me from trying. Some things are hard wired.
I’m operating this new soft self. My mind tries to drag me to every worst case scenario and exhaust me into that familiar irritability, but I’ve hedged my bets with all the support I’ve allowed myself permission to seek, and to accept it.
My authentic self is finally taking the lead…. Slow and steady wins the race. I am steady. I am a rock. I am reliable and trustworthy. I am consistent and nurturing and so loving. I can see myself and it’s overwhelming.
I spent most of my life overwhelmed by fear, and now I get the privilege of being overwhelmed by love.
I just took a deep breath. Whenever I’m overwhelmed now, that’s what I do. The restless settles into security and then the fruits of my labors shine and sparkle all around. I blink my eyes and try to bring them in and out of focus. Yes Christina this is real.
It isn’t any longer all or nothing. My life is piloted by self trust, not story telling. And I will not shame myself for what developed out of survival, for I have always lived the philosophy of Maya Angelou. Once you know better do better. And I always have.
And now after 41 years on this planet I’m in my body. Through hell and back so many times. Fighting myself, fighting every battle that crossed my path, permanently in fight and flight mode. The story protected the mechanism and as long as that was the case the pattern repeated.
Now I am broken free. Out of jail and purgatory. It’s like having to learn everything from the beginning again, so vulnerable and raw.
I’m so exhausted, prone, in a good way. Laying spent across the earth finally without all the thoughts of illness and death.
Everything is a first right now in so many ways. Out of the dark night. Reborn. Now when I don’t want something to be over rather than dissociation, I open wider and connect more. It’s never over, the moments, they become absorbed into my being.
Becoming solid, whole, and present.
I am present, alive, for the first time in this way. Overwhelmed by possibility….. life is beautiful. I know I always believed in that, but I never felt it, not like this.
Recovery is a long road, and it can be beautiful. It doesn’t have to be dark. Turn on the light. Allow the universe to have your back and shine its gifts on your pain. Everything is connected….
I was getting kind of used to being someone you loved
It’s Tree Day and Koenig Family Therapy is getting a facelift, a new front door. I’m sad to let the original one go, but it just didn’t fit right, cold air was coming in, and it wasn’t working. It’s bittersweet, what a metaphor.
I finished the limited Netflix series Maid last night. It was a show I wasn’t going to watch because I’m careful with my psyche and triggers, but as it turned out it’s something I needed to see. It’s so ironic that my initial training was in domestic violence. My first internship was at a shelter, and at that time I was so naive.
I was more caught up in work dramas and my own head to fully capture in my mind the importance of the work we were doing and the great minds I was around. That internship yielded a mistake that would teach me one of my greatest lessons. I was so green at that time. I made a lot of excuses for myself. I remember a supervisor there, not mine, helped point that out to me and coached me through a situation. She told me just to say I made a mistake and not all the reasons I felt I made it.
I took that lesson and kept it and cultivated it. It was a seed that’s still growing and still needs to be nurtured. It helped me learn at that time the significance of being with our mistakes. And if that isn’t what I’m having to do right now.
I’ve told so many stories about what was going on. They matched my ability to tolerate discomfort about myself. It doesn’t leave you much to trust when you know you can lie to yourself to feel better, but that won’t get you very far. Most of this isn’t conscious unless you do the work for it to be.
Sometimes I’m ashamed of the work, it feels heavy and too serious and the bullies of the world would tell me just don’t think so much. I’ve been told that my whole life, but what wasn’t happening was people having the understanding of why I was so serious. They just didn’t get it, so I for sure couldn’t and didn’t. More low self esteem just got internalized. The walls of the shame house got reinforced until I was inside a cel.
My trauma has been a solitary confinement I was longing to be out of, but I’d reinforced my survival mechanisms so much that it felt (it feels) impossible sometimes. Until my therapist reminds me I’m already out of the cel I just don’t have any program for this new life.
Stockholmsyndrome is real and so is domestic violence. The worst part about it is that often no one can see the mental prison: I’ve been in a mental prison, for so long, that freedom feels like a heavier burden than captivity. I longed for my captor and my mistake. I longed for rage and contempt and mercurial torture, and then I shamed myself for that too.
In an episode of Maid yesterday which I sat and watched by myself…. you watch her lose herself inside the abuse, and it cried hard. It punched me in the face. It punched me in the gut, it beat me raw with the truth.
When she goes to the shelter again and she just rests for days, and can’t tolerate anything. When she doesn’t remember her favorite color, it slapped me across the face hard. It hurt so much I couldn’t breathe. How she walked away from the healthy person who loved her well and ended up back with her abuser because he’s the one who understood her mother and what she came from. It’s excruciating.
She went back for herself….. I went back for myself. When I stood there that day refusing to give up my ground it was about ME. I didn’t have any relationship with me. I didn’t even have a favorite color. I didn’t know what I liked, It was anything goes.
Everything I set out in the world to do was to not ever choose an abusive relationship. I’d abuse myself first and that’s what I did. I held myself to the fire to become someone worthy, all of these years. I squeezed every drop of me that ever emerged to make sure and stay on task. To make something of myself.
I held myself together for my kids, and every person who has ever judged me for my behavior has never seen what I was trying to do. Holding a River of shame that roared beneath the surface constantly at bay. I’ve been fighting for my life. I was holding back all of these memories that felt like they would kill me. I just tried to get away from them.
I used my whole will to try and make the nightmares stop, to walk away from fucked up love, to leave my mother. And even when I watch something like Maid I feel guilty and bad for leaving abuse. I feel guilty and bad for getting out alive. No matter how sick I got in the situation.
I’ve been fighting for my life. I was fighting for my life when you met me, and in that way I did put my kids first, even though I’ve been consistently called selfish. You have no idea what burdens I’ve been carrying inside. I separated myself from them so I could function all these years, but what I didn’t realize is I couldn’t have a self either.
I’ve been going back into the burning building and collecting her one piece at a time. I’m not a hero, I’ve made so many mistakes, but I am a warrior. And I’ll never give up the fight.
This is an excerpt from my morning pages. It’s been a tear filled morning. “Set the bed on fire…. Teddy. I had a rough wake up. Talked to Jen and didn’t even know how bad I was feeling. What about for the people who have choices as far as domestic violence. I chose to stay. The less visible something is the harder it is to get out. I felt empowered by choosing despite being the target of a rage that dialed right into the stream of shame that always ran just beneath the surface. Think the pink goo from the original Ghostbusters. I kept trying to dam it up, rather than drain it. Hustle for my worthy…. Thinking of Beene. That’s the only love I’ve known, the hustle. A narcissist demands loyalty without actually providing anything except rage and contempt. I cry for the little girl in me that thought that was love. I’m living with the consequences and the growth. I was always going to have to go back for me. I put it off until my kids were 20 and almost 18…. I patched holes in a sinking ship furiously. And now I’m a variety of tired I can’t even describe and a loneliness that’s like I’ve been hollowed out. I creak and rock. My bones call to you from their separate skin. I make myself translucent to let you in…. In the absence of fear, a Jewel lyric, I’ve loved a long time. This doesn’t make me any kind of hero, a warrior maybe, but I sure don’t look like one to all of the people I’ve tried to do love with, and since I could only view myself externally I just internalized more shame.
It has been vicious this pain and abuse. I’ve been fighting for my life. In my own head where I was banished to live…..
Knowledge is power, once someone gets their story clear, healing can happen. This is a cause I can get behind with my whole being. It’s what I do, and as I live out my own story with courage I become more and more capable to do this.
Clarity and Connection has resonated a lot with me this year. Yung Pueblo. It will hopefully be named poetry book of the year.
The fog lifts and I emerge and that’s almost the heaviest burden of all. When the wires are so crossed that possibility feels like a heavier burden than limitations.
Scarcity is a cruel master…. I have to actually learn how to accept abundance. ….
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.
