Bucket list: read all Stephen Kings books in order before he kicks the bucket
I can’t tell you how many times I begin my memoir. A solid beginning paragraph that engages the reader and makes them want more. People always give me feedback they would want to read more. Even if it’s just my circle. And there is not just about my circle, the weary, brave, and beautiful are my people.
So I am going to share what came so easily this morning in my pages. Something I’ve done a thousand times and then never followed through with because I give my time and energy so freely. I am not resentful of this, it’s what separates a man from being a martyr. In fact it’s not only a calling, but also one of the most fulfilling ways to live a life.
I sit here a “normal” woman, with regular responsibilities. This morning I’m awaiting the delivery of a new dishwasher. I must confess I read the fine print last night and it said if you click the haul away option you must have the old appliance out on the curb ready. Yeah I know nothing about that, and considering an average pink Himalayan salt lamp from home goods burst into flames and tried to kill me the other day, I think I’ll pass.
I’ll play dumb, when it comes to being an electrician I don’t have to play. And hopefully they will take pity on a poor single mother and remove the thing for me. Sidebar: I think I’ve been watching too much Schitt’s Creek and channeling my inner Moira. The only kind of pity I’ll take, sympathy for heavy lifting and home improvements I know nothing about, but am slowly learning after being thrown in the deep end alone. Because I will tell you, that I refuse to drown.
Anyway my story begins…
“I imagined it the same way I had a million times before. Getting the call that my mother is dead. These days I don’t even know who it would be from. These days my response I most often hear gurgling up from my depths is …. It’s over. It’s over.
The turmoil I’ve lived with, worrying it was me who is bad or wrong for walking away from loving her, fixing her, comforting her. Soul death by slow poisoning is how I would characterize this disturbance. Yet I am so removed from the memories that would help me piece together the daily battles of my reality.
Which are knowing what I want, need, and who I am. How I feel when I feel. What decisions to make without vacillating in terror. Freezing, fawning, fighting, falling….
When my therapist asks me any of these questions I just go blank. I dissociate when asked anything directly about or for me…
And that’s as far as I got in my pages, but as I write it here I was immediately ready to go further. So that’s a great sign. Another great sign is the consistent purging of what’s unhealthy for and of me this past couple of years. I have been shedding layers of habits, belief systems, memories. With this shedding has been tremendous loss, things I never meant to shed, never intended to, but they went nevertheless.
Some of this shedding has created extreme self doubt conflicts that take all my energy and leave me broken and bleeding for days. I recover. We do recover.
One percent better every day. I had been determined to be perfect all the time. The only way I ever saw to even obtain an ounce of love. Those wires were crossed. And like the new dishwasher that will be installed today (hopefully), my functioning is new. New as we know it is very scary.
I won’t know what buttons do what. And you can bet your ass I’m a trial and error gal, not an instruction manual reader despite my belief in knowledge is power. The best teacher is a lived experience. Try and fail, try and fail. From the delightful Pema, Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better.
I tried to be Pema, Elizabeth, Brene, and on and on…. Friends who seemed to have the magical formula based on their lovely pictures of family and events.
I tried to be everyone but myself and now she’s so buried it’s sometimes hard to breathe.
I’m coming up for air…. Ash, dirt, water… use whatever metaphor for you like because I’m about to breathe from now on, and for forever.
Ok the dishwasher is 10 minutes out. It’s showtime. Damsel in distress here I come… I’m not above it 😉 I’m not above anyone or anything….
Often my enthusiasm was all I had to hold onto, now I sit in all the ways it’s gotten me in trouble….. readjusting always….
I am raw this morning…. I usually am after family therapy. Thank goodness I’m able to catch nuance and notice the most important part is that we are allowed to talk about our pain. This therapy truly has me practicing what I preach.
However if I insert any of my experience into the sessions then it is immediately justifying. That’s difficult to sit with. So I’m going over what’s the difference between justifying and also wanting room for your experience to be considered and seen. I think the difference is follow through with changed behavior. The words in the moment don’t do anything but invalidate the persons experience and I am truly sitting with having to hear hard things and sit in my mistakes as a parent and not squirm out of it, but also ask that I am also seen.
Not an excuse or a justification, but I need to matter in the equation and with parent child relationships “it’s not about you” applies. It never was about me. I began at such a deficit in attention, safety, love…. That I am tired in a way that has me operate in ways to outsource things.
I outsourced love I couldn’t find within myself amidst the survival, and I have to find out how not to shame myself for that as I am watching how it has hurt my kids. It’s also been widely judged by a variety of people. I could not be in three places at once. I made choices. Choices for a career and self development and trying for love as well, so I could not only love them, but also show them how to live.
I have to look at it like now I am strong enough to weather the storm of showing up in a new ways regardless of the built up pain that often comes at me. It’s almost unbearable, but when I realize I’m being allowed the opportunity to build trust one interaction at a time and I am following through, albeit still with mistakes, I gather the strength to go on.
I want desperately to be understood and to have a safe space to relax and rest in, and I’ve had to create that in myself so my children can have it at some point, if I haven’t made them into overly independent (a trauma response of course) by now. A certain amount of self sufficiency is good, abandonment is not.
I felt abandoned my whole life, and as a result my children felt that abandonment through me. It is heart breaking. My only solace is that grace and compassion and understanding will help us all heal. It’s finding that balance of having it for myself while fighting the intense need to protect myself at all costs.
Courage under fire
That line is what I most resonate with right now. And don’t give up on me. Me to me, and me to them. Please don’t give up on me. I never wanted to be selfish in the ways that I was, and a first hand experience has changed my heart.
In short I have hurt enough from hurting others that it drives me to change. What always got lost in all of this however was my SELF. There was none. Only responses and triggers and survival templates.
Now I am growing a self….
Growing a self from scratch, while providing a modicum of something I never had.
It says in the trauma book by Oprah and Dr Bruce Perry, you can’t give what you don’t have, and so I found a way. I always believed where there is a will there is a way. And if there wasn’t a will, if I didn’t cultivate that belief system, I would not be here today to be writing.
For much of my life my will to survive is all I had.
I am struggling and have always with the shoulds imposed on parents while they have very little support and understanding. It’s the trickiest balance you can imagine to validate someone’s experience, and also challenge them in ways that are loving and supportive so change can occur.
This is my work: what I can and will strive for in my counseling office, and I will do so with all my heart. It’s easier in there, many boundaries keep me safe and able to work. Then when it comes to applying to the messiness of real family, without that structure, without a beginning model or template. It’s unimaginable.
But I will keep working at it. Walking the line. I walk the line every day. Of validating my own experience and theirs and also not accepting any story u might tell to feel better emotionally, but then as a result not follow through with changed behavior.
I’m exhausted of having to modify my behavior on top of all the roles I hold, but thankfully I also appreciate the journey and am energized by life itself as well. Light and dark intermingling and never giving up on a story that’s being written and the one that needs to be told.
So this morning I’m watching my teenage son pick himself up from some of his personal struggles and a new grief and I am in awe. I made that, but nothing could prepare me for the privilege it is to watch him grow. And if the events of this past couple of years didn’t happen, I might have missed it. That would have been tragic.
He’s so beautiful. Learning to be himself, and so are you Christina. My friends would say that, because they often see me better than I see myself.
I am coming back to life. I am breathing life into this home that felt like a tomb housing all my dead dreams. But nothing died, life just adjusted me back on my path.
A dear one sent me a Jay Shetty podcast where he was interviewing Martha Beck and this quote is what began it, “The variety of an ordinary life is infinite and precious.” Yes yes yes! She talks about what integrity means in the sense that she knows it. Which is when we are aligned with our true nature and purpose and whole versus when we are divided by being what society wants us to be. And the sheer difficulty of this because biologically we are wired for belonging.
For me, never having felt a secure beginning of belonging the only thing my frightened mind could do was focus on that pursuit and then society came along and caused people to judge me, knowing nothing of my origins or my pain.
Recently even a family therapist has contributed to some of this shaming, without realizing it. It has shown me how easy it is to shame/judge another, when what they need to grow is understanding, acceptance, and support.
It is so easy to say what a mom should or shouldn’t be while never even knowing her story. You cannot give what you do not have. And I’ve spent my life making sure I got it so my kids could have me available to them. Ironically that path and financial scarcity created the opposite. I’ve been in a hurry to become someone they needed. I did it without being given it naturally. I’ve been doing the impossible for a very long time. Defying gravity.
This has been challenging my approach as a counselor as well and there’s a shift happening in me. Moving towards the natural ability to nurture and support. One I always felt I was and would forever be without.
It is grief itself that has softened and humbled me into a calmer more loving person. I think of that anxious terrified girl who looked so strong and intimidating clothed in her defense mechanisms. A scared child, and easily irritated adult. I just want to hug her, she is me.
Witnessing how much suffering a human heart and body can endure is truly humbling. And our culture says just keep going. And yes we need to keep going, but at what cost if we leave ourselves behind by not acknowledging our own lived experiences fully.
Acknowledging, knowing, is the sweet spot between blame, shame, and or blindness and numbing. Acknowledging allows us to see what we are working with at full value and adjust accordingly. But for intolerable circumstances we make up stories about what’s happening subconsciously in an effort to feel better, but what that does is make us even more locked inside ourselves.
As I get to know myself I realize how invisible I’ve been to me. I’m often surprised when people say something that reflects they see me, and I see it so differently.
Learning to be Christina….
My relationships with my children are evolving, repairing, it’s slow, but it’s happening all around me. The realization of how much beauty I will get to experience as I get to watch them become. I could not have asked for a better life. I say that as if I did not create every second of it. See invisible.
Lately I’m filled with love…. There isn’t a part of this last time that I regret any more because understanding wipes that away. It’s exhausting to fight your own path, your own self. Especially now that I know my own heart, and have a new understanding of how my early life impacted me. It is not and will never be an excuse. It is reality. I was so so hard on myself.
Something I’ve unwittingly ingrained in my children, and now hopefully as they watch me change that, they can heal also.
I think of that feral self I was, and have so much compassion for her pain.
Martha Beck describes so eloquently the pain one can experience when divided and I was divided from self and any family system and I’ve been rushing to get to a place where I can enjoy my children and be connected to them and me, but that journey never looked like that to the naked eye, because you would need a deep understanding of brain, behavior, biology, and my story.
I am working on that last part now, the claiming and the telling….
Anyway it’s time to shower and counsel humans (my greatest privilege), and then have my own counseling. Just a typical Tuesday. I had so many thoughts as I always do, but lately it’s the quiet of my mind that I marvel…..
To be clear, this is what grief looks like, my process of uncovering myself. From now on I’ll use all painful things I need to sit with to heal. By not minimizing, dismissing, numbing, ignoring. I’ll say my truths loud and forever, because it works.
Tonight I’m angry that I was robbed of my childhood, and my spirit respectively. It feels extra raw tonight. As part of family therapy it’s been suggested to me I can be intimidating and the possibility my children fear me or I make them anxious: this feels unbearable. It’s not because that’s how we don’t change. So I will feel it. It’s a punch to the gut. It feels like I’m making excuses when only I know truly the on and off switches that often operate against my will.
I can’t even explain the variety of abuse I endured and how it was consistent mental torture that always left me guessing my reality. Gaslighting, manipulation, shame, guilt, fear. How everything was on my shoulders: I was to take care or myself and if I had a need it was such a bad thing.
I can understand logically now caregivers were burdened beyond capacity and I was not that burden. But it does not make the imprint on me any less severe.
For a long while each new realization of how my trauma has impacted my choices, my relationships especially with my children, and me, left me feeling filled with bullet holes and left to bleed out and die. Every Friday night I would feel this way, and often Tuesday evenings as well as I travel through emdr exercises.
I have just wanted the pain to stop so many times. And I do not mean in death, I mean through living in a way thats enriching and authentic.
I have been severely lacking in support, and left to my own devices to figure it out, and then shamed for that as well. The more I lack support the more I scramble like a wild animal to quickly meet my needs. A frenzy. And then shamed for that too.
I kept my children safe from anything I could unwittingly become due to the lack of trust wired into me. Everything feels like a danger for me. My new tattoo, could get infected, could be allergic to it, could be my fault, could be irresponsible. Who do I think I am to have something I want and think there won’t be a tragedy to quickly follow.
Do you have any idea how much pain I live with daily ? And I’m not a martyr. I refuse to make anyone else responsible or sorry for me or be a victim either. I sure sound like one above don’t I. Except that is a judgment, and so too is what I just said I suppose. If my scars didn’t burn so hot. My grandmother running around wringing her hands and letting me fix it and soothe her. Poor Joyce with the mentally ill daughter.
Poor Chris. People would do nice things because they felt sorry for me, all the while shaming me for my acting out behaviors. A tragedy. All the whispers I felt them clawing through my skin. Don’t be nice to me because you feel sorry for me. Have the courage to see who I am and why I am and love me anyway.
If you want to love me be enthusiastic about me, knowing me, being around me, talking to me. That’s all I want. If you’re not enthusiastic about it then just don’t…. Simple. But don’t feel sorry for me.
They all stood idly by because no one wanted to upset anyone. So they whispered about my grandparents being the poor ones saddled with a mentally ill daughter who got pregnant. I became lumped in with her. I was Lisa’s daughter. I was not a child who never should have been in that situation. No one spoke up about that: everyone was so fucking afraid to upset anyone. So that became my burden to shoulder, and now because of it the other adults in the world shouldering their parents wounds trying to also be parents themselves find their way into my knowledge.
Knowledge is power.
I have only ever wanted understanding and support. Those are the things I wanted. Instead people are horrified at the mother when she appears any less than the societal standard for nurturing. We cannot do what we have not had. We can try, we can circumvent, we can fabricate and hope the knock off passes. But people can only do as well as was done by them, when they were defenseless and innocent.
I made sure I always met my needs with another adult so I never ever spewed all of my dysregulated emotions or all of my unmet needs onto them. I literally did the best that I could, and on top I keep working towards being a calmer, kinder, better mother, against all my wiring and all of the pain I carry.
Don’t you dare feel sorry for me. Just be kind to me and understand me and never be a place that harms me. That’s not too much to ask.
I only want peace, that’s all I want. And to be able to be peaceful while living with all of these triggers, all this sensitivity to sound and anything that moves, and all of what’s stored in my body.
I want to be able to make a decision without freezing or flying. I want to not be irritable when my kids are simply playing because everything that moves agitates things inside of me I never fucking asked for.
If I could count how many times I’ve been gaslighted by society. Just do this. You think too much. You’re too sensitive. You’re intense. I am fucking intense. Life has always been intense to me, and then I got shamed for it. I’m angry: furious.
I don’t feel intimidating, I feel intimidated all the time. And like I won’t be safe and won’t be loved. And the parent isn’t supposed to feel that way. But I do, and it’s not my fault.
I need to only be responsible for my healing right now. And battling the shame that comes with speaking about it even. People don’t know what to do. You must be crazy. They look away from things they can’t make sense of and decorate their homes and stick their head in the sand.
And I’m not. I’m looking. And fighting. And trying. And breathing. And crying. And claiming myself from the lost and found.
I broken spirit is the hardest thing to recover. A broken heart mends, but a broken spirit is almost fatal. They broke it over and over. Every enthusiastic thing I tried to share some strange cold critical remark was made. I shrank inside myself, and became everything they needed, because that was the only way to even get a crumb of worthiness.
My children can be loving. They approach and hug me with warmth and passion and I want to be the same way. I know I am logically, but I’m all locked down inside myself.
I love with drive and I love with passion and I love with intellectualizing. I love with acts of service and reliability in financial support and keeping myself sane. This is how I love. I soak in hugs and warmth and affection, but giving them is always a carefully calculated world with me because what if it isn’t sincere. It never was in childhood it was a game. And then came the torture of having any affection given to meet an end, swiftly removed. Kicked in the teeth and punched.
I was not a child I was a pawn. I was not a child I was a therapist. I was not a child I was a punching bag. I was not a child I was a chew toy, a back scratcher, a gratifier of egos. I was not a child I was a burden. I was not a child I was bribery and image. I was not a child I was a meal ticket something to get welfare and praise. I was not a child I was a poorly behaved monster, and they made sure I knew it.
I’ve spent my life trying to be loved and belong somewhere. And in that process garnering even more shame. All of the fucking shoulds. You should have felt what I did or seen what I came out of. The fact I’m breathing is a miracle. And that doesn’t mean anyone owes me anything or I expect anything, except to be treated with compassion, understanding, and respect.
My abuse included the continued shattering of a spirit, with very few reprieves. Psychological damage continuously administered, to the point I was almost a robot, a machine. Responsive to the needs of others and deeply giving, but with no self. If you asked me what I needed I would stare blankly.
I’m intimidated by the smallest of tasks, things that for someone else is a phone call and a few quotes. Will I do something horribly wrong and end up not able to support my children somehow immediately is always in my mind.
I always feel unsafe, even without any evidence. Do you know how tiring that is? It’s not conscious. It’s a reflex, something that lives inside.
And maybe the happiest I’ll ever be is the only thing I’m programmed for which is my dark passenger and my saving grace: the gift of sight to clearly point out dynamics and needs in others; because that’s always so clear to me from my life.
Where do you think I got this knowledge? It only cost my humanity. If this feels dark, or intense, or difficult to read. If you’re uncomfortable with words like this said aloud, then you have just experienced a little of what I live with every day.
Abuse is intimidating isn’t it ?
This is my commitment to my children….. I will do the best I can….
“There are many kinds of joy, but they all lead to one: the joy to be loved. Every story is a never ending story.”
It’s going to be a two fer today. Who could have guessed. This is the downswing. The loneliness settles in right around now. I’ve surrounded my day in all the ways I wanted it. I’ve indulged, relaxed, and spent my day with the writers I love.
I finished Wild Game, and am now onto Amy Tan’s, Where the Past Begins. She of course is talking about the writer’s process, and the longing sets in.
She dedicated her book to her editor because he took her many frenzied emails and listened to them. It’s me! It’s me! I’ve tried every way around this. I know I can open an email and write to myself, to a friend, to my therapist, but nothing is the same as when it’s fueled by the passion of the excitement of becoming known to one another. It brings me to life. A huge part of who I am. I feel lifeless and listless without it.
She writes, “my emails were not carefully composed. They were dashed off with free-form spontaneity, a mix of rambling thoughts off the top of my head, anecdotes of the day, and updates on my dog and perfect husband. In contrast, Dan’s emails were thoughtful and more focused on my concerns, although they also included notes about Moroccan cuisine. He sometimes responded to my off hand remarks with too much care, thinking I had expressed serious wringing of my soul.” This last line be still my heart. Me too. I feel seen.
Later she goes on to say what had enabled her to write those thousands of emails was spontaneity. I underlined and starred this. If I applied that to writing a book, I would be able to finish quickly. Spontaneity is the answer. This thing I continuously fault myself for as impulsivity. My wires are always crossed towards seeing me in some horrible light. When what comes into view most often is how right I have been and am. Just because something hurts does not make it wrong. Not in the ego sense of right. In the spiritual sense. I am on my path damnit. I am enough, and I will figure out this balance while also being compassionate and loving to myself.
Longing will be the theme of this evening and post I believe. I can do all the self work I want, but it’s not moving this period of time in my life. Amy writes about how her writing in an email is different, and the hairs on my arms stood up. I’ve never heard anyone describe the differences in modalities in a way that made me realize how much I miss writing letters to a lover.
That is my thing. My truest self comes out to play in those correspondences, and I was in love with that consistently exploring myself with another person, and hitting the ball back and forth, as much as anything else. I’m thinking how wanting to be known is a theme of recent.
And entirely different self emerges when I open my laptop (which I haven’t written on in months). I just felt a stabbing pain at the realization I don’t even write my blog posts on there, because touching that keyboard is as much touching the skin of my lover. That is the place I would go. I would open up the screen, describe some of the surrounding details and fire away.
Did I have a lover to facilitate my writing, or my writing facilitated the love? Either way I wanted that consistent space, but I never wanted to stop writing, or working at love. Recently someone suggested to me “does it have to be so hard though, or that they didn’t think it need be so hard all the time.” And I’ve been sitting with that and thinking about it a lot. I think of how I differentiate good hard and bad hard, and good tired and bad tired.
Is consistent engagement in a variety of ways using creativity and feeling alive hard? Does it have to be? For me it’s hard not to be those things. And for some I suppose it feels like work. When work is fulfilling it ceases to be work, for me at least.
I am lonely ….. deeply lonely. Longing to be known and engaged with in a way where someone shows up, is consistent, reliable, interested in building, engaged, and all in. And that isn’t something available to me right now and so it’s stretching my limitations to go day in and day out without. I’m constantly threatened with falling into bad habits or pits of despair. And knowing that if I can’t maintain on my own.
You know what that’s crap! What if I can’t because I don’t want to, because we aren’t made to be alone like this. I don’t buy it. At least I’m not. But there is no default either.
I read a post by Brene Brown today about how she’s ready to go down the writing spiral and how her process is all or nothing and she gets lost. And in another book I read just today as well, about a supportive family tip toeing around the writer knowing that’s who they are and what they need, and I think what must it be like to have that kind of support.
I can’t write with love and I can’t write without it. Although I think not being able to write with it was prior to the crucible that has been this past year and a half. I was desperately disconnected in so many ways. I could have never written anything without the connection to me.
But now I want that playground for my psyche that is the art of e-mail and all the other forms of connecting, that is that secure grounding of that one main place you go when you want to be your full real self. And here come the tears.
Melissa would say just be with that feeling. It won’t swallow me, end me, and truly I finally know that. But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck completely.
I want to be held and touched and considered and from someone who can show up as a whole person to want to be consistently engaged with me creating a life together. The loneliness is like jagged teeth biting into my flesh. There is very little relief. I get moments and glimmers, and I know I’m on path.
I’m frustrated with feeling impatient, or too intense or this or that…. Those are judgments. Just because certain things did not turn out the way I thought doesn’t mean any of that is true. But that’s my constant battle. Which means I still have work to do on my relationship with myself. I will always have work to do and I’d still like to be held, touched, worked for and with, by someone enthusiastic about me, that is able to stay two feet in and fully engaged.
It’s not too much to ask and it is ok that it hurts right now. That the loneliness stings…. I think the biggest area where I hurt myself is still being used to turning something that is not something into something. Straw into gold. I need to be still and do me until I invite a fully present and enthusiastic individual into my orbit.
The lens of scarcity colors everything different than abundance does. Moving slower helps to see what’s really there. I see why I just tried to use my will and determination before because sitting in the disappointment is sometimes unbearable. It’s especially unbearable when I go to that old place of alone in childhood; where there was no reprieve and no relief. At least if I told myself life was what I made it, and boy did I live by that, it gave me something to focus on that kept me alive and sane.
Burning right now. Burning good, versus burning bad. There’s a light at the end of this tunnel. I can’t feel it yet, but I can see it, and that’s something.
“You can see when you’re wrong, but you can’t always see when you’re right.” Billy Joel -Always remember me this way….-
Somewhere I always knew that the answers lie in books, cumulative knowledge that lies dormant until the appropriate combination of lived experience and wisdom collides into epiphany. Im sure it’s part of the reason I want so badly to write one…. Many.
More apt the answers lie within ourselves, but books are the mirrors, particularly in the absence of a loving and safe parent relationship, that help us become known to ourselves.
I cannot for the life of me remember who recommended me to read Wild Game by Adrienne Brodeur. I think I know, and I know that has no correlation with what the person means because they are no less than soul tribe as this book connected life changing dots for me at this time in my life. How did they know ? It stands to reason the people that venture to love us in one way or another, can often see us better than we see ourselves. This is certainly the case with me, as we all know by now I’m often invisible to myself.
I’m awaiting my Sunday treat of a visit from Chip. He brings groceries, the things a parent might do. I can only hope to fashion myself as half the person he is with consistency and thoughtfulness. These are things I now have the space and knowledge to cultivate within myself. I can truly feel and see the joy in tending to my children. I never wanted it to be a thankless duty, a burden, or to take more from them than I gave. To use them for my own benefit unwittingly from the life that was dealt to me.
I have been determined about that, as much as anything else. Though to me it has only seemed about my love life. I couldn’t see the rest of me, only my mistakes. There isn’t a fate worse than that. Purgatory.
I am finally realizing who I really am is not the worst possible assumption, even in the face of many eyes that could see me that way: there will always be those that truly appreciate my full real self. I am rambling now as Oslo and my daughter’s boyfriend are visiting and I cannot miss these moments. It’s no longer a raging battle and desperate attempt to get my words down before they escape. I mean it still is, but my priorities are no longer backward, making my children feel as if they are irritating to my existence, rather than the thing that has always breathed meaning and life into it.
If I had only ever just been less overwhelmed with survival, with life, with myself…. But if I had I wouldn’t be me, and have my cast of characters and a rich landscape to create from. Life has to be lived forward, but can only be understood backwards. No truer words. Kierkegaard
It’s not where you get lost that matters as much as where you land. Character (not a forced kind, but the kind that emerges from the genuine caring for another’s well being before the self) is everything, it will always emerge outside of the mistakes. It stands tall, when momentary clips of life fail to capture the big picture.
I always wanted to be closer to my kids. I just didn’t know how. I believe an onlooker could scream common sense or just easy, but for me this was not. Desperately terrified at any second I could morph into something that I came from, and as a result of that fear, a self fulfilling prophecy. Moody. Short fused, vibrating with anxiety.
When I read this book I see how much worse I could have done, and it answers a lot of questions for me. I could have used my children as my confidante, and because I didn’t know how to not do this, as it’s how I was raised, I stayed always an arms length away. It is my sincere hope that through therapy and this reconnecting with myself, this now can heal. Because it was never the truth of my affection for them, or my true desires and motivations.
I always put love first from what felt like a place of necessity, despite others judgments including a therapist recently who suggested some shoulds and that I could have hired a nanny. Interesting perspective and I’m wondering with what resources, emotionally or financially. The truth is we can harm others with our world views and belief systems, while never having lived a moment in their shoes. I hope to always be mindful of this, when it’s so easy to forget and just blurt out words.
I am not perfect, sometimes I say things carelessly, in sessions even. I can always tell by the immediate reaction in my client. To the best of my ability I attempt repair then and there, if I am unable at that time. I make sure not to repeat the mistake, because I’m able to pick up on how it made them feel. I can feel the immediate shift, as they tense up under the weight of sometimes their own judgments, preceded by my well meaning launch of passionate preaching.
Something I love most about my clients is I believe the majority of them know my heart, character, and intentions, and feel my repairs. I believe that’s why my clinical relationships are so deep, meaningful, and continue to evolve. When they are not or do not parting is not a trauma it’s done with care, concern, and an appropriate amount of honesty. So we both are allowed to grow in the absence.
Anyway this book. I could feel the stab straight through my heart as the main character waited loyally for a bond, recognition, etc from her mother that never came. On her wedding day it was not about her in the least. Her entire life it was about her mother. My heart aches for all the hopes that were born and died in vain, and the toll that took on the host.
This book helps me sew up a long time gaping wound of abandoning my mother. Always wondering if I had it wrong, am wrong. This books help me see what would have been had I tried to belong somewhere that truly never saw me.
And the benefit is two fold because it gives me even more motivation to be genuinely about the lives of my children, interested and invested. While striking that delicate balance of still having my own life. Something worthy to strive for. And nothing about this can be all or nothing. It’s truly one foot in front of the others with my priorities straight and it’s working. It’s no longer the mythical they, or any other myth.
Reality is that we are healing and reuniting and it’s not grand gestures or manipulation of facts, painting a reality over their lived experience. It’s sincere change.
This book has helped me see what would have been. Even as I read it I longed for the being wanted and normalcy of her marriage to Jack, that stability and to be adored, the honeymoon and all that shared experience and closeness. And yet her mother’s affair and lack of presence gave her no arena to create a relationship with herself. The result depression, disconnection, and her suffering.
It was at this very moment I’m realizing all I dreamed I didn’t have is not the stuff that matters most, and that I truly am more than capable and aware of those things, which will lead to a life that is fulfilling in ways I haven’t begun to imagine yet.
I wonder what it will look like for my kids that their mother is catching and correcting, the very second she could, and also sitting with the burn of all the years I was consumed and distracted with my own pain. The guilt could swallow me sometimes, but when I understand that too is selfish, and pick my head up and carry forward with my corrections, is better than trying to go back to understanding or halting my ability to exist in peace, because if I am to create space for them to learn who they are, I must find acceptance and eventually joy for my whole story.
Blackwing 602’s…. A new discovery and wanting to do some song writing…..
I’m quite sure one of the keys to a balanced existence is to be able to think and feel at the same time. I’m also quite sure repeated trauma particularly in infancy and beyond creates a brain that disconnects that wiring to protect you.
I over thought everything and I under thought everything. I literally had all my wires crossed. And in addition to this: It’s a lot of responsibility being a writer, our lives and often our emotions are not even our own.
I found out in therapy yesterday I probably don’t have ADHD. Crazy because if you saw me you’d think for sure I do. The same therapist has said for sure I do, but that was before I shared with her details about how medication affects me. She said that if Xanax works well, and I got a terrible headache and irritability on ADHD meds that means I don’t have it.
I said, but then how to explain never sitting still and talking in class, and being annoying to others etc. I was trying to be seen. I was lonely. The result of that was more negative feedback which I deeply internalized because there was no one else. If I talked to my grandparents it would be well what are you doing, they always made me feel ashamed.
I’m just reflecting on my appointment yesterday. Where I validated that trauma before the age of two and after has made such a dramatic impact on my life. It has changed my brain and I’m literally RE-wiring myself right now. I’m watching the changes and slowing my speed and taking everything one step at a time.
I’m having trouble focusing, and being still enough to have the deep relationship with myself to prioritize and recover my creativity. I don’t even know what it looks like, but also I do. Deep somewhere I do. Trusting that and investing in it is scary. Not trusting and investing in it is scary. Everything is so fucking scary. Thinking of EG in big magic.
Anyway I was telling my therapist that I think maybe I want to try medication, but I’m not sure because I hate how almost all of it affects me. I was telling her how I love playing piano and love my lessons. But when it comes to practicing I just look at it and freeze. I get lost in the day and everything else, everyone else, and continuously abandon me.
Although that’s a harsh narrative because so many choices I’m making are moving away from self abandon. I can’t even see me sometimes. I’m invisible to myself, while I see everyone else so well and clearly, and that just doesn’t work. I have to continue to fight for visibility and a relationship with me.
The only thing I knew how to guide my attention was deep conversation with others, which became deep connection, but I never knew what to do, or how to choose what space they occupied in my life or how to organize them I suppose.
My boundary less existence prior to the dark night.
Now I am organizing and having boundaries and giving myself whatever time and space I need to decide what’s right for my kids and I. And I hardly know what to do with this new self. Some of these concepts are so foreign and the sense of peace that is coming. Peace for me is almost a trigger. In my childhood if you settled into anything peaceful and abrupt stop would come and not in a pleasant way.
I will likely live with the feeling the other shoe is going to drop forever. Or at the very least it will be a reflex that attempts to kick in, and hopefully the solid foundation of peace I have built will override.
When I began this blog this was the battle I was having. I talked about ADHD and PTSD a lot. I had a lot more questions, and a lot less answers, and yet there are still so many questions.
I look around and almost can’t believe how I could have lived in that much pain for so long. So scattered, so much panic, so lost, so locked up, so locked down, in agony. Relieving it only by using my gift and feeling some sense of confidence from that. But no other solid footing. I thought that was all I needed, until I realized there was more healing that needed to happen.
I believe in therapy in a whole new way now. And now I will finally be able to be a human in my own life and not rely on connecting because of my sight. To wait and see what another person sees about me besides that and offers in terms of reciprocity and availability.
Providing resources from what I know but not feeling a desperate need to fix or change or that something isn’t ok. I am just being and I hardly know what to do with this new self, but here we are.
Lots of beautiful new things on the horizon. Stay tuned for my new attempts at creating…. Whatever that may be. I don’t know yet. That used to have an ominous devastating tone… now it’s I don’t know yet and a big smile spreads across my face.
Never have I understood grief the way that I do now. Never have I had connected empathy versus cognitive, the way I do now. This morning I went on a journey watching old videos of my life, my kids, our dogs, our found family members and I saw so much happiness and play and joy in them. I forget/forgot those existed as I stayed trapped inside a cage in my own mind. My own personal hell played over and over, which can be described as constant thoughts of what I was doing wrong or could do differently. That was my default.
I was talking to my dear friend Jen on the porch yesterday morning. We often talk about mother’s. And I said to her that I’ve played scenarios in my head a hundred times what I will say or feel when I get the call my mom has died. And resoundingly where I land lately is my mind screaming “it’s over”. That I will weep for all my pain, and also release. And what I realize about what I will let go is the struggle inside of me that if I just did something different could we have a relationship.
I would have done anything to love her better, I mean love her so much she became better, felt better. I would have tried everything and I did at one point. But I couldn’t ignore the anxiety and illness that plagued me as a result of that one-sided love and intermittent lashing out mixed with just enough of a crumb (so she didn’t look like a bad mother to other people).
I still feel like I abandoned her or being a daughter and not like I got out alive, the way I deserve to be able to feel. My mind plays tricks on me. It is not in my wiring to abandon. I have to be able to be honest and work through things, but it is not in my nature to abandon. Except I abandoned myself a long time ago, right along with all of them. And I’ve been reclaiming her for my whole life, while also trying to be a mom, with absolutely no template.
Sure there is no instruction manual, but I didn’t even have a rough draft. And I made myself into a good parent anyway. Not a perfect one, thank God, but a good one.
Chip dropped off potato salad this morning and then groceries later. I made breakfast burritos and dropped twin A at work, she drove and did well. Life just keeps happening around me, and now I am here too.
The entire energy in my home has changed. I never thought I would be here, never thought my best could get this good. It didn’t seem possible.
We had our first good therapy session as a family this past Friday night. For so many weeks I felt filled with bullet holes of all my mistakes and shortcomings. I would go home, cry and fall asleep and get up and try again.
You see I promised I would never supply myself with my children. That my need would be confined to an adult capacity and I would keep them kids. And when I look now I have been pretty successful at that. And they still have their experience with me as a mother and my shortcomings and wounds, but no longer are they distrustful of that.
They are able to get perspective and hear normalizing of the difficulty in the best of circumstances between parents and teens at this age, that it’s natural, and I have to hear that too, because for me…: the other shoe is always going to drop.
So here we are a year and a half of intensive two times a week therapy, including emdr, their individual therapy, and now our family therapy and there is some light. We are able to see the identity of our family with its own story rather than the constant comparisons that flay us raw. Make us feel less than.
We are our own story and it is a beautiful one. Our cast of charactersis unmatchable. I wouldn’t change a fucking thing.
If I had gotten what I wanted when I wanted it all of my energy would have once again been abandoning myself and this family, and while the dream and heart had the right idea, in practice Everything happens for a reason and in its own time. I held on so hard to the dream and a story, and didn’t trust my own reality.
The gift is that I’ll never do that again. I have a relationship with me, and a relationship with them. And a new relationship with life itself where there is a semblance of trust. It will likely always have a tinge of something bad possibly happening at any moment. There’s a lot of that in me, and that’s ok because I will and have learned to support myself through this and to choose supportive fellow travelers.
My work has deepened, and my relationship with self and others.
My story is far from over, in many ways it’s just beginning. Another life within the millions. Today I played piano. It’s been a long time since I could sit down and focus. I have an idea I can or will but then I just stare frozen. I can’t will my body to try.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been tallying the losses I’ve had. I won’t go into explaining how I’m not doing this to be negative I won’t do this to me. I am honoring my experiences.
In the past two years I’ve lost a home I lived in for 8 years, my first secure space. I’ve lost many possible pregnancies and a couple of heartbeats, I lost a dream of having a baby with a woman I love in a healthy relationship. I lost a dream of being a foster parent and providing more of what I didn’t even have. Needed to have it first. I lost a father in-law and a family. I lost a wife and more importantly an unconditionally loving human being who adored me and held me and supported me.
I lost a beloved pet and now a new one because we weren’t ready.
And then I lost my self respect personally and professionally. I lost touch with myself. And then I lost reality nearly altogether. I nearly lost my mind, and I definitely lost some of the health I’ve worked so hard for by spending my life walking away from unhealthy and toward freedom. I could have lost my life quite a few times over the past year.
I lost a soul relationship with a new family, kids and all, and a lover who still haunts my bones. I’ll love them forever, all of them in their own way, because they were a before and an after moment of my life. I send them love every chance I get, even when I’m hurt and angry. It just exists. I remember every single moment.
And I wouldn’t be me if the losses didn’t make me naturally think of the gains… I don’t have to try. So let’s see. I gained friendships that I didn’t even know I had because I’ve been so numb and removed from myself. They were there but I couldn’t feel them like I do now. I gained appreciation for family and attachment for the people who held me this past two years.
I thought I was grateful before, it’s nothing like it is now. I gained humility, awareness, a greater capacity for healthy self sacrifice. I gained a new home that now feels friend versus foe. I gained many lessons as a clinician and lost many doubts in my abilities ironically.
I gained a relationship with sex and my body that feels fulfilling and embodied and whole. I gained believing in my capacity for exercise and endurance. I gained pieces of my identity I would never have uncovered. I gained faith in my tefloness. I gained earned security. I gained the ability to value myself as lovable and deserving. and that line brought the tears.
I gained being less scattered in my burning brain. It has a permanent layer of salve on it. It’s soothing…. cool. Healing.
I gained the ability to be present over being lost in my head. I gained piano and enriching my already immense relationship with music. The ability to delay gratification and to not justify things in the name of scarcity.
I gained integrity……. one I was already built with but didn’t know how easily I could lose. I gained an intimate relationship with grief, and the understanding of how it can affect choices and so much more.
There are so many more, but these are the ones I can think of now.
So what now ?
The rest of my life being able to be present and not jumping ahead or freezing, for more than a little before I lovingly catch myself in a bear hug and ground, …..
I don’t worry whether I’ll write a book or not or what kind. I enjoy thinking about it and creating space inside my head for the discipline and dedication to breathe life into it.
I’ll be here writing, reading, connecting, singing, dancing, playing, working, living, and loving…..
90 days……. she’ll love you if you love her like that……now the day bleeds into night fall…..she’ll love you if you love her like that.
Music begins my days and the songs speak to me. I realized this morning I’m in love again. This time I’m in love with my whole life and myself. I get it now. What being still means because now I can see my whole life and all my connections and my ability to carry on and connect beautifully with others, the world, and myself.
I get it now.
I’m on my front porch and the other chair isn’t lonely or empty, it’s often filled by some of the strongest and most beautiful people. The kind I aspire to be and am lucky to love. My life is surrounded by those that get it.
For the last 5 years or so I’ve been rebirthing myself. Contained in the watery womb that is my bath. And now I’m outside. I’m outside with the world, standing in all that I am. The musicians and authors they are by my side. They are my ancestors. Loyal brave and true they surround me with the art they have had the fortitude to get out into the world. They are encouraging me.
“You gotta get up and try”
And I always do.
That’s beautiful
I cry on my front porch in the mornings. I cry for the pain in the world and for the beauty. Grief is beautiful it means we have tried for something, and when it doesn’t work out it doesn’t mean we aren’t enough. It means we had the courage to try for something we wanted. The courage to pursue our dreams.
This morning I thought deeply about my beautiful friend’s birthday. About how strong she’s had to be and how her light still shines through the personal darkness she navigates. We are kindreds. Both vibrating with anxiety to the point it consumes. Wounds we were left with. Bullet holes bleeding, and still we rise.
She posted a photo with her grandparents from her birthday dinner last night and I could see the little girl there. The one who just wanted to be celebrated and seen. The thing we all desire. And it broke me open to seeing everyone’s child, the child in everyone just wanting to know who they are and what to do with themselves in the world.
Who am I? What is my purpose? Will I be loved? Will I be safe?
This finally feels like home. My house isn’t not a home because I’m not sharing the experience with a partner. My house is a home because I belong here. I am home. My home.
I can finally see the beauty in the flowers, in everything, in my own life, not just others, desperately wanting them to see too, so that can be a shared experience.
My whole life I was so driven and focused on obtaining this one main thing I thought would make me safe and happy, but discounting me and everything I am. Unless I was healing I didn’t know where I fit in the equation. Unless I was useful.
Now all my connections are important, no tunnel vision, not just one at a time. I can finally appreciate me for the way that I connect to others, and now to myself too.
My son didn’t do the dishes last night though he was reminded and asked and this morning I thought on the porch of how many times I’ve harshly pushed, asked him why he didn’t do them, not if he’s ok. Not a hug. Not warmth. Because that was my relationship with myself, because that was the relationship I was given from the cards I was dealt. It’s taken my whole life to get it. To understand the power of are you ok? How are you doing ? How was your day? Are you connected? Do you need something? The dishes can wait. They are not the most important thing. But that is what I knew how to do. My model my template. It’s as far as I could get.
Until now……
From now on…..
I literally couldn’t get myself to open warmly and hug and ask those things. Inside I’m screaming to do that, but I get stuck inside myself. In Pinks documentary she said a line, about how she wishes she could reach inside herself and give that little girl a hug. This is why the rebirth was needed.
Over the past year and a half I’ve been on a mission to reclaim that little girl. I didn’t know that was my mission. I thought it was something else. So often life is like that. We misunderstand. So my kid can connect with my kids. So I could replace harsh drive with enthusiasm for living. Warmth. Everything I accuse are only things I couldn’t find in myself.
Always disconnected with me, always begging for connection with someone else. Thinking that would crack the code and it never did. How many times do I need to crack open I thought? How much more breaking.
Breaking let’s the light in. You can hear all the quotes and read all the memes but in my experience you can’t embody the experience until you’ve walked the path yourself.
So this morning I’m outside, not locked inside myself. I’m in the light. I am the light. I’m in the world and I love everything. In love with myself (I was typing my life and it changed it to that and I left it).
I’m not afraid my existence is a burden any longer. I won’t live that way anymore. I am here and I have a voice and a right to exist. I won’t hide for hours in the bathtub trying to figure out how to fix what is broken. I don’t need to anymore. We aren’t there anymore.
Once you grow you can’t go back. One could say why would you want to, but of course it’s tempting because being new and open and ready can sometimes feel an overwhelming responsibility. I was overwhelmingly responsible for everything during my childhood. I get it now.
Now I am responsible to myself to allow myself to exist in all the light I have to offer and to enjoy that.
My heart is bursting with love and I don’t need to aim the arrow at anyone to feel safe and wanted. I can be love. And I already have love and I already am love.
I get it now. And this morning my heart felt so much love for everyone that has ever dared to love, and for everyone who has ever grieved anything, because grieving isn’t easy. It hurts to be human.
The people we connect with makes the hurt worthwhile.
It’s not the stuff, the milestones, the achievements. It’s always about connections. We try to make meaning and know what that is, we try to control. We beg to be enough, belong, to be seen. And those things are our natural birthright.
We have to claim that.
If we have shared a journey I love you. For your strength, your pain, your resilience, your harder moments. I love it all.
I have always loved life itself, and life is the unreliable narrator, but never again will I tell a story or believe one that hurts me. Not for long anyway because after all
The second I drive up over the hill the smell of salt and sea climbs inside my veins and breathes life back into me. Like coming home. Today a flag is whipping in the wind, the wind that’s tousling my hair. It’s 80 degrees and sunny and I have Pink radio on Pandora.
This morning the overwhelm roiled up inside me to a frenzy and texting a friend brought the tears. One of those good shower cries. Loud. Inconsolable. Here I am a whole summer later and have to refuse another like the last in any way shape or form. I am a new self and that’s scary and lonely. And if you add health issues on top down right depressing.
I’m being strong in so many ways. New ways and old ways. When I hit my limits I break down and then build back up, rather than acting in a trauma response. Life is much calmer this way. I connect more easily and peacefully with myself and my children. My mind isn’t wild like it was. I am free to focus and enjoy things if I wasn’t so fucking sad right now.
I was looking up things to find out why I’ve been such an emotional wreck since my uterine ablation, two weeks ago today. Is it that ? I feel bloated and just entirely unsexy and that sucks. It feels icky. I feel old. I feel not where I want to be. I feel ashamed. I feel sad. It all just bubbles up to the surface for release.
I don’t have the answers to lean on anymore. I am humbled. The only thing I can do is be grateful I can feel this deep and have packed so much into one life already. I don’t have regrets, just really big feelings.
I want things to look forward to again that feel exciting and give me hope and joy, but I can’t force them to be now. I have to be where I am. To be in this. But haven’t I been here long enough my soul cries. How long ? At this point it’s beyond being impatient. If this is hell, I should have prayed more, because I can’t take it anymore.
The bag from my surgery still sits next to my bed. I haven’t even unpacked it, books are piled all around it, I need to put away laundry. I can’t move. I am frozen and that’s a terrifying feeling. I can’t play the piano. I know it will feel good. I know it makes me happy, but I can’t move. It’s hard to imagine at this point ever feeling better again.
Recently someone was talking about wanting normalcy again after a large and painful life transition. And it made me think of Leslie Charles and her “there is a before and an after” when it comes to grief. A new normal must be created. And not knowing what that looks like is a hard place to be in. Focusing on what I want my life to look like, what I want, versus who. For me it was always going to be about love. All these concepts jumble together.
Be still
There are ways I like where I am right now. Irreplaceable lessons, and ways I most assuredly do not like where I am. And just like magic Unsteady comes on. Of course it does.
My day was cut short today. I am seeing 5 clients and that is a relief when it happens like that. I think I’ll go home and rest until them. I’ve been so tired since surgery. I don’t know what the hell it did to me or if it’s the sheer lack of a loving and warm attachment that I’ve always abided by. Probably that or both.
People are living all around me. I’m watching them right now. I feel like the walking dead and this is just a moment. I know me. That I’ll keep venturing and learning and being me, but right now I just want to sleep. And I don’t want to want to sleep because it’s gorgeous out and there’s life to be lived.
This state I am in right now is in such conflict with who I am. A suck the marrow out of life girl stuck in a black and white world.
