Tag: #Growth

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Anything is possible

I was introduced to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs when I was a student. This would be the very first time it occurred to me as to why I felt so undeveloped in certain areas. That there could be a reason for this that was not a short-coming or fault.

For the last several years I often say that theory and practice are very different things. But what I never realized as I was preaching this to others, is that I was really telling myself that I have become someone else than I ever thought myself to be.

As I counselor I often tell people they need to update their software, just like on the I-phone. As soon as they become aware of their “bugs” and have engaged in the process of correcting those (therapy). Ever so slight shifts happen, that often go unrecognized by the self. People from the outside will often be the first to make them aware, by commenting about these shifts, but even then… it’s hard to imagine themselves as different than the story they have formulated with the “help” of media, society, comparison, etc.

Self-doubt fueled narratives abound, especially in women as their tender nurturings are often seen as far less valuable than they truly are.

A nurturing mother is often times the difference between a fulfilling life and one of incredible struggle.

Much to my great surprise I found myself to be one. How am I here right now? I spent the first half of my life in a chaotic blather of creating before I knew what I was doing, doubting myself all the way along, and so so susceptible to the opinions of others.

I spent years self-flagellating, and I’m not even Catholic. At the time the only thing I knew how to do was beat myself into making sure I would not be the things I came from. Little did I know that behavior would be the very thing that could have turned me into that.

So here I sit…. a totally different self than I ever hoped to be. Not only did I turn out different, but I turned out better than my wildest dreams. And now I am just trying to update my software to stand in this grace and this power that I deserve and have labored incredibly hard for.

I can know I’m touching on something sacred because the tears come. Glorious tears from a spigot that was dry and dusty for so many years. My emotional self housed carefully on ice, deep deep within the innermost caverns of my soul.

I am blessed enough to have been able to preserve my child safely until I could parent her better. I’ve figured out how to do this, even under the demands of parenthood, partnership, and career.

I used to think I could only have one. Judge myself for wanting to much. More flagellation. I mean I was so good at it.

And here I stand in the realization that one feeds into the other, and that anything is possible with faith and friends. I have built my new sturdy foundation on the grace and mercy of friends who saw me for more than I was behaving like at the time. They didn’t feel the need to “call me out” or condemn me. They saw something else, so I could see it too.

Even friends who I have parted ways with under pretenses of terrible stories, have contributed such gifts to my life.

Lately I’ve been wondering if my dreams are too big. And still trying to pathologize myself as chaotic, rushed, crazy; etc.

I’m terrified of the possibility I could be safe as a foster parent. I’m guilty I think as well, that I will appear a better parent in the eyes of my children this time around. There it is. You see how when you write openly you unearth the deepest truths. This is what I do. There it is. I’m afraid to be a good parent now, because of how long I struggled and how much they endured with me.

Is it a justification to say that they are better people for having had to be part of that struggle? It feels it. But I can’t do that to myself. It doesn’t honor all of my parts and all of my story.

Family: I can only do better now with what I’m willing to create and how arduously I’ve been willing to work. I am my best self when I am of service to others. I become creative in ways I never imagined when I am in the trenches of someone else’s suffering. I am humbled daily. I want to serve the wounded souls that I feel most at home with. I want to be humbled by that experience and have it test my limits and feel terrified enough that I know I’m alive and trying at something.

I want to be broken open over and over until I am my soft child like self. So I can be gentle and warm. I want to be that calm in their storm, the calm I always starved for.

I don’t want to limit myself with fears. I want to expand myself with courage.

Anything IS possible….

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It’s not just the boxes

“The music is all around us, all you have to do is listen.”

My wife being brave….

If I don’t write this blog post I think I might spontaneously combust. I just have to start somewhere. Being out of the habit all the old doubts have had time to creep in. The self-consciousness clinging to me as close as the tiny beads of sweat that have been my constant companion since moving here. We have no central air in the new house. Now I know why they call it “central” air. :p

We live in a new home, in a new beautiful town. My wife’s father is dead. We didn’t even know he was going to be dead. It was thrust upon us, as death often is. It was unannounced and a swift blow upside our happiness.

The very real threat of a victim story unfolding and a woe is us why so much grief in one year trying to barrel roll me to the bottom of the bayou and choke out any remaining life. Yes it’s been this intense.

From movers that didn’t arrive til 7 pm (scheduled at 3), and moving until 4 am the next day right before our closing, while her father was in the ICU. We found out there wasn’t any hope the same day we signed our papers for our new home.

Everything was out of place. Our hearts and souls were like the many packed boxes. Jumbled and scattered. Unfound. Riddled with broken items we have held dear, the natural losses any move yields. Now we are standing bewildered at where to begin unpacking all of this. It’s not just the boxes.

Unimaginable timing. My wife and her two siblings standing wide eyed with horror bracing themselves for an unknown journey of probate and estate settling, while packing their grief away for the time being.

And my wife said to me the other day, “and life just keeps going”, as in that’s it. It’s just over. He was here for so much of their years on this earth, meant so many things, and he is no longer. What do you do in the wake?

I feel like we are in the upside down. I didn’t actually even watch Stranger Things much, but the reference somehow feels right to me. Everything dark and unknown, and not being able to get back to what once was. A delineated before and an after.

Grief is the great divider. We are together, but right now we are also separate. I cannot be where she is in her feelings. The closest I can come is what she is able to put into words. I guess that is why writing is so sacred. But I still cannot know what it is like to be her right now. And when she is consumed I have to wait. A triggering position for me. She is oh so patient with my many scars.

I think as humans we are tricked into expecting a happily ever after once we have done so much work, as I have, to find your person. And we have immense happiness together. Is that why we are being offered up so many challenges? Four failed pregnancies, one ending in surgery and utter sadness, and the loss of a parent, and a move in the period of about one year.

No baby, a funeral, and a whopping amount of change all at once. I feel as if the tectonic plates of my life are shifting, constant earthquakes, and the aftershocks are still coming. When will my earth feel secure again? And if anything all this has done is made me know that anything can and will happen anytime. You are not guaranteed any kind of happy. So if you have it even for a minute absorb that shit! Pay attention to it. Be grounded. Be grateful.

The tears just started to pour. I can’t explain what it feels like for me to write, or maybe I can and will right here and now. Your first sip of water after being stranded without for days. That first touch of warmth after being cold with no relief. It’s an inhale and an exhale. It’s holding on and letting go. It’s a communion with my higher self. It’s joy and ecstasy. It is raw. It’s August’s symphony. If you haven’t seen August Rush, see it now.

It is the most profound relief to put my heart on the page. It is everything.

Amidst everything going on around me there is a lot going on inside of me. I am approaching my 39th year. The last year of my 30’s. My body is changing, my mind is changing. How can someone simultaneously become more confident than they have ever been as they are also acutely aware of the descent of their metabolism and a great many other bodily related factors. Just how?

I will not even touch on my son leaving for college in two weeks. It’s too heavy to even add. The stack of cards will crumble. That is another post. How can one heart possibly hold all this feeling ?

August Rush. A fairytale. I downloaded the song of course so I can listen to a beautiful composition with so much heart as I am doing just that. This movie. A lost perfect boy with amazing talent, who plays music to find a set of parents who both want him as much as he wants them. A fairytale indeed. Good for you August…. no genuinely good for you.

Watching a set of siblings grieve their father, my wife grieve him. I couldn’t help but have a huge missing portion of my life highlighted. The best case scenario is that I say at least I was able in a strange way to have that experience. I’ve been grieving the absence of my parents my whole life. And it’s made me who I am in so many ways, the good and the bad.

I watch from the outside an alien. I watch the humans with my nose pressed to the tank. Human in moments, robot in others. Carefully choosing which emotion suits me the best because naturally feeling them was abandoned long ago. It sounds so sad when I say it. Don’t saaaaaay it. But it’s so beautiful too.

What a paradox that the more a person suffers the more kind and open hearted and brave they become. Why do these qualities require such suffering?

So here my wife and I are, on this journey. Somehow together, which is my greatest privilege. And living with our whole hearts. Which people can actually see and they respond to it. Two people building their confidence in a world that would keep them small if it could.

My wife has been taking singing lessons and watching her battle through her self-consciousness to that glorious moment that makes it all worthwhile. That smile when she hits the “C”, that high after her lesson when she is in profound joy. And I am doing the same thing with my clothing and with my counseling. We are being brave, blazing trails, and enjoying one another in this life.

Even amidst all the sorrow I just described. What I am finding is that life is both beautiful and devastating, all the time. Your best hope is to fashion a self that can manage the hurdles. To be humbled by the losses, and to carry the people we love, even if only in memory all the days of our lives.

I am stitched together by moments….and to my beautiful wife and to my children… you are my greatest. I’ll climb through hell and back a thousand times just for one more with you. I’ll fight all my demons to show up for you, and live my life with great heart.

I hope you know….

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I’ve never been in love with a house before…

I’ve never been in love with a house before, in fact I never in my life imagined to be buying a home of this magnitude.

I’m used to being so focused on love. Obtaining it. Cultivating it. Claiming it. Keeping it. Explaining it to others. Analyzing it. And this is making me realize how that pretty much took up my whole reserves of energy (what was left after all that was already needed).

So here I am repeatedly combing through every photo of our new home wondering if it will feel as good as it seems…. if the reality of it will be as good as the idea.

My new writing studio 😉

This leap feels gigantic for some reason and I can only imagine that means I am attached to my feelings this time around. So I won’t need to worry about them catching up to me six months in and suddenly changes needing to be made are thrust upon me without warning.

I feel my feelings in the moment they are happening now.

This actually makes for less writing I think. My writing was (is) so attached to my healing that now that I’ve come so far, there is some fear I will lose the writer self too. Or that this writer self is not as dynamic as my whole self, and only had this intense dark stream of consciousness inside it and nothing else. A one trick pony.

I suspect this is not the case. That soon I will have the courage and mental bandwidth to do anything I’d like. And that possibility is as daunting as the feeling of not having it. Survival is a task set before you, and it is a demanding mistress.

In my clinical world my wisdom grows. Seeds planted have become a beautiful garden that I bask in daily. I no longer worry I won’t pull the weeds, and tend to this garden or that suddenly it will be infested and decimated. Pity this is only a metaphor, my actual gardening skills are abysmal, unlike my late grandmother who could whisper to the roses and they would bloom.

In our new yard there are twin trees. Which I found to be quite prophetic. I am not sure what kind they are yet, but they bloom and have gorgeous giant pink blossoms, whose petals shower the yard with beauty and contrast. I have twin girls, I’m in love with 1/2 a set of twin girls, and we lost identical twins in December. It make me wonder if we will have twin girls this next time and it will become a major family legacy.

So soon, we will be moving and living in the town of Milford. Everything changes. My firstborn son graduated high school a few days ago, and he will be off on his own at WPI. A terribly exciting prospect. I have not lived without my boy child since I was 19 years old. I don’t know life without him. I don’t know myself without him anymore. I’m so delighted the world will get to experience him, and he it, but my mother heart skips a beat with fright for this unknown, and knows already it will feel as if several of her major organs are missing from her.

Please keep him safe and fulfilled!

The best way to describe these days of my life are that I am living with a grateful presence. That I am growing myself as a tender gardener, not a punishing one. And that all my most sacred dreams are coming true so loudly, that I can not argue to keep any of my limitations any longer. Life does not let me, and I am so blessed.

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The winds of change are blowing….

11 B road

A picture of the front of our first real home together as a family.

It’s been way too long. When I don’t write it feels like I am underwater. When I do it feels like taking that first breath, or that first day you feel better after you have been sick. Everything burns brighter particularly gratitude. I would describe the way I have been lately as present and in a euphoric state of gratitude, while also being plagued by feelings of discomfort that such fast and profound changes elicit. Yeah that pretty much puts it exactly. I love that I am able to do that. It is such a gift. Thank goodness for my gifts. Thank goodness that I am a gift. Who would have ever thought.

If you know me very well you will know that most of my life has been plagued by fears of who I am as a person. Narcissist, selfish, too loud, too much, awkward, not feminine, not pretty, chaotic, poisoned by association of my genetics, too intense, weird, and the worst of these: a bad mother. It took me until about 2013 or so and a very good therapist for me to even entertain the idea I could love my kids in a traditional way (whatever that is), and I remember the times I allowed myself to refer to myself as a good mother. It felt like a foreign language and when the words accidentally spilled out so did a river of tears.

My morning pages has been hard to write lately, and I have worried that this means my relationship with my self is slipping a bit, when I won’t give myself that much time for my thoughts. This new dawn I have decided this is not the case, much like many of the things my brain tries to put a negative spin on. I have been present. This is what it feels like to be present. I am coming out of my shell, which is not a play on introversion, it means I’m coming out of my head, out of my mind palace (dungeon). I am living and breathing like the humans do. I have emerged owning my many titles with fierce love and pride.

Trauma survivor. Not just any trauma a special kind, the kind that is more difficult to notice. So having a strong personality lended itself to me denying those parts in favor of feeling strong and capable. Which was good while it worked, but then turned against me when I couldn’t validate my own experience or understand why such anxiety began to plague me as I began to thaw out. I spent most of my life trying to parent myself into something that I didn’t even have the slightest idea of. Making up the rules as I went because I was an adventurer with creating my self. I didn’t begin with a model, so I looked to everything that seemed like something I wanted to model myself after and got to work. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be so I often worried I was some awful thing. If you could actually see what that struggle was like, witness it….. I wish there was a way that people could see me. I’ve always felt that way, and I guess this is the way, that’s why it feels so important. At the same time I am still plagued by shame in some of my deepest layers. You can know things logically, and they can still be trapped in your body. This is something I want to do work on.

Fabulous and sexy gay woman who is a tomboy and would be caught dead in heels, but really appreciates seeing them on women 😉 Allowing my sexuality to be a beautiful thing has been a lifelong process for me. I may seem so out and proud and strong, but loathing is often internal thorn filled winding vines of darkness penetrating every corner of the self. Allowing my gender expression to be allowed. It is such a shame filled journey. I was always othered in such uncomfortable ways in my “family” of origin. Religion added another layer of wrong, and as I write I don’t know sometimes how I ever stood a chance.

Anyway I have many other titles, mother, counselor, advocate, friend… I could go on… and these days I am embracing and enjoying them all.

See even my writing trails off because I favor presence lately. I get in that beautiful zone or flow and then something moves in my home, and the wave of inspiration just sort of passes. The words seem to either tumble out of me like a waterfall or not at all. I wonder if I will be able to find a steady rhythm and go in and out of it as I please without losing the flow ever? Or if this is just how this works in my writer’s process.

So what’s funny is I actually got on here to update about the many changes that are about to happen in our lives and how I am in such an odd position in them as I change myself. A set of Russian Nesting dolls, except tornadoes instead of dolls. A storm inside a storm inside a storm and rather than being still in the eye like I’ve been most of my life I’m joining the main stream in the storm, connected with others, not watching carefully so I don’t screw up my chances to belong. So my habit is to write deeply introspective even though lately I am not needing it as much, and I view that as a good thing. Rather than shaming it away, or wronging myself for it I am discovering a sense of peace that it will move along on it’s own accord as I am ready. This is where peace comes from.

We are selling our home and buying a new one. This will be an entire post, but for right now this means today I will be painting a front door, helping the kids store their things in bins for the showings, and mopping up their emotions as I go along. Something I didn’t even know I could do. It’s been a little rocky at first. I’m more likely to be just deal with it because that is what I had to do to myself so many years. I have literally re-wired myself to respond warm and compassionately (usually after I realize I haven’t). It is hard to write that. I want to backspace and delete those words because so often my vulnerabilities are turned against me. That is the reality of another struggle I am having in my life. How do you fight back against that without talking poorly of a child’s other parent? I am trying to stand up for myself, and also be compassionate and apply grace. I’m trying to scramble around and take care of everything as always. This historically would get me so tired out and running in circles that I would lash out.

I am attempting to change all of this. To stay in warmth, compassion, grace, confidence, and to truly be the rock of a mother… .wait I’ve always been a rock they are hard and cold. The lighthouse of a mother? The one I have always wanted to have I am trying to be that. That has always been my mission. Dorothy the power was in you all along? For me if this is true it was so deeply deeply buried in who I needed to become to survive all this time. I kept evolving and moving at lightspeed so in this lifetime I can know peace and my children can know the safe arms of a mother who loves them.

I just love differently is the thing. Again differently than what? I love with my whole story included. I wasn’t willing to part and parcel it out anymore in favor of something that looked or felt better at a face value. I needed to love with every part of myself brought along, all the dark and stormy ones too. I had to go back and recover them. It’s more work than that of 10 lifetimes and I’m doing it in one.

So here we are next to a gratitude waterfall that just keeps me standing in awe. I am standing in awe of my life right now, always almost close to tears.

I am safe. I am loved. I am safety. I am loving.

I have worked my way to financial security and approved for more than I ever imagined home wise. I am making good financial decisions, not just ones to comfort myself. I am becoming a calm place rather than the storm. I think I’ve said that line a lot recently. I am at the next upgrade on myself and I’m so afraid to step into that outfit/role because what if I don’t fill the shoes? See what just happened I went to say how amazing it all is and I got scared again. Fear is always all of our constant companions, how we use it is what is important.

Anyway it is time to go back to presence, I am hoping this post just unlocks a little bit of what is going on. Today I will be painting our front door, cleaning light fixtures lovingly by hand, moving furniture, and getting ready to say goodbye to the first solid thing I was able to help get for my kids. Our first real home together that has been ours.

Please keep our family in your thoughts right now and send us healing love. There is so much old energy that is being dragged up. Emotional dust is clogging our nostrils and making us sick. We are all nervous about the many changes and highly charged with nerves. Please help us let these emotions make us stronger and closer versus scratching and biting at one another.

foundher

I found her…. 

I am living in a new home inside my head, and physically we are moving into a new home soon. Magic

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It’s elementary my dear Watson…

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Recently Courtney introduced me to the BBC series of Sherlock Holmes with Benedict Cumberbach et. al. It isn’t very often that I will watch a show and it will captivate my attention more than wanting to be full throttle ahead in the pursuit of my dreams. But I could tell right away that there was something more to watching this show. It was another way for her to show me she sees me. It’s literally my life.

Sherlock goes through the world being primarily misunderstood by most people and putting most of them off as well. Until not very much by accident at all really he and Watson are introduced and they seem to fit together. Sherlock begins to become ever slightly more human, and Watson provides him nearly endless mercy. And in exchange Watson is most certainly never at risk of being bored.

Do you know what this means? That long before there was ever a me, there were people who think like I do. It means I am not alone. So as a gift I bought Courtney (me) the entire set of original Sherlock Holmes books and I am reading through them, and noticing things I never would have before. Things such as in the book the way they meet is because each asks a same random acquaintance about a roommate situation. This time when I hear this I think destiny. I think a miracle a plan. More and more as I go about my life I think we are exactly where we need to be, and even the tiniest event may actually have been orchestrated way before us. I’m not sure what you call it, and my inner skeptic who is a much more comfortable personal has had a hay day being in charge most of my life. But when I look at how things are for me now, it just isn’t possible any of this is accidental.

I was given Courtney because I needed her, and she needs me, and we are each exactly necessary to the other’s well being and dare I say growth, in ways that we won’t even know until probably much later. I can see myself changing, so much of the dissatisfaction parts of me are melting into a deep surrender.

I mean don’t get me wrong, I still get into these mood fits of restless: wander/wonder/creative/disaster/glory/magnificent/confusion/supercalafra-just kidding. And I get into them frequently, but now I am starting to see a rhyme to my reason. If I am not stimulated by some new experience constantly I go nearly crazy. For Sherlock if he wasn’t solving a case that was challenging his brains (stimulating him), he was a nightmare to behold. I am a similar character.

If someone can write this and make it take shape, then there is no reason with this brain that I can’t write anything that I so desire. Believing in myself, (you had the power all along Dorothy), has been the battle… and that is becoming less and less of a problem.

I get so caught up in the details of it all, in how I spend my time, rather than lost in the experiecing of whatever it is I am trying to embark upon. Thankfully it doesn’t take murder or solving a case to get my juices flowing. My child like wonder and naivete that never before had the kind of space they do now, make even delivering a pizza via Uber Eats, an adventure for me. Who will order food? What will it be? Where will it be from? How much will it cost? How much will they tip me? Something about when that little app lights up and sends me on a mission I am filled with wonder.

Who can be filled with wonder about delivering a pizza?

And yet somehow I can. Because someone ordered, and there was some reason they ordered it, and perhaps we will get to talking and something magical will take place. Can you think of anything better than realizing your mind makes magic out of the mundane, if you will just sit still long enough to realize that.

If I could just stop trying to find fault in myself long enough to realize how wildly creative I have been all along. I am WILDLY creative. I have spun straw into gold with my life. I have made amazing connections, and they are all the product of risks I have taken that the average person just never would. I am much more likely on a daily basis to find the wrong in all the things that I do, but aren’t we all fighting that battle, until we realize we don’t have to anymore.

Something is going to unravel out of this madness. I just know it.

You know what’s funny? I actually began this post from a place of self-deprecation, and as the words came out they aren’t even habituated to that behavior anymore and I found something totally different as the story. You see there I go again… MAGIC.

I want to tell you about the silliest argument my wife and I had this evening. Because it’s so Sherlock and Watson of us. My wife tells me today that she purchased a second unlimited car wash package for our other car. My mind immediate thinks, “why”? So I say as much with very little sensitivity or thought. “Well I just don’t understand why anyone would care about such a thing.” I mean isn’t it futile really the washing of a car? Kind of like cleaning up leaves in a yard. I’ve never really done it and nothing has ever happened to me. I haven’t suffered in some intense way as a result. In fact I can see no difference in my quality of life whatsoever due to the fact I’ve rarely had a clean yard or much of a clean vehicle. And yet I have been taught to teach my children these things are important. So I have. But I guess I haven’t really modeled it much. This for a different blog post I should think.

So then poor Courtney begins to see things from the angle I am painting them and thinking she has been had by marketing and advertising, and feels less than smart. And then I feel badly for looking at things in this way, and nervous that I am not upholding something important simply for the fact if it is important to her then it will be important to me. My logical mind just blurted out my thoughts on the matter. And then I grappled to understand how in the world when we rarely argue at all, that we are feeling each misunderstood by the other over two packages of unlimited car washes. LMAO. It all feels so hysterical now. My thoughts were over the course of my 38 years of existence rarely has it occurred to me that the car needs washing. Perhaps 10 times in total, perhaps not even that many. And she was just being her Watson-y self and being considerate, practical, and studious in ways that make sense to her from her own story and upbringing. A conclusion is that neither of us should feel badly for our way of thinking, and the most important part of all is that we are never rude to one another, or condescending, or unkind. I think if either of us comes close to this, it is me because of my analytical, pragmatic, and intensely driven to the core of meaning in all things mind.

When you look for depth in everything, many things seem superficial in ways that seem to not make sense or are hard to be understood by others. She understands this in me and let’s me be myself, and because of that I always want to let her be herself. ALWAYS. Because of my wiring I think it may take something extra spectacular to teach me how to be gentle enough to make sure I create space for this. Sigh.

The point is that IF it is important to her, it doesn’t matter whether I deem it important or not, this is the way I CHOOSE to show up for love. It doesn’t matter if I see it as futile, illogical, meaningless, and by pointing out all the ways I did I only ended up making her feel like shit. Which both of us know logically neither of us can make the other feel anything without our consent, it’s why we work so well, we know this. But we still are not immune to the emotional ups and downs of human existence. Such a silly thing to become so sensitive over.

Is the conclusion that there are two types of people: those who care about washing their car, and those who feel nature will do it for them? Or perhaps there are infinite types of people: such as a type that will never own a car because of a value system or geographical location, or different priorities, and yet another subset that will own several hundred cars as a collector, or to showcase their status? As I could go on and on, much to the reader’s distress we shall call this case solved.

We are on a journey that so many others are on currently, that is to each be ok with ourselves in the light of so much comparison, and so many seemingly good reasons to find fault within ourselves. I am so grateful for this health relationship, where we can have a silly disagreement and my labrador of a mind can try to analyze every crevice of it, until a much needed distraction comes along. My son wanted to talk to us about some of his feelings, as soon as we became engaged as parents, we forgot the silly old discussion anyway, and it ended with Courtney saying, “Honey we parented together”, like we don’t do that all the time. But her enthusiasm about the whole damn thing is what is most healing. She’s enthusiastic about all of us, with all our imperfections, now she will just have to include herself in that generosity and the sky will be the limit 😉

With Heart,

Christina

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Dear John ….. a birth and death… full circle at the Grand Canyon.

Wow so because I am going to post this letter I went back and revisited it. First of all this letter was written February 22nd 2016. It feels like lifetimes ago this happened. We reconnected on June 12, 2010, had a relationship via e-mail, never saw one another in person, until around January of 2014, and around that time I was at the height of discomfort with my disease and seeking understanding and lashing out at the things I couldn’t make sense of. It was around this time he cited that I was exhibiting frightening mental states on a public platform, and reminding him of my mother. And that was it for us. I didn’t have it in me anymore to be abandoned again. I chose not to abandon myself and my needs in the name of reducing anyone else’s discomfort.

I lost a relationship that I had always dreamt of with a father, I called off a wedding to a person who was the safest place I had, her and her family. I risked harming my children, and miles and miles of criticism from others. I was more alone than I have ever been in my life.

One of the things I didn’t realize until re-reading this today is that it was something in the book Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert that helped me write my way to my own closure. This morning as I am reading some of the things that felt so amazing to hear from him, and then some of the things I wrote, and some as we fought, it tears the wound right open.

John Rexford Wilson (my father) died on December 28th at 11 am. He died from tuberculosis at 70 years old. He did not believe in the healthcare system. My brother stated they would be scattering his ashes at the Grand Canyon, and that he would keep me updated. He didn’t. I was not included. Once again the illegitimate. But in the end I chose to let go of him or my ideas about him, and any relationship we did form, because it was the healthiest thing for me.

My mind is trying to tell me now as I read the few nice things he said to me (the things I would try and gather the crumbs of to make something whole that didn’t exist), that maybe if I wasn’t so difficult I could have maintained a relationship with him until he died. We could have left on good terms. Time and time again I see people as this their biggest fear when it comes to not abandoning themselves. But what if we have a negative interaction and then the person dies. Well that is exactly what happened here. But only if you focus on the time we were in contact. What about when we weren’t? Wasn’t that his responsibility? Wasn’t he the parent? He just spoke so pragmatically about it all, about how men are and in those days. Like no big deal. Like it wasn’t a big deal to me. He didn’t allow any space for my feelings, and this is why I’ve dedicated my life to trying to allow space for people’s feelings, and to have enough room by doing my own work to be able to do this. It has taken lifetimes of healing.

It is so interesting that all of this comes up for me at the Grand Canyon. I never even thought of this. It all just came together right now. And about how I just met Elizabeth Gilbert and thanked her and why I cried so hard when I did.

Here I am at the Grand Canyon, where my father’s ashes are possibly spread, and feeling all of these things, that I didn’t know where they were coming from.

Here it is, full circle.

Dear John,

 

I was reading the end of Elizabeth Gilbert’s book “Big Magic” this evening. The section on Trust. Where she speaks of the difference between martyrdom and the trickster and how to find “lightness” in the pursuit of your passion versus a commitment to “being the tortured artist”. I for very many years had been committed to my suffering. It is the only way I knew how to be until I didn’t. I have contemplated greatly over the subject of “too much introspection” and your words on the matter, and your feelings. I have gleaned a lot from that in terms of finding balance in my own life. I wanted to thank you for that. I even use it with my clients in private practice. It is true you can overthink. However I happen to appreciate the way that I think things through and it has served me in my pursuits. 

 Today I completed the first day (my orientation) at Wheeler clinic. I was recently hired as a senior clinician, heading a team of people in efforts to ease the transition of foster children who have struggled exceptionally into their new homes with their families. This is my first “big girl” job with a real salary and benefits and all of that good stuff. At 35 this is my first time knowing what it feels like to not struggle financially and to feel secure. In addition to this over the past couple of years I have done some amazing self work in leaving old wounds behind and finding a “lightness of being”, one that I never even imagined could exist. I feel as if I will finally write the way that I have always known is in me, I just have never trusted myself enough. Trust has not come easily for me. One of the most glorious parts of getting to talk to you was recognizing the writer in me that I believe came from you. I believe I have lots of parts genetically that came from you, and I am grateful for them. 

 In addition to the new position I have my own private practice that is thriving and for being a clinician fresh out of school I have a lot of people referring to me, and the consistent feedback is that I am helping people move further in their journey toward growth than they previously have been able to do. It is rewarding and I never would have gotten to this space without the entire process of self-doubt, fear, and a  degree of introspection (not to be confused with rumination). Without that whole journey I would not be at the space I am in now. I was thinking about this tonight, and my heart got heavy. It got heavy because you’re missing out on all of it. This is not even the most important part of the greatness that I have created in my life. My children. I have 3 intelligent and phenomenal human beings that I helped create and they are beyond wonderful. Everyone feels their children are wonderful, as well they should, but these kids are so special. They bring so much to the world with their kind hearts and very bright minds, and that is just barely scratching the surface on them, and again you’re missing out on it. Then I thought to myself this is probably mostly a projection and not a reality because its all subjective to each person’s own human experience and I doubt that you feel or realize that you are missing out. Not because you don’t have the capacity, you most certainly do, but more because of your commitment to the choice you have made and as you told me at the time you were not interested in rehashing any of the past but only to move forward. I desperately thought I could be willing to take any amount of being allowed to know you no matter what the cost to me. But the process by which all of my feelings existed is natural, wondering about a great many things that I never understood is natural. It is not only natural but also warranted without it causing shame to me or that my process is invalid. 

 Of course I hurt. Of course I wondered why we were not in touch, or how you didn’t wonder about me and how I was doing. Of course I wondered if it was that necessary to never have contact with my mother again, to pay the ultimate price of not also being able to know me. Especially since those things never needed to be connected, they could always have been independent of one another, thought maybe that at one point felt impossible, or maybe that never mattered anyway and it really is more of just a choice of yours. Of course I wonder all of these things without it being shameful or wrong. 

 I could sit and tell you all the wonderful realizations I have had and sell you this idea of everything you are missing out on, but ultimately that process is about me and nothing to do with you and how you feel. The fact remains that I would try to be impressive to you in some ridiculous effort to feel loved. It’s what I’ve done with everyone I have ever come across to try and earn their affection with my merits and my effort. An exhausting pursuit to be sure, and also that has nothing to do with real love. Real love allows space for all of the parts of someone to come fully into their being in whatever process is needed. That is the kind of love I needed to find to become comfortable in my own skin. I had to stop searching for it from a million different resources that looked like a well in the middle of a desert, only to be dry at the bottom when I lowered the bucket. Ive been doing that process my whole life when all the while just over the next hill was an entire ocean. I am sailing right now and smiling and my heart is still heavy that you’ll never be on this boat with me. For whatever reason that is. I won’t tell myself its because I was too sensitive or I was out of line by expressing pain in any way shape and form. I won’t deny myself those feelings they are mine, and they are valid. But what I do take back is any amount of making you wrong or hanging onto any anger. I release myself from that prison. I don’t need to understand. I wanted to see or know or be a part of your process or feelings or anything with you. A romantic notion to be sure that is again more about me and my heart and the way that I work, than it is about anything I have missed out on. I am not missing anything and I do not need anything. I want to share my thoughts and my mind because it is the truth of my feelings and for no other reason than that. 

 As with most things in my life I moved very quickly through being terrified having Crohn’s Disease would turn me into my mother, or that it would ruin the rest of my life. At the time it felt like a death sentence, at the time I felt afraid and alone. I see that person now and only have compassion for her, a compassion that it appeared at the time you were not able to find. I would like to say i would just move forward and embrace your pragmatic probably well-meaning advice and renounce taking what happened so personally, but again that would deny myself the natural process I was having, and it would allow me to accept a relationship that was also unhealthy, one that was based on the convenience of you experiencing an aspect of me without knowing much about the real story, like reading only a chapter in a book and making a decision about it’s value. In real love we don’t get to weed out the undesirable aspects or parts of the story and keep the ones only that we want. If you need to chalk me up to emotionally unstable by association of your experience with my mother, if that is the process which you need who am I to stop you. 

 Amidst the wreckage of all of the old versions of me and many dysfunctional relationships has emerged a person who is powerfully influential to the world. A person who refuses not to feel every inch of everything even when it burns. I am a writer and I choose to only be grateful for getting some of that from you, but the credit for getting to the place where it can begin to come to life is all mine, and at least I get to know that. I get to know that. I will always wonder about a great many things with regard to you, but everything that truly matters is within me and I am ecstatic for this existence that I would not have without you. I can thank you for that regardless of what feelings may come and go. 

 

Thank you,

 

Christina 

 

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Shame, Disease, and Dad: Grand Canyon Ponderings

I’m a little homesick this morning, so it makes sense that I am going to turn to my constant companion that is with me everywhere: my safe haven of the written word. Somehow I always feel better after I have bled my experience on the page, and someone hears it. I think we are all like that. I am sitting in a cute little coffee shop called Brewed Awakenings on Route 66 in Arizona, just a few minutes shy of the Grand Canyon. We are supposed to have a Pink Jeep Tour at 2:30 today, but on the Groupon it says “pending” and I am not sure what kind of weather these guys operate in. I am also not sure if we have the appropriate gear. We somehow assumed that Arizona would be warm. We rented a convertible car LOL! It just so happens that it is snowing this morning, and rainy and wet, and is supposed to be this way all day. “You can plan a pretty picnic, but you can’t predict the weather.

It is however a great day for the permission to write. I have several things on my mind this morning, it’s exciting to see what I will untangle from them. The most prominent thing, much to my frustration is my Crohn’s Disease, and it’s close companions are shame, a certain level of confusion about validating my own experience with it (and in general of course), and this brought up feelings of my Dad, and about how I “lost” him again. Though you can’t lose something you never had, and that isn’t the correct narrative. I chose to eliminate any source that would shame me without looking or investing in me.

So Courtney and I went to a little restaurant last night, it was an interesting experience. There was one cook, and one waitress and they became slammed. The Yelp information made it look like an established and popular establishment. Overall it wasn’t a bad experience, though I would not get food there again. The beer was delicious and probably because we didn’t eat much with it, I ended up squared up with my disease again.

Over the years I have really tailored any drinking because I can tell my body has a very hard time processing it. I essentially got to the point where if I have even a few drinks I get a very bad experience with heart palpitations and tachycardia, and sometimes even atrial fibrillation. However I have been rolling pretty smooth in the land of disease, until I got bronchitis over a month ago now, and had to skip an injection. I’ve been struggling since then, in ways that I haven’t in 6 years. I dread the possibility of another difficult round with this disease or having to change my medication and play that “game.” And at the same time what did I think was going to happen. That I would just take Humira and never have an issue again.

I struggle particularly after being at the International Women’s Summit, where there is lots of talk of sickness in our bodies being a symptom of repressed feelings, un-lived potential, etc. I have always struggled with feeling I’m injecting myself with poison, that is experimental, and doesn’t my body know what to do to heal itself. And on the other hand my GI tells me that this thinking is unrealistic, and that staying on top of this disease in a top down fashion can give me a much better quality of life. Confusion.

How do you know what is intuition and what is superstition?

This is a very important question. We human beings have very superstitious ways of thinking, the way we connect the dots in our experiences. And this isn’t limited to “unhealthy” things, most people think in these ways.

So anyway I woke up last night shortly after falling asleep with my heart beating so hard it felt like it was going to shake me out of the bed. My beats per minute on my Fitbit were over 100. TERROR. I could hear and feel my heart beating in my ears. Seven years ago when this would happen I would go to the emergency room, only to be told I had anxiety. So I gave up doing that long ago, though now I have to be nervous I won’t get help if I need it. I’ve worked that one through with a therapist as well. I’ve tried to cultivate a sense of faith in myself that if it continued to get worse in a variety of ways I would seek help. Except who knows what kind of medical care is available here. I mean people live here right, there must be something. But I’ve been spoiled living only 20 minutes from Yale Hospital. Where bad doctors can exist as well, arrogance can be as dangerous as anything. But that discussion will lead us off topic, as if I ever stay on topic, HA.

So my episode. I take .25 of Xanax to head off any panic attack this can cause, and because I am superstitious of course I believe it will lower my heart rate. I mean relaxing a little can’t hurt in that department right? And then the bathroom things happen, sweating, erratic heart rate bad bad things is what we will leave it at. When that is over I am left shaking and sweaty and cold and aching. Pain radiating up my back. So many symptoms that they tell you to watch out for in a heart attack, because that isn’t stressful. I sit up vigilant lest I pass away in my sleep. I don’t wake up my wife, because that makes it more real, if she gets afraid I’ll read her fear and then really get anxious. So I work my way through it. Eventually I get it down to 90 ish, and I’m doing deep breathing, and making my trips back and forth to the bathroom.

EXHAUSTED.

I wake up this morning feeling like I was hit by a truck, pain radiating up through my kidneys, bags under my eyes. Here I am at the Grand Canyon, and I want to BE fun. Notice what we do? I’m not worried about how I am feeling, and that I deserve to feel better. I am worried I will ruin someone else’s time. Because I know she will be disappointed if we stay in. I know the disease deserves our anger here, hers and mine. Not me. And I never know if I really have to or not. I never know when to push myself to just keep going, or when to validate this thing I don’t want in the first place. My dark passenger, Crohn’s Disease. When I put it like that I am grateful it is not the urge to murder anyone. This was a Dexter reference if you didn’t know.

So when I am grappling with shame and doubting my own experience, this time I am looking to the origin of it. When I got diagnosed with my disease I was so unseen in so many ways. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. After all I didn’t know what to do either. A dear friend of mine had rekindled a relationship with her father and I was wondering if that couldn’t be the same for me. My father stopped talking to me around the age of 12. There was no explanation he just disappeared. I suspect a complicated relationship with my mother and my grandparents, and a lot of confusion to blame, but it was never my fault, and yet I am the one who paid the ultimate price. He made a choice. There is still so much I’ll never know about that choice, so many unanswered questions.

So when I found my 1/2 brother on facebook and was able to look him up and we began corresponding via e-mail I was overjoyed. It felt like falling in love. He of course became romanticized even more so than the average parent in such a situation would because anything was better than the situation I grew up in. He always got the hero role by default almost. Because his energy felt more sane from what I remembered, it felt more normal than what I was going through at home. But as it turns out he was intellectual, and quite pragmatic to a fault. At first I appreciated these things, but as we moved further and further there was no empathy for my experience there. He stated he did not want to re-hash anything of the past only to move forward in relationship, this clearly had nothing to do with my needs, but then again it never did, did it? That was the first flag. But then I thought ok well I can work with that as long as I get to know him. I would do anything you know to have a relationship with a parent. Plus he was so smart and so worldly and doing such neat things. He was living in Xico Mexico at the time and writing a blog about life there.

We struck up a writing relationship. I was smitten. I couldn’t wait for an e-mail from him, and what was even better his take on me being gay was that evolutionarily this was the more intelligent thing to do. He said men were assholes mainly, so he was glad that I was with women. Another interesting perspective. Not one I expected, but I was so hungry for acceptance at this time. He even posted a picture of my daughters on his blog. We belonged! He was willing to own us as family is how it felt at that moment. I felt a taste of acceptance and belonging, one I had yearned my whole life for. He didn’t post a picture of my son, or of me, or anything else. I recall hearing about him that he was a womanizer etc, he appreciated beautiful things, cars, women etc. But I don’t know how much deeper his integrity or his heart went than that. He did stay with his wife (my step-mom when I was little) Anita, for the whole rest of his life. So that’s a sign of health one would think, but then again, people stay together all the time and are not necessarily healthy.

Here is what I do know. When I was lost and scared, riddled with physical symptoms and diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, and in a relationship that didn’t feel particularly loving in the ways I was needing at the time (due to my behaviors as well)…. he said to me “daughter your posts as of late tend to exhibit some frightening mental states not unlike your mother”, and our relationship was over at that point. I cut it clean. I felt no warmth or empathy from him. I just thought I might find it there. It was like a mirage of an oasis in the middle of the desert, and to realize I was sucking in dry sand rather than water. My heart had to break again. The loss of him, or perhaps only the idea of him, to have a father, and then to lose him again. I then vented at him all the things that were hurting me. All the unanswered questions that burned at me my whole life, that I had to carry around. His responses were scathing and only burned more.

Then I got an e-mail from the brother I told you about that he died (this is 2 Decembers ago now). He was 72. I was only vaguely regarded with any information of his passing, even when I asked if perhaps I could attend the services for my own closure. I think his parents didn’t even know about me, and much of the rest of his family. I know I wasn’t given any empathy. There was only shame. SHAME SHAME SHAME.

This morning I saw a post from a friend reaching out on Facebook, and it made me think of people’s statements about whether people should or should not post about their lives on there. What an arrogant statement. Who is someone to know what another person needs. Perhaps in that moment facebook is all they have in terms of nurturance, and one person saying they are there for them may make the difference between life and death. How do you know? Is it really so shameful for someone to vent their sufferings in a public space? I think we need more of this, not less. We need less of the shaming.

Anyway I am going to add an additional post with my final letter to my father that he never read because I knew I was writing it for me, and I knew it wouldn’t be appreciated or received by him, and would only give another opportunity for me to be harmed. So I wrote it for me. It was a huge part in my growth. The decision, MY DECISION that I didn’t choose a relationship with him, rather than feeling abandoned or not chosen.

My letter on the next post….

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Meeting my Spirit Animal: Liz Gilbert

Good Morning from the International Women’s Summit in Phoenix Arizona! Just hanging around with Laverne Cox (no big deal), Elizabeth Gilbert, Cheryl Strayed, and Glennon Doyle. NO BIG DEAL! You know what I realized this time around however, is that I am not as star struck as I used to be. I realize that due to their bad ass ness I have these power house women available to me all the time anywhere I want. Elizabeth Gilbert for instance has been downloaded into me (this is actually something she spoke about here, about her beloved Rayya). Her words are literally a part of me now, and so too I am realizing is her spirit. So when I was able to have the courage to show her some words I wrote about my experience in 2015 and receive an amazing nurturing hug from her, I absorbed it into me and it just gave me more encouragement for my own journey as a bad ass.

I’m just sitting here trying to wrap my mind around this experience. I was going to write that even words fail to capture it, but that simply isn’t true. Words haven’t failed me before and I am willing to bet they won’t now either. I just don’t know which ones will come forth at this time. Isn’t that exciting?!

Isn’t that the very definition of magic, that we don’t know what is going to happen next?

It can be magical. And for people with anxiety it can be terrifying. I am both. It depends on how grounded I can find myself in any given moment and what I am facing down in the mirror that day. These events have a way of doing that to you. Bringing you face to face squared off with any existing feelings of unworthiness. Four years ago at one of these I could barely make eye contact with anyone. I was so afraid they would see straight through to all the hurting parts of me and decide I wasn’t meant to be there. At the same time I was desperately wanting to be seen. We can be both, ALL, all at once.

Elizabeth Gilbert ended up telling us a very intimate story (that she stated she hadn’t planned on) about her beloved Rayya, that she lost two January’s ago. By the way if you haven’t read Rayya’s Memoir, “Harley Loco”, I highly recommend it. Harley Loco !!! She describes the process she needed to go through to come to terms with losing the person she always went to for everything. How could she exist in a world without her, and she ended up saying at the end of the story that this process made the download complete. She talked of radical mercy, the kind that defines who we are as people, not the person we are being merciful with. She keeps Rayya inside of her now, and can access her voice at any time, because she knows her so intimately, that she knows exactly what she would say in any given situation.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. This idea that we can keep people well beyond their expiration in a variety of ways, not just through the written word.

Also at the panel lunch (that only gold tickets have access to, something I can hardly believe I am able to do, never would have been able to before), they talked about this idea of leaving a legacy and how much pressure we women feel to do that AND all of the other things on our plate. One of the bad ass women said something along the lines of rather than thinking of some large scale way to do this, the end result our biggest dream come to life. We leave our legacy anytime we touch another human life with connection, mercy, kindness, integrity, anytime that we see someone that needs to be seen. This idea was so comforting to me. It gave me the sense I am exactly where I should be RIGHT NOW. Not that I am somehow desperately missing some imaginary mark that was set for me. A way I have always felt restless and disturbed about.

I am experiencing more peace, even amongst all of these very big emotions, and so many different energies, here this time. In my personal journey peace is probably the thing most would describe could seem the most unattainable for me. I do not have a peaceful mind, often I have a vicious one, but I am learning to love it/her right into submission. She is melting into a puddle of positive thoughts, and solidifying into a beautiful deeply rooted willow tree. Strong and grounded, and capable to allow her branches to be lifted and moved by life’s experiences, without fearing total annihilation at every turn.

I barely even recognize myself on this trip.

So for this morning I will share one defining moment from it, there have been many. At the top of this post I shared a passage I wrote in September of 2015. At that event I wandered around, not knowing whether I was doing peace or being spiritual correct or not, feeling very insecure about my place in the world.

This time I took my shot and I asked Elizabeth Gilbert to read these words in the front of my very worn copy of Big Magic. She READ MY WORDS! And she gave me the best hug, she didn’t let go first she just held me. My hero held me for a few moments and read my words. I can do anything now! She saw me. And that was enough. It didn’t need to be more. And so perhaps maybe I too can entertain the idea that I am enough, and nothing needs to be more, and then hopefully I can model that for all of the women who look to me. My daughters, my wife, my friends, my clients, my found family, and anyone I come into contact with: WE ARE ENOUGH! We are exactly where we are supposed to be, and life can be full of magic if we are willing to face off with our fears enough and to keep going when it burns enough to see the horizon over the next difficult spot.

Keep going my friends. Dreams do come true. Here is what it looked like when one of mine did…

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What ever happened to Lisa?

grief2

I’ve fashioned myself into the therapist, and left behind the survivor. I wanted to move past, beyond, ever away from my own trauma. It is only recently that I realize how much it is still with me today. I am reading the article “Touched by Trauma” in the most recent publication of Counseling Today.

I tend to move so quickly through life that I see the magazines on the desk, but rarely read them. Why wouldn’t I read what others are saying in my field? I wonder if I avoid it because of realizations like the one I have had just now? It can’t be that though, because I read many many books and articles on such topics, but I tend to ignore magazines, perhaps I regard them as more a waste of time like tabloids, People Magazine, and Entertainment Weekly.

Perhaps I am so hyper aroused all the time that I can’t focus for hardly a second. Perhaps this is not your garden variety ADHD, and something a lot more sinister. That requires a lot more attention that I have ever given it, because then it would become more real. And the fear is always that suddenly you will fall apart, or become swallowed by the associated feelings. They are too big, and there is no way to properly control how much of it you feel, when you are recalling. 

I never connected how much my Crohn’s Disease is probably an effect of my trauma. Instinctually I know, have read and seen how much cortisol, the stress hormone is bad for you. The article says, “Counselors also need to be mindful of the accumulative physical toll of long-term trauma. Research has shown that experiencing trauma- especially when it is prolonged and repetitive- rewires the nervous system in ways that cause hyperarousal and persistent anxiety. This continuous stress causes the body to release cortisol, which can cause chronic inflammation. Over time the inflammation leads to negative health effects. To help counteract this cascade of neurological and physical damage, practitioners can teach clients skills for calming their nervous systems. The treatment should be tailored to the individual client.” 

I’m still peeling back layers of my own abuse. 

When I read this I made an immediate connection. I have been inundated with physical health issues for the last 10 years of my life. I had problems as a child, asthma, and I’ve always identified as a hypochondriac. I was in and out of the hospital often. For awhile youth and enthusiasm to get away from my painful past kept me busy and disassociated from physical symptoms, but as soon as I realized I was not in the right marriage for how I was made and who I am I began to have a lot of problems.

It all began with heart palpitations. These sent me to the Emergency room several times, it actually took me years to realize, or have suggested to me that I could have anxiety, and it was not done kindly ever. It was more like I was too sensitive, making a big deal out of nothing. Anxiety was suggested to me as a personal flaw, not something that required further inquiry and comfort. 

Right now my family is out in the living room playing Trivial Pursuit. I can hear them and they are having fun, and to be fair so was I until my stomach began to bother me and I had to excuse myself. Once I read that and made a connection I went away to the place I so often reside, somewhere in my head trying to figure it all out. I’ve made the mistake of trying to figure it all out at once, because then the idea is perhaps I could be free of it. What it? I didn’t know what to call it. When we don’t know a language for something we tend to automatically internalize some fatal flaw within us. 

I just had a severe ringing in my ear, it happens sometimes, it came on suddenly. I have read more on symptoms and health than the average person probably ever will. My first thought as it happened was that my blood pressure is at some bad level and something is going to happen to me. I probably think about myself or someone I care about dying or suffering some terrible fate no less than 100 times a day. I can’t ride in a vehicle without jumping at any unforeseen occurrence. I am only now at 38 years old connecting so many of these dots.

I am able to do so because of this career as a counselor. 

I can still help people, in fact I am very good at helping people, AND it distracts me from my many anxious thoughts. This dispels the myth that you have to be fully healed in some capacity to be a healer. You just need to be healed enough to not unintentionally harm others. You have to be aware, and a good deal of the way towards acceptance of self and others, otherwise you can use someone else for your own needs. 

It has never occurred to me before this article and this point to be upset I have this disease, and a weakened immune system due to the trauma I have endured. I have worked so hard to keep myself separate from my beginning. I moved across the United States to get away. Another life and another me. I disconnected myself from it so much, that when I had a difficult time maintaining relationships all I experienced as a result was shame. There was no one to help me connect my triggers, behaviors, and anxiety related impulsivity, attachment fractured impulsivity. There was no one. Mostly I have lived marinating in shame and self-abuse as a means to shame myself into a new way of being. it never worked. 

I have so many thoughts to untangle about this. But the one this evening most prevalent is what in the hell happened to my mother and to her sisters to cause the type of toxic sibling rivalry that permeated my childhood. Who was the evil villain and how evil were they? Who is at the root of this, and how much damage has spread through the family tree? They worked so hard to look different than whatever hurt must have occurred, but my childhood felt terrifying in a variety of ways.

I have tried to minimize. I have tried to make myself responsible. I have tried to convince myself that it’s me who made all of this up. It’s unbelievable even to myself. I want to say I dramatized it. How can I trust any of those memories after all. But some of the memories I do know for sure. I know the gist. I know how I felt. And I know what I struggle with today…. and most importantly that this is not my fault. 

I can’t even say that and feel connected to it. It feels dramatic. My intense feelings have always been shamed. ALWAYS. By family, friends, and loved ones alike…. validation is not something I’ve had much of. I’ve often wondered why nobody saw me, why they didn’t notice a good heart, with behaviors that didn’t make any sense. So many people rarely look beneath the surface for answers. 

Where was that one person to come forward and help everyone make sense of it? 

People suffering from complex PTSD without being noticed are wounded warriors with no decoration. They have no percentage of disability, no purple hearts, and in fact are mostly invisible until they find their way into a Counselor’s office. Probably they will spend most of their life plagued by terrible thoughts that something bad will happen either to someone they love or to themselves. Running horrific scenarios through their heads. It will be difficult for them to travel or live any kind of a normal life unless they are disassociated enough to appear functional, but inside is a whole other story. 

My daughter came in to be snuggly and I was intense and in my head as usual. I want to erase this out of frustration. It will be seen as deep and dark, and no one wants to be seen like that. The kind view is no one should have had the experiences that cause them to feel this way on such a regular basis. With your kids you are supposed to be the parent, and present, and none of this is really something they can understand. So I only appear like I don’t care, or I am not present, then I feel guilty for being this way. Then I am shamed by my ex-husband, society, parents of the partners I dated before I connected any of these dots. Seen only for my behavior and my flaws. 

I want answers. I want to know what happened? I want to know if it’s fair to be estranged from my mother to protect my mental health, or if she too was a victim of some trauma I don’t know about and something could be done to heal it. The hope is always there that something could be done. With me healing was possible. What is the difference? Is it in the wiring? Could she have been wired from birth for narcissism, or was she so damaged a health self could never emerge, and if that is the case how can I make sense of any fairness behind all of my feelings towards her.

Where can I place this accountability if not always in myself? What if she never stood a chance? I never did either, but somehow I thrived and turned things around. Is the difference between us the severity of experience or the wiring?

I need to know. 

I don’t want to know.

I need to know.

I don’t want to know.

I distract by staying in the present, but we are never free from trauma that forged our entire nervous system.

I am a prisoner inside my own body is the dark side.

And I am a warrior of light and a protector.

If that isn’t confusing I don’t know what is.

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A Sunday Untangling….

The yarn is multi-colored and vivid….this above is a live capture of my brain. When I can get one thread undone and use it properly, the feeling is pure bliss.

Blog from the bath on a Sunday afternoon. I decided to attempt to restart my day as I have been cranky. A combination of my period, waking up with a migraine, and existential questioning is contributing to this.

Days never seem to go as planned have you noticed this? I once told a client the song lyric, “you can plan a pretty picnic but you can’t predict the weather” (an OutKast lyric) though I am sure the phrase has been around long before they have, and they tattooed it on themselves. Not a bad choice considering how relevant a phrase. This happens in my life all the time.

My health is what most often derails my plans, and rather than accept and nurture myself for this, I am usually hard on myself. Today is no exception. If I could just push through and create one account (for Vivint). The biggest problem with this job, while there is many good aspects, is the constant self imposed pressure. There are group chats, and a leaderboard, and it activates every competitive drive in me, which is obviously the point.

The challenge? I suppose is to trust myself more, give myself more permission and space, to not determine my worth by that scoreboard, and to find balance within, versus seeking external acceptance.

This is all well and good except…. that I can’t keep thoughts like, “if I just worked a little harder that’s 5,000 more to help my kids with college with”, and “I need to be less selfish and self indulgent.” But I just can’t drive as hard as I used to in any aspect. I can’t because I won’t allow myself to not rest, to not validate my disease.

I think I’d appear more successful to others if I could just keep up this grind and pace I have my whole life.

There it is, there is the epiphany I was writing towards….. the truth is I’ve had “grit” my whole life: it’s what has made me so successful, and also so deeply bone soul searingly tired. I am both of these things.

The truth is my spiritual self is already at retirement age. There is our chronological age, and then there is our life experience age. No one sees or recognizes the latter. In God years, Dog years, and warrior years I am 137. I just guessed at that number. I think it’s really like Methuselah (can’t believe I still remember this Bible crap), who was rumored to have died at 969 years of age. Yeah like him. Also small disclaimer I’m not actually anti anything to do with anyone’s faith or belief system. I have some deep wounds that were inflicted by the devout Christians in my life, and that’s my cross to bear. No pun intended :p Wah wah

With sales and money it only gets more seductive, all of it. The competitions, the numbers. The more money you have, the more you need to keep up. I will have to beat this system, but I catch myself already doing what all the humans do which is strive for the nicer things to validate their existence of course, as soon as they begin to get a taste of success.

I was perusing a commonality among these Vivint DMs this am, that’s district manager. Most are men, and most are tall, handsome, tattooed, and have a bombshell on their arms, and or a gorgeous family. I caught myself being envious of their trips to Fiji and fancy cars, and how their life looks.

And then I’m wise enough to know that pictures may tell a thousand words, but so often they can also tell a thousand lies. You just don’t know. Maybe yes, maybe no.

Money may not buy happiness, but it for sure can buy a certain amount of peace of mind, which is what I crave most lately, if you know you can pay your bills, you’re much more sound emotionally than when you can’t. I know that from my vast life experiences. But it is hard to notice when in the midst if you’ve crossed over to the dark side of this equation: seduction, greed, production at the cost of your health, etc.

I’m so grateful I can usually head off most destructive processes at the pass now, by doing just this. Reflecting, thinking, using an open mind and heart. Not getting too conclusive, and also not getting too careless with my emotions or behaviors. At least their is some silver lining to just a torturously analytical mind 😉

Guys I’m almost there. I’m on the brink, of teaching, talking, training hopefully. I don’t know whether this will be the product of an article I submit to Psychology Today or Counseling Today, or whether it will be down the road during or after getting a PhD, if that’s what I do.

I’m craving a change I know that. I’m always craving a change, because there’s more opportunities for learning and growth. I just don’t know yet what that change looks like. If it will be brought on by us having a baby (embarking on that journey again), or by moving to a different home, or a different state which I’m really craving. I’ve been thinking of Oregon lots lately. It’s calling me. But that would require so many logistics. So it is likely long down the ride, though I’m not sure if it has to be….?!

With only one life (perhaps I should get more into the idea of multiple ones so I can cultivate a sense of peace that everything will happen that needs to). One lifetime hardly seems enough to fulfill all one’s dreams, not this one’s anyway 😉 they are too big.

And then I’m right at gratitude again. Thank goodness for this enthusiasm for living. Even when I’m afraid my gigantic feelings could swallow me, or grief will end me, I’m so much more resilient than my feelings would lend me to believe. We all are I think.

Sometimes our resilience works against us for along while after it has protected us from great trauma. The same mechanisms that are meant to protect, also harm in ways the subconscious won’t even let us be aware of without that magical observant impartial party: the therapist.

I want to write so much more about trauma, what I have learned about my own and others. I want to trust that I have something to contribute that hasn’t been said or done in the way I will say and do it.

This is where life finds me today. In my 38th year, often wondering how long I have left, because this is how my mind is wired. Because I am desperate to share my gifts with the world. It finds me in love with myself, my children, my partner, my work. It finds me being someone others seek for solace and wisdom, a position I’m so honored with. It finds me the parent of children who are wise beyond their years, and driven, and brave, and intelligent, and determined.

My son is in love for his first time. And it’s interesting to see how much like me he is in his thinking, and depth of feeling. I’m both elated and terrified by this realization. He faces many difficult decisions, young love is not for the faint of heart, and does not favor the weak of constitution.

My daughters continue to learn and grow and navigate this world as a second sex, their birthright affording them no mercy with regard to how fiercely they will need to love themselves to suit up in this society. They will need all the strength I have bestowed them with, and all the resilience life with me has required them to develop.

My wife is grieving more gracefully than any human I’ve ever encountered. So many changes she has had since we have fallen in love. What a bad ass!

And me… I am here just learning to play and to be gentle with myself and others. How does one ask a freight train or a tornado to be gentle, after they have had such a need to develop into those things?

I’ll be here trying to figure this out…