Tag: #lifeinyourownway

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Finding my Memoir

Full circle smack dab in front of the mirror facing all of my shit. My patterns, my ugly, my everything. The lights are fluorescent and unforgiving.

I have never been so lonely. That’s the irony here. I look like the one who has it all, has it all together, and that’s the worst thing, because it can’t be further from the truth.

I’m terrified to create. My thoughts are so disorganized it hurts so much all the time. The only thing that gets them to be still is being a counselor and pouring all of me into another. That’s the only thing I’ve figured out to make myself still enough to be.

To just be.

I cannot just be. It’s impossible for me. And this gets me into all sorts of trouble my whole life. I never asked for this. Worse yet no one even knows what to call it or how to see it. I am unseen, but I am not unloved, or unappreciated. So that’s something.

I want everything.

You never think you’ll get lost again, and again, and have to find a new self again and again. No one tells you this about life. And for most people I think they won’t even know or worry too much about this.

But not for me. Everything is different for me.

I wish I could find anymore words but for tonight I can’t.

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Grief is the great separator

After I vent my many giant fears to my trusted few my words are free to roam…. if anyone knew how much work even a post takes…. but oh so worth it. Oxygen

I’ve been in contemplation. Another pupa stage. Each time I wonder how there is another. Haven’t I arrived yet? What the fuck self-actualization, isn’t there an end point? Resoundingly no, there is not.

There also isn’t a limit to the amount of love our hearts can hold, or pain. I thought I knew that before this year, and now I know….

respectfully, I didn’t know shit.

Why do we cuss a lot when feeling strong emotions ? Emphasis I suppose. Ever the analytical mind. What of it. This is me bitches ?! Wow I am unknown even to myself so much of the time. That truth creates insecurity and uncertainty. The two things we are always trying to lock down most.

I want to hurt and to bleed so I can physically feel what just happened to us. A tattoo might not cut it this time. We need a third bird on our wrists. Go deep this time. We have earned it. You’d have to cover my entire body. It’s eviscerating every single time. Doesn’t matter if you’re new or old to the process.

Today we walked into the clinic. The fertility clinic. It’s like going into battle Lord of the Rings style, nothing prepares you for it. We have walked the walk in so many different states. And each time I see a couple I wonder if theirs is joy and victory or hurt and loss? I want to know their story too. What would it mean to know their story too? Why is it that my energy is always shared experience?

It would mean we could be less alone. We all want to be less alone all the time. Prisoners in self created purgatories born out of our own templates of how the world works. Some innate. Some inherited. All, our own personal Mount Everests to scale.

How can a heart even hold this much feeling?

To feel like this all the time and to be so much of me, it’s a delicious torture. To be this alive, this awake. You wonder if you can burn at this frequency and not disintegrate, into only a memory in the lives of our loved ones. Which is all we are anyway.

I don’t die. I just get stronger and wiser. I thought it would kill me. But instead I just go under and come back out someone else, every single time.

I can’t even create a story that backs my suffering any longer. That’s a boring small life. I’m not meant for that. We only think our limitations, we are truly not any of them.

Speaking of that… all the ways “they” (the mystical they), tells you how to handle this. Don’t spread your pain to others, don’t do this, don’t do that. You know what when someone is suffering just be fucking kind. That’s all you need to do. It isn’t as hard as we make it. Be kind damnit. Let their tears fall. Let them take up space. See how I slip out of personalization, because this much pain is unthinkable.

Is it a thing you think that losing a possibility is as hard as losing what’s concretely there ? Why do we measure the validity of our suffering and stack them up next to others to see if our experience is ok? Why do we do that?!

Why can’t everyone’s own pain just be their own pain and we can hold it? It’s not complicated but the rules of society make it so. Grief and love are natural states, in allowance they are gorgeous pieces of humanity. In resistance we become tortured and can torture.

Is a 5 week miscarriage “worse” than never being able to conceive? Is losing a baby at the end harder than watching a child suffer through cancer? A true game of would you rather that no one wants to sit and play. Is it better to have loved and lost ? A beloved client of mine and I play this game all the time. Along with “I win” and a deliciously necessary level of dark humor and sarcasm that are sometimes the only way a human can cope. And have a seat at the table too.

Do you want to know the truth?! We don’t ever know. We don’t ever know. Let that rattle your cage. Let that wake you up to your own desires you have been putting on the back burner for the if and when of it all.

If there was an answer, versus many, it would be compassion. Be compassionate and open and warm and kind. Create space rather than closing it off with your own judgment, critic, and self-righteousness. Hold someone else’s experience as tenderly as you wish you could your own.

Level up! We need to be together when we grieve and to be allowed to share our experiences. Not silenced or shamed!!

You don’t need the answer…. only an open heart. An open heart can grieve and love as much as it needs to. I’ll always write my way to my most profound truths. And always hold myself accountable to my own integrity.

Always …..

Ps. If you pray, chant, walk, meditate, or whatever it is you do keep us in your thoughts. We keep getting knocked to the ground, and our people always help us get back up. That’s why we are meant to connect in this life. Thank you for loving us so well.

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Music, lyrics, water, ice

I said to my friend this morning that I have a big family. It just fell out of my mouth, and then all of my insides smiled at the realization. How can that be?! How can all of this change have occurred and right under my nose.

I’m always vigilant for threat. But for happiness…. I can’t even see it when it was always available to me. Just some fine tuning of perspective.

This hunting, constant hunting for belonging or acceptance has left my soul tired. What I actually had to do was to let go, not hold on tight. Then everything just opened right up to me.

I’ve traversed lifetimes of growth just this morning. A time traveling warrior of light. Transcending typical chronologies and customs, and all barriers of logic and reason. A traversiamo; I’ve crossed over.

I had a beautiful line right here, and I didn’t save the draft properly, and it’s gone. It was exquisite, and I’m feeling rather heartbroken. But isn’t this just how life works? If I sit here not writing, let the whole thing ruin my mood, when all the lines come from inside me anyway, and if it’s important it will come back again.

I’m in a freeze again. I’m waiting for something, the next something, and there will be a something after that. So why wait I suppose? Write what I can right now?!

I can write that life is happening around me so fast I feel like I can barely keep up. This creation has taken on a life of its own, and some of my parts (sum of my parts by Mary Lambert, a favorite), still feel like they are in that other life. I am constantly checking the evidence and pinching myself. That must indicate some pretty radical transformation right ?!

I can’t stop thinking about that line, and I can’t stop thinking about other things… my mind just rolls it over and over in the palm of my hand like glistening agates bathed in ocean water and sunlight. Mesmerized. They could turn to dust at any moment these dreams, and I know that like I never have before. I now know what it means to have the courage to go after your dreams. I used to think what’s the big deal? That’s because I was separated from myself.

People thought I was brave. And I was but I couldn’t feel it, and they never knew that.

What direction is my life about to go?! What many directions ? What do I have to offer the world ? I am excavating, contemplating, exfoliating. Laughing. Playing.

Mary Lambert sets my soul on fire. I want to do what she does for the world. With my words. Before my child got lost she wrote. She wrote a lot. Always had a pen and paper. She wrote poetry and song lyrics and tried so sing, not well. And then people made fun of her and she tucked all that away on a mission for acceptance. She watched and became anything she could to be chosen, wanted, to belong.

It’s not all tragedy though that lost child created the very thing that helped her become found. It was effortless to have those three gems, or at least it feels that way this many years out, and within this new journey. They are effortless to love, and yet I was blind for so long. Now I see everything. I spent a small amount of time fearing it was too late, but there’s no such thing really.

It’s never too late. I want to play the piano. I want to dance with joy. I want to weave words together into a brightly colored tapestry and then sit back and see me from the outside in a way I never have before. I have dreams and a heart, that are thawed.

It’s so hard to explain this life in words. I burst with gratitude to the point only unintelligible sobs can escape. I’m nervous to show the world so much feeling, they don’t know what to do with it, and I hate anyone around me being uncomfortable.

I make people uncomfortable, just before they find themselves.

I needed enough insight to realize how to hold on through the storm so I could witness the sunlight. Most of the storms of my childhood were unbearable. So it’s taken several trips through hell to learn how to sit in discomfort.

“Don’t go looking for some kind of rescue, you are the only one who can save you. We are we are more than our scars, we are more than the sum of our parts.” -Mary Lambert

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Soul and mind stuff

Life can still surprise me. My awe this morning says “there’s more”. How is that a thing?!

There’s more magic. I have so much already. It’s not fair. What if I’m taking up someone else’s. My natural state of being says these things.

This magic is meant to help me fully grasp my own power as a human being.

To use my voice without it shaking with old wounds and loss. They are ready to let go of me. These insecurities are ready to let go of me. They have taught me all I need. And I don’t need them anymore.

And who will I be after I shed this skin. I’m going to be someone else again and that’s terrifying. We humans do not like to change it makes us severely uncomfortable I am finding.

An energy shift entered my life unexpectedly and I had a migraine over a week, intense anxiety, old insecurities and suddenly all of my old shit staring me directly in the face. The ego hates this. It says no no no we have already done this work, make it stop.

But our work is never done, which also means the magic is never over either. Life just keeps surprising you. It can be beyond your wildest imagination, but first I can say confidently from experience it will bring you to your fucking knees with terror and grief.

It will rack your whole body. Rock your whole world. You’ll be standing like Dante in the dark wood completely lost, and think you’ll never find your way out. But first it will burn. And you’ll think all the darkest thoughts about yourself.

“It’s always darkest before the light”.

My self has always tried to resist the woo woo stuff. Actually my ego is the resister, my self is soft and kind and receptive. Ego is a nasty master. It says stay safe and still. Don’t take any risks. They are all going to laugh at you.

After each new gift that’s placed in my path my vision, voice, and soul grow stronger. I see it as it’s happening. I feel it. It’s the exact opposite of anxiety. It’s a confidence unlike any other thing. One that hardly ever seemed possible.

Layers and layers and layers of healing can happen, but it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s tearing open wounds each time. It’s painful literally. It’s illness in the body, fear in the mind. That’s how hard our soul hangs on for dear life. There’s a lot that can happen to a human being.

But there is more than this lifetime and this body. Did that really just come out of my “mouth”. What the ?! Who even am I right now. Ack ! There’s just too much evidence that has to be true.

And Josh Radin “Here, Right Now” comes on, because of course it does. I’m coming home to me. The me before the trauma. The true me. The me that looked in the empty eyes of her “mother”, and the mother said, “I knew you knew more than me and were wiser and stronger the day you were born.” “You were the mom and I was the baby”, she said. Perhaps she was an infant soul. https://lonerwolf.com/soul-age/ perhaps it’s mental illness. Hell maybe it’s Maybelline I don’t know.

Not very many things my mother has ever said have meant too much or resonated. But she had that down. She said I was a tiny adult. If she told me no once I never did it again. The perfect child. Well I didn’t have much of a choice.

But in the words of the amazing Lady Gaga, “I was born this way”. And this all leaves me with a lot to think about.

What I will say is I woke up this morning very happy. I’m in my element being my weird ass self. Writing in my bathtub (sanctuary). And I feel one with everything, this sense of peace and love. The very opposite of my beginning and it’s heaven.

It truly is Nirvana.

Pure love, without demands, it’s a thing that radiates to all beings. It’s not held back or contained and there doesn’t need to be a 2D story about it. Is that way they say.?!

“Before I get into this topic, I would like to remind ourselves though of the phenomenon, that our ego needs to label everything. In 5D terms, we would not ask ourselves the question, whether we met our twin aspect or a soul mate, or if we are experiencing a catalyst situation. Because, no matter what experience we go through, we know that we agreed on having it before we incarnated.

There is no better or worse. It does not matter if it is a twin connection or some other type of soul connection we are going through. Our soul chose it for a specific reason. They are all necessary to contribute to our awakening and growth. So please, honour and value the experiences you go through without putting any label on it. As Caroline Myss says: “The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.” Source: Waking up

Yes I have really gone down the rabbit hole now lol. But if I keep going in my right direction , my true north, it won’t really matter and I won’t need to be nervous.

Now I must return to my earthy dwellings and rush a teenager to practice and be a counselor.

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Heart on display

Today is for homemade chicken soup, snuggly bulldogs, and heavy contemplation. It’s for music, blankets, kisses, and decorating. For acquainting ourselves to a novel corner of our new domain. Creating a new feel to the already existing landscape.

Today is the brink of another brave journey down the IVF road. We are embarking upon try number five, and I’m scared like hell. And you aren’t allowed to say that. Because you’re supposed to say how positive and excited you are. I am those things too, but if you haven’t experienced the searing pain of disappointment in this arena you don’t get to tell me how to conduct myself. All you need to do is listen and be kind to me, that’s all.

I’m not afraid I won’t be ok. Or that I am not loved and have a great support system. My heart isn’t thin glass. It’s incredibly resilient. This isn’t fear or a lack, its raw. It’s naked in Times Square. It’s holding nothing back.

It’s as if I’ve pulled my heart out of my chest, holding it carefully, and have placed it on the counter. It’s just sitting there outside my body. Anything can happen to it at any moment. It’s sitting next to the ten thousand syringes and needles of various sizes and alcohol wipes. It’s out in the open and I have no idea what will happen. I’m just standing here marveling at it. How beautiful and strong. It never was the dangerous thing I always feared.

We are becoming friends, my heart and I.

I have woken up out of a nightmare and into a fairytale. Knowing that in real life fairytales there is still pain. I’m still here regardless of outcome. It will only add another layer of depth to my soul. But these layers aren’t cheap.

The Halloween decorations are down, the Thanksgiving / Christmas ones will go up. Our first Christmas tree in this home. The first of so many, if we are blessed. This home will house laughter, and a thousand possibilities for a secure space full of traditions and love. What life is this? How can it possibly be mine? I just keep pinching myself.

This is nothing I have ever known.

Hyper vigilance gives way to peacefulness. Anxiety is replaced with security. The neural pathways laid down attempt to derail progress, the progress is too consistent and too great. I’ll lay down an entire new railroad if it means I can love and be loved.

A life once only dreamed of comes clearer into view. I’m no longer naive enough to think I’ll be happy if or when…. something always comes along. Life changes on a dime. Be happy now, exactly as is. Your perspective and circumstances can change in an instant, then life will change you.

When I no longer live inside my head anymore, what will my writing be like then? I’m changing more quickly than I can keep up with. Am I ready to pour this molten heart into children who desperately need love, and to be seen, as I did? Am I ready? What is ready? They weren’t ready for their circumstances.

So if they have to be brave, so will I. If they can be brave and open, amidst crushing disappointment then I will too.

It’s just the unknown, which has as good of chance of turning out beyond our wildest dreams as it does bad. Our biological wiring is made to detect threat rather than possibility.

I’ve spent a lifetime surviving. Now I’m ready to live.

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Musings from my 20k Client Day

It’s 9 pm and my client day just ended. I needed to pick up my daughter right after and on the way I found myself sifting through moments from my day.

What I experienced was a sense of reverence for what people share with me. For how brave they are. For the work itself.

I was thinking about that fine balance line between feeling self-important, essential to them, and being responsible for an outcome etc…. and what I landed on is that;

I don’t feel responsible for my clients, I feel responsible to them.

I feel so grateful for what this works gives to me, and such a respect for it and them, that I want to be constantly raising the bar on self-love, support, acceptance, and my own accountability.

This work makes me want to be a better person. Their strength and courage fuels me. I know what it takes to come to that first appointment. The sweating, the indecisiveness, the anxiety, and the cold hard fear. It’s the same as if we were looking in the mirror under fluorescent lighting.

I never see the way I do Client work as me being the gas station and them being the car. The way I do work I don’t burn out because it’s a beautiful reciprocity. Where I have true respect to my core for the experiences of each and every individual.

Listen I am by no means perfect. My mind can wander. Some people’s demons rattle the cages of mine easier than others. I make plenty of mistakes. I am a human. But I’m always interested passionately in their experience as a human being, down to the most mundane interaction they are describing. Because there are always clues to be had about their worldview or value systems.

I can do something with anything. And being given a challenge to push through my discomforts and self-defeating barriers, makes me feel alive!

Client work makes me feel alive.

It is important. To be allowed to process our thoughts and feelings in an arena that provides acceptance and safety is important.

I get energized by holding this special place in the world.

It is an honor.

I wish I could get out more complete ideas, or do an update like I have been wanting to. But this honor also leaves me spent at the end of the day. In the best of ways my brain is scrambled eggs. I think of my youth and that silly commercial this is your brain on drugs. Except in this case it’s this is your brain on Clients.

Except I could never keep a story that I am drained by it. I don’t need that to feel validated about how much I give or how important I am. It’s ok for me to be energized by my work, without the story.

When I’m exhausted these days it’s such a satisfied exhausted. After a days long hard work.

Which speaking of I did have a thought I want to look further into…. I wonder how many calories I burn being a therapist. So much emotional energy my heart is often high during sessions, but I’m animated and engaged. Tonight when I ate, I ate as if I had worked out for hours. I wonder how much using our mental energy burns in terms of calories etc. I wonder what other therapists out there are the same.

I often joke that some of my therapy days are so deep it’s as if I ran a 20k.

I’m curious exhausted. I’m happy exhausted. I’m fulfilled exhausted. I can feel great and tired and that’s such a cool thing to wrap my brain around. The only template I had about exhaustion before was to make a problem or make myself wrong.

I’ve thought things such as what if Client work is killing me physically. When in actuality my not loving and accepting myself fully is the root of all of my ailments. Never someone’s energy being harmful to mine. That’s such a dangerous belief system, and it makes the problem outside of us rather than inside.

Anyway my last shreds of bandwidth are rapidly deteriorating. Perhaps I’ll be able to follow up tomorrow morning.

Warmly, Universally, Cosmically,

your companion on this journey we call living…

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We all float down here….

I’m feeling the need to write, as in it’s a must. But I’m back in that mode where I’m getting tripped up by what to write about and how to organize it instead of just doing it. So here I am just doing it.

Another freeze and another thaw.

Here we are a year later on the brink of fall gearing up to “put our hearts out to be shot at” (for those whole don’t know that’s a JRR Tolkien reference). We are going to transfer an embryo as soon as all our ducks are in a row, or even in the vicinity of a row. Realistic expectations are important.

So many things in my world have shifted on the inside and the outside. For a little while there I thought I (it, they, etc) was lost. I felt so anxious and disrupted, but I realized that was an emotional flashback. Feelings from another time, another self.

The universe whispering gently, “it’s only change Christina, just change, you’re always safe and loved, you’re on the right path, your path.” You’re not on the edge of a cliff, as a dear therapist said to me recently. And she was right. Solid ground. Stability. The unthinkable. Unicorns and magic.

Our firstborn just turned 18 years old. He is at college out in the world navigating his own ship, and doing all while having a safe harbor. Our girls are thriving despite all the pain of leaving all they knew behind as well. Finally my feelings are not so consuming that I have enough to see them simultaneously. They are not falling through the cracks as they so often were in danger of.

I’m seeing and choosing being a mother over every other kind of existence and emotion, and I love it. How dare this not just be natural and a guarantee right ? When everyone gets so excited about a new life. But I have learned it’s not. Like any kind of love you have to work at that shit. To be less selfish, to see deeper with an understanding heart. To see beneath. To break open, no matter how terrifying.

We watched the movie IT the other night. The only way I will watch a horror movie anymore is if there’s a beautiful underneath, and with Stephen King there always is. And I caught myself wondering if I could be that brave. One of the major themes is these kids promised when they were young to go back to the thing they fear the most and protect others. And in the movie you see their struggle. One of the members even takes his own life prior because he knows himself well enough to know he doesn’t have that in him, and all of them must be there. That’s how scary.

When I imagine if I could face the scary monster I always think no way I would choose to stay safe. As I cringe in fear and am shaking. And yet this is ridiculous because I have been facing my own monsters and others my whole life without backing down. And I am finally appreciating myself for this.

Owning and feeling when people notice my brave. I believe it now and it’s enhancing who I am as a parent and how much love I can offer the world. My smaller world, and the larger world. I have love to give and damnit I intend to bring it. I’ve spent so much of it so afraid I wasn’t truly loved.

And here I am…. truly loved. And even better …. a truly loving person who doesn’t ever have to doubt that again. I refuse to ever doubt that again. That’s a promise to myself. She deserves it.

That’s the surprising part. When you are always ahead of yourself and your feelings catch up later sometimes (always) it can be hard to trust yourself. But trust is exactly what I am finding. I would venture to say faith even. Faith I am where I want to be, need to be, am supposed to be. I feel connected, as much as someone whose journey has included what mine has can.

More connected than I ever thought I could be. I live on earth now with the other humans. Not nearly as much in my head, where at one time it was so dark and scary that I understood Stephen King on a more intimate level than most. How his mind could travel to such horrific scenarios and yet beneath is such a deep understanding of humanity and a man who wanted to bring to light, in his own way, the struggles we all endure. The bullying, the tragedies, the terrible. How he must have suffered throughout to have such an understanding. I wonder if he would trade it? I doubt it….

The beautiful moments between the scary stuff. Our connections, our humanity.

So we are embarking on an adventure that includes being the parent I never had, and the one I always knew I could be. And in my process I’ve found the love of my life to do this with, and my tribe is forming. The like minded who wants to support and be supported. To contribute to this cause and they have found belief in it as well.

We are becoming registered to do foster care, and have a baby of our own. And whatever presents itself first as it’s meant to be we will welcome with open arms. Babies, career shifts, adventures, hand in hand… up we go….

It always seems so scary not knowing what’s going to happen next, but I have a feeling this next chapter is going to include more trust that whatever it is, even with the scary parts, it’s going to be novel worthy.

It always has been and always will be…

ready set go…. write…. create…. love….

repeat….

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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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Healing, and Validating My Dark Passenger

Being a Clinician helps me validate my own trauma on a daily basis. It gives me a space where I can acknowledge it, along with carefully detecting others and helping them become self-supportive versus being their own authoritarian parent.

Every single time someone reveals themselves to me I get permission to reveal me to myself, and I grow.

I’ve come so far on my path that it’s time to peel back another layer of denial. My trauma still lives in my body and wreaks havoc on my ability to enjoy…..everything.

My body is the last part to address. I’ve been working on my mind basically my whole life. And I never seem to be able to find a Clinician who will see beneath my high functioning exterior and be able to help me hit that sweet spot between acknowledging and not being terrified as I do.

I need to fall in love with my body. I have never loved it much. It was drilled into me in a thousand ways I shouldn’t.

First, as a woman, as my mother’s daughter I was already capable at any moment of being the promiscuous temptress she was (at the ripe age of 10 or so), so it was drilled into me sex was bad, being around boys was bad, and even movement in my own body, bad. No dancing. No joy. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.00.

Second, I liked the boys section of clothing always. They had the cooler stuff. I never liked lace and bows and never liked to do my hair. Even when my own daughters came along, that wasn’t something I ever did. I didn’t know how really. And also had no desire to learn. I’ve never been girly. Call it hormones, tomboy, the urge to be more male like as a means to protect myself and anyone else. I was always shamed for that.

As adolescence and puberty came along I desperately tried to fit the bill and be like the other girls because I so wanted to be picked and chosen, probably by them, but I wouldn’t know that until much later. I was convinced by society and the standard that Prince Eric was the prize and Ariel was who I needed to look like. And if you have ever met me once I know what I need to do to adapt and be picked, I am an unstoppable force.

But none of it ever felt very natural and I couldn’t put my finger on why.

Sex never came very naturally either. Was this the thing I was supposed to enjoy so much? I made it work. I always make things work, but never under a confident hand that pressed for their own needs. Not until much later anyway. I could only choose those just as lost and confused as I was, but to me anyone looked like a well in the middle of the desert. Anyone who paid me 1/2 a second of attention… could have my whole heart.

I would have our wedding dreamt up. My imagination the sustaining force of my inside world. Naive and childlike this imagination; I have to give her credit, she has taken me on a Wild wild ride, and it did lead to my destiny. So to speak anyway.

And now that I’ve cracked the code on love, my sexuality, am becoming the best parent that was ever possible given my history, am a successful and sincere Clinician who loves her work. Now that so many of my dreams have come true it is time to work on a strong, proud, fluid, gentle, relaxed, healthy body.

Now how does one do this without getting overwhelmed by all the possibilities? I can do yoga, Pilates, exercise groups (terror for me), I want to find someone who can tell me more about how my brain compares to those who haven’t had my experiences. More validation. I never validated the C-PTSD. Helping others gets me just close enough to mine to look, but we haven’t quite tipped over the edge of owning this history yet.

Why if I am doing so well? Is a measure of denial not productive and healthy? I’m not sure. Strip away these layers and terror could lie beneath. I could crumble under the realizations. But Christina, “you have never crumbled before, cut that out.”

I don’t exercise primarily because every little extra fast beat of my heart makes me feel like I might drop dead any moment. The true reality of me if you want to know the truth is I am the imagineer of terrible scenarios. I do it everywhere, all of the time.

If I’m walking to he big E and we pass a bridge. And a woman with a baby walks over it. I imagine her or someone else, throwing it over. If I’m on a train to go do something fun, I begin to have scenarios of a gun man getting up, or of the train exploding, crashing. I’m sitting right there with my family about to enjoy a nice day. And so then the physical symptoms begin, the tingling and numbness, the chest discomfort, bad stomach time, will I find a bathroom in time. This was so much worse at a certain point. I’ve mostly conquered the physical, by not entertaining the thoughts, but they still are there.

This is just a tiny picture of what could go through my mind. We went to Hamilton this past year, one of the best days of my life. We were in orchestra and my children (teens) on top of the mezzanine, smiling down for a photo. And terrible images of them jumping, or when I’ve been up there, what would happen if I jumped.

I have no desire to kill myself, in fact quite the opposite I have a terrible fear of not completing my missions here in time,

Why is this such a part of me (I know why). Why even with all of my work can’t it be laid to rest. My body is as tight as anything you have ever imagined. Stiff as a board, not light as a feather. Every muscle is ready all of the time for battle, at any moment.

I would like to catch my body up with my mind. Would like it to feel as healthy, strong, capable, fit,.. as I’ve created my mind to be able to be. But I keep telling a story of tired. This is when I want to coast I say…and then the anger and resentment rises and there is no room for that in my life because it makes me irritable with my family when I don’t want to be.

So denial keeps everything where it needs to be so I can function just enough. Peel back denial and you are completely in the unknown. And imagine if I can picture such terrible scenarios in the known what I can do with the unknown.

Imagine…..

So recently I’ve finally been convinced to try CBD oil. Enough clients are finding success from it I really wanted to try. I have a complicated relationship with marijuana, and yes yes I know no thc in this, but if you have seen the things I have at the hands of your own mother and even the smell is a trigger. I hate the stuff. I know tons of people find relief, but also it’s a dark mistress as well. There is a dark side, it robs motivation and self efficacy and convinces you it is the only thing needed. It masks and hides as well.

Taking any new medication induces such hypochondria in me I begin having physical symptoms and can’t tell whether it’s anxiety or the medication being taken. A really fun time. I already don’t feel well in a variety of ways each day, from my Crohn’s Disease. So I am determined to get my self healthier.

So I tried oil from https://www.cbdmd.com

750 mg gummies and oil.

The result thus far after 3 tries at a gummy in the evening. I felt anxious about taking said thing and felt weird eye pressure and head pressure, though this has been bugging me awhile, so probably not that.

I realized that while I don’t feel anything in my head. I can’t tell what it’s doing. My body feels relaxed in a way it never has. My level of red alert constantly is a little more relaxed. I have never slept so good. And this morning I cried with the possible realization that my body could be this stressed for this much of my life. That this could be real and not a concoction of my mind to validate my experiences.

So my new mission is to lose weight, not leave my body last to absorb the brunt of everything, and to find natural mediums to heal myself. To be willing to devote that time and energy, and not just say I’m too busy or it comes last.

So I will be writing about this as I go. Each days attempt at body love and trauma work, and everything else in my world.

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The Elusive Consistency of a Creative

This is the grief puzzle …. It’s finished now, though the grieving isn’t….. A perfect metaphor for process.

I’m trying to figure out so many things currently. My gears are turning and I’m deeply inside my head, figuring out how to get outside of it, when I should do that, when I shouldn’t. Ew should and shouldn’t. I preach against such words in my practice. I could re-frame right now. I “should” 😉 But I have to be human too.

I took my 15 year old daughter to her eye surgery 5 week follow up this morning. Everything is good there. I can cross that off my list of things to worry about. Good eye position, she’s healing well. I am grateful.

The things on my mind the most are consistency and self-discipline. I’m having trouble untangling because Starbucks and distractions.

I need to DECIDE on my mindset, the one I want to keep most consistent, so I do not get thrown about by every emotion I have because they are plenty. If you’re thinking easier said than done, you’re damn right.

How do we take someone who has thrived on chaos and survived not by careful planning and structure, but by the ability to bob and weave and to be constantly moving, and tell them to slow down and organize? Life is calmer and more peaceful for me these days, but my nervous system and psyche are not as ready to accept that. I still have a lot of threat response reactions, many of them physical.

All of my current goals involve self-discipline. I am a person who can talk herself into and out of anything using whatever story I decide to tell, and often I realize the stories I tell myself are not congruent with my mission. This is going to require some work.

These episodes of flushing are really getting annoying. I’ve about had it. If the solution to this is rooted in my weight and my health, then we are going to go hard at figuring this out.

How do I choose what thing to give my most attention and consistency too when there are so many?

This is my biggest issue right now. I’ve been trying to push work aside and show up for my kids, and being in my home and doing the things to make it run as smoothly as possible. This is the least easy to do because the reward has to be found by introspection and is only by looking down the road. It would be easier to get rewards I can see more easily, like the screen light up on the Vivint Board. All the screaming and yelling of my success. Rather than being yelled at at home, which is a lot of what happens when you have teens. I hope somewhere they really see that I am trying. And not that I am putting myself aside and all that martyr crap. But that when they talk I listen, and I try to actually put forth the effort.

The problem is all the areas I have to choose between. Limit your choices and discomfort could potentially go down, but there has to be another way. I don’t want to my choices limited.

Ultimately I need to feel good about myself, and not much I am doing lately is helping with that, because I keep doing different actions than the goals I have in mind. And I believe stories such as I am tired etc, but I’m more tired when I am not working towards my dreams. I am more tired when I eat like shit, that thing I said I was going to let myself have as a reward. There is something wrong with the system.

Talk less, smile more…. work on my focus more while smiling, rather than gritting my teeth. I want to feel joy in my days, and as a matter of fact I do so much. A lot of options I am successful at and people wanting what I have to offer is a good problem to have.

I have good problems now in my life, the problems I used to have I would classify as bad ones. This is like the difference of having to dig out of a 20 foot hole, versus having to avoid a pot hole here and there. And the biggest types of pot holes I need to avoid are ones that suck me into a story that takes me to an old emotional place that is outdated to all of the effort I have done.

I need to prioritize feeling good in my body, it needs movement and appropriate nutrition and this feels like it could be a full time job in and of itself. Why does everything feel so daunting? Could it be because my period is going to start at any moment? Yes, but it’s also more likely that my self-discipline is low.

Now the question is why is it so low? I am going to do some research about this, as well as dig into some of my stuff. I think a clue is how long I went without. Without enough of so many things. Not enough love, not enough stability in a variety of ways. Not enough of myself accessible to myself or anyone else. Now that I am thawing I allow myself to indulge, and then that quickly becomes habit. Hard work is no longer necessary to my survival, now that it is more of a choice, I allow myself to be tired.

But what if that’s more a story that I tell and then believe, rather than something that actually ends up making me feel better. Give yourself this reward of this thing that builds up to something that ends up making you be constantly in conflict with yourself.

There is no worse place to than in conflict with yourself, and I am so often there. I am just here trying to figure this out. One solid choice in the direction I want to go after another should really be where I focus, but my brain is like a disobedient puppy, and training gets tired after awhile.

I also think there is something to be said about intelligence and attempting to wire ourselves for automation so processes can become easier. My mind defaults to indulgence now, rather than to my goals and discipline.

I am retirement age in spirit years and this is causing my soul a lot of confusion.