I’m grieving my impulsivity, which I previously regarded as all things passion and therefore true.
Quick connections, assumptions….. firing squad quick. Life or death. Ride or die. I wasn’t wrong many times, but it wasn’t right for me either. It was always the one in my story. I was always so sure so fast. What I didn’t bargain on was how this was wired into me, and how little control I really had over it.
I have since learned to practice action over feeling. Actions tell the reality of any situations. And one foot in front of the other you can lay down stability and security with only your own, no need to scream about mistreatment, to panic, to drop to your knees.
Though when you do need to please allow yourself. There is beauty in the breakdown.
I’d need to know me to figure that out, not just how to present a presentable human to the outside world.
Shortcuts do not make for a whole person or experience.
All in Christina, one day at a time, crystal clear boundaries, let them figure it out.
Let go
You never had control anyway, all you ever had was anxiety.
My impulsivity has led me into more lies, more unsafe situations, and on and on, than are imaginable.
Let’s better understand what my history means my impulsivity truly is. Constant and desperately seeking feeling loveable, wanted, loved, desired, and as if I had the capacity to provide those things.
As if….
And to be able to feel it before I better understood my trauma it often, if not always needed to be intense.
To confuse feeling intensely wanted with being loved can lead to the stuff of nightmares I can tell you that.
Often in recovery people struggle with boredom and destructive thought patterns. I find it helpful to walk and to read and to keep things as simple as possible.
Total and utter presence with only the tasks at hand.
I now know you don’t have to respond to every battle you’re invited to, and I preached it long before I was able to practice it.
For me it helps to learn to divide my focus between the many important pillars of my life. Rather than getting caught in story traps, and painful regrettable all or nothing states.
I’m halfway through my second mile, it’s beginning to rain. I’ve been listening to Matthew Perry’s memoir, which my thoughts often trail to how I’d write my own.
A plan like many before them has taken shape as a way to organize. List every single influential character in my story and write as many sentences describing those experiences as comes naturally to me. No more or no less and see what weaves together just from that.
This morning I had an intrusive thought. We got these crazy sharp and expensive cutco knives from a friend of the girls selling them. It’s a cute and funny memory. But one slip of one of those suckers and like butter your finger will be gone.
My kids like me, can be ultra sensitive about things. It’s a product of trauma and also innate. A double whammy if you will. Anyhow she understood me as laughing at her for the way she was cutting an apple and got angry, just a little compared to before family therapy. I knew if I said anything about how to cut differently I’d be met with an anger that shrivels my soul immediately and makes me want to run for cover.
The only threat present here is misunderstanding, and being misunderstood. It’s the biggest threat present in our family. And finally with a healthier clinician than in the past, the tangles are becoming a little bit undone.
I’ve been hungry to write, but also overwhelmed about gathering and organizing my thoughts. The story of my life. It will be on my headstone. Many years later of course which I now might actually be able to believe. Instead of the story about the shooting star lifespan, bright and gone as quickly as it came.
We all are most likely shooting stars in the scheme of things.
I’ve been having clarity and connection and moments which are all part of a natural ebb and a flow I never thought I’d have a part in. My triggers and coping mechanisms felt as if they swept me up and gave me little choice in the matter.
I know better now.
How to find the delicious sweet spot of acknowledgment of symptoms and experiences and also the compelling why driven reasons to keep moving forward.
You, my loved ones, will always be my why.
I am emotional and open and atoning.
“Everyone is the narcissist but you Christina” plays and re-plays, until I shake it clear of my head and remember the hurt that propels such statements and how deeply misunderstanding I was of myself, which invited energies that would misunderstand me.
I am too aware and too motivated for change to consistently employ such a defense mechanism. Do I have layers of protection that can emit projection and all the other beautiful aspects of control and hiding that that involves.? Absolutely I do.
I am committed to breaking generational curses. Yours, mine, and ours. It is my steadfast promise. I become steady, courageous, accepting, gentle, open, and loving.
It is possible.
I am de programming myself. Shaking off all of the abuse replaying, mine, as well as my transgressions. Enough internal secure ground laid to face the heat of the truth.
The truth has legs. All the things she said playing in my head. All the things I said and did. How outlandish and ridiculous I sounded when I was a walking, talking, coping mechanism. How sad the pain that can be inflicted.
And it’s not over unless life is. I will still make mistakes, and have misunderstandings. But I am here and I show up and I am sturdy and proud of the life I have lived, and the one I’m creating now.
I watched the Glass Castle the other night. Wow. Poignant. Devastating. Relevant. Just incredible.
I watched it through a lens of seeing my transgressions. The worst is the freeze. It’s worse than screwing up. Because I couldn’t be loving either. I admire the fucked up families that stay I always have. Would the children have been better off or not?!
I held back so much, held myself so carefully so I couldn’t be damaging from my damage until I better learned, that for a time I barely existed at all. I couldn’t be fun or playful and I now think rather than only how hard for them, how hard also that was for me. I couldn’t express. No wonder writing felt so important. I had to find some way.
Now I get the privilege of becoming who I’ve always been, and being able to feel it and be connected to it. I am awestruck at this possibility and genuinely compassionate as the suffering involved from my almost entire separation from myself and purely external functionality for enough years I could have become a pillar of stone.
Now I try not to look back lest I become a pillar of salt.
I want to enjoy being a pillar of stability and wisdom and love for my loved ones. It is my daily prayer and mission no longer impossible.
I can say unequivocally that my departure from my own was necessary. I’ve since stopped watching others grief process and wronging myself.
It’s been so exhausting weighing every movement I make, and anyone near me, for good or bad, right or wrong, safe or unsafe. It has been one of my greatest burdens and taken up so much space. But it has also made a conscientious and grateful human being who appreciates even a crumb.
I no longer desperately subsist on scrambling for them, but a little glimmer never hurt anyone. The words often rise. All that glitters is not gold. That memory is sharp, pungent. Control. It worked.
Life is a treasure. It no longer matters.
I was so tired of being misunderstood even before that began. All I needed was to be understanding of myself. I am that now. Soft when I can be, as often as I can be because that’s my preference.
I love Sundays. I love walks. I love reading. I love writing. I love learning. I love connecting. I love warm hearted open people, the ones who mean well and do things ultimately for the right reasons to the best of their ability, according to their awareness at the time.
I believe whole heartedly in no man left behind and I never have, they live on in my mind.
Love is not an emotion, it doesn’t behave as emotions do, it is steadfast promise. Karen McLaren. The language of emotions. It exists whether it is present and practiced or not. In memories, in moments. In the wonderful Brutiful trap that is the mind. The door is open you may come and go as you please.
I am at peace.
Oh and also I’ll be attending a getaway at Omega again finally. Haven’t been since 2015. Elizabeth Gilbert and Rob Bell. Be still my heart. Their article why do we Thank our heroes was printed and given to as many clients as possible around that same time. The first time I saw Liz in person. Those are such intimate memories.
I have more I want to write but for now I broke the silent spell and that is enough for the moment.
How Do You Block the Sound of a Voice You’d Know Anywhere….
Lisa Loeb Wishing Heart and Jan Arden Insensitive are taking me back today….
I have a bad sinus cold. I woke up this morning with my head pounding, sensitive to light and sound and essentially everything. I debated strongly what course of action to take, ie migraine pill because it feels like that, but I know it’s sinus pressure.
I opted for severe sinus med and it definitely lightened the suffering though it’s there behind the pill. I don’t want to take an antibiotic if I don’t have to. It wipes out any good gut bacteria I manage to have and causes whole other issues. So there’s that.
I’m seriously reflective right now. Very within. Integrating the changes from these past years. The holidays brought forth lots of grief. All of the lost dreams. It’s not as doom and gloom as it sounds, well it is and isn’t.
It isn’t because I am faithful these days to a belief that all of these are threads in a tapestry of my life and all are sacred, even the more coarse fibers.
I am understanding my self better, which helps me to understand others better. I’m doing this in all areas and in past and present relationships.
It’s a softening.
Will I be thawing forever?
The answer in so many ways is a resounding yes. What’s different is the resentment. I no long resent this as much, that is becoming a holding it sacred as part of my path. Who even am I?! Oh hey heyoka. If that’s the name for a deep spiritual being that can hardly believe that’s a real thing and not some grandiose fantasy. It sounds ridiculous and self aggrandizing. We only believe what we can see and touch, because anything else never showed up.
I’m not behaving as if I’m living in a fantasy. My feet are firmly planted and I’m addressing myself and my needs and learning to communicate. I am learning. It’s not easy for me. Yep it’s not the other person, it’s me, just as much. Humble pie. I own my things, and own them specifically and follow through with change however and I was always capable of that. That was always possible under the right conditions and I am not responsible for the right conditions. I made my hard decisions.
I can trust that because when push comes to shove afraid or not I act with integrity. Scared or not. That is trustworthy. So when am I going to start valuing myself in that way?! Love HER Christina, choose her. She deserves and is worthy of your love. Stop fearing her, she has always meant well and tried hard and course corrected when it has been necessary without relying on manipulation.
I never relied on manipulation. When I recognized that’s what I was doing I owned it and changed and had empathy for those hurt.
Empathy without boundaries is self destruction. Yes it is. Never again. Boundaries are king and everything will be as it should because those are water tight. Crystal clear boundaries she said, a therapist from another life. Able to protect even when that was a difficult balance. Crystal clear boundaries Christina.
I remember every single thing that is important to know. Not protected by a narrative, but cloaked in taking the time I need to make the decisions that are best for me and learning how to be more than a coping strategy.
Meeting myself. Falling in love, or at least like. Sometimes love can be very overwhelming.
I am observing myself in absolute shut downs and freezes and then watching what brings me back and what shuts me down further.
I have slowed down enough that I am able to be seen, only because I am seeing myself, not only in that terrible polarity of good or bad, right or wrong. But in all of the richness and complexity I deserve. Did you hear that?! Wow.
I did. And my eyes are wet.
They thaw over and over as my heart does as well.
My head is exploding I’m going to freak out! No I’m not. My adult self will take myself to the walk in later and get on some antibiotics and trust the rest. I’ve had this pain for three days. I rearranged my day to only have a 12, and 1 and moved the rest. So I can just crawl in bed and relax. I think it’s time to also take the migraine pill. I think it’s both 🙁
It’s so painful these realizations of the way I’ve seen things so backwards and tangled with my kids and how misunderstood I’ve felt, and not being able to clear those up. I can’t believe how I’ve lived like this all this time. So separate from myself and those I love and just as a harsh executioner. Reactive, ready to jump on any sign of dissension.
I was reacting to my children all the time, when I didn’t feel in control. And shocker I’m not in control of anything, but myself now. Jesus it was about time. In the immortal words of Elizabeth Gilbert. You never really had control anyway, all you had was anxiety. Yes Liz. Thank you for being a beacon when I am lost.
How I have needed to be in control for safety. I am the things I’ve accused of and I see so much more softly now. Of myself and others and the glaciers just thaw and thaw.
What will emerge ? As I no longer reside in a story or rely on the same coping mechanisms.
It’s absolutely terrifying being in a transformation. Dying over and over. Things are so clear at least and that is a relief. and there is also so much to sit with. To make friends with.
I’m fighting to trust myself. That is my biggest area of work right now. My perception, my own ability to feel my feelings in real time, rather than a year later. That the things I say and do will not hurt me let alone another. I’m juggling so many plates in the air all the time and working at being entirely different when overwhelmed.
The tool I’m employing most often is empathy and having been so far removed from my own for myself for so long I’m wondering how the new fresh oxygen will integrate: was I without it for too long? Is the damage too great?
I’m only just beginning to peel back the layers. To not use usual coping strategies and patterns. To know what is and what is not that.
My heart is opening and softening, but I’m still an anemone. At the slightest sign of danger I close up tightly and it’s frustrating feeling so emotionally handicapped. Stunted, frozen, cold.
I am going through those things, but I am not those things. This is quite possibly one of the biggest changes inside to date.
I’ve misunderstood myself so catastrophically for so long, that finding understanding now is almost unbearable. It’s unbearably different than what I am used to.
To stop misunderstanding others, my children. My SELF.
The one safe space I understand well contained into an hour long appointment with my acute and honed ability focused and objectivity at my disposal I cling tightly to my gift to keep me steady, and it does.
Then I adjust my narrative not to pathologize that somehow, and then I do that in every other area of my life.
I am naked right now.
And I’ve never been like this before. My eyes are wet again.
The breaking and building.
My bones are powder….
At least I am not a powder keg anymore.
My heart is an ocean
One of those lovely ones that are clear blue and contain no sharks. A safe ocean.
It used to be safe for others, but not for me….
That is different now. I am different now. I am soft and scared and sacred and new and old at the same time.
My head hurts so bad…..
I just want to snuggle into my covers and cry and listen to the last two hours of Evelyn Hugo. But first a bath, a rally and showtime for two hours.
My sessions deepen as I do, and as my understanding of myself does, and my forgiveness of myself….
Onward
Ps one moment of truly being seen to the core, I have found, can thaw the thickest ice. The person opens right back up and becomes present in that safety. The person so often lately doing that, is me.
I am told I am that for so many others, but I wasn’t doing that for myself. I’m so surprised when someone sees me and so used to living without it.
You gave me oxygen then removed it, over and over until I begged for an end. In the end I made it myself.
That was just the beginning, as often is with transformations. Now the integration and not knowing whether the organ will be accepted or rejected.
I always need to have an exit strategy which includes an exit narrative and I’m working out the difference between that and a balanced look at things. It’s not easy work.
It’s dark out and gloomy, but I don’t feel that way. My storms are calm. For now.
“But I’d follow you to the great unknown. Off to a world we’d call our own.” I want to watch this movie. It’s been awhile. That and the movie UP are on my mind. This blog is my attempt to not lose myself in the fray.
I am lost, I am found. I’m a walking contradiction that’s hard to be around.
No.
So many changes around me and the seasons are the least of it. “So I’d risk it all just to be with you.” Yeah did that. Not anymore. I wouldn’t risk the stability of my kids and I for anything again. I have to work daily at self forgiveness. It becomes a way of life, not some singular moment.
Forgiveness and compassion for self. It starts there, and I learned very little of it. I have to start from scratch.
Yes.
Left right left right. One foot in front of another. The most simple part of my day. Me with me. Walking.
Gentle walking. Tears falling. Tension releasing. Surrender walking. White flag walking. Calm talking. Rhythmic rocking. No tik tokking. Lol. Have to play a little. A little lighter.
The rain begins to fall. I don’t know it all.
When I don’t I’m not safe. You try it the way I’ve had it and see how you do.
Coming to grips blow by blow continuously seeking flow.
Here comes the rain. Don’t know how hard it will be. Will I drown?!
One mile is pretty good for a migraine day. One migraine for a holiday month is pretty good. My stats are going pretty well. Maybe I’ll make it two, you never know.
But I do.
It’s only rainy not raining, not pouring. The difference is important. Nuance is important. Understanding is important. Black and white is dangerous.
Just breathe Christina. Breathe. The only thing you need to do is be yourself, who you truly are, and be honest about that, and what you want and need.
Why is that so fucking hard.
You know why.
You’re seeing my chat with my higher self in real time. It’s ok to have an exit strategy, but decide what the criteria is for using it or not. You get to decide. You don’t have to decide: you get to. It’s a privilege, not your sole responsibility. It never was.
What I Have. Kelsea Ballerini. Cuz I got a roof over my head, I’m doing alright right where I’m at with what I have.
The simple things like making a stir fry on a rainy day. Simplify. When all your mind does is complicate, simple is bliss.
One more loop. One more mile. One more tear slips down my face. One more epiphany. One more day of life at least. It’s not a burden it’s a gift. You’re not bad Christina. Not emotionally uncaring or shut down or cold. Unclench.
It’ll be ok. How do you want me to believe that when it never was. Let alone want me to say that to you. I don’t know how. Help me.
Have you ever actually been unsafe?!
You don’t have to be to feel that way I’m learning. The mind can play cruel tricks, but it can also heal.
A beautiful mind and a wounded heart are a difficult combination.
Gifted but only in the right places. Threatening in others.
I’m not bad. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t yours either.
Misunderstandings are a prison. Don’t let your mind be.
Plant a garden. You plant so many flowers. All of my plants die. Argue argue argue.
Minds a mess. A mind at rest.
Lay with me….
B12 injection in Fairfield. So many memories there. My first office. It took so long to feel real. Like that was my life and not a fantasy.
Surreal every day. Until the truth finally sets in. It takes so long for that to happen.
It takes all the consistency there never was, and follow through on the build.
Don’t abandon this project, she’s going to be great. She always was.
The world may, you may, but I never will. I’m right here.
These days I’m working on my relationship with myself. It requires a lot of healing and many optimal conditions for that.
My heart requires it.
So if you want a place at this table inquire within if you can be congruent without.
A lesson of late, there are many, is that brute force and iron will are not the best way.
I won’t say they don’t work, they have served me well in certain ways, and we will honor the necessity that forged them in me.
I’m wanting something softer and wiser these days. The written word. Reading the words. Humility. Learning.
The pen really is mightier than the sword. I’d take everything I felt I could get and figure out the rest later. A main strategy.
Gather. Hunt. Grind. Grit. Sweat. Choke back the tears. She turns her head away in that office, so you won’t see her cry. Willing the tears not to come. They never helped her before.
Yes I remember. I remember every single moment, and I don’t will myself to forget. I don’t work that way anymore.
Would you even recognize me? Or does the completion of a soul contract change everything? I don’t know.
“Be careful with that one love, he will do whatever he needs to do to survive. You built me palaces out of paragraphs.”
Scraps for my memoir written in the bath this am as I read Stephen King On Writing, which I’ll finally finish after five years of trying. It’s time she whispers. It’s time she roars.
“I used to just carry a book around, with very little hope that I’d ever fully read it. Let alone write one of my own.
I lived on crumbs you see.
And I gave everything I had to everyone else every day, in the hopes of someday giving and receiving love the way it always seems other people do.
I gave to anyone else with very little discernment.
My trauma reduced me to focusing only on what was in front of my face if at all.
I could barely keep a train of thought, hell a car of thought.
I barely had any ability to focus at all.
Scraps.
Starved
Becoming”
Let it burn. Anything that isn’t yours naturally. Anything that betrays your personal values in the process. Things will be offered. They will cross your path.
Twin B has wisdom tooth surgery in a few days, far away, never someone else’s baby, but won’t be her caretaker right now. Letting go of our babies is hard. I think of her getting to learn more than I could teach at that time, and experiencing herself in a positive light, something I wasn’t offering at that time. These things bring me joy and peace. The former not the latter of course.
I can’t go down rabbit holes anymore. It doesn’t work. I just good my head up and keep going. Get up and try again.
So anyway back to my story. Did I say I had one? I already can’t remember. That thought is ten years ago within two seconds. Time is irrelevant when we are doing soul work. A minute can last hours and hours can be over in a second.
My fortieth birthday. I was going through what some call a dark night of the soul. Hell. Purgatory. When we are face to face with our shadow Lisa Romano might say, probably has said many times.
I was in scarcity in so many areas. I ordered my own birthday cake. I did this as an act of self love at that time. I was learning how to not wait and hope for the things I wanted to arrive. So I was thinking I was self loving. But really I had zero faith that anyone would show up. It’s not surprising given my choices at that time.
I made my bed.
But my mistakes could not have been so bad I wouldn’t be thought of on my birthday. I have all those memories. Not all bad. Not even.
Anyway my twin B asked me or more commented that “you bought yourself your own cake.” It hadn’t even occurred to me this was a “bad” thing Or however she meant it. Maybe an unusual thing. Those things usually don’t occur to me I’ve lived a backwards sort of life. Hey Heyoka.
What do I make of this now? With the lessons I’m laying down. Was I really self loving or did I not trust anyone would show up for me?
Spoiler alert: It’s usually both, not either or.
Maybe I was trying to model for myself, because I’ve often felt that alone, whether I was or wasn’t.
The clear lesson now however is trust, and a firm balance of it to self and others.
Let go Christina ….. let go.
Taylor Swift Sober comes on….. the tears fall. When I was drowning, that’s when I could finally breathe.
Getting clean from all the painful ideas I’ve held about myself. The what ifs that should have happened because of what happened to me. But I discounted my effort. It’s invisible and therefore so will be that of others.
I poked my own eyes out and cut off my own legs in search for a savior. When all I needed in the first place were my senses and my emotions.
Luckily (divinely) we are permitted multiple do overs and re-takes. The universe is a generous teacher. And don’t we all deserve one of those.
I hope to continue to be one…..
As long as I live.
And a safe place to land.
These tall orders require radical boundaries if this is to be maintained.
It’s a good thing I am energized by both.
All my love,
C
Ps I started a new journal today. It was time. The last was to not waste my piano book and had some ju ju. This is a fresh page. We get one each day. Hell a fresh book. New eyes. New legs to walk around with.
A relevant example from mr Kings book. They bought their son a saxophone because he showed interest. Very soon the King couple discussed if their young charge should continue. They said no. Why!$ because Stephen said he only practiced during the set times. It never took flight or set fire…..
If it does you’ll know. You’ll want to do that thing and move heaven and earth.
May I vow to myself I’ll accept nothing else for the rest of my life.
“When my depression works the graveyard shift all of the people I’ve ghosted stand there in the room.I should not be left to my own devices they come with vices and prices……”
The mental gymnastics I have to do to keep my heart open would shock you. It takes many forces and lots of therapy and energy healing hours to pry the iron door on that sucker open. I need to be with that, that needs to be ok.
Several weeks of events have culminated into another glacier melting that is after the world is thrown into chaos.
Once it breaks it breaks though. Pain is released and it’s also scary because you know you’ll go forward without that level of being guarded and for a survivor that’s a big ask.
It’s me I’m the problem it’s me….
Except it’s not.
It’s everything passed down to me, inherited, that I had to grapple with.
What I’m beginning to see is what a privilege it is. I mean that now. I’m not preaching it, disconnected from it. It’s a privilege. Because what I’m afforded is post traumatic growth and wisdom to the degree that I’ve been able to build a successful vocation from it.
I am privileged because of my trauma. And I have to hold tight to that reality for all of the times that feels very different. When I’m being sucked under the intense waves of emotions of my grief and pain.
This is the life raft.
I love differently because of my trauma. It’s more, not less. That would be a lie of the mind’s programming.
We don’t love like the humans do, with us it’s forever. From the movie I am number four. And this resonated out of this silly movie because in that moment I recognized something in me, which is what movies and music does right ?! I recognized how loving I am and how deeply I love…
When I am safe, more importantly, when I feel safe.
And what did I say at the beginning of this post about what it takes for me to feel safe ?! Yeah.
I’ve been working on opening my heart, despite all of the events in my life, some out of my control, and some in it, that have left deep chasms of suffering that make me want to close it.
I will cut my self off from any source that is unhealed to the point that, I cannot be safe in their presence, because they cannot.
It’s no one’s fault.
And the worst thing that could be done is to blame because the kind of suffering that leads to a person closing themselves off from love, is soul murder. And unfortunately soul murder likes to persist. The cycle is stubborn.
Guess what!!? I am more stubborn. My stubborn may have been born out of necessity, but I’ll be damned if I don’t honor it for the valiant warrior it is.
My stubborn was hard earned. I don’t think it would have been my natural disposition. I believe it was forged from suffering. It was forced.
Being forced leads to resentment, forcing ourselves leads to resentment. Will is a part of it, but heart has to have a seat at that table and cannot be closed, if you want to understand so you can be understood, and vice versa.
Trauma survivors so often feel misunderstood. That’s my primary trigger. Not being understood.
I work my way through this daily. It’s a daily job, one that I’m determined to view as a privilege and not a burden.
If we get the privilege to feel life altering connections that lead us further into ourselves, know that many don’t. They literally fumble and stumble and many don’t make it out alive.
Their disconnection turns against themselves. Purgatory of their own making, but not their fault. It breaks my heart.
Which is good because as long as it can continue to break without losing it, it can heal.
I am here trying to heal my heart, and my soul. And enjoying being with others who are as committed to that as I am, and yet each in their own way, at their own pace.I
I am here and I am letting go of controlling myself, and gaining control of myself.
I am fierce about protecting my peace, and also open to learning where battles at times become created by my traumatized mind.
I want to be mindful of the power of my choices, and to speak gently with my higher self in making them.
No more abusive relationship with me. That was the ultimate enemy. My trauma and my own mind, but it was never a reason to not trust myself. It happened to me, not because of me.
And I am empowered these days in healing it, and that is also a privilege.
“Inside my skin there is this space, it twists and turns, it bleeds and aches. Inside my whole heart there’s an empty room, it’s waiting for lightning it’s waiting for you. And I am wanting….and I am needing you here. Inside the absence of fear.My bones call to you from their separate skin, I make myself translucent to let you in…. “ Jewel My favorite set of lyrics from way back and all time, and believe me there are many.
These days I’m most often looking at the nature of my relationship with myself. I am sifting through my history more objectively than I ever have. It’s a good feeling. I know that it means I’ve moved forward in health with my mind.
I’m seeing myself with such compassion and so realistically these days. My light and my dark, and their origins. Blame or spirals or deep dark thinking seem far away. There is a lightness of being.
I am present with and for myself and the simple things become special. Like a haircut and seeing a movie on a Sunday. And moments with my loved ones. There is gentle where savage pain was.
I felt inspired this morning to write some truths I’m thinking about myself.
I spent years living with a myriad of health symptoms that signaled to me I was dying or would at any moment. This made my world very small. I became afraid to do things out in the world. The truth is I was having intrusive thoughts anywhere and everywhere and using all my energy to act as if I wasn’t. To try and stop the thoughts they made me have about myself.
Lately I’ve been noticing my coping so much more clearly. I’m able to know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it and speak my truth. Those words, just words, hold so much power. They rock me to my core. That is a safety I’ve earned and provided and no one can remove it.
I in fact do a schmorgasbord of coping mechanisms daily at the slightest hint of something that could become “unsafe” and it’s tremendously affected by the moods, tones, and behaviors of those around me.
So unsurprisingly parenting teenagers was a special kind of hell for all parties involved for me. I was being triggered constantly and fully reacting from that place. After the trigger comes the shame spiral, and after the shame spiral being a puddle on the ground that must resuscitate herself. After the whole process usually a week of symptoms. Flare, migraine, stomach pain, crippling exhaustion.
I must forgive myself for what I did not yet know…..
All the while showing up for myself and my work. Knowing I must give more than I take there, or I’d lose the one source of positive feedback about myself. Yes as a counselor I was also co dependent and I knew if I didn’t get that under control I wouldn’t be able to have a good relationship with myself or a healthy one at work either.
I reflect on the “one source of positive feedback about myself” and my heart aches with the lonely and scarcity of that statement. Things were out of balance. They were always going to be while I was separated from myself for safety.
I was my very own authoritarian parent abuser.
I could make the marionette dance, but not feel things. There are limits to that power. I sought a more gentle source. How when feeling feels immediately threatening to anything solid, and all you began with was a single plank a thousand feet in the air over a pit of poisonous snakes.
I spent a good forty years pacing anxiously back and forth across that plank until I finally sat still and accepted my circumstances and started being curious about what I could do to make things better. Not only was nothing else working, but I kept repeating cycles that affected more than just myself, so more evidence I was bad.
I was really trapped inside myself.
The only signal of distress was for my body to become sick, because it’s the only model I’ve ever had for getting to a point where I could allow myself to receive. If you know you must be sick to receive you will be sick I can tell you that.
These epiphanies have just clicked for me lately: with the help of many therapies. Julie, Melissa, love from my people, and most of all a connection to myself, rather than being disconnected from her. Always vigilant for her to mess everything up, and become horrible at any second.
So right now I’m grieving a deepest layer. The way I have regarded my tender beautiful self. My mouth gets dry and the tears come.
So lately I’m walking a lot and being with my mind. My poor frazzled scattered brain and how quickly it darts to all the horrible scenarios. I’m just providing lots of comfort and safety like I would have to those foster children, if I didn’t need it more for me at the time, and not even know it.
I needed to love me, not always look to be able to love me by loving someone else. And I have only grace and compassion now for the fact love was so foreign to me. It’s different when you learn it through concept and not experientially. It’s different.
I am still learning. I will always be devoted to learning and to being loving and gentle and steadfast. I crave consistency and I insist on building it. There’s nothing else I will accept at this stage in my life.
Of that I am sure.
In other news I saw Bros yesterday and I was so delighted to see gay men allowed to be seen in a major motion picture. I was also sad at how much we forget how much pain minorities have to endure, and how much is insidious and viewed as if it’s all ok now.
I loved seeing Ptown on the screen and all the gay culture references and it did make my heart swell with pride. Just two people each being who they were in all their stereotypes, boring, too much, all of it, showing their true colors to one another and finding love.
Trying for love to build it. You don’t find it, you must create it. Love is crafted.
Yes, I will always be a sappy idealist when it comes to love. No, I’ll never let it allow harm to come to myself again.
The light and dark of a life well lived. (put it in my tombstone folks, but not too soon ok, I have shit to say first)
Please
I have lived and I’m not even close to done yet. Let’s go as my teens would say. Lol.
I think I’ve seen this film before and I didn’t like the ending….
Happy Sunday from sunny Florida. Tiny lizards are cute, palmetto bugs are nope. Humidity is death, the bath still brings life.
Hot. Cold. Sweaty. Calm. Breathe, just breathe.
Be still.
My whole life I ran. I ran and I didn’t know I was running. I thought I was just living with gusto and a strong will. Where’s there’s a will there’s away would have been my motto. Until I hit a period where will was not all that mattered, a period that brought me to my knees. Kesha Praying.
Will could only take me far, and take me far it did. I’ve been marveling lately at all the life experiences I have, they have grown me. I wouldn’t change it, and that’s new because my ruminating signaled that I lived in a swamp of regret. I’ve visited don’t get me wrong, but it’s not a place I could ever live.
I’ve been so hard on myself for every single thing I didn’t ask for, and judged me for how I coped or didn’t, all the while not even realizing how much coping I was doing, because I didn’t call it that. That signals there’s an issue right ?!
Yesterday we watched Pieces of Her, not the series that was very good by the way, the movie with Shia Labeouf (had to look up how in the hell to spell that). Spoiler alert ahead.
The movie starts with an intimate birth scene, very well done I might add. Raw. Beautiful. I was nauseated during it, for her, but of course I was. The movie took me on a ride of emotions. I was experiencing it. Few movies do that. Recently the Starling also did. The fact these move me the most is no surprise to those close to me.
Anyway this movie! Things I noticed in the beginning. Sean, her partner, stayed calm, was a rock for her, strong. Inside of me twinged with the wanting of that, back then. I didn’t know I didn’t have it, and frankly I know my memory is so fucked up. But the idea of a man who knows himself, is strong in that, for better or for worse, already through recovery at that time. So he had that experience and owned it, and worked at it.
They hold their baby for the first time…. It’s gorgeous. Shortly after the baby turns blue and well I can’t even say it.
The rest of the movie shows the various ways they cope and don’t. How they take it out on each other. How one shuts the other out, and the choices they both make. Suddenly all of the things that happened aren’t such a mystery.
The family dynamics were so interesting, but at least they each said their truth. How they really felt. What is that even like? Not a family who you could cut the tension with a knife, all covered in pretty outward smiles with gnashing teeth.
I’ve been clenching my teeth at night. This is a new phenomenon for me. Of all the ailments. Sigh. Clenching so hard. Despite being more healed than I’ve ever been, and sleeping very well.
Last night there was a little girl in my dream, it was vivid. We had a pleasant interaction, it was warm, and one of her mother’s was accepting, not forgotten, but forgiven. Life moves on and I felt peaceful by it, not tortured. A whisper that everything is as it should be. I felt warm.
In my own life there are fires. One of my girls will be leaving for the other coast and the other family. There was no middle ground to meet on, so it’s not the best of circumstances and that’s creating an unbearable pain.
A difficult labor is quickly forgotten once the child is in your arms and you’re more than occupied with the many new tasks at hand. A fractured relationship of this magnitude that can’t get any oxygen and is turning blue is a different kind of hell.
One at the moment I can’t find my way out of, or see a way to just distract myself. It’s excruciating. And two months ago I didn’t know it would be this way. I didn’t dupe anyone. This is real and it’s mine and I get to be allowed to feel how I do without dismissing or distracting, and while still loving and supporting myself.
This is new. A new relationship with myself, where I don’t pressure myself, and stand up quickly saying, I’m ok. Where I don’t force myself, or get lost in unhealthy coping mechanisms. This is new.
I’m not ok. I’m scared, and locked down, and in this. And it’s going to take a little adjusting, and healing.
Who knew being a mother was so important to me. Everyone else. The problem is I didn’t regard myself in that way. I couldn’t see myself as anything more than her daughter. There was no myself, No herself. A Martha Beck reference from Diana Herself.
Here I am and I’m fiercely showing up, and I’m not ashamed. It’s a new look for me, and it’s going to take awhile for the training wheels to come off, and to rub the cobwebs out of my eyes to get a clear view in the mirror.
It was always going to happen..
My grief and my story are real, and what I’m realizing is that healing from the beginning let alone now is a way of life. For me it is, and that has to be ok. Not heavy or unfun, just real. It will ebb and flow. This creative heart recovery there will be periods I’m under, and periods I’m out, periods I’m dancing and playing, and one’s where I’m stuck to the floor.
Because this is what life is like when you feel it all, and take it all in, and learn to keep some of it out. This is a whole story of becoming whole, from the pieces of her.
This movie rocked me. It made me remember my birth stories and what was going on at that time, and how did you feel when you held your babies the first time….
Probably not just romantic, probably I was scared shitless too. And I get to be that! Because that is what’s real, and I felt that way having no idea what I’d actually have to face to be a good enough mother.
I had no idea the lengths I’d need to go to to not be triggered, to not use my children to comfort my emotions or take them out on. To keep them safe, even from me, when I didn’t know how unhealed I was, but I did at some level.
Intuition trauma blocked.
What’s a gal to do besides study and heal and study and heal and heal and heal and heal. It takes a village and daily practice and lots of support. It is happening though and for that I’m the most grateful.
That I am able to feel things as I am. I could just be numb. And there’s nothing worse. My dear friend is struggling with this just now, and I’ve learned, am learning, to judge less, and love more.
I remember it all too well and Taylor Swift’s Clean were on repeat this morning.
Despite the repeated migraines, nausea, joint pain, and other afflictions, I had to get out and walk this morning. To move some energy. My thoughts were dark and intrusive. I’ve been clenching my jaw and tossing and turning.
There’s a combination of distressing things happening currently, and all around that is regular every day life. Life that I love. The distress threatens to swallow, but it can’t with this spirit. It’ll never break my spirit. Et Lux Intenebris Lucet.
An ex lover and partner’s mother is actively dying. In one year’s time cancer has ravaged her. I had no idea how something like this would feel. The memories it would walk me through. I’ve never been so close to death before. I never realized how entirely I love, and that no longer being connected to the people never removes it. It just exists there.
It helps me to experience myself as loving and I need that right now with everything else I’m going through. The threat of parental alienation is real. I was programmed to always believe it was me, that’s bad, wrong, causing things. And while I’m by no means perfect my perception of myself has been the biggest battle in my life.
It’s plugged right in. People have plugged right in to my trauma and taken over where the previous left off, and the worst part is it felt like home. Love that wasn’t love at all, but a mask for insecurity, a bizarre attempt at control, a lot of things. But not love.
The impending loss of this woman who was a mother to me, one of very few, surrogate mothers. Who cried as I wore a wedding dress. Who loved my children and I…. sits like a stone in my stomach. I am heavy, foggy, and struggling with focus.
I burst into tears to her and her husband when I asked permission to marry their daughter and I meant it. I meant it. I didn’t mean to be the way I was, to not have room for anyone else’s feelings to exist. To be consumed inside my mind. To not stay. Those I didn’t mean. There was a lot I didn’t understand much less meant.
She is happily married now to a person who is well suited and she’s happy. She still loves my children and her partner holds that connection sacred. So they visited a few weeks back. I was nervous and they handed me their little one. Welcoming. Another baby I wasn’t able to have with a woman.
They are about to have their second, any day, while any day the glue and the matriarch will take her last breath. Vibrant, laughing, alive, kind, loving, Karen. It is unthinkable. I cannot even think it because what comes with this will be all manner of intrusive thoughts of myself or my loved ones going like this.
I stare numbly at the wall.
It’s almost show time. The time I show up for my client’s and give all I’ve got until I run out. My energy, focus, love, wisdom. What meaning would my life have without this exchange. It is not a question, it’s a statement. It’s everything. The sharing of knowledge that could make a moment of passing even a tiny bit lighter. I hope..
I hope for the family who is saying goodbye that the new lives beginning, at times provide temporary anesthesia for the pain.
Mother daughter relationships are complex. I’m struggling immensely in my own right now. This morning my mind is busy sending it’s energy to my former lover and friend because I know what that connection means to her, and what losses she’s already endured.
In some ways this is one of my first. The first up close death of one of my surrogate mother’s, and a loss to people I love deeply.
When love is true it still exists whether near or far. There is so much of that in my heart right now. Love and loss, the full spectrum.
I am learning it’s just still all right there. Ulay Ulay….
I am grateful for my deep connections and all of the love that’s helped me get connected to myself, every thread is honored.
Twin A begins college today…. Twin B prepares to move out West, a one way ticket for now with so many possibilities, my family is changing. It is a beautiful agony. One that I don’t know if I could have ever prepared for.
There will be a funeral soon. Life is just an endless cycle of birth and death I suppose after all, and this clinician is most concerned with the meaning between the lines and what’s beneath the surface. It’s not a bad way to live. It’s not too shabby.
Remembering and forgetting moments all while simultaneously creating new ones, because never give up is something that I live by. For me there is no other way.
Will you hear my heart tearing when the plane takes off, and the last breath is taken? You never know the last time you’ll see someone, hug them, appreciate their laugh. That’s a lot to be with, that reality.
What I do know today however is that real love never dies. It only transforms and is transforming. What a comforting sentiment amidst all of this existential suffering…..
Piece by piece she restores my faith that a person could be kind and stay ….. piece by piece she filled the holes that you burned in me at six years old…..
I woke up grumpy this morning. It’s a long day ahead, many bills to pay, many admin issues that need addressing. Ones that are intimidating. I’m tired. My b12 has been low, and I’m getting weekly injections. All of my therapies while deeply helpful, leave me gutted of energy by the end, and that leaves me fallen behind in other areas.
I’m mortal after all, not a God.
My tone inspired by the finishing of The Song of Achilles this morning.
Then as I’m in the bath attempting to rejuvenate my spirits and soak my sore body, I hear twin B singing of all things. I’m just a small town girl….. living in a lonely world…
It immediately lifts my spirits. I smiled from ear to ear. Then even more she texts requesting some time with me. I know it is backwards to need love from your children, (or is it just human all too human) but they are my only flesh and blood connections, and the only ones that have been my motivation to fight so hard against the dark experiences that marked my beginning.
I was waiting to enjoy them…. Wish I knew I didn’t have to wait. But I did. I had to connect with me first and that was nearly impossible.
We have had a turning point in family therapy. And even if it’s just a glimmer of hope (I think it’s more, that this is real), I am overjoyed with it.
Finally all being clamped down in our own story, corners, and pain…. It is relenting…. The icy grip releasing.
Could this thaw too?
It must Christina. You did. So how could it not? Remember what it took to get here.
The pool is getting fixed in the next couple of weeks. If nothing else to preserve the value of this home as improvements continue. A trip to a hot tub store in Milford last week ended in us getting the motivation to clean the thing out. I’ll have to post some before and after shots as I learn how to make the pictures blog sized and not make the whole post not work.
I can’t believe we cleaned that thing out. It has sat for four years and I thought there was no hope. That sounds familiar. Then you give a little time and attention and look what happens.
Look what a little presence does…..
Magic
Not a story, with intensity and a movie like script that must be followed or it can’t develop but everyday magic. These little moments….
I’m watching my kids become me in certain ways, and also them of course, but seeing my strength in them is exciting, and of course that I have not done every single thing wrong. The tale my mind so often weaved. Painful. Excruciating really.
Sometimes it really is all in your head. And that doesn’t make the difficulty any less or it any less real.
I spent my whole life running from my pain. Willing it away by just good ol’ elbow grease. I’d create a family. It’s just that easy. I was naive and foolish and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I had ideas, ran with them, then those ideas crashed and burned painfully. Being redirected was not my strong suit. I would stand defiantly arms crossed and be stubborn against my own behalf and not even know it.
It’s interesting to think now that all my rushing for self work was exactly what I needed to be doing because I could have missed out on connections with my kids. I think I just barely made the boat. On real live ones, not trying to figure it out cognitively, but feeling them in real time.
I have come back from the dead. I was dead inside. All the feeling parts. Maybe not fully dead, almost dead, almost lost, only a small part of human left in there. I had to fight myself, my mind, all while simultaneously figuring out how to support myself, to have healthy relationships, to choose a family for myself of people who show up for each other well.
I had to do the opposite of what I was… to slow down. To show the pain, so it could be seen, so I could be helped. Masking was suffocating me.
Last family therapy session I feel like I breathed for the first time ever. My first breath of oxygen as a flesh and blood human, not a robot who just works constantly and can’t feel.
It’s the most beautiful thing, but I’m also the most exhausted I’ve ever been and the most emotionally raw. And this of course coincides with a busy client schedule with some major shit (shifts) going on in the world, that people are feeling.
And some are not making it. Children taking their own lives, and how to hold space, but also not get trapped in the enormity of that reality.
To just smile at dinner or focus when earlier you sat in this pain with someone and your mind is beckoned to go there, and to the possibility of that happening to you.
I thought I knew what heart break was until I recognized how the very thing that saved me was keeping me emotionally distant from my children. That is heartbreak.
I just expected myself to exist without my story attached, without even speaking of it. I didn’t want it Or me, or my mother to hurt them, but It was always going to pass down to a degree. I held it back with everything that I have. Carried it really. Until I recognized the heaviness was crushing me, and that wasn’t serving anyone.
Now that I’ve set it down I don’t know that I’ll know what to do, how to be. I’ve been existing this way a long time. In reality I’ve been setting it down piece by piece and I’m getting to the part where I’m starting to feel naked without it. To shiver and shake with the new.
When it comes to new and trauma survivors, good or bad doesn’t matter, new has a high threat quotient.
Settle…. Stay…..ground
You’ve worked so hard to be here
Home in a heart that is warm despite the amount of cold it has felt….
