Tag: #whenitsscarykeepgoing

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The Movies, Music, Morning Walks and Making Amends

Always, C

I’ve been thinking the most about amends lately….

This mornings walk started with Dear Depression by NF and second song is Unsteady by X Ambassadors. If you love me don’t let go. Hold on….

Which makes me think of Me Before You, which makes me think of Love Rosie, which I watched last night. Which makes me think of which movies I enjoy so much and why.

Probably if I were to guess they were friends when I had none, and they at times inspire hope. I like movies that make me feel the way I want to around the people I have close. I could disappear into the feeling of that story. T

hat’s likely the most important thing here. I could have a family, a best friend, a lover, for that 90 minutes I didn’t feel the kind of alone that was unforgiving and unforgivable during childhood. I will have no amends there. Not a death bed whisper. Only an endless chill.

Deep emotion. Human stories. Inspiration.

I like these things.

How I like the piano and string instruments and vocalists that have been through the ringer emotionally. Mary Lambert, Teddy Swims, Pink, Taylor Swift, k Clarkson, so many more…

Like I like my authors…. Brene, Liz, Martha, S King. So many more.

Our vibe attracts our tribe they say. I have to believe it’s true when I pay attention to what I like.

I don’t like horror. I don’t need to experience anymore terror. All set thanks. I feel the things the character is experiencing in my body and heart and will think about still shots of the movies days and even years after.

I have an interesting encoding system in my brain. It’s kind of magical really. Genuinely.

NF Perception, Remember This. This guy has had some trauma too huh! So find people that challenge what you think….. gorgeous.

So back to my brain and amends.

What I’m realizing lately is that most of my life I’ve misunderstood myself so painfully.

Each time I shut down and moved overly quickly that was a reflex, that had nothing to do with my true self. She was so far buried in those moments.

This last time I tried to say that, but I was already in the action of my choice. It’s impossible to regret it because of where I am now. If you asked me last year though.

Not very dependable someone who changes that easily right?! The story, the T, the gossip. Hate it. Because it never understands. It’s fast and realization is slow.

The kind we need to breathe life back into a world gone cold and hard.

Empathy

I had it for others, but none for myself.

Anytime she did something that wasn’t in compliance I’d leave her out in the cold. Punishment. No understanding.

Here comes the amends. This is how I was with my kids. And a lot of it was because I was fighting to feel supported by their father, someone still lost in bitter hurt. This is my version of course and that’s all I can write.

If I told the bad story it would look something like this, of course he would want to be away because of the flip outs I did, just like my mother.

Just like my father wanted to be away from my mother. I understood why. BUT there’s so much I didn’t understand. Everything that came before me. What he did to her. A little girl with a grown man.

No perpetrator and no victim. We all have a part in our choices and I’m more interested in who I will become because of them, than to cast judgment.

Judgment is boring and nearsighted and hollow.

Nothing comes full circle there. You just chase your tail and go on a haunted carnival ride of your own emotions.

My ego fought an invisible battle with him to feel supported, because I felt I had none.

And the punishment fell to my kids. They didn’t have my warm wise presence at some of the times they needed it the most.

And now I sit in the pain of knowing this and let it soften the borders of my heart so I can course correct.

Twin b tried to scream at me your punishments don’t work and I doubled down. I wasn’t fighting her. She just wanted to be heard, and I shut down.

My shut down switch is so frustrating in my life. How do I forgive it, because it saved me before, and left me for dead later. The thing meant to protect me also kept me shut off from the love.

They were out in the cold with me. That’s a bitter pill to swallow. I want to explain to cry for understanding. But that forgoes the accountability I need to make amends.

They need to feel I can respond to their emotions.

How can you ask that of me my trauma cries. Don’t you understand how terrifying someone else’s emotions became for me. If you knew.

But they don’t and they didn’t ask …. They were at our mercy as parents. Now that I can connect with.

I only hope they will someday come to their own conclusion that I did my best in all the ways I could.

I didn’t do it all wrong, but I have the strength now to know that one of the most important ingredients was missing. That soft love. I hope that their fathers family supplied it enough. Holidays and unconditional love. Things I didn’t have.

I hope they don’t suffer in the ways I have. Those words are true. It would only be judged as dramatic or anything else for someone who doesn’t know, connect with these losses of self they never consented to.

No one told me about trauma.

When the first person (therapist) suggested it’s shocking I’m alive, it was like a scene in a movie. He couldn’t be talking about me. I wasn’t even in my body.

I had kids with a grand idea of creating a family I didn’t have and I was going to do it perfect of course in my idea.

Then life takes hold and tells you ha you thought that was going to work. Silly goose.

Being gay and not realizing became another school yard bully, and I almost lost that battle.

I would have done anything to protect my kids from divorce and him. I wanted to. I agonized.

I just kept hitting wall after wall with it. It was not possible and even the voice now says I could have done it and waited if it meant…. NO.

I’d do anything for love but I won’t do that. Not be myself how I was made. Not an option.

Divorce. The first area that requires amends. Creating a life for everyone (all my responsibility of course), when I wasn’t aware of myself.

My enthusiasm for living often preceded my better senses.

Can you ever forgive me?!

My mind is mostly fragments and so scattered and living steadily requires the gathering of all these things each morning just to function.

Please forgive me….

*I’m still trying to figure out this writing thing. This excavation. The where, when, how of it all. So bear with me as I find these fossils and thoughts. My psyche is so often a steel trap. It goes into lockdown with a hairline trigger. When I listen to music the rhythm style and emotion of my writing is immediately influenced. So if you’re here on my journey. Thank you for helping me be less alone in the world. It’s special to me beyond words…..

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It’s Time to Lay Down the Sword….

In clearing your name you have ruined our lives.

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.

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Open Hearts and Doors of a Traumatized Mind

“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.

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Coming Home to Myself…..

“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.

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“The Pleasure is for Rent and So is The Pain.”

As captured on the cover of a journal at Barnes and Noble the other day. Love that place.

I’m sitting outside at Nate’s Plate’s, waiting for an egg and cheese sandwich. First time trying it here. Way to ruin your walk Christina. Ok we aren’t doing that. This is about enjoying life. The little things, and the big ones.

It’s a gorgeous pre fall day. I’ve been walking and occasionally jogging 2-3 miles most days. Sometimes only one, sometimes none, but usually some. Currently I’m listening to On My Own by Ross Lynch. It’s the first song of the day. It came on Spotify Taylor Swift radio. There is a fake plant, bright yellow in a wicker pot on the table, my water bottle a consistent comfort, and two bags of peanut butter chocolate energy bites.

From here I can see the playground, tennis courts, baseball field, that are behind the Milford Public Library. I love Milford. I’ve fallen more in love with it through the hard times and good of the last few years. Milford is a constant. And constants make my heart happy, despite my creative’s occasional rebellion against it. I always return if it’s safe to do so, and healthy for me.

I only cut off from sources of poison, and the bad thing was never me. I could cry writing this for all the confusion and suffering it’s caused in my life trying desperately to find “the right answer”, in those choices. Never know there was always a right for me.

I never knew my self. Never knew she was worth knowing. And that might make you sad to read, but don’t be sad for me, because I believe we each have a path that has meaning, even when the view hasn’t all come together. Unsewn threads causing doubts. Painful. It’s ok. Is it, my anxiety says?! Yes it is my higher self says. And I no longer shame myself for how long this conversation must be had.

The past few days I’ve been loving Greenlights on Audible written and narrated by Matthew McConaughey (so hard to spell this name sigh). Insightful, fun, quirky, a journey of sharing of self and thoughts. Of course I do. Bask in it. He just said a line, the pleasure is for rent, and so is the pain.” Meaning everything is temporary so be present essentially and don’t get too caught in being impressed, rather be more involved.

Engaged, present, involved, trying, learning.

Want to have a mad love affair with yourself.? Go someplace, order something, try something on, pick something up and feel it. What do you like, and what don’t you like. Pick up your head, put down your phone.

Think

Try a new food, a new spot to sit, and feel and think about what it feels like. Presence is bliss. Still your mind. Just look, sense, write, dream, feel.

So I had therapy last night. I still go on average two times a week when I can. At one time I felt I’d accomplished something by going down to one, because who wants to need therapy two times a week. I do. I do! I do because it helps the hurts. That’s why.

*I wrote this post Monday I think. It’s Sunday now. Had our first fire in the fire place kind of Sunday. White bean and chicken soup kind of Sunday. Watched a great suspense movie Sunday. Had a nap Sunday. Stayed in sweats Sunday. Set boundaries Sunday. Shared chocolates Sunday. Enjoyed seasonal candles Sunday. Chip grocery and visit Sunday. Took a walk Sunday. Gave a special gift Sunday. Thought about time Sunday. Finished Hillbilly Elegy and Slaughterhouse Five Sunday. Watched Hocus Pocus 2 Sunday. How did so much fit into one day.

Soon maybe it’ll be started my book on a Sunday.

Soon…..

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Celebrating a Life Gone Too Soon….. and One Just Beginning

Wrote this a week ago and just getting around to posting it….

When I’m gone I hope you play Bette Midler’s The Rose at my gathering…..

It’s always a new day one of some sort. Something to quit, to begin…..

All you gotta do is walk….. Griff

After three long years I was finally ready to give City of Girls the attention it deserves, the attention I deserve. I was not disappointed. How do you do it Liz and can I be like you when I grow up?!

When will that be…..

And all you gotta do is walk….. my song of 2022…

What Liz Gilbert manages to do with her writing is grant permission for you to be who you are, and have the issues that you do.

People are who they are and all of it is beautiful. Choice is beautiful. Stories of monsters and demons are for fairy tales and Netflix.

I used to ascribe to the idea I could bend anything to my will, until life bent me, and I finally got the lesson.

Surrender. A full surrender.

My little prince turned 21 yesterday. He’s all heart. He’s exactly as he should be and yet in all the wisdom I lacked, I showed him everything he isn’t, because of what I learned during my survival. How to push hard and harder.

I am unlearning THAT.

My son’s friends flew his rose out here to surprise him for his birthday and we all banded together to pull it off. He was happy on his birthday. Satisfied and knowing he is loved. There will be many other kinds of moments throughout his life, but these are ones we will always treasure.

He can receive in the moment. All really is NOT lost. Thank you Leslie Charles.

I see boats and sunrise and water. I smell water and salt and Sunday.

I will be gathering today with those who loved Karen Sahler in Greenwood Lake New York. So many memories. I always said I hated funerals, all those emotions in one place. All that discomfort congealed into a suffering pudding inside my sweaty flats.

Today I understand. I am looking forward to it. To being given the space to feel my feelings with others feeling theirs. To have and to hold. To remember.

Grace and Mercy.

Now I can understand the conflict inside of me worrying it means something about me that I won’t attend my own mother’s funeral. Thank you Liz. Thank you life and thank you death.

And most of all thank you love, which is the force that makes it all worth it in the end.

I’m not some cold dead thing inside who wouldn’t go. I found this love I didn’t know existed. It’s just there. You can’t make it or unmake it. Don’t misunderstand me, it does take work and discipline to maintain a self that is capable, especially when it wasn’t natural for me.

Could that finally be ok??! Could I finally stop analyzing myself for flaws?! I think it’s time.

I’m not angry with her like I used to be. She wasn’t made to be a mother and became one anyway. Liked the idea of the attention it provided her, but never got any further. And I don’t really know the ins and outs of what happened to her, or if it’s a wiring thing. And you know what? Somehow it matters so much less to know

Because it doesn’t mean anything about me. People could have said that a million times, but I had to live my lessons. Just like you.

And love exists in its purest form as so many things. Love is there in the person that smiles at me on my walk. Love is petting my dogs. Love is walking, running. In heat and cold.

And all the love I’ve ever shared is valuable and valued and has accumulated to make my steps in this world a little lighter.

Love is a friend who remembers a version of you, you forgot. Sometimes love is persistence and sometimes it’s letting go.

For me…. Now…. Love is no longer the confusing manipulative thing it began as. And I thank whomever for that. The windows and the walls and the ceilings and the floors.

And today on this beautiful Sunday love is a mother who has died too soon. A woman who made those around her feel her love. A woman who gave my kids and I family events that I never had before. The only mother who will have seen me in a wedding dress probably, lol.

The gift of love is that I still have all of these moments inside of me. I didn’t know. It’s natural for me to keep myself out in the cold when I don’t have to be.

I am still learning ….

And I am warm…..

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It Was Always Going to….Be a Lifelong thing….

I hope your soul is changin’……

Healing

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’m learning a lot…..

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Penetrating the Defense Mechanism…

I remember it all too well….

I wanted to say membrane for artistic quality, however it’s way to thin and tame a word for our subject matter.

Word salad, bread crumbs, generalities, banalities, poppy cock, and balderdash. That’s what the defense mechanism speaks. It wreaks of bullshit. Activated, deactivated. My friend calls it morphin time. Spoiler alert he’s a pink ranger fan.

The very fact he can speak about it as if it’s a choice shows the healing work that’s been done. The thing that brings hope and life to life.

I’m walk/run writing which means I’ll probably end up motion sick and nauseated. That’s old hat for me anyway. Are you kidding?! Stringing together beautiful words that never really say anything at all.

The water is low, very low. It smells that way. Peeeee ew. Blech. Death will eventually turn to life though…. And so it goes.

I hate lying and manipulation with a fiery passion these days. I somehow never seem to have less of it in my life. It seeps through. I can do all the work in the world and it still wafts through the air. I pick up on it like a bloodhound, get called crazy for my troubles, and become spun like a top.

Then it’s my reaction to the abuse that becomes criticized. How I save myself. Acts of violence even after all weapons have been put down.

A full surrender…..

Untangling myself from the mess of misperception. The very place I seek help from only becomes another source of misunderstanding. This I’m told is frequently peoples experiences in counseling.

Some counseling misunderstandings cost dearly. Those are the people meant to protect. We trust them more.

Thank God, the windows, the walls, whatever, that I finally learned that lesson. Those legs are still wobbly but they stand firm, shakes and all.

Listening to a counselor try to reason out why it’s difficult to apologize, rather than get a layer deeper to understanding. Don’t try and fix it, that’s ego, try and understand it and find the art to show the inhabitants of that magical safe space, the one space they are committed to listening, that’s safe enough.

Wouldn’t it just be easier to apologize?! What must it be like in a family without being able to do that?! Gee, you think?! Maybe first check what kind of family the person came from 101. Then add their experiences. These are not excuses they are understanding.

To help someone understand themselves by being understanding and compassionate. That borders on the miraculous.

Understanding is salve and balm. Cooling and soothing to the burning hot infected wounds. The disease has metastasized by now. I fall to my knees.

A human walking talking defense mechanism, who struggles inside her own life, and clears up misunderstandings for others, because of the knowledge she’s gathered. This process was not trivial.

A light warrior with a constant stream of dark thoughts about herself. That’s how I’ve kept my humility, it’s kept me. Trapped. Prisoner of war. I’m working on a different kind now. A kind with a wise guide rather than a harsh task master.

The war rages on.

A tear slowly drops down a child’s cheek. They know better. They know war can be replaced with love. But some people will always love war, more than peace. And some have a constant battle within. It’s those that know the value on peace. And there are those that never will.

One priest who couldn’t control himself all those years ago would ensure my abuse continued throughout the span of my life. One depraved religious crazy has had such an impact on my life. That’s what happens when you damage a child. You fucker. There’s a special place in hell for you.

I would never protect the adult over the child’s pain, it’s something I need to stay mindful of in my office because it’s easier to do than you think. We don’t want to be uncomfortable, don’t want to believe in monsters.

Counselors are constantly faced with the truth they are alive and well living right among us. The rest of the population would prefer to cover it’s eyes, and to create routine and distraction. Live your best life. Not everyone has that privilege.

I may serve the literary muse, but even a romantic heart knows, that’s the biggest ruse.

How can you damage a child? How can you break their trust and spirit before they even begin. The nausea turns to sickness. I can’t watch this shit because I’ve lived enough. Their spirit won’t be free again until death. When they can dream again.

Even I know some things break beyond repair and I’m in the healing business. And I’m not God or whomever. I’m just a person with a lot of knowledge that didn’t consent. It feels that way when I feel angry. But according to Julie I did exactly that, and those lost children did too?!

I don’t know.

I don’t care how much meaning can be made from suffering, breaking the spirit and trust in a child, watching the playful go out of them. It tastes metallic. I clench my jaw until my teeth press into my gums with the pain it being locked down inside somewhere and continuously misunderstood.

Because one human couldn’t control his cravings. Because he believed he was living as God intended. Incorrect belief systems in the hands of the wrong people keep the war waging. And hedging your bets is the biggest sin of all. Manipulating both sides. Agememnon.

I need an Achilles. With maybe a few less hair tosses lol. His destiny was his justification to fight mens wars, so perhaps not. He had to be arrogant. Does anyone have to be? One foot on earth, one with his mother. See, even Achilles has mommy issues.

When you’re locked down in a trauma mechanism it sure feels that way. Education, time, commitment, and determination help.

Can you break threads of destiny (would you want to) or are we all just deluded puppets after all.

I’ll leave it to the great philosophers, for I am just a good enough mother down on her knees praying to be forgiven for what she didn’t know, and still doesn’t.

One more circle around the block, then my coffee, my reward. My journal, my oxygen. Then clients. Then a soft safe space to rest before it all begins again.

Green light…..

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Something I’m Learning is You Learn a lot about Loving from Death

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…..

💜

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When Stories are Told in Safe Spaces Shame Dies

All of these lines across my face…tell you the story of who I am, so many stories of where I’ve been and how I got to where I am. But these stories don’t mean anything when you’ve got no one to tell them to. It’s true I was made for you.

Being loved is overwhelming….

This is my realization this morning.

This is why I have chosen partners that were not capable of healthy love in one way or another, and I wasn’t either.

Would I always have unbalanced love outside, and frozen love inside ?

I’m just beginning to be able to see the light at the end of that tunnel.

And it’s scary to be 41 years old, I almost said 42, I always round up. I guess so I’m already prepared. So much of my life is geared around being prepared, for anything. It’s scary to be 41 years old and feel like an infant at times, that vulnerable, because everything is new. I’ve never been this self before.

“I’m not the explosion guy”, that’s my father.” I think of Silver Lining Playbook. The pain that’s involved in families where a member had an unidentified mental illness or personality disorder. The shame and pain that passes through the generations. No treatment. No relief.

No relief. Let those words land.

Just shouldering those burdens trying to look and be normal. Swallowing it down. I get so angry with the injustice of that. The silenced pleas for help in the form of various “negative” behaviors in children and they just internalize and absorb it into themselves and become sick. Which looks like defiant, odd, impulsive, and a whole range of other things.

Then exiled from others because they don’t fit.

Understanding is the salve that heals. I apply it generously in my office. Often while having so many unknowns on my shoulders. Feeling like a small mistake could cost an entire life. Anxiety often weaves that tale. Sometimes the stakes feel so high, and then I have to readjust to “I can only do my best.” That’s been a game changer.

I don’t have peoples lives in my hands, I have their possibility of healing in them. The choices I make can impact their healing, but my role is not enough to stop the results of a lifetime of suffering if the train is already blurring down the tracks. I can’t stop a bullet, but I can apply a vest.

When you grow up feeling responsible for everything, and utterly by yourself it becomes difficult later in life to know what’s yours and what isn’t. A major task of therapy.

A major task of mine…..

I had a 20 k client day yesterday. Sometimes it goes so deep and so heavy, that one day feels like a week. I’m in a daze and don’t even know what day it is.

I do know I bring my whole heart and I lay my energy on the front line daily; and though I may never have a hero’s celebration. Let’s be honest I would probably squirm with discomfort. I need to learn to celebrate myself and what I do, and pause. I can’t always just keep going, but tell my mind that.

There’s a community that lost a teenager to suicide a couple of weeks back, and it haunts me. The pain of those affected haunts me. The intrusive thoughts when I see a sign in one of mine haunts me. The pain of those parents haunt me, and I’m not even first degree attached. But I am a human and I can’t even fathom that pain, or maybe I can.

The threat was always there in my own life. A not so gentle reminder of my trauma. My trauma. The thing I don’t talk about because to access it extinguishes my breathing almost immediately. I shudder and shake with it in the therapy office. I don’t want it spoken. What if I made it up.? I wish I made it up.

And it’s just easier to press forward and pretend it’s something that can be left behind. It can’t. It infects the next generation and the next until it’s spoken, understood, and loses it’s power.

I think my true self inside wanted a simple life. And resents the enormity of this role. I think my therapist would laugh at this. That’s just my whining about the acceptance of the things I didn’t choose. My energy healer disagrees, she believes our souls contract before they entire the body fully knowing what their destiny will be.

Did I sign on that dotted line? Was it inked in blood?

I have stories locked down inside me. Guarded by dragons. Dragons I shouldn’t have had to face then, let alone now. To access my memories. It doesn’t seem fair to go through what I have to do to do that.

I spent a life trying to create something I didn’t have to forget and if I want to heal I need to remember enough to also get that little girl out alive.

Confusion. Exhaustion.

Nobody wants that. They want fun and to believe in happy endings. But what about happy beginnings. I’ve realized lately those really do and did exist in those other people. The ones who don’t shudder when a voice raises.

Those happy people you’ll never be understood by, is how it felt. Separation, desperately seeking belonging.

Desperate.

Now that I’m no longer desperate how do I do life? It’s all new, and new is overwhelming even when it’s good.

Patience. Security. Safety.

A loving self ….

I created one.