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Hi, my name is Christina I am a codependent.

This is where you say hi Christina with all the love from your own pain, your own unmet needs. Your own love that has no safe place to go…..

Where do you go with your broken heart in tow… what do you do with the leftover you…. 

Next month will be nine months in recovery. I flirted with it for years, before fully committing. So unlike me 😉

A relationship with recovering, much like other relationships, is a mirror.

And how many of us can say we like what we see when we look into ours?

This is what recovery means to me, being able to like what I see in the mirror.

Sometimes liking begins first with acceptance. I would say often actually.

So what is codependency?

I find this is one of the most deeply misunderstood concepts. 

To put it extremely simple, in the words of Ross Rosenberg. Codependency is self-love deficiency.

And this particular deficiency can be extremely tricky to diagnose, to fully understand the patterns and characteristics of… And to heal.

Because when you are deficient and self-love, you tend to attract, not only those who also are, but those who would love to benefit from all the gooey goodness that is a product of your sensitivity, you are attunement, and your open heart.

An open heart begging for love has a very different energetic feel, than an open heart with fantastic boundaries around it.

This has been my striving for the past nine months, the past six years, and my whole life.

So here I am outside walking on this fall ish summer ish day.

I am listening to Shonda Rimes book a year of yes. At first, I was a little judgmental, which is very human of me, and deeply misguided. Although she does give her explicit permission in the book to do that as she wanders through her own mishaps of judgment. 

She talks about her relationship to so many things. I can resonate with so much, especially her relationship with writing.

I have only just begun to realize how significant mine is. People have seen it long before I have and have been daring Warriors in pointing this out to me and trying to push me to workshops, put journals literally in my hands, to foster this gift.

I say to you now thank you to each and every one of them

I listened to a reel this morning. I posted on my story. It is a man talking about how if you were attempting to be a family therapist as a child, you will get into relationships with patients. 

I feel very seen about this!

I don’t fault them and I don’t fault me, all of these unconscious relationships. Trying to heal our stuff inside this container how often does the container take the blame or something else for that matter.

Blame and shame. Two things I have spent a tremendous amount of time working to cut the cords and pull the threads that are strangling the life out of my beautiful vital organs.

These things will murder your life.

Things I am looking forward to in recovery. Nurturing and loving my body in such a way that it will be allowed to get strong and healthy.

I am so excited about that. I have no doubt that I will grow stronger, and healthier, because I desire it, and because I won’t give up until I find the right amount of Love and Support, it needs for me to be able to take risks and feel safe and open to do things that bring me, Joy.

Dance

Play

Create

Everything

Love

Music

Books

Everything

I am making amends to myself right now. And on that journey, all kinds of fantasies about doing that with people I have harmed in my life, running through my head, running through my head, like all the things she said.

I have a lot of Grey’s anatomy songs running in my playlist right now. Where does the good go and so many others. I can look back to songs. I was given in 2020 2019 and probably trace their origins back to Grey’s Anatomy.

One of the things I didn’t realize about how important this show is: that it gives representation and visibility to those who would otherwise not have that.

Shout out to the marginalized populations, my people. My chosen family.

This is not empty and mindless TV my friends. Though if you watch too much TV, you can certainly disappear, and become depressed. So, just be mindful of that.

We become what we consume, whether that is food, the beliefs and opinions of others, what is closest to us, and so many other things.

So stay awake and stay aware and stay tuned because this relationship between writing and I is just getting going… 

Ps shoutout to Melissa. My therapist. This will likely be its own blog post. Melissa who models what it means to be a trauma therapist. Melissa who doesn’t indulge herself with my time on anything except giving me back to myself every Friday … and sometimes Tuesday too ! Melissa who could talk to me about shows or her own life or eat during session or be distracted or human in all the ways we are.

She doesn’t …. She shows up. She’s consistent and when my own reality feels unreachable to me she gently helps me stop spinning. 

The hour is barely enough. I drink in the attention, intelligence, warmth, care, education, being seen. Like the starving human I was, and the full one I am becoming….

She helps me remember myself…. When it’s so easy to forget.

Like men in black I can be a blank canvas each day….if I’m not careful. I like this painting. I am going to stop erasing and re starting and just use a bigger canvas.

An adult. A warrior. A trauma champion. A mentor. And all the things I hope to continue to heal into as a therapist. 

Melissa has saved my life more than once and if you think that’s dramatic it’s actually all the in between that stitches that together. The awkward. The sessions where neither of us know what to do. The lost …. 

Good therapy gives you back to yourself…. Is a healthy mirror. And I’m here for it ! I am grateful. I’ve had therapists who have hurt me. Some have done more damage than others. 

You don’t realize how important consistency is until you’re on the other side and can see the damage. It can be caused in the little ways we don’t show up as our best…

So I’m just going to be over here working on me with her as a model. 

💜💜💜

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Letting go is an art, and is not for the faint of heart

“It is the time you have spent on your rose that makes your rose so important.”

Sometimes I can have too much insight.

And sometimes I’m so distracted I eat the fortune right along with the cookie during a counseling session and then imagine all the ways having done this just might kill me. Ink poisoning? Tiny microscopic organisms clinging to the paper grow worms in my belly.

Do you think maybe I’ve been watching too much Grey’s Anatomy?

Yes this is a true story. It happened yesterday. You may laugh now …. 😉

Being the more insightful in the room can feel lonely. That isn’t a better than.. it’s just a fact and the point is to honor my experience: the loneliness. 

Reading someone and giving them information about that to obtain something, is not the same as insight. It’s more in the predatory realm. For example promising someone with deep attachment a family, that isn’t even yours to give or offer. That as it would turn out would be the opposite of warm and welcoming towards me for very understandable dynamics. 

So many amends there…

Grief is like gremlins. It multiplies… one tends to open all the other wounds. 

This morning I am applying stitches, slowly and gently, and covering the wounds. Neosporin and anti-biotics. 

And I will attempt this time to not rip them open again and again….

And the processing continues and the sense of desperation to send it to have it land in a safe haven, which is no longer that. 

I am eating avocado toast on my homemade sourdough bread. It tastes like life itself, which is still a shock even to me. But when something is born of love it tends to last.

Fear is the great disruptor of that. Taking more dreams and lives than you can ever imagine. 

There is this person on my social media who is doing reciprocal ivf with her partner, they posted a video of their entire journey. The large garbage can looking container for the sperm that you buckle gently into the car seat. The scrubs and shower caps. The turkey baster of it all ….

They went to Mexico to do it, SMART. I never even thought of that. And the journey was the best part. 

The tender moments of one injecting the other in her soft belly with the hormones to help the process along. Down on her knees kissing her tummy….

To my knees…..

More grief… 

Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, have all the pics. Egg retrievals and flipping through catalogs for sperm. But how would that have somehow been more legitiate in any way or cemented a family together more than what I did end up doing. 

It wouldn’t.. 

What I realize now is that if that is what I wanted I can have it. My good friend is beginning with her wife now, she’s 35, her wife is 60. Love comes in all shapes and sizes and on all timelines.

There is no too late. I have plenty of energy.

What I want is a relationship with mutuality, collaboration, integrity, desire, intimacy, maturity …. The relationship is that regardless of what adventure we choose. That’s what that video makes me crave rather than a baby itself.

The baby represented being allowed, permitted, legitimate and able to share an experience as a woman with another woman.

As it turns out that’s just not how much story went so far…..

It’s very important not to spend too much time dreaming that you don’t realize the reality of what you have already. 

Now it’s hard to imagine what my life would be like if that would have worked the way I thought I wanted it to, or if the other things would have either. 

I am here. I have better relationships with my children than I ever could have imagined. And my relationship with myself, the fact I have one at all. The fact I am not entirely dissociated and a living coping mechanism, is a god damned miracle. I cannot even tell you… 

I truly am “livin the dream” and the only thing left is I’m so damn open that I have no idea what is next. I am deteremined to find the excitement in that, and not let fear take over. 

And while I didn’t do any of this “alone” I also did every inch of it that way in so many ways emotionally. I can honor that and also the tremendous gratitude for what has been provided in this life because of connections I chose or cultivated. 

I have assets rather than never ending debt… ( I mean those student loans though, they tell me the haunting will only continue another 10 sish years at this point I believe)… but oither than that.. I have choices and assets and honestly for a survivor that’s somehow harder. 

If you never thought you’d get somewhere …

IT’s time for my 8 am so I’ll have to pick this thread up later… 

Another bag of stuff left on the porch. Someday I’ll never need to worry about that again.. all of the lessons about what love is and isn’t will just be a part of me.. 

Right now they burn so much… 

The reality of attachment wounds, especially the deep ones, is that life is rarely easy… but it is beautiful, and that makes all the difference. 

It’s the time you spent with your rose…. 

“you had time”…. 

“you’ll be happy, you just won’t know it” bonus points if you know what movie that is from. Very very few people will. It’s a fave, yes every song and every movie is my fave 😉 It’s true….

All my love,

C

Ps you know what happened that Christmas Eve Eve…. What was missed. Is that I felt unworthy of all the love around me. Childhood videos of a happy childhood and all that family love. My experience was so different. I was so in my head about that. If we talked about if you knew maybe once that was known I could have joined in your excitement at your new love. And my old pain and our new love could have both had space in the room…. So “can I touch” wouldn’t have felt like being so unseen …. Maybe we could have processed these things if…

Just let go …. Just let go

I can’t. I won’t.

I will …..

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“You are all in Christina” ALL IN….

The death of comfort so something else can grow ……

It is only with the heart…..

This was a statement. I was just thinking about in the car, listening to song for Zula by Phosphorescent. So often while I’m driving in the car some of my most profound writings come to me.

“You’re all in”

This is what my therapist said about me as a therapist.

She had shared with me hadn’t I noticed that she had sent me referrals? I had not.  I had assumed based on some of the things I was struggling with that she would not find me fit or healthy of such a thing, because I did not find me fit or healthy of such a thing. 

I can be incredibly hard on myself disastrously so in fact.

I’m all in …..

This statement is true ….. 

I am loyal 

Also true 

And yet none of this makes me immune to the complexities of life and love. In that way, I am just like all the other human beings in the program. 

As they say, human school is hard. It’s the most advanced program. 

You blamed our relationship. And I blamed you for our intimacy struggles and you blamed me for not booking a vacation and with all that blame all we did was circle the drain, and dismantle a perfectly beautiful life that was being built right before it could get good.

Sabotage that’s what co dependent’s do….

My friend in Coda says that her mom said to her the first 10 years of a relationship are the hardest. I don’t know about you, but I don’t wanna spend another 10 in negotiation trying to sell myself with PowerPoint and presentations.

So I can only open myself, bit by bit by being vulnerable and intimate as a lifestyle. No anesthesia.

Argue protesting, yell, after the fact

Easy, easy, easy the word haunts me and haunts me.

Whoever told you it was supposed to be.

I’d like to get a hold of them

You know for a quick conversation

The ability to have difficult conversations is directly proportional to how much satisfaction in life you’ll be able to have.

Easy, easy easy

I guess the thing about me is my life set me up to never expect it to be

Maybe that was a gift all along

And Ingrid Michaelson sings all I can do is keep breathing. All I can do is keep breathing.

I’m so angry

I’m so free

I’m so fucking tired of the word easy

My friend sends me a picture from Lyon 

Home of the Little Prince

How is it possible we could each have such ties to that story, and yet be doing so little about living it.

Don’t you understand it is the meaning in the last six years of building that is everything? 

That only you and I together are the holder of those memories. Have you really reconstructed reality so naïvely as to have

Torn all of that into tiny little shreds

Like the notes you left me everywhere

to have collapsed the narrative into something so simple 

A painting, the roses red

Eat me 

Drink me

Expand me

And shrink me

We are down the rabbit hole, Alice

Laying naked in a bed is as far as you were willing to go as a signal

Make sex happen for me

I wanted an encounter

Genuine intimacy

Ask me a question that opens me; rather than going down a list of events of the day…

Tell me a story about something that makes you feel anything other than the mundane and dreary details of the list….

The most naked I have ever been with another person has been standing in the street, inches and miles apart all at once, hands on their belly, outside a therapist’s office. 

The belly is where life originates from… where our serotonin is stored, where we process and digest all that is….

The most intimate I have ever been with another person is inside a therapist office with all of my children, all of my dark, and us

And I can get on an airplane and I can take a trip, I can go to a concert, those memories of intimacy, they haunt me. They make me want more, to be more, to be someone better than I was yesterday.

You said I make you a better person

Then why leave?

Everything will change nothing stays the same, nobody is perfect …. But everyone’s to blame…. In my veins 

Encounter me 

Stay 

I’m ready for the novocaine

I won’t even feel the needle  

(I did I did…. Ahhhhh the worst) ouch

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I am loving and love able, as they say in the rooms.

I’ll stand by you…won’t let anyone hurt you …

Good morning ! Hi from your friendly therapist who wakes up studying trauma bonds Trauma Bond toolkit And everything else !

I’m thinking about the word insatiable this morning and how it has shown up in my life.

Trauma bond was what I was needing to sort through and recover from during my dark night, and for the last six years.

I am still in recovery…. ❤️‍🩹

I think the rest necessary after it and reconnection with myself that was needed was underestimated. I also know an area I was insatiable was in this.

It never felt like enough. It wasn’t you who wasn’t enough and it wasn’t me who wasn’t enough.

We are living in a damaged society, that gets sicker and sicker.

The only hope is re-wiring and connection.

“Happiness only real when shared.”

I can so easily misjudge myself. My capacity.

I have all these blank spaces in my memory. In my ability to see myself. I am stitching those together now. So I can see the tapestry I have woven with the love I have shared. With the love that I am.

I made it out of the bath and into the world and I tried new things and experiences. So many actually.

I don’t want to have to explain myself, or write a PowerPoint presentation on me. Sell me. See me.

I can only stay free and trust that what is meant for me will be present without me having to do a single thing except be on My Path.

Deep presence is what I am cultivating in myself because I want to have it with those I am in front of.

I want that way of life.

I do not want to disappear or deflect or hide my face when the emotions come.

I will show up ….

I do show up and that’s it

That is enough.

I am so grateful that these days my brain can do more than ruminating and threat responding. That it can wander through the beauty that is living.

There is so much love that surrounds me. Regardless of whether I am alone or not.

Love is in everything always.

I am working to undo all the gaslighting I do to myself about my lived experiences. I do such an incredible amount of that.

I am so hard on myself and I’ve been hard on others. But I am not hard or hard to love.

I’ve been working through triggers around the word “easy” lately. Some more recent than others.

It’s always easy on the surface, unless you know what’s beneath.

I remember distinctly when my grandparents were overwhelmed by raising me, they said so many dimming things. Things that dimmed my light. “When I was a little girl I would play quietly with my paper dolls”. Children are meant to be seen and not heard. Left at the table for hours because I did not eat something.

I grew up in an authoritarian regime.

I grew up in chaos and so many things that were not of love. Witnessed day in and out. And with a child’s mind and heart I tried to set them straight, help them to see. I tried so hard it made a therapist out of me.

I don’t resent it though. It became a gift rather than a burden. I am able to connect deeply now because of that sight and that striving. When I am tired I rest. When I am sad I cry. When I am lonely I can connect.

Then that threatened to take over my parenting. But over and over again the world has brought me back into balance with the people I have walked with. Angels sent to help me learn to enjoy life.

All of you know who you are ….

I have learned how to celebrate my children. And the freedom to give them lessons on how to celebrate what’s unique, special, and loving in them.

I will show them how to enjoy life as I continue to walk this path ….

I am doing the unthinkable adventure which is to set myself free from these old programs and rid myself of anything not of love.

Restoration.

I’m taking out all this old moldy carpet and finding the shining hard wood of my soul underneath.

Real healing takes patience and time. So much of both. It takes trust …

I am working on that…. and I am here …

All my love,

C

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To Tahoe or not to Tahoe that is the question….

Love is all around …

Oh hi! It’s 12:25. I have about an hour and a little change until leaving for Julie’s for meditation. I am happy it’s earlier. I will have dinner with Courtney D. after. Doesn’t have to be anything nice. Something easy perhaps. I just gave the bulldog a spa day, complete with teeth brushing, paw butter, ear cleaning. The works. He’s handsome. He’s a little chilly now. I don’t even know if I have the energy to shower or look nice to go to dinner. I will probably just have to show up exactly as I am. 

I’ve had a blog post rattling around my brain for awhile today about intimacy, and the most intimate I have ever been is showing all my pain parts next to someone else in a counselor’s office. A few scenes come to mind, that are staggering in their clarity and emotions they bring.

I have had a lot of sex. A lot of different kinds of it. Some that left me stuck inside some of the deepest agonies I have ever known. I have been in a relationship with longing for as long as I can remember, after one thing or another.

So what I am most interested in at this stage of my life is peace and a life that feels authentic and aligned for me.

Which absolutely includes continuing to invest in relationships with my adult kids that feel fulfilling and good for them. That is a priority for me, and I take my cues from them, as this is “their time”. A little Goonies reference there 😉

I speak in song lyrics and movie lines very often. I guess you could call that a quirk.

Bodhi is sitting next to me all wrapped up in a blankie like a burrito so he doesn’t catch a cold. He’s snorting away as he digs and spins to try and get comfortable. I get it buddy. 

Twin B came home from Uconn yesterday and we caught up on Grey’s. We are on season 16, ep something. 10 I think. About to find out if the baby is Owen’s or Link’s. Owen has come a long way from his love with Christina. And homeboy is having kids out the ears now. So he seems to be doing ok as far as his dreams. And he gets a lot of flack for how unreliable in love he has been the past few years. Then he had that really good trauma therapy that got straight to the root. And he became very clear on what he wanted. I love that for Owen. He deserves to heal from his ptsd, and accept love into his life. 

Hmmm… 

It is an absolutely smashingly gorgeous fall day. There is a little fire going, because although it’s beautiful it is cold. The fire is a comfort to me. I had my water season. I guess this is my fire season. Burn baby burn. Burn off everything that is not serving or meant for me. And let the new come forth in the spring. 

It’s going to be a long winter, but not any longer than any of the other’s in my life. Constant unworthiness being no longer my companion the weather isn’t nearly as much of a concern anymore. 

I am heading to Julie’s today for a meditation thingy honoring all the thin veil and all of that. It’ll be nice to see her. I don’t go nearly as often anymore. So it’s extra special when I do. I still try and do it quarterly at least. 

I am currently in desperate need of a massage and sourcing around that. Touch is necessary. It grounds and rejuvenates and I need to get all my lympathics moving and draining and move this energy. All the big feels. Nothing new there, except for maybe a steadiness that crept up on me slowly. 

Wednesday night is writing meet up at the Firehouse Gallery. First one of every month. I am looking forward to it. As well as the 50 k challenge in November. That starts today. I completed one in May. That was really cool. Something about a competition motivates me I suppose. A metric that I can see myself in. Someday those will matter less, they already do really. It’s just a structure in which to thrive in. Oh what a loaded sentence that is right now. 

Crackle goes the fire. Hello little flame. 

I have been listening to Shonda Rhimes, a year of yes. It took me a minute to get into her voice and to the good stuff. At first it just felt like a lot about celebrity stuff and was annoying me. But now she’s getting into the good stuff about her relationship with her body, with her kids, with writing. 

There was a part about play… and how when her kids ask her to play she says yes all the time now. I had a pang of guilt. How many times did I say no, and felt what I had to do was more important. And it wasn’t. I could spend time marinating in regret of losing out on so much. Or I can focus on the memories I do have and that I’m right here working as best I can to make sure there are plenty more. And that these are so much more filled with abundance…. 

So today I said yes and it pulled me temporarily out of the pain I am in.

I definitely can work on my stamina when it comes to pickleball though. 

Lately the insight of how a relationship begins is how it ends has really been rattling around my brain. 

Why wouldn’t Tahoe be a trigger? I recall the first time you were there, how it felt. And the last time, no exception. Why does it feel like having to choose. Why can’t two things be true at the same time?

Because some things affect everything I suppose. I read in an article the other day “the way you do anything is the way you do everything.” Yes!

I have been free a long time… I wouldn’t know how to be any different if I tried. I wouldn’t want to be. You wanted to love me… but you aren’t…. 

It’s a tragedy. 

It’s just us you said to me once, but it never really was was it? 

Do you know what the arrival fallacy is? It’s this idea that once you have some thing (out there) or have achieved some thing you’ll be happier. I remember seeing Elizabeth Gilbert for her “All the way to the River” speaking event. She said we human beings are notoriously bad at knowing what will actually make us happy. Often what we think will is so far off from the truth. 

I think about that a lot lately. 

I want to read that book again as well. My queue grows and grows…. 

Ok time to shower and head out to “The Wisdom of the Crone: Reclaiming the wise-woman. A meditation and sound healing. And about an hour drive each way.

It will be good for my soul, but right this second I feel like I could sleep for a year. 

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Aliveness. Wonderland. Light shows. Madness

“We have one spark of madness we mustn’t lose it” when it comes to this I’m not worried about scarcity. I’m a light show.

Good morning, 

I was blessed with an opening this morning to go to my water spot.

Today I wandered back through memories of the first time I saw the water as I walked towards it. I didn’t know it was there. I just took a right on Belmont street.

A discovery. Magic.

A young mother completely overwhelmed. I military wife in a culture that didn’t really fit. As soon as I saw the water everything was fine. It was just me …. I could put all the anxiety, the tasks, the issues, my past… down. I could be still and know ….

Or maybe just the still part lol 

I envision the rest of my life coming to this spot. Reading, writing, walking, talking, eating… Just being here. 

I love this place. And this love is as legitimate as any other. 

I truly blissed out on my walk today. Doing some research about how to include some strength and core and build that into my exercise really slowly. 

And for this all or nothing wiring that’s a lot. 

Today I’m thinking about Terry Real and his relational life method. How to receive influence in a smooth way with your partner, rather than power struggles and tension. I’m thinking about relational love versus transactional. I do for you, now it’s my turn.

I’m thinking about resentment.. and it’s many forms and expressions and mostly its repression.

I’m thinking about how tender trying for love is for a human being. I’m thinking about how much I still need to learn about being loving and seeing myself / knowing I am lovable. Does that have an e in it or no? Not sure. That’s ok. 

Softening, thawing…. learning, growing. Baking. Cooking. Talking. 

A simple life, with simple things. 

Easing my complicated thoughts into their respective beds and allowing deep rest. 

Hey guys you’ve done enough, we have “figured it all out” so many times, that now we just go blank so often and can’t even gather a thought when we want to.

I think it’s time for some R & R. Gentle living and loving. 

That’s what I’m thinking about today. I’m writing this from my Hemingwrite Freewrite at Woodmont Beach. 

I notice it’s easier to want to be out in the world now. A little at a time allowing discernment and my preferences to exist, and not to override them to please someone else. 

I have a great client line up today. I work until 6:30, which is not preferrable but for right now I still have a couple late evening stragglers because “oh my God I am loyal” … 

Music is one of my great loves, it accompanies me in so much of my journey. I still want to take dance lessons, privately at first so I can build up confidence. Improve in my ability to move my body in that way and not become overstimulated or perfectionistic. An important tool in the healing arsenal.

I would (could) learn guitar and piano and continue to write poetry, songs, and anything else that arises spontaneously from desire. 

And of course I’m thinking about that too… 

Turn me off
Turn me on 
round and round 
we go 
Questions of 
what’s beyond
the power of my mind 
how to have faith 
and in what 
and even more 
practices that 
develop the 
muscle

see what I did there 😉

Aliveness

What does it mean to you? 

How do you know when it’s present?

When it’s not?

Anything blocking access?

Warmly, 

C

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Infinitely re-starting step one

Oh hey Macy Gray and Sara B… my world crumbles when you are not there… la la la 

I haven’t done a blog post in forever (not even being too dramatic). Here I am in my spot by the water, I just looked at the end of the rocky jetty and one single gull stares at me from the end. It feels like it could rain, but also like it’ll hold off so I don’t have to immediately run for cover as soon as I get started. Perhaps the U knows I’ve done that enough. Maybe it’s time to not be disrupted. 

I miss this. I am writing plenty so it’s not the same as gulps of oxygen between lots of turning blue. This is different. 

I wonder if someday I’ll have a house facing the water at Woodmont. I don’t need one. I can just come here. But I just simply allow myself to wonder.

Wander. 

When one of my songs ended I took off my headphones and wanted to just listen to the water lap against the rocks. Unfortunately two other patrons are speaking loudly about crushing lantern flies and it’s yucking on my yum at the moment. Not sure who origincally coined that term. I think an OG I know better is crap on my cornflakes lol. I’ve been very nostalgic lately. Truly craving mellow yellow kitchen appliances and phone cords. A world where everyone isn’t illuminated by the glow of a screen. Bike riding, roller skating, dollar movies, and hanging out.

If I’ve learned anything as of late it’s that I can only control myself LOL. 

Speaking of that six months in CODA as of this weekend. It truly and really has transformed my journey in ways other forms of healing and spirituality hadn’t touched yet. For this I am grateful. 

I’m grateful for most these things days. I want to be a better person. I’m not a bad one. I just want a lifestyle that focuses a lot on growth. That’s been a constant. I think a lot lately about what constants are authentically me. 

It’s been three months without Henri….

16 years with and three months without. In my line of work we call that adjustment…it’s diagnosable and sometimes requires a cpt code. 

A little humor never hurt anyone. leraning to laugh has been a big part of my work lately. I should say returning to laughter, which is part of my birthright and I was only blocked from not having to learn it from zero. 

Four large birds circling over the water. One of my spirit animals. Condor, Eagle, Hawk, whichever…. 

The water sounds amazing right now …these keys feel like life. Like I was always meant to be right here writing just in this very moment. I know it in my bones, and I don’t need to know anything else…. 

I was listening to Orpheus by Sara B. I don’t write out her last name because I never know how to spell it. Which is funny for me. 

I made the Little Prince homemade teriyaki chicken yesterday. I worked at perfecting the tenderness and glaze, and not burning the teriyaki sauce. Not an easy feat. Or overcooking the chicken. Yep…. 

I took it to Trader Joes for him and as usual so saw many blasts from my pasts including the world where I lived within one of my first family systems that got me through that period of my life. Both emotionally and financially. 

Acts of love and homemade food have been a chapter of the past six years. 

The aftermath of a dark night of the soul… finding light and joy and awe and my authentic self buried alive under all those layers of grief and loss. 

Heartland by Sara Bareilles – I am a woman, I am a gift, I stand on the edge of promise so you know where it is. 

Sidebar- when I die please spread my ashes at woodmont and make me a bench that says Christina Jenkins – “she wrote herself back to life over and over….. know she’s still writing somewhere now….” that’s still a work in progress. 

My bucket list for the weekend is going pretty well. 

Watch an 80’s movie. I saw a clip the other day from Point Break I think it’s called with Swayze and Keanu, the surfing movie. Gonna watch that I think, and take a bath. Sunday dinner. So yeah lots to do. 

Twin A is in grad school …. how ! She runs circles around me. She also recently participated in a jiu jitsu tournament, placed and stood on the risers and everything. 

Twin B is conquering semester two at Uconn. Learning. Trying new things, participating in organizations with meaning, researching studying abroad not semester Lisbon is first choice. She loves travel and family time. Recently marvel and Grey’s Anatomy are things we have shared joy in. Killer kiddo! 

As Melissa would say: I’m helping my children ease into adulthood. Something I did not do/ have. 

A lot of very full circle things right now… 

I am noticing we live in rotations/ seasons. Everything comes back around for the lesson until it’s “completed” whatever that means. I still don’t know much asbout that 😉 Above my paygrade. 

As I face down granny sports bras and belly fat, menopause looms. I take inventory of the beauty in my life and I am in awe. That’s mostly what I can say right now. 

The kids are all right and so am I… 

I’m figuring it all out. Actually I’m doing less of figuring it all out, and it was good 😉

Surrendering is more accurate actually, but don’t worry not losing any grit. I find both can exist.

“Now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” East of Eden

I’m writing this on my Hemingwrite device. I have written aprox 150 k words on it, which is crazy. It’s finally flowing and it will never stop again. 

Well for now I’m going to pack up and go spend some time with the dogs, watch my dose of nostaglia and see what is to be to be learnt from it and take my bath. I don’t even think I’ve taken one in a year or so, if I at all. Maybe one. I don’t do that much anymore, but I recall how for a long while it felt like the only place I could get any access to myself… 

All my love, 

C

Posted on

Not Everything Is a Symptom: Writing Day One With the Flu

Good morning (hello, said in Adele’s irreplaceable voice).

I’m not on the other side yet, though I am operating on the flu (strand A), a hefty dose of prednisone, and less sleep than has become usual for me these days.

How are you, my dear readers?

It’s strange having a blog and not really knowing who reads it, or why—or why not. From the beginning, the majority of this blog has been my raw emotional process, more than most people would choose to place in public. More than I might even want to look back at. Those selves have been integrated, and now we are getting an upgrade. I love them too, even when it’s hard.

Illness, meaning, and writing day one

My flu feels like evidence of an ongoing transformation. Yesterday, in the name of “research,” my explorations included searches such as “the shamanistic perception of the flu” and “spirituality and the flu.” They did not disappoint in confirming my internal process.

So here I sit on another day one of writing my book.
Oh—I felt the pressure there.

Just like when I suggested to myself that I would try consistency by writing a blog post once a week in the new year. I used to hem myself into those expectations and inevitably become upset when they didn’t pan out. Now, I more swiftly redirect toward self-compassion and a realistic consideration of my “plate,” so to speak. I find that the gentler I am, the easier life becomes.

I am not very acquainted with easy—though we have been courting for quite a while. It’s a slow burn. The romantic aspect is taking its time, and right now we’re more like roommates trying to figure out daily life together.

Who am I writing for?

So who is my audience? Who am I writing to?

I would say: the feelers of the world. Deeply introspective souls who are on fire to hold space for the stories of others and walk alongside them. Poets, artists, musicians. People who don’t just watch a movie, but experience it—which, let me tell you, can be a tricky path.

Perhaps that’s why romantic comedies are my favorite genre. Though I can’t stick my head in the sand forever, so I’ve had to develop skills to separate my gift from content that might otherwise stay with me indefinitely. A gift and a curse.

Adaptation, strategy, and compassion

Here I am on “day one,” attempting to utilize ChatGPT for organizational purposes—something I never thought I would do. But resistance helps no one. You have to move with the current of life, not swim against it. So this is me adapting.

As humans, we are nothing if not adaptable. It’s one of the most important aspects of existence. Much of it is written into the program—the coding—of a human being. It’s done for you.

I spend a great deal of time helping people upgrade their subconscious adaptations into conscious strategies. Because adaptations that once kept us safe can later turn against us in the form of maladaptive coping mechanisms. Often, they can be integrated into part of someone’s gift package more easily than they realize.

Seeing a person make a connection they’ve never made before—and watching hope and relief spread through their body—that is something worth living for. Along with everything else the world has to offer.

Loving life, chosen family, and continuity

I love life and living, though I haven’t always loved mine. Over time, I realized that was a terrible waste—and that I could love my story too.

So here I am, starting over again and again. Because I can. Because I get to. That, I know, is privilege.

I’m less blissfully unaware of what’s happening in the world than I once was—no longer consumed by my struggles, but not drowning either. There is a natural order where issues return cyclically for deeper healing, both individually and collectively. There is a reason for this, even when it’s unclear.

I find myself becoming someone who prays—maybe even to God. That resistance, too, was born of human hurt. Those hurts don’t sting the way they used to. I take the parts of memory I’m clear on and keep moving forward.

I have lived many lives within this one lifetime. That makes me far less afraid of death than I was when I was disconnected from my body and scattered in my mind.

Steven

Now, just a regular update—lighter at last. I dive straight to the bottom and slowly work my way back up to float and rest.

Steven is coming to visit. I’ll be picking him up at the airport today. I hope not to gift him influenza; I should be just past the most contagious stage.

I don’t think I’ve had the flu—or even a fever—in nearly twenty years. My theory is that I didn’t feel safe enough to get sick. I wasn’t embodied enough. My will drove illness away, which also removed my opportunity for shedding and regrowth.

Maybe I’ll tell Steven’s story more fully soon. One of my oldest and dearest friends. We met when I worked briefly at a veterinary hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia. I was about twenty-two, married to a man in the Coast Guard, with a one-year-old son. An unlikely friendship.

Steven sat beside me when I was placed on bed rest with my twin girls after almost losing them at twenty-two weeks. You never forget someone who shows up like that.

Steven—who once joked that babies are “the other white meat.” Steven—who plays the banjo, is a good Southern boy, and still manages a veterinary clinic to this day. There are a million more things I could say, but for now, know this: he is chosen family.

Closing

I’m nearly out of steam—literally—for this post, and yet I could sit here and write all day, all at once. I often wonder if my book will be written that way. Is this mania or flow state? How do people tell the difference, anyway?

Thankfully, I am leaving my pathologizing era and entering one of spiritual awakening. I have the symptoms to prove it. These days, when something arises, I don’t immediately run to the ER—I explore how it may relate to energy. Turns out: a lot.

I hope you enjoyed this wandering update on my life. If you feel moved to comment and share what’s coming up for you, it may inspire future posts. Who knows—maybe this blog will become the next thing it wants to be.

I’ll leave you with a favorite Martha Beck quote of late:

“Magic is the thing that wants to happen next.”

Yes. It is.

All my love,
C

Posted on

Keeping a Promise to Myself. Fifty Two Posts this Year.

Hafiz

Happy New Year my loves!

I just took a second to straighten my posture and take a few deep breaths. I am sitting at my office desk. It’s cozy down here. At times I dream of an office that looks like it was taken straight out of Edward Cullen’s bedroom from Twilight. And also there’s something magical down here in the coziness of this space.

One of mine (our) mantra’s of the year is “I have everything I need”.

So for this time in this life, my office is perfect. My desk is surrounded by pictures of my loved ones, positive messages from others, and myself, as well as “a few of my favorite things”. This sentence is an example of how our lives become everything and everyone we have ever experienced. My grandmother was just in that one. Her favorite movie was The Sound of Music.

What an interesting foreshadowing to my life. I began my day with a bath and an old playlist. I only got a couple of songs in but the words are still so interesting. I can recognize now how little I truly slowed down to process and sit with them.

Sit with it…. Another mission statement for 2026.

I was arranging a few of my books as I consider my queue (I confess I never ever know how to spell this word, and spelling is one of my innate gifts) and came across C.S. Lewis ( the other who brought us The Chronicles of Narnia among others), a book with a Year of readings based on his works. Let’s see what January first has in store for us today.

It’s called “Supposing We Really Found Him?” From him at age 12, he appears to be contemplating the existence and form of God. Something that has in the past made me squeamish, and as the wound heals, and the scars turns from pink to brown. I find I only need contemplate if I so choose. I wonder what he was feeling at the time? What he needed, as the Buddhists would ask. As I would ask and wonder.

I started the day with a reading from Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance. Most often I begin with a text that helps inspire some Kaizen in me. That is the continual improvement of processes internal and external I would say. I learned this word at Trader Joe’s as well as Integrity as a value. It was a great place for me to begin to learn those things, along with self-discipline, perseverance, and a few others. A first look at what it means to “cut off one’s nose to spite one’s face. A turning point from an attitude that may push others and opportunities away, instead of attract them to me.

My poor physical body at that time. My poor mind. It was on fire with self-doubt, contempt, and pains stacked and stacked. I tear up recalling how anxious I was, how scared, and how many physical manifestations of my pain. What is repressed, will be expressed by the body. I have lived out that truth, and gotten the lesson full circle. I am grateful for each healthy day I have now, that is filled with vitality.

I have thought a lot about what this blog is anymore, as I have changed so much. Who I am writing to and why. My relationship with writing remains that the act of doing it is sacred and special and important for me. Tossing aside any attachment to any outcome of what it is to do in this world.

I don’t know where this will take me…..

Isn’t this how so many great adventures begin?

I was cleaning out my closet the other night, and found my twin girls little 0-3 months pink Old Navy Hats, and their bracelets and birth beanies, still with ribbons on them. They are now on the brink of twenty two years old, and new chapters in their own lives. Ms. Marvel was reflective this morning about saying goodbye to a child she has helped nurture and watched grow this past year of their lives. She made a post about her 2025, and it revealed how rich and full of adventure her life was this past year. This inspires me.

So off on my own adventure I go….

This year it began with a bath, something that is much more rare now, as I’m more likely to take a walk or go somewhere. Today is a reminder for a balance of both. Still battling all or nothing, and black and white thinking. This past year has shown many improvements in that, and I know this next will be no exception to the continued growth.

Tonight is an interesting full circle moment, the finale of Stranger Things. I believe around the time I turned my life upside down, with a little help from the Universe, we are never operating solely without a contract. I had watched some or a little of the first season. With all going on it didn’t really stick.

Somehow I jumped on the binge train with my daughter just in time.

I am reflecting on the Upside Down often, and how I experienced it. As well as everything I have come away with that has helped me become a more compassionate person, to myself and others. I know more about how I love, and have a stronger relationship to my own self, identity etc. Something I did not have much of prior. I will be grateful for that and so much more until the day that I die.

The baby in my life just came to join me. He is warm on my lap. It is cold down here and Ms. Marvel stole my space heater for hanging with friends last night. Nothing is sacred in such a big life. Nothing except everything. Anyway the new edition of the year is a French Bulldog Puppy, Bodhi. His name came together just perfectly. And in my spiritual world it means “Awakening” or Enlightenment. The horse whisperer, aka twin A would laugh at this as she often jokes about him having, a head full of rocks. Frenchie’s are not bread to be smart or do tasks, they are companion animals. For example currently he has his little chin rested just on the edge of my desk. Right in front of him my fingers clack clack clack away on this keyboard. This is my heaven. He is loyal, loving, affectionate, and just wants to snuggle. What’s better than that. Also he represents a level of forgiving myself that was always going to be necessary for me to move forward into the next chapters of my life.

Hello to my forty fifth trip around the sun. Goodbye to shame, criticism, contempt, unrealistic expectations of self and others, and so many things. Hello to joy, peace, nurturing, being of service to others. Hello to my voice, my true self, and the rest of my life.

Oh one more important edition to my life that occurred this year is my relationship to sourdough bread. So much more than a fad for me. I think it’s the first thing I’ve ever made that didn’t feel forced and like some awkward relationship I didn’t know how to do. I have a complicated relationship with food. And it happened naturally all by itself. It was introduced to me by my beloved Jenkins, it was never even spoken about if I wanted to do it, or taught really until it was. I just ended up bringing home starter from my trip to Washington State in July this year. Where I also met my father’s sister and was introduced to a side of the family I never knew my whole life. Aunt D will forever be in my heart, and I will cherish all the time we have knowing one another. She has filled in many gaps and holes in my knowing for me, and that has been a salve to my heart.

I once recall my therapist M, saying to me “you’re all in Christina” this was with regard to me being surprised she would refer to me, because I felt so screwed up at the time. I was judging myself harshly, as I am prone to do. I think about what she said often as I experience myself this way.

I am all in and I am loyal to my love forever, given that there are realistic expectations and parameters, and I needed to have a relationship with myself. I didn’t know how much I needed to, and how much I didn’t, until I did…..

I look forward to what’s next for me….

Until then Stay Tuned, and all my love on this first day of this new chapter.

Gratefully,

C

Posted on

To the Closing of a Chapter, and the Opening of a new one

Big Eleven energy here !!!!

Hello divine readers, from the upside down, from the other side….. Hello.

I have missed you so. I have missed this so.

I am writing this using a very old IPad, and a QWERTY keyboard, that mimics a typewriter. It has been lent to me by a dear dear soul friend. It is helping me channel and honor my old soul self. It is also helping me enjoy playing with my toys. Last night that didn’t go so well with one of my fountain pens. I swear those things cause me so much grief. It is hardly worth it, were it not such a deeply ingrained love of a writer, for the various timeless mediums of our craft.

Most often these days find me just trying to figure out how to be a person.

Whatever it is that this truly means. I suppose something to do with balance, consideration of self and other in, as equal measure as one can measure given the vicissitudes of life. Most recently I am including content from Women Who Run with Wolves, which I’ve had a long time, but not given myself the time to delve into, as we so often do. Which is addressed within. My writing coach recently referred to this book as being medicinal, and I could not agree more.

So I wanted to start the year off strong with connection to my knowing, my intuition, a connection to how I feel, what I need. This has historically been very difficult for me, which is exactly why I want to give the much deserved and long time needed attention to it.

This year for me I plan to be one of delving into my own depths, rather than seeking in someone else how to find something about me. It shall be a year of minimalism. Of contemplation rather than consumption. Of learning the lines, rather than never enough, and an endless abyss of wanting. Desire can only take us so far. And love I have found is built.

I am putting up on the self some childish fantasies of a mystical union, and cultivating that which is present in my life and shows up for me. I have been doing this awhile now, but I am speaking the intention aloud to continue my forward path. I am open to trusting what is placed before me, rather than trying to cut through the jungle with a machete, and burn my way through anything that stands in my way.

I am taking a gentler approach these days.

I would say that trust is probably one of my most important lessons and in the past has felt like a giant obstacle standing in my way, rather than a source of nurturing. I am learning to have a new relationship with it.

I have been geeking out on Stranger Things. My history with it is interesting. I dabbled with it, but was unable to tolerate some of the more disturbing elements, because I become too identified and fused. Simply put a person with a high connection to their empathy does not merely observe material, they experience it. My heart rate can jump to 120-130 simply watching a show if I do not gain control over my gift. I am learning how to do that, and when and how to separate myself into an observer of fantasy, of story for the sake of it, so I do not harm my body in the process.

So when my daughter invited me to watch all of it with her in preparation for the final season, I was all too eager to acquiesce. I have found a lot of metaphor within the show for the integration of our own shadow into the self, so it can become whole. And more simply stated I truly enjoy the 80’s pop culture and recalling a simpler time of existence where children rode their bikes and played outside without nearly as much concern for harm. I am grateful I grew up in a time before cel phones and as much overwhelming connectivity as we have now.

We are going to see the finale at the movie theater. So I have to stay off the internet until then. I try to do that in general these days anyway.

I am excited to share with all of you a new an interesting cast of characters in life, and more of my daily adventures, here in this blog in the upcoming year. I am hopeful to do a blog post a week at minimum. It won’t be perfect. I will have some hiccups and probably stretches, but my goal is to close the gap in my all or nothing, and make more of a habit of allowing my writer to emerge, come what may.

That being said I am going to sign off for an errand to see the Little prince who has been promoted to King at the land of Trader Joe’s. I am so proud of him. I am going with Twin B, my mighty marvel loving sensitive “bug”. Family time is the thing I crave most. Family as defined as a person’s who’s energy you feel safe with, though not all the time. Because family can be difficult too, as we mirror one another’s triggers, and proximity guarantees we will hurt one another the most of all humans we interact with. And we also get the best moments of each other too. That whole balance thing.

So I sign off for now

Imperfectly Yours…..

The emotional alchemist

AKA Christina Jenkins

ps look forward to my post of some summary of the year, and hopes and dreams for 2026. I am in deep reflection about these things today.