Tag: #alibraryofselfdiscovery

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Gentle and Fierce

My mind is fierce yet I am determined to keep my heart gentle. My experiences were fierce and I’ve been determined my whole life to stay soft. It’s a constant battle.

My grief is not gentle, it is fierce.

I become fierce in groundlessness.

Fiercely overwhelmed.

Everything is overwhelming right now, and I wasn’t supposed to be doing any of this alone.

I’m allowed to not want to be and I was allowed to try for love in all the ways I did with all the needs I had.

My life and myself evolving too quickly to keep up. Many disjointed parts out of alignment. Sometimes I feel like a bag of broken glass. My second to last energy healing she spoke about seeing shards of glass and beautiful light and something about them coming together and a friend recently spoke about a kaleidoscope and mosaics have been coming up for me.

When I look out over even this past year I have an extraordinary life.

I always set out for that and I have one.

I have deep and enduring friendships that mean the world to me. Some new and some old, but all of them incredibly meaningful. I look at all the pictures of my tears, roads I have walked, my smiles, excursions, moments with my kids, this home. It’s a full life surrounded by love.

From within and without.

Perspective is a soothing balm to the open wounds all throughout me right now. Attachment fractures that feel like fault lines that can erupt at any moment. It feels terrible to be so acutely aware of this. The pain is unbearable at times. Almost all the time right now with glimpses of peace.

I just went through an intense period of “seeing red” I call it, threat everywhere, the intrusive thoughts get so loud I can’t hear any security. This will all be taken from you in a thousand horrible ways, bad things will happen, you are the bad thing, you had no business being born, you tarnished the family reputation, fix your mother, go soothe her, be quieter good little girls play with their paper dolls in the corner, children are meant to be seen and not heard. Why are you so….., let’s play the quiet game, all of ways you are inadequate. These weren’t complexes these were my actual beginnings. So much threat.

I work hard to calm these thoughts, and I fill my life with the opposite as one means of doing so. Pursuits that are worthwhile, but when there is no relaxation of the kind I need, those struggle too.

I am adjusting slowly but surely. It’s hard to collect my thoughts right now. That’s the worst thing. My nervous system is in overdrive all the time and I’m looking to connect to the things that used to calm it, and unfortunately these days that makes it worse.

Alone is a trigger for me I am finding.

I am capable of being alone. I’ve been very alone in so many ways. I’m allowed to not be I cry out. But I made this choice and here I am.

I don’t want to be figuring out the reorganization of my home alone. I never wanted that. That was not the plan. But these are the consequences of my choices. So I’ll take the hits, they feel like they just keep coming. I can’t breathe.

My grief is not calm and gentle it is fierce.

Being back at this place again. It’s like the ground hog day from hell. That movie is kind of appropriate actually. He’s an asshole until he gets it. His day repeats over and over until he becomes a different person and appreciates everything differently, and then the cycle is finally over. Intelligent writer there.

Something broke open last week, I hit a wall of awareness, or rather it hit me in the face during a therapy session with my daughters. I don’t want to be this snarling and snapping thing, it’s not natural for me, and nothing, and I mean nothing is worth losing yourself.

I have felt unworthy most of my life to connect with my children, so scared I would harm them, that I busied myself doing everything I could do well to keep them safe in so many ways. I didn’t even want them to see I didn’t know how to connect.

And as I wade daily through the stories of others the struggle became normalized. I recognized my own humanity in everyone else’s and reattached to myself in a slow painful process.

I remember my first energy healing. I could hardly be touched. I laid on that table struggling to be vulnerable and just breathe when so much rose up in my body. It was so defended. I remember her saying she couldn’t go anywhere near my heart, that it was too guarded and my mind was swarming like a hive. It’s so painful. If you had any idea what the moments of calm and gentle mean.

So that’s exactly what I’m attempting to become, with myself, and with my children. I hold on for dear life. Hold my breath and clench everything to survive. Then I spend all my time trying to undo that, to deal with the effects. The migraines, the pain, and the only thing soothing is safe adult presence preferably in the form of nurturing and attentive partnering with a good balance of give and take. I’ve long known this is the secret to a happy life. We are meant to be connected, and it certainly is for me. It feels a cruel joke the vulnerabilities that lie within in me with regard to that. The ones I’ve had to painfully uncover layer by layer, so I could be known to myself.

And now I’m supposed to like what I see and believe anyone else could ? The tasks asked of me seem impossible most days.

Am I a samurai sword ? Being beaten into submission so I can be what?! A weapon of truth? I’d rather be a beacon of light, peace, and warmth. How can one so fierce also be that ?

It’s all too much sometimes.

A screenshot from long ago stands out in my mind, it was our relationship can be unnecessarily intense at times. This coming from a person who held all the cards and the control and had me dangling on a wire. And you have the nerve to assess or speak about my behavior in the midst of deception and manipulation. How dare you make me the problem when I showed up and you didn’t. When I show up without excuses no matter the pain and cost to me.

Also that she would ask what I was doing, anxious about my whereabouts more than how I was doing. Yuck.

I’ve been shamed for the impact of my trauma in a variety of ways my entire life, and most people truly didn’t know what they were doing. They saw behavior as behavior and couldn’t or wouldn’t look deep. Looking deeper has become my life’s work.

Will anyone ever look deeper into me and stay ?

And will I stop trying to do that in the wrong situations and choose the healthy ones?

Stay tuned

Ps my last energy healing my heart was open and she put her hand over it awhile.

My heart was open.

My heart is open. That’s why it’s so painful.

It’s happening in my therapy sessions and I’m reconnecting with my kids and friends and appreciating differently. Don’t let the intense emotional moments shared fool you, it is happening. My first energy healing she had put her hands under my back and I recoiled and tensed but she didn’t stop, I thought she would, I worried about her having to feel all that pain. I didn’t want her to. My body screamed don’t hold me, but she stayed, and I softened, and my grief poured out of me, down the sides of that table, and back into the earth to be recycled. That day was a beginning in many ways. I sobbed and I thought she would say it was too intense or let’s stop, that I would be shamed again, that it would be too much, that I was too much.

What is too much is what I have endured in my life the danger and the loneliness and what legacy that has left me with to clean up.

It’s still extraordinary…..

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Feral children Feral Parents

Have I really operated like a scared animal most of my life, much less felt like one. Wow. I sit here and think about that. What it feels like to be scared. Like really think about it, the sensations, and what your mind tells you. The toll it takes on your body.

I am listening to Esther Perel podcasts of actual couples therapy sessions Esther Perel relationship podcast

And it’s making me think. What stood out to me in this one is how she made the couple aware they each operated from their own internal worlds for 20 years deeply affecting the quality of their marriage. Imagine misunderstanding someone for 20 years! They each operated from their own world view, fears, etc, but they did not deeply listen to the other.

Both feeling rejected and shameful from things that weren’t actually what the other meant. When they felt unworthy the ended up making the other feel that way from frustration of not knowing what they wanted or needed, or not allowing themselves that.

I have been thinking about what I’m meant to share. It always seems like it’s all been done, and everyone does is better. Imposter syndrome at its finest. That’s what happens every time. Usually when I listen to another therapist work I hear everything I must be doing wrong, or polar opposite I think wow I’d do that differently. My ego is often in full protective mode and that blocks out learning and trying for something. I like to think of myself as not like this, that’s probably why I’m so good at pointing it out in others.

My own arrogance disgusts me sometimes and facing it down in the mirror is not easy. Particularly when it comes to connecting with my children. With their experiences rather than my parent ego blocking being able to see life how they do. We are doing therapy together and it’s unbelievable. To see myself, the therapist gently confront, to feel that burning shame after when I realize how wrong I am doing things. God it hurts.

Trying to redirect to if you’re willing and trying you are ahead of the game, it’s those who avoid that that create harm for generations. So I sit in the burn.

I sit in the shame of how hard I clamp down and hold on tightly to the only thing I have ever been able to, my resolve. My strength. It’s the only home I’ve ever known.

I realize this morning what an unrealistic view of love I have and how painted by my trauma that portrait is and I am humbled. Unrealistic expectations of others, myself, and my children. I keep trying to get them to understand my experience, when I am not understanding theirs. Because it’s too scary in there. I could be my mom. It’s terror. Terror. And so I shut down completely and the only thing they are able to translate that as, is that I must not love them.

Which couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s a line in the movie Riding in Cars With Boys that always stopped me in my tracks. A young selfish mom, makes sense right 😉 who’s sons very existence seems to vex her and he knows it. The kids are playing and Drew Barrymore says to Britney Murphy, “we love our kids but like do we really love them or do we just have to love them.” And Britney responds that “she thinks sometimes we love them so much that if we felt it all at once it would kill us”, so we don’t always realize or can’t always be in that feeling.

Like how do you switch from protecting and providing to loving and nurturing. I clamped tightly to a role and held on for dear life I think. Nothing fluid or gentle, because my life was not those things.

I got very intense at one point last session with them, feeling attacked for everything and why don’t they trust me, I’m mom , don’t they know how hard I’ve worked, and the clinician gently said something along the lines of maybe it’s because of something like this. And I burned with shame and pain. And then later the hot wet tears of release and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

And all the other people who have called me intense. All the fucking shame, the finger pointing, and so few have ever been curious and interested enough to stay to know why I get like that. I want people to know. And I don’t want people to know, and I’m locked in here.

It’s a cage.

Feeling like some kind of reject that doesn’t know which emotional response to choose out of the jukebox at which time. I turn my head in shame, and the tears come down.

Hurt people hurt people and I don’t want to hurt anymore or hurt them. Burning pathological loneliness. How do I make them understand I don’t know how? That I freeze. And when they don’t know how I just push them forward because that’s all I’ve ever done in my life.

Frozen and thawing. Frozen and thawing. The seasons of my life. This perhaps the most difficult which means the most fruitful.

I cried a lot while writing this, and I thought of her, how similar our wounds are and how they separate us from receiving any relief, and how does it have to be that way…. too much relief and you don’t grow, too little and you don’t either. There has to be something in between numbing and ecstasy. A grey area. Realistic and one step at a time.

For now I’m just practicing this with myself…..

Always

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Lina and the sunglasses

Fun fact the site of my first blog post ever written, at Safari kaffeine, next to the Jeep dealership. I was getting an oil change on my brand new Jeep Wrangler. What a naive pup I was then.

So this morning I didn’t even plan to leave the house. I’ve been under the weather and not wanting to be on for the world. However my mouth had other plans, and I needed a temporary crown affixed more permanently in my mouth.

Since I was already out I reluctantly decided to journey to the mall to replace my sunglasses. Tail tucked between my legs with the damaged pair in tow. Our new lovely baby Sophie, the five month old German shorthair pointer, had managed to snag them off the counter the other day. This is why we can’t have nice things, and why I kick myself for getting lazy about keeping them in the case. Lesson learned, but probably not for long.

Old habits die hard.

Anyway so I’m standing outside Sunglass hut in the mall it’s just before 10:30 and I’m guessing ok well I could wait til 11 if I have to. So I set to writing, listening to music, and walking back and forth. Trying to kill many birds with all the stones.

Side note: the black bean soup at Crave in Ansonia Connecticut is to die for, as is everything else here. I’m meeting my son for lunch now that he’s a full adult now, I have to schedule weekly lunches if I want to see him. Oh my God this soup is an experience. Heaven. The Cuban sandwich and shrimp Caesar salad is other worldly.

So I get lost in my mind and 11 rolls around and still nobody, and I’m thinking of making a Facebook rant with my mood as annoyed, and don’t they want to make some money. When a woman approaches me and completely disrupts my thought reverie, I hadn’t even noticed her.

My first thought is I’m about to make a snarky comment even if she is the long awaited employee. She asks what I’m there for and I’m still kind of dazed. I said I need new sunglasses and she says she can’t help. I follow her and am thinking what? And she says there’s a sunglass hut inside Macy’s. Being not a mall goer, I did not know this. She also mentioned it I have a Macy’s card (I do) that I get a discount.

I wonder how in the world this woman spotted me or even realized it’s interesting, not often does someone come find you to fix your problem. Wow.

She was very nice and informed me that since I had the old ones if she sends them back I can get a new pair for 1/2 off. I had already been wanting to get a new pair of wayfarers I’d had my eye on, but also I’m so used to thin wire frames now I wasn’t sure. She also shared my sensitivity for selection to do with weight on top of my ears and knew exactly how to help.

The woman ends up being so entirely nice helped me find the perfect size for my face, and even called over another employee to confirm the difference between two. I have always considered the shiny black wayfarers because they look so nice on people when I see them. They make a statement.

So when I asked her between the tortoise shell matte amber lens and those she said, essentially that the black look good on anyone so of course they look nice on me, however she would go with the others because they match my complexion and are more uniquely me.

I loved her answer, her outlook, her tenacity as only I would literally walked the mall finding my commission outside the store lol, her attention and kindness. This was also super random because I didn’t even have make up on. I’m not a big make up wearer anyway but I literally only planned to hop out and get my tooth put back in.

The ladies at the dentist office and I laughed and they told me again what a nice patient I was, which was easy since I was busy blogging anyway. And then the good interaction with the mysterious sales woman who found me and was perfect.

The other day when I found my sunglasses to be ruined I was having not such a good day and it was an overwhelming thing.

Today I get to balance it out with one less thing on my plate.

The woman and I of course exchanged information (after realizing we live down the street from one another) because I can always tell when something happens for reason, you can feel a prickle on your skin. But today she felt like my personal angel and a reminder of things working out.

This whole thing reminds me of a dear friend of mine Chip. Someone who likes to write me emails about random acts or things he notices and is always a gentleman and always considerate of other people. He is someone I greatly admire.

I ended up telling my girls if they go down today they can get themselves a pair each for early birthday as it’s buy one get one, and be helped by the lovely Lina. Which resulted in my sharing with them some history about why I am so particular about my glasses and what that means. They are getting to know me a little at a time, as I am, and it’s a whole new world.

Always

Ps. Old me would have beaten herself relentlessly about the ruined glasses and felt the world was ending, and also would have been covered in a layer of terror at going to that dentist much less having to go back. This me is cheerful and makes an adventure and/or a lesson out of everything and is able to appreciate that about herself.

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Loyalty and acts of God

Someone once told me if you have my loyalty it would take an act of God to break it. 

I’m thinking about those words today. 

I am thinking about how I fancied myself to be the same, and about how once certain circumstances collided that did not stand up. 

We all want to see ourselves a certain way. Having integrity, who we want to be, and then we all have circumstances, or maybe I will call it our own personal story, that often has aspects we are blind to. These can lead us to behave as we never thought we could or head down roads we never expected before. 

Most of us don’t like to admit this, but if we don’t it can’t get any oxygen. What isn’t acknowledged cannot be healed. That will always be the case.

That’s why I am always trying to talk things out, if I can’t hear myself say them, or I can’t read them on the page, I’ll continue to operate with these templates that are often outdated, and end up causing a lot of suffering.

Lately I’m having a really difficult time sorting out between who I am, who I want to be and what my path is. Maybe that could just be chalked up to a lack of trust in myself. And that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt I require a trusting relationship with myself above all things. I desperately want to place the responsibility for this in somebody else’s hands, for someone to come along and save me from myself. Paradoxically this is bizarre because I’ve always saved myself, I guess that’s why I’m so tired. But it’s not really saving we want, it’s faith in who we are. How do you ever get that when survival has been the primary concern, but you’re so good it doesn’t even look that way. 

Oh the disconnect of how things look on the outside to how they are on the inside. I always aspire for those to be in alignment, but then still get dazzled by seeing what appears to be for others, that never seems to be for me.

I have been thinking a lot lately about this idea of being legitimate and what constructs we need for things to feel that way. Are all the customized paraphernalia from major life events, rings, vows…. are those enough?! What do they mean even. But if you never have any sense of these things, whether they be traditions or events, then how do you define security. 

Oh elusive security. Scrambling for it outside and inside all at once is quite the chaos. Trust me, I know a little about this. Then you have The Little Prince and his fox and existential philosophy and Pink Floyd who says all you’ll touch and all you’ll see is all your life will ever be. Moments of impact as Channing Tatum says in the Vow. And so much noise about what it means to love anr be loved and what that is supposed to look like. 

If you have the courage to create your own you’ll never know whether you’re doing it right or not, but you can be sure others will put in their two cents whether they have been inside your whole story or not. This can cause a lot of suffering. What if we dared to love people anyway, for their whole story, not just the chapter you arrived on. 

Who am I loyal to? Am I loyal to myself? Do we ask that question enough. I think what does required an act of God, or God as you know him as they say, is breaking through the various shames imparted on us by a society that doesn’t even know our story. 

Personal stories are so important to understand. That is always the goal for me and I am always interested in a persons story. Always. It’s a huge part of my identity. And right now I am trying to piece mine together in a way that makes sense and is an accurate representation of the truth, with barely any of my own memory. 

There’s that lack of trust again, a worthy opponent. I won’t be giving up anytime soon. 

Stay tuned….

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Connecting the dots of health related anxiety and trauma

So I’m sitting at the dentist (again) waiting. I had the temporary crown that was put in yesterday come out last night. I wasn’t even eating. Grrrrr. It’s kind of a funny story actually because the technician who was assisting the dentist had assured me that they are good and this won’t come out, when I told her she could expect it would.

So this has me thinking about a few things. It makes me think of the recurring nightmares I had as a child of my teeth falling out, and how terrifying they were. I remember that they were vivid and explicit and that I wanted to hide it so it wouldn’t disturb anyone else in school. And if that isn’t a metaphor for my life and what I’ve done with my pain and shame. Wow. It actually makes my eyes burn.

These guys are so nice at this office. When it comes to medical professionals niceness has always made all the difference for me. Because I have a lot of anxiety that has bordered on terror before lots of work, and I didn’t even know why. I shamed myself.

Made myself defective and wrong, as usual.

And that’s exactly what I did with this latest upheaval in my life. My fault it’s because I did this or that I’m this or that bad thing. And as a result I kept myself separate from my kids so as not to hurt them any further with my bad, when that is the thing hurting them. What a difficult situation.

Shame is the nastiest beast of them all. I have fashioned myself as a shame slayer while the entire time I was still bathing in it and didn’t even know it.

Some areas of my life incredibly over developed and others completely under developed. No wonder I have caused confusion and pain. I was in more of it than I ever realized. And now I know there’s a very good reason for that.

Because this has been pure hell. Dante’s dark wood. A dark night of the soul. And any other word to describe. What I can confidently say you emerge from it with is there’s nothing left to fear. I no longer fear death or the dentist because I’ve already been in hell. I know what it’s like. It’s filled with loneliness, rage, regret, contempt, fear, anxiety, and shame.

Living in shame is hell.

So now I am trying to forgive myself for my many mistakes as I’ve navigated my own story, and I’m trying to stand in it. To stand in the light and be at peace with myself, so I can be peaceful with my family, friends, and live my days that way.

So yesterday for the first time in my adult life I had dental work and didn’t shake like a leaf in terror. I believed I would be ok, I was safe, they would take good care of me, and if a problem did occur that involved extra pain or something scary I would be able to get the help I needed.

I was playful I made the dentist and other helpers laugh and they enjoyed my presence and I was able to continue to build on I am lovable versus any of the other shameful things.

This isn’t the most of my health related anxiety and intend to talk more about it in the coming weeks. If I get to that. We all know how I work. But like my beginning I block things out easily, my gift and my curse. I often don’t give myself the credit, validation, etc I deserve for the things I have overcome. The many ER visits, tests on my heart, unexplained symptoms and that no one made the connection between my trauma and these things until I came across The Body Keeps the Score and the same things in my clients.

It took them to see myself in them, that’s how invisible I’ve been to myself. So I am working on visibility and asking for my needs and knowing what they are, and organizing my painful painful mind to make proper sense of what’s happening in the present when it so terribly wants to use a template that keeps me disconnected from myself and those I love.

I am healing.

I intend to keep conquering my fears, anxieties and demons.

Thank you for using your most precious resource, your time, to hear and see me.

Always

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Christina Herself

New Year’s Day hike, Southford Falls, Connecticut

Alright let’s see what this new year makes of me.

I’ve set some intentions, some I’ll keep and some undoubtedly I will bend simply for the fact that I am lofty with my goals and ideas, and my human self cannot always keep them.

I do however have faith that this year I will be able to use and access my knowing a little better than the year before. What more can anyone ask of themselves than that.

My main focus right now is trying to keep a clear mind and be able to regulate my emotions more from within rather than the coping mechanisms I have used most of my life. This is not easy. Particularly as someone who has lived most of their life using one of the four f coping mechanisms (see the work of Pete Walker on C-ptsd).

I like most, had convinced myself that my life was my own, and that my decisions were solid etc, as it turns out it’s not so easy to be slapped in the face with radical awareness of lifelong patterns. This threatens to drown one in shame and self-loathing. The information almost too much to bear.

Try to trust yourself when you keep having to re-start because, because you have a particular path, a destiny. I always knew mine wasn’t easy, but this time period really takes the cake. Just wow.

From surviving to thriving indeed.

This chapter in my life includes so many changes I feel like I am on the gravitron ride at the county fair. My head is spinning, and when you’re in that kind of state, doing anything to still it for a moment takes precedence over rational and careful thinking.

Am I in charge of these changes, or are they in charge of me? I have always felt overly responsible and therefore in my quest to claim my god given right for a childhood where I wasn’t, I slip into bouts of under responsibility that are uncharacteristic of my nature and my age.

I’d like to think of it as diving hundreds of feet to a shipwreck and the only way I was ever going to recover my true essence and the gifts I’m meant to enjoy and share is this journey. It could also just be bad behavior and this can be seen as a justification I guess you would have to be able to watch my whole story on a screen (maybe someday), or magically know what’s inside my heart.

I don’t think many would be willing to give up all their comforts and safety time and time again, a pursuit that always ends up feeling a fault, a shortcoming, selfish, and many other things. I’m trying to reach a place where I don’t take more pride than is necessary to fuel myself, or more shame than is an average amount that makes one look at themselves and be able to follow through with authentic change.

Everything is on a spectrum after all. Believing a story can provide temporary comfort, but it doesn’t create an interesting life, and change is too complex for that.

I had all but given up this past year with the amount of pain I have been in, spiritually, personally, all of it….. and so caring for myself well, while improving in certain ways, had become worse in others.

So this year I am on a mission to feed my body and my mind only healthy uplifting things, and to tackle any habits that undermine my success and authenticity.

I am reading Martha Beck’s allegorical novel Diana Herself. I am at the half way point and it just made me extremely emotional. Without spoiling it I will say that she is a girl from a difficult background (we have that in common) and as a result has these voices that follow her telling her how unloveable she is and how she can’t have what she wants etc. her spirit guide in animal form in the book suggests she use a method of turning around any negative narrative she has about herself. This is based on the work of Byron Katie I suspect. As she is one of Martha’s mentors. So for example she says no one wanted me they all left me etc, and upon further examination she left them because she was too precious and good to be around that. She had the story backwards all along.

It’s stories like these that resonate that someone else gets it, that brings magic to life. Something I hope to do for others some day.

The key to unlocking this is recovering a relationship with myself that is filled with wonder and nurturing and as a result connect this way with my children, who are teenagers, so that would fall under the category of lofty goals. Watch me 😉 I will do, and hopefully you’ll appreciate and learn from my many stumbles. I need to add some humor to this process. It’s been serious and dark a long time. That’s what I knew after all.

So many of my goals are feed my mind with words if people I admire and things I want to learn about and stay with that rather than becoming distracted, chaotically just anywhere.

To DECIDE how to spend my energy, always knowing it’s value.

Read, write, walk, breathe, feel, sense, try new things, see new places, and not keep my world small with anxiety.

I’ve spent some time reflecting on how much anxiety I have overcome. Literally debilitating intrusive thoughts, panic attacks, healthy anxiety, a total preoccupation with fear of death, and I truly believed for a long time I would die at any moment. It threatened to shrink my world and I didn’t realize how much I huddled inside in my comfort, but also how much I badly desired to adventure free from fear.

This year I have burned off the most of my health anxiety. I no longer anxiously check my heart rate, or obsess over my disease. I simply will get care if a problem worsens or persists, but generally from this relaxed space they don’t. I’m still reminded sometimes of my limits, but I’m also constantly pushing past them.

This past years victories include piano lessons, even though my hands shake, and I get hard on myself when I don’t practice, etc. battling lots of shame there. The courage to be seen.

As well as going to a trainer regularly, more exercise than I ever have. I am still threatened with stops and starts but the time lapse between shrinks and getting back up is much easier now. I can no longer believe a story that enables me to defend my weakness.

I am realizing that my particular brand of freeze has resulted in my mind making so many things more difficult than they actually are. It’s liberating!

FREEDOM!!!!!!!

I intend to bring my readers along with me as I explore myself in relation to the world this year. I am often lonely, and rather than scramble for a source outside myself I shall invest in a relationship with her and chronicle my adventures. This is my intention.

💜 always

Grateful today for…. having brunch with twin B (Victoria), that twin A (Rian) enjoyed breakfast out with her sweetie and that it’s a healthy relationship, that my son Tyler is doing him and living his life. For my friend Chip who stops by and shares delicious food he has made and always has a hug for me. That Sophie turned 5 months today and is finally getting a little better with behavior :p. For my bath time, beautiful home, and books.

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August’s Rhapsody

Flashback to August 2019. Flash forward. We don’t bounce back we just bounce forward.

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

My wife being brave….

If I don’t write this blog post I think I might spontaneously combust. I just have to start somewhere. Being out of the habit all the old doubts have had time to creep in. The self-consciousness clinging to me as close as the tiny beads of sweat that have been my constant companion since moving here. We have no central air in the new house, who would of thought something could be so “central” to one’s existence.

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

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

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

Everything was out of place. Our hearts and souls were like the many packed boxes. Jumbled and scattered. Unfound. Riddled with broken items we have held dear, the natural losses any move yields.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My wife has been taking singing lessons and watching her battle through her self-consciousness to that glorious moment that makes it all worthwhile. And I am doing the same thing with my clothing and with my counseling. We are being brave, blazing trails, and enjoying one another in this life.

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

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

I hope you know….

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Recovery

Hi I’m Christina and I am a Co-dependent person in recovery.

This means that I’ve spent my life trying to gain acceptance and love through outside sources, and completely neglected the inside of myself, just as my caregivers did.

I didn’t know any better.

So here I am nearing 40, and I was on the brink of repeating another cycle. Well I did repeat another cycle, just in a really short time span it came full circle and I landed smack dab facing myself down in the mirror.

Now the real challenge is to give myself love and acceptance and nurturing all while seeing all of the damage I’ve caused, primarily through the behaviors/ mental anguish my children have picked up from me. And now I get to try and figure out how to help them out of that without being Co-dependent lol, good luck, and with being a mom and not their therapist.

How the hell do I do that ? Dear Google, how do I be a mom and not a therapist when my whole life it appears I’m a set of defense mechanisms and coping mechanisms.

What does recovery look like?

Apparently it looks like reclaiming whoever I was before all the mechanisms. This is a tricky process. My intuition has led me for the moment toward music and movement to accomplish this task. Namely piano and dance, and doing things without needing (can’t say wanting because I do want) anyone else to be involved.

Decide

That’s been my word of late. I’ll probably get it tattooed somewhere :p because that’s in the prescription for mid-life crisis, which my good friend last night helped me RE-frame to awakening or something along those lines. It was better so I’ll have to ask her and edit later.

It’s really hard to sit with the realities of my obsessive all or nothing nature when it comes to love and especially how that’s impacted ME (see what I did there, have to add me in now), and my children.

How do I clean this up? And do I have to do that without love at this stage in my life? Or can I do it with love and just continue to keep myself, my routines, and find a balance there.

Do I have to go Sandra Bullock and 28 days and begin with a houseplant and then a pet and you know how it goes. I have been wanting to watch that movie lately.

How did this happen? I know exactly how it happened. And that will be my next steps I suppose is unfolding the experiences that caused this set of behaviors to be my modus operandi.

How do I sit with all of this and hold space for it? To forgive myself for the pain it has caused others and myself, and then to not only validate but value my experience and hopefully at some point share it.

A note: there is no need ever to swallow a diagnosis or a label whole. Some things will apply and some won’t. As a wise professor in graduate school once taught, “chew the meat and spit the bones”. Take what you can learn from to enable yourself, but don’t become disabled (discouraged) by over identifying with an entire thing.

There are a lot of aspects of Co-dependency I have already battled and come out better. However, there are some things I didn’t even realize I was doing that need tending to.

So here’s the real trick for me, rather than work on myself, the way I intend to heal is by not working on myself, or others and learning to play and relax. That’s what I’m hoping to make the rest of my life about. Not irresponsibility or out of balance, which is really tough, but making life light and fun versus an emergency or working at survival all the time, because this is all I knew.

And above all things when I do embark on love having a partner not a project.

This isn’t something I’m labeling the other person. What I mean is not that they are less by being the project, I mean that I am in control of the mechanisms that I use for bonding and attachment and that they are not therapy. That I figure out how to allow myself to be seen, my full self, not for my productivity etc, but just me.

I’m not even sure how to do that, but I know I need to.

Take me as I am… made me think of Chicago and my first love Mike. Our song was You’re the Inspiration. So of course I bought the album (feeling very geeky as I write this). And Will you Still Love Me is also a favorite and despite what a ballad of Co-dependence it is I’m going to link it here lol.

Will You Still Love Me

Christina everything does not have to go back to Co-dependence. Just like the song. You are still allowed to be a hopeful romantic and stay on top of your healing. It can all exist.

Ok deep breaths and one healthier step at a time in any given choice. Slowing way down. That’s uncomfortable to even think about. It feels like standing still over hot coals, I’d much rather run across so my feet don’t get burned, but I’ve been running my whole life. I guess it’s time to stay.

STAY…..

I both like and dislike this idea. Stay connected to myself enough to practice what I preach and be consistent in those things. Read the whole book before well meaningly giving it to someone else without even having read it myself.

A strong confident presentation on the outside, with an inside that’s trembling. Finding authenticity and direction amidst another wreckage. Being gentle with my own heart (ick) so I won’t regret an interaction with another when I’m not gentle and bounce about the world in chaotic flurries.

STAY…..

Ok I’ll try…..

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More than Our Scars

My own little zen garden…. building a fortress for my heart :p

So I’m at the beach

Listening to the sounds of children playing in the water, an older couple who always occupies the same spot, the gentle lapping of the water against the shore, the gulls, the wind, and my own heart.

It’s a roller coaster of emotions lately. Some days it’s anger, some it’s sadness, all days it’s grief. How can it be possible to grieve so much at once ?

Some moments I don’t think I’ll survive this.

“At least if… This would’ve all been worthwhile” What is the point of it all if not for…” How do I have so many words in my head, that are not even my own? How did this happen? So many others grief in my arms too by the particular blessing and curse that is the way that I love.

Were we just a distraction from the real stuff ? Is that what all this is about ? What will be true on the other side of this pain? Will I ever be on the other side of it?

And tears, and rage, and blood, sweat, and teeth biting hard into my soul. They bite down hard. It used to be a pleasant sensation, pleasure and pain mixing perfectly.

Now it’s just teeth sunk into my heart, blood running down its chin, the enemy. Whatever it is. People’s opinions, shame, guilt, fear. “Comfort the enemy of progress”, the progress used to be my comfort.

There is none now. Everything is blank. A blank page used to excite, now it’s empty, what is a blank page without a pen and ink. I am a few tools short right now, of the things that make me sing and dance.

Memories mix with reality and the entire picture becomes a blur. It comes into focus for brief moments, before going under again. Out of view. Everything goes black.

Unconscious. Subconscious. What’s the difference anyway. Is there one?

Acceptance I am finding is a dish served cold. And not the good kind, like tuna tartar or sushi.

Fuck

There just isn’t a better description than that.

What is on the other side of all of this?

If nothing else this has shown me how much of my life I lived in pure naïveté. And I want it back damnit. I was impervious. I thought I could just make my mind up and make it happen. As it turns out that doesn’t work so well in baby making and in love. I was duped into a false sense of security with my first go around with those things. I got them too easily maybe ? I don’t know.

It was all so “easy”, it came so easy to me, but maintaining it, that’s when it gets difficult. Even then though with the right ingredients I thought I could make it work, make something out of it.

Instead what I’m learning is there really are a lot of forces beyond my control. I don’t think I believed in destiny because I had such a will forged I believed I could create anything. Because that belief is all I had.

Now that I’m stripped down to the bare bones, who will I become…. that’s the scariest thing.

Who will I become?

Mary Lambert, Sum of Our Parts….

“I want to know who ever broke you

I want to know how you can grow bigger

And don’t go lookin for some kind of rescue

You are the only one who can save you

We are we are more than our scars

We are we are more than the sum

Of our parts…..

I didn’t know I was a phoenix
Till I learned how to speak
Even with ashes in my mouth
I was still born to breath
I wonder are you like me
Were you left in the fire
Are you raising yourself
Above your father’s empire”

There’s a sun shower right now And it’s the oddest sensation. Droplets of water started to hit me when it’s bright and shiny out and no sign of rain. I thought I was sweating considering I just wrapped up errands at BJ’s.

Is there a cosmic meaning ? Who knows :p

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Decluttering my Mind

The ultimate task.

The disorganization of thoughts, the rapid fire scrambling to find a safe narrative to land on is one of the most harrowing journeys.

Lately I am working on holding space for myself, so I may at some future point be able to do so for others in the correct capacity of the roles we hold.

Role confusion may be the most monumental task of my life. Not assuming a helper role, but rather showing up as my full authentic self and believing I’ll still be loved, and more importantly safe.

The lines between creativity and chaos are so often blurred for me. It reminds me of a favorite sentence by Sylvia Plath. “Oh how my mind ricochets between certainty and doubt.” I think I have taken for granted how exhausting it is to learn when to be slow and when to be fast, and what role to assume in what situation.

This is one of the reasons counseling has been such a healthy and productive career for me. The clearly defined boundaries, and learning how to model that also holds me accountable.

Too rigid and it’s unhealthy, too loose and also unhealthy. A spectrum of varying degrees. A constant pursuit to balance, to be the fulcrum.

We are meant to learn from each other. And to have healthy periods of “going under/within/inside” to recover the lost parts of ourselves.

Thinking about all of the tasks I am facing personally as well as practically (namely taming this home), is daunting if all I do is run all the scenarios. So what I am trying is to choose one task, and make one step, and make sure I’m present to feel the satisfaction of a days hard work, and acknowledge the small victories, rather than being in flight mode and already onto the next disaster etc.

I’m trying to read a whole book cover to cover and give it the time it deserves. Surrounding myself with the things does not in fact osmotically imbue me with what is needed right now.

I needed permission to know what I needed, and then the stillness to allow it.

Who knew I couldn’t achieve everything with the frenzied escape pace I adopted early on. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks and on the brink of 40 I have earned that title.

This was my word of the day:

From anxious to dauntless, to establishing some kind of a baseline. Decluttering my burning brain and soothing it is quite the process. It’s even more difficult without external comforts that I’ve come to rely on so much. Over-reliance, under reliance again finding/being the fulcrum.

Some resources for decluttering your mind.

https://zenhabits.net/15-cant-miss-ways-to-declutter-your-mind/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/nomanazish/2017/11/19/how-to-declutter-your-mind-10-practical-tips-youll-actually-want-to-try/amp/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/ideas.ted.com/how-to-declutter-your-mind/amp/

Avoid multi-tasking! I think I may have already fried my mother board from this. I have maintained the frenzied pace from how I earned my worth (and my financial freedom), and my self-esteem. I find I’m still holding desperately to the then, and it doesn’t allow as much room for the now.

I can sit and read a book calmly now, but my nervous system is not up with that program. It’s out of date and so much of my operating systems are habitual. That’s where the mindfulness I preach but rarely practice come in.

So I’m going to be working on it….