Tag: #babylawler2019

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Hamilton: What will our play be called ?!

Thank you for seeing me in this way, for delighting in me and in us. It has literally saved our emotional lives. We had our physical lives before you, but our emotional ones are taking such beautiful shape now. And I want to write about it. I want the world to know your bright love. And I what we have created here. 

The image suggests perhaps a playful post about our experience in the city. Wouldn’t that be a more pleasant read ? Perhaps it would, but it wouldn’t be written by me then, at least not tonight. 😉

This blog post is a letter I wrote to my wife tonight. Whether or not all things are meant to be shared I think there is always a power in it for someone. This letter bled straight from my fingertips, it fell onto the page in waves of truth that couldn’t make their way out fast enough. A catharsis. Isn’t it always. If someone else has a different experience with those words who am I to stop them.

Clicking publish has always been an act of bravery…. one I never gave myself much credit for. Warning it begins with graphic Crohn’s Disease material exactly as I experienced it.

I had a stomach episode tonight unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I thought I was going to have you have to call 911. I almost screamed for you. Literally. I had visions of me passing out and dying on the toilet. I woke up doubled over completely, and I mean completely. I hobbled to the toilet. I didn’t know if I would vomit or faint. I felt like all 3. I felt like I was going to have to poop but didn’t know what thing would come first. It felt like I was being ripped in half. My shirt was completely soaked, completely, and contrary to the scary fast heart rate I will have usually during an attack my heart felt like it couldn’t even beat, it was low 50’s. 

I just held on and tried to breathe deep as I could through the waves of pain and head swimming until finally I pooped literally probably 3 toilet bowls full. It wasn’t all at once. First was getting the hard part out, and then a ton came. 

By the time I was done I was left shaking and freezing and now I’m more wiped out than you can ever imagine. I just can’t even quite describe the pain.

A couple of things happened. One, I felt a tremendous wave of compassion for V and guilt at not feeling more present. It’s like I can’t weather watching her suffer and I must because I’m mom. What a confusing thing. And two, intense fear that having not taken my injection even for a week has thrown things into some terrible state with my health. What if?! And what if V is in for a lifetime of chronic suffering with her tummy that impedes so much of her adventurous self. My god that will break my heart. And then that I really do love my kids moment. Well of course I fucking do?! How could I ever be so unkind to myself, ?’ To not give myself this benefit of the doubt. 

And then I think of the good thing that I’ll make sure she is safe and supported forever. Never scared she won’t be able to support herself. And then the realization that I’m a steadfast supporter and provider and that I’m creating / have created that from scratch. 

And this is literally what a profound RE frame in thinking looks like. I’m strong and proud and safe and I’ll keep my family safe, not some impulsive person hanging by a thread.

I’m creating something beautiful in myself and for others and it’s my story. My legacy. What I want people to say about me, when they tell my story like Eliza did for Hamilton. What will they say?! We all wonder what people will say.

This makes me think of you: do you know all anybody says is nice things about you?! I always wanted to be that person, but I make too many waves, take too many risks, and don’t think enough about how I’ll make someone feel. You think too much, and I not enough. If you take us both you have the perfect person 😉 boastful? Perhaps. 

I make people uncomfortable, but do it with good intentions lol. Don’t they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions;) I make people uncomfortable by pointing out what is so readily visible to me, that for others it takes them a lifetime if at all to notice. A gift and a curse. 

I wonder if V felt a fraction of how I felt just now. If she did I feel terrible for her. I’m gonna root around in your magic bag of goodies, the bag leftover from our dead dreams (to be dramatic and truthful) and see if I can find some life giving electrolytes in the form of Gatorade to settle this tummy. It’s feeling like knives are raking it currently and I can’t be out of commission this long. 

If anything happens to me babe please tell my story. I need my story told. The need is getting fiercer now. I need people to know how hard I fought just to be ok on a daily basis and my kids to know how strong their love makes me. They are the fuel to my fire, and everything that makes me the person that I am.

Every person I’ve ever helped has them to thank. 

And I have you to thank. You’re such a source of comfort to me. Speaking of…. I’ll need to restock our sick supplies. We were so fortunate to have all these. Though the reason we do and they are unused is still excruciating. 

Babe I know your process is different but please know that if this didn’t happen I might not in some really profound way have truly known how much I want it. How I want to enjoy the tiny new life that we create rather than ever viewing him or her as a burden. And my life has already been so heavy so long, any small thing sometimes does feel this way. But in part due to experiencing this loss with you, I know even more profoundly how much each second even is worth. 

I do in a fucked up way feel it is meant to be this way. This sense that everything does happen for a reason, and not that that’s just something we say to make sense of things when they are too fucked up. It makes me believe in destiny and magic. 

Does that mean we couldn’t have done without this toll to our hearts, this wound, and these scars… of course not. 

But life would not hold as much meaning without the whole picture, the whole journey, and my life now is beyond filled with meaning. 

While I don’t plan on going anywhere soon, I am satisfied with my life right now. I need you to know that. I don’t regret for me or be sad for the rest of my unloved life ever, because I have lived it to my fullest already. I do want more of course, immense amounts more. But if it wasn’t in my cards I didn’t miss a thing. I knew exactly what I was doing. 

I want you to find the same feeling, but in whatever way Or path that’s meant for you. That’s my dream for you, never give in to self defeating thoughts, ones that lack compassion for your full journey. 

If you did ever lose me I want you to live on for me in the way I would have. Carry my legacy and be for my kids what I would have been for them. You are up to that task. No one is as well as you or I wouldn’t have picked you. They will need you forever. 

I don’t plan on going anywhere, but we never plan for that so I want these words down. I don’t care what laws or rules or fears or whatever. We have something very special here and blood relation has nothing to do with it. We must trust that. You are an irreplaceable part of the kids healing now. You’re already written into the story. And I would never want to let you be snuffed out in the event of my demise. And anyone who would try would do so out of ego or pride etc, finally able to have their kids back from my evil clutches you know 😉 but you know better. 

You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to us. Yes little ol you, it’s true. That’s a truth. And it couldn’t be without you being so much more than you see when you look in the mirror. That distorted perception is your only enemy, it kills more dreams than a semi-automatic with unlimited rounds. 

I hope my kids will delight in my letters someday when they are old enough to read how my mind worked. Find, keep, and appreciate them all, because they are who I always really was inside and kids know so little about that.

I’ll never know much about who my parents really were inside, so much is a mystery, especially my dads side, and my mother’s, a tragedy. So for them to have this insight. To know my mind intimately. Incredible.

Wow so all this feels like a product of a near death experience. Listen honestly. It may sound dramatic, but this episode was no joke. And all this sweating and gross (being on prednisone and scared) the past couple of weeks has been really humbling.

There is a level of acceptance I am at, that wasn’t there before. 

My disease has carried a large piece of denial for the longest. I wasn’t willing. I’ve been in as much denial of it as I have how damaging my childhood was to me. I am reaching a stage of acceptance now, and it’s making me so much stronger. So much more at peace and strong. Someone that you will feel proud and safe to have a baby with. Someone stable that will enjoy that adventure with, not resent it, or fear it, or feel guilty about it because I already have kids.

That is at least the take home I’m recognizing from this tragedy. 

I will get to move forward without a doubt in my mind, and for me, that’s like having rebuilt an entire nation after its downfall. I’ve been a shaky entity bordering on panic for as long as I can remember, to be emerging this strong, still, solid force of love and compassion is unbelievable even to myself. 

I am surprising myself a lot lately. The strong I always identified as prior was a sort of forced kind of strong, a necessary one. This strong now is the accumulation of weathering storms with a sense of grace rather than a frenzy or a panic. 

It’s a strong I am satisfied and proud of, not one thrust upon me without my consent. It’s a soft kind of strong, and I can’t wait to hold our baby in these new arms made of this.

Every time you grace me with your vision of seeing the loving child inside of me. I can see when you see her, I can see her too, and it brings powerful healing. You bring that to me. 

Thank you for seeing me in this way, for delighting in me and in us. It has literally saved our emotional lives. We had our physical lives before you, but our emotional ones are taking such beautiful shape now. And I want to write about it. I want the world to know your bright love. And I what we have created here. 

What if someone else could find this place (when they couldn’t before) because of our story? Or was able to believe in their dreams?! 

Bliss. 

My tummy has burning remnants of the suffering I just went through and I can’t even be bothered to focus on that. I’ve too much shit to do with my one life. Thank goodness because otherwise I’d crumble into a little ball of stress and worry and take days to recover. 

I don’t have days anymore to spend in that way, there’s too much work to be done.

Every word on every page for every day of my life…. are for you….

Now I am going to curl up as close to you as I can and let your breath lull me into a deep relaxation, and help the pain melt away. 

All the love in my heart 

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A birthday tribute to my wife …

It’s my fourth favorite person in the worlds extra special born day tomorrow. Who’s keeping count right?! But I’ve learned over the years I need to be my number one, closely followed by my children, and have now been blessed enough that now we are 5. Still soon to be 6…. that dream floats evermore back into the picture daily. Thank god for our natural innate resilience.

Just 5 humans trying to navigate a painful and divisive world with the biggest of hearts and fullest of enthusiasms.

So I just want to take some time to honor this new addition to our family. She’s new old. We have a new love everyday, that feels like it could/should have been there my whole life. The depth goes that far.

My dearest Courtney you walked softly into our lives, as if on a bed of Snow White powder, silently, and yet the foundation we are laying together is molten lava stream of concrete that has hardened into the kind of solid ground healthy families thrive on. We created this out of a place of deep love for love itself, and for the creation of the family we always dreamed of.

I’m so proud of us. You’re a mighty, quiet, thoughtful, kind, soul, who lights up a room with her smile. People just love to be around you, and I consider it a constant gift that I get to be the benefactor of a large amount of these moments.

Whether you are generously rubbing my back at the end of the day because you know how heavy my walk in the world has been, or cooking a meal that risks you great criticism for my ever changing teenage children’s tastes….. you do it with loving kindness.

You see yourself so often as less than what you are, and I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to show you your powers. Great healing powers, they are immense.

No matter what else you do with your life from here on out, please know you have saved us. This is not dramatic, rather it is true. You’re gentle with our hearts, when much of life for the kids and I has felt intense.

Your gentle love is an intense space of healing, and I’ll love you like the grateful stray dog I have always felt like, that’s found her forever home.

And finally now this is all ok. It was never supposed to be different. I was never supposed to be more than what I was when I was, and neither are you. We just are.

And this life with you in it is bliss to me.

So I hope your 35th year lends to you feeling as special as you make us feel everyday.

It is fitting we get to experience Hamilton in Broadway together to celebrate. I remember watching you see Wicked and it was one of the most ground moving moments of my life. I knew you felt with your whole self, and I knew that’s what I wanted and deserved.

Thank you in a million little ways….

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Bronchitis and Snowy Reflections

There’s a certain permission that comes with being sick that it seems you (I) can find no other way. The permission to sit even slightly more still, even for a second. Which has allowed me to reflect a lot.

I’m recovering from bronchitis and had no idea it could lay me up so much. But here I am.

The snow is finally cascading down today, it is almost a relief existentially; climate change as it is and all. The flakes are ice coated and making a tiny crunch sound as they topple and flit here and there.

I’m just sitting here marveling at how much has changed around me, and it really does seem like all I did was blink.

I’m sitting in the kitchen part of our finished in-law portion of the home. This has been a dear friend and roommates kitchen, when her and her son lived down here, and her second son was born in this home, about 4 years ago. It’s how I paid my mortgage, and also how we both stayed sane. I was less anxious living alone, and we have become a sort of family to one another. Seeing the other through bests and worsts.

It’s brisk down here, but I’m wrapped in a warm red blanket, and sitting in and oversized brown lazy boy recliner. It’s interesting to get this kind of perspective on the home. Not a space I would normally sit. I could pick apart its imperfections: the low ceiling, white tiled floor, the basement like feel of it all. But what I’ve been doing most today is marveling at how far I’ve come and how blessed we all are.

I don’t think I ever even set my sights high enough to home ownership. I think I had planned on a retail job (management if I was lucky), and a small clean apartment, the kind I sometimes saw my friends in when I lived in Oregon.

I’ve been moving through life so frantically, so panicked that simplicities are now what I long for. What comes when you enjoy what you have like it’s the best thing on earth. My ability to hear for example or to taste, to appreciate the finer details in any mundane thing.

My wife and I recently were deciding if perhaps we might move to Milford or Fairfield Ct, out of the valley, up into a different class (and tax bracket). Funny how the important things to me about this move are still in the small details.

I would like taller ceilings, the feeling of room and space, a wood burning fireplace for smell and ambience, and a very nice bathtub. I’d like to see some woods or nature out my window. Bookshelves, many many bookshelves. Mahogany and teakwood smells and feels. An office so my papers and documents are not constantly strewn about. And we have the means to get into this nicer home now, but only to be stressed or house poor again seems not the right way this time. So we may just refinance and fall in love with all we already have! For a couple more years at least anyway.

Perhaps poor the love into this home and choose to see it in a way that serves us, rather than trumping up dissatisfaction as a means to motivate us into an action that may not even end up with us any happier in the end.

Tomorrow we are all as a family going to see Hamilton on Broadway and stay overnight in the city. Another extravagance I never would have dreamed of before. Some of us are not feeling so hot, hopefully that can be mild so there’s nothing taken from our experience.

I have found myself ahead rather than behind, perhaps not as much as my dreams could imagine, but then my dreams always were very expansive anyway.

It’s interesting the creaks and sounds down here. Now a part of other’s memories who have occupied this space. It’s housed a woman post recovery and pre-discovery. Another who was fleeing a bad roommate situation and stayed over here. Our home is a space of comfort, warmth, shared meals and affection. How could I not have seen this before?!

It’s everything I ever set out to create, and so am I. Not a single thing lacking. What a delicious discovery to stumble upon as I am sitting here listening to a different angle of the home I’ve occupied for 7 years.

This chair is very comfy, yes it would look nice next to a roaring fire, but I can imagine one just as easily……

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A Self on Ice

In my morning pages today I found myself pondering whether I like my new tattoo or not. I’ve posted it here, 2 birds in flight, it matches with my wife. It represents our identical twin pregnancy flying away, a dream removed without warning or time to prepare. A major disappointment. An earth shattering grief. The pain can be recalled at any second, but as we humans are wired for resilience we are back up and running and re-shaping our plans.

We got the tattoo on a moments notice in downtown Ansonia. I had just cut off all my hair, and my head was freezing, and my identity shaky. Who was I now? I went from the girl next door with her long hair that often hinged on the, “but you don’t look gay”, and “you’re so pretty” compliments for shelter, to someone I didn’t recognize in the mirror. Shocking.

I was suddenly transported back to childhood when I would stare long hours in the mirror wondering if the soul that was housed within, was the same as the body without.

Could anybody see me really.?

I’m still looking in the mirror and wondering. Waiting for evidence this way or that. If suddenly a client leaves then it must be my radical new appearance, analyzing everything. A disease really. Could the tattoo on my wrist so unlike my conservative self that was deeply forged in childhood, the one taught to constantly be observant for shame, signal something about me I don’t want?

Will someone think I’ve been to jail? I look at it and sometimes identify myself with some of the judgments people make about tattoos and that helps me connect to compassion for all misunderstandings we have about ourselves and others in this world.

My mind expands and so does my heart.

As I was writing my morning pages I wanted to share an excerpt because this is trauma and what it does. It may not go across as meaningful as I experienced it. But what I can tell you is that the words cascaded onto the page almost as if someone else wrote them and they evoked emotion.

That has to be the real magic they talk about of writing. It happens through us. It isn’t thinking, its feeling set to open space and room for what arises without judgment. That last part is the toughie. Without judgment, how does one do that amongst so much?

Loving myself better, for the right reasons, and thoroughly inside and out has been a life long pursuit for me. I’ve been fortunate enough to navigate myself into a position to teach others what I have learned about this journey through my counseling practice, and really through the way I live my life personally. And there’s still much work to be done. A lot of thinking this morning on how I want to be in my loving, when to be soft, when to be strong, when to bend so nothing breaks and knowing the boundaries on what is my part of the work, and when it’s outside of my control and something laid down long before I stepped on the scene.

Loving myself with my analytical nature, loving myself for my quirks, loving myself when I’m making mistakes, and being gentle, as I navigate this I’ll be better at doing the same for others.

This journey is not for the faint of heart.

So I was writing about my battle between nice girl next door who is nervous about what everyone thinks of her, and rebel without a cause who gives 0 fucks. I try to make my way toward the second, but my body even defies this option. I will always care more than I want to about everything it seems….

“A self on ice”

(A depersonalization separation disassociation until reunification)

A rebel whose stomach quivers

At the slightest disturbance,

I am a fraud my harpy critic shrieks.

All these selves will give way to

A little girl huddled down for safety

Holding her nighty night blanket

Sucking her thumb.

Where is she?

Give her back to me, I need her.

I left her.

When I am cold and hard,

I’ve left my child

And I’m guilty for it.

I stumble forward numb

Hoping to feel any connection

Scrambling for it.

That smile she had,

It was beautiful,

She lit up a room with her enthusiasm.

She’s died

A thousand times I’ve mourned her.

Each self built she went further

Underground

Until I stopped to dig and find her.

These years of doing that have

Been the hardest and the best.

I knew to love as you all deserve

I had to look at her,

See her suffering,

And not turn away in shame.

I had to hold her,

And I keep having to do so,

And it’s changed my whole world.

Fierce drive no longer cuts it,

Stopping to think how I feel,

And others as well,

Beats cold stubborn drive any day.

Now it does anyway,

But in the world of the trauma

Survivor

It’s one minute to the next,

Frantically meet that need at all costs

Zoom zoom

Leave all feeling behind

Assess situation,

find safety,

seek comfort

Run fast

No where in that is

Stop to feel

Be at peace

Love yourself

Rest

Now I am here

Seeking

Balance

No one told me

That thawing out

Could be this hard

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Suffering and Parenting Consciously

Anyone who reads this without a transcription has the patience of a God, lol. But somehow it seems more authentic.

Sometimes I think who writes like this to their kids. And the shame gremlins chime in about how perhaps “children” (though they are not anymore) should maybe not be meant to understand such adult matters. Others two cents have stated that they would have given anything to know what was going through a parent’s mind. There’s a lot of different ways to do things out there. That is for sure.

Given that we lost identical twins and my wife had a D and C five days before Christmas and two before my birthday, the year is off to a slow start enthusiasm wise. We are just navigating this perilous terrain of grief, and I wanted to share something I just realized.

A day deep in grief can seem as endless as a lifetime. Each one day spent seems like a year. Time stands still as if the beating of our hearts just stopped as well…. as if they couldn’t go on. Then for awhile your hollow chest realizes the thump is still there, and the rest of you will have to acquiesce eventually. You know you’re alive, but you can’t feel things the same way.

Everything is different and you never even gave permission for that to be so.

So here we are at the beginning of week two of 2019. Wandering numbly through the mine fields of the memories of our whole experience thus far trying to conceive. Who would ever go back for a second tour I think. But then one day I imagine we will find ourselves smiling at tiny new babies again and our dreams will re-shape themselves from the nightmares they became.

Moments of relief are where we are at now, peppered with lots and lots of sadness shrapnel. As we figure out our new expectations of ourselves, each other, and even consider a plan to move forward.

Daunting or exciting ? Do the emotions set that tone based on where we are at on our grief terrain? Or do we decide we want to be excited, AND accept the moments of suffering that just can’t be avoided as a human being?

We can only outrun or block out the inherent being of suffering for so long, it will get all of us eventually.

A dear friend is reading Eckhart Tolle’s, A New Earth. She shared with me a passage about suffering consciously. Sitting with the feelings and learning from them. That this is the only solace and way to transcend the pits of despair as it were. And even then I shall say from this experience when you’re IN suffering it seems like you’ll never get out. But somehow the resilience of the human spirit can’t help but cut through the dark. We are just made like that.

As a lighter side emerges that Chumba Wumba song, I get knocked down, but I get up again comes to mind… and all it’s silly lines.

I’m just here trying to figure it out. Trying to catch the next wave of joy, even as it seems we are swimming with sharks right now. I refuse to get out of the ocean even if I could get eaten. It’s a strange and marvelous thing this humanity.

I think of Elizabeth Gilbert often. She doesn’t even know who I am, but to me she’s a mother I never had, a best friend, a kindred spirit. I think of her grief of the loss of her partner Reyya. The other day she posted her delight at her Uber driver on the way to the airport, and that you can find joy anywhere. She is so right!

Speaking of her being a mother I never had. It’s funny how she never had children, and that was such a big deal to her at one point, other’s judgments and opinions and her own of that process. And yet I wonder how many spiritual children she has. I am certainly one. She has been a teacher, a warm shelter in the storm, and a friend in times of need. All through her beautiful words she is these. What is a parent if not these things?

Perhaps she chose to sacrifice certain aspects of individual meaning for the whole good of humanity? I wonder if she ever looked at it like that? Rather than selfish …. etc…?

Anyway yesterday my wife and I were in the car and trying to count how long it had been since surgery. We both literally estimated a month or more. We were shocked to find only a little over two weeks. I’m still thinking about this.

Time is irrelevant when it comes to the matters of the heart. I have always believed this to be true.

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There is no recipe for this

I’m all thrown out of whack, and I am trying to figure out what to do. I used to thrive on chaos so well. I used to separate myself from my feelings in order to survive and it became a way of living that served me for so long. I am finding through this that I’m not wired like that anymore and it has me completely thrown off. My heart is all thawed out which means that currently I am immobilized by grief in so many moments. And when I am not I am helping my wife who is having her moments.

Even when I am numb it is because my heart feels it almost can’t feel such suffering for one more second, it is no longer a disconnected numb. It’s a feeling numb, a raw one.

I was off to such a great start with working for Vivint and now I feel like I’ve lost my mojo. I was enthusiastic and excited and a self that loves to talk to people and right now I am just raw hamburger. I think if I see a baby right now I will just crumble into tears, if it catches me at the right moment and outside of my careful boundaries as a counselor.

I think I feel worried that I didn’t know how much I cared about this whole thing, not really fully knowing, until this happened and now it hurts. Hurting is an easier model for me than safely having faith everything will turn out ok. Or maybe I did have faith because if I didn’t I wouldn’t have been so on top of the world with excitement, an energy that seeped into everything that I did. Now I just have sad energy. And that doesn’t mean I’m not hopeful about the future, but right now I am just neck deep in these feelings and I can’t do anything to speed up this process or control it in any way.

There it is, the problem right there. The truth. I can’t just work hard and make this different. I even convinced myself that it was my steel mind that prevented me from losing my twins all those times I almost did. I’ve been in control of my own destiny for so long I’ve been living under the illusion that I have more control over things than I really do.

I couldn’t stop this.

And the tears come.

I couldn’t stop the bleeding or the things my wife is feeling right now. I just have to sit here and feel things and wait. So many fears are biting at my ankles like many a rabid dog, tearing at the corners of my mind. I can’t stop the war between feeling and knowing we already have so much to be grateful for, and truly acknowledging how this feels in its entirety for us right now. The desire to minimize and just keep moving foward quickly as a means to avoid suffering. It’s what I have always done.

I can’t outrun things anymore. No amount of staying busy will fix this. No amount of financial success etc. No cottage or new thing, or any other kind of comfort. There is nothing to do but just feel the feelings until they get less sad.

Will that happen?

The things I normally love aren’t able to bring me comfort right now either. My writing, my reading and my bounding enthusiasm all seem tasteless right now. I am eating food to satiate a bottomless well of pain. I am not eating to taste the food. I know this because I can’t taste anything. This is why I’m eating worse things lately because it has to be deliciously sweet or painfully salty to feel anything at all. And even then it’s just a temporary distraction and then right back to the darkness.

Any next step feels so completely daunting. And taking the next step even when it’s hard or I don’t know if my foot will have something secure under it… well that’s what I do. And right now even that isn’t working. I’m a doer and even picking up the phone to call a new clinic and figuring out how to have our eggs transferred etc feels too difficult. Sometimes getting dressed feels too difficult. And it definitely feels too difficult to do anything about all of this, and that’s all I got. I’m a one trick pony.

Moving foward through suffering is my trick. I’m afraid right now it will swallow me.

I think I really had convinced myself that I’m a robot incapable of the kind of suffering that has taken me over right now. The evil voice says “yes you still are”, of course your’re upset about this you didn’t get your way. And all sorts of other things that criminalize my intentions and my heart. The thing that threatens me to think badly about myself, one of my only main constants. That process to make sure I do no bad thing, the kinds that were done to me. To make sure that I watch myself carefully for flaws and ill intentions and at any single sign of one I pull the kill switch.

I’m supposed to think about what I’m supposed to think and feel and to decide, and this process falls so far outside of that I am lost in the dark wood right now.

Except this is a whole new dark wood, one I have never experienced before.

This is why defense mechanims are such powerful forces, because some of the depths of suffering we are just not meant to feel. I see they are definitely there for a reason. Everything is there for a reason, and so they say it happens that way as well. And I’m supposed to believe my suffering right now has another purpose right? Everything happens for a reason just isn’t cutting it for me to give me any sense of comfort. I am not there yet.

Why can’t I just skip to acceptance? Why do I have to feel every fucking thing so fucking much?

I’ve been in control even of my grief it has felt for all these years. I have stayed ahead of it. Can’t catch me! But this time and this thing has me in quick sand. Even my will cannot carry me through right now.

Is this where I am meant to find faith?

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The International Women’s Summit

So we are hopefully off on a new adventure. I am asking support from my reader’s to take a healing trip to recover from loss, and from the typical self-doubts all of us human beings are afflicted with.

I will hopefully be able to have a Stella with Elizabeth Gilbert! This has been a lifelong dream. I mean a lot more than that, but that’s the simple part of the dream. The more advanced is that someday she write the endorsement for my book.

Anyway my presence is required with my wife today. We are watching A Muppet Christmas Carol and doing a puzzle. Today we have a little reprieve as we are excited to create a beautiful holiday for our kiddos.

Until I can write more later here is the plum fund account and there also should be a widget on my website. I can’t wait to write more later about what this means for to have the courage to ask for help towards my dreams. And to not just automatically discount it with so many a critical thought.

https://www.plumfund.com/travel-fund/womens-pilgrimage-to-connect

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Connected

*I guess we are all one phone call from our knees. *

I don’t think I could have bargained for all the gratitude this experience is bringing me. I can’t feel it too much yet, everything is just so painful. But I know that it’s there, and growing, and that this experience has already profoundly changed me.

If I do it right it’s going to make me realize all the things I take for granted each day. It’s going to make me realize what a gift and blessing my kids are in a new way.

We need to hit the refresh button on life often folks! Not just when bad things happen, but consistently. Not just once a year. Refresh, open your eyes, and look around at the landscape of your life.

My God I could have never imagined this. I never believed I would trust or love myself as much as I do now.

I would have never believed I’d be here living out my dreams. Here I am.

It’s interesting to choose a person early on because of a hunch and an intuition and then watch them unfold and get to know them with faith and trust the rest of your lives together. Love grows as you go through things. We have been through a lot this short time together.

Prior to this I moved quickly into love also, this was a need based approach it wreaked if desperation and seeking a buoy in the ocean with sharks swimming around. I’ve finally climbed onto an island and am relaxing. I did not purposely use those people. I didn’t even know my own bs as most of us don’t, until hindsight affords clarity. Hurt people hurt people. It isn’t nearly the intentional process believe I don’t think.

Now if you realize this is what’s happening and you don’t do something about it that’s a different matter.

Love now:

We know one another’s soul, and yet we learn new small things about the other each day. We become more and more familiar as time moves on. A confirmation of the original hypothesis. The other times were disproving and they were as devastating a loss as any for both parties.

Life is a learning playground is it not? I’ve rarely seen people set out to harm another, that’s a different category all together. But I’ll tell you what I still scan myself often and thoroughly for signs of being what I came from. I still take any feedback that could be construed as negative about me and make sure it’s twisted into that either way. This is one of my greatest areas of work.

Am I taking up too much space with my big feelings? Am I selfish? Am I like them? Do I make people uncomfortable with my rawness, and is that the same As the chaotic discomfort of my beginning. It is not the same. Thank God!

As I work for Vivint I’ve been meeting lots of people who lost their loved one recently or within the last few years, and my empathy as a person grows. After having something like this I get it. I’m already aware of the depth of suffering I’ll have when I lose it. I’ve never been able to cruise along in blissful ignorance, though I’ve often envied (probably falsely) those who have.

If you had told me two years ago that this year I’d be spending trying to get pregnant with the love of my life, I would have thought you were crazy. If you would have told me I would get so close to this dream after so much hard work, and then lose it suddenly and have to push it back again significantly, I would have told you I wouldn’t make it through something like that.

And yet here we are.

The courage of my wife astounds me. Her grace and kindness and gentle soul. Some people are just made angels from the very beginning, and others have lives that make them need one. We are the perfect match. Blissfully she seems to feel it’s the other way around. I’m still trying to figure out how that’s possible.

I am able to know I can be kind and unselfish when things are hard because she believes me to be that person.

I am trying to put this into practice with my children. Coming from a life of hyper vigilance and a huge lack of trust this has been very difficult. I’ve been RE wiring myself as long as I can remember and it’s difficult for anyone who doesn’t know what this work is like to understand the profound exhaustion that comes with it.

I am not exhausted from my children. They are my reason for getting this far. But over the years if you looked at my life you might have thought that, or that I valued my romantic relationships above them. Something I’ve long been accused of. I knew I needed a certain kind of love to heal parts of me, so those parts didn’t damage them. I had the foresight to know this.

And foresight is serving me again with this tragedy we are currently experiencing, because I can already see how the awareness it brings is challenging me to love better.

To my kids: I know it has taken my entire life to become a whole loving person that you deserve. I know this journey hasn’t been easy for you. I think the only redeeming part is that your lives will be better for it in ways you may only ever see when you’re my age. Distance brings clarity. I hope your lives end up as full as mine has been. Full of adventure, challenges, new experiences, real feeling, and the love I worked so hard to find, and to help you connect to it.

I’ve worked to connect with others and myself despite incredible connection difficulties.

And now here I am a connected and real person and boy does it feel different.

During times like this for a small moment I wish I could still be safely disconnected from my real feelings. But that never worked I always felt separate from the humans like that. It was terribly lonely.

I am connected to my self and currently my suffering too, and to the Universe, and to everything.

I am grateful for that. Thats what the smile below is about. It’s a different approach at times to this grief. For me great grief also brings great gratitude I have any of this at all. That I have someone to be sad with and lose something so important with. And we can try again for this, but this love is a once in a lifetime love. It’s the kind that always helps me love myself more, and I needed a lot of that.

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Ritual

I turn 38 on Saturday. In so many ways I never could have imagined my life would be where it is right now. I couldn’t have even dreamed this.

Today I am turning to my blog again as a healing medium. I don’t have well organized thoughts. I just know I need to write.

I could never have imagined being so sad and so grateful and blessed all at the same time. A blanket of numb sadness has set in this morning. I’m just trying to feel something. Anything.

I needed to renew my drivers license this morning so I came to Hamden DMV before my Vivint meeting. It was shockingly fast. I had anticipated a 2 hour wait, and running into my meeting late. But I was in and out.

If there was a Guinness Book of World Records for bad drivers license photos I would be a strong contender. The cameras are way beneath you. Why do they do that?! Is it the only satisfaction they have in their lives? Don’t they know women need a steep downward angle as they near their 40’s and grow softer under the chin and more robust around the middle?

So I did a thing!!! A nearing 40 thing… and I’m sitting here trying to process what it means to me on the deeper spectrum.

It means to not be seeking acceptance anymore. To not be shaking in my shoes that someone won’t like me for how I look, a long held legacy stemming of course, back to childhood. It means to play with life a little and try new things without it being so serious. So yesterday my wife and I set out on an adventure. We went to a local barbershop and had a great old time. It will now be filed away in memories I hold dear to my heart.

The barber was amazing! Goodfellas Barbershop Ansonia CT. Fary Palacios. All the guys in there had a blast watching me get my very thick and long locks shorn off. It was a hoot.

Then we went to a local tattoo shop and got matching birds on our wrists to commemorate our twins and loss. To honor this pain and this process. This one hurt. Not worse than many moments in each day lately, but certainly was intense.

Food doesn’t really taste like anything. My brain can’t grasp on anything to focus. We have a 2 o’clock appointment today to find out what we are going to do and I know more waves of grief are imminent. My eyes look sad and dark, they have bags under them. I don’t want this to be my reality.

I don’t feel anything holiday like or like celebrating anything. My heart is breaking over and over each day in moments. One of the deepest cuts I have ever experienced. I’m trying to hold it shut myself, and clearly I need medical intervention. Irrigation, anti-biotics, and stitches. But I have become to not feel like I can trust those institutions to be careful with us.

Like a cornered wild wounded animal. Protective. Angry. Sad. Scared. Flayed open. Raw.

I am writhing with pain on the inside, and just trying to keep it together on the outside .

Help me please I just need some peace. It’s too in between.

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Waiting: Darkness to light. Floundering to faith.

Waiting. We are heavy with it. Heavy with an irritability and sadness that is uncharacteristic of our lives together. Both breaking and numbing at different times. Both on our own journeys; separate yet together.

Humira injection day, plus PMS day, plus emotional devastation slowly settling in and also crashing down: its more than feels bearable.

I want to eat bad things and be numb. I know it makes it worse, but sometimes the inertia is too powerful. I try and get up but it feels like I have on lead boots, and a heavy lead plate across my chest. It seems to take a gigantic amount of effort to do anything but stare off into space. I wish I could just sleep for the next few months. Hibernate and recover and wake up ok, skip the inevitable steps.

We are fucking waiting to expel our dead dreams and it is excruciating. When is it going to begin? How painful will it be? Will we see it? Should we capture it in a tiny cup for testing.

People may go through this all the time it may be common etc etc; but I guarantee you for each one of those people that didn’t change their own personal experience. The way they made sense of it, or couldn’t.

I want this extensive time alone away from the world to understand this, and to hold my wife and keep her sheltered through each wave. Except that isn’t an option. You just keep going. Sure you take moments, but you just have to keep going. Or I do anyway.

I also couldn’t have bargained or known the anxious thoughts that would plague me. The nightmares, the wakefulness when I need to rest. My mind spinning into outer space like an astronaut that’s been lost in space.

Speaking of space and my mind I can’t seem to grasp onto any clear thinking.

We ended up watching Bruce Almighty. I’ve referenced this movie hundreds of times. Somehow Courtney has never fully seen it. And watching her laugh and watch it tonight was such a pleasure. She makes my whole world better.

It’s only with a raw and open wound that we can sometimes see things we didn’t before. I loved this movie for years, it helped me learn not to feel sorry for myself. It helped me learn how to get outside my stories of tragedy and truly see the world with gratitude.

We are just sitting here caring for one another and making it to the next moment filled with joy. We truly are in a love that will weather for better or for worse, and this is what I’ve always asked for.

The rest I have to just keep having faith through. Faith in myself, faith in more good than bad at the end of the day. Faith over fear. To find my way back from my experiences seems unthinkable, but here I am…..