Tag: #babylawler2020

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Grief is the great separator

After I vent my many giant fears to my trusted few my words are free to roam…. if anyone knew how much work even a post takes…. but oh so worth it. Oxygen

I’ve been in contemplation. Another pupa stage. Each time I wonder how there is another. Haven’t I arrived yet? What the fuck self-actualization, isn’t there an end point? Resoundingly no, there is not.

There also isn’t a limit to the amount of love our hearts can hold, or pain. I thought I knew that before this year, and now I know….

respectfully, I didn’t know shit.

Why do we cuss a lot when feeling strong emotions ? Emphasis I suppose. Ever the analytical mind. What of it. This is me bitches ?! Wow I am unknown even to myself so much of the time. That truth creates insecurity and uncertainty. The two things we are always trying to lock down most.

I want to hurt and to bleed so I can physically feel what just happened to us. A tattoo might not cut it this time. We need a third bird on our wrists. Go deep this time. We have earned it. You’d have to cover my entire body. It’s eviscerating every single time. Doesn’t matter if you’re new or old to the process.

Today we walked into the clinic. The fertility clinic. It’s like going into battle Lord of the Rings style, nothing prepares you for it. We have walked the walk in so many different states. And each time I see a couple I wonder if theirs is joy and victory or hurt and loss? I want to know their story too. What would it mean to know their story too? Why is it that my energy is always shared experience?

It would mean we could be less alone. We all want to be less alone all the time. Prisoners in self created purgatories born out of our own templates of how the world works. Some innate. Some inherited. All, our own personal Mount Everests to scale.

How can a heart even hold this much feeling?

To feel like this all the time and to be so much of me, it’s a delicious torture. To be this alive, this awake. You wonder if you can burn at this frequency and not disintegrate, into only a memory in the lives of our loved ones. Which is all we are anyway.

I don’t die. I just get stronger and wiser. I thought it would kill me. But instead I just go under and come back out someone else, every single time.

I can’t even create a story that backs my suffering any longer. That’s a boring small life. I’m not meant for that. We only think our limitations, we are truly not any of them.

Speaking of that… all the ways “they” (the mystical they), tells you how to handle this. Don’t spread your pain to others, don’t do this, don’t do that. You know what when someone is suffering just be fucking kind. That’s all you need to do. It isn’t as hard as we make it. Be kind damnit. Let their tears fall. Let them take up space. See how I slip out of personalization, because this much pain is unthinkable.

Is it a thing you think that losing a possibility is as hard as losing what’s concretely there ? Why do we measure the validity of our suffering and stack them up next to others to see if our experience is ok? Why do we do that?!

Why can’t everyone’s own pain just be their own pain and we can hold it? It’s not complicated but the rules of society make it so. Grief and love are natural states, in allowance they are gorgeous pieces of humanity. In resistance we become tortured and can torture.

Is a 5 week miscarriage “worse” than never being able to conceive? Is losing a baby at the end harder than watching a child suffer through cancer? A true game of would you rather that no one wants to sit and play. Is it better to have loved and lost ? A beloved client of mine and I play this game all the time. Along with “I win” and a deliciously necessary level of dark humor and sarcasm that are sometimes the only way a human can cope. And have a seat at the table too.

Do you want to know the truth?! We don’t ever know. We don’t ever know. Let that rattle your cage. Let that wake you up to your own desires you have been putting on the back burner for the if and when of it all.

If there was an answer, versus many, it would be compassion. Be compassionate and open and warm and kind. Create space rather than closing it off with your own judgment, critic, and self-righteousness. Hold someone else’s experience as tenderly as you wish you could your own.

Level up! We need to be together when we grieve and to be allowed to share our experiences. Not silenced or shamed!!

You don’t need the answer…. only an open heart. An open heart can grieve and love as much as it needs to. I’ll always write my way to my most profound truths. And always hold myself accountable to my own integrity.

Always …..

Ps. If you pray, chant, walk, meditate, or whatever it is you do keep us in your thoughts. We keep getting knocked to the ground, and our people always help us get back up. That’s why we are meant to connect in this life. Thank you for loving us so well.

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Music, lyrics, water, ice

I said to my friend this morning that I have a big family. It just fell out of my mouth, and then all of my insides smiled at the realization. How can that be?! How can all of this change have occurred and right under my nose.

I’m always vigilant for threat. But for happiness…. I can’t even see it when it was always available to me. Just some fine tuning of perspective.

This hunting, constant hunting for belonging or acceptance has left my soul tired. What I actually had to do was to let go, not hold on tight. Then everything just opened right up to me.

I’ve traversed lifetimes of growth just this morning. A time traveling warrior of light. Transcending typical chronologies and customs, and all barriers of logic and reason. A traversiamo; I’ve crossed over.

I had a beautiful line right here, and I didn’t save the draft properly, and it’s gone. It was exquisite, and I’m feeling rather heartbroken. But isn’t this just how life works? If I sit here not writing, let the whole thing ruin my mood, when all the lines come from inside me anyway, and if it’s important it will come back again.

I’m in a freeze again. I’m waiting for something, the next something, and there will be a something after that. So why wait I suppose? Write what I can right now?!

I can write that life is happening around me so fast I feel like I can barely keep up. This creation has taken on a life of its own, and some of my parts (sum of my parts by Mary Lambert, a favorite), still feel like they are in that other life. I am constantly checking the evidence and pinching myself. That must indicate some pretty radical transformation right ?!

I can’t stop thinking about that line, and I can’t stop thinking about other things… my mind just rolls it over and over in the palm of my hand like glistening agates bathed in ocean water and sunlight. Mesmerized. They could turn to dust at any moment these dreams, and I know that like I never have before. I now know what it means to have the courage to go after your dreams. I used to think what’s the big deal? That’s because I was separated from myself.

People thought I was brave. And I was but I couldn’t feel it, and they never knew that.

What direction is my life about to go?! What many directions ? What do I have to offer the world ? I am excavating, contemplating, exfoliating. Laughing. Playing.

Mary Lambert sets my soul on fire. I want to do what she does for the world. With my words. Before my child got lost she wrote. She wrote a lot. Always had a pen and paper. She wrote poetry and song lyrics and tried so sing, not well. And then people made fun of her and she tucked all that away on a mission for acceptance. She watched and became anything she could to be chosen, wanted, to belong.

It’s not all tragedy though that lost child created the very thing that helped her become found. It was effortless to have those three gems, or at least it feels that way this many years out, and within this new journey. They are effortless to love, and yet I was blind for so long. Now I see everything. I spent a small amount of time fearing it was too late, but there’s no such thing really.

It’s never too late. I want to play the piano. I want to dance with joy. I want to weave words together into a brightly colored tapestry and then sit back and see me from the outside in a way I never have before. I have dreams and a heart, that are thawed.

It’s so hard to explain this life in words. I burst with gratitude to the point only unintelligible sobs can escape. I’m nervous to show the world so much feeling, they don’t know what to do with it, and I hate anyone around me being uncomfortable.

I make people uncomfortable, just before they find themselves.

I needed enough insight to realize how to hold on through the storm so I could witness the sunlight. Most of the storms of my childhood were unbearable. So it’s taken several trips through hell to learn how to sit in discomfort.

“Don’t go looking for some kind of rescue, you are the only one who can save you. We are we are more than our scars, we are more than the sum of our parts.” -Mary Lambert

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Fox Tattoos and Trauma Hues

I picked up my son from college last night. How is this even a thing ?! What happened to all those years? I was just surviving but I wasn’t alive in my heart. I’m grappling with this realization right now.

I provided my children with what appeared at face value to be safe people. Everyone was safer than me because I could become some dark thing at anytime.

That’s so sad when I say it now and feel it. No dissociation only raw realizations here.

My son has been talking about getting a tattoo. And my mom side says wait til you know who you are and what you like. She protects and guides and also thinks no don’t be so grown I can’t handle it. It’s scary. So my response was always no. Closed off from him. What he was asking for what he wants in exploring the world. So he went to another source. That’s what we do with unmet needs right ?

Anyway he was talking with my ex partner (now friend). She had said she was going to take him to do that. And something about this felt off to me. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Was it jealousy?! If it was I would manage that. But it was more. I’ve not been controlling with my children in fact I’ve let them be given to the world: however I think I did not even have a template for how important I am to them, and vice Versa.

I did not know how. I didn’t know how to mom or how to child. Chaotic confusion.

They have seen this mother. Always seeking, but most likely always at more of an arms length than is comfortable for me to sit with. But the truth sets you free, and opens up new possibilities, especially the hard ones. Most people aren’t ever willing to admit… it’s too uncomfortable.

That arms length was not believing in who I was as a mother. It was never them, and hopefully showing them now, and this connection blossoming now. I provided others for play, while I worked. While I worked at school, worked at my trauma, worked at Trader Joe’s.

What breaks my heart is that it was all so intense for me. I always could have been connected to them as much as I wanted. Children are open and loving always. I kept myself from their love because I didn’t want to use it inappropriately, like what was done to me. I was frozen. Trauma freezes our beautiful soft selves.

Now I’m thawed and they are older and the only way they will ever know how much of my love has always been theirs is if I write so they can read my story. My heart is opening. I can see them now and connect. What if I hurt them all that time? Were they lonely? It’s more than most parents will ever look at in themselves.

I think children might rather have consistency even than any other thing. And my c-ptsd has left me bouncing around the world like a brightly colored super ball. Were they lonely ?! They must have been because I was. I did the supposed to’s properly, but connection I knew nothing about that. I just tried to learn about life from the damn movies; not from any real connections. So that left a lot of room for error!

So this whole tattoo thing. I realized I want to be there with him for that and asked him. I asked him for this connection and to accept my place as his mother and his friend. I asked for my need and also let him know he is important to me. I could have just stayed in the backseat out of fear of myself.

I’m ready to accept my place in their lives. To love myself enough to accept my role and to fulfill it properly. I am sorry it’s taken me so long. But I promise no one has ever loved their children so much. I’ve done my own surgery and my own stitches and I’ve been living wounded without anesthesia for so long.

If I had something visible I would have had people gasp and run to my aid. Because it’s not visible I’ve been shamed and judged. And that created more bondage.

I am a trauma survivor. I live with PTSD every single day. I can’t even ride in a car without jumping 60 times. Most days I spend monitoring my heart rate and flushing from cortisol. So many times without my consent. My body and my heart are so tired.

I’ve called it Crohns. I’ve been in denial. Anything else. Because a trauma survivor story is filled with such shame. It will be no matter what work you do around it. How to not be seen as attention seeking or pity seeking. How to not have shame around this. When you’re responsible for everything.

Coming out as gay was only the tip of the iceberg on my coming out. I had been strong for so long I forgot I was soft. It’s my soft parts that connect with the world and my children.

I don’t talk about it. I really don’t. I live with it but I don’t talk about it, because I’m always afraid of taking up too much space.

It’s time for another healing journey, one with my body, my heart rate, my mind. I stopped looking, because I was looking to the wrong sources.

The medical community has failed me, the family system has failed me. And I get so angry…. not getting answers but I’m focusing on the wrong thing. If I had a medical issue it could be easily fixed and seen and there’s a pill for that.

I deserved to be seen so long ago….

Everyone deserves to be seen….

I’ve spent my life becoming the mother I want to be. It’s a lot of work. I hope this new little one is ready for me. I am ready for her…..

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Love is an open door

Hurt people hurt people.

I see the very realness of this every single day in my office, in my own life, in the life of my friends.

It’s what we decide to do with that pain that makes the difference. Yes you can decide to do something with your pain. You don’t choose that it’s yours, but you do get to decide what you will do with it.

Yesterday a dear friend reached out to me about a wound that she was experiencing as a result of her mother not being able to fully understand how to love her, or what she needed. She shared that pain with me.

Last night another dear friend wrote me a string of texts about how her mother did not see her progress she has made with her sobriety and with going to school to change her life around.

In my office so many people sit with me, and show me their wounds. It’s intimate and scary. They reveal themselves to me. I am in awe that they trust me so much with their heart.

It doesn’t matter the why’s of it all. It’s just so beautiful all the time. If their wounds can be beautiful and I can learn and be privileged by them, then so can mine. This is what heals me into a whole person. The courage of others to let me hold their pain with them, and they hold my pain too.

I know they can see it and feel it because they chose me to share their open hearts with.

The courageous are not the ones who have all the answers figured out. The courageous are those who go looking for it, knowing all the while they could experience disappointment again and again. They look anyway. These are my tribe.

Yesterday my wife took her progesterone and oil injection, no thanks to me. I chickened out. My anxious mind wonders what vital organ that giant needle could hit, and feels threat at the possibility of her imminent loss. This is what a combination of PTSD and anxiety can do to you. If you believe anything is possible then you aren’t limited by the mere medical knowledge that there is not a vital organ in your hip. Every part of her is vital to my existence. What if I did something wrong? What if she wasn’t ok? Oh anxiety. Sigh.

I wasn’t anxious before. What is this? I wasn’t human before either. I was a feral terrified wisp who fashioned herself as best she could. I was devoid of real human emotion that would have been poured into me by the wanting of my sheer existence. My existence was not wanted, so I didn’t know what to do with myself either. A person with this sort of beginning will always wonder why the wanted people are interested in her. It feels like a different breed.

But what I realized this evening is it is only our own story that keeps us from being loved as well as we could. The universe provides us with multiple sources to help our gifts come forth from us.

Spoiler alert. It isn’t always our parents and family.

Did you hear that? Sometimes it’s a teacher, a friend, a neighbor, a pet even.

It’s 3 am. I woke up like a shot at 3 am with all of this beauty and realization in my heart. 3 am actually seems to be my prime writing time, when without pretenses or agonizing self-criticism I can just pour my heart onto the page. Adult me knows that this 3 am bullshit will bite me in the ass later, in the form of nausea, dizziness, crushing wall of tired at exactly the wrong time.

But right now childlike me can allow herself to get up and participate in magic making. It’s never as good on the page as I experience it inside of me. That’s a real challenge I want everyone to see what I do, as I do, and right now. I want to be seen like we all do. But then I remember again all of you who share your heart with me. All those who seek my warmth and my counsel, and I know I am seen.

Lately I am seen so well it is staggering. I am regularly in disbelief about this. I was having a few moments like this about it over the past few weeks, and was sharing with a new friend these thoughts vulnerably. They asked me if it was perhaps my sense of worthiness preventing the reception of this. I said that it wasn’t. But as I sit here with all of these people’s shared hearts laid on in front of me I think I must change my answer. It all comes down to worthiness.

I am in shock that someone could come along and see me as safe, beautiful, someone they want to get to know more, someone to look to to learn from. I realize I don’t have a template for that inside myself. And that helps me realize that is what good love does for us. It gives us a template to go off of in learning to love ourselves. Which just makes life so much easier.

When I just said that I got really worried about my son. He is at that very delicate period of finding himself. His first year of college. I’m so afraid that perhaps from not yet having this template he doesn’t have it either and will suffer unnecessarily. I hope the love of others while I was chaotic and frantically searching, and as much love as I had was enough so that he knows he is special, and worthy, and he has permission to find out who he really is without torturing himself with the pressures of society, student loans, and all the negative possible outcomes of an existence.

Bumpy roads still can lead to fantastic destinations. Don’t worry my little love. Worry never did a damn thing, but limit my imagination and possibilities. Yes

While I was responding at 3 am to my friend who is hurting I found a message in my inbox that another friend of mine is getting ready to make her next step towards a dream of hers. She shared her beauty with me too.

Life is a giant canvas mixed with brush strokes of beautiful agonies. It is art in motion. It never ceases to challenge and amaze me. The pain of some of my friends right now, their loss, it sits heavily in my arms. So many people that I love are feeling so many big things right now.

And I am too. I am right in between the possibility of a dream and crushing disappointment right now. I’m standing here and all I can do is love as hard as I possibly can. And I can accept the gifts the universe offers me.

Dear new friend, I accept you seeing me and being interested in investing. You are here at exactly the right time. Thank you for seeing me.

And to all of the people who trust me with their valuable feelings, thank you. You are a gift, and your faith in me renews my faith in myself. It has opened up my heart.

My heart is an open door…

This is a big time for all of us. There is a crib in our room. There are baby things waiting. They have been waiting a long time. Fuzzy sloth blankets, cute little onesies, books on cooking for baby. They are in boxes in bags, packed away. There’s a photo of our embryo we transferred on November 8, 2018. Little pieces of our hearts also are packed away with those things. We begin foster classes tonight at 6 pm. The first step in a lifelong dream.

This love is bursting and flowing over. We must do something, many things, worthwhile with that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Heart on display

Today is for homemade chicken soup, snuggly bulldogs, and heavy contemplation. It’s for music, blankets, kisses, and decorating. For acquainting ourselves to a novel corner of our new domain. Creating a new feel to the already existing landscape.

Today is the brink of another brave journey down the IVF road. We are embarking upon try number five, and I’m scared like hell. And you aren’t allowed to say that. Because you’re supposed to say how positive and excited you are. I am those things too, but if you haven’t experienced the searing pain of disappointment in this arena you don’t get to tell me how to conduct myself. All you need to do is listen and be kind to me, that’s all.

I’m not afraid I won’t be ok. Or that I am not loved and have a great support system. My heart isn’t thin glass. It’s incredibly resilient. This isn’t fear or a lack, its raw. It’s naked in Times Square. It’s holding nothing back.

It’s as if I’ve pulled my heart out of my chest, holding it carefully, and have placed it on the counter. It’s just sitting there outside my body. Anything can happen to it at any moment. It’s sitting next to the ten thousand syringes and needles of various sizes and alcohol wipes. It’s out in the open and I have no idea what will happen. I’m just standing here marveling at it. How beautiful and strong. It never was the dangerous thing I always feared.

We are becoming friends, my heart and I.

I have woken up out of a nightmare and into a fairytale. Knowing that in real life fairytales there is still pain. I’m still here regardless of outcome. It will only add another layer of depth to my soul. But these layers aren’t cheap.

The Halloween decorations are down, the Thanksgiving / Christmas ones will go up. Our first Christmas tree in this home. The first of so many, if we are blessed. This home will house laughter, and a thousand possibilities for a secure space full of traditions and love. What life is this? How can it possibly be mine? I just keep pinching myself.

This is nothing I have ever known.

Hyper vigilance gives way to peacefulness. Anxiety is replaced with security. The neural pathways laid down attempt to derail progress, the progress is too consistent and too great. I’ll lay down an entire new railroad if it means I can love and be loved.

A life once only dreamed of comes clearer into view. I’m no longer naive enough to think I’ll be happy if or when…. something always comes along. Life changes on a dime. Be happy now, exactly as is. Your perspective and circumstances can change in an instant, then life will change you.

When I no longer live inside my head anymore, what will my writing be like then? I’m changing more quickly than I can keep up with. Am I ready to pour this molten heart into children who desperately need love, and to be seen, as I did? Am I ready? What is ready? They weren’t ready for their circumstances.

So if they have to be brave, so will I. If they can be brave and open, amidst crushing disappointment then I will too.

It’s just the unknown, which has as good of chance of turning out beyond our wildest dreams as it does bad. Our biological wiring is made to detect threat rather than possibility.

I’ve spent a lifetime surviving. Now I’m ready to live.

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Anything is possible

I was introduced to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs when I was a student. This would be the very first time it occurred to me as to why I felt so undeveloped in certain areas. That there could be a reason for this that was not a short-coming or fault.

For the last several years I often say that theory and practice are very different things. But what I never realized as I was preaching this to others, is that I was really telling myself that I have become someone else than I ever thought myself to be.

As I counselor I often tell people they need to update their software, just like on the I-phone. As soon as they become aware of their “bugs” and have engaged in the process of correcting those (therapy). Ever so slight shifts happen, that often go unrecognized by the self. People from the outside will often be the first to make them aware, by commenting about these shifts, but even then… it’s hard to imagine themselves as different than the story they have formulated with the “help” of media, society, comparison, etc.

Self-doubt fueled narratives abound, especially in women as their tender nurturings are often seen as far less valuable than they truly are.

A nurturing mother is often times the difference between a fulfilling life and one of incredible struggle.

Much to my great surprise I found myself to be one. How am I here right now? I spent the first half of my life in a chaotic blather of creating before I knew what I was doing, doubting myself all the way along, and so so susceptible to the opinions of others.

I spent years self-flagellating, and I’m not even Catholic. At the time the only thing I knew how to do was beat myself into making sure I would not be the things I came from. Little did I know that behavior would be the very thing that could have turned me into that.

So here I sit…. a totally different self than I ever hoped to be. Not only did I turn out different, but I turned out better than my wildest dreams. And now I am just trying to update my software to stand in this grace and this power that I deserve and have labored incredibly hard for.

I can know I’m touching on something sacred because the tears come. Glorious tears from a spigot that was dry and dusty for so many years. My emotional self housed carefully on ice, deep deep within the innermost caverns of my soul.

I am blessed enough to have been able to preserve my child safely until I could parent her better. I’ve figured out how to do this, even under the demands of parenthood, partnership, and career.

I used to think I could only have one. Judge myself for wanting to much. More flagellation. I mean I was so good at it.

And here I stand in the realization that one feeds into the other, and that anything is possible with faith and friends. I have built my new sturdy foundation on the grace and mercy of friends who saw me for more than I was behaving like at the time. They didn’t feel the need to “call me out” or condemn me. They saw something else, so I could see it too.

Even friends who I have parted ways with under pretenses of terrible stories, have contributed such gifts to my life.

Lately I’ve been wondering if my dreams are too big. And still trying to pathologize myself as chaotic, rushed, crazy; etc.

I’m terrified of the possibility I could be safe as a foster parent. I’m guilty I think as well, that I will appear a better parent in the eyes of my children this time around. There it is. You see how when you write openly you unearth the deepest truths. This is what I do. There it is. I’m afraid to be a good parent now, because of how long I struggled and how much they endured with me.

Is it a justification to say that they are better people for having had to be part of that struggle? It feels it. But I can’t do that to myself. It doesn’t honor all of my parts and all of my story.

Family: I can only do better now with what I’m willing to create and how arduously I’ve been willing to work. I am my best self when I am of service to others. I become creative in ways I never imagined when I am in the trenches of someone else’s suffering. I am humbled daily. I want to serve the wounded souls that I feel most at home with. I want to be humbled by that experience and have it test my limits and feel terrified enough that I know I’m alive and trying at something.

I want to be broken open over and over until I am my soft child like self. So I can be gentle and warm. I want to be that calm in their storm, the calm I always starved for.

I don’t want to limit myself with fears. I want to expand myself with courage.

Anything IS possible….

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We all float down here….

I’m feeling the need to write, as in it’s a must. But I’m back in that mode where I’m getting tripped up by what to write about and how to organize it instead of just doing it. So here I am just doing it.

Another freeze and another thaw.

Here we are a year later on the brink of fall gearing up to “put our hearts out to be shot at” (for those whole don’t know that’s a JRR Tolkien reference). We are going to transfer an embryo as soon as all our ducks are in a row, or even in the vicinity of a row. Realistic expectations are important.

So many things in my world have shifted on the inside and the outside. For a little while there I thought I (it, they, etc) was lost. I felt so anxious and disrupted, but I realized that was an emotional flashback. Feelings from another time, another self.

The universe whispering gently, “it’s only change Christina, just change, you’re always safe and loved, you’re on the right path, your path.” You’re not on the edge of a cliff, as a dear therapist said to me recently. And she was right. Solid ground. Stability. The unthinkable. Unicorns and magic.

Our firstborn just turned 18 years old. He is at college out in the world navigating his own ship, and doing all while having a safe harbor. Our girls are thriving despite all the pain of leaving all they knew behind as well. Finally my feelings are not so consuming that I have enough to see them simultaneously. They are not falling through the cracks as they so often were in danger of.

I’m seeing and choosing being a mother over every other kind of existence and emotion, and I love it. How dare this not just be natural and a guarantee right ? When everyone gets so excited about a new life. But I have learned it’s not. Like any kind of love you have to work at that shit. To be less selfish, to see deeper with an understanding heart. To see beneath. To break open, no matter how terrifying.

We watched the movie IT the other night. The only way I will watch a horror movie anymore is if there’s a beautiful underneath, and with Stephen King there always is. And I caught myself wondering if I could be that brave. One of the major themes is these kids promised when they were young to go back to the thing they fear the most and protect others. And in the movie you see their struggle. One of the members even takes his own life prior because he knows himself well enough to know he doesn’t have that in him, and all of them must be there. That’s how scary.

When I imagine if I could face the scary monster I always think no way I would choose to stay safe. As I cringe in fear and am shaking. And yet this is ridiculous because I have been facing my own monsters and others my whole life without backing down. And I am finally appreciating myself for this.

Owning and feeling when people notice my brave. I believe it now and it’s enhancing who I am as a parent and how much love I can offer the world. My smaller world, and the larger world. I have love to give and damnit I intend to bring it. I’ve spent so much of it so afraid I wasn’t truly loved.

And here I am…. truly loved. And even better …. a truly loving person who doesn’t ever have to doubt that again. I refuse to ever doubt that again. That’s a promise to myself. She deserves it.

That’s the surprising part. When you are always ahead of yourself and your feelings catch up later sometimes (always) it can be hard to trust yourself. But trust is exactly what I am finding. I would venture to say faith even. Faith I am where I want to be, need to be, am supposed to be. I feel connected, as much as someone whose journey has included what mine has can.

More connected than I ever thought I could be. I live on earth now with the other humans. Not nearly as much in my head, where at one time it was so dark and scary that I understood Stephen King on a more intimate level than most. How his mind could travel to such horrific scenarios and yet beneath is such a deep understanding of humanity and a man who wanted to bring to light, in his own way, the struggles we all endure. The bullying, the tragedies, the terrible. How he must have suffered throughout to have such an understanding. I wonder if he would trade it? I doubt it….

The beautiful moments between the scary stuff. Our connections, our humanity.

So we are embarking on an adventure that includes being the parent I never had, and the one I always knew I could be. And in my process I’ve found the love of my life to do this with, and my tribe is forming. The like minded who wants to support and be supported. To contribute to this cause and they have found belief in it as well.

We are becoming registered to do foster care, and have a baby of our own. And whatever presents itself first as it’s meant to be we will welcome with open arms. Babies, career shifts, adventures, hand in hand… up we go….

It always seems so scary not knowing what’s going to happen next, but I have a feeling this next chapter is going to include more trust that whatever it is, even with the scary parts, it’s going to be novel worthy.

It always has been and always will be…

ready set go…. write…. create…. love….

repeat….

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I’ve never been in love with a house before…

I’ve never been in love with a house before, in fact I never in my life imagined to be buying a home of this magnitude.

I’m used to being so focused on love. Obtaining it. Cultivating it. Claiming it. Keeping it. Explaining it to others. Analyzing it. And this is making me realize how that pretty much took up my whole reserves of energy (what was left after all that was already needed).

So here I am repeatedly combing through every photo of our new home wondering if it will feel as good as it seems…. if the reality of it will be as good as the idea.

My new writing studio 😉

This leap feels gigantic for some reason and I can only imagine that means I am attached to my feelings this time around. So I won’t need to worry about them catching up to me six months in and suddenly changes needing to be made are thrust upon me without warning.

I feel my feelings in the moment they are happening now.

This actually makes for less writing I think. My writing was (is) so attached to my healing that now that I’ve come so far, there is some fear I will lose the writer self too. Or that this writer self is not as dynamic as my whole self, and only had this intense dark stream of consciousness inside it and nothing else. A one trick pony.

I suspect this is not the case. That soon I will have the courage and mental bandwidth to do anything I’d like. And that possibility is as daunting as the feeling of not having it. Survival is a task set before you, and it is a demanding mistress.

In my clinical world my wisdom grows. Seeds planted have become a beautiful garden that I bask in daily. I no longer worry I won’t pull the weeds, and tend to this garden or that suddenly it will be infested and decimated. Pity this is only a metaphor, my actual gardening skills are abysmal, unlike my late grandmother who could whisper to the roses and they would bloom.

In our new yard there are twin trees. Which I found to be quite prophetic. I am not sure what kind they are yet, but they bloom and have gorgeous giant pink blossoms, whose petals shower the yard with beauty and contrast. I have twin girls, I’m in love with 1/2 a set of twin girls, and we lost identical twins in December. It make me wonder if we will have twin girls this next time and it will become a major family legacy.

So soon, we will be moving and living in the town of Milford. Everything changes. My firstborn son graduated high school a few days ago, and he will be off on his own at WPI. A terribly exciting prospect. I have not lived without my boy child since I was 19 years old. I don’t know life without him. I don’t know myself without him anymore. I’m so delighted the world will get to experience him, and he it, but my mother heart skips a beat with fright for this unknown, and knows already it will feel as if several of her major organs are missing from her.

Please keep him safe and fulfilled!

The best way to describe these days of my life are that I am living with a grateful presence. That I am growing myself as a tender gardener, not a punishing one. And that all my most sacred dreams are coming true so loudly, that I can not argue to keep any of my limitations any longer. Life does not let me, and I am so blessed.