Tag: #believeinyourself

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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hear myself say them, or I can’t read them on the page, I’ll continue to operate with these templates that are often outdated, and end up causing a lot of suffering.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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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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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….

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The Problem is Me

When you realize the problem is you.

I’ve been eating a lot of humble pie lately. Wounded healers they call us.

I’m trying to find a middle ground for the narrative. Not black and white, but just acknowledging the reality of the way I have lived my life and why. What decisions have been made as a result.

My statistics. Maybe I am just a statistic. I don’t know why that keeps playing in my head. Like anyone needs more to shame themselves for. I’m trying to battle it, but the water is up over my nose and I’m drowning.

I’m no different than you.

How to not be or live as a defense mechanism. Is this an appropriate google search?

Is it possible I’m really this insufferable creature that can’t see anyone else very well because she’s invisible to herself? Can that truly be a thing? That can’t make room or honor anyone else’s feelings because of her own particular brand of island.

I’m an asshole. An arrogant insufferable asshole who doesn’t make any room for the feelings of people around her. Am I only heaven or hell? Is there no in between. I am certainly both.

Then my mind goes immediately to how and why could someone love me if that’s true. Yep that’s fun. That’s what’s really in here. Behind this carefully crafted machine of a human being that’s designed to please and accommodate.

It was suggested to me I might have a touch of Co-dependence (ya think). It feels like I’ve run a marathon only to be plucked up right before the finish line, and put right back to the start. Over and over again and the Universe is watching me punch the air and be mad at the world, shaking its head at why I must make everything harder on myself.

I didn’t like that suggestion at all. In light of the circumstances it feels completely invalidating. I’ve worked hard toward healthy relationship. That does not mean I’ve arrived. And worse I sit and point out everyone else’s soft spots when I couldn’t even take what i dished out.

Let it burn Christina ……

Did I even stand a chance to be more than that without all this work?

When can I be done ?

The insufferable is suffering with looking in the mirror right now. It burns.

I don’t have it all figured out. I might not even have anything figured out. Yuck.

If I was such an expert at any of it this wouldn’t keep happening in my life with one justification or another. Always a justification. That’s me, not anyone else.

Will this ever heal?

Will a more gentle human emerge?

Am I really banished to a life of over-functioning or under-functioning with nothing stable in between. Back and forth between extremes in a panicked frenzy. Yuck again.

I think I’ll revisit the book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, a therapist realizing what she needed to do after an immense blow. She realized it was her who didn’t want to pay attention to reality, she made her own in her mind. As we all do.

What am I meant to write anyway?

Perhaps an instruction manual on how to become a human being.

I want to crawl out of my skin with irritation. Everything is angering me.

I’m back at the starting line and incredibly out of shape….

Again….

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Now seeking: Myself

Now seeking: myself.

I’ve looked high and low, but most of all I’ve looked to find myself in everyone and everything else. Where I could fit, belong, thrive, enjoy life. I’ve looked in characters in books and movies and tried to emulate what they do, but nothing has ever seemed to fit.

That’s because I never looked to myself. I never even knew I could, that this was a thing, or that I had permission.

So many greats have paved the way for the self work I’m doing now. Carl Rogers, Rollo May, Jung, Nietzche, and then there was the women. The “mothers” who adopted me through the words they put out into the universe. A baby blanket. The arms I always needed.

Cheryl Strayed, Anne Lamott, Anne Patchett, Sylvia Plath, Joan Anderson, Martha Beck, Brené Brown, Oprah Winfrey, Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach.

And my spiritual mother Elizabeth Gilbert. The woman whose daughter I could be for our many similarities. And oddly it’s innate and learned, even when our DNA isn’t shared. It makes me believe in the ephemeral in a way my science “can do” mind has never lent to.

If everything you need is always inside you it’s hard to figure out what to do with that when all the research suggests a feral child like me has so much less chance for thriving. It makes me wonder if my mother had even less than I did even with two parents in their traditional slots.

I’ve learned a lot this past few years about not romanticizing things at face value, that just because people have families doesn’t mean they have suffered any less.

I am learning now that suffering is a state of mind more than a state or circumstance regardless what one goes through. Because we all have our stuff. It’s not the hand, but how it’s played. And we will play it from what we know, until we know better. Oh I forgot the beautiful Maya Angelou above.

I have woven together a tapestry of love from fragments for as long as I can remember. And is there anything so wrong with that? Is there some better thing to strive for? Or did I have it right all the time.

“But you don’t know what it feels like to fall in love with you, you don’t know what it feels like when you can’t go back” plays on Ruelle radio that has also been a staple of this time in my life.

I was thinking about the things that mark each time period in our lives. The signature drink, the favorite outfit, the fears, the desires, the songs, the vehicle we drive, and the smiles mouths and body we share during that time, and how they change and once they do that time period is over.

Would life really be better with warning signals?

We don’t know when it will begin or end. Even if we work really hard to know these things, we don’t.

I’m in the mountains with beloved found family. Gifts from the universe. Good people. I find myself and lose myself amongst these experiences. We are all interconnected and yet we all have our own emotional experience, and those are colored by the things that have shaped our lives.

The closest we can get to connecting is bridging the gaps in understanding by sharing our feelings. We each do things our own way, but we still strive for togetherness because we understand that’s where the most meaning is found in living.

I love these guys. I love being here right now. It’s exactly what I need. When my mind threatens to take me somewhere else I bring it back and there is joy to be found.

There is no glory in staring at a door wishing that someone will walk through it. Someone asked me the other day if I ever let anyone surprise me, and it made me think. It called me to look back over my life.

I survived by creating fantasies in my mind of just that, someone surprising me with showing me they were thinking of me and would show up. So I turned myself into someone who could make others feel that way. I became what I was looking for. Because that’s what the mystical they says about how to manifest what you’re looking for. Become it.

I became the guy with the boom box in Say Anything. But the thing is I never counted that. It didn’t count because it was just me being that and unless someone showed up for me in that way, it never counted.

It’s a hard thing nearing 40 to realize you never really felt connected to yourself let alone anyone else. I thought I was, that’s the thing. I was doing the best I can and I did it with my whole heart.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But I missed so much about me. Who I am. What I need. I became an incredible tool to see others in the way I always wanted to be seen. But because I was so good at, and everyone is in such need of that, it never moved past that.

I thought they would recharge and then pick up and do that too. Not exactly like me at all, just the effort. And maybe I just couldn’t see their effort in their way. I need to work on that. I have lots I need to work on.

So here I am on the brink of 40 a blank slate, having my whole life before me rather than behind, and my God I’m grateful.

The tears began streaming as I’m writing this. I’m alive and I’m ok. And I didn’t even know that. I’ve been in survival mode my whole life and I’m grieving that. Everything that came with. Every way someone has seen the product of what I created to get through my life with, but not the whole thing.

Someday someone else will show up for the whole thing, no matter what, just like I do for them….

For now I will show up with more of my pieces in tact, the ones I’m tending to gently every day, reconnecting them to myself is a slow and painful process. It’s surgery. Much like therapy. Yet very few people understand and respect the seriousness of this work, because we all want to see things for the surface and believe you can work that and just manage.

Yet we have tired, ragged, masses, angry, hurting, sad, lost, starving emotionally. We insult the new generation who are trying to teach us to recover ourselves. We call them all manner of things. They are not tough because they acknowledge emotions or what they need.

A society of martyrs who cause horrendous damage insulting those who take responsibility for their own happiness. But that looks shameful in the face of tradition.

What’s shameful is the cruelty than can be afflicted when we are not aware of ourselves. To allow continued suffering because we are too afraid to face ourselves.

I am not a perfect mother, in fact I’ve made more mistakes than most. That’s where wisdom comes from.

I am looking forward to being connected to myself and those I love for the rest of my life. It’s taken me nearly 40 years to travel here. I respect myself for this journey. I’m too tired for anymore shame.

💜

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I am an Instrument

Recently I had a really good talk with a beloved friend. I had said something along the lines of I’m usually that person that will bring something to someone’s attention, but I rarely get that same. And she said… “let me be that for you right now”.

Ask and you shall receive.

I have never felt I fit in anywhere. I’m reading Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown, and it’s exactly the medicine for my heart right now, and it’s perfectly geared towards the pandemic. She’s ahead of her time and I am of mine as well. No wonder we can’t find anywhere to belong.

I spent most of my life afraid of myself, a robot or an alien. My recent realization is that I am not those things.

I am an instrument. And as one let me be the cello, the piano, the violin, and the guitar. I have always wished I could be watched for the concerto of creativity and warmth I can cultivate in a client session.

Lonely oh so lonely without being seen as we all want to be. But lately I am seeing myself.

In my life because of scarcity every time I am meant to be an instrument maybe just in a small dose, I go all in always with my own need and it muddles things. I do have my own needs but I was always meant to fill them with source, my own source not someone else’s. So I’m not left hollow and wanting and internalizing exactly the opposite beliefs about my self.

And yet it’s this very suffering that cultivates the level of compassion needed to change the world. And yet what an overwhelming task. Who am I to and how am I to change the world? Is it one person as a time as I’m doing now, especially beginning with myself?

What is my task?

My life need has created this constant cycle of deep attachment and bonding only to part ways. I think I was never meant to attach my whole life all those times. The person and I were meant to cross paths, healing was meant to happen, but that didn’t mean that everyone you come across you try and create a life with.

Family, making one, being in one, was my unmet human need. So everything became about that. If there is an unmet core need it will continually trump anything else. It will override logic and create a lens that makes everything look one way, but not clear.

Three or four years later the water calms and clears and then restlessness and chaos ensues because I don’t have the answers.

I was trying to fulfill my destiny without any solid ground under my feet. The solid ground became the priority and I missed so much else.

However if we use faith, this says that everything is exactly as it should be and no horrific harm has come, and everything will be ok, especially me, and my tender worn out heart that has been through the shredder as of late.

There are no victims and no perpetrators, no us and no them, no sides. There is only the fulfillment of ones own personal destiny.

And everyone’s is important. And mine is a slippery one to nail down. It comes into view in brief moments, beautiful, and then everything goes dark and I flounder again. Lost and found, lost and found.

I am not an alien, I am an instrument. It’s overwhelming being an instrument with no map or music. What kind am I? What am I supposed to play? Especially when I can’t carry a tune, but perhaps that level of self doubt is outdated, if not entirely human. More human than human. Imposter syndrome at its finest.

I think I’m finally ready to accept I am an instrument and there is more to life than my frantic search for belonging to a person, like that will solve everything.

When I read Brené I am envious of her Steve. Of their dialogue and support of one another, and their journey, and taking the time to understand the other. The discipline and self-awareness love demands.

I want those things, but those are not for me to create. I have other things to create and perhaps that is where and when I will be found/and find someone who wants to do life with me enthusiastically and being willing to show up, the way I am for them. With my mistakes and all because there are plenty.

So much of the reason my path has been as it has is being revealed right now. I have been gifted so much love in so many corners of the world. I was moving too fast to feel it before. But now it’s wrapping me warmly. Coming out of the woodwork and showing up.

Whenever I come into contact with someone they react or connect to me. They feel my presence and I can make a lifelong friendship from one conversation in the car. The feels almost beyond my comprehension. I have had to weed out all the critical thoughts about how wrong this is. Especially in Connecticut lol. Stay in your own lane.

So out of balance with my confidence and my own need, my gift always gets confused and then causes chaos. It hasn’t been properly channeled because it has had to come together, and I’d like to believe it couldn’t come together without the exact path I am on.

So I can forgive myself for my sins.

Everything is a blank canvas right now, but this time I know I am the pen.

On being an instrument

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We Bounce Forward

So today I’m at the Honda dealership waiting for a new AC condenser to be installed. I am reflecting on my very first blog post ever, written in Ansonia at a small coffee shop waiting for my Jeep to be serviced. I’m at another full circle beginning of a new life so it’s appropriate and poetic.

I need to find my way back to me, my writing self, my heart. Also though you can’t go back to something you never started with. So perhaps I don’t have quite the right calibration on the wording.

Because we don’t bounce back we bounce forward (after a hard hit) according to the great Martha Beck. So this is completely uncharted territory and that brings with it absolute terror. I’m trying to find enough excitement to balance it out to become unfrozen so I can budge.

A whole new world and a whole new me. I didn’t want either of those things my toddler whines. I wanted the comfort of the known, to be held softly at night while I sleep, to have the routines I am used to, to see the smiling faces of my children feeling secure and loved in as far as I’ve gotten towards those things.

Which was not as far as I believed. That’s a stunning realization.

I’ve been traveling the dark wood of my own soul for around seven months now. My life and my self is unrecognizable now. I have soared to the highest heights and crashed through the earths crust and straight to the center of hell. I’ve been bathing in flames lately, not the soothing water I had found.

Another death and rebirth. I am finding there are hundreds of those across a lifetime, not just one or two.

I am breaking another generational curse right now. This work is not for the faint of heart. I do it so I can be a beacon of light for others. For my family, my friends, my clients. I lose myself so I can find myself again so I can know.

So I can I know what’s on the other side, the inside, the depths. So I can be the tour guide on inner journeys.

But lately I’ve become stuck when the work involves needing to play and rest. I don’t know how to do those things by myself apparently. I know how to show other people. I can do this work when my nervous system is calmed by the steady heartbeat of a lover. I become my full self.

But left to my own devices I freeze. It’s a shame filled thing these traumas. You don’t end up working like you’re “supposed to”, and finding compassion when compassion isn’t what saved you, is nearly impossible: truly.

Could I really have been running all this time in one way or another …. is that really possible? Half dissociated and half frenzied running. Love is the only force powerful enough to slow me down or wake me up, but sustaining it like this became another matter. Add another layer of shame.

I have been running and when my feelings catch me, it is a storm. The degree to which I feel things is unreal. A product of the battle to keep my feeling parts, when it was unbearable so long. I was fierce to keep them, even though they end up burning me alive.

I long to put this way of living down. It’s too heavy. I am in this process. Putting down an entire way of living is like not have any skin to protect the nerves, the air hits them and the pain is excruciating. Every day for me is like this right now.

Eventually the battle breaks you open into your heart, and the space where it’s soft. Where you’re your full light in the world and love doesn’t feel so hard anymore. It’s something that flows naturally.

I cannot run anymore. I cannot default. None of my tools or tricks work anymore.

Naked and still….

Ps. Today is a very special day in a place of my heart that isn’t allowed to exist right now. So keep me in your warmth please. My heart is raw there.

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Lost Back in 2016

Is there anything better really than clean sheets and a freshly made bed?

I’m still sleeping on an eighth of it, but nothing lasts forever.

I watched Stuck in Love with the girls tonight. It’s a very full circle kind of thing. Very! I was watching this movie on repeat spring into fall of 2016. When I was taking my next steps into finding my writer self. Rescuing her out of the rubble. That was a year of discovery for sure. And of Jeeps and french bulldogs, oh my.

We even had a Stuck in Love themed Thanksgiving. That was actually really fun.

That was the year I got my first office that was all my own. The year I got Sigmund Freud, the fantastic Frenchie. The year I began morning pages. It was my four year pages anniversary this April. The first time I ever dated dated. Oh the perils of that, lol. I have some crazy stories. The first time I took three solo getaways by myself. The year I learned one could romance themselves, and that I didn’t need to be with someone to justify a nice restaurant or lavish evening.

The year I got my Et Lux Entenebris Lucet (the light shines out of the darkness) tattoo. My first real adult job that I ended up hating. This helped me learn to trust myself, being able to walk away, and hang my own shingle.

I was so much more naive and innocent then. I’ve grown backwards in so many ways.

I can’t even remember that girl.

I asked my therapist tonight how come some people seem to have it so much easier. Being wanted, chosen, things coming more easily to them. While others no matter how hard they work or try, things seem not to work out for.

There isn’t an exact answer I can share, other than dynamics and human behavior. I personally think it’s a privilege to be calm and grounded. One not afforded by everyone. You have to have had a certain kind of life, things you could depend on consistently for that wiring. I envy those people. Not enough to not be grateful for my exact path, but I do.

Lily Collins is absolutely gorgeous. Gahhh

Rian has my hands. My daughter has my hands. Right down to the lines on the inside of our palms. I don’t think I’ve ever stood still long enough to notice.

Have I really been running my whole life?

What does slowing down look like ? I don’t know but I liked my moments with her this evening. And teaching the girls how to drive and getting ice cream at the Sundae House.

I felt them. These things.

It’s staggering sometimes to realize how much of my own life I’ve been a guest star in. Never fully Inhabiting my body. My own ghost, and haunting.

I can get everyone to love me, but me.

What a cruel trick.

I’ll find myself between my own pages in my own story.

Or maybe in Tuscany or anywhere else.

I am going to busy myself planning a vacation soon. The idea of being all on my own with nothing to do or be responsible for is entirely appealing. Just quiet and calm.

My eyes are getting heavy….. it’s time to rest.

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Where is Virgil When you Need Him…

I can say with great confidence that becoming a mother has been my greatest privilege…..

“I make no apologies for how I try to fix what you broke” – with regard to my path all these years with love.

I barely stood a chance with this hand and I have played the hell out of it. Hurt people do hurt people and I am no exception.

Holidays are tough for me. No secret there. Those closest to me know my battle intimately and I’m so grateful for the ones who do. I’m invited and wrapped warmly in a variety of ways with other family’s and have had the privilege to know and learn so much from so many.

This Mother’s Day is particularly difficult for me. I have a broken heart and as a result of being consumed am being hard on myself on who I’ve been lately as a Mom. Guilt about disappointing them again.

Feeling lost does not really go very well with owning the place you deserve in the world. I know there is a discrepancy here, but right now I don’t have the energy to sort it.

This morning I have waded through the options on what to write about. As thoughts of my own experience with a mother bring a fresh bout of tears I think of writing that, perhaps it will come later.

My beautiful friend is visiting. She’s sharing some of her wounds with me. It eases my own. Her particular survival has involved her accepting love way less than worthy of her efforts, her self and needs not even in the equation, as she shares with me about how she hasn’t been held in twelve years, and that she needs that.

Twelve years. My God twelve days is excruciating for me. I know how healing the power of touch and connection can be, and how devastating as well.

People who do the best they can are a thing of beauty. Be careful with people you never know when someone is doing the best they can. That often looks like things that could easily be judged. When wounds are invisible healing is so much more challenging. When there is no story for what’s happening that makes sense.

People need their story to make sense and to be tailored and fair to the wounds they carry. Unfortunately that’s uncommon. It’s one of the things I have the privilege to do for others, and am finding I need to include myself. It’s no longer enough to heal others, I need to feel worthy of healing too.

My mind goes to not having anyone to help the kids do something special for me for Mother’s Day, and I get sad before I think about people I know whose Mothers still demand unreasonable things of them or punish them for their own wounds. I am grateful I’ve healed enough to not do that.

Those feelings pass and I return to gratitude hanging onto all the nice things people do for me, or even a text of those I’ve helped on their journey through life. Appreciation for me, and I warm back up. It’s not really grand gestures on a single day that makes the difference it’s the showing up. And this past few weeks so many people have shown up for me, random flowers, help with my lawn, texts, encouraging that I am seen. And that always has to be bigger than the pain and loss. But since love is very different for me this isn’t always the case.

Lately I haven’t shown up very well for my kids, and I’ll be careful to be kind to myself about this. I’ve had a lot of loss recently, and so have they. I have an idea of the mother I want to be, but lately I feel as if all the air has been taken right out of me. And it’s all I can take it to get out of bed.

My priories are all out of whack and originally that was in the name of love, but now as I watch everyone else make sure their priorities are in tact, I simply will learn from them. I need to do that too. And I’m all my kids have their everything. And this my own doing. It’s unfortunate all too often I feel too guilty and unworthy of that space so I stay isolated. I want closeness with them but I don’t know how with that other safe adult buffer to make sure nothing happens.

In my life something bad could happen at any moment. And another safe adult around makes that feeling less. It’s just always been my truth. I wish I could be one of those moms that isn’t like that. It’s how I learned to survive, finding a space that felt safe, which was never inside of me, because outside of me was never safe. My whole childhood.

Not only was it physically dangerous but it was a mental game of manipulation and terror.

Like I’ll hurt or damage them somehow just by breathing. If you knew what it had been like with my mother, if you knew is all I can say here.

But excuses are unacceptable when it comes to finding the worthiness to accept their love enough to show up near them. It is non-negotiable.

I have always kept another adult present as much as possible just in case I somehow morphed into my mother, in case too many bad things still lingered on me. To breathe enough life back into me by holding me at night, so I could face the next day. And this last time I chose one of the best humans I’ve ever met.

And then my own emptiness inside led me to destroy that. Trying to fill empty holes when there is no end to the holes, so nothing can collect. Nuclear sized craters all around. I am amidst the sheer devastation of myself and I don’t want them down with me.

So I hide at the bottom of the hole curled up hoping for some light. And then I dig and I build and a rush for relief and it’s momentary, never stable. Leave the healthy people alone my dark thoughts scathe. Leave well enough alone.

Momentary fixes to long standing issues only create craters. This post apocalyptic hell is inside and all around me right now.

When you’re in survival mode you don’t see anything clearly until later. I’m permanently wired in survival mode, doing the best I can. That will always be the truth of the matter.

I’m an adult in survival mode that can be so incredibly healing to others, but for herself, she is lost.

I am lost, and I need to find myself….

I don’t need to be seen or found or loved anymore. I’ve been loved well and I rush right around life looking for a chaos that feels like home. If I wanted to be loved well I would have stayed right where I was.

I’ve had plenty of brave batters step up to that plate. I’ve never felt worthy enough to be still enough to see what happens outside of the scary, or boring period that inevitably comes. I bail one way or another before I can lose anything. You can’t lose anything you never let sink in.

I need to be able to see the person in the mirror that other people see. My long standing people who stay in my life, seek my wisdom, provide warmth and love…. they see me. So I am not unseen.

Most of my life I spend afraid everything I love will be taken, or worse damaged by me….. and then I create exactly that.

So when you’ve found yourself in a self fulfilling prophecy that’s come full circle, and you’re all alone with yourself, the only thing to do is slowly form a relationship with her. And hope that you’ve traveled far enough that this time it’s a healthy one.

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Trauma and my Heroes

What no one tells you is that trauma is a lifelong sentence, you didn’t commit the crime for. An invisible dark passenger that makes living and loving an entirely different thing. No matter how hard you try love will never feel like it does for those wired with it.

They just seem to be able to manage better. They don’t need to live going over and over every detail of something looking for threat for a crumb of safety. To add insult to injury the sufferer worries they are crazy, less than, and can be hijacked at any time.

And with trauma comes the many addictions and vulnerabilities the person will blame themselves for: unhealthy love, food, sex, substance, work, busy, isolation, television, scrolling, and on and on.

More evidence to prove their fatal flaw.

Jail is peaceful compared to the bars and cell of your own mind. Your own worst enemy is your constant companion. And everyone expects that you’re a free man.

To all my survivors right now during the Covoid-19 Pandemic. We will be ok. You are not alone. I am right here with you. Never has there been a more triggered time for us my loves. In the words of Glennon Doyle, “We can do hard things”, and we don’t have to do them alone.

So in this 39th year of my life I’ve found myself with something in common with my heroes. The survivors. I’ve found myself at rock bottom. They tell me this is what happens before the ascent. If I could feel anything right now I might believe that. I can’t even feel the water on my skin.

I’m on the bathroom floor with Liz (praying….. like to God), on the Trail with Cheryl, Expecting Adam with Martha, in the Arena with Brené, underneath with Glennon, lost with Abby, and in my late father’s house lonely and facing myself each day.

Last March I attended the International Women’s Summit, a life changing experience. Elizabeth Gilbert spoke, and sometimes I wonder if our exchange, the hug she gave me, changed the talk she gave that night. If my bravery and tears inspired her. She had made a comment she decided to talk about something else.

She told the story of her late love Rayya. One of the themes of the conference was Mercy. And she described Rayya, since she had been an addict, as having mercy, but also radical boundaries.

Liz spoke of how during her cancer she vowed to take the best care of her, and then how when her stomach lining ripped and she was given pain patches that Liz was putting them on her and she wasn’t getting any relief. She sat and watched her love writhing for several days not understanding and aching herself. She was failing caring for her.

Then she realized days later she hadn’t taken off the thin film of the pain patch to adhere it. So her love had suffered because her own incompetence after vowing to do the best by her. When they realized what had happened Rayya looked at her like she wanted to rescue Liz from her own self hatred that she had done that. She gave her compassion even in all her suffering. The way she describes the look in Rayya’s eyes…. there wasn’t a dry eye in the venue. You could hear a pin drop. Everyone’s breath and their tears.

She was trying to protect Liz from her own pain and herself. Mercy. This is how Liz describes her love with Rayya.

She said she went into the bathroom and got on the floor and she cried like a baby, wracked with sobs. Then she said she thought of her friend who had not been attentive to her toddler and the child ended up injuring themselves and dying. And she thought if her friend could live through that she could forgive herself.

So she said, “I kissed my tiny hand and forgave myself.”

Mercy

She then described the rest of Rayya’s journey which included relapse after all that time clean and how Liz tried to give her what she needed and the money spent, and the drug dealers and how her beloved became lost to her to addiction again in those final days.

And how could she set boundaries, how could she abandon the monster she had created, but her life was a dumpster fire.

So she had to ask for help from Rayya’s drug dealer ex. She had to concede she couldn’t be her angel and hero. So she turned the stash and the monster over to people who had loved her previously.

Left with a crater in her home and her life. She had to move and she was decimated.

Rayya got clean again. One last time. During pancreatic cancer.

She returned to Liz and she said, love if we had time I know this would take years to heal, the pain I’ve caused you. I know who I am as an addict. I will listen to every hurt I’ve caused you. But then could you forgive me?

And they returned to love for her final days…..

And Liz had another bathroom floor moment in her life after Eat Pray Love.

She said that Rayya’s return to and from drugs again during their time together and the pain patch and lessons in mercy was how she downloaded Rayya into her forever.

This is how we keep people, by the most valuable lessons they teach us.

So Mercy on Me right now…..

I am on the bathroom floor and I need to kiss my tiny hand.