Tag: #believeinyourself

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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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New is scary…. everything is so fucking scary

I’m thinking back to Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Big Magic, and how much it helped me to change my perspective on fear.

I am in a space right now where things are scary again. I am learning many new skills with understanding the business of solar and how to present numbers and designs to clients. I am so not a numbers gal. This is really intimidating for me. You come out of the gate needing to understand how to present information to people. And I am so literal and it is so important to me to be honest. I am finding if I don’t fully understand something and am trying to explain it as if I do it feels incongruent in such a way that I completely freeze up. So lately I am doubting my ability to close the deals so to speak. This is called a Welcome Call in my world. I mean I know that the District Managers can’t close my deals forever.

So here is what I am trying to do. I am trying to think back to my level of fear before I knocked my first door. The very first day that I tried I sat in my car driving around for hours trying to get enough courage. I texted Courtney lots of times of how afraid I was, and how I couldn’t do it. And she just kept telling me I was so brave, until I was forced to believe it myself. When someone believes in you so thoroughly you have no choice but to rise up to that blessing. She is my blessing. So I knocked. It ended terribly. The woman was beyond rude. And yet I went skipping down the steps with glee at the fact I had mustered enough courage to even knock this first door.

It did not get easier as soon as you would have thought. The next day I got up enough courage to knock three doors and by the time I was done I needed a serious nap. In between each one it probably took an hour to muster the courage. My heart pounded in my chest when I knocked and I hoped they wouldn’t come to the door. When they did I stuttered and stumbled. These nights when bed time came I passed out fully clothed on the outside of my bed. I was too tired to even undress. Now that I am reflecting on this I am thinking in one perspective I could wonder what is wrong that this isn’t easier. I could be nasty to myself. But when I am looking right now I feel like a warrior. Because this is my real experience with this and I am still going. That is the only thing that matters is that you still try. With parenting, with relationships, with learning something new. The only thing that matters is you keep squaring up with your fears. You don’t let them drive the car, they have to come along to keep you safe and aware, but they don’t call the shots.

So 20 days into my 60 day trial period where I have to prove myself I have 4 out of 10 welcome calls. One more and I get to attend a cruise to the Bahamas, and if I get all 10 then Courtney gets to come with me. I love a good challenge so this is fun for me and keeps me feeling alive and engaged. Why not?! It’s the challenge, and the small incentive challenges within the challenge that makes it fun for me. I have always enjoyed being challenged. That is kind of comical if you knew my life, because if I am not challenged from an outside source I will create my own, setting them up like a track of hurdles at a meet. I make pole vault sized hurdles, and then expect myself to get over them as if they were just jumps.

And because I believe I can I do.

The fears nipping at my heels the entire time. You aren’t made to do this. You don’t understand ALL the info you aren’t an expert yet, so you’re going to look stupid at a closing alone. You will stumble and get nervous because these people are intimidating, and think you’re out to screw them over, and if you’re afraid that’s what you’re doing without knowing it, you’ll fear being insincere. If you don’t put everything into one thing then the rest of anything will fall apart. I’ve cut back on my hours of the stable employment that I LOVE to grow myself.

But did you hear that? I did it to grow myself. If I am going to help others grow, my continual self-growth is crucial. Staying fresh and engaged. Again I will think of my hero Elizabeth Gilbert and her style of writing. The fact that before she writes a book she will spend 3-5 years immersed in researching everything about the topic, and then like training for a marathon she quarantines herself with her love, a delicious tryst versus being caged. She shows up dressed and ready early in the morning to commune with her writer’s gift and she creates works that her reader’s love. I want to find my groove with writing, and to do that I need to buy some time, and to buy some time I’m going to need some more money and a space that I feel as if I can commune in.

Our baby is the size of a raspberry this week. 7 weeks and 2 days (ish), it has a tiny heartbeat and looks like a little hunched over tad pole. We get to see it again at the end of this week, and I am wondering when we “graduate” to the normal OB, and who we will pick for that special special task of helping us deliver our baby in a way that feels best for us, and keeping him/her safe until that point.

I have so many questions. I always have so many questions. It used to be annoying to others and I always knew that. Now more and more I see it for the gift it is. To stay curious and open is to be engaged in our lives. I want always to be this way in my life.

There is a work truck outside that has interrupted my morning commune with myself, and I am none too thrilled about it. I’ve tried to do what I can to drown it out. I want my Nature and quiet at the colony in Woodstock. I am still trying to figure that out, as I stash the cash to be able to purchase it. Will I be able to take THAT RISK. When I have that kind of money. Should I not put it to my student loans or a down payment on a different home? So many things need to come before that.

Shouldn’t I be able to write anywhere? But that just isn’t true. Right now I write in the bath tub to drown out all other enough, and in certain ways as you might imagine it isn’t ideal. I want to walk in the woods and have that unique meditation. I think I will have to make friends with the space I am in. Know it well enough that nothing new is spiking my interest before my attention will relax itself enough to produce writing. I need a spiritual space where I feel accepted and alive. I felt that way there. I also felt that way at Omega. I must answer this dream. I must.

So to be able to answer people’s questions and know what I am doing this will require some studying and learning and rehearsing. So I am not frozen in the moment. Truth be told I am probably more interested in all the human aspects of people once i am in the door. So many of them are widows and recently lost a loved one, or new and starting out.

That is what I am interested in, not if I can close the deal.

Such a large portion of life is discovering who we are and who we are not. We can do a great many things that can be taught, but do we want to is the question? For me I have no other choice but to strive for tasks that light me up and make me present. Counseling does that, and yet I still need to stay fresh and learning new things. And I never liked that to be only one thing. I am learning so many things about people from being in their homes and having the challenge of challenging them about a new and scary concept. A new way to source their energy. Tired and overwhelmed people who just don’t want to bother with something new whether it’s a better idea or not.

Anyway that’s another blog post I think. So I’m just here learning new things each day, preparing to turn 38, wondering what I’ll be like as a mom this go round, being in awe and radical gratitude of my capabilities….

Learning is life..

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These Dreams Go on When I Close my Eyes….

So this morning I am scheming and dreaming. I’m at the vision board and I’m designing.

The goal: my wife and I want as much time together as humanly possible. We found each other late in life. I understand with extreme clarity the fragility of our time together, and I don’t want to spend it in an ordinary way. What I mean by this is toiling and only having a free few moments together. I don’t want to be rich in money, I want to be rich in time. And it would seem though that money can buy time, and as long as you don’t spend ahead of the making, and get above your means, I think this can be achieved.

This is what I’m thinking about most of the time lately. Originally I had hoped to do this by writing a book. However as I learn myself more and more, I realize that to sit quietly I need time, and to get quiet time I need money. And with twins on the way I’ll never have that hehe 😉 but I still think I can do it. I always think I can do it. It is this naïve enthusiasm that has powered me this far.

Couldn’t we all have more naïve enthusiasm?

The problem: My wife is a 911 dispatcher and 7 years invested in a pension. And she holds our amazing health benefits that keep my Crohn’s securely cared for and has funded our IVF. Her schedule is terrible. She works 7-3 one week then 2 days off and then 3-11 the next week and 3 off after. We can never get into a schedule and I cannot imagine how she will do this with twin babies. Her commute is an hour plus filled with traffic. And her job is a lot of sitting to which her body feels as if it’s falling apart. It has gotten us this far, but we have added so many other elements to the story we are going to need a change.

Needs: good benefits for us 4, the big kids have Tricare insurance through their father. A flexible schedule to be able to take care of the kids. Less commute, more time together. Yes these are needs, not wants. So this is a tall order right ?! But how can you say it doesn’t exist if we don’t look? At this point we could have a reality tv show 😉

So we need to find her ideally a part time job with good benefits that she can enjoy, but have most of her time at home crafting and being a mom like she wants and loves. Something she can be active and engaged doing what brings joy to her.

So if you want something different you have to lay blueprints to those dreams. Then you have to ask, look, research, and not stop until you’ve found a solution. There are always many solutions it just never feels like it because our minds are wired to see potential danger. We don’t see possibility nearly as often as we see the potential for a harmful outcome. Fear rules the roost.

Our dreams: time together raising our family, having the means for a vacation together and to see Hamilton as a family, having a family cottage we can create memories in and mom can write a book, our little identical twins make it safely into the world, Tyler gets into the college he wants and transitions as smoothly as possible, our family will love and accept us and want to be engaged in our lives, writing and sharing our story, and there are many more! Oh and paying off student loans and financial freedom to buy time together.

To enjoy life. To really taste food. To get goosebumps more often. To art. To cry regularly. To love gently. To encourage and nurture humanity in humans. To be kind. To learn new things.

In other news I have been enjoying talking to people, walking in neighborhoods, fresh air and perspectives. I am enjoying the newness of it all. I’ve also begun to feel the heat a beat of less relaxation and more my mind spinning towards one task or another. And scheduling has been hell! Trying to fit dr appointments, knocking time, trainings, meetings, baby appointments, kid appointments, client appointments, and the list goes on.

I have long known that this level of chaos feels at home for me, but also parts of me have changed in that regard without really knowing. When I am busy and engaged I am happy. It’s no longer trying to outrun something, but more an energy fueled be enthusiasm. Yes that’s it! I’m not running away, I am running toward. And I feel good about myself in the world.

If you would have seen me 5 years ago, my struggles, my behaviors, my outlook…. you wouldn’t even recognize me. Life is all a matter of perspective, self-acceptance versus critical abuse, and finding connections that energize your soul.

I had to pick this post up later, and I’ve been very scattered. I would guess it reads that way. Life is a jumble when you’re in the midst of change, and it’s difficult for most to tolerate that feeling. I’ve lived on a healthy dose of it my whole life, and have found the payoff to be quite grand.

Write a new blueprint anytime you want to make a chance, you are after all the lead architect of your life, and you don’t want fear getting a heavy hand in your project.

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It’s the day before another beginning… IVF moments

Some of the beginning of us…..

Anytime my thoughts are all tangled up in my brain, like many a brightly rainbow ball of yarn, my blog is the place I come for comfort.

Time has been standing still again.

We are in another freeze. We are 10 days post fresh embryo transfer. We have done everything right. We are quite literally on the edge of our seats. Tomorrow morning we go at 7 am to get the blood test that will show if her progesterone has spiked tremendously (mustn’t it considering the three times daily suppository), that basically says we are pregnant ish, or a stranger will tell us your result is negative, please stop taking all meds, and you will get your period in one to two days.

My emotions have always been intense and of the roller coaster variety. This however is like a ride you can’t even fathom in your imagination. It’s like being on the worlds scariest, tallest, most dangerous one with a faulty seat locking mechanism. If you can picture this whole thing it might look something like me upside down dangling out into the air with only my strength to hold me in the seat until it returns to a right side up position. Each time my palms more sweaty than the first and feeling like for sure I’ll just slip out and be on a free fall that ends with a plummet into the cement. The end.

Is it the end or another new beginning? And either way it will be the beginning. We will either begin to grieve and make decisions about taking a break, a vacation, though those funds become used in IVF, or whether we can dare to get excited. Even more nerve wracking is that we are hosting thanksgiving. So we are either going to be happily chirping about dreaming of our little speck happily bouncy in it’s turkey and cranberry sauce induced euphoria, or have to find a way to manage cooking through heart ache. And to smile back the tears.

If this is the case I feel like a dark cloud will always threaten our Thanksgivings. They don’t have a great track record so far, and already this year there are some disappointments before we ever don an apron.

The truth is I’m scared, and I’m also not scared. Because the world won’t come crashing down this time. I have finally gotten out of that purgatory, and it’s taken me almost a lifetime to do so.

This love strengthens me, and the love I am talking about is for myself. I often praise my wife (and she does the same for me), but the most profound thing here is that I am not nearly as unkind, if at all, to myself anymore. I will allow my feelings and honor them, and create room for my loved one’s as well. I’m not worried about falling into a destructive tailspin or checking out, or behaving impulsively to cope, thereby sucking out all the energy in a space.

I have learned that I can love myself more when I am stable and able to weather emotional ups and downs in such a way that I don’t do “must be nice”, to all the happy new parents right now. It’s still a bitter sting, but has nothing to do with something they have I don’t. Because I am learning to trust my journey and have faith.

After faith betrayed me so hard in the beginning (never faith itself, more the institutions that professed to sell it), I never would have imagined I would find my way back.

The truth is though to have faith in a higher power, but none in yourself would be a grave situation indeed. I am learning not to be bathed in such self-doubt, and so many painful pages replaying of my story. Each day is a new adventure and even the hard ones, especially the hard ones are more opportunity for growth.

Now if you ask me to sound this calm and grounded if we hear that negative result for the 4th time, I won’t be able to find it for a bit. But I will be able to rest in the arms of my loved one, and hold my children in mine (ours), and we will learn to be more loving and grateful for every small thing through this process.

This process makes me take my children for granted less. This baby is not the only thing that matters while they dust in a corner. This whole process has brought me to my knees in some kind of sacred prayer that I have these three. And I would say if you can find that during the teenage years, even for a moment you’re doing something right.

This whole thing is just another piece of my thawing. And if for some crazy reason we are not meant to have a baby together I have to try and believe that was so we could love each other, and the kids we have now even more. I have to choose to have this be my process before I encounter the actual emotion, or I run the risk of being sucked under.

Finally making this blog post feels like I’ve just been administered CPR and taken my first gasp of air. I have so many loves in my life. So much love inside and outside of me.

I almost can’t even paint anymore that something won’t be ok. Of course my brain already is harping away that that is when life gets you, and it will. To be human is to suffer. It will reach you. If you were lucky enough to avoid too much in the beginning as you age and watch people lose loved ones, and have profound disappointments, and watch the news and see the violence and shambles our nation is in right now.

I’m always my most afraid because with a very difficult beginning your only hope becomes some relief. So then when you go into the years that naturally hold more disappointments, when you are no longer naive to the pain of the world, you feel like none of your layers of skin are there to protect you.

I thought I was fragile by now. Since my long ago forged armor has fallen away. And I’ve transformed my disconnect from me emotions into my own connection system. And I’ve fashioned the self I want to be from scratch. I’ve put in all that effort, so if the story turned to tragedy after all that, it used to feel like the world would end.

But now I am much wiser than I once was and much kinder, and since I can trust and love that self I know that I can be graceful in my disappointments and teach my family from that composure. Most days anyway 😉 I’m still as human as ever. Actually much more human than I was ever allowed to be.

I cry when I need to cry, I rest when I need to rest (or I try anyway ha), I ask to be touched when I need to reconnect to a safe space versus fear, I give myself what I need when I need it. It feels calm.

So right now I feel calm and scared. Before I would have felt panicked and scared. My wife is the one who has undergone all the procedures, her poor body, all the hormones, and who has bravely jumped right into the middle of a harrowing adventure book. She jumped with her whole heart. She knew I never needed someone to only stick a toe in the water again. And that has given me all the strength and courage I ever needed to become who I always was.

Here we are….thank you for loving us and being on our journey.

Trying to bring a new member to share all our love with….

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Ivf Retrieval Day

It’s retrieval day!!!!

It has been feeling like the (an) end to this journey, but it’s actually just the beginning.

It’s the end of hormone injections and the related symptoms, and the end of a great many questions and nervousness. The end of three failed iui treatments and all the associated emotions. And yet it’s the beginning of an even more intense period of waiting for phone calls from the lab on the development of our little one (ones).

It’s beginning again down a road into a dark forest and not knowing what’s on the other side.

Will we get lost in there? Another gigantic disappointment, another cycle to wait and more hormones before a frozen transfer if this one doesn’t stay? How much of this roller coaster can we take? It’s been such a wild ride. But for the first time in my life even amidst sometimes crushing disappointment nothing feels like life or death.

I never even pictured having another baby, ever.

I spent most of my life worrying I didn’t deserve, nor was I up to the task of the first three. So to find myself standing here, calmly walking toward my next dream with confidence and joy. It is a dream like no other. I’ve already won the lottery, and written the best seller, and recognized my singing voice on stage in a moment of sheer shock and gratitude. Finding my love already feels like all those things mixed.

It has changed me so profoundly I am becoming rewired.

So many of my anxieties are calmed. And this isn’t a momentary high from idealizing something that turns out much differently. This is the real deal. Steady on my feet and walking headfirst toward another amazing dream, one I never saw.

It’s not very often life surprises me.

This is because whenever it did when I was young, and that was often, those were not good surprises. I became hyper vigilant and carefully in control of each happening to avoid further pain. But that has its side effects. And finding this love has surrendered me back into a childlike dreamer I was always meant to be.

I’ve turned my Stephen King movie into a John Hughes one. Sorry Stephen I love your work, I just wouldn’t want to be in one…. again.

And I used to be too fragile to be in the creation of a dream. Any setback would crumble and tumble me, and lead me down a path of dark thinking and misery.

Now I am finding faith and a well balanced way to view reality.

So it’s neither fantastic or terrible, but a mixture of both of those moments on a steadfast bridge of love.

I have a family of best friends on there with me, and I’m finally adjusting to life in partnership and belonging that I couldn’t feel I deserved before. Now I am accepting this as my life, and everything that comes with it.

So here we are…. I’m about to be a “nearing 40” new mother. Here I am, the happiest I’ve ever been.

At another new beginning….with knowing there will still be so many more.

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Letter to a friend, profound gratitude at 4 am

My dearest Katelyn,

It’s 4 am. The bulldog had an itchy fit. That creature is an abomination sometimes, often, lol. Anyway I got so cranky he wouldn’t let up I’m now wide awake. I’m struggling to breathe, damnit I’m so allergic to cats. We will have to take my car on our next adventure, and before you feel bad don’t, I had the best day.

So here I am in the bath contemplating my existence and what came is how grateful I am for you. Both you and Courtney seem to see me through a lens of generosity I can hardly even comprehend.

In some ways you’re like Teflon it seems, like nothing can touch you and so brave and outgoing, and yet inside you’re so incredibly sensitive and care so much for others, it’s actually humbling. In both these ways you’re almost like a mirror for me. A twin flame of sorts. And I can’t imagine what I’ve done for you, other than make your best friend happy. 

Kate I am becoming emotional now because you cannot imagine the world I crawled out of. Most of the people I grew up with are either recovering or not recovering in NA and AA. My grandparents who sort of raised me are dead and gone, nothing left, and my only memories are of me torturing them as a teen, I never got to see the other side of adult relationship where I cherished them. My father will be dead two years this December and his parting words to me were concern about my emotional stability, cold steel blade to my throat. 

After one last time of thinking I could weather a relationship with my mother for her benefit I cut the cord and let myself loose again, floating out into the unknown that had to be better. 

As far as biological family I am alone in the world, and not only alone, but ever aware of the wreckage I arose from.

I know a flare for the dramatic in writing. But how can you know what even a single kindness means if you do not know these things.

And I’ve grown wise enough to know that people can still have their family close and be just as hurt by their intended care. I am not as naive anymore, I do not assume I have it worse. I used to feel sorry for myself in this way. Not productive.

Your line about the difference between people who don’t make it at Vivint resonates strongly with me. “They are the weak”. And we are most certainly not.

I love what working for Vivint represents to you and how much you have grown as a result of rising to that challenge. If I understood it correctly you were coming off a partnership that challenged your worth as an earner and as having passion. And it appears there were so many other benefits as well. The people you’re connecting with, your self-concept, and financial security and confidence to name a few.

It’s actually your strength and energy that makes me think I can do this at all. The fact you believe in me, and even said I could be “better than you”, not that this is relevant, but I can’t tell you how much your investment and faith means in me.

You, Courtney, and every person who so easily sees me potential, worth, inner nature, you are the parents I never had. And it heals me constantly.

This is what I feel energized by. You’re like a lighthouse. And I’m so hopeful that I can turn this opportunity into something that can help me enjoy the confidence of freeing myself from feeling a financial burden. I’ve been behind since before I began.

Making continuous poor decisions financially with no parachute, because I never had one. I’ve been free falling, grabbing onto a cliff here and there, bloody knuckles and hands and clinging for brief rest, and letting go again.

And now I have gear, goggles, helmet, glider, chute, all the protection of friendship and a found family, and from all that security I am able to have fought hard enough to be able to enjoy bringing a life into the world with a true love, one that is the kind I am wired for. To feel I deserve that second chance and this much love and support, is a daily task. My beginning experiences tell me otherwise all the time. This is a battle I have made companions with, its familiar, but it may never fully be over. 

And here you are another beautiful gift from the Universe helping me with an opportunity that can alleviate the stress of my student loans and not being able to provide enough for the children I in many ways grew up with. I want to give them the world for having faith in me, when it’s been so hard to find it in myself.

Even buying those Hamilton tickets would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago. And it would be hard to do much of my dreams or fun things, if I can’t make sure the responsibilities I already created are not set up. My life force begs me to do both/ all. But my thawed out heart forces me to have enough empathy to consider the feelings of those that my choices impact.

So if I can make my days feel a little less life or death all the time by being able to pay off my student loans and help the kids more and support Courtney and our baby… then sign me up. I am so hopeful I am up to the task and that I can weather fears of making others uncomfortable and rejection that has been the hallmark of my life, that I’m so nervous about that trigger. Except I think that this task is before me, to realize the enemy isn’t that big anymore.

This is yet another opportunity to learn how to love myself better by rising to a task and learning from the whole process.

So all of these words, these intense, dark, deep, grateful words are to say thank you for believing and investing in me.

Thank you…

Christina

Sent from my iPhone

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Time. A most valuable asset.

Time in reflection is so necessary for gratitude.

There was a time that I ordered one meal at a restaurant and split it three ways for my kids. A time we all rented a small room upstairs in the home of a generous woman as I labored through school. A time when we finally got our first real home approx 7 years ago. Nicer and larger than any space we had occupied as a family. There was a time when in this home a relationship didn’t work out, and I didn’t know how I would pay the mortgage. This is when friends who became family moved in and we made it work.

There was a year I was so lost and lonely. Alone on Christmas Eve, I watched The Holiday and cried, and cried the whole day because I wanted that forever family with a person who saw me, didn’t resent me, and is a woman 😉 I never thought I would find that with how full our lives already are. I had been told and shown that a lot of people prefer to create their own from scratch, not learn how to mesh in an already made world. It’s not shame or in need of pity it’s just true.

I’m a lot. I think a lot. Strive a lot. Dream a lot. And before I was loved as I am now I panicked a lot! I wasn’t always kind when I was scared. I own those truths, and I need to live with them, and continue to try and be a better version of myself…

And now this a time where I get a constant infusion of unwavering enthusiastic love streaming through my veins. A partnership where we truly are best friends and want the same things. My wife teaches us the art of small ego each day. She doesn’t take things overly literally or get bent out of shape easily. She is genuine and loving. And we can be lighter, and more genuine and loving as we learn from her.

This is a time where being kind is more important than being right. A time when it’s ok to slow down and feel feelings and moments without rushing. Without rushing. Unimaginable for me. If you only knew.

This is a time where I have money in my bank account and have paid down debts, and can love myself more for those efforts. A time I am learning to put off instant gratification just a little bit more to create a safety net for my family.

This is a time I can play and enjoy life a little bit, there was a time that I thought I would never have time like this.

All the time I have left in this world is yours….

💜💜💜

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Money, Divorce, Stress, and Highly Sensitive People

There has been some improvement on the battlefront, but the war has taken a toll.

It’s a humbling experience to realize how many things there are always still to learn, no matter how far you have come. I’m in one of those growth phases right now. My iron will keeps me fighting until I have to surrender and it’s when I do that the real change and healing can happen. The exact thing we avoid, the breakdown. Due to all the what if’s and self criticism and fears, we stay trying to bear down and white knuckle it, until our bodies fail.

For me my body giving out under stress has been a big part of my recovery. I’m experiencing tremendous amounts of stress right now and I want to describe from the point of view of the mental health counselor that is supposed to have all these answers, what this feels like.

This feels like shortness of breath, heart palpitations, painful flushing, feeling like I might be getting early onset Alzheimer’s (lately I’ve been using the wrong words for things), stomach problems, self-esteem problems, extreme fatigue, frequently tearful, overwhelmed even more easily than usual, heartburn lots of heartburn, feeling out of it, trembling, and the list goes on…

When you begin to fantasize about jail as a simpler alternative to everyday life, you know some back to the drawing board brainstorming is necessary.

It’s only now that I can look back on situations I have experienced with kindness, or what I might have tried. I wouldn’t have known then what I needed, and now that I can see with new perspective, I see what an impossible order. And how being hard on oneself is such a dangerous thing.

Once again being divorced is a hard thing for everyone, and to not be hard on oneself because of it.

The stars aligned and schedules cleared (after some controversial tactics that once again open me to criticism), and this morning we did what is always needed and we talked. We somehow avoided the many land mines that can end any attempt at conversation with another blowout. Tread carefully, but still be able to talk about difficult things, but don’t be unkind.

How does anyone ever get through this intact?

Money is the root of all evil and in divorce it’s particularly complicated. As life changes demands change, and children do what children do, they ask for what they want and what they need. And the parents have to figure out what to say yes to, what to say no to, and everything in between. There are so many complicating factors. People who get along and love one another often have hard times agreeing about finances in the best of circumstances.

Now take people who have opinions more than understanding and don’t have a good level of communication. The result I’m sorry to say was, “ask your mom, and mom says “ask your dad”, and the kids hear the stress and want to shrink into a corner and avoid that at all costs.

So in my Highly Sensitive teen son’s case, since like me, he can barely tolerate the discomfort of someone he loves, he decided to try and solve this by taking on the world himself. Suddenly he became like a 40 year old man trying to raise a family and pay bills in his stress level, and all this was happening inside of him.

Folks I cannot stress enough to you that what you see on the outside, especially with adolescents and young adults is often falling short of what is really going on. I’m a therapist and I missed it. I let the face value behaviors make me react and tell a story. I’m not a therapist at home. I’m a human with blind spots, and short comings, and everything I came with from my beginning.

Highly sensitive people are highly conscientious, and they often know ahead of someone else what the need is. When they attempt to accommodate this without the right tools and understanding things can get difficult.

The thing I have found most important in life is to be able to talk to each other. So we can find out what’s really going on. So we don’t say harmful things, so we don’t make decisions we will regret later. So we don’t hold onto pain, and a limited story, and then suffer unnecessarily.

So this morning that’s what we did, and we are now that much closer to understanding and hopefully to a more peaceful home environment. To be able to be our loving sensitive selves more of the time.

🤗💜😍

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Untangled thoughts are a bridge in my world…

This is my life in the raw. I’ve done my best to be the judge and jury and find myself guilty in any way possible of incorrect parenting/living. I’ve spent most of my life fearing this, and the journey I undertook only gave more evidence. It is now that I am finding my way out of that. Because now everything makes a lot more sense.

A letter to my son: bless anyone with the courage to brave my handwriting. This is how I spend my mornings. Deep in thought and reflection, and I’ve learned to stop finding that to be wrong as well. “Too much introspection, you’re too serious, too too too.”

Perhaps I should type the transcript for ease? I can’t right now because now I need to scramble like eggs to at least put clothes on for work.

I am here feeling radically grateful for the love I’ve had the courage to spend a lifetime weaving. I love myself enough to be brave enough to put pen to paper and to show my heart to the world.

You should know I criticize myself. Or I try, but it just isn’t as loud anymore. I am corny, inappropriate, shouldn’t this be private between him and I? Aren’t these emotions too intense for a child to hear from their parent. I’m not sure on this one: but I know it’s almost impossible to explain my story, and they are the ones who really need it. So they will never have to doubt my love for them.

I’ve created many critics along the way, but do you know what was harder to find? Someone who was willing to look further into me and to invest. That is what we all want. To be loved like that. And I hope and pray I get enough time on this earth to teach my children this self-acceptance and love I’m only finding now.

Is that even possible ? Or don’t they probably have to have their own journey with its trials? Isn’t that the beautiful part even, would we want to skip it in the name of less suffering. I finally know I wouldn’t. I used to think if only I had suffered less I wouldn’t be so crippled in so many areas. Now I not only know logically, but have lives, that the “wound is where the light enters.” -rumi

Love should never be private. Perhaps if we showed more of our scars and trials to the world, more people could love themselves better as well. And then their gentle hearts could also be accessible to their children, and not just their drive and protective instincts. Not just their advice and guiding.

The kids are all right. They will find their way. It’s the adults who are fragile and scared. Scared of not enough, scared of too much, scared of the unlived portion of their lives.

Kids still believe in magic and hope and play. I want to more like kids in the second half of my life.

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On becoming real…

I have a relationship with my writing that has developed silently by; that I am only realizing now. If I just trust myself a little (ha) and trust life a little bit, my needs are met much more easily than I ever imagined possible. Writing shows up, and I’m learning to show up for it as well. We have had a tentative courtship for years, but I always RE-coiled as less than worthy, and so writing couldn’t be close either.

Recently I saw the movie a Star is Born. It awakened the young songwriter and poet that I dismissed when I was young. I forgot all the dramatic song singing, all the pretend play, all the notepads filled with writing. I’m slowly remembering them now, going back for my child, reuniting us.

It’s raw and difficult work. It seems so secondary to the pressures of adult life, but something is slowly showing me that it’s actually necessary. The catch to all this new enlightenment ?! I feel everything. I am raw all the time. Vulnerable as a newborn baby. Living new lives within a single life. Defying gravity.

I continue to progress and grow as a Clinician, my sessions deepen and my clients return. I am learning new ways to love and be loved. I can cry when I feel like crying. As a mother I struggle to keep the same rigid beliefs and templates. But I just can’t. I empathize now. I am closer now.

I always thought I was keeping them at a safe distance from me. But really I think I was keeping a self that is so much more fragile than she ever knew safe.

Life is going to touch me now. “I’m a real boy”, the wooden parts abandoned for soft and breakable skin. And this means I am scared to death lately of my own emotions sucking me under. They are giant, terrible and beautiful things. They are mine and I can’t reject them anymore, or hold myself compartmentalized. But I am so very raw.

I’m safe and strong now, and I’m also the small child I was never allowed to be. And that’s confusing and scary. It’s not supposed to be, my backwards life. It’s intense and too much to bear or understand for most people. It’s weird and unknown.

“Tell me something girl, are you happy in this modern world. Or do you need more, is there something else you’re searching for.

“I’m falling’

In all the good times

I find myself longin’ for change.

And in the bad times I fear myself

Tell me something boy, aren’t you tired of trying to fill that void. Or do you need more, ain’t it hard keepin’ it so hard core…

I’m off the deep end, watch as I dive in. I’ll never meet the ground. Crash through the surface, where they can’t hurt us. We’re far from the shallow now.”

The movie was a spiritual experience for me.

My work deepens. No shallow living here.

Part of me still tries to panic as we ready ourselves to create a life and bring them into the world. But that part has grown quieter, it doesn’t run the show anymore. In its absence peace and joy are filling in.

And as an existentially minded person I know beyond a shadow of a doubt the cost of loving with the much of an open heart will be excruciating pain at some point. I can’t use a superstition or an illusion to numb me from that truth.

I always know. I am acutely aware. And the acutely attuned suffer more. I’d take a guess that’s why so many artists numb in ways that destruct themselves, and obliterate their loved ones with them.

And I’m so aware I can’t even do that. The tendencies are all there, Born or learned they are there. They try and seduce me; but there’s just too much life to experience that I must feel. And I could never live with myself if I let those I love suffer with my self destruction. So I recognize I can’t destroy my soul either, by not allowing my emotions, because they overwhelm me.

Everything overwhelms me….

If I don’t feel I can’t art, and if I can’t art what’s the point of it all anyway.

And if I can’t love two feet in…. my kids, my wife and myself….

then I can’t rest.

And if I can’t rest, I can’t write

And if I can’t write I can’t breathe.

I’m two feet in now….

Maybe I should write a song about that,

About what that feels like.

Maybe I will….

Once you realize all your dreams really have come true…. once you’re not running anymore….. you have nothing left to do but surrender into whatever moments life has in store for you. And that’s such a foreign feeling.

I’ve been creating my life for so long, so intensely. I don’t know how to sit back and enjoy everything I’ve worked so hard for. And if I don’t find out how, I’ll drive through the rest of all of our lives frantic and seeking, when everything I wanted is right here.