You call me up again just to break me like a promise.
The “I am” project…. I remember when my therapist gave me this assignment and I could only list like 4 things that described what I do. My roles. I am my roles. I am disconnected. I am starved. Is what I could have said then if I had the words.
Now someday I am going to wrap together I was and I am with a beautiful bow. The pages are going to smell like heaven.
Like her
So for now I submit to you my growing I am list. For any who may be or have been lost in similar ways and are working on their own.
All my love,
C
I am….
A mother Counselor Writer Deep thinker Creative Kind Generous Spontaneous Curious Impulsive Impatient Passionate A piano player Affectionate Warm Playful Intense Loyal Conscientious A people person A leader An advocate Self-aware Strong A music lover A reader A researcher Full of triggers Less ashamed than I used to be Growing A spring and fall person And extroverted introvert Sensitive Movie lover Coffee and coffee shop bookstore lover Frugal Poet Naturalist Feminist Grateful A little things person A believer in magic and happy “endings” Naive Idealist Sensual Someone who prefers small intimate venues where I can hear over clubs and loud. Someone who loves Sunday’s A mermaid Someone who loves French vanilla ice cream and lavender linen spray A person who likes to be cozy A conversationalist / enjoys working on the art of communication A recovering hypochondriac A person who suffers from complex ptsd Wanting to belong A person who believes a life well lived can be defined by loving well and being loved in return Haunted Recovering Battling all or nothing Transforming Dynamic Unbridled Tempestuous seeking serene Woman Child Human Someone who starved for and enjoys touch, it grounds me Lost when it comes to family connection. Admiring it in others and feeling deeply inadequate when I don’t know my family history or seem so different than everyone else. The song Vienna by Billy Joel Someone who has an incredible amount of questions about her family that deep down wishes they could be answered, but cuts off from even the questions themselves because it hurts too much to wonder, to be outside, to be disconnected Someone who numbs the pain by staying passionately engaged in living and learning Someone who makes a lot more mistakes because of that. Hyper vigilant Disorganized Prone to rabbit holes of self loathing for things that were never my fault Struggling with chronic dis ease of body and mind, and trying to calm those storms Someone who can have an amazing memory if present and has developed the skill of erasing them just as easily.◦
It, much like me, is a work in progress …..
Onward
Ps. I got a massage last night and woke up feeling human today. I wasn’t in pain. I get them every two weeks for now, and it’s changed my whole life. I take care of myself the rest of my life, in all of the ways I wasn’t. As protective as the parents I deserved, and I’m not mad about it 😉 xoxo
This mornings walk started with Dear Depression by NF and second song is Unsteady by X Ambassadors. If you love me don’t let go. Hold on….
Which makes me think of Me Before You, which makes me think of Love Rosie, which I watched last night. Which makes me think of which movies I enjoy so much and why.
Probably if I were to guess they were friends when I had none, and they at times inspire hope. I like movies that make me feel the way I want to around the people I have close. I could disappear into the feeling of that story. T
hat’s likely the most important thing here. I could have a family, a best friend, a lover, for that 90 minutes I didn’t feel the kind of alone that was unforgiving and unforgivable during childhood. I will have no amends there. Not a death bed whisper. Only an endless chill.
Deep emotion. Human stories. Inspiration.
I like these things.
How I like the piano and string instruments and vocalists that have been through the ringer emotionally. Mary Lambert, Teddy Swims, Pink, Taylor Swift, k Clarkson, so many more…
Like I like my authors…. Brene, Liz, Martha, S King. So many more.
Our vibe attracts our tribe they say. I have to believe it’s true when I pay attention to what I like.
I don’t like horror. I don’t need to experience anymore terror. All set thanks. I feel the things the character is experiencing in my body and heart and will think about still shots of the movies days and even years after.
I have an interesting encoding system in my brain. It’s kind of magical really. Genuinely.
NF Perception, Remember This. This guy has had some trauma too huh! So find people that challenge what you think….. gorgeous.
So back to my brain and amends.
What I’m realizing lately is that most of my life I’ve misunderstood myself so painfully.
Each time I shut down and moved overly quickly that was a reflex, that had nothing to do with my true self. She was so far buried in those moments.
This last time I tried to say that, but I was already in the action of my choice. It’s impossible to regret it because of where I am now. If you asked me last year though.
Not very dependable someone who changes that easily right?! The story, the T, the gossip. Hate it. Because it never understands. It’s fast and realization is slow.
The kind we need to breathe life back into a world gone cold and hard.
Empathy
I had it for others, but none for myself.
Anytime she did something that wasn’t in compliance I’d leave her out in the cold. Punishment. No understanding.
Here comes the amends. This is how I was with my kids. And a lot of it was because I was fighting to feel supported by their father, someone still lost in bitter hurt. This is my version of course and that’s all I can write.
If I told the bad story it would look something like this, of course he would want to be away because of the flip outs I did, just like my mother.
Just like my father wanted to be away from my mother. I understood why. BUT there’s so much I didn’t understand. Everything that came before me. What he did to her. A little girl with a grown man.
No perpetrator and no victim. We all have a part in our choices and I’m more interested in who I will become because of them, than to cast judgment.
Judgment is boring and nearsighted and hollow.
Nothing comes full circle there. You just chase your tail and go on a haunted carnival ride of your own emotions.
My ego fought an invisible battle with him to feel supported, because I felt I had none.
And the punishment fell to my kids. They didn’t have my warm wise presence at some of the times they needed it the most.
And now I sit in the pain of knowing this and let it soften the borders of my heart so I can course correct.
Twin b tried to scream at me your punishments don’t work and I doubled down. I wasn’t fighting her. She just wanted to be heard, and I shut down.
My shut down switch is so frustrating in my life. How do I forgive it, because it saved me before, and left me for dead later. The thing meant to protect me also kept me shut off from the love.
They were out in the cold with me. That’s a bitter pill to swallow. I want to explain to cry for understanding. But that forgoes the accountability I need to make amends.
They need to feel I can respond to their emotions.
How can you ask that of me my trauma cries. Don’t you understand how terrifying someone else’s emotions became for me. If you knew.
But they don’t and they didn’t ask …. They were at our mercy as parents. Now that I can connect with.
I only hope they will someday come to their own conclusion that I did my best in all the ways I could.
I didn’t do it all wrong, but I have the strength now to know that one of the most important ingredients was missing. That soft love. I hope that their fathers family supplied it enough. Holidays and unconditional love. Things I didn’t have.
I hope they don’t suffer in the ways I have. Those words are true. It would only be judged as dramatic or anything else for someone who doesn’t know, connect with these losses of self they never consented to.
No one told me about trauma.
When the first person (therapist) suggested it’s shocking I’m alive, it was like a scene in a movie. He couldn’t be talking about me. I wasn’t even in my body.
I had kids with a grand idea of creating a family I didn’t have and I was going to do it perfect of course in my idea.
Then life takes hold and tells you ha you thought that was going to work. Silly goose.
Being gay and not realizing became another school yard bully, and I almost lost that battle.
I would have done anything to protect my kids from divorce and him. I wanted to. I agonized.
I just kept hitting wall after wall with it. It was not possible and even the voice now says I could have done it and waited if it meant…. NO.
I’d do anything for love but I won’t do that. Not be myself how I was made. Not an option.
Divorce. The first area that requires amends. Creating a life for everyone (all my responsibility of course), when I wasn’t aware of myself.
My enthusiasm for living often preceded my better senses.
Can you ever forgive me?!
My mind is mostly fragments and so scattered and living steadily requires the gathering of all these things each morning just to function.
Please forgive me….
*I’m still trying to figure out this writing thing. This excavation. The where, when, how of it all. So bear with me as I find these fossils and thoughts. My psyche is so often a steel trap. It goes into lockdown with a hairline trigger. When I listen to music the rhythm style and emotion of my writing is immediately influenced. So if you’re here on my journey. Thank you for helping me be less alone in the world. It’s special to me beyond words…..
A lesson of late, there are many, is that brute force and iron will are not the best way.
I won’t say they don’t work, they have served me well in certain ways, and we will honor the necessity that forged them in me.
I’m wanting something softer and wiser these days. The written word. Reading the words. Humility. Learning.
The pen really is mightier than the sword. I’d take everything I felt I could get and figure out the rest later. A main strategy.
Gather. Hunt. Grind. Grit. Sweat. Choke back the tears. She turns her head away in that office, so you won’t see her cry. Willing the tears not to come. They never helped her before.
Yes I remember. I remember every single moment, and I don’t will myself to forget. I don’t work that way anymore.
Would you even recognize me? Or does the completion of a soul contract change everything? I don’t know.
“Be careful with that one love, he will do whatever he needs to do to survive. You built me palaces out of paragraphs.”
Scraps for my memoir written in the bath this am as I read Stephen King On Writing, which I’ll finally finish after five years of trying. It’s time she whispers. It’s time she roars.
“I used to just carry a book around, with very little hope that I’d ever fully read it. Let alone write one of my own.
I lived on crumbs you see.
And I gave everything I had to everyone else every day, in the hopes of someday giving and receiving love the way it always seems other people do.
I gave to anyone else with very little discernment.
My trauma reduced me to focusing only on what was in front of my face if at all.
I could barely keep a train of thought, hell a car of thought.
I barely had any ability to focus at all.
Scraps.
Starved
Becoming”
Let it burn. Anything that isn’t yours naturally. Anything that betrays your personal values in the process. Things will be offered. They will cross your path.
Twin B has wisdom tooth surgery in a few days, far away, never someone else’s baby, but won’t be her caretaker right now. Letting go of our babies is hard. I think of her getting to learn more than I could teach at that time, and experiencing herself in a positive light, something I wasn’t offering at that time. These things bring me joy and peace. The former not the latter of course.
I can’t go down rabbit holes anymore. It doesn’t work. I just good my head up and keep going. Get up and try again.
So anyway back to my story. Did I say I had one? I already can’t remember. That thought is ten years ago within two seconds. Time is irrelevant when we are doing soul work. A minute can last hours and hours can be over in a second.
My fortieth birthday. I was going through what some call a dark night of the soul. Hell. Purgatory. When we are face to face with our shadow Lisa Romano might say, probably has said many times.
I was in scarcity in so many areas. I ordered my own birthday cake. I did this as an act of self love at that time. I was learning how to not wait and hope for the things I wanted to arrive. So I was thinking I was self loving. But really I had zero faith that anyone would show up. It’s not surprising given my choices at that time.
I made my bed.
But my mistakes could not have been so bad I wouldn’t be thought of on my birthday. I have all those memories. Not all bad. Not even.
Anyway my twin B asked me or more commented that “you bought yourself your own cake.” It hadn’t even occurred to me this was a “bad” thing Or however she meant it. Maybe an unusual thing. Those things usually don’t occur to me I’ve lived a backwards sort of life. Hey Heyoka.
What do I make of this now? With the lessons I’m laying down. Was I really self loving or did I not trust anyone would show up for me?
Spoiler alert: It’s usually both, not either or.
Maybe I was trying to model for myself, because I’ve often felt that alone, whether I was or wasn’t.
The clear lesson now however is trust, and a firm balance of it to self and others.
Let go Christina ….. let go.
Taylor Swift Sober comes on….. the tears fall. When I was drowning, that’s when I could finally breathe.
Getting clean from all the painful ideas I’ve held about myself. The what ifs that should have happened because of what happened to me. But I discounted my effort. It’s invisible and therefore so will be that of others.
I poked my own eyes out and cut off my own legs in search for a savior. When all I needed in the first place were my senses and my emotions.
Luckily (divinely) we are permitted multiple do overs and re-takes. The universe is a generous teacher. And don’t we all deserve one of those.
I hope to continue to be one…..
As long as I live.
And a safe place to land.
These tall orders require radical boundaries if this is to be maintained.
It’s a good thing I am energized by both.
All my love,
C
Ps I started a new journal today. It was time. The last was to not waste my piano book and had some ju ju. This is a fresh page. We get one each day. Hell a fresh book. New eyes. New legs to walk around with.
A relevant example from mr Kings book. They bought their son a saxophone because he showed interest. Very soon the King couple discussed if their young charge should continue. They said no. Why!$ because Stephen said he only practiced during the set times. It never took flight or set fire…..
If it does you’ll know. You’ll want to do that thing and move heaven and earth.
May I vow to myself I’ll accept nothing else for the rest of my life.
“Inside my skin there is this space, it twists and turns, it bleeds and aches. Inside my whole heart there’s an empty room, it’s waiting for lightning it’s waiting for you. And I am wanting….and I am needing you here. Inside the absence of fear.My bones call to you from their separate skin, I make myself translucent to let you in…. “ Jewel My favorite set of lyrics from way back and all time, and believe me there are many.
These days I’m most often looking at the nature of my relationship with myself. I am sifting through my history more objectively than I ever have. It’s a good feeling. I know that it means I’ve moved forward in health with my mind.
I’m seeing myself with such compassion and so realistically these days. My light and my dark, and their origins. Blame or spirals or deep dark thinking seem far away. There is a lightness of being.
I am present with and for myself and the simple things become special. Like a haircut and seeing a movie on a Sunday. And moments with my loved ones. There is gentle where savage pain was.
I felt inspired this morning to write some truths I’m thinking about myself.
I spent years living with a myriad of health symptoms that signaled to me I was dying or would at any moment. This made my world very small. I became afraid to do things out in the world. The truth is I was having intrusive thoughts anywhere and everywhere and using all my energy to act as if I wasn’t. To try and stop the thoughts they made me have about myself.
Lately I’ve been noticing my coping so much more clearly. I’m able to know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it and speak my truth. Those words, just words, hold so much power. They rock me to my core. That is a safety I’ve earned and provided and no one can remove it.
I in fact do a schmorgasbord of coping mechanisms daily at the slightest hint of something that could become “unsafe” and it’s tremendously affected by the moods, tones, and behaviors of those around me.
So unsurprisingly parenting teenagers was a special kind of hell for all parties involved for me. I was being triggered constantly and fully reacting from that place. After the trigger comes the shame spiral, and after the shame spiral being a puddle on the ground that must resuscitate herself. After the whole process usually a week of symptoms. Flare, migraine, stomach pain, crippling exhaustion.
I must forgive myself for what I did not yet know…..
All the while showing up for myself and my work. Knowing I must give more than I take there, or I’d lose the one source of positive feedback about myself. Yes as a counselor I was also co dependent and I knew if I didn’t get that under control I wouldn’t be able to have a good relationship with myself or a healthy one at work either.
I reflect on the “one source of positive feedback about myself” and my heart aches with the lonely and scarcity of that statement. Things were out of balance. They were always going to be while I was separated from myself for safety.
I was my very own authoritarian parent abuser.
I could make the marionette dance, but not feel things. There are limits to that power. I sought a more gentle source. How when feeling feels immediately threatening to anything solid, and all you began with was a single plank a thousand feet in the air over a pit of poisonous snakes.
I spent a good forty years pacing anxiously back and forth across that plank until I finally sat still and accepted my circumstances and started being curious about what I could do to make things better. Not only was nothing else working, but I kept repeating cycles that affected more than just myself, so more evidence I was bad.
I was really trapped inside myself.
The only signal of distress was for my body to become sick, because it’s the only model I’ve ever had for getting to a point where I could allow myself to receive. If you know you must be sick to receive you will be sick I can tell you that.
These epiphanies have just clicked for me lately: with the help of many therapies. Julie, Melissa, love from my people, and most of all a connection to myself, rather than being disconnected from her. Always vigilant for her to mess everything up, and become horrible at any second.
So right now I’m grieving a deepest layer. The way I have regarded my tender beautiful self. My mouth gets dry and the tears come.
So lately I’m walking a lot and being with my mind. My poor frazzled scattered brain and how quickly it darts to all the horrible scenarios. I’m just providing lots of comfort and safety like I would have to those foster children, if I didn’t need it more for me at the time, and not even know it.
I needed to love me, not always look to be able to love me by loving someone else. And I have only grace and compassion now for the fact love was so foreign to me. It’s different when you learn it through concept and not experientially. It’s different.
I am still learning. I will always be devoted to learning and to being loving and gentle and steadfast. I crave consistency and I insist on building it. There’s nothing else I will accept at this stage in my life.
Of that I am sure.
In other news I saw Bros yesterday and I was so delighted to see gay men allowed to be seen in a major motion picture. I was also sad at how much we forget how much pain minorities have to endure, and how much is insidious and viewed as if it’s all ok now.
I loved seeing Ptown on the screen and all the gay culture references and it did make my heart swell with pride. Just two people each being who they were in all their stereotypes, boring, too much, all of it, showing their true colors to one another and finding love.
Trying for love to build it. You don’t find it, you must create it. Love is crafted.
Yes, I will always be a sappy idealist when it comes to love. No, I’ll never let it allow harm to come to myself again.
The light and dark of a life well lived. (put it in my tombstone folks, but not too soon ok, I have shit to say first)
Please
I have lived and I’m not even close to done yet. Let’s go as my teens would say. Lol.
It’s time. To be here now. Deep breath. Ocean Eyes by Scvrina is on.
I just attended Cheryl Strayed writing workshop Wild Awakenings. She was live from The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck. It walked me back through my experience there in 2015, on scholarship. Elizabeth Gilbert was promoting Big Magic and spoke.
I was wanting to be a writer then, permission for something already mine. There are too many takeaways from the course that are amazing to shuffle back through.
I remember sitting there feeling so frozen inside myself. I looked to others to try and figure out what I should be doing. They looked like they had it figured out. I felt alien and cold and emotionally stopped up and exploding all at once. All of this carefully contained by a scratchy wool sweater.
Other people smiled and spoke freely with one another. I was sweaty and terrified.
In this particular workshop unbeknownst to me we got put into breakout rooms on zoom cameras and read our pieces and I did not balk. Not one shred of fear or self consciousness on the camera. Because why. This is me. It’s how I look and what I have to offer, and why is that any less or more for that matter than anyone else.
So I’ll talk about my experience. I just chose a prompt and wrote for 10 minutes each writing exercise and was shocked at the results. I was shocked at how much I have repressed about my own experience because of how I’m supposed to think, be, do.
I realized I don’t lose control on the page, the one place I am supposed to (able to). I still don’t, because what will it mean?! That folks is anxiety programming in action. To make our thoughts mean more than they need to before they are even processed yet.
My writing means nothing but someone else’s interpretation when shared, and everything to me. That’s what it means. It’s my flow. My self on the page. My wild mind. Scattered or with blank spots, flooded, however it is it’s mine and there are reasons are minds are as they are: some more mysterious than others.
So don’t process at all?! Well you know my every heart beat is based on the belief in the process and yet I stopped trusting my own. I stopped trusting everything really. That’s such an unpleasant place to be in. My well of passion dried up via suppression. That realization feels like a rock in my stomach.
I guess that is part of the freeze after deep pain, regret, etc.
Balance is a tight rope walk of acknowledgment of the things we can let go of, the destructive thoughts about anything. I didn’t know I could let go. I’ve been holding on tight for so long.
So it’s October and I’m finally going to begin (already have) and finish On Writing by Stephen King. I had read half breathlessly and was afraid of it being over. That’s an example of how scared I am every single day. I’m scared of attachment. And I created so many self fulfilling prophecies with this wound.
I did it by rushing. I did it by being a coping mechanism. Now I’m trying to be a human, and not just any human, my SELF. It’s a little harder than one might think with all this wiring.
I’ve lived with so much fear. I’ve lived so tamed. I thought being highly emotionally reactive at times meant being untamed, but it’s the opposite. That’s the result of constantly taming oneself. I watched The Luckiest Girl Alive last night and I don’t think I’ve ever resonated with a movie more. Hillbilly Elegy is up there.
Please be careful with that movie. But right down to the intrusive thoughts. I was / am so much like her and I didn’t even know it until I saw this movie. In some ways I’m just cracking through another layer of ice. All along my ego defenses need to shout how far along we are. I’m ready to give up that battle.
I too am trying to look like I have a normal life, be normal and safe and whatever else. And that does not work. I need to find who is really in here. All of it.
This writing class was a good beginning it shook a lot loose. For example I realized it’s not nothing to say as the freeze often suggests. A dirty dirty lie. I have “too much” to say that could be disturbing and Cheryl addressed this perfectly when she told the story of taking an amount of her dead mothers ashes into her body for keeping.
A gorgeous testament to her raw pain and her love for her mother. Her fierce love for her mother made me long that my children will ever feel that way about me. I’m not sure it’s ever in the cards. I know they love me, but it just doesn’t feel like our story.
I realized in my energy healing this past weekend that my head compensates for my feeling parts, and I realized that the wires are crossed on that. I thought that kept me safe. It did Christina, a long time ago. But now it just keeps me from the warmth of the fires of my own passion. Careful control. I don’t even believe in that, but it’s a subconscious default in so many ways.
I just wrote anyway, and then erased it 😉
Cheryl talked about how a reviewer of Wild had become disturbed by the ashes scene and said it’s just too much and threw the book in the trash. She said that person’s feeling and reaction was hers and as valid as the good reviews and that alone taught me so much.
She let go of her attachment to people understanding and allowed her own experience. Let go of control. See the work of David R Hawkins on letting go for some practical tools and lovely wisdom in this area. It’s one of my current sources.
I spent so much of my life letting people who didn’t even have my back get under my skin. Their review of me. Trapped in purgatory of what other people think, while not even knowing what I do.
That is my compelling why in exploring the depths of myself.
To do this I’ve been walking a lot lately. Once I’m off, one foot in front of another it’s meditative. My thoughts settle into sentences and become available to me.
My own thoughts available to me?! I take for granted at times the magnitude of my own healing. I could have easily spent my entire life a very different way, where the above does not exist.
I need to develop a healthy relationship with my self and my thoughts. Rather than viciously sort them into categories of good and bad. Be with them, understand them.
My deepest wound for a very long time is feeling misunderstood. It’s what much of my emdr centers around. When I deeply misunderstand myself, it’s much more likely I’ll do that with others as well and blow my life up. Or at the very least turn the possibility of a lot of gorgeous moments into a minefield of reactivity.
I’m quiet a lot more, and I want to be more quiet. To be with nature. I’ve been craving a morning hike lately. It’s been beach for a long time, maybe it’s time for some woods. Solitude doesn’t have to be some grand voyage, it can be a few hours a day.
For anyone reading this who is interested I recommend Julie my Angel. My energy medicine practitioner. She has changed my entire life, primarily by helping me ease my anger by the belief that we choose our paths for specific reasons. I do believe this. When I was particularly lost inside my pain, this thought was outrageous to me. But as the threads to the tapestry begin to reveal my path. That tingle is irreplaceable, I become a believer.
My mind is a skeptic, of course it is. It’s hyper vigilant to a fault. My special skill set to identify even the potential of threat in any given set of circumstances and have an itchy trigger finger.
The gun is down and these days I’m working on my own self.
I am loving and tending to my home, the physical one here and earth and my meat suit lol.
So look forward in the very near future to seeing some practice writing pieces, perhaps with prompts perhaps not. Poetry. Pieces that I feel and felt when I wrote them. Unedited and raw the way I like to live life. The way I aspire to allowing myself to live.
It’ll always be easier to talk the talk. I am a human who is committed to walking the walk.
As captured on the cover of a journal at Barnes and Noble the other day. Love that place.
I’m sitting outside at Nate’s Plate’s, waiting for an egg and cheese sandwich. First time trying it here. Way to ruin your walk Christina. Ok we aren’t doing that. This is about enjoying life. The little things, and the big ones.
It’s a gorgeous pre fall day. I’ve been walking and occasionally jogging 2-3 miles most days. Sometimes only one, sometimes none, but usually some. Currently I’m listening to On My Own by Ross Lynch. It’s the first song of the day. It came on Spotify Taylor Swift radio. There is a fake plant, bright yellow in a wicker pot on the table, my water bottle a consistent comfort, and two bags of peanut butter chocolate energy bites.
From here I can see the playground, tennis courts, baseball field, that are behind the Milford Public Library. I love Milford. I’ve fallen more in love with it through the hard times and good of the last few years. Milford is a constant. And constants make my heart happy, despite my creative’s occasional rebellion against it. I always return if it’s safe to do so, and healthy for me.
I only cut off from sources of poison, and the bad thing was never me. I could cry writing this for all the confusion and suffering it’s caused in my life trying desperately to find “the right answer”, in those choices. Never know there was always a right for me.
I never knew my self. Never knew she was worth knowing. And that might make you sad to read, but don’t be sad for me, because I believe we each have a path that has meaning, even when the view hasn’t all come together. Unsewn threads causing doubts. Painful. It’s ok. Is it, my anxiety says?! Yes it is my higher self says. And I no longer shame myself for how long this conversation must be had.
The past few days I’ve been loving Greenlights on Audible written and narrated by Matthew McConaughey (so hard to spell this name sigh). Insightful, fun, quirky, a journey of sharing of self and thoughts. Of course I do. Bask in it. He just said a line, the pleasure is for rent, and so is the pain.” Meaning everything is temporary so be present essentially and don’t get too caught in being impressed, rather be more involved.
Engaged, present, involved, trying, learning.
Want to have a mad love affair with yourself.? Go someplace, order something, try something on, pick something up and feel it. What do you like, and what don’t you like. Pick up your head, put down your phone.
Think
Try a new food, a new spot to sit, and feel and think about what it feels like. Presence is bliss. Still your mind. Just look, sense, write, dream, feel.
So I had therapy last night. I still go on average two times a week when I can. At one time I felt I’d accomplished something by going down to one, because who wants to need therapy two times a week. I do. I do! I do because it helps the hurts. That’s why.
*I wrote this post Monday I think. It’s Sunday now. Had our first fire in the fire place kind of Sunday. White bean and chicken soup kind of Sunday. Watched a great suspense movie Sunday. Had a nap Sunday. Stayed in sweats Sunday. Set boundaries Sunday. Shared chocolates Sunday. Enjoyed seasonal candles Sunday. Chip grocery and visit Sunday. Took a walk Sunday. Gave a special gift Sunday. Thought about time Sunday. Finished Hillbilly Elegy and Slaughterhouse Five Sunday. Watched Hocus Pocus 2 Sunday. How did so much fit into one day.
Wrote this a week ago and just getting around to posting it….
When I’m gone I hope you play Bette Midler’s The Rose at my gathering…..
It’s always a new day one of some sort. Something to quit, to begin…..
All you gotta do is walk….. Griff
After three long years I was finally ready to give City of Girls the attention it deserves, the attention I deserve. I was not disappointed. How do you do it Liz and can I be like you when I grow up?!
When will that be…..
And all you gotta do is walk….. my song of 2022…
What Liz Gilbert manages to do with her writing is grant permission for you to be who you are, and have the issues that you do.
People are who they are and all of it is beautiful. Choice is beautiful. Stories of monsters and demons are for fairy tales and Netflix.
I used to ascribe to the idea I could bend anything to my will, until life bent me, and I finally got the lesson.
Surrender. A full surrender.
My little prince turned 21 yesterday. He’s all heart. He’s exactly as he should be and yet in all the wisdom I lacked, I showed him everything he isn’t, because of what I learned during my survival. How to push hard and harder.
I am unlearning THAT.
My son’s friends flew his rose out here to surprise him for his birthday and we all banded together to pull it off. He was happy on his birthday. Satisfied and knowing he is loved. There will be many other kinds of moments throughout his life, but these are ones we will always treasure.
He can receive in the moment. All really is NOT lost. Thank you Leslie Charles.
I see boats and sunrise and water. I smell water and salt and Sunday.
I will be gathering today with those who loved Karen Sahler in Greenwood Lake New York. So many memories. I always said I hated funerals, all those emotions in one place. All that discomfort congealed into a suffering pudding inside my sweaty flats.
Today I understand. I am looking forward to it. To being given the space to feel my feelings with others feeling theirs. To have and to hold. To remember.
Grace and Mercy.
Now I can understand the conflict inside of me worrying it means something about me that I won’t attend my own mother’s funeral. Thank you Liz. Thank you life and thank you death.
And most of all thank you love, which is the force that makes it all worth it in the end.
I’m not some cold dead thing inside who wouldn’t go. I found this love I didn’t know existed. It’s just there. You can’t make it or unmake it. Don’t misunderstand me, it does take work and discipline to maintain a self that is capable, especially when it wasn’t natural for me.
Could that finally be ok??! Could I finally stop analyzing myself for flaws?! I think it’s time.
I’m not angry with her like I used to be. She wasn’t made to be a mother and became one anyway. Liked the idea of the attention it provided her, but never got any further. And I don’t really know the ins and outs of what happened to her, or if it’s a wiring thing. And you know what? Somehow it matters so much less to know
Because it doesn’t mean anything about me. People could have said that a million times, but I had to live my lessons. Just like you.
And love exists in its purest form as so many things. Love is there in the person that smiles at me on my walk. Love is petting my dogs. Love is walking, running. In heat and cold.
And all the love I’ve ever shared is valuable and valued and has accumulated to make my steps in this world a little lighter.
Love is a friend who remembers a version of you, you forgot. Sometimes love is persistence and sometimes it’s letting go.
For me…. Now…. Love is no longer the confusing manipulative thing it began as. And I thank whomever for that. The windows and the walls and the ceilings and the floors.
And today on this beautiful Sunday love is a mother who has died too soon. A woman who made those around her feel her love. A woman who gave my kids and I family events that I never had before. The only mother who will have seen me in a wedding dress probably, lol.
The gift of love is that I still have all of these moments inside of me. I didn’t know. It’s natural for me to keep myself out in the cold when I don’t have to be.
I think I’ve seen this film before and I didn’t like the ending….
Happy Sunday from sunny Florida. Tiny lizards are cute, palmetto bugs are nope. Humidity is death, the bath still brings life.
Hot. Cold. Sweaty. Calm. Breathe, just breathe.
Be still.
My whole life I ran. I ran and I didn’t know I was running. I thought I was just living with gusto and a strong will. Where’s there’s a will there’s away would have been my motto. Until I hit a period where will was not all that mattered, a period that brought me to my knees. Kesha Praying.
Will could only take me far, and take me far it did. I’ve been marveling lately at all the life experiences I have, they have grown me. I wouldn’t change it, and that’s new because my ruminating signaled that I lived in a swamp of regret. I’ve visited don’t get me wrong, but it’s not a place I could ever live.
I’ve been so hard on myself for every single thing I didn’t ask for, and judged me for how I coped or didn’t, all the while not even realizing how much coping I was doing, because I didn’t call it that. That signals there’s an issue right ?!
Yesterday we watched Pieces of Her, not the series that was very good by the way, the movie with Shia Labeouf (had to look up how in the hell to spell that). Spoiler alert ahead.
The movie starts with an intimate birth scene, very well done I might add. Raw. Beautiful. I was nauseated during it, for her, but of course I was. The movie took me on a ride of emotions. I was experiencing it. Few movies do that. Recently the Starling also did. The fact these move me the most is no surprise to those close to me.
Anyway this movie! Things I noticed in the beginning. Sean, her partner, stayed calm, was a rock for her, strong. Inside of me twinged with the wanting of that, back then. I didn’t know I didn’t have it, and frankly I know my memory is so fucked up. But the idea of a man who knows himself, is strong in that, for better or for worse, already through recovery at that time. So he had that experience and owned it, and worked at it.
They hold their baby for the first time…. It’s gorgeous. Shortly after the baby turns blue and well I can’t even say it.
The rest of the movie shows the various ways they cope and don’t. How they take it out on each other. How one shuts the other out, and the choices they both make. Suddenly all of the things that happened aren’t such a mystery.
The family dynamics were so interesting, but at least they each said their truth. How they really felt. What is that even like? Not a family who you could cut the tension with a knife, all covered in pretty outward smiles with gnashing teeth.
I’ve been clenching my teeth at night. This is a new phenomenon for me. Of all the ailments. Sigh. Clenching so hard. Despite being more healed than I’ve ever been, and sleeping very well.
Last night there was a little girl in my dream, it was vivid. We had a pleasant interaction, it was warm, and one of her mother’s was accepting, not forgotten, but forgiven. Life moves on and I felt peaceful by it, not tortured. A whisper that everything is as it should be. I felt warm.
In my own life there are fires. One of my girls will be leaving for the other coast and the other family. There was no middle ground to meet on, so it’s not the best of circumstances and that’s creating an unbearable pain.
A difficult labor is quickly forgotten once the child is in your arms and you’re more than occupied with the many new tasks at hand. A fractured relationship of this magnitude that can’t get any oxygen and is turning blue is a different kind of hell.
One at the moment I can’t find my way out of, or see a way to just distract myself. It’s excruciating. And two months ago I didn’t know it would be this way. I didn’t dupe anyone. This is real and it’s mine and I get to be allowed to feel how I do without dismissing or distracting, and while still loving and supporting myself.
This is new. A new relationship with myself, where I don’t pressure myself, and stand up quickly saying, I’m ok. Where I don’t force myself, or get lost in unhealthy coping mechanisms. This is new.
I’m not ok. I’m scared, and locked down, and in this. And it’s going to take a little adjusting, and healing.
Who knew being a mother was so important to me. Everyone else. The problem is I didn’t regard myself in that way. I couldn’t see myself as anything more than her daughter. There was no myself, No herself. A Martha Beck reference from Diana Herself.
Here I am and I’m fiercely showing up, and I’m not ashamed. It’s a new look for me, and it’s going to take awhile for the training wheels to come off, and to rub the cobwebs out of my eyes to get a clear view in the mirror.
It was always going to happen..
My grief and my story are real, and what I’m realizing is that healing from the beginning let alone now is a way of life. For me it is, and that has to be ok. Not heavy or unfun, just real. It will ebb and flow. This creative heart recovery there will be periods I’m under, and periods I’m out, periods I’m dancing and playing, and one’s where I’m stuck to the floor.
Because this is what life is like when you feel it all, and take it all in, and learn to keep some of it out. This is a whole story of becoming whole, from the pieces of her.
This movie rocked me. It made me remember my birth stories and what was going on at that time, and how did you feel when you held your babies the first time….
Probably not just romantic, probably I was scared shitless too. And I get to be that! Because that is what’s real, and I felt that way having no idea what I’d actually have to face to be a good enough mother.
I had no idea the lengths I’d need to go to to not be triggered, to not use my children to comfort my emotions or take them out on. To keep them safe, even from me, when I didn’t know how unhealed I was, but I did at some level.
Intuition trauma blocked.
What’s a gal to do besides study and heal and study and heal and heal and heal and heal. It takes a village and daily practice and lots of support. It is happening though and for that I’m the most grateful.
That I am able to feel things as I am. I could just be numb. And there’s nothing worse. My dear friend is struggling with this just now, and I’ve learned, am learning, to judge less, and love more.
I wanted to say membrane for artistic quality, however it’s way to thin and tame a word for our subject matter.
Word salad, bread crumbs, generalities, banalities, poppy cock, and balderdash. That’s what the defense mechanism speaks. It wreaks of bullshit. Activated, deactivated. My friend calls it morphin time. Spoiler alert he’s a pink ranger fan.
The very fact he can speak about it as if it’s a choice shows the healing work that’s been done. The thing that brings hope and life to life.
I’m walk/run writing which means I’ll probably end up motion sick and nauseated. That’s old hat for me anyway. Are you kidding?! Stringing together beautiful words that never really say anything at all.
The water is low, very low. It smells that way. Peeeee ew. Blech. Death will eventually turn to life though…. And so it goes.
I hate lying and manipulation with a fiery passion these days. I somehow never seem to have less of it in my life. It seeps through. I can do all the work in the world and it still wafts through the air. I pick up on it like a bloodhound, get called crazy for my troubles, and become spun like a top.
Then it’s my reaction to the abuse that becomes criticized. How I save myself. Acts of violence even after all weapons have been put down.
A full surrender…..
Untangling myself from the mess of misperception. The very place I seek help from only becomes another source of misunderstanding. This I’m told is frequently peoples experiences in counseling.
Some counseling misunderstandings cost dearly. Those are the people meant to protect. We trust them more.
Thank God, the windows, the walls, whatever, that I finally learned that lesson. Those legs are still wobbly but they stand firm, shakes and all.
Listening to a counselor try to reason out why it’s difficult to apologize, rather than get a layer deeper to understanding. Don’t try and fix it, that’s ego, try and understand it and find the art to show the inhabitants of that magical safe space, the one space they are committed to listening, that’s safe enough.
Wouldn’t it just be easier to apologize?! What must it be like in a family without being able to do that?! Gee, you think?! Maybe first check what kind of family the person came from 101. Then add their experiences. These are not excuses they are understanding.
To help someone understand themselves by being understanding and compassionate. That borders on the miraculous.
Understanding is salve and balm. Cooling and soothing to the burning hot infected wounds. The disease has metastasized by now. I fall to my knees.
A human walking talking defense mechanism, who struggles inside her own life, and clears up misunderstandings for others, because of the knowledge she’s gathered. This process was not trivial.
A light warrior with a constant stream of dark thoughts about herself. That’s how I’ve kept my humility, it’s kept me. Trapped. Prisoner of war. I’m working on a different kind now. A kind with a wise guide rather than a harsh task master.
The war rages on.
A tear slowly drops down a child’s cheek. They know better. They know war can be replaced with love. But some people will always love war, more than peace. And some have a constant battle within. It’s those that know the value on peace. And there are those that never will.
One priest who couldn’t control himself all those years ago would ensure my abuse continued throughout the span of my life. One depraved religious crazy has had such an impact on my life. That’s what happens when you damage a child. You fucker. There’s a special place in hell for you.
I would never protect the adult over the child’s pain, it’s something I need to stay mindful of in my office because it’s easier to do than you think. We don’t want to be uncomfortable, don’t want to believe in monsters.
Counselors are constantly faced with the truth they are alive and well living right among us. The rest of the population would prefer to cover it’s eyes, and to create routine and distraction. Live your best life. Not everyone has that privilege.
I may serve the literary muse, but even a romantic heart knows, that’s the biggest ruse.
How can you damage a child? How can you break their trust and spirit before they even begin. The nausea turns to sickness. I can’t watch this shit because I’ve lived enough. Their spirit won’t be free again until death. When they can dream again.
Even I know some things break beyond repair and I’m in the healing business. And I’m not God or whomever. I’m just a person with a lot of knowledge that didn’t consent. It feels that way when I feel angry. But according to Julie I did exactly that, and those lost children did too?!
I don’t know.
I don’t care how much meaning can be made from suffering, breaking the spirit and trust in a child, watching the playful go out of them. It tastes metallic. I clench my jaw until my teeth press into my gums with the pain it being locked down inside somewhere and continuously misunderstood.
Because one human couldn’t control his cravings. Because he believed he was living as God intended. Incorrect belief systems in the hands of the wrong people keep the war waging. And hedging your bets is the biggest sin of all. Manipulating both sides. Agememnon.
I need an Achilles. With maybe a few less hair tosses lol. His destiny was his justification to fight mens wars, so perhaps not. He had to be arrogant. Does anyone have to be? One foot on earth, one with his mother. See, even Achilles has mommy issues.
When you’re locked down in a trauma mechanism it sure feels that way. Education, time, commitment, and determination help.
Can you break threads of destiny (would you want to) or are we all just deluded puppets after all.
I’ll leave it to the great philosophers, for I am just a good enough mother down on her knees praying to be forgiven for what she didn’t know, and still doesn’t.
One more circle around the block, then my coffee, my reward. My journal, my oxygen. Then clients. Then a soft safe space to rest before it all begins again.
I remember it all too well and Taylor Swift’s Clean were on repeat this morning.
Despite the repeated migraines, nausea, joint pain, and other afflictions, I had to get out and walk this morning. To move some energy. My thoughts were dark and intrusive. I’ve been clenching my jaw and tossing and turning.
There’s a combination of distressing things happening currently, and all around that is regular every day life. Life that I love. The distress threatens to swallow, but it can’t with this spirit. It’ll never break my spirit. Et Lux Intenebris Lucet.
An ex lover and partner’s mother is actively dying. In one year’s time cancer has ravaged her. I had no idea how something like this would feel. The memories it would walk me through. I’ve never been so close to death before. I never realized how entirely I love, and that no longer being connected to the people never removes it. It just exists there.
It helps me to experience myself as loving and I need that right now with everything else I’m going through. The threat of parental alienation is real. I was programmed to always believe it was me, that’s bad, wrong, causing things. And while I’m by no means perfect my perception of myself has been the biggest battle in my life.
It’s plugged right in. People have plugged right in to my trauma and taken over where the previous left off, and the worst part is it felt like home. Love that wasn’t love at all, but a mask for insecurity, a bizarre attempt at control, a lot of things. But not love.
The impending loss of this woman who was a mother to me, one of very few, surrogate mothers. Who cried as I wore a wedding dress. Who loved my children and I…. sits like a stone in my stomach. I am heavy, foggy, and struggling with focus.
I burst into tears to her and her husband when I asked permission to marry their daughter and I meant it. I meant it. I didn’t mean to be the way I was, to not have room for anyone else’s feelings to exist. To be consumed inside my mind. To not stay. Those I didn’t mean. There was a lot I didn’t understand much less meant.
She is happily married now to a person who is well suited and she’s happy. She still loves my children and her partner holds that connection sacred. So they visited a few weeks back. I was nervous and they handed me their little one. Welcoming. Another baby I wasn’t able to have with a woman.
They are about to have their second, any day, while any day the glue and the matriarch will take her last breath. Vibrant, laughing, alive, kind, loving, Karen. It is unthinkable. I cannot even think it because what comes with this will be all manner of intrusive thoughts of myself or my loved ones going like this.
I stare numbly at the wall.
It’s almost show time. The time I show up for my client’s and give all I’ve got until I run out. My energy, focus, love, wisdom. What meaning would my life have without this exchange. It is not a question, it’s a statement. It’s everything. The sharing of knowledge that could make a moment of passing even a tiny bit lighter. I hope..
I hope for the family who is saying goodbye that the new lives beginning, at times provide temporary anesthesia for the pain.
Mother daughter relationships are complex. I’m struggling immensely in my own right now. This morning my mind is busy sending it’s energy to my former lover and friend because I know what that connection means to her, and what losses she’s already endured.
In some ways this is one of my first. The first up close death of one of my surrogate mother’s, and a loss to people I love deeply.
When love is true it still exists whether near or far. There is so much of that in my heart right now. Love and loss, the full spectrum.
I am learning it’s just still all right there. Ulay Ulay….
I am grateful for my deep connections and all of the love that’s helped me get connected to myself, every thread is honored.
Twin A begins college today…. Twin B prepares to move out West, a one way ticket for now with so many possibilities, my family is changing. It is a beautiful agony. One that I don’t know if I could have ever prepared for.
There will be a funeral soon. Life is just an endless cycle of birth and death I suppose after all, and this clinician is most concerned with the meaning between the lines and what’s beneath the surface. It’s not a bad way to live. It’s not too shabby.
Remembering and forgetting moments all while simultaneously creating new ones, because never give up is something that I live by. For me there is no other way.
Will you hear my heart tearing when the plane takes off, and the last breath is taken? You never know the last time you’ll see someone, hug them, appreciate their laugh. That’s a lot to be with, that reality.
What I do know today however is that real love never dies. It only transforms and is transforming. What a comforting sentiment amidst all of this existential suffering…..
