Can’t make this up…. I was thinking of Dirty Dancing this morning and boundaries. Right this second I can’t even recall the exact thought (because a lot goes on up here), but Hungry Eyes just came on as soon as I opened this post.
So story time? Maybe. First, I put on a shirt this morning. I felt like looking human because I felt like it, and because admittedly I have new clients coming in today. That’s right I’m going to do some couples work and I’m a little nervous about it. So silly considering my confidence in my gift. However the events of the past couple years could explain my lack of confidence in that arena. But I just never forget that’s in my personal life not my professional one. I never was much of a compartmentalizer, in fact I hardly believe in it.
Anyway I put on a shirt that’s kind of feminine thinking that I wanted to look nice in a way I’m used to viewing as nice, and the shirt is nice. How it looks on the hanger and at the store and how it feels on turn out to be different and if that isn’t a metaphor for everything and life itself. See what I did there 😉
I’m not looking to ask someone else if they like it or not I now know if I want to wear it or not and am going to let it go because it’s not me. And it’s a nice shirt. I’d like it to fit or some external validation to help me to like it. But try as I might (and why would I, that is a million dollar question right now), it doesn’t feel right.
Also a top my to do list is to get some bras that don’t make me want to lose my will to live. That feel comfortable but also I feel good about my figure in. What a challenge already anyway. But how I feel in it has become more important than how I look to someone else because I can’t concentrate on anything if I don’t feel right in my own skin and clothing, and if I’m not who I am.
Getting to know me is starting to become enjoyable rather than a burden, exhausting, impossible, etc. I’m starting to enjoy getting to know me and I just smiled ear to ear as I wrote this so I know it’s true. what a relief. Deep sigh.
The blog post that was brewing this morning was other aspects of who I am and how desperately I want someone who knows that to show up and stay, without me having to do anything besides be me and work on me. And I will hold out for that.
Lately I’ve been sharing this as part of client work, helping them understand when their standards raise as their self love does, that it’s normal to be lonely when you aren’t accepting just anything, and how that’s actually a good thing. I tell myself as I tell them. It’s part of the magic.
I am coming to life, living. It’s been so hard to let go of this old self and the people who have been on the journey who began this, but in letting go I am free to live. I experience freedom. I can’t fix or change anyone or anything but me, and I can enjoy rather than being overwhelmed or daunted by that process.
Anxiety was running so much of my life, and I thought I was through with all of it, but really I was just at another opportunity to level up. This is me. Here I am.
Earlier in a session someone was mentioning how we would rather stick with a terrible president for example than venture into the unknown, because it could be worse and it was making me think of some emotional blackmail I’ve witnessed that connects with this. It’s so sad to me, how people won’t let themselves grow and change in the name of fear and anxiety. It’s brutal. And then I bring myself back to letting go of those feelings because it’s not mine. My work is right here.
Hey spaghetti arms this is my dance space and this is yours….oh hey I wrote my way to it. Boundaries. A dance and no one stepping on anyone’s toes or standing on someone’s feet being whisked around the dance floor. No matter how romantic that may seem. One step two step, and how follow through and self trust are the lessons of this season in my life, and how I’ll never compromise that again. There are plenty of mistakes but that particular lesson is laid down.
Lately in therapy I am confronting my damaged programming and my broken attachment system. It’s humbling and gorgeous and I’m the most me I’ve ever been, and I am enchanted by the work and that infects the rest of my life.
I have my voice in tact now rather than waiting for decisions to be made for me.
I watch my fellow co dependent travelers who would romanticize death if it meant they would permit themselves to relax, or who hope for a car accident to prevent them from having to go into work, rather than feeling the ability to choose and handle the outcome of their choices.
It makes me grateful for my healing to be privileged to witness the space they are currently in. I smile because now I know it isn’t a forever sentence, just a stop along the way.
It’s blog o’clock, my favorite time of the day. I am writing from Provincetown. P-town. Wafting through the memories and thoughts old and new. I’m listening to Feels like Home by Chantal Kreviazuk, vacillating between that version and Bryan Adams and Diana Krall. Sometimes a song just feels like home and if you have to listen to it repeatedly. If you’re me that sometimes happens often.
So far today I’ve watched the sunrise from a new place, gone out to breakfast, and done a ton of walking. My next steps I believe are a shower and to rock my hard earned hairstyle (two years of perfecting that art), and to head for some sunshine on my skin. I think I’ll try to read almost the entire book of Another Day in the Every Day series. I have no need to rush, but allowing myself to get lost in something for as long as I want without judging it, is something I’m working on.
I think of the self conscious version of me I once was in this place. The version who was so uncomfortable in her skin and any semblance of belonging that she got black out drunk and embarrassed herself, and her own chaos was so off putting and she knew it. When all along she carried inside this true self that anyone could and would have enjoyed. So hidden. And I think of the song Creep by RadioHead and how both of those songs came into my awareness. How another fellow co-dependent (narc food) human being, her greatness lost to herself, how we crossed paths and how chaotic that was. The Human Magnet Syndrome by Ross Rosenberg explains this. Two people of this magnetization repel one another, sadly because in truth they would be a really good match. But unhealed selves rarely can be still with their feelings long enough to know that. So here we are.
I think of how she would love this place. Anyone longing to express themselves resonates here I believe. In this case perhaps not even knowing there’s a longing…. that would be too painful to admit, and the waves of pain are intolerable without “a why”. Pain without meaning is simply suffering.
I think of how in the shop window I saw this morning at the HRC store mugs that say established in 1980 and how those also fit the date of births of two greats, and how I’ll shall have to procure a few for my home office to show some pride, perhaps the colors of the rainbow.
I think of how yesterday was National Coming out Day, and how much that process has shaped my brave. I didn’t begin brave, rarely if ever is that some natural thing I don’t think. I think like gene expressions it must be turned on out of necessity. And that is why I can’t hate my story, and also why I strive so hard to get it straight. I think of how I joke forward never straight, when telling directions, and how people tease me about it. And in this moment I think about how not wrong I am in that, with any direction in life. You can go forward without traveling in a straight direction. I just don’t recommend going in circles, as I found the last year of my life, you’ll get dizzy and sick chasing your tail. I said this to a client the other day, that they were chasing their tail and it has stayed in my mind thinking about it. Trapped in a cycle is nowhere fun to be, but sometimes it can be a necessary stepping stone. I guess you have to get tired enough of being angry and dizzy.
Some people never do. That thought makes me sad. The concept of lost souls makes me sad, I still can’t believe it, but it is healthy to accept it when one must, because otherwise suffering.
Ok it’s time for the Bryan Adams version, right after I pee. Also I literally can’t wait to put my feet in the ocean….. EEEEE. I’m very glad I have my Mad Rabbit Tattoo sunscreen, gotta protect my art. My therapist called it a coping mechanism (my tattoos) and I almost judged myself. That was enough to make me pause and think why am I doing this? Should I be? Do I even like them?
Sometimes I find for me that it takes awhile for my feelings to register, making it even more scary to make a huge and permanent decision. I remember years ago a psychic (the real deal yes there is that kind), saying to me that if I want to help people go feed them at a soup kitchen don’t move them into my home. I laugh thinking at this now, for so many reasons. I think don’t marry them until you fully know them would have been sufficient. I didn’t make a mistake in marrying anyone, those all led me to where I am now. I made a mistake in not being committed to myself enough to embody any set of vows. I stated them whilst not being in my body, and despite how I argued to myself over and over how different it was each time, it was NOT. I was not in my body. I was lost somewhere inside my painful mind and a powerful set of coping mechanisms that ran my life.
“We get into the habit of living before we develop the habit of thinking.” Excerpt from the Myth of Sysiphus as learned in philosophy at Gateway Community College, and read along with the Little Prince, a book that would change the direction of my life so entirely. A book that would begin the journey home to myself. So I can be in my body next time I make any vows. For now I just write a lot of them to me, and then break them over and over so I can learn what works and what doesn’t on this path of creativity during this thing we call living.
A created human becomes a creative human, despite the fact that all of that had a forced shutdown, a system override, those many years ago. I am told if that happens in childhood to that degree that the chance of change around certain things is quite literally a miracle. Watch me work. My life IS a miracle, the excavation of this self IS a miracle even when I don’t have the words for it, and occasionally being seen in a more complete way has become many a guidepost to getting me “home”. Feels like home.
I’ll make a home out of me yet, so I can make a home with someone else because I’ll always be a hopeful romantic.
This has derailed and changed shape often throughout the process. Isn’t that always the way. I have an idea, but the writing has a mind of it’s own. As we sync into alignment the words come. They have always been there, and they will always come.
Here in Ptown I am wafting through past selves, outdated versions of me. I weep for that girl who was so lost inside her pain. I weep for that shattered mind, and for the pain that is inevitable in a human experience. I wonder about the luck of the draw and about destiny and about the enormity….
This is what magic today has brought so far, which jogs my memory about time, how I always felt it was running out, how there was never enough, and the pace I moved as a result of being stuck in that speed. Being stuck implies a passivity that is not characteristic of me, so in this case I shall clarify to it took a long time for me to become aware I was a walking talking coping mechanism. It would take a life changing connection that unleashed a lifetime of wounding to rise to the surface.
The perfect drug, the perfect storm…… the perfect ending is that there is no end, only transitions….
If there was a tragedy or disaster you probably wouldn’t know what I was feeling by reaction. Similarly if a really good thing happens it takes me a bit to register how I do feel about it. I have to wait and check my feelings for safety, and what is real, and then decide on a reaction. I have to peek out of the foxhole of myself for awhile first. And this process can easily be misunderstood for something else. It’s a difficult aspect of me that I never asked for.
I’m quite aware you’re just supposed to naturally feel what you feel. That safe process that most don’t know as a privilege was never a part of my wiring. And I always feared it meant something was wrong with me until I could get the knowledge and information to share about myself. Until I could believe I could be loved with all of this. I didn’t even see me how could anyone else.
And that’s the last thing on my mind these days I’ve never been more alone in my life, and somehow that’s not killing me. My phone barely dings and it’s never that high inducing looking forward to it being someone special. And for me after all these years there is a peace in this simplification of living. At first it was boring and meant I wasn’t special etc, but every road I went down led to less me, and that wasn’t an option.
So here I am becoming a solid self. Not rigid but solid. There’s a difference. Solid in that say what you mean and mean what you say kind of way.
I am reading Another Day, the second book in the Every Day series. It’s from the girl he is in love withs perspective, and boy it’s impossible to refute that the right books at the right time cross our paths. I won’t get judgy on myself about this being in high school, because really I have rebirthed and am now reparenting the younger parts of me, so we can all amalgamate into one big happy family.
I got Halloween pillow covers that say Dead and Breakfast, the black flame candle co, and a few others. I like them. One piece at a time this house will become a home, not the way I thought it would, but nevertheless.
I have finally snapped into gear with the administrative tasks of my life. I finally requested a rate increase from Cigna, fixed a billing issue with BCBS that has many claims in the ether. It’s ok one big pay day when you have to play hunt and find w your money. It’s like a fun game :p I mean I’ve never liked easy right?
These days I value peace of mind above all else. Peaceful inside usually peaceful outside. With the exception of the never ending battle w my first born over his bedroom. Battle of the wills and struggling to balance relationship that is healthy between us also. All as one person.
I can get better only a little at a time and I need to be ok with that.
Friendships ebb and flow as people navigate their own lives, but they are solid and stable.
I am on the brink of having “adult” relationships with my children. That change is not easy. They are no longer children and not yet adults. They are in between and I am in the meantime. In my meantime things are so quiet that life is expanded to all the delicious simple pleasures, like the home smelling good and feeding loved ones. I have settled down into the value of that without needing to force something that felt unnatural for so long.
Give me a home cooked meal, the chatter of my children and loved ones (at a dull roar of course;)) a cozy set of slippers, blanket, and mug of hot something. A fire crackling perhaps. …. Bliss.
Last year I could not crack a box to decorate or breathe oxygen and my children yelled at me and I heard it as personal. I didn’t hear I miss you. I heard you’re not doing your job well and I saw red.
This year I’m going to enjoy every little moment.
This year I’m imagining what kind of parent I want to be as they age in terms of being involved if they want me to. I imagine what kind of grandma I’ll be, and how consistent and what role I’ll have and I am excited.
I never knew how much I could love being a mom because I never had or stood a chance, and I’ve done the unthinkable and rewritten my stars and their very histories. All of our lives could have looked so different. There were so many forks I could have taken that would have led to less for them.
And I’m just getting started, really just beginning in so many ways.
For now I’m going to read my books, I can make my goal on the Good Reads app, love that thing. I’m 10 behind for the year so I’m thinking the everyday series and then the wrinkle in time series and actually finish it, and then East of Eden and perhaps I’ll finish The Midnight Garden on audiobook on my upcoming vacation.
I’m still vacillating between don’t leave me alone with me that long and sheer and utter bliss thinking how hard I pushed for that alone time even when I was stable and loved. The grass IS greener where you water it. For now there’s plenty of my own lawn to do that with. My writer self needs tending to, to coax her out of her dormancy. Writers are sensitive creatures, creativity flits like a fickle butterfly. It alights where and when it wants to and the energy guides it.
You have to make the conditions, make an environment that is suitable and welcoming to the work. Trying to force it has never worked. You have to listen and adjust, listen and adjust course again and again. If you can listen…. You will hear your knowing. But nothing can ever be forced in the realm of authenticity.
I recognize now I always had to force myself to even be ok… and I got so used to that way of being. It felt impossible for things to be different, but from this side I can assure you it is anything but.
“It’s never too late to be who you should have been”
The pain has woken me up. Or maybe it’s the words that woke me up. Or did the pain wake me up to the words.
Until the events of the past couple of years I never realized how much pain I was in all the time. I wouldn’t have realized anymore because I fashioned a soothing and capable self for others as a means of survival. I must have found it made the pain stop.
I had an epiphany as I was awoken at 4 am out of a dead sleep that as I only had myself to rely on I decided to make her so attuned and soothing to others because that also made me feel safe. As I soothed another I was soothed, and I recognized they were comforted, but I couldn’t recognize myself.
I’ve lived my whole life trying to make the pain stop in what I thought of as a healthy way. And perhaps it’s a lot healthier than where I could be. I’m driven intensely almost all the time to find ways of existing that make the pain stop. The anxious thoughts, the many physical symptoms I deal with regularly. The fact I can’t concentrate to save my life and my mind feels broken.
I found ways around the shattered self that lives inside to the point I was afraid I was a sociopath. Because I carefully select an emotion based on practicality before I’ll let myself feel it. I need to know if it’s safe and acceptable to others. If it will bring me belonging or desertion, warmth or isolation.
Are there others like me? Where are the other people who raised themselves, lived through terror constantly, and made a strong self in the outside and spent their life afraid they were bad or wrong? Where are the other people that coped the way I have ?
The things I found to make the pain stop weren’t numbing, they were the opposite, tuning in not tuning out. I wanted to make my mother’s torment stop. I knew that. And my aunts and my grandparents , and my little brother’s, and all the other chaos that swirled around me. I was determined. I am nothing if not determined. I clamp down like steel, my iron will and my nostrils flaring. I was years before they ever did so in a calm primal manner that meant anything but terror.
The problem with fashioning a self out of many trial and error tries, to make sure you don’t become what you’re from, is that your true self is lost. Many people don’t have their true selves in tact for one reason or another. I’m far from alone in the pain of being pathologically lonely.
The problem with all of this above is you can never really trust what’s real and what isn’t. And you’re vulnerable to the same fantastical thinking that probably took you to a safer place. See how I slip out of first person when it gets close to the wound?
My beautiful writer and dreamer mind, the childlike one preserved on ice betrayed me a couple of years ago. Is this real is the first thing I asked my therapist in the first session. The one where I would ask if I had to choose between passion and safety and what each of those things meant. What I was referring to was a feeling that shook the tectonic plates of my world.
The feeling was as real as you and me. What meaning I attached to the feeling and why was the ultimate betrayal. Escapism at its finest. Why couldn’t I just be a gamer at this point. That wouldn’t have cost me my sanity. Or maybe even an alcoholic. The jury is still out on if that would have.
I think I was trying to recover a sense of faith in something along the way, and I really clung to spirituality. Everything happens for a reason I bought into that when it came to this. And as it turned out it did, but the reason I was so very wrong about. And once you’ve felt so very wrong so many times and for so long, the joy, the manufactured joy, begins to get further and further away.
The only thing that brought me relief in childhood was being brought into other families and feeling seen, and the possibility of belonging. I became childlike and wide eyed. So when I attended a couple of family events and felt I belonged there, with someone telling me also that I did, and they wanted and saw me, I became attached to that notion and all of the players involved.
The intoxicating mixture of the words expressed and the want coupled with the family gatherings at the right time of loneliness and the hook was set, and the story was laid down, and I wanted to believe that magic more than anything.
As it turns out when you set out to find what to believe in, and it’s never in who you are, you’re in for a lot of pain. No foundation for me knowing who I was got laid down. So I’ve flitted from here to there trying to make the pain stop.
The thing that does that the most for me is touch. Touch forces me to be reminded I exist and I’m less likely to float away in my mind. It grounds and comforts. It is something I spent a long time not understanding why I didn’t care for it when I longed so much. These days I can be touched by kindness, even a smile and it gets me through.
And once I did figure that out nothing was going to prevent me from that joy. I was determined and racing through life because I wanted a story book story. The years together, the wedding where I am celebrated. I am never celebrated anywhere. It was the opposite. So when the attention is on me in that capacity I wriggle with discomfort, but also desperately want that, with the wanting of a child.
Whenever I started to get serious with someone and attempted to piece together some of my memories to explain to them my life it always felt unreal. Like a lie. I felt like I had made it up. I know I didn’t, but even the telling feels like that can’t be a thing. It must have made it up it must be me. I felt like snakes were crawling all over my body and I was going to vomit. And desperately I wondered if they were going to want to choose me once they knew. so I stopped trying. It’s too dark and I know instinctively people don’t want to believe things like that exist. Conceal don’t feel… don’t let it show. A child knows who the world (parent) needs them to be. We are much more attuned.
I never even got to know that because I moved things along so quickly out of panicky desperation every single time, all the while looking exactly the opposite on the outside so sure. Is it any wonder I can’t trust myself.
Part child, part adult…. My own personal science experiment. Let’s try this or that and see how it feels. But I don’t know how I feel. Let me look at how other people seem to feel is that how I find out?
Why am I so different from other people? I’d imagine the answering of this question will be a part of my work. I feel like my therapist would say Christina you know why, and I’d stare blankly that way I do when my brain runs out of knowledge and explanations and I long to just feel.
I very much veered off of the poetic musings about pain that my mind made me wake up for. That post would have been beautiful. It split immediately off into my thinking mind grappling to explain it make sense of it, and left the feeling.
I’ve lived my whole life trying to make the pain stop while also “being a good person”. Or feeling like I needed to feel like one. As it turns out I’m all too human to be a good person all the time. I’m a person who feels the feelings of others when I’m at a comfortable distance. As it turns out once I’m up close the stakes are too high on that and I can camp down immediately and be completely blank, and therefore banish myself from my own graces as a result, rather than trying to understand. U
nless of course I can be soothing to that person, then it’s the perfect drug for the both of us.
In my life time bridging the gaps of understanding for others split off from themselves or their loved ones…. It stops the pain. When someone outside of you sees you with the most generous perspective and truly understands, it lets the pain out. The pain of not being understood. I put the words together to help the person understand how their coping has been shaped and how their trauma changed their stars, and how to find meaning in that, that at bare minimum can lessen the pain.
The scarcity I’ve lived with is trying to get the pain to stop, and the irony is to become connected to myself so I can have a foundation I’ve been tasked with being directly in it until I become real.
Until I become visible to myself, and develop my own consistency outside of anyone else and my own self. Not develop that’s what I did before. Uncover what was already there. “It’s never too late to be who you should have been.”
Pain itself has changed and shaped me in so many ways, as well as the things I tried to do to get the pain to stop.
I have learned if you get or are in enough pain for too long you’ll do almost anything to make it stop. There’s no calm reasoning and then you lose faith in yourself to be consistent and dependable and it’s just a cycle of pure hell.
I’m in so much pain it’s like being burned alive, and you’d never even know if you looked at me, although I’m quite sure I look different now, that now it’s beginning to show in the lines of my face and in my weary bones.
It wakes me up and memories float in and out without my consent. I can only sift through the ashes, as the tears make them stick to my face. I toss and turn all night some nights and others I sleep soundly and it is the day that is the nightmare. A gauntlet full of memories that pull me back to a place that harms and I have to start all the way over.
One little fragment at a time I recover myself from all of this, all the while having no idea who I’ll be and rather than the idea of having a solid foundation being exciting, I just get to be viciously aware it should not be happening at this time in my life. That I’m all out of order, because I get to live seeing that confusion and loneliness on my children’s faces. They’ve had to fashion selves too, in the absence of me.
What’s normal and what isn’t during this time ? How do I relate? What’s safe and what isn’t? What’s right and what’s wrong? Chaos and anxiety.
These days my strategy is finding calm and soothing from inside myself. Finding the impossible.
All the intellectualizing falls away and only I emerge. A singular woman with simple details and a complex set of coping strategies.
Life is simple right now. I sit on my couch and marvel at how on fire my mind was and how on edge all of my senses were a mere year ago today.
Today I watched Bourne Identity, with my son, after clients. I ate comforting fall type food. I stayed comfortable, and I napped hard. Hard deep sleep. I browsed hotels for the girls and I since the air bnb cancelled, annoying, but not life altering. Something better must be out there.
I sift and waft through memories, but no longer do I feel the battles and emotions of life and death. What is this variety of living. This might be my heaven, even in the absence of all I thought I wanted.
Utter groundlessness. Only moments of impact. I am just calm. There is nothing else. When I’m not calm, I’m really not calm. I’m a triggered frantic wild primal animal. Thankfully I am rarely that anymore. Life doesn’t burn as bright either, however it’s settling into something real, something spherical, no jagged edges. Something wholesome and good.
An assassin of the senses who is finally allowed to retire. “It’s over”. What is it? Possibility? Is that dead? No! But all possibilities thats are not healthy and transparent and what you see is what you get. All of that is over.
I’m also reading, because of course I am, a book called Every day. And a part I just read inspired this post. “I have to decide the importance of each and every memory. I only remember a handful of people, and in order to do that, I have to hold tight, because the only repetition available- the only way I am going to see them again – is if I conjure them in my mind. “
“I choose what to remember, and I am choosing Rhiannon. Again and again, I am choosing her, I am conjuring her, because to let go for an instant will allow her to disappear. The same song that we heard in Justin’s car comes on – and if only I could, I’d make a deal with God….”
“I feel the universe is telling me something. And it doesn’t even matter if it’s true or not. What matters is that I feel it, and believe it. The enormity rises within me. The universe nods along to the songs.”
In some ways I feel like I’m office space that I have been hypnotized. I just walk around dazed wondering what to do next. Unable to get extremely stressed about details, and also unable to feel intensely good either.
I look out over the landscape of my life, At everything I’ve conquered, every possible ending beginning and everything in between.
I live in the present now, which means I live in moments rather than in stories. I look around most of the time and can’t even believe the possibilities or that this is my home and I have the means to make any decisions. I forget that when I become instinctively overwhelmed from old programming. When I forget that I have stability and options.
I’m working on refinancing this home: I can do that now. I’m looking at the possibilities more than the devastation and somehow that doesn’t feel real. I must be missing something. This is all mine. I created it and it’s stable. If I need a new refrigerator I can pay for it in full. I don’t need to take out a line of credit and wonder how I’ll pay the bill.
I must be missing something. I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it probably will, it just won’t be what I think. It won’t be what’s on the radar and that’s scary.
Deep breath, and one at a time.
What unforeseen thing will happen that is unimaginable. It isn’t possible that fairy tales exist, only moments, and I’ve already had so many. Could things actually get good beyond my wildest dreams, as I do.
If you had seen what I came from. I never imagined I’d have all these adult choices to make, or that I’d even live this long. Now my overwhelm is from abundance and not scarcity.
Now I can what if over all the choices and no one to bounce it off of. Why is it so impossible to believe I’ll do a great job, beyond great even.
I’m getting sleepy now. I didn’t expect that because I napped. I’m so tired lately. I do need to move my body and get some energy, that’s highly out of whack right now, but I will.
I have this beautiful home, these beautiful children, and this whole world, and life says that could change at any time. I can’t be too fragile for difficult circumstances, however I can also still believe in dreams.
I think of the things people regret, and I’m listening to that in the Midnight Library, and of course it’s having me take inventory. I realize in my life there’s very little to regret. I was so lost in all of that. I’ve made mistakes, I have issues yes, but nothing so much worse than anyone else.
In my 40 years I’ve become a mother, on that first day, those first days, and every day after. I didn’t wait for perfect conditions. And for better or for worse I’ve left a legacy. I’d like to think better. I’ve gone after a meaningful career and found my way to something I love doing, and it’s in no way over. I can still do so much with it. And love I’ve worked as hard as any human ever has to crack that code, with all my attachment wounds.
I’ve done therapy. I’ve lived in many different states. I’ve met people. I’ve taken risks. I’ve tried and failed at many things, and succeeded as well. If I were to get that phone call tomorrow, no portion of my live is unlived. Nothing has stopped me:
The rest of this is literally just getting to choose what I want and having that choice and being capable to make it for the right reasons and in the right ways.
Everyone is all strapped in tightly together and come what may….
Come what may.
There isn’t a single stone of my soul unturned. I am not afraid. I have comforts. I am not dying any longer burning alive in fear alone in this over sized bed. I can go to bed at night and be comfortable. Don’t get my wrong it’s not my preference, but I also don’t need to abandon any parts of my soul to go after what I want.
Empowering.
I went back and got all my childhood pieces and United them, and I don’t need anyone to understand this journey, because the right people already do.
Watch me live now…. My life is beautiful. I burn off insecurity by the second. There is nothing left to fear but fear itself, which sucks the joy out of life.
I saw my energy healer Julie in her new home yesterday. The drive was nice other than the nausea that has been plaguing me. My crohns is not wonderful right now. In October we shall get an inside look on that. My favorite. Colonoscopy number six. Is that like mambo number five? Honestly I’m so much more surrendered to navigating this disease and able to honor my path with it.
I loved the old healing space so it was pleasant to not even notice, now that I’m thinking about it, the difference, because it truly is about the person and the work. I’m less about the space although it’s nice to make it homey. The work happens through the person.
I am reflecting on my first energy healing and how rabid and wild running my mind was. I could barely sit still and when my body was, my mind was racing. A mine field of disaster ridden and frantically paced thinking. Brain in overdrive. I am so very grateful to be healing and have it be so different now.
It’s nice to find myself ahead of my own game. I had shared with her some older wounds I had really already worked through, but I was afraid as always I hadn’t. It was so lovely for that to be reflected in the table work. Holy shit I can relax now and I can receive. I went to be loved and nurtured and I could not ask for more support. We find our tribe. Whether or not we start out with them, we can find them. It takes a courageous and pure heart though. At least in my experience.
The most important thing Julie said to me was that I am committed. How do I not see this about myself, just as my piano teacher said I was consistent (until I wasn’t). I haven’t been able to touch the piano, I was so lost in the darkness. But I’m ready soon to keep going with that.
I am thinking now of the past four years in the bath recovering my self from the depths. How that’s what it took to access me, that much quiet, warmth, security, etc. 4-5 years in the tub rebirthing myself. My baths are much less frequent because they are now a joy, then they were a necessity. Should I not be lost in the depths of my own suffering.
Over the past year my therapist reminds me that I’m all in…. Dedicated to my work and clients. When I’m afraid all the time I’m doing something wrong or I’ll do something bad. No, bad things happened to me repeatedly most of my life, and I’ve taken those and used them to become my most authentic self.
The tragedy truly was never seeing the reflection of what this life has created. Which is a loving human being who is always spreading knowledge and love. Generous with knowledge and love. I could never see myself at all really, let alone well, and in that dark and triggered space is where true hell exists.
It isn’t the battle of good and evil outside of us that needs contending with, it’s the inside one. What we will believe about our character and capabilities, the reason for things, and the security of our gifts within the world.
Heaven or hell truly is a state of mind, not a state of being. This however is no easy task to reconcile with. But how how the lost will ask. I am the lost too, so I know.
Heaven for me is a moment when I connect with my children, a moment when I see the beauty in these things and in myself. Heaven is the food that has been made with love, and or shared with loved ones.
Hell is being exiled from the beauty of oneself, by a shattered perception, a lost identity or sense of meaning. Hell is judgment, fear, misunderstanding, hate…. Hell is a separation from our divinity. Divine purpose.
I am the fallen and the risen. I am me and I am you. We are all one.
Heaven is a pot of warm soup, the house smelling nice. Making someone’s cold feel warm again. Heaven is being held by someone who loves you, and being held can be so many things. Being listened to, understood, shown up for, loved consistently with great care. And even to be fought with, if both parties are fighting to understand the other and fairly.
Heaven is watching my kids learn the world in a way that isn’t filled with terror. Belinda Carlisle has it right 😉 oooo heaven is a place on earth.
Heaven is the trees in my backyard in bloom, it is my cozy office where people show me the parts of them that are hurting, and also share their successes as well.
I have created heaven on earth in the form of my life. I’m fortunate enough to have crawled my way out of hell enough times to be able to appreciate it, and that makes all the difference.
I know I will not occupy this space for long. The wide open expanse of this peacefulness. Not because I can’t, but because my mission is learning. I enjoy it. Now don’t get me wrong suffering does not need to be inherent in that process, however realistic expectations are important. That natural ebb and flows of the tides of a life where the emotions are in tact and have not been abandoned.
I’m excited to see what work is able to open up in me as a result of my commitment. My studying and perseverance, and even more excited to tackle the rest of this living securely attached to my true self.
I am so far from the deep pathological loneliness that has plagued me most of my life. I desperately wanted to cling to my suffering story to validate my existence. What I learn from Julie is I don’t need to validate something in that way.
I am already divine.
I vow to commit to joy in my life rather than suffering and I understand the undertaking that this is.
Unhealthy love claims lives, healthy love saves them…..
I have always believed in the power of love, and this portion of my life has been learning the limits of it, and of my capacity for enduring what should never be endured.
This lesson has been one of the hardest and one of the greatest. Coming to terms with myself in a fair and balanced way while also understanding what happened to me in the past and in the present.
I am coming to believe our psyches literally prevent us from accepting the existence of certain things. Perhaps that is what mythology has derived from, the human yearning to make sense of an experience.
Knowledge is power. It eventually can put the pieces back together of something broken. If that broken thing is a story, then we can see either the devastation or the transformation of a human being.
So what makes the difference?! The intention behind it. The true intention not the stated one. Someone once told me we judge other people on their actions and ourselves on our intentions. The very definition of manipulation I suppose.
To simplify the complexity: does the person care about the well being of another, and to what extent and under what circumstances…. Wait see even I’m doing it. No Christina. Does the person care about the well being of another ?
We care as much as we are capable of based on what we have been taught, our values, and a complicated elixir of our innate temperament mixed in.
Where things can go really really poorly is when it’s obvious the impact you’re having is negative and not only do you keep doing, but you’re gaining supply from it all while continuing to shout poor you.
This is the lowest of the low. And when a person high in empathy consistently identifies emotionally with that persons wounded parts (because of their own), and forgets the ways they are different, the troubles arise.
One exploits with no genuine desire to follow through correcting their behavior so it no longer harms. The other painfully devoid of support and resources keeps trying to get out of the issue by using the same thinking that started it and failing.
The victor is the person who stays in the fire of their own mistakes long enough for it to change them.
My programming is immense. My coping mechanisms are survivalist in so many ways, however I can finally be able to see who I actually am, from seeing who I am not.
I’m thinking of Stephen King a lot lately and wondering what motivated him to attempt to capture the dark sides of humanity and also the hope, in his landscapes and characters. What happened to that man? Who was he really ? He sublimated and I’m attempting to do the same.
I tried to protect my kids from anything I could become from scarcity and survival instincts by keeping them with family systems that felt safe, however my self was not able to develop. It was frozen somewhere on ice. And now I’m so out of chronological order and so aware, that shame threatens my forever separation from others.
So hyper sensitive to threat and criticism and then feeling awkward and lonely, the perfect food for a predator. And who looks crazy?! The victim that’s who. Driven to the point of insanity purposely. The victim looks crazy.
I’ve never been able to accept what happened to me then or now, because it makes me feel like it’s me. That is what abuse does. People incapable of loving in a healthy manner perpetuate suffering that is almost incomprehensible to the human psyche.
We, including doctors, counselors, people in privilege and power, don’t want to believe it when it’s right in front of our face.
Abuse
So we tell stories. And we learn about character and behavior through story that we hope a man sets forward in motion those qualities in him that are protective and virtuous in nature.
If anything I’m so protective that sometimes ends up harmful because I’m easily triggered and who to protect in what way or moment can become very overwhelming for me, and as a result of that overwhelm I act out of character and then doubt myself.
This whole process is clearing. Along with it the digestive issues, headaches, tight muscles, nausea and nauseating levels of self doubt and low self worth.
The not enough of it all. That season in my life is over. There will always be scars, but never again will I abandon my own knowing to feel loved in a moment, while not even being known let alone loved.
I didn’t think it could happen to me again….. I didn’t think it actually did the first time, the abuse.
I sound crazy right ?!
I assure you that I am not and I am. A lifetime of neglect and poisonous manipulation will make anyone crazy.
Google the symptoms of complex ptsd for a very good description of what it feels like to be “crazy”.
Do you know what crazy actually is to me? Someone who doesn’t listen to someone they love when the person says “this is hurting me”.
I vow to always listen to myself. I wanted marriage vows to save me from myself and the life I had. That security of belonging. Instead I just keep becoming visible to myself in a realistic light. My light and my dark, and I assure you all of it is enough and that I’ve had enough abuse for a lifetime.
What heals is holding myself accountable to listening and being gentle with those I love and continuing to invest in healing and believing in myself.
Enough. I am enough and I’ve had enough ….. enough ..
How is it possible saying goodbye to an office is like saying goodbye to a lover? It’s saying good bye to a time, to a place, to a different self, and to a thousand memories. I became a counselor in this space. This is a second home to me. A refuge. I thought I would be ok, but now that I’m actually doing it I am overcome with emotions.
I don’t know if I can…. Perhaps I’ll just keep it forever. Eccentric. Why does it feel like ripping off my limbs? Nothing about this is ok. I had so many dreams for this office. So many big dreams. So many dreams in general. I couldn’t have bargained for all the changes I’ve made, and that have been made for me. For how this all feels, the changes it has made in me.
Writing in this office cuts through my insides like a cold blade. My guts wrench. I spent the first half of my life being able to Men in Black shiny thing myself (erase my memory) and begin over and over. And now my past haunts me daily. I sleep terrible and throughout my life that hasn’t been an issue since I was little.
I just want to run out of this space, leave everything and never come in it again. How does anyone do this grief thing. I was in this office when we found out we lost the second identical twin boy. We were supposed to graduate to the regular doctor that week. What the actual fuck. Searing hot. Scars burning. I found out over a screen with an adolescent in my waiting room: I thought I was doing the right thing as a provider. Only appointment I ever missed. It doesn’t matter now.
What matters is how fresh all of the pain is and the only difference is it doesn’t drag me under anymore, or to versions of myself I don’t like. I’m learning grace.
I have thousands of memories in this office, some burn brighter than others, all of them legitimate and a huge piece of my history. I am aching. My heart is aching.
I had hairapy this morning. It’s beautiful out. I have hope in my heart. But one more goodbye? I don’t know if I can handle one more goodbye. Almost six years this relationship with this space and it’s time to let go.
I am taking a vacation in October, a whole week, just me. I am so happy about that. I have needed this for so long. I’m finally making a home within myself. It does get better. All of the stinging is still there, but I can breathe again in so many ways. Lean into the sharp edges.
I have no idea what the rest of my life will look like and that’s oddly comforting as the terror releases it’s grip on me.
I finished Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids last night. I finish things now. I just keep getting back up after I get knocked down. The second sentence is old, the one before it new.
I stay.
I can’t be here anymore with this legal pad and pen staring at me. I’m going to throw up. Please …..
I remember every second of every moment in this office. Every single one. I can replay them like some fucked up episode of black mirror. The blessing and the curse of high sensitivity and a nearly photographic memory, never mind sensory memory. I can close my eyes and always access all of it.
My eyes are burning hot and wet, the tears trickle and drip. Ok no more for now. I’ll come back to this later. I don’t want to miss Chip’s visit.
I want to do fall things. To watch Hocus Pocus and Beetlejuice and to go to ciderys. It’s later and I’m utterly exhausted. I’m going back in forth between reading The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz, and writing in my journal.
I’m very sleepy and deciding if I have enough time to nap before picking up my curbside order at Bj’s and making dinner with twin A.
This day couldn’t be any more beautiful. The wind is gently teasing the leaves on the trees and they are rustling with joy. Dancing and talking to one another happily. They are good company. This house continues to become a home, not unlike how I continue to become a human. Visible to myself, friend even.
Slow and steady wins the race. I’m glad I’m no longer in the rat race.
My new ink is in the itchy phase on my elbow it’s bending and driving me nuts. I relocated my office lamps to my bedroom, well one for now, I’ll need to make another trip. So hoping that feels a little more homey. I brought some of my artwork home as well. Bittersweet.
My office is a mess currently so maybe I’ll spend some time on straightening that. So many projects. One at a time and just finding joy in them is the goal versus became overwhelmed and being down a rabbit hole of anxiety. No point in that.
Everything is quiet these days, well besides the teenagers. I’ve never been so still. It’s so peaceful and so lonely. But nothing at all feels rushed or chaotic and for that I am grateful in my bones.
I’ve been doing little outings and day trips. Last night I had dinner at Gusto in Milford. I had never been before. Sal my piano teacher played there and the staff was so great. My server was so nice. I was able to be at peace by myself. I didn’t look around much at all I don’t have the gathering of families together. I thought of the opportunity this was to be with my thoughts and that there will be plenty of time for gatherings and I have plenty of warm and loving connections.
My next outing I want to do is to go to Bad Seed Cidery, it’s on Pancake Hollow rd in Highland NY, nearly 2 hours away.
I added a couple more Stephen King books to my collection from used bookstores. I will spend time with me until and then after because, I enjoy my own company. There’s so many things to do and see and I never realized it before. I was completely blacked out.
Lately I’ve been spending time with my neighbor. She has a new puppy and she’s so cuddly and cute and I don’t have to be responsible for her. Just two women; each alone, living in these giant houses next to one another. She’s so strong. I admire her tremendously. We enjoy one another’s company. And isn’t that what it’s all about anyway.
I’m between lives and selves right now and it’s a strange but not unhappy place to be. My mind continues to wander in and out of the many memories and stories of the past few years. I’ll just keep attempting to capture them and my journey and immortalize it via the page.
Onward….
Ps I think I’ll watch Mermaids tonight or Julie and Julia. I’m in a comfort mode, not lost in it fortunately, but it’s a lovely place to visit occasionally.
I’m watching ATypical with my oldest. We are catching him up on episodes one and two of the newest season. The kids and I watched the first few seasons, what feels like years ago. So it’s nostalgic and warm to be watching this now.
Comfort. This is a lot of my goal right now. As I learn healthier ways to do it, I realize how unhealthy some of my old coping was. This is a lot to sit with. A lot to sit with.
As life starts heating up to a boiling point I’m able now to marvel at how I take hard circumstances, criticism, etc, and use it to push me to keep making myself better at a reasonable pace. Well the whole reasonable pace thing is new 😉 as many of you know, lol. This is making me think of how I resonate with Black Widow, the new movie. Pain only makes you stronger, it can, but it can also make you crazy if you can’t make sense of it. If there is no structure that is safe to heal within. My current safe healing structure is friends who know me when I’m lost to myself and a therapist that models good boundaries and is objective and consistent. Safety. Deep breath.
I would have lost my mind long ago if not foe therapy and my own healing process with writing.
Truly an epic battle of light and dark inside of me, and I won’t give up the fight or outsource my self knowing to anyone else.
So today is my beloved Sunday. I’m too in my head and not enough into a project and moving around so I need to get out some energy in that way shortly or to do some walking. After Chip’s visit I will.
Today is filled with reflecting, writing, and reading.
Today I reflect on an unhealthy counseling relationship and the damage it has caused, and how dark things have been in our world for the last while. How to turn these crisis into opportunities for growth and bonding and using a creative approach.
Today I’m going to share with you how counseling can go wrong. It can go wrong when Clinicians are trying to juggle too much and or as a result not having continuity of sessions and making sure to validate change. If we don’t catch and validate change it doesn’t become reinforced and if it doesn’t then it won’t stay (stick).
I’m going to be working on some counseling models in the up and coming days. Well I already am, but talking about it here.
There must be grace because during Covid it has been tough for us all, however we have an ethical code to do no harm, and a responsibility to own when we have due to blind spots and our own unhealed areas.
Recently during a family counseling experience I am learning a lot more from what didn’t work than what did. I’ll give you a hint if the counselor is talking about themselves in any way that does not pertain to your counseling and enhance it, that’s a red flag. If the counselor seems to not be following and staying focused on your need etc, please share this with them so they may grow.
Counseling should always be focused on the client need and progress should be validated and followed up on. And if something in the relationship isn’t working, if the client tells you, be willing to repair. And also be self-monitoring with integrity at all times. It’s more work, but this is our responsibility to our ethical code.
Lazy counseling is damaging. Someone who is in it for the wrong reasons or past their expiration of energy to expend. It’s as bad as distracted driving. We have people’s mental well being in our hands. They come to us sick and scared. If we are not dedicated to this work for the right reasons we can inflict great harm.
I personally am taking this situation and using it to slow down and pay attention, listen better, talk less, and truly be with the client experience versus wanting to fix it to gratify ego. This is a lifetime process. It’s nice to see my clients faith and sticking with me over the years as I am imperfect and grow, but they know my heart is in the right place and that I’m always growing myself to better meet them where they are.
A client is the expert on their own lives, a clinician who is skilled, competent, and there for the right reasons will only enhance the clients own knowledge about themselves using an empathic mirror and warm guidance. It’s a difficult balance and a very challenging career. The only one for me!
Never give up. That’s my motto. And keep curiosity larger than fear. Keep moving forward. Makes me think of the movie Meet The Robinsons and the song Little Wonders. I think I’ll go have a listen….
It was a series of unfortunate events that would ultimately lead me to the most secure relationship with myself I have ever embarked on. My story is taking shape. They say you write better from a more resolved place. Cheryl Strayed for example didn’t write Wild until around ten years after her hike through the Pacific Northwest.
So I’m sifting back through the events lately, as I also remain firmly in the present reality. Whirlwind after whirlwind when it came to relationships, and all because I never had one with myself, or my own identity for that matter. And that’s scary. No wonder I didn’t trust the world or myself. The very definition of anxiety. Homework: write fifty I am statements. The first time I attempted this I had around 3 or 4, and they were just titles.
Now I’m on the ground, and while my feet feel a little unsteady sometimes, I’m enjoying having more peace and clarity. I will be fiercely protective of that. My relationships with my children are becoming real and solidifying. They are no longer this touch and go, terrified thing.
I can tolerate being present now, without being swallowed up by fear and anxiety.
So often I look back at the girl who was consumed by intrusive thinking almost constantly. It was incredibly painful. No wonder my first objective was always shelter. And that to obtain that shelter I looked for the fellow vulnerable. I didn’t want to be alone. Except that I never was, I just couldn’t feel any different at that time.
I often tell my clients that our feelings lie to us, particularly if we suffer from ptsd or an anxiety disorder. Then our feelings can be really unreliable. We must get to solid ground and not be flailing about before we assess and certainly before we decide. Feelings are not facts.
So this morning I’m thinking about the ingredients and prescription for change. The thing people come to me for. Some want me to do it for them and have the answers, some want nothing from me, and come because they have been told they should, but aren’t willing or open. And my favorites the ones I work the hardest to show up for, are in earnest desire of change and willing to hear hard things, sit and be in uncomfortable feelings, and stay the course with trust and conviction. No wonder they and this work inspires me so much.
This is what I always aspired to be and do, but a lot of the information I needed was missing.
I didn’t know I was co-dependent and what would subconsciously feel like home time and time again, is someone to heal or fix, so I could also be doing that. That the relationship would be dependent on our mutual need and addictions, and not mutually independent and parallel. If I was alone I was lost to myself and frozen with thoughts of fear and inadequacy. Love become confused with desperate need, and boy does that create blind spots.
I have such hard nights so often. Last night in particular. Nights I just want to be held, feel someone else’s heart near to mine, smell their skin, sync my breath, and my whole nervous system responds. But being safe with a person means so much more than that now.
What it means primarily for me these days is that said person has the courage to hold themselves accountable and a secure relationship with themselves. This is something I’ve asked my therapist a hundred times if it even exists, as I stared blankly off, completely removed from myself. I couldn’t answer what I wanted or needed when I began.
I was in so much pain all the time, my only energy seemed to be to obtain momentary comfort, over anything lasting, secure, and that met my needs.
What I find myself wanting most sincerely (I was tempted to say desperately but that’s old, and I am new), is someone who wants to work as hard as I do on themselves, and stay parallel to me in that process. That we ebb and flow and dance. Secure attachment, which you can only do with another secure. I’ve been spending my life becoming an earned secure. Security is anything but natural for me, but I was always going to crack that code.
An integration of mind, body, and soul: bringing all the separated on ice parts, home. Reconnecting the nerves and the tissue. It’s been a lot of surgery lately. 2014 the year of my graduation from my masters, led to the beginning of the thaw. I found Morning Pages. I finally had some time that was my own, and some hope for financial security. It was my first toe in the water of living rather than purely surviving.
2016 the thawing gave way to whole hearted enthusiasm and I jumped quickly into a marriage. We didn’t even know one another apart from that we both had genuine hearts and were kind, and seemed to both want the same things. I can only speak from my experience of course, but what we really needed was a relationship with ourselves not with another person.
We didn’t legitimize ourselves or our own experience. We hid away in shame and feared that others wouldn’t trust our union. A self-fulfilling prophecy when you don’t know or trust yourself.
I have a personal belief we grow more in relation to others than we ever do by ourselves. But there’s a time and season for each, and that growth doesn’t always have to be found in romantic partnership. That has been a big lesson this past year. My determination sometimes preceded all logic. I can chuckle at that a little now, and appreciate that in myself. It has made for a lively story.
I am now growing in relation to lots of others, and primarily myself as I sit with me and pause and reflect and that feels safe. Holy shit I can’t believe I just said that. When I have ever felt safe all alone in the world. Except I don’t feel alone, and I don’t feel adrift either.
I am in pain, agony really, so many times throughout the day as I sift through the wreckage of all my past attempts at a dream, and now I’m am restructuring as the architect of my own life.
I am learning to live without outsourcing some of the most incredible aspects of my life, because I feared I wasn’t good enough. Often it feels like being in quicksand, that at any moment I’ll be pulled back under to that old existence where I couldn’t breathe. But then I look around and realize I’m in a beautiful field, and not on the edge of a cliff.
My goodness I missed this. I believe there are many good things on my horizon. The most forefront of which is thinking about what I need to say to the world, and how to say it. I’ve been working a beyond validation model for counseling for years, and I think I may breathe some life into that.
I have this magical ingredient as a counselor and it’s difficult to even put into words, and I think I’ll take some time doing just that. If I have a valuable resource I need to, actually scratch that I want to describe it so I can share. The thing about me is I want to share not sell, so I’m nervous about that whole process. I don’t want to brand or market, I just want to be my authentic self.
I’ve made such a transformation this past year and a half and I want to share that journey. Perhaps it’s so fresh I’ll need to share more previous ones first and trust that, my own memory and lived experience.
Why ultimately do I want to share it? I would have said before to feel less alone, which means I needed too much to be able to do so in integrity. I want to share it so I can empower others to have more satisfying lives. It’s so automatic who am I to do so? Until I look around and realize this ability to consistently self reflect and put this into practice with follow through is rare. So rare in fact that’s what led to the lonely feeling.
Where are the others doing this? They are working and sharing. Brene Brown, Nicole Lepera, Anita Morjani, Byron Katie, Martha Beck, Elizabeth Gilbert, Dr. Ramani, Ross Rosenberg, Melody Beattie, Anne Lamott, Stephen King, and so so many others….
I need to stay the course with my work and my relationship with myself no matter what… I said that to the tune of Callum Scott of course. Dancing on my own… I never intended it to be that way, but touching lives and being present has me feeling much less alone than I ever have.
I know in forward motion my task is to only entertain situations that make me feel less alone, not more.
Onward…. (Now I understand why this is the word Liz uses). It’s solid. It carries with all the lessons and the pain, and also still goes forward. It has conviction and strength, and also softness. The things I aspire to.
