Tag: #courage

Posted on

Out on a limb

My whole life I feel like I have been out on a limb. In so many aspects. Somewhere along the way I learned to take the risks. During more of the unsure times in my life these risks could definitely have been categorized as the unhealthy kind. So I internalized, as I do so well, more bad information about myself.

In this second half of my life my “risk taking” is the exact thing that has yielded some of the biggest pay out. I still look at those people who cross all their t’s and dot all their i’s with great admiration. And a serious dose of black and white thinking: they are right, I am wrong.

Here in the state of Connecticut I have found that risk taking could be as simple as speaking to someone in line at Starbucks. They don’t do that sort of thing here. Stay in your lane baby girl. Mind your business. More people starving for connecting here, than I have found anywhere else. Perhaps that’s why me, the queen of connecting, ended up here.

I met one of my dearest friends in life, a man closer to the end of his life than the beginning. A good man who likes the Hallmark channel so he can get a dose of real emotion when he needs. A man who loves his son and grandson, and a wife who doesn’t deserve it so much (from him, everyone deserves love).

I tell our story sometimes to clients and they are always baffled. You did what? Yes we borrowed sugar and an egg to make cookies. We asked a neighbor to borrow something. Naive as usual, I had never received the memo that people in Connecticut absolutely under no circumstances do this sort of thing. Psycho. Go to the store like everyone else does. Nevertheless this yielded a friendship that would become a surrogate father, and person who tells me I am their normal.

I tell him if I’m his normal he is in serious trouble. We loved him on birthdays when no one else showed him how special he is, and he loved me with all of my insecurities. He listened to a thousand anxious emails, worried I would never be loved the way I was hoping to, worried I was bad. Only one of those worries very occasionally threatens to crop up. I consider myself very blessed.

You see thoughts about going out on a limb come to my mind, and they won’t be dismissed in the name of anything. They keep tugging at the strings of my heart until I am forced to unleash them on an unsuspecting world. This wasn’t so well received when I was younger. I scared the hell out of people. I was called too intense more than you can imagine. Which of course triggered my family stuff. Too much, somehow not good that you’re around. I made myself smaller. My self became depressed, shrank.

I tried to just do day in day out with no magic. It never worked for me. When I ignore that urge to reach out when I feel that vibration, later the regret drives me mad. I know I missed out on the hidden secret the universe had wrapped in many papers and then in box after box, like those Russian nesting dolls. And the determination it takes to be brave enough to keep opening after not only finding empty ones, but also being ridiculed for trying.

I needed to belong somewhere, anywhere. That need trumped coming into my own. So it has taken me a long time to be here now. And when it comes to trusting myself I am still a baby deer wobbling on it’s new legs. Self-doubt had been my constant companion, ptsd has hard wired it into my system. But I always knew I belonged out on a limb.

Out on a limb you’re alone, nervous you will fall at any moment, and precarious. You face rejection, being discredited, and boat loads of shame. Why would anyone do that? Especially in Connecticut. If there ever was a state you do not do that, it is here. I often muse to myself that instead of being the “Nutmeg state”, we should be the repression state. I guess “Repressers” doesn’t ring as light and fun as “Nutmeggers, but I would venture it rings true to many.

Now before you’re tempted to think I’m generalizing in a terrible way, I’m not finished yet. Underneath a thin layer of steel, people here are warm and gooey just like all of us human beings. I would argue they may even be more passionate here. Whether it’s being fueled by the unbeatable fall seasons here, or the determination to make our own sunshine after a long cold winter, there is as much heart as anywhere.

The heart is in tact. And I have found people are just wanting those brave people to make that first move to connect in a real way. Sure some aren’t ready for it, that is their cross, and it is heavy. Another best friend heart (bless her), one who has known me at my worst and still seen through.

She once gave me a Globe from the show Wicked. She taped “keep defying gravity” in a small note she taped to the bottom. If the house ever caught fire this is the one thing I would grab. After the live animals of course. :p Her heart was crushed from birth perhaps, a thick skin became very necessary for her, and I broke through for a real friendship. My self-doubt made it feel invisible sometimes, afraid I wasn’t good enough, and so I kept myself away, as people who feel that way tend to do. I hope she always knows she is my person.

At that time I was an uncultured swine (ok that’s mean, a broke, single mother) and could certainly have never seen that show. I was as lost as a human can become and my behaviors sucked, and yet she still believed in some part of me. These people are two of many of my supreme gifts the Universe has given me. These people are how I help so many now. I had to be lifted up, to lift others. They are my angels and the light that shines through my eyes.

To be allowed to have the love I knew was behind a particular soul, more big risks, more limbs. I’m pretty sure she thought I was nuts in the beginning, but something bade her to keep going with it. And now we are standing on the precipice of a great dream, neither of us knew we had before.

This woman never wrongs me for the risks I take. Every time I go to talk to her I project she will tell me no way and that I’m not thinking and all sorts of other things. But she trusts me and our love to such a pure degree I HAVE to trust it also. It is unwavering. Her love and trust for me is UNWAVERING. And like the grinch who had been so hurt and rejected he had reached the point where he was bristly and mean on the outside, the parts of me that still threaten to become that way, just stop. I think my heart has expanded larger than my body, and all the light is just constantly radiating outwards.

I am a lighthouse for others, and I am beginning to believe that is true, and to love parts of myself that I shut down (to keep safe) long ago. Her love is my constant kerosene, and it’s a reflection finally of all the love I splashed at the world. A world who wasn’t ready for it, a girl who wasn’t ready to give it to herself.

Here I sit today, on the end of this limb, calmly having a picnic, dancing on the tip. For me this is the only way to live. Love is everywhere, inside of everything… Connecticut is no exception and neither are you….

šŸ’œ

Posted on

Mary Lambert a Champion of Women.

Do yourself a favor before reading this:

Body Love Mary Lambert

Also this is blog post #50!!!!!!

We watched this beautiful soul at Daryl’s House in Pawling New York. I am tearing up just thinking about it. I’ve never been like this before. Openly emotional and all heart outside my chest beating for all to see. Her first few words made the tears come immediately, something I never thought was possible for me.

Which helps me also acknowledge how hard my life has been and allow that. Allow it without worrying that I feel I’m special, or in comparison with someone else, or betraying another. I am realizing journeying out of PTSD is a lifelong pursuit, it cycles over and over, until enough security is built to let safety and peace take over.

And now that I am standing here (a little), I am feeling all my feelings I minimized before. My whole body shakes with them at times. I am feeling them with a new story. The work is exhausting. I am ragged lately. I dress comfortably and often don’t even wear make-up. At face value many things could be said, but since I go deeper, and I’m loved deeper, it doesn’t matter anymore.

Trying to live to be seen and loved has lost all its power, and in this new place I am finding all of mine.

I found something in Mary Lambert last night. I said to my wife that “she must have suffered a lot/suffer a lot”, and that “she does music the way I do therapy.” I could feel every word of her music wrapping my heart and soul in support and love. I could feel her giving to others with passionate truth.

The tears just kept running down my face. I didn’t wipe them away, or smile awkwardly in shame. They are mine and they are important. I want to live Bold like her. I do on the outside, but my insides still scan my self for wrong and bad things. Hyper-vigilant to my core.

Watching Mary Lambert move her body proudly, unbridled, and with great joy; makes me know I have to love mine as fiercely.

I’ve spent most of my life desperately insecure about how others would see me, squirming with it. Trying to sell myself, and so often feeling rejected and less than. Uncomfortable in my clothes, and my very skin. Always looking to others for answers.

Mary helps this great hurt. Her voice goes straight to my soul. She is a healer also. And again I catch myself wishing I could be enjoyed like that. She gives comfort and often times I remove it in favor of growth. People watch her and enjoy themselves. People come to sit with me and ache and bleed.

I give permission to feel feelings also, but there’s no sweet background music. Maybe there should be šŸ˜‰ I’ll have to think about that.

I still don’t have all the words for my feelings right now. What I can tell you is I am a person who has dedicated her life to healing, and I am only now realizing the full extent of my wounds, and the time and medicine it takes. I am hoping to do some important work for others with this.

Love,

Christina šŸ’ŖšŸ¼šŸ’œ

Ps wanted to share my Facebook post that came out in the raw last night.

Music gives us permission to fully feel our feelings. Tonight the music of Mary Lambert opened up my heart and emptied it, and filled it, again and again. It was a spiritual experience. This past year I feel like Iā€™m walking around with no skin on. Everything is raw. Itā€™s beautifully painful.

This past year Iā€™ve come back from the dead. My body was present and I could give, but my emotions were so far away from my reach. As a result Iā€™ve feared myself, questioned my character, and been drenched in immense doubt for most of my life.

I ran hard and fast from myself. I had huge feelings I didnā€™t know what to do with. I held them on top of me. I couldnā€™t breathe. I havenā€™t breathed a true sigh of relief most of my life. So now when I do it could blow down a building. Iā€™m a tidal wave force of emotions. The choice of the powers always to decide for good or evil. I was always good. I had the hardest time believing that story. My feelings are valid.

I refuse to ever let myself believe again like I am not worthy of every one of them, and Allowed to express them. I used to write songs, but then I forgot. I forgot my joy and my beauty. I packed them away in many a suitcase. I padlocked them, wrapped them in chains, and let them sink to the bottom of the Ocean. The current took them to extreme temperature depths ,and they froze there.

I just tried to find the template for living after that. I looked around, and then said, ā€œI guess Iā€™ll try that.ā€ And that and that and that. A great enthusiasm on the outside, and endless pit of doubt on the in.

Now I have the permission to create. I gave it to myself. And this brave brave woman tonight, has given me more than I can express in this moment. Simply by fiercely loving herself, so I could see how beautiful that looks on someone, and know I could be beautiful too.

Posted on

Into the Abyss of My Story

ā€œAnd Then She Dancedā€

ā€œYouā€™re the mom and Iā€™m the babyā€, she always said. No truth could ever illuminate my early life more. That first time she held me and looked into my eyes, she also said ā€œyou had a wisdom in your eyes I knew you already were beyond me.ā€ Sometimes I wish she didnā€™t take that so literally.

That day was the first and last day I was a baby. Now at thirty seven I might as well be eighty eight. Iā€™ve often felt like an alien in this life. The self-doubt was the worst part, when you are your own parent how do you know if youā€™re going the right way and doing the right things.

I had an innate curiosity and enthusiasm that rocked me tightly through the storms. I was conscientious to a fault. I remember watching movies and always wanting ā€œto be the good guy.ā€ My insides would tighten when someone was harmed or in danger. I wanted to jump through the screen and protect them, the fatal flaw was that I always believed that I could. And that I never included myself in that equation.

How could I, I was born to be strong. Thatā€™s what they all needed from me.

I sought my Father for safety, nose pressed to the glass a hundred times he didnā€™t show. My heart broke again and again. Bonded and left wondering. He smelled like Polo cologne, the green bottle. He smoked a pipe, was strong and smart, and had big dogs I adored. He was the safer bet I thought. Except he didnā€™t bet on me.

My salvation, is that so many others have.

My human angels that just reached out and saw my heart. They loved my enthusiasm and my smile. To them I wasnā€™t too much. To them I was someone to be enjoyed. They brought me into their families and I watched and learned all I could.

My grandparents meant well and they tried. Good church going folk doing the right thing raising their daughterā€™s out of wedlock baby. Whispers through the church they were the saints, I was the sinner, and my mom was never mentioned except with pity, as those with mental illness often are. Rigidly religious, shame was the ruler of this roost.

Everyone had sympathy for my birth and praise for the grandparents who saved me. Similarly later in life everyone pitied my husband, a good man, when I left him after the realization I was gay. Inside I struggled for years, wanted to end my life, and entered therapy. Outside I had an affair, and my character diminished. I was always dark and twisted, something to be feared. Why then did others see so much light in me? The ultimate confusion.

I became everything I hated and wanted to fight against. I had already been that for quite some time, but strong always speaks louder, in these situations. So naturally now that I had the whole big answer: being gay. I pressed fiercely forward towards love. I fell in love fast and hard. Dripping with desperation.

I needed a parent not a lover, but I didnā€™t know at the time.

When Love was the vehicle that finally illuminated all my broken parts, I could begin the healing process. The critics were immense. There were more than those that cheered me on. Self-doubt again was my constant companion.

Another trip into hell, and another trip… it would take me hundreds before I emerged.

As a result I have this gift. People feel seen and safe in my presence. When I expected myself to be everything that saved just one, all my own triggers were brought forth. Through the process of honing my healing powers in graduate school, and with the teachers that sprung forth my heart was thawing out. Boundaries were a constant lesson, and the better I got at them, the more healing occurred. I could help people without pouring my entire being into them.

I could find a real and genuine empathy for others I was closely involved with, and not just the strangers on the street. My heart was thawing. The tears could finally fall freely. I had learned to refer to myself as a good mother without flinching and immediate disbelief. I began to learn how to play. I found healthy love, and a meaning filled career. I wake up each day looking forward to it now.

The title of my memoir that has rolled over and over in my head emerged:

And Then She Danced….

Posted on

Day One of My Eighth Life

Day one…. again

We have 17 follicles. Tears are gently falling into the Raisin Bran I am eating out of a mug. Itā€™s so surreal. This moment. This is life number 8. In this life I am loved with every bit of what I didnā€™t have in the previous ones.

In this life I am a good mother not just practically, but emotionally. A strong partner and a financial provider. I blink twice and pinch myself once.

Itā€™s still true.

My teenagers could feel angry or resentful about this. Nervous they will lose the number one spot in my heart. Nervous they never had it. Because I went back and got my own child, now Iā€™ve scooped them up too. So they are so excited for a baby sibling.

I am 37 years old and going to be a new mother again.

On this other side of things how much of an oak will I be? Iā€™m figuring out at this stage of knowing myself my limits begin to get real when someone I love suffers. In the words of the great Maya Angelou, ā€œYou have to have courage to love somebody. Because you risk everything. Everything.ā€

Courage is something Iā€™ve never been in short supply of, but Iā€™ve also never had so much to lose. Iā€™m in that strange in between where Iā€™m fully embracing it, but also canā€™t help ā€œthe rug will be pulled out mentality.ā€ Itā€™s fainter now, but the body remembers even after the mind has healed.

My body regularly reminds me Iā€™m a survivor.

The only thing I may have never doubted is my strength. Now I must wonder about that? I didnā€™t know I could love a family so much that if a member of them suffers and I have to watch; shards of glass throughout my whole body. Donā€™t move it will hurt.

Being strong before was my only choice. Now that Iā€™m thawed out what will happen when we face a trial? Iā€™m scared. You get scared when youā€™re soft. When youā€™ve aligned all your fragments, you can get scared. They never told me this would happen. This is a beautiful scared. The other was a terrible scared.

We are having a baby. Today is day one of my 8th life within 1. I am a good mother. I will be a good mother.

This much love might just be the scariest thing I have ever faced….

Posted on

Beach Blankets, Bookstores, and Blog Posts

I’ve had a very hard time slowing lately. So semi-unintentionally ending up at the beach today is likely no accident. My love and I have the day off together, and the only thing I came across was to bring her to RJ Julia Independent Book Sellers in Madison, CT. Coincidentally, they also have a cafe. The Chardonnay Rosemary cupcake is particularly a delight. My weight watchers program is going fabulously thanks for asking šŸ˜‰ ha.

Hammonasset Beach is a delight for the senses. How is it that I have been so engrossed in the seemingly necessary non-magical aspects of life, that I have not taken more time for such things? Slow down Christina. “But how?”, she asks. I have not felt my toes in the sand for as long as I can remember. And even when I have, my mind scurries like Beatles scattering in a beam of light, to the next, and the next great indulgence. I’m beginning ten more things just as I’ve opened the cover of one.

I began to write a blog post last Sunday. My family and I attended the Pride Festival in Northampton, Massachusetts. I felt inspired to share some pieces of my journey with being a lesbian, and why we march. But that got lost in the abyss of motherhood and “wifery”, and the pure presence I am trying so hard to bestow my loved ones with. I am finding with how I am wired this is not the easiest task.

Last night I came home from a day of seeing clients. My son seemed a bit frustrated with a response I gave him, likely something to do with finances. When overwhelmed (which happens easily and often for me) my first instinct seems to be to pull my turtle head into its shell and disappear. Don’t get me wrong from inside the shell I am still orchestrating the events that are vital to the running of our lives, but I wouldn’t say that you could view my investment from this angle. Particularly if your young eyes are not yet engineered to see in that fashion yet.

Anyway what has stayed with me the most since our conversation is the improvement in our interaction this time, and how rare a gift it is to even be able to recognize this. In the past I would have taken him saying that I am not listening and involved in things that are important to him, as a personal arrow imbedded straight through the heart. What this looks like in action is the tried and true mother’s sonnet about how much they sacrifice for their children, and essentially invalidating the young lads every feeling. My more fragile ego has not been immune to creating such havoc in my younger days. Ok let’s be real probably last year even.

My heart whispered to my ego to pull back and wait, that it’s services were not quite needed yet, and to stay to find out the deeper cause. When listening ears wrapped his words tenderly in their arms, what rose to the surface was only pain. All anger had been stripped away, and the tears fell. The arrow was still embedded in the heart, but as I extracted it, feeling every tear… this time I thought, “we can fix this, we are all in this time, and we can fix this.” And then I summoned all the fragmented parts of my self for a great meeting and said, “let’s get started, we have a lot of work to do!”

This morning even amidst my determination to write and be present for date day, I leaned over to pick up my phone and send him a text.

“I wanted to tell you thank you for sharing your feelings with me. I think we both did a good job. Could have gone not so well in the past right ?! I love you! Youā€™re right, I get so focused on one area, all or nothing, that if others are running themselves, I take a deep sigh of relief and keep focusing. Iā€™m sorry. And I am quite sure if it isnā€™t something you didnā€™t bring to my attention that would be a huge regret when that time has passed. Someday you will be busy with your own life and Iā€™ll be wishing you would call or I could hear about ā€œschoolā€…

Iā€™m sorry and I love you. Iā€™ll work on it and you may have to help me because of how my brain seems to work.”

This blog post is somewhat unfinished. I got caught up in a writing course I am taking and being fully present for myself in all her forms. I chose me. Sometimes I cannot simultaneously show me and save me…. I chose to save her this time, and to have faith I could show her whenever I am ready, in whatever way feels the best for me. To do the deed in joy versus obligation: this is what I am working on.

Write on writer’s, carry on gentle hearts….

the sun is shining….

Waiting to bless you with it’s sweet kiss.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on

Spring cleaning of the house, the heart, the soul….

I’m not doing so well with my pages this morning. The season has shifted and the feeling is almost immediate. Last night we randomly, with no planning whatsoever, began to pull out the lawn mower, and get some new yard tools. My yard looks like the Secret Garden before it’s magical transformation. It has been 6 years of neglect of having an owner whose last primary focus was it. The yard that time forgot. I’d be ashamed, but how can I rightly do so when I’ve opened a successful counseling practice, learned how to do billing, become a better parent, learned to manage Crohn’s Disease and all that comes with it, gotten a much better handle on my anxiety, and found a love that makes me a better person every single day.

So I guess now it’s the yard’s time for a little attention. To hopefully help me slow down as I learn to tend to it’s needs. To take the effort to do something that doesn’t yield an immediate gratification and to enjoy task for the sake of being tender and nurturing, without requirement from the task. It seems daunting at first this under-taking. How do I even attach this blade to this long handled saw? Am I qualified to prune trees? I’ll probably kill them. I’ll probably cut off a finger, and then I won’t be able to write. I’ve always had a black thumb. Honest. I used to tell people that if you truly cared about that plant to give it a different home. But perhaps over time I’ve become more able to attend and nurture and maybe I could be a gardener now. We can try on a new self anytime we want. Did you know that? I sure have and boy have I learned a lot along the way. It’s what I have learned the most from.

Could I be the environmentally conscious person with a compost pile and dirt under my finger nails? Ok I couldn’t do the dirt under my finger nails, that strikes fear into my highly sensitive heart. That’s why I can’t keep finger nails. I would obsess about the dirty nail until I had to take it off immediately with or without the tools to do so.

I would also like to try out being the person with an exercise routine. And maybe even one who runs a 5 k. Also could I be someone who has the edgy fun short hair cut without worrying that my weight gain would make it unflattering or someone won’t take me seriously in my career with the hair. Why do we give ourselves such little permission for the things we really want? Conditioned and trained with so much outside commentary about who we should be and what we should do. Lately I am feeling like rebelling against this in every way possible. I recognize the pain caused to self from shame and feeling not enough or too much in some way. I’m spending lots of time thinking about this.

Guess what person I am though? I realized this after my post and this is an edit actually to the original. I remembered how good it felt last night. We played and worked outside together. I was the house in the neighborhood that kids wanted to be at. They played four square in the court that someone who isn’t in our lives anymore, but loved us at an important time we needed it built. We have been loved and supported, so we can also give love and support and a space to others. This is how it looks. The more we receive the more we have to give. And I realize in this moment I’ve never been short on receiving. I just had a lot of expectations about where I was supposed to get things from, and what they were supposed to look like.

I am in love with my life. Truly, madly, and deeply. I complain and get cranky sometimes and my kids probably think I’m the strictest mother ever. But I am seeing us all becoming more compassionate of one another and conscientious people, and that’s always been important to me. And I have moments where everyone is laughing and playing and I’m surrounded by love and being love. Those moments are my gold.

I’m less in the mood to think and write as I am to DO this morning. To be present with people I love and to share the joy I’ve found in myself. The only thing nagging at me is all the supposed to’s of my Sunday expectations of self. Cleaning, shopping, and most importantly to my heart right now. Preparing myself for Martha Beck’s Light Writing Course. I am going to be a Light Writer! I am already one is the conclusion I’ve come to from listening to the initial materials on the psychology of light writing. Basically it’s how to access our higher selves, the compassionate less reactive ones. I am relieved to notice that this is my life’s work already. I just didn’t have the language for it she does. So I’ve found my place. That’s one of the best feelings.

Another new feeling of belonging. Belonging has been on my mind a lot lately. It’s been one of my biggest battles in life on so many different fields. I never feel like I belong even when I could. And now I’m trying to give myself fierce permission to belong to myself so I’ll never have to fear the sting of taking personally that I don’t belong somewhere for some reason outside of myself. Belonging, like love, is an inside job. It’s whether we feel worthy to belong, and in the face of much information towards the opposite it feels impossible.

I am a light writer and I am a being who who accesses her higher self a good portion of the time. And when I don’t I am committed to looking at my part in things and learning to be humble and take the lesson. I think this writing course will also be humbling for me, it will show my painful parts to me and I know I need to be up to the task. I admit I’m a little nervous.

So I will be here guys tending to my internal garden and the external one and writing about everything along the way. Thank you for supporting me. You are the kerosene, the candle, the electric current, and the sun to my shine. I’ve never been alone. I believed I was for so long, and that belief held me back. All my supports were just waiting for me to reach out and find them. For me to love myself enough to ask and to teach, those willing to learn how to love me.

šŸ’œ

Posted on

I came in like a wrecking ball….

For as long as I’ve remembered I’ve been deeply concerned with what kind of person I was. Even as a child my constant focus of movie watching (even Disney) was making sure I felt like “the good guy”. I have had an over-sized conscience always. I remember often wanting to rid myself of it, so I could partake in normative teenage experiences. But I would over-think/ deeply think about everything. Nothing could just be done. Which is an interesting compliment to my natural ADHD blessing of impulsivity. Later in life after I had decided to choose to rid myself of religion as my reason for “trying constantly to do everything right by someone else’s standard of right”. When I finally started to allow myself my own life, which created tons of inner conflict, then impulsivity took me far out of balance in the other direction. Then I had to face the most egregious of all wars, knowing full well when I had made an action that was unfair to someone else. They say ignorance is bliss. “The mysterious they, whoever they are.” They in this case would be more correct than they even know. Ignorance is a bliss I have never been afforded. I was gifted with a keen awareness of self and others. I can make connections in an instant that others have kept carefully out of their awareness for years.

I cause pain. This gives me great conflict. But then pain opens up the possibility for healing. I don’t just rip off the band-aid. I apply salve and anti-biotics as well. I am saying this to myself for the first time. Realizing I am not sinister, even though the feelings of the actions suggest it to my “Jimminy Cricket.” Being unwittingly tasked with being a person who reveals painful truths for a living, I am only now coming into the full realization of how this mixes with my shit, and creates a dangerous cocktail. I am proud and it is an honor to do this work, and it also takes a toll. It takes a toll more when it is personal, as it is for me right now. When I am inside the pain, not an ally and observer.

I shake up systems. Family systems that have operated on unspoken rules for years and been “just fine”. The thing is those unspoken rules often create great invisible pain for those that are silently expected to repress in the name of someone else’s comfort. Do the others not realize the discomfort of the person asked to adjust? Do they literally shield themselves from painful truth that much? Or does some part of them know and refuse to look?

Part of my coming out process included me learning to introduce myself as gay and not wince. It took awhile, but I recognized early on that if I seemed ashamed people will hop right on that bus. I knew the feeling of repression before I knew how to name it, as most of us do. It’s a silent and slow death by poisoning. It saps just a tiny bit of your soul in each interaction. And since it can slide by so unknown the damage resides on the inside. A beautiful smiling husk that keeps others happy while the inside is rotten and burning with pain. The holder of the families pain, struggles under their burden sometimes named depression, all the whole elaborate defense mechanisms as intricate as scaffolding’s you see on skyscrapers in New York City. They deem themselves the weaker of the flock, when really they are the strongest.

I seem to always be the common denominator in the equation of relationship that demands truth to be fully seen and listened to. I have never been able to stay quiet about truth; my gift and my curse.

Today I sit in extraordinary pain as the love of my life and I experience what it feels like to be seen as different, somehow less valid. I am tasked suddenly, like being faced with an oncoming accident in progress, with navigating this treacherous terrain. Of behaving with grace and compassion in the face of invisible and subconscious judgment. It’s innocent enough. My partner being asked by a sibling to not make their father uncomfortable on his birthday by me coming to dinner. That’s in the name of justice right ? It’s his birthday after all. So my beloved is expected to take a seat at the table, hold back her tears, and her self. She is asked to present the husk, the representative only, her true self is not welcome to the table. “Forgive them because they know not what they do”, it is ironic isn’t it that religion should come to mind right now. The pain is searing. I wonder if they know that? I suppose they also take for granted their permission to get married, be a couple, and to show up at events not making anyone uncomfortable with their presence. She is “asked” to only talk about things that won’t make anyone uncomfortable. Keep it light you know, work, whatever can be accessed without revealing too much. Exhausting. I wonder if they know how exhausting to be asked that?

I am in a raw state of pain right now. So I turn to my writing and my speaking truth out loud. It is salve. It is bandage and medication. I am angry and hurting, and I promise to turn all of this emotion into something that helps others and not into the pain that caused it. That is my promise. My place at the table of warriors who protects those who don’t know words for their feelings, and who have been silenced by lethal expectations, sometimes unspoken: the ones the highly sensitive notice and take on themselves. Too heavy a burden for anyone, but their heart will try nevertheless.

I don’t trust myself right now to write any further without being unkind. I have learned to stop short of that and process and synthesize my feelings until how I express them is of my choosing. Using wisdom rather than weapon.

Posted on

The all consuming nature of chronic illness

It’s been a weird couple of weeks. I wonder if it’s something in the Universe and others have felt this way as well, or if it’s just unique to me? I feel like when I haven’t written (on here) in awhile, I need to find my way back to my writer self. The muscles groan and protest, as if they are saying “you can’t just come and go as you please and expect us to function, this is a commitment. That’s how it feels anyway.

I’ve been consumed in not feeling well lately, and exploring the emotions that arise here. Lots and lots of anxious thoughts, and worst case scenarios. Probably not helped by the fact that I recently saw a campaign to raise money for a woman with stage 4 lymphoma. The woman was someone who traveled in circles of friends of mine at a significant time in my life. During my newly being “out” as a gay woman phase. I knew people who dated her. I hadn’t thought about her since. And here she is with a wife, two adorable children, and cancer.

As humans we protect ourselves in a variety of ways. One of those ways is a powerful, fully operational form of denial. It is constantly present. This idea that could never be you. The less degrees of separation bordering you from a truer realization or your fragility, enter more anxiety. I often function by thinking thank goodness that isn’t me, and quickly busying myself with a protective layer of every day life that holds no room for morbid thoughts. But I am the type of person who possesses a keen awareness of the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as much as my human mind can comprehend. Often I wish I wasn’t, because then my mind would not be able to drive me as crazy with its frenzied thoughts of madness. To live fully is also to be mad I think. Mad with desire and mad with fear. Because if you know how much true beauty there is to be had in even the simplest of moments, you also know how fleeting those are. Always outracing an invisible force, that only I seem aware of. Or only I appear willing to acknowledge, and when I talk about it frankly I know the darkness in my thoughts frightens others. It’s like we know but don’t say it. You’ll jinx it. What superstitious creatures we are.

The first of the not feeling well began with some odd pain in my upper back, and extreme fatigue. I remember laying with my partner and feeling the first 2 fingers on both my hands be sort of numb and tingly. This driving me crazy of course, firing all my alarms there’s something wrong here, and the story tells if worse horrors then a flare up. It always does. I couldn’t get warm to save my life. I’m often cold. As all the weird feelings took their turn on my body I steadied myself in her arms. A safe space. Thank God for my safe space these days. It’s the only reconciliation I can find for knowing that my days are numbered. All of ours are, and someday maybe, like my grandparents, we will be resigned to checking the obituaries page daily and reading aloud to one another about the latest friend who has passed away.

The episodes include flushing. A delightful thing that is triggered by being over-tired, alcohol such as red wine, and sometimes stress. It feels like you’re on fire, mostly just your face. Hot, head achy, and dizzying. All you can do is lay down, maybe and ice pack and wait to it to pass. Often this is followed by a bad stomach and then elimination that leaves you shaking and freezing in an exhausted heap after. Either too hot or too cold always, the days you feel good being remarkable in their noticeability due to rareness. During times like this it’s a guessing game of what yuck Unidentified symptom will be the flavor of the day, and how you will keep the silver linings ever present as protective cloak. After only so many days you feel your spirit being eroded away at, and the irritability sets in.

Being overwhelmed happens so easily when you’re trying inside your head to manage your invisible symptoms so no one worries or feels sorry for you. Trying to feel normal. If you fall into the trap of thinking about them too much, or too much validation you run the risk of letting it take over your spirit. I refuse to do that ever. But then I think of how draining this is, and cannot imagine fighting cancer to keep my life. It’s hard now. I fear I would not be up to that task.

After the couple of draining days follows a moment of hope, a good day. I bask in it, soaking it up to carry me through the rest. And then the back injury, ironically it happened when I wrote my last blog post. Sat too many hours in a tall kitchen chair without lumbar support (apparently). Because when I got up my back was sore and I couldn’t figure out why. But with as many ailments I thought par for the course and carried about my day. What was supposed to be a quick trip to The grocery store to drive my son to work, became a nail in the tire and 3 hours at a shop with bored twin teenagers. We ate McDonalds, gross no wonder I’m sick šŸ˜‰ it was 16 degrees and the only walkable distance to bide our time. By the time I sat and got up a few dozen more times into that evening I was nearly paralyzed. Could not walk without agonizing pain. Since I’ve also been down this road I called a physical therapist I know and trust and got in right away. This story could become so long… so let’s just say I finally won the round for much needed pain medication. I may have won the round, but it feels like I lost the game. Going on two weeks of limited everything. Co-pays, heating pads, one wrong move and spasm again after so much hard work… the back let’s up and I get 1/2 a good day and the migraine strikes. Pulsating, furious, making me nauseous. I take the migraine medication and feel weird like I may not actually be breathing, like my heart may have stopped altogether, like if I go to sleep I may not wake up. All this has been in between work and life and dogs and snow and ice and teenagers.

So here I am today at the beginning of two much needed days off, and I’m so afraid they will need to be spent resting, because the migraine remnants have left nausea and a sapped spirit in their wake.

Amidst all of this writing is my breath of fresh air. This is me when I can find hardly the will to do anything still fighting for what I love. I have wanted so badly to write, and yet my mind has been consumed with pain. It’s nearly impossible to think when your body is racked with one symptom or another and you’re just trying to catch your breath in between. This is my way of honoring my experience. When I see it on the page I judge myself. I sound so dramatic, it’s not as if I have stage 4 cancer. This perspective becomes a slow dance with denial, so I can live as fully as I want to. I was blessed with an iron clad will. My gift from the Universe. It must have known I would need it. I choose my reality regardless of my circumstances. I have chosen for it to always be this way.

This is an experience I am having currently with chronic illness. Right now it refuses to be ignored, and constantly sucks at my writer’s soul. Stay tuned because I refuse to give in. Stay tuned because between the night sweats, pain medication roller coaster, confusion of “the correct approach at healing”…there is wisdom between the lines, and between the symptoms.

Posted on

The Calm after the Storm .. Clarity

Every time that I have a really intense bout of “feeling feelings” I come out as if I am staring over a totally still lake at sunrise. I can see straight to the bottom. It’s as if my most profound truths are completely revealed to me, and I rush to capture every second, because as quickly as I can see them all, life amps up and demands my attention and then they are clouded again. The lake has boats and people water skiing and playing, and living their lives, and watching those moments captures the primary part of my attention. So I try and soak up these moments of clarity. I feel sometimes like an entirely different breed of human. These days however it is much less lonely… people are beginning to see and understand me, because I am allowing myself to be seen. This is because I am living much less in fear, and much more growing into my confident capable self. It’s a great feeling.

I had the hardest of days yesterday, with the sweetest of endings. I was scared going in, but I faced my fears and didn’t avoid the situation (as tempting as that was), and I SHOWED UP. I showed up with my whole heart present and didn’t stay consumed in my pain, especially old pain. Even if it makes an appearance to show back up you just gotta let that shit move on. Please for the love of your lives, don’t hold onto your pain as if it does anything for you. It doesn’t protect you from it happening more or again. That is an illusion. Let pain go as quickly as you forget all you have to be grateful for. If only we could do that.Ā The waters of my life have become so much more calm lately. I used to live from one wave of something to the next. Constantly drained. It took so much of me. It took so much of me from my kids, and I am just thawing out and realizing how my fears of myself kept me from having the relationships I want with them. I held myself back. I felt unworthy I think of gifts so special and fragile. But we human beings are anything but fragile. We are tough as nails, but so few know that. Because something happening to someone we love is unthinkable. It still is for me. I have never truly been touched by a tragedy of such a nature, and I cannot imagine how it might change my life if I were. I am in awe of the strength of those that have.

Anyway I had a couple of epiphanies that I want to capture in this blog. My person and I are just at the point where I am coming to family events and getting to know her people better. I’ve done this dance so many times, and lost so many families after the difficult work of learning one another and becoming close. This is a loaded area for me. Having 0 family for my partner to get to know besides my children makes me feel on a totally different playing field, and also increases my longing to belong to the pack. Loving my kids and I has historically ended up being a bridge gap in terms of acceptance. In the past in my relationships, partner’s parents who were struggling with their children being gay, would meet my kids and I, and love us so much that it seemed to change their hearts. And I of course loved to be that piece of healing. As it turns out, I think that was my primary purpose in their lives, rather than it being that the person and I would share a lifetime. I have often had this role in a person’s life confused. When I finally became a helper as a career, I could stop confusing my romantic love life with helping others grow (and I recognize I grew too, you can’t help someone else without helping yourself). So now I’ve chosen a partner for me for the right reasons for me, and we help one another grow naturally by loving each other so well. It has a balance.

So the tricky aspect here is that her father is having a very difficult time with a conflict in his religious beliefs and our love. I’ve never had this experience before (surprisingly), where I may not be accepted because of how I am made. It is harder than I thought. It triggers deep places of rejection sensitivity, unworthiness, and a lack of belonging. It takes me back to an old place, one I worked very hard to leave. So as I am trying to navigate those waters and know how and when to be bold with my truths (which is how I am my most happy), and when to be patient and calm and wait. How to gently educate and to be understanding in the face of great pain. I can’t think of much that is more painful than having your existence invalidated. A big fear here is me being any kind of wedge between my person and her family. It is my life’s purpose to bring families closer, not to create conflict. I know that is way too much responsibility for me to bear alone. I know that, but the feelings cannot always be helped. Only processed through and then can make a choice about where to “land”.

So add to this equation that it is my natural thing to do to put any family that is in tact on a pedestal and me as the outsider who doesn’t belong. This is me attempting as we all do to continue my family dynamic because it is where I am most comfortable, whether it is healthy or not. It is what I know. So this is a tricky combination.

The epiphany is that I came out of it last night keeping a lesson that I often share with my clients as they build their self-esteem. Often times I have young women/men, who have not found their way, come to me in the face of accepting relationships that do not value them, but they have not yet learned their own value. I often have women/men coming in wanting to be accepted and when they go into a situation they come at it from a place of “will they want me, will they choose me, will I be enough x, y, or z?” What I tell these women/men is, have you thought about if YOU want this person, have you considered the aspects of who they are and if that is a good fit for YOU, will they be enough to hold your heart with great respect and dignity. To turn the tables and if you are looking at something from one angle, be sure to consider the other one. So I realized last night that I am not just on audition here to see if I will be accepted into the pack. I also need to consider if I want to belong there, if it will be healthy for me or not. This is a balance I haven’t ever had before, folks. A learning and a growth. There is a confidence I found in myself through this experience yesterday. I was raw and flayed open, but I didn’t keep a story about my worth based on where I came from and what I didn’t receive.

We accept the love we think we deserve. I am getting so much better at this, but it’s still a work in progress.

These epiphanies/realizations/clarities… they opened me up to truths about my relationship with my kids that I am sitting in this morning. My trouble with worthiness I realize has kept me at a certain distance from my own children. It is an emotional distance, not a physical proximity, and I know it is one they can feel, but how could they understand it if I didn’t…. I am often in my head trying to fix these sufferings so I can be worthy of a love like theirs. It is given so freely and I didn’t understand that kind of love. The only kind of love I understand is the kind that felt like it must be earned, and even then the supply seemed so sparse. So I’ve been working hard on myself to be good enough to be their mother….. and I recognize the error in this. The hard work makes me tired and less available to their open and warm hearts. I needed to create an open an warm heart so it could meet up with theirs. This means I have needed to bypass a million defense mechanisms that life helped me put into place so I could get to the next phase. The bomb squad has been with me the past year and I think that we are all clear. And can stop living like the bottom will drop out, and that I won’t love my kids like they deserve. I will and I do, mine just looks a little different and a little more complicated than most. But if anyone will find a way to communicate through this to understanding… I will.

These realizations and what will follow them are the greatest gift I could ever receive this year. Capability being the key word of some of my most profound discoveries. I am capable of being a good mother, partner and, hopefully this next year, author. All of my arguments to my own greatness are slipping away and it is the best feeling…

 

 

 

Posted on

Donā€™t turn away….PTSD hurts, and finding what heals….

I had a difficult night last night. My son is having a hard time as a highly sensitive person in an overstimulating world. As a family system when this is hard on one, because we love each other so much, it’s hard on all. And the most readily accessible emotion is anger. It’s the most seductive, the most comforting. We had expectations about the way our day would go. After all we were cutting down our first Christmas tree together as this whole family. I myself have never cut down a tree for Christmas before. This event went differently than planned in every sense of the word. I always say “you can plan a pretty picnic but you can’t predict the weather”…. that isn’t original in fact I am pretty sure a Ludacris song lyric gets the original credit, but I’ve made it an important lesson in counseling over the years šŸ˜‰ I also got a terrible stomach just at the moment we were cutting with no bathroom in sight and had been fighting a migraine all day. The stress and guilt and frustration at thinking I wouldn’t make it, to the outhouse blech, threw the migraine into full force. The anger thoughts are so tempting…. the why me’s, the I deserve’s….. the it’s not fairs of it all. I needed comfort and warmth, but instead was forced to be strong for my family. I wanted to show up. I always want to show up.

Strong seems to yield hard on self and others for me. So when my teenage son wouldn’t participate in photos I was anything but patient. He having just come off of being distressed the night before because his sisters were fighting over ice cream. The true result of the ice cream was hurt feelings. One feeling the other didn’t believe the best about her and being shamed etc. Hurt all around. He absorbed and internalized and it stayed with him that next day. And heaven forbid my dreams of a peaceful day be interrupted in such a manner. I wasn’t as patient as I would have liked.

All I can think here is that we need to help each other with this hurt. Shaming does not work. Blaming does not work. Anger does not work. Disconnecting does not work. Warm, open, gentle, understanding, kindness, effort, dialogue, patience…. these things work. If we don’t first give it to ourselves we cannot show others how to do the same. The model where we put ourselves to the side in an effort to give all to someone else doesn’t work either, because our unmet needs turn into anger and frustration that must find a way out somewhere.

If I did not feel so guilty for leaving during an important moment, due to something I couldn’t control, perhaps I would have been more patient. If I said to myself it’s ok Christina they all understand, maybe I could have been more understanding for my son. And then later would have been less likely to have an adult temper tantrum when I was afraid, and instead of showing up in warmth …. I froze in terror. I let my teenage son feel like he was responsible for ruining our day, with some words I allowed myself to say out loud.

The truth, my truth is that when it comes to observing intense suffering especially with my children (unthinkable) I freeze in terror. I have felt not nurturing because of this. I have felt like some important part is missing in me. I have had such a difficult time understanding why I can show up so well as a Counselor, but this aspect of motherhood always held places of deep fear for me. This is what PTSD does, it grips and holds and freezes.

As a Counselor I care deeply for my Clients, however the relationship has boundaries and I am an onlooker to their lives. I can stay and be present, and offer support and I mean it genuinely. In my relationship with my children it’s an entirely different ballgame. But I do sit and try and sort through these things. I believe that PTSD changes your wiring. And that you need to learn to work around your unique self. The self that matches your WHOLE story, not the parts that are more palatable. That you need to embrace and work with the parts that have been hurt, versus rejecting them. And that is the most difficult thing because who wants the injured parts? We want to rid ourselves. When you choose a puppy you choose the lively one that is energetic and happy, you don’t choose the sad one in the corner who looks as if it may be ill. But probably most of the time you give that puppy what it needs and it will likely perk right up and thrive like the rest. But if needs go unmet it will continue to suffer.

I had an interesting morning. I decided after a very draining experience last night in my family to rally and continue forward. I wrote an email and I called the school counselor, and I got up and helped my son wake up and I cared for him in the best ways I know how. I helped him get to school and drove him. He usually takes the bus. I pulled up and saw a woman sitting on a bench outside the school breaking down into tears. I looked once and thought you know what I don’t want to butt in, what if I make her more uncomfortable. What if it isn’t my place? So I went to leave…. something stopped me and I thought I can’t let that woman sit on that bench crying and not do a thing, when I know I can do something. Also the part of me that connected to my own pain thought, oh thank goodness I’m not alone, let me try and connect. I needed her as much as she needed me.

I approached gently and asked if I could sit with her. She stated she had just been fired from her job, and that her son who has behavior troubles was about to be arrested, he wouldn’t get out of her car so she was sitting on that bench. We realized that our children know one another in a significant way and I embraced her and sat with her. The school managed to help and her son went to school and she later told me her boss listened and let her keep her job. There’s still a lot that she needs, but this morning neither of us had to face the things on our plate alone.

If you see someone or something that has a need and you get that inclination to reach out…. turn toward it. Don’t turn away. You never know who you may be affecting, but you can guarantee that you will be impacted as well. It takes a village and we all need to be connected to each other.

If you have found love…. spread it as much as you can šŸ’œšŸ’œšŸ’œ