Like you’ll never be bored ha. I never am. Sometimes I think I’d like to be until I’m actually there.
Then of course I want to be somewhere else.
I’m doing a lap before taking twin b to the hospital for fluids and stuff to help her tummy. I hate that she got this disease.
I hate how my heart aches when she doesn’t feel well. How my gut wrenches when she wretches. But this is the price of admission and I’d gladly pay double, and it’s taken me a long time to get here.
I’m grateful beyond words lately.
Surrendered, open, loving, letting go. And boy is that difficult for me, to stay consistent with that. It’s daily work.
I can now see fear, control, and so many other things so much better. I can now see myself and others that way, thank God.
I’ve had such artful posts flow through my mind the past couple of days but couldn’t get it down and that’s ok. It’s softer now. There’s faith I will.
I will. Not owned by my will. Will you?!
Where my mind goes in all intimate moments, the all nighters, the special moments. I have as much control over that as I do gravity.
I want to be free. To play, to think, to write, to create. To breathe.
I have needed to and am becoming a better person through letting go. I used to think that it was a process of holding on, to beliefs, to safety, to my opinion. To anything.
God I was insufferable. I suffer just thinking about some of the damage I’ve done, and with that is all I’ve overcome. Conjoined twins.
What is solid and will always be, are my boundaries around choices, they will be made from my most authentic truth bravely, and not recklessly.
I will only be and accept direct straight forward honesty. That makes me breathe easier. That is my commitment to myself. I love her fiercely.
God she’s beautiful.
I am my best friend, and sure we fight sometimes but these days we repair quicker and cleaner.
I am committed to this work. To my beautiful clients who show up and show their scars, pain and hearts to me. It energizes me. If you show up my energy is yours to share in. I’m here.
My life is not only worth living it’s exquisite. A masterpiece. Nothing is allowed to steal my peace anymore, nothing.
I have family, coping mechanisms, love in my open heart, courage, a fierce mind, and I love living, and life with all that I am.
I wouldn’t move one piece of my puzzle.
This year I’m going to work on solid layers of self and continuing to not abandon myself, while also becoming better at love.
I see how much threat alert I lived with daily and what it has caused. I watch the damage daily in my children’s struggles. However I am right here for them. A rock. A River, an ocean. A warrior.
I am fiercely loyal, and that loyal was always going to need to include myself. I learned it didn’t.
Update ER for four hours. An experiment in the observation of humanity for sure. I may never come to one again. Somehow you end up worse off. Gah.
I watched the movie Burnt the other day, with Bradley Cooper. It resonated. Amazing movie about passion and recovery and food and creativity. It really touched me. I’ve watched it since.
I seem to stay attached to those type of things. Movies and music that make me feel something. It stays. I stay.
I’m back to reading schizophrenia and beginning one book after another but not committing, and resisting finishing them. Sigh. Time to slow down. Same with writing. Although there’s some new on that front. I’m beginning a therapeutic memoir writing course in January in addition to the immersion I’m already doing.
Investing.
There are new beautiful things happening. New energy.
The old and new converges into a brew a stew, a crew.
Coming soon, talking about connecting with family members I never imagined I would, and knowing things I never imagined I could. A bond with my father posthumously I didn’t expect via a family member.
And the ongoing process of how in the hell to decide how best to spend the time and talent I’ve been given. The ever elusive balance.
There’s so much ground to cover. But for now let me prevent myself from ending up in jail as a mom on her 5th hour of watching her daughter uncomfortable and not being able to do anything.
How Do You Block the Sound of a Voice You’d Know Anywhere….
Lisa Loeb Wishing Heart and Jan Arden Insensitive are taking me back today….
I have a bad sinus cold. I woke up this morning with my head pounding, sensitive to light and sound and essentially everything. I debated strongly what course of action to take, ie migraine pill because it feels like that, but I know it’s sinus pressure.
I opted for severe sinus med and it definitely lightened the suffering though it’s there behind the pill. I don’t want to take an antibiotic if I don’t have to. It wipes out any good gut bacteria I manage to have and causes whole other issues. So there’s that.
I’m seriously reflective right now. Very within. Integrating the changes from these past years. The holidays brought forth lots of grief. All of the lost dreams. It’s not as doom and gloom as it sounds, well it is and isn’t.
It isn’t because I am faithful these days to a belief that all of these are threads in a tapestry of my life and all are sacred, even the more coarse fibers.
I am understanding my self better, which helps me to understand others better. I’m doing this in all areas and in past and present relationships.
It’s a softening.
Will I be thawing forever?
The answer in so many ways is a resounding yes. What’s different is the resentment. I no long resent this as much, that is becoming a holding it sacred as part of my path. Who even am I?! Oh hey heyoka. If that’s the name for a deep spiritual being that can hardly believe that’s a real thing and not some grandiose fantasy. It sounds ridiculous and self aggrandizing. We only believe what we can see and touch, because anything else never showed up.
I’m not behaving as if I’m living in a fantasy. My feet are firmly planted and I’m addressing myself and my needs and learning to communicate. I am learning. It’s not easy for me. Yep it’s not the other person, it’s me, just as much. Humble pie. I own my things, and own them specifically and follow through with change however and I was always capable of that. That was always possible under the right conditions and I am not responsible for the right conditions. I made my hard decisions.
I can trust that because when push comes to shove afraid or not I act with integrity. Scared or not. That is trustworthy. So when am I going to start valuing myself in that way?! Love HER Christina, choose her. She deserves and is worthy of your love. Stop fearing her, she has always meant well and tried hard and course corrected when it has been necessary without relying on manipulation.
I never relied on manipulation. When I recognized that’s what I was doing I owned it and changed and had empathy for those hurt.
Empathy without boundaries is self destruction. Yes it is. Never again. Boundaries are king and everything will be as it should because those are water tight. Crystal clear boundaries she said, a therapist from another life. Able to protect even when that was a difficult balance. Crystal clear boundaries Christina.
I remember every single thing that is important to know. Not protected by a narrative, but cloaked in taking the time I need to make the decisions that are best for me and learning how to be more than a coping strategy.
Meeting myself. Falling in love, or at least like. Sometimes love can be very overwhelming.
I am observing myself in absolute shut downs and freezes and then watching what brings me back and what shuts me down further.
I have slowed down enough that I am able to be seen, only because I am seeing myself, not only in that terrible polarity of good or bad, right or wrong. But in all of the richness and complexity I deserve. Did you hear that?! Wow.
I did. And my eyes are wet.
They thaw over and over as my heart does as well.
My head is exploding I’m going to freak out! No I’m not. My adult self will take myself to the walk in later and get on some antibiotics and trust the rest. I’ve had this pain for three days. I rearranged my day to only have a 12, and 1 and moved the rest. So I can just crawl in bed and relax. I think it’s time to also take the migraine pill. I think it’s both 🙁
It’s so painful these realizations of the way I’ve seen things so backwards and tangled with my kids and how misunderstood I’ve felt, and not being able to clear those up. I can’t believe how I’ve lived like this all this time. So separate from myself and those I love and just as a harsh executioner. Reactive, ready to jump on any sign of dissension.
I was reacting to my children all the time, when I didn’t feel in control. And shocker I’m not in control of anything, but myself now. Jesus it was about time. In the immortal words of Elizabeth Gilbert. You never really had control anyway, all you had was anxiety. Yes Liz. Thank you for being a beacon when I am lost.
How I have needed to be in control for safety. I am the things I’ve accused of and I see so much more softly now. Of myself and others and the glaciers just thaw and thaw.
What will emerge ? As I no longer reside in a story or rely on the same coping mechanisms.
It’s absolutely terrifying being in a transformation. Dying over and over. Things are so clear at least and that is a relief. and there is also so much to sit with. To make friends with.
I’m fighting to trust myself. That is my biggest area of work right now. My perception, my own ability to feel my feelings in real time, rather than a year later. That the things I say and do will not hurt me let alone another. I’m juggling so many plates in the air all the time and working at being entirely different when overwhelmed.
The tool I’m employing most often is empathy and having been so far removed from my own for myself for so long I’m wondering how the new fresh oxygen will integrate: was I without it for too long? Is the damage too great?
I’m only just beginning to peel back the layers. To not use usual coping strategies and patterns. To know what is and what is not that.
My heart is opening and softening, but I’m still an anemone. At the slightest sign of danger I close up tightly and it’s frustrating feeling so emotionally handicapped. Stunted, frozen, cold.
I am going through those things, but I am not those things. This is quite possibly one of the biggest changes inside to date.
I’ve misunderstood myself so catastrophically for so long, that finding understanding now is almost unbearable. It’s unbearably different than what I am used to.
To stop misunderstanding others, my children. My SELF.
The one safe space I understand well contained into an hour long appointment with my acute and honed ability focused and objectivity at my disposal I cling tightly to my gift to keep me steady, and it does.
Then I adjust my narrative not to pathologize that somehow, and then I do that in every other area of my life.
I am naked right now.
And I’ve never been like this before. My eyes are wet again.
The breaking and building.
My bones are powder….
At least I am not a powder keg anymore.
My heart is an ocean
One of those lovely ones that are clear blue and contain no sharks. A safe ocean.
It used to be safe for others, but not for me….
That is different now. I am different now. I am soft and scared and sacred and new and old at the same time.
My head hurts so bad…..
I just want to snuggle into my covers and cry and listen to the last two hours of Evelyn Hugo. But first a bath, a rally and showtime for two hours.
My sessions deepen as I do, and as my understanding of myself does, and my forgiveness of myself….
Onward
Ps one moment of truly being seen to the core, I have found, can thaw the thickest ice. The person opens right back up and becomes present in that safety. The person so often lately doing that, is me.
I am told I am that for so many others, but I wasn’t doing that for myself. I’m so surprised when someone sees me and so used to living without it.
You gave me oxygen then removed it, over and over until I begged for an end. In the end I made it myself.
That was just the beginning, as often is with transformations. Now the integration and not knowing whether the organ will be accepted or rejected.
I’ve got approximately two and a half hours left of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and I’ve been savoring it. I’ll feel incomplete for a short while in its absence. I’ve been all or nothing so long, it’s nice to read it bit bit and then process and listen to music. I have a nice groove going on.
I walked to Natural Kitchen and got a bowl today. I think the tuna from there makes me a little allergic, probably some preservative they use. A major goal in the new year is to begin working with a nutritionist and allergist and really attend to my health.
Another goal is to spend very little and see if I can pay off my student loans. I’m coming up with a strategy with my financial advisor. I want to leave my children with a good financial situation and also make sure in case anything happens to me with my Crohns that I have wiggle room. So they and we are safe and don’t have additional stress.
*don’t worry I’m not leaving anytime soon, I just think that far ahead. It’s a part of me.
When did I suddenly become such an adult ?! Who knows!?
I was able to do quite a bit for those I love this year for Christmas and it’s all done. I’m usually panicking the night before. It’s pinch me unreal the things I’m able to do.
I’ve been that way most of my life though, pinching myself at things I just never could even have seen for myself. How rich my experiences have been. No corner of my life unturned and I shall continue living this way.
I wore my only human sweats today and grey under armor sweater with beanie and just felt cool ha. Feels silly to say but I did. I felt cool despite having my winter weight on, some breaking out on my face. I just don’t torture myself anymore and that feels very nice.
To not nitpick myself apart about perfection. Now if I could just continue to do that with writing.
Go easy on me baby….. appropriate.
Henri is asleep at my feet. The cat dog that she is. The little prince is cleaning up after his ugly Christmas / cookie extravaganza last night. Thankful those are few and far between, and also grateful to be able to be that house and have such a good group of kids.
I feel like Diane Lane in the end of Under the Tuscan Sun, something I want to read by the way. I’ve only seen the movie. She had felt so low at one point, like she was never going to have what she wanted and then realizes she did even though it’s completely different than she thought.
Yep my face is definitely flushing from this food. I get much less anxious about these things anymore. I go with I’ll be fine, and if I’m not I’ll know and be able to get the care I need. Not going to eat this bowl again. But I will for sure walk to places to get my food and even shopping. I love walking when I can instead of driving.
Maybe next I’ll bike everywhere and keep costs down. Anything can be an adventure. I could be happy the rest of my life walking back and forth to the library and eating a picnic lunch out in the sun with a book.
The simple things…
I just want to make sure my loved ones are safe and cared for and myself and we have experiences. That’s what I’m focused on lately, and that I make choices that are congruent with that. Yes a therapist word for sure. Shocking 😉
Writing a book lately feels like more of a when, than an if. That feels so nice. I could cry just to say it, but most important that I feel it. A sense of security and that it’s solid. If my circumstances change I still am solid. That’s taking root.
It’s my birthday tomorrow. It feels different this year somehow. I’m acknowledging it and not saying it doesn’t matter and I don’t need anything. It feels calm and safe.
In fact I need to see a show, A Strange Loop on Broadway and the tree and have a nice dinner in the city with my loved ones. I’m not anxious. Well maybe a little. About not finding a bathroom or anything that can happen, but the excitement outweighs. Mmmm.
I have more than I need. I can begin thinking about what I can do to give to my community and to my field and all of it.
I have so much more to write maybe today will be a twofer or tomorrow morning I’ll take some time for me to contemplate the brink of my forty second trip around the Sun.
I was going to talk about Evelyn’s sixth husband because that’s where I am. And how I feel for people so beautiful they get trapped in the upkeep of it all, it’s one thing to enjoy taking care of yourself, pressure however is quite another.
Ok so I wrote this a couple of days ago and didn’t post. It’s more an update than passion ridden prose. A theme I suppose. I have therapy now on Christmas Eve eve. Then walking and family time. I anticipate a lot of writing as I am present and coming to the end of Evelyn’s story.
And still well at the beginning of mine 💜
Ps and in true Christina fashion I didn’t talk about the title subject much at all. Stay tuned it will come along somewhere…. Soon. I think. Maybe
That ice crust on the outside though, the moment your teeth break through. The feeling when you have the whole thing still, and the one when there’s only a bite left. Moments.
“I want to live and not just survive…. That’s why I can’t love you in the dark….Adele this morning.“
It’s finally a cold morning. I woke up needing to walk…. So here I am. The tree that was dazzling fire the other day, is already coal and ash. It changes as quickly as my consciousness does.
I was recently conceptualized as a porcupine. The irony. Rough around the edges huh. Shocking. The guards don’t relent, and they don’t dispatch either. Maybe if I’m still, meditation, contemplation, they will get bored and stray.
Doubtful. They are loyal to a fault.
Porcupines aren’t bad. They have soft underbelly’s. But reaching that space, that’s another matter entirely.
The cold air prickles my skin this morning, quills or not. The sun’s rising is creating a cotton candy pastel glow. It’s a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper out here this morning. I am truly old 😉
As she approaches (the Sun) it’s an Orange Creamsicle now. A childhood memory fragment. On field days and other occasions my odd Seventh Day Adventist k-12 school always offered either that or a fudgesicle. How would you spell that anyway.?!
Anyway I was never a fudge girl or chocolate. But every once in awhile I’d change it up, because I knew the power of variety and learning. I wanted to try. To this day give me a plain French vanilla ice cream from a classic parlor any day. Bliss. It’s hard to come by actually.
It’s rare I remember that playground, the one I had so many nightmares about. Waking and dreaming one’s. Just a gaggle of little ones playing silly pretend games.
In recent years some of those little girls have come forward and shared their secrets and their truths with me. They felt I was safe and a protector. That’s because we knew each other. Could smell the fear on her.
I remember how much I knew and wanted to protect as a kindergartner. And now I know that shouldn’t have been. Now I can be angry and reclaim.
Now I can see the friends with children with two loving parents living their lives around their children and know where each quill originated.
I might as well be from another planet observing. What would that be like?! I consistent world of that. So much less running, and yelling. Having my truth choked out of me. With silent manipulation. With cold hard death stares. With every adult temper tantrum.
The gun in her mouth, the passed out all the time, powder and mirrors. I was a little girl.
I wasn’t.
I was an informant, a spy, a comforter, a therapist, a massage therapist, a toy, a buddy, a friend.
I was terrified and frozen and forced out of my heart and up into my head before I ever knew a thing about me. To try and preserve anything that could be, without even knowing I was doing that.
Viktor Frankl mindset before I knew what or who he and that was.
I had a good attitude about life and I loved people, as fucked up as they were. I loved living.
I have always loved waking up, even when the content of the day sometimes made me wish to sleep forever.
The gift I have is every day is a blank canvas and always has the possibility of being a masterpiece.
For so long I was chasing the ability to consistently create one, in whichever area of my life.
Now I’m walking with the world and listening and looking. No more chasing, and no more running either.
My work deepens, my clients heal before my eyes. And now I do too. So I can keep going with it. We cannot ask people to travel further than we have. Rollo May.
Did you know you can see a person heal.?! It’s observable. Their nervous system calms. Their eyes meet yours. They hunch down less, with each empowering choice they are able to make because they understand and feel supported.
Seeing themselves through new eyes and new understanding.
It IS Magic. And I am privileged.
So what if the solid ground of my identity was forged the way it was, it has created a beautiful life and career. One that just keeps getting better.
I get to watch people come home to their true selves, as I do the same.
Creating positive ripples in a hundred families. Changes that ease the suffering and create possibilities. The starfish and made a difference to that one.
We find our way together. The walking wounded and the gifts that produces. One of the greatest misunderstandings about pain.
When I opened this this morning while walking I had no idea what it would become, but here we are.
Letting go and letting things take on a life of their own. Being in a space with myself that I can allow that.
Magic
Ps mom moment: twin b is having wisdom tooth surgery in Washington where she’s staying with her aunt, to adventure. I won’t be taking care of her for the first time in our lives for a medical procedure and that hurts my heart. I feel it. That’s the beautiful part. She’s well cared for, so that’s good. And she will be home for Christmas. But this is a first that I couldn’t have anticipated the sharpness of. “I just want to protect you the way the skin protects your blood.”
Never wish not to feel something. Trust me on this one. It’s torture.
All of these lines across my face… tell me the story of who I am… so many stories….
I did EMDR last night. The first session I made all the way to an installation apparently. I didn’t know that. That all my talking and planning what I’ll say, and having things to say, could have sometimes been avoidance. I’m getting closer to acceptance within the grief process.
My intellectualizing, while quite functional and productive even, also an elaborate form of denial. Denial and avoidance are being confronted abundantly lately.
Within the many grief processes. It’s like once I began why not just keep piling them on. How did I get here? Well I didn’t get myself here alone. I know that.
Last night I focused on permitting myself to fully estrange myself from “my family”, those people I grew up around. How is it possible to spend time agonizing over what will happen when I get that call someone has died. The reality is to go there, to that place, even the thought of it gives me rapid and horrific physical symptoms.
This is my reality.
How would I feel if they didn’t call me? Abandoned all over again? Not belonging. Without any mindfulness of if I want to belong there, and why or why not.
Radical acceptance …. Any acceptance, perhaps radical sets the bar really high.
Another reality is that so much in life I have used a copy paste technique to make big decisions in my one precious life. Never having learned trusting myself or anyone else, why not just default to a faulty system. It felt sound at the time. This works over here, let’s try it in my life. I don’t know what I feel anyway. Why not. Plus look how great it looks.
I’m paralyzed, where are my feelings, I no longer feel things I know I should.
I’m on an NF and Brandy Carlisle kick right now. I want to read her memoir and Matthew McConaughey Greenlights I started on Audible last night. His voice is something other worldly soothing. In a fantasy he could have been my father. Just like Elizabeth Gilbert could have been my mother.
My reality is so much better than fantasy…. And yet the dissociative patterns of old run deep.
I just keep challenging stories, that are just that. The kind my mind creates. I would rather keep it busy reading others subjective truths about their lives as they recall it. Than ricocheting between certainty and doubt in my own mind as a means to keep myself sharp and honed for any impending disaster.
The ever present dread. The illusion of safety it creates. That soothing bastard.
The reality is my want to be in attendance of a funeral for a connection I never had would be one again to prove some worthiness to some unknown diety. I see others do this or that with their grief and wish to emulate rather than trust what I need.
What I need……
(Selfish) you’re selfish. It’s all about you)
Last night in emdr I scratched the surface on the truth of what I need. It was introduced. Progress. Because normally that wouldn’t have even been in the program. It would have been what I need to do. And the why is always to be accepted or belong. (This is why my parent focus is what the kids need to do, rather than on an emotional connection, that breaks my heart. I’m inside of here (her) trying to get out. I’m right here in the upside down.
The proverbial carrot always being dangled over my face. (belonging)
I don’t have to live that way anymore. I accept and belong to myself, and if you know how hard won those words are to be uttered authentically, then you know.
In Emdr I made parallels between families and not feeling understood or wanted. Mine and my ex husband’s. The two starter families. I combatted the story that I abandoned them, and was able to realistically list the ways I was the abandoned. Not in a victim sense. In the way that one must do to confront reality as it happened and not how we wished it to happen.
I wish when I got that call it would be different. That it’s not something that would make me sick. That’s not the reality. The reality is people will judge and hold their own reality when I cut myself off.
Other people stay. Look their family’s are together. Look they go and attend the funeral. But at what cost to them?! If it’s a scrabble toward worthiness, that battle is already lost.
(May I only stay where I am nurtured and valued consistently. May I nurture and value consistently those I love and have responsibility for and to.
These are my vows
May I recognize and have my eyes open to a relationship being abandoned and not nurtured or engaged in so I may never have to be so cold to myself again.
May I notice if I have grown cold or abandoned. And have the courage I need to breath life back in, if the cause is worthy. )
Maybe it doesn’t have to cost for them, but it does for me. I must permit myself my own truth, rather than dissociate from it for anesthetic value.
Trust and Permission
The only way to feel a sense of wholeness and worthiness, especially if the roots weren’t naturally provided, is to be understanding and accepting of yourself. So others can do the same. Or that’s what I’m finding anyway.
Want to be understood? Take the time to be understanding to yourself, of yourself, for yourself. She, they, her, him, must be included.
Must belong
I was never loyal to myself. I was loyal to even an idea of a healthy family. I kept trying to see what ingredients would create one and kept trying. Like a mad scientist, only to be misunderstood further.
Mirages
Until my vulnerabilities got used so thoroughly against me I became forced to learn how to have a relationship with myself.
I was staring the abuse and neglect in the face until I dis identified and realized it was not my self. The self was preserved on ice.
Heart throbs, heart melts…. Heart beat easily 120 bpm on so many days. I didn’t even know my own post traumatic stress. I didn’t know that’s what it was. It was my fault like everything else.
It was tricky at first…. A clumsy dance. This relationship with me….
This is how scattered and shattered my brain is. It blanks and grasps at a memory or a thought, even as a trap door lies right beneath my feet. Or a panther lies in wait guarding the memory. Can’t get the good without the bad Christina. Evil laughter.
“And you call me up again just to break me like a promise So casually cruel in the name of being honest I’m a crumpled up piece of paper lying here ‘Cause I remember it all, all, all”
Let’s just see what comes. It’s time….I always think. And then I get busy and don’t let the wings of inspiration take me to that special place. Home.
Speaking of home…. I bought one. Mine. A redo of sorts. There will be a house warming, why not, really because it’s already a warm home. This time death or any other death will not cloud my accomplishment or my joy.
I often just marvel and awe at the fact I am able to own a home like this just in my name. I can’t tell you how much work it has taken to get a healthy relationship with money, or anything really. I could just cry thinking about it.
I am finishing books, the most recent of which is Momma and The Meaning of Life by Yalom of course. And I’ll post some excerpts from it that I love! Prior to that was the Honey Bus, I related to that one so much, and found parts of myself that may have never been recovered without it. I’m also working on Hillbilly Elegy, The Tender Bar, and East of Eden.
East of Eden I could take a lifetime to read as one page is so delicious I’m description, metaphor, and insight…. That it’s too good not to savor slowly. It’s the kind of book that you drink in every word, and pray it lasts, because you never want it to be over.
I am blissfully present most of the time these days. My brain no longer on fire. Sure the spirals occasionally threaten, the over thinking my brain is so naturally programmed for, but it’s not natural for me any longer. Peace has taken over.
I lived as a walking talking trauma response for almost 40 years before I became aware of how severe my own was. It’s like working with clients was always walking me towards that truth gently at a pace I could tolerate. Funny as I would often see myself as not gentle with others, because my style is very direct and protective and I’m sometimes too full with knowledge. Who knew there could be such a thing.
Sometimes it isn’t knowledge that does the most healing, those words are hard for me to say without choking on the resistance. I have learned the heart had the most healing power, once you can figure out how to get the guards to stand down.
We are all in this together, my defense mechanisms and me. I thank them for their service daily and also let them enjoy their retirement to a degree. They will likely always carry and always watch carefully, but peace is their main objective.
I have learned peace is just another way to protect oneself. Peace of mind is a powerful ally.
Being so disconnected with myself and keeping away from my children while focusing on providing has taken its toll and given me a fair amount of regrets. Fear is a great thief. So much pain is caused with it being the guiding force. I wade through it daily in my work, and as I process my life and the meaning of it.
My mind is an interesting force some days it can remember everything and some days it can’t even catch a thought. I used to become so disturbed by these inconsistencies and now I attempt to embrace them and it with compassion.
The truth of the matter is I live daily with a lot of psychological pain. It’s a fact. I asked Melissa (my therapist) the other day how sick am I? She worries it was self deprecation I’m sure, and I assure her I need it for understanding and validation of my pain. We explore for curiosity at first because she can’t answer without context. We can’t answer without context, could be disastrous.
Later she concedes that I am very traumatized. It’s a fact at this point. It’s a fact that I lived without the knowledge or language for my entire life. Just stumbling through it in excruciating disconnection from myself, and being able to access stable logic to balance me…. Keep me floating steady.
I use my trauma daily in my practice, to inform my care that I give, and to help others like me connect dots to understanding themselves. And while I’m working the pain eases. It returns white hot in almost all other times, but while I’m using my pain to help it all but disappears. This is the point in Man’s Search for Meaning. The light that shines out of the darkness. To be a light in someone’s dark, lights my way as well. You cannot share light without also being in its glow.
This is how I survive my painful mind, that looks for threat everywhere. That causes so many triggers and flashbacks that I must manage daily. I must manage myself and not turn that into a negative view about myself. That’s a lot of managing. Never mind the raising of children, the keeping of a home, and owning a successful practice.
I have so many triggers. It’s so easy to distort reality and it’s taken a lifetime to admit that which feels like defeat or failure, when it is actually a very real disability.
It is brain damage. All of those times I was teased or insulted for not being able to concentrate, or why I can’t remember how to get somewhere even after twenty times of driving there. The worst of which is that my kids feel like I don’t care when my mind drifts when they wanted so much to talk to me about their day. My mind was thinking about our next meal, money, how I was going to feel any acceptance or belonging, but for them I was just absent during all those times.
It never was a lack of caring. That misunderstanding cuts so deep. The misunderstanding of myself as bad, wrong, deeply flawed has been my dark passenger all of my life.
This is the first time I’ve ever lived without it as much as humanly possible. There will always be a tendency, but I’ve gained control of my own mind using awareness. and tons of trauma work.
Melissa decodes me to myself each session when my mind attempts to twist things into a narrative that makes sense, a battle. She helps my mind make a peace treaty before the troops are even on the field. Their uniforms are getting dusty, they are getting out of shape and playing cards, but they will always be waiting if I need them. Security.
If I don’t get a dose, my mind starts to become cluttered with intrusive thoughts and I start to fall back into triggers. After two years I moved to one time weekly and sometimes I’m barely breathing with the rally of the troops just before Friday mornings. I have held on so tightly until I can understand myself and others in a better light.
I breathe with relief after a session…. Even the heaviest of sighs are with so much lightness Of being. It burns off, the anxiety eventually burns off with enough exposure. It’s walking through the fire that’s tricky.
Anyway I promised some Yalom, we are almost there. Some details before…. Twin B also has Crohns disease and is on Humira. Not the thing I wanted to pass to my kids. It’s heartbreaking. 🙁 it’s interesting watching her navigating this and everyone just says she’s lucky to have me, and that’s still hard to accept as true, though I’m much further on that journey.
My girls are days away from high school graduation. They are strong, kind, insightful, warm, and I could not be more proud, and my son as well. He’s sensitive in the best way, though that also sometimes turns against him. I hope I’ll be able to help with that, just by showing up. I am finally able to enjoy my children without being terrified of fucking them up, since I already have of course.
But finally I can see more good, than the bad. More good in me and from me, and not hold myself in contempt for the ways I learned to survive. For how my mind became programmed. It truly wasn’t my fault, and I truly have always taken responsibility for my own healing. It’s just been a very long road.
I am tired. I am so far beyond tired. Yesterday I walked almost 7 miles working on being healthy and today I woke up sore in all my joints, and aching. Every attempt I make seems to end in punishment, but I don’t choose to keep that narrative. I take deep breaths, pauses, ask for what I need, and keep showing up.
I stretch. I cry when I need. I say how I feel. I am learning and teaching and living. I appreciate life as a gift, even amidst pain. The pain comes and goes and there are moments in life so sweet that all can be forgotten and I’m blessed with so many of those.
I didn’t realize how shaped I am by the theories that resonate. Yalom is in so many ways my guiding force. “Dr. Whitehorn genuinely wanted to be taught. He was a collector and had in this manner accumulated an astounding treasure trove of factual curios over the years. You and your patients both win he would say, if you let them teach you enough about their lives and interests. Learn about their lives; you will not only be edified but you will ultimately learn all you need to know about their Illness.”
“By allowing the patient to teach him Dr. Whitehorn related to the person, rather than the pathology, of that patient. His strategy invariable enhanced both the patient’s self regard and his or her willingness to be self revealing.
Yalom is honest with patients in a way that at times makes me cringe with imagining. We are not supposed to say something that will hurt them, and god forbid it’s not socially appropriate. One of the vignettes is about a client of his who hears his honest thoughts about her accidentally on a recorded tape he gave her. She never reveals this to him, but finds ways to make it as if she’s found out other people have said this and asks him if he feels she’s this or that.
He is never dishonest with her, and so even with that level of a breach the work becomes successful because her anger at his words motivated her to truly look at herself. The truth itself is what motivated her, when nothing else had budged.
An honest look is worth its weight in gold as far as transformation, and it’s one of the hardest things to do.
All this time later I can finally hold space for the ways my trauma has hurt my children and me. I can operate from a softer space, and from this place worlds open up to me.
I can feel in real time, not only think about how I should feel. That is something that I’m still only getting glimmers of, but it’s a beginning and it will grow.
I have a patience I never had before, mostly with myself, and It has given me a new world to explore within myself and how I see others.
I guess I had (have a lot to say) no surprise there. Where do I start, where do I stop, what goes where? Finally that’s not so overwhelming that I don’t move. For now I’ll just speak, the work will organize itself once I trust it enough.
This line stops me in my tracks. Trust my heart?! Have you taken a look at my life lately? But somehow I know it’s true.
I am reading Words on Bathroom Walls. It’s simple style makes me want to think and write that way as well. It just seems so straightforward, so easy, nothing like my mind.
Adam (the main character) and I have that in common about our minds. You never know when your mind will be your enemy or your best friend. One moment you can be so sure of the truth and everything, and the next shattered.
One moment I can have the galaxies of the universe on the tip of my awareness and the second I attempt to capture it, everything goes blank.
Like when I opened this blog post I had a wave of inspiration and in the time it took me to open the app on my phone, poof. Into the abyss. I sit very still hoping it will alight gently on my shoulder any minute now.
Thursday nights are dinner at my favorite restaurant. It’s nice having a favorite restaurant and being a regular. Another aspect of belonging of course. It’s comforting. Last night I felt comfortable in my own skin and confident and not socially anxious and not overly preoccupied with anything, even though I always manage to create something to be overly preoccupied about.
A regular I hadn’t seen in a long time, a tall dark and handsome man (rare for me to interact with LOL) told me that I looked great and asked what I was doing. You know to look so fresh and perky. I’m forty I’m not sure perky applies but we will go with it. It felt nice to be noticed (seen?) those are different I suppose. See over thinking again. Can you really over-think or is that just a way society shames us for using more of our gifts than we should?
Anyway later in the evening my friend who I dine with on Thursdays (friend is such an understatement fellow traveler and family more appropriate, and many others), went to go speak to someone and said tall dark and handsome enters seat next to me. He commented on my posts on Facebook and said he needs help. To clarify I believe he needs light like the rest of us, not exactly help. Light helps you create your own help as an inside job.
Once again the fact he would share that with me, and I’m that person, it never ceases to amaze me, humble me, excite me, and make me feel special in all the ways I never did in childhood. The universe has a funny way of making up for what your earthly coils lacked. It’s one of my favorite things.
I have a doctors appointment this morning. Sometimes it feels like my whole life is filled with them and then I think don’t feel sorry for yourself it’s not like you have cancer or something. And I toggle back and forth between validating and invalidating my experience. I just summed up how I spend most of my mental energy. Funny and not funny at all.
I’m dreaming about vacation lately and trying to get a vision for what that looks like. The toggling happens here too, a lot. Can I use those resources when there are so many loose ends in the air. Should I use it for this or for that. Time and resources apparently feel always running out despite the abundance I’m surrounded with.
Maybe I have more in common with Adam than I thought. I mean it’s not an accident I’m reading the book and love the movie so much. My perception can be completely skewed, and also it can be so completely perceptive to the ends of the earth. If I stayed solidly in that place I wouldn’t wander in my mind, in the ways one needs to wander to be a healer. Hmmm. See during the act of writing this that arose and felt damn true and good too. That’s why I do this.
Deciding how and when and to whom I process to, these days that’s a whole other matter. It’s more of a sacred decision than I ever valued it as, but also there’s so many less ways to go wrong (such an intense word) than I originally thought.
Highly sensitive people spend a great deal of time trying to find how they are wrong so they can fix it, presumably because their major intent is the betterment of humanity. Betterment of humanity detriment to themselves. Is it always that way for healers or just when you’re out of balance!?
What kind of healer am I? Was psychotherapist just the beginning? I mean it felt like the total destination and I already have a purpose. So what now? I’m always on the brink of something. I suppose that makes me an adventurer.
That felt nice to write. Not crazy and bad? No Adam we are not crazy or bad. We that invaluable shared experience with another that can also be found in books and movies and just so happens to be there when you need it.
I had a client share with me yesterday that the yucky depression voice is barely hanging around these days and maybe it’s just coincidence (see we all want to minimize our accomplishments), but that they noticed.
Something in the book that struck me is how Adam gets to know Maya, and the things he notices about how she operates and who she is. He knows her very well, the light and the dark and this happens slowly over time. Have I ever allowed that? Leaps and bounds subsisting off crumbs, existing primarily alone. I see myself so different now.
But I have no idea what that will mean going forward. That sort of groundlessness used to plunge me into pathological loneliness so easily and it would take days to recover and it would always be a patch job.
I’m sailing a yacht now and the compass and all the equipment is working and that in and of itself is terrifying. It’s a lot of responsibility, our own happiness. Much easier to play out templates and patterns from our upbringing and be in a part that is rehearsed rather than breaking through to our own.
I’m scared of my own abundance and my gifts and power. I’m actually scared I can’t complain or default ? Wow.
Who will I be outside the story I make up for myself daily to create relief. Outside the story what is real and what isn’t? Could it be possible that real is whatever I perceive and create and that’s ok?! That feels too simple and too complicated all at once.
I only have a few more pages left on my journey into Adam’s journey. Who’s will be next and what will I learn ?
Sophie at approximately 6 months old. She’s heavy now. I didn’t move because the cuddles were too sweet. Why can’t human love be as easy as dog love?
The thing about love and I, is that I tried to make it and mold it and choose it the rest of the way I did my life. With intention and actions, but done by me.
I didn’t allow it to unfold organically ever. And if you had seen the beginning of my life you’d understand. Natural and organic for me, didn’t turn out so well.
I applied all the things I knew how to do to survive to love as well. I never trusted it. I didn’t have any faith. Maybe that’s what this process has become about.
Actually let me craft this better. I didn’t ever wait and allow someone…
Ok I see. I’m always trying to make myself responsible. I always was responsible. I had to be. I’ve never not been. And in this time now I’m responsible for and to me. It feels surprisingly good.
To know that I’ve put down my exhausting tasks and going to replace that with faith. That love will show up a fully formed thing and it will be safe and interested in me for nothing other than who I am. When it comes that will be what it looks like. Not for material or status gain, or for a perceived lack of other options. Scarcity.
For the pure enjoyment of the occasion. I celebrate myself. Stop this day and night with me….
The sun isn’t up yet on a Sunday. There are so many possibilities in this day. So many hours that can be filled by simply just being and noticing. One breath in and one breath out.
I’m noticing my kids a lot lately. How long had I been holding my breath waiting for something terrible to happen like that would change the level of pain felt if it did.
How long has life been a blur of longing and trying. What have I looked like to them? They just missed me while I was figuring myself out. Wanting more of me, not less, even as they pushed me away.
They are the only ones allowed to send me confusing messages about love.
They are trying to figure out their paths and separate from me some but still feel my warmth on them as they walk about the world. I’ve been lost to me and them, and it has cost a lot.
I have a migraine brewing, must be the pressure of the impending snow, or it’s Crohns Disease. My stomach is red hot coals this morning. 🙁 This is why I don’t drink. See still trying to blame myself, when it’s always been the stress.
Victoria came in and kissed my head last night while I was sleeping and my heart melted. We are figuring it out. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it, that single act of loving.
They are more able to be loving and open and warm than I ever was. It always made me feel defective when it came to them. The way I sometimes freeze up when emotions are too overwhelming. It’s only when I’m caught in shame.
When I don’t think I’ll be safe or good enough. I was never that. Life was that for me. And that made me start to cry. The words bring the emotions, and the emotions create the will to write the words.
This won’t help with the headache and the nausea.
My children are magnificent. They keep trying to better themselves. All three of them. I just hope their pursuit with that will not be as rabid and desperate as mine. That it can be relaxing and filled with peace. I guess that is my next task to model for them. It has felt impossible. RE-wiring. A break and rebuild.
My bed is so comfortable and my new bedroom color is lovely. It’s been a slow transformation. Who would have thought, and I am finally able to recognize while I wasn’t even looking….
I’ve been slowly transforming too.
That is a warm thought. I never thought I could find comfort outside the safety of another human until I was left so unsafe as an adult. A situation I never thought I would put myself in.
Love is always a risk worth taking. I have no regrets. Life is not meant to be lived fearfully and I stand behind my philosophy. I needed to be forced into recognizing myself as I am and not as I had crafted myself to be.
As it turns out this is even better than my representative. Read Love Warrior. We all have our path.
That was exhausting.
This is peace.
The only thing I’ll allow the rest of my life. Allowing. And I’ll leave creating for writing and not for love until love shows up for me without me doing anything. Natural.
Let the problem wear itself out. Rather than wearing myself out. Who knew that was an option.
Ok my coffee is beckoning and I’m going to need to take a migraine pill. My morning pages and my novel await.
Perhaps my unfolding as a poet and writer will happen right here… in live format. I mean it already has, but the consistency I was yearning to be.
Sometimes the only thing I have is my voice (my writing). Things have been so hard lately. For a lot of it I haven’t even been able to get glimpses it will ever be better. No glimmers in sight.
I also have music, Pink in particular, my barber, my therapist, my work that I love immensely, my friends, my kids, my health though that’s sometimes questionable but for the most part, and food and shelter.
The way I survived my childhood was to get away from it, and the way I did that was through my connections with people, and my tenacity and ability to get a job in five minutes or less of being in an establishment.
I made a family naively, quickly. I will never regret that. My sadness is that I didn’t have a situation that cultivated any safety or investment for me to know who I was and what I wanted beyond survival.
I wanted to be a mother because I didn’t have one. I needed a father not a husband at nineteen years old.
Why didn’t anyone see that? Why didn’t I? I was just expected to function like anyone else did, and damnit if I wasn’t going to try.
I was like a giant enthusiastic puppy about life. They couldn’t take that. But it got translated into a single focus, belonging anywhere and loving as hard as I could so I could feel safe. So my nervous system could calm down. I didn’t even know why it wasn’t.
I didn’t know what complex PTSD was, hyper vigilance, etc. I remember my ex husband would get upset with me or tease me that I couldn’t remember how to get somewhere. I couldn’t focus. Even when I started going to college I’d read the same line over and over and walked around in a blur. My friend Abby as I mentioned, she was kind to me anyway.
She was never unkind. Not mocking or teasing. That energy. Backhanded compliments, or criticism. I pick up on them at the most subtle levels. And now when I look back…. at what I endured on a daily basis and no one put it together.
I dedicate my life to connecting the dots for others. It’s what I do.
My whole life changed when I began taking foster parent classes last October or so, and that was just one of the many changes that occurred. I realized at that moment when I watched the graphic videos of kids in abusive situations that I was watching my my life. Wanting to be the foster parent, I ended up the child. I felt sweaty and like I would vomit, and I knew during those classes that I had held this at bay my whole life.
I rushed into relationships because that was the only place it all stopped. The way I felt safe (er). My nervous system was calmed by safe people to be around. And that was love to me.
Safety was love, and love was safety.
Until it wasn’t……
Demi Lovato. Warrior (Music always talks to me while I’m writing, this just came on)
It took one of the safest relationships I had ever had to unlock enough of my security to get into my next abusive one. Why?! There really is some kind of sense that if we have struggled we deserve this or that. And based on my experience it doesn’t work that way.
If you are self-love deficient (see the work of Ross Rosenberg and the Human Magnet Syndrome), then you can avoid pathological loneliness by attracting unconsciously the very type of situation that feels most like home.
I am struggling with shame. I’m a mental health counselor. How could I end up in an abusive relationship? Someone abusing the unconditional regard I gave them. A shared experience leading me to believe we would be one another’s safe space when it was anything but.
The effects are immense. My childhood trauma in my face with a vengeance while doing EMDR, and trying to hold it all together.
Now I am a mess of trust triggers and health symptoms and my children bare the brunt.
I was always going to need to heal these things if I was ever going to move forward on my path. One of the most devastating parts is the acceptance of the story as I actually experienced it. I was perfect for also wanting it to be a certain way, and creating that in my mind over trusting myself and actual reality.
The good news is that will never happen again. The bad news is the trauma I am wading through every day. And whatever toll it is taking on my body that already has Crohns Disease.
I tried to hold my trauma at bay by feeling this alone pairing up with another person with a good heart. I tried to keep myself safe, and I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. It’s conscious now because I can see the blind spots. It wasn’t before.
I have complex PTSD and I intend to speak about it as I move forward. As all of this happened and layers of shamed piled on while very few actually knew what I was experiencing. I hardly knew.
There is always so much beneath the surface. Look! That’s all I can say is look. Ask! Educate yourself and be brave enough to understand. If you see the light in someone’s eyes go out, you have no idea how instrumental you could be if you’re kind and you don’t make assumptions or judge.
I’m in so much pain right now. A shadow of myself. The misunderstandings almost killed me. The shame. An ocean of shame I’ve been drowning in. I look forward to this.
For those that have seen me and loved me in small ways and big this past year, who believe more in me than the things society defines us by. The ones who see my heart and always have. You have saved my life so many more times than you know.
You have stitched together a patch work quilt I huddle under right now for warmth. All those that reach out, the people who see me.
It’s Sunday! And as you know Sundays are for blogging.
My daughters are seventeen, seventeen?! Where did those years go? They are beautiful beyond my wildest imagination and lately I’ve been able to travel back through my memories. Prior to this I never could really. I was traveling forward at the speed of light. Now I am glimpsing, staring out over the horizon.
We went to The Melting Pot yesterday. My little family plus a boyfriend (not mine obviously) and a friend. Each girl had a plus one. It was such a lovely time. I was present and the kids were happy, and that in and of itself is amazing. It felt good. They enjoyed everything so much. Just pure joy.
There was as always a couple of empty seats at the table, that should have been filled. Holes in my heart. I thought about it a lot as I always do, how the little one would delight in playing at dinner. But it didn’t steal my presence any longer. Nothing is worth that, no amount of pleasure or pain, to lose yourself and your luster for life. Not an option.
This morning I read a post on the complex ptsd group on Facebook. Someone wrote about how they shiver and shake in social situations and wondered if anyone else gets like this. I was so strong and resilient I had no idea what I was experiencing all of those years was complex ptsd. All of those physical ailments, intrusive thoughts, fear of dying, and complete terror ridden thoughts nearly constantly. Feeling like I didn’t belong, wasn’t good enough, and then betrayed by my own body. And not one single person put that together. The link.
Truly the world was just fine with letting me be strong and captivating as long as I could maintain it but god forbid I struggled. I got teased and truly just internalized that I had a problem. Absolutely brutal. All the while gratefully helping anyone I came across because I was just thankful to be alive and safe-er than I had been.
No one saw. I was such a good little soldier. And now I am going to spend some time honoring my journey and my story. I’m not sure what that will look like, but I know as the chaos calms I am organizing my thoughts better (at all) and so that helps me to know I’m on the right path.
There was something going on with me that I didn’t have the language for.
The only language I had was shame. Some people deal with this in ways that make them look even more efficient and attractive, but underneath the surface something very different exists. As I let myself be congruent with what I was feeling I lost a lot. Anyone who would judge me or take it personally, and everyone who couldn’t see the pain that was inside.
I think now and wonder how no one ever bothered to connect the dots before.
You think I’m just this island and doing fine? You think my physical symptoms, my sweating, racing heart, tingling limbs, trips to the emergency room, being spaced out and not able to focus that those were on purpose. Why didn’t anyone see? It always became my fault. Always judged for it. What’s wrong with YOU. And I better get this under control I thought or no one will ever love me.
If I couldn’t concentrate on what you were saying or even driving somewhere didn’t you ever wonder why? Beyond I didn’t care?!
Why can’t you focus, why can’t you remember how to drive places you’ve been there many times, why can’t you just be more quiet and need less attention, why can’t you suck it up, why must you have so much pain that you packaged away as to not bother the world with it?! Why do you need so much attention, any attention. Can’t you just manage that. As it turns out I could for most of my life.
Well I’m about to get loud.
It’s never been productive trying to have to shout to someone to get them to understand, to stay, to see. I always wanted to stay, but you were always going to need to see me too, and act like it by showing up.
And you…..I don’t want your promises of grandeur when you know damn well you won’t even answer my call unless you’re out of the house. Disgusting. I never deserved that.
I never deserved a lot of things. One being a paranoid delusional mother who was volatile and selfish and empty in her eyes. Or a cold womanizing father, predatory, who was only willing to have a relationship with me later in life if I had no questions and no emotions. Neither ever became a parent to me. They could have. They had a choice.
Everything is always a choice.
I never deserved that the safest place to land was with a martyr victim quietly co-dependent grandmother, and a harsh authoritarian grandfather, that at least was a little less dangerous and cruel with me. The real danger was his daughters jealousy at that. I was not supposed to receive anything they never did, after all I was not supposed to be born.
They would be nice when lonely or wanting something from me, while simultaneously telling me all their woes about everything and how much better I had it. Then when angry they would lash out say horrible things to me, physically chase me, or ignore and stonewall me. Getting any kind of attention that was pleasant was like a game of chess. I became the perfect player. My wits needed to be sharp to get the most out of that life, and I sure as hell tried.
He could even be warm sometimes. There were moments they both had genuine affection for me, and while completely burdened with the mentally ill children they created, those good church farers pulled themselves up by their boot straps and raised this granddaughter. Raised seems a generous term.
What I didn’t know was after getting out
alive how scattered my brain would be. How confusing it would be to be able to determine what was safe and what wasn’t. There was nothing about knowing who I was or my dreams. It was a game of survival.
A hunger games without the flashy costumes and weapons. It was mind war fare. It makes me skin crawl talking or thinking about it, that’s why I rarely do.
When I finally did go to college I was plagued by anxiety, and I didn’t even know it was that. That too more evidence I wasn’t normal and I was bad and wrong. Never once all that time did I realize I had illness I never asked for. That I was a victim not acting like one.
No one put it together. No one. No one except me now.
So you saw me functioning right ?! Trying to make a life with everything I ever studied to try and make that happen. But do you know most of my life I felt pain and fear and gave out love anyway. I gave it anyway so no one would have to feel like I was.
I have tried my best with what I was given. I’ve tried to keep the damage I was inflicted with off of anyone who comes into contact with me, and at bay. But I never knew I was allowed to claim my whole story and heal. And by god I fucking will.
I’ve had to crawl out of more shame than you can ever imagine and just talking about it is almost impossible. I took the responsibility for my whole healing on all by myself and I was trying to keep anyone from having to be uncomfortable. I wanted to make all the discomfort around me stop. I comforted all of them. I rubbed my moms back, listened to her pain constantly, even as she lashed out on me constantly. I spent time with my aunt I tried to be good and when I couldn’t I shamed myself. I was bad and wrong and not enough. And I carried all of this into the next steps of my life, all the while looking enthusiastic.
A pretty….. lost….. person.
So when you see me staring out in space maybe just maybe I am dealing with these memories. Not lacking presence or wanting to be connected. I wanted those things more than you can ever imagine.
