Tag: #grief

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The unthinkable

*also please don’t tell us it was early or it will all be ok, tell us it’s ok to express our journey as we see fit, and that you will hold us through our pain.*

What they fail to tell you when you’re a survivor of trauma, huge life transitions, and vicious ongoing self-development; is that you won’t hit a place where human suffering becomes less. Unknowing of this you will keep searching. Maybe the beauty is that you search anyway.

There is a certain amount of entitlement that a survivor has. They almost expect that if and when they have worked hard to turn their stars around that life will grant them a time to sail peacefully. Perhaps I am not capable of sailing peacefully, because I’m too determined to fill every page. I fill in the margins, and the back, and the top, and then I make notes around that too.

My best friend calls it defying gravity.

We thought we could defy gravity with science and this time again is not the one for us. Again.

It has however allowed me the opportunity to view with extreme clarity the many changes in myself that have occurred over the last two years. It has allowed me to know I won’t shatter into a million pieces. It’s allowing this unique look at my sensitivity. I thought I was Teflon before, and that was all wrong. You are not Teflon until you have experienced unspeakable loss. And even then soft can never be Teflon, you may think you are, but you are not.

I thought I experienced suffering before, but this is an entirely different ball game. This time I’m attached to all my feelings. This helps me understand why the body has such elaborate defense mechanisms in place, because we humans have soft skin and tender hearts for a reason. We are meant to connect with others and to commune with our innermost voices, and yet so many of us become so different as a result of the world we live in. It is not a place for soft skin and warm smiles.

This inevitable contradiction blinds me with pain on a daily basis.

I was working so hard to be able to have time to relax with family, and now again crisis takes precedence and our time off together becomes grieving. This is one of the worst parts. Thinking of getting back into the swing of work, or talking about it without crying.

Watching her is the worst part. Watching her wonder if she could have done something differently. Watching her wracked with sobs. It cuts through me. And now we wait to see if her body will expel is naturally or if we go for a D & C. Wondering if our donor and her are in some way incompatible and thousands of dollars are wasted. Wondering if we can’t have one at all. If we will. If I even think I could make it through this again.

This isn’t just one loss, and “it’s early”, and you have more frozen embryos. This is a year of waiting to exhale. Focusing, surrendering, sacrificing all our time to relax and play together for appointments, needles, injections, tests, poking and prodding and at the end all that hard work is supposed to pay off.

Except that isn’t how the world works. Also while I know I’m angry right now the word Yale means nothing to me. Perhaps I’ll write out experience in the next blog post because I need to get it documented anyway. Just because a couple of nurses are kind does not make it comprehensive or a good experience. After the bleeding we were told to go back on Monday for an ultrasound, they didn’t have an apt Monday (even though we were told). No communication that this was a necessary appointment, that if one twin was lost the other might follow.

Except we were elated by that tiny heartbeat on the screen. Ok good we have one. Not at one point did anyone even know what was happening in there. With our chart or file. No one has checked on her. Our Dr does not care, we have ten doctors.

We had to decide frozen or fresh transfer at 5 pm when I had clients all evening and then no one knew what was happening. A lady called my wife and said you’ll need to discuss this with your husband. This is a fertility clinic for crying out loud. They aren’t used to same sex couples? We had been attending a year and you don’t know us? It was so frustrating, but we let ourselves block it and so many other things out because eye on the prize.

A doctor who was seasoned and knew what they were doing would have warned that mono di twins might be different, the heart rate was in the lowest end of the spectrum. Yet we came home with an ultrasound picture and hope in our hearts. I think they could have known at that time if someone was paying attention. Yale is a fertility farm and we were cattle. I’m furious. I kept chalking up my frustrations to normal things on my end, but looking now at all the dropped balls.

We are going to take our 4 remaining babysicles somewhere else. Norwalk I think. I’m done. I wonder if they see too much extreme hope and extreme suffering and have had to desensitize themselves completely?

And before that we need a vacation. I’ve missed my wife for a year. We need to give some tlc to us and our relationship, and find a new normal. This dream is just too painful right now.

We have other things to focus on for awhile.

At least I get to know I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through something like this with. Rather than tearing at one another we are careful and kind. The other is sacred to us, and that is an irreplaceable gift in this world.

Back to square one…. again..

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Writing the Life Authentic: How to not repeat a pattern, complete with raw example from my own life

*Somewhere in the town of Stamford far removed from family and creature comforts my wife is coping with another possibility of life leaking out of her. Hurting physically and mentally. Here at home I am doing the same. We are both sending one another signals of love and light, they are powerful enough to make it across Countries, so I have faith that they will reach one another and hold us safely these few towns away.

Interesting that our love has such a strong and safe foundation, and that a love that was built on expectations and ideas of dreams yielded three children in a way that felt effortless at the time. It could have been easy to expect that this should be granted us because true love would make us entitled to the gift of children. This is often not how life works.

We all take so many things for granted…

I was brought in a round about way to thinking about childhood me. I want to talk about her, but also what got me here.

In an attempt to not be upset with myself for yet another thing I bit off, but was unable to chew and swallow, I took some time today to watch the next video in my Martha Beck Write into Light course. The material will no longer be available as of October 31st. After all the talk, and the money invested I am determined to finish this thing that I started. So here I am again facing myself down in the mirror, this course demands nothing less. I have learned by now that it is not all or nothing, but rather beginning anew as many times as necessary to keep going. I am grateful I was born with the courage to continue on this process. I don’t believe everyone is so lucky, In fact the more I understand, the more I see my gifts as rare gems in this way.

In fact this is what module 5: Writing a life authentic, is concerned with. In it MB talks about how will power doesn’t work when it comes to change. Funny because the power of my will has often felt like the only thing that kept me going. MB describes how our neural pathways are wired for habit, and something we are used to doing gets deeply entrenched and becomes essentially automatic (myelin sheathing on the neurons) and nearly unstoppable. She describes the only process she has found to be successful at actually creating change to be “light writing”. A process where you observe a pattern and watch yourself like a field researcher, you must be removed enough to not get sucked into the story, so you can actually watch the behaviors. She suggests you write DEEPLY into whatever you are working on. It’s kind of like taking a plain sheet of paper out and brainstorming. For this particular lesson she is teaching about how to not repeat a pattern. She has suggested two things.

One is to take a pattern you do not want to repeat and write it down on a piece of paper. She says it is important that you choose something you yourself deeply want to change, it has to come from a DESPERATE NEED THAT IS YOUR OWN, versus something your mom or partner etc wants you to change. Then take that paper and rip it into many pieces or burn it. Say outloud as you do this, “I invite in a new pattern”. She explains even if it sounds silly the importance of putting a physical aspect to this. She then instrucs you to do one of two things in your exhale. The exhale is the part you brainstorm through and get all your thoughts out. The inhale is the more constructed piece of writing that gives attention to your reader.

So I need to choose to either write a manifesto about leading a revolution to break this pattern. Rally! Have fun with it. …. here is what I will no longer tolerate about this pattern.

Or to write a comedic anectdote, one that is lighthearted. How you did something over and over again, how you can look at it with humor enough to be able to change your behavior.

Something that came to mind was how when my wife and I get stressed out with my ex-husband and some of the petty arguments that we both must engage in to fuel: we think of Buzz Light year and Woody in Toy Story, and say “you’re a sad strange little man, you have my pity”. It has helped us more than once. Now a disclaimer to this is that I do not feel my ex-husband is a bad person, or any less of a father because we get into these tifs. In fact as I chip more and more away at the bedrock of the issue I am able to see both of our disappointment and how deeply that can run that we didn’t get to have the picturesque idea of all these years of our children’s having been shared together. That we both have needed to endure the sharp pain of separation, misunderstandings, and watching our kids be confused or hurt during the process. That we both are being challenged with re-writing a script that we thought we had already worked so hard at. We already risked so much, and carved so much out, to have to begin again and again feels unbearable. It feels wrong, and flawed, and bad, especially according to the rules of society. How deeply ingrained in each of us is it that once you make a committment of a lifetime that it must work that way. Particularly for the conscientiously minded folk such as ourselves.

Neither of us intended things to work as they did. That is one thing that I can say with 100 percent clarity at this point. And keeping us on the same page as far as the pain that comes with divorce is a much healthier way to look at it than one of us a victim and one a perpetrator. At this point in his storyline of events, he is still much more determined to see me as the perp and he the victim, it comes out time and time again. And he ups the bar as he attempts to recruit my ex-partners into those rankings. He has stated as much that he feels people should not be bought and discarded like cheap dollar store toys. He appears unable to see how this is his projection of our relationship not working out, and takes a great deal for granted when it comes to specifics. If he were able to look a little closer at what I had to overcome to achieve healthy relationship perhaps he would understand more. He is right actually that love should not work that way, and boy is it painful when it does. But there is much more than meets the eye here with me and love. There is a lifetime of work, several actually, that I’ve somehow managed to do in one.

And I do promise that you must be up close to truly see. And you must have been able to do your own self work of separating from your ego enough to observe things in such a way so that they can be changed. Otherwise your main fight will be that of how you are perceived by others. One can spend their whole lives in this way. 

But my realization in the here and now is that for me to beg to be seen in a particular way brings me right back to my childhood. A person can only see things from a viewpoint that is reflective from how far they themselves have traveled. To try and ask for them to see further is impossible and will end up frustrating to levels I cannot even begin to tell you. This is possibly one of my greatest sources of pain in this lifetime. And now the gauntlet is thrown for me to not repeat this pattern anymore. My only battle is to see myself through a generous lens. I have borrowed my wife’s for now, and people before her. But I understand as well as anyone by now that when using this model, if you do not please the person seeing you in the way that they are looking for, the generosity expires.

Much like in therapy if you don’t take the lessons that are offered and make them your own, and make them real, bring them outside the office, the magic ends at the end of the appointment and dissipates with the termination of the therapuetic relationship. A therapist lends their generosity of vision, seeing people at their best selves, but the Client themself must learn this way of seeing and apply it. They must seek to understand how the therapist is able to do that with such information to the opposite end. As if the stigma of seeking therapy itself is not cause enough to not be able to do this. So many people with their opinion at the ready to slay a person’s attempt of breaking out of painful patterns with their criticism. And to what end? To be able to stroke the ego. To be able to say “see look I was right”.

To this point with regard to my ex-husband, what would he possibly gain by proving me to be the mother that he believes. If he were able to be right and he could know that I am in fact selfish, and get my kids to believe this. What is the prize here? I see only loss and suffering at that. Immense confusion and pain.  And this is why I must challenge myself to not be a victim either, because what is possibly to gain by believing the father of my children is a bad person, in the name of ego. Wouldn’t it be healthier to believe that his life turned out so differently than he had imagined that he can’t bear to live in a truth that doesn’t back his story, that he has lost the zest he once had from this attachment fracture. Such extreme disappointment that he is lost with how to move forward. And what is someone feeling this way in need of? Certainly not more criticism and turmoil.

Sometimes in life I think we end up fighting so hard for something, when we aren’t even sure anymore what we are hoping to acheive from it. That’s a little scary don’t you think? May I always strive to be aware of the “why”, the reason I want to acheive what I am working hard towards. If I put this template down, would I ever be able to see it as a good thing for my children to see a dark and ugly side of things? This helps me to be truly aware of the power the ego can wield, of how seductive it can be. Come to the dark side it says, we have cookies it says. Of course it would say that to me. I love cookies.

If you’re looking for me I’ll be here resisting cookies and my ego lol. And being honored to be invited into the sacred processes of my client’s world, so that we both may feel less alone.

My blog post on childhood me, will have to wait… or perhaps I’ll post it after this one since I am “on a roll”.

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Untangling my emotions about senseless violence…

There are a great many things I have been inspired to write about since my last post. Certainly there were more events during my getaway that were worth recalling and sharing. Also there have been many hurdles in the parenting arena for me to scale as of late. However, the thing I absolutely cannot just brush past to be able to access any of those, is this mornings newest episode of senseless MASS violence. My heart is aching audibly this morning. As I scan past the many different reactions from people on my social media platforms I am spending some time sorting through my emotions.

You see we have to make a choice about where we want to land with all our feelings and thoughts. I always say it isn’t the lengths or depths of where our mind takes us, but the choices about which thoughts to hold close and encourage, and  which to hold and comfort perhaps, but also let pass on. Which do we breathe life into, and which do we create space for but not want to hold too tightly or make a part of ourselves. Our thoughts can very easily become beliefs, and core beliefs are very powerful operants in our lives. Our ego can even subconsciously expend much energy in an attempt to fulfill these beliefs.

Quietly reverent I am here trying to sort through this mess. As an empath for me the easiest thing to do would be to separate myself from this altogether. To just remain far removed as emotionally, as I am physically from the event itself. This just seems unfair to those who are not afforded the ability to do so. As if my solidarity can be lent in the time I give of myself to imagine the suffering in the hearts of those directly and those of us indirectly affected. The truth is that this could have been any of us this is happening to. An even bigger question is how not to lump this in with the current political climate and become even more embittered.

There was a period of time in my personal life that I actually traumatized myself by “going too far into the shoes of those experiencing such events”. I was persuing my Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology at the time of the Colorado Movie Theater Shooting. I was trying to experience the full spectrum of humanity and it felt disingenous to my degree to not explore the dark sides as thoroughly as the light. I poured over headlines and devoured anything on the topic I could find, My mind sought understanding around these events. In an attempt to walk myself through them I began to imagine what it might have felt like to think you were just going to a showing of a movie and suddenly someone get’s up and begins to shoot. What would I feel like? How terrified? Would I be brave or would I be a chicken? What might it feel like for a bullet to burn through my skin. I imagine even worse the anticipation that at any moment this could happen. I allowed my mind to play with all possibility, and as a result I couldn’t see a movie without having a panic attack for a very long time. I also couldn’t attend a fun loving event like a St. Patrick’s Day parade with my children in tow, without wondering if perhaps this time we would be the unlucky ones. What I ended up finding is that if you let yourself identify too much you can easily run the risk of never leaving your home.

So the question here is what does one do with events like these? How do we make sense of them? How do we offer up our care and concern, while also protecting ourselves? If we become too disheartened we cannot be helpful. My Grandpa always used to say “if you aren’t part of the solution then you are part of the problem”. I didn’t love hearing it then, but I often use it in my practice now.

It feels unfair that I can sit and contemplate my fitness journey and the fact that I made it to the gym this morning. It feels like it somehow pales in comparison. There are several hundred people (minimum) who woke up this morning with their lives deeply affected by tragedy.

As I sit with my feelings on this the answer the floats most closely to the surface seems to be focusing on the courage of people. At a more micro level for example, a session with a client who is celebrating the anniversary of a child’s death. Someone taken long before they should have been. I have a deep appreciation for the courage in human beings. Their brave hearts beat a decibel above the throbbing pain, somehow keeping it just manageable. We get but a series of profound moments in our lives, a collection if you will. My heart is deeply saddened that the people affected by this tragedy have added such dark ones to their’s.

Edit: And of course directly after this 2 important things happened. One: Courtney came for lunch with me and we laughed and played with Sig (my frenchbulldog). It got me out of my head. I am grateful. Two: The first thing I pulled up after our lunch date were lovely words from Brene Brown (one of my 2 main spirit animals). She says “1. Prayer + civic action are not mutually exclusive. Join me in both. 2. Step away from social media coverage and toward real people for support, action, conversation, and being with each other in collective pain. Keep informed, bud don’t stay glued. Our Secondary trauma will not make us better helpers – it shuts us down and sends us into self-protection and blame-finding.”

Absolutely lovely. This is basically what I was trying to say through my process.  Elizabeth Gilbert posted her words. In this way I am able to feel collective in my pain. My spirit animals are out there also in the trenches of this tragedy with me. My heart is comforted.