I’m watching ATypical with my oldest. We are catching him up on episodes one and two of the newest season. The kids and I watched the first few seasons, what feels like years ago. So it’s nostalgic and warm to be watching this now.
Comfort. This is a lot of my goal right now. As I learn healthier ways to do it, I realize how unhealthy some of my old coping was. This is a lot to sit with. A lot to sit with.
As life starts heating up to a boiling point I’m able now to marvel at how I take hard circumstances, criticism, etc, and use it to push me to keep making myself better at a reasonable pace. Well the whole reasonable pace thing is new 😉 as many of you know, lol. This is making me think of how I resonate with Black Widow, the new movie. Pain only makes you stronger, it can, but it can also make you crazy if you can’t make sense of it. If there is no structure that is safe to heal within. My current safe healing structure is friends who know me when I’m lost to myself and a therapist that models good boundaries and is objective and consistent. Safety. Deep breath.
I would have lost my mind long ago if not foe therapy and my own healing process with writing.
Truly an epic battle of light and dark inside of me, and I won’t give up the fight or outsource my self knowing to anyone else.
So today is my beloved Sunday. I’m too in my head and not enough into a project and moving around so I need to get out some energy in that way shortly or to do some walking. After Chip’s visit I will.
Today is filled with reflecting, writing, and reading.
Today I reflect on an unhealthy counseling relationship and the damage it has caused, and how dark things have been in our world for the last while. How to turn these crisis into opportunities for growth and bonding and using a creative approach.
Today I’m going to share with you how counseling can go wrong. It can go wrong when Clinicians are trying to juggle too much and or as a result not having continuity of sessions and making sure to validate change. If we don’t catch and validate change it doesn’t become reinforced and if it doesn’t then it won’t stay (stick).
I’m going to be working on some counseling models in the up and coming days. Well I already am, but talking about it here.
There must be grace because during Covid it has been tough for us all, however we have an ethical code to do no harm, and a responsibility to own when we have due to blind spots and our own unhealed areas.
Recently during a family counseling experience I am learning a lot more from what didn’t work than what did. I’ll give you a hint if the counselor is talking about themselves in any way that does not pertain to your counseling and enhance it, that’s a red flag. If the counselor seems to not be following and staying focused on your need etc, please share this with them so they may grow.
Counseling should always be focused on the client need and progress should be validated and followed up on. And if something in the relationship isn’t working, if the client tells you, be willing to repair. And also be self-monitoring with integrity at all times. It’s more work, but this is our responsibility to our ethical code.
Lazy counseling is damaging. Someone who is in it for the wrong reasons or past their expiration of energy to expend. It’s as bad as distracted driving. We have people’s mental well being in our hands. They come to us sick and scared. If we are not dedicated to this work for the right reasons we can inflict great harm.
I personally am taking this situation and using it to slow down and pay attention, listen better, talk less, and truly be with the client experience versus wanting to fix it to gratify ego. This is a lifetime process. It’s nice to see my clients faith and sticking with me over the years as I am imperfect and grow, but they know my heart is in the right place and that I’m always growing myself to better meet them where they are.
A client is the expert on their own lives, a clinician who is skilled, competent, and there for the right reasons will only enhance the clients own knowledge about themselves using an empathic mirror and warm guidance. It’s a difficult balance and a very challenging career. The only one for me!
Never give up. That’s my motto. And keep curiosity larger than fear. Keep moving forward. Makes me think of the movie Meet The Robinsons and the song Little Wonders. I think I’ll go have a listen….
Things fell apart my whole life. I became the glue, at the expense of knowing who I was or what I wanted or needed. I became a machine that met the needs of others, while begging to be loved.
So it is not surprising that healthy love was a complete mystery for me and while I’ve spent lots of time trying to solve that with my own experimentation. Simultaneously I’ve been living in a manner of consistently seeking to make the pain stop.
I’d do anything to make the pain stop for a few moments. And then became shamed and shamed myself for it.
This is the cycle I’ve been living in for nearly 41 years of my life.
And the only way to make the pain stop is to acknowledge the experiences that shaped me and how that has affected the children I brought into this world. Which brings another red hot wave of searing pain.
The only time the pain really stops is when I can use it for meaning, which in my life means to serve others with the knowledge I’ve gained. And to also be less alone in those moments. To stay in my humanity, rather than falling into insanity. A tether to belonging that has become consistent, and hopefully modeling that to myself.
It hurts to become.
My work makes me enthusiastic and hopeful and useful enough to make the pain stop. But rarely if ever is anything unconditionally provided to me. I have to look to the Universe for that. Nature, which also usually feels like an enemy as it bites me and makes me burn and itch, and in its vast unknown presence I always feel in danger.
So I return to the ways I know how to make the pain stop.
While this is happening I have tried to raise my children to the very best of my ability. Always doubting in that, my ability. Why wouldn’t you doubt something you’ve never known ? Something that was only dangerous and painful.
The tears slide down my cheeks.
The self doubt is probably the most painful part, and what I have drawn into my life, what I’ve chosen to invest myself in are things that end up harming me further. Then I harm myself with my choices.
I feel an experiment in human suffering and would victimize myself if I wasn’t so damn curious and concerned with meaning. My saving graces. The light shines out of the darkness, but not very much right now.
The message is to rest. But how when you have never known it, and when there is no loving touch to soothe to sleep.
Craving and starving touch, constantly leading to choices that harm some more. Self harm. Way more than cutting. There are far worse wounds to be had.
It gets good when you do. They say. The mystical, mythical they. The generalizations of our time.
I do good and I feel good. I do bad and I feel bad. What goes up must come down. My mind spins round and round.
Suffering. Relieved by service.
Will I always be fragmented or am I becoming whole and I have no vision for this because there is no template programmed into me.?
It’s all meaningless my existence except for moments. Moments of relief is what my life has been characterized by, with a lot of chaos.
I hope one day to see myself differently.
In the wake of all of this grief hope is difficult to find at the moment. It is times like this we just stay the course.
Steady as she goes…. Becoming steady out of chaos, that is the path of the warrior.
It’s been such a very long day…. Literally non stop even though I sat a lot of it, which is regrettable. I can only focus on so many things at once.
It feels like every home project that gets accomplished, five more happen before it’s even complete. Today a new whole house fan went in, and also new storm doors. Complications! First of all the door was brown and it was supposed to be white, something the installers didn’t know. So this will be a whole pain. Also the front door needs a larger storm door so good thing since it’s the wrong color they have to come fix it. In theory. Which requires calls and a whole pain again. I hate such things.
Although I will say it feels good to be making a home and taking some pride in joy in these things. They still aren’t my priority but I can enjoy making a home beautiful and be really into it, because I want to, not because I have to. Also the whole house fan needs a certain kind of switch, and there are outlets that aren’t working downstairs and are not an easy fix. So to complete that project it still requires and electrician to come out.
Once these smaller projects are done, the back stairs and then the deck and Juliette porch, and the pool will be up and running again next year.
I already need a plumber again, another leak, grrr! It never ends literally. However I’m just thankful I can do all of this without stressing financially. It’s more the time that’s frustrating.
So today to distract myself from discomfort I decided it would be fun to delete over 60,000 emails from 4 different accounts. Eight hours later. I kept saying I’d stop here or there, and obsessively I had to keep going. When I am determined I am determined and I won’t stop until I see it through.
That feeling of no notifications, which ironically I don’t even really care about. Life is too short. But we will call it a step in organizing my life in general to make sure I stay on top of things.
I don’t look forward to anything in my inbox anyway sadly. Not like me at all, but this is where I am.
Life is short. My tattoo artist got a stent put in on Friday, we were supposed to finish my books (highlighting, and some white) that day and do some more sleeve planning. We will do it Tuesday now, after clients, an eye appointment for twin A, and my therapy. Long day.
Most of my days are long, fulfilling, satisfying, and desperately lonely. I am making friends with lonely. Just being in and with her.
Today I cooked a delicious hello fresh holy moly it was good and everyone was fed and happy. Jen hung out and we watched movies all day while I deleted my emails and the house was being worked on. We watched Stepmom and something else and some Schitts Creek.
I already need a haircut again. Is my whole life just going to be a series of hair removal and preening. It’s stupid. Oh that’s what else we watched It’s Complicated, a favorite. I never realized how entirely a dick her ex is in that movie. I mean really selfish. It’s funny though. In particular was what made me remember when I was talking about hair removal. He says “I see that you have stopped getting bikini waxes, you’ve gone native, I was into it.” Lol!
All my bad habits are quit. I’m a few weeks out and the stability of that is taking hold. Now to get addicted to movement and strength building because I want and need energy. Discipline and routines and focus and writing.
In this moment I’m thinking about cuddling and how much I miss it. Affection and warmth and passion. The loneliness aches and burns.
This will now be the first post of August. Only five minutes in. I can’t wait for fall. I’m looking forward to snow and hoodies actually and the before and the running and hiking. Reading while snow is falling outside, and the silence that is felt when the world is covered in a white blanket.
And one of my favorite things when ice forms all over the trees and the sun hits them, and it looks like something out of a fairy tale. God I love that.
Anyway this helped me get sleepy…. I’m so so happy with all of my heart it’s Sunday tomorrow. I want to read and take a bath for sure. I haven’t been doing my bath much. Partially because that bathroom keeps trying to kill me, but mostly because I’m so busy from morning til night.
I’m just sitting here thinking how working on this house is making me feel affectionate towards it in a new way: we are creating a bond. This is becoming home. My home. I’m no longer a guest. There are still a lot of tweaks and I’m still not ready to do anything to the bedroom except take out the flooring. But for now I’m doing too many other things. I’ll be a monk like minimalist when it comes to that. My bed is all I need.
I’m finally working on playing my first actual song on the piano, though it’s been very slow going because I’ve been laying it all out with my clients. Seeing lots of people and showing up fully, there isn’t a lot left at the end of the day.
I need to move tomorrow running early before it gets hot!
I have so much to talk about right now it’s hard to know where this will go. I was going to say to know where to start, but that’s actually not hard anymore, I just do. Progress over perfection.
So let’s start with this morning. I went to a funeral. An all day long funeral. This is something I typically dread. The first reason I dread it is because I’m a special breed. I’m not only highly sensitive as a trait, but I have come to fully embrace that I’m an empath. Anita Morjani describes it best in her new book Sensitive is the New Strong.
The type of alien I am actually has a description. High sensitivity is sensory and perception, and empath actually feels other people’s feelings with them, sometimes before they do, and we have a sixth sense. Deep intuition. Sometimes I talk directly to people’s higher selves. When I describe this it’s hard not to feel grandiose or self important, however it is the truth.
So needless to say being crammed into a hot room with many people feeling big feelings, especially some I care about tremendously, is not easy for me. Since I don’t have much family I’ve been fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to not have many to attend.
Complicated grief. Is there a simple grief? I think so. Complicated grief is not even knowing if, when, or how to grieve because there is no familial or other structure.
As I sat and listened to people describe their loved one, particularly as a mom here were some of my thoughts…. Besides being present of course because I was, but it also creates my own thinking. What will people say about me. Will anyone besides primarily my clients (if that’s even a thing) be there to say anything. Now I used to think these things much more bleak and not have answers: today was actually not so bad. Immediately as I hear the good things said I think my kids wouldn’t be able to say that about me, and I want to fall in despair.
Then I bring myself back to how I arrived as a guest at this celebration of a life and the integral part I have, and I try to look at some different things, primarily myself differently. But what sticks is how alien I feel and truly I know hardly anyone that has my situation.
Even children who are given up for adoption have some kind of structure. I slipped between the cracks, and the only way I was even visible is when I was quiet, accommodating, and useful to others. I was loving and engaged and would go to the ends of the earth, and it’s easy to see why I don’t expect reciprocity in this area now, because there wasn’t any. That expectation was never set. (It shall be from now on)
So then the preacher man laments about how 40 some years ago he had also married that couple, and my despair grows deeper. Here are the good and better people, the ones who got it right and come from good families and Christina you don’t belong here. That’s what it feels like. No need to feel sorry for me, no one wants that, it’s just the truth.
I literally burst apart with their pain of separation by death that is spoken of on that day of vows and how much sooner it came than deserved. I was present for them as well, but I am human, so these events bring forth my story as well.
The persons children spoke, and I wondered what mine would say. We all know mom struggled a lot. Is that what it will be? Is that all I am? Struggle? Why do I have such a distorted view of myself. I know why.
This funeral made me think of weddings, my last one in particular. In my living room w my kids and wife only, a fact hidden from her family. We hid in shame. I hid in shame. I’ve been fucking ashamed my whole life.
Today I recognize why there’s never an event where someone has something to say where they know me well, I want to say I never stay long enough, but my god that’s being hard on myself.
I try with my whole heart to do so many things at once so my kids didn’t miss out on anything, and so I had ground under my feet to love from. I tried hard and I tried fast the best and only ways I knew from my life and I got shamed and faulted for it. Where was someone to ask what happened to me?
Where was that person who saw something seemed not quite right and it wasn’t a fault or flaw in me, it was something fundamental I never even had and I’m still trying to live like and with those who did! Where was the one to say I see you, and the wisdom to help me feel secure.
So I became that.
I think of how I didn’t know I deserved to wait for someone to see me and take that time with me and that it does exist. I think of how you promised me a family and how opposite that was and how now when you post videos of blending families and relationship articles it’s so bizarre to me because those people are transparent, genuine, congruent, honest, considerate, brave, etc that’s how that works and why that works. I think of how you try and make it seem like it’s me, and how that doesn’t work anymore.
I wasn’t the one you needed to talk to about cohabitation and outside the box situations so I could accommodate. That was what you were supposed to be doing in the therapy you said was for co parenting. That was your job to do with your ex partner and family to lay that groundwork and communicate with me, and everything would have been on the table, nothing to hide. You post these things that you aren’t living congruent with. I am not the issue, and you know it. Blame isn’t my thing. Growth and forward movement is and we both know I’m perfectly capable.
And how if you had done that work, any of it, you wouldn’t need to try and manipulate me from a blog, it wouldn’t even be a thing. We would already be living it. I think of the emotional black mail, and how that has nothing to do with me. I’m light years beyond that and open and free to have a loving and fully invested relationship when I find someone willing to show up their whole authentic selves and be all in with me.
I think of how I know it exists now even when I’m in dark and lonely moments, which are often as of late.
So this evening I came home and wanted to write, but first I listened to an episode of a podcast and it also made me feel so many things. The link is below. Hearing Glennon and Craig talk to one another makes me wish that I had the wisdom as well as the support to have had this grace with my ex husband and not taking everything so reactively. I mean he had his part, but my biggest threats were tapes I played on repeat, of my own creation.
Sidebar what I found most wonderful of the many things in here was the idea of everyone having a voice whether things were agreed upon or not. Our family therapist brings this to my attention a lot during sessions, very strategically I might add. And I recognize that by fighting against what their dad thinks of me, I shut those voices down, because of my own ego and my triggers and I regret that deeply. I’m working on healing that now. So they feel heard and deeply respected by me, and we can have the relationships we all deserve.
Attending family events has always been bittersweet for me. It’s so validating to hear many clients with difficult trauma histories like mine, share how difficult events like this are. How many feelings it brings up. Today was no exception. But what was remarkably different is that I didn’t want to crawl out of my skin and leave as soon as possible.
I didn’t feel so awkward I could barely breathe, and I didn’t feel I didn’t belong: I knew I did.
I thought about my last marriage a lot this morning and at the event. The last funeral I went to after all was her fathers. A father who refused to acknowledge who I was to her or hardly at all. I never became part of that family in any real way. The closest I ever felt were with an aunt and uncle, and her cousins.
Don’t get me wrong no one did anything wrong. They did the best they could in general, all of them. But I never knew where I stood, and I’m still trying to sort out what might have made that gap bridged differently. But they weren’t my family to know that about. We showed up around one another, but never knew one another that well.
I think what were we thinking getting married so fast. Why? Why didn’t the one w a family think maybe we should get to know my family first. I mean if didn’t decide and create it all myself right ?!
I think of the line in The Little Prince it’s the time that you spent on/with your rose that is special. And that any amount of investment is never wasted, however I am exhausted of starting over. I don’t want to. I never did. But I was always going to need to be in the equation and what I’ve gotten good at over the years is being invisible and accommodating and ok with that.
I’m not ok with that. I’m as worth getting to know, for a willing partner and family to be enthusiastic about, at a realistic pace when the time comes.
But here is what I’ll never be again, anyone’s dirty secret, anyone’s lie, anyone’s anything that needs to be hidden, and I don’t need to make myself into something for that to happen. It was never supposed to be that way.
I am on a journey of not hiding how I feel, think, my wants, needs, emotions, in an attempt to not lose something or to get something. I will not be modifying, disappearing, shrinking to fit, pleasing, hiding, or any other thing.
This is me…. I exist and I’m not going to try and earn my existence or explain it away by my efforts. That is exhausting.
I don’t know if I’ll ever have a wedding again traditional or otherwise. I don’t know whom will be in attendance or what will be said at my funeral,
But I do know from this time forward I will know I am worthy of belonging somewhere and to someone, or perhaps everywhere and to everyone….
And that makes all the difference as to what you accept and what you don’t…..
Onward as Beautiful Liz says….
Onward
Ps my kids have been gone and will be back tomorrow, it’s so strange being in such a silent house. They have my car so I’ve been rocking the silver civic, Louis ha. I haven’t been sleeping much this week, totally unlike me. Oh also I realized during the funeral I have never really mourned the loss of the babies we lost. I did just like I’ve always done and tried to just keep going. I thought about how we honor our losses, and that for her and I we didn’t even honor our union by having family and friends present. I never felt worthy, and that’s a lot to sit with.
“There are many kinds of joy, but they all lead to one: the joy to be loved. Every story is a never ending story.”
It’s going to be a two fer today. Who could have guessed. This is the downswing. The loneliness settles in right around now. I’ve surrounded my day in all the ways I wanted it. I’ve indulged, relaxed, and spent my day with the writers I love.
I finished Wild Game, and am now onto Amy Tan’s, Where the Past Begins. She of course is talking about the writer’s process, and the longing sets in.
She dedicated her book to her editor because he took her many frenzied emails and listened to them. It’s me! It’s me! I’ve tried every way around this. I know I can open an email and write to myself, to a friend, to my therapist, but nothing is the same as when it’s fueled by the passion of the excitement of becoming known to one another. It brings me to life. A huge part of who I am. I feel lifeless and listless without it.
She writes, “my emails were not carefully composed. They were dashed off with free-form spontaneity, a mix of rambling thoughts off the top of my head, anecdotes of the day, and updates on my dog and perfect husband. In contrast, Dan’s emails were thoughtful and more focused on my concerns, although they also included notes about Moroccan cuisine. He sometimes responded to my off hand remarks with too much care, thinking I had expressed serious wringing of my soul.” This last line be still my heart. Me too. I feel seen.
Later she goes on to say what had enabled her to write those thousands of emails was spontaneity. I underlined and starred this. If I applied that to writing a book, I would be able to finish quickly. Spontaneity is the answer. This thing I continuously fault myself for as impulsivity. My wires are always crossed towards seeing me in some horrible light. When what comes into view most often is how right I have been and am. Just because something hurts does not make it wrong. Not in the ego sense of right. In the spiritual sense. I am on my path damnit. I am enough, and I will figure out this balance while also being compassionate and loving to myself.
Longing will be the theme of this evening and post I believe. I can do all the self work I want, but it’s not moving this period of time in my life. Amy writes about how her writing in an email is different, and the hairs on my arms stood up. I’ve never heard anyone describe the differences in modalities in a way that made me realize how much I miss writing letters to a lover.
That is my thing. My truest self comes out to play in those correspondences, and I was in love with that consistently exploring myself with another person, and hitting the ball back and forth, as much as anything else. I’m thinking how wanting to be known is a theme of recent.
And entirely different self emerges when I open my laptop (which I haven’t written on in months). I just felt a stabbing pain at the realization I don’t even write my blog posts on there, because touching that keyboard is as much touching the skin of my lover. That is the place I would go. I would open up the screen, describe some of the surrounding details and fire away.
Did I have a lover to facilitate my writing, or my writing facilitated the love? Either way I wanted that consistent space, but I never wanted to stop writing, or working at love. Recently someone suggested to me “does it have to be so hard though, or that they didn’t think it need be so hard all the time.” And I’ve been sitting with that and thinking about it a lot. I think of how I differentiate good hard and bad hard, and good tired and bad tired.
Is consistent engagement in a variety of ways using creativity and feeling alive hard? Does it have to be? For me it’s hard not to be those things. And for some I suppose it feels like work. When work is fulfilling it ceases to be work, for me at least.
I am lonely ….. deeply lonely. Longing to be known and engaged with in a way where someone shows up, is consistent, reliable, interested in building, engaged, and all in. And that isn’t something available to me right now and so it’s stretching my limitations to go day in and day out without. I’m constantly threatened with falling into bad habits or pits of despair. And knowing that if I can’t maintain on my own.
You know what that’s crap! What if I can’t because I don’t want to, because we aren’t made to be alone like this. I don’t buy it. At least I’m not. But there is no default either.
I read a post by Brene Brown today about how she’s ready to go down the writing spiral and how her process is all or nothing and she gets lost. And in another book I read just today as well, about a supportive family tip toeing around the writer knowing that’s who they are and what they need, and I think what must it be like to have that kind of support.
I can’t write with love and I can’t write without it. Although I think not being able to write with it was prior to the crucible that has been this past year and a half. I was desperately disconnected in so many ways. I could have never written anything without the connection to me.
But now I want that playground for my psyche that is the art of e-mail and all the other forms of connecting, that is that secure grounding of that one main place you go when you want to be your full real self. And here come the tears.
Melissa would say just be with that feeling. It won’t swallow me, end me, and truly I finally know that. But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck completely.
I want to be held and touched and considered and from someone who can show up as a whole person to want to be consistently engaged with me creating a life together. The loneliness is like jagged teeth biting into my flesh. There is very little relief. I get moments and glimmers, and I know I’m on path.
I’m frustrated with feeling impatient, or too intense or this or that…. Those are judgments. Just because certain things did not turn out the way I thought doesn’t mean any of that is true. But that’s my constant battle. Which means I still have work to do on my relationship with myself. I will always have work to do and I’d still like to be held, touched, worked for and with, by someone enthusiastic about me, that is able to stay two feet in and fully engaged.
It’s not too much to ask and it is ok that it hurts right now. That the loneliness stings…. I think the biggest area where I hurt myself is still being used to turning something that is not something into something. Straw into gold. I need to be still and do me until I invite a fully present and enthusiastic individual into my orbit.
The lens of scarcity colors everything different than abundance does. Moving slower helps to see what’s really there. I see why I just tried to use my will and determination before because sitting in the disappointment is sometimes unbearable. It’s especially unbearable when I go to that old place of alone in childhood; where there was no reprieve and no relief. At least if I told myself life was what I made it, and boy did I live by that, it gave me something to focus on that kept me alive and sane.
Burning right now. Burning good, versus burning bad. There’s a light at the end of this tunnel. I can’t feel it yet, but I can see it, and that’s something.
I believe I had promised at one point that I would be talking more about my trauma in coming posts. And since my follow through has improved dramatically as a result of the grounding that occurs from my trauma work, here it is. Here I am.
I am connecting so many dots recently with regard to my early childhood experiences and who I am today, and how that has impacted particularly the events of the last couple of years of my life.
A recent trauma in getting a large area of my arm tattooed has given way to some more realizations. So here’s the process around me getting this tattoo. I have always been drawn and attracted to sleeves on others, but unable to picture one on me. I use all sorts of reasoning to deny myself the very expression that unlocks my healing and therefore my creativity.
So recently I’m freeing my spirit enough to go after these things, but when I get to the overwhelming parts I often freeze or fly. All or nothing to a fault. So on the brink of this sleeve I was anxious and restless for days. So many what if’s. What if I hate my own arm after, what if it doesn’t come out exactly as I want, what if what if, what if I get in a lot of pain and can’t finish it. What if there’s a complication because of my autoimmune disease. What a silly notion because I’ve been living with so many different kinds of pain my whole life. I am not a stranger to it, nor faint of heart.
In any case I was emotional the day of, and absolutely terrified. I went anyway and found it to be relaxing, enjoyable, and that I had a ton of support, children and loved ones stopped by and cheered me on. I am seen and loved, and my kids were excited for me. They were not judgmental or unkind to me, the way I am with myself. I hadn’t realized how much. No one but me said anything unkind to me!
I’ve made all these strides in the way I live, but the way I think is often still trapped in old ways. I am working on moving those energies now.
So I end up also putting a whole other piece I did not even expect that evening. 3 plus hours of tattooing and an ink well that had quite an intense amount of shading and color in a sensitive area. It’s beautiful I love it….
So I wake up the next day and am examining my new arm, working on falling in love, ignoring the imperfections, and seeing the whole and the experience for what it is…. I had clients all day and dinner with my favorite man. It was Thursday after all…. And during dinner my arm begins to ache…. I wondered if perhaps I had held it funny but this was something that just came on.
Electric currents of pain begin to flow up and down my arm in waves. It begins to intensify. Aching, jolting…. I go home try to take something and I’ve been so exhausted from all the excitement I think I’ll sleep it off. The pain worsens and I can’t get comfortable and I’m beginning to get nauseous and shaky from it. This pain was no less than a foot surgery in 2009 where they cut through bone. And the thoughts that went through my mind. What could possibly cause this kind of pain besides something very serious.
I knew I was taking a higher risk as someone with an autoimmune disease, and why would I increase my chances of anything being harder in our lives. But then I dismiss all that and think it’s anxiety and I’m dedicated to confronting my fears as a way of living. So I think I’m being a bad ass and so excited and proud only to be struck with this.
And this is one of my major areas of work. It is so unthinkable for me that I could be safe, deserving, and have things I want without retribution. There was always a punishment after I got a need met. Never safe and secure. So energetically the minute I get something I want or need, right after something bad happens, and I can’t break out of this cycle and thinking until I can break through this pattern. The rug is always pulled out, something always comes crashing down. The belief perpetuates the action, until I break through. And damnit you know that I will.
What happens when an unstoppable force meets with an immovable object? Transformation that’s what. I never knew how to answer that question and now I do. My lived experience taught me, and now of course I want to watch Imagine Me and You….
All the horrible thoughts arrive. As my energy healer said not only were you in pain but then also you were suffering. My thoughts were causing me a great deal of suffering and they were trauma responses. This swift change from exciting to terror set off all my trauma triggers.
No matter where I go or what I do I will always be something wrong or bad or doing something wrong or bad. It’s so deeply ingrained in there. So on top of being in pain, horrible thoughts raking through my insides with white hot pain.
Then on top of everything taken care of by someone I have hurt. Christina you hurt also. You were in the equation and how wonderful each of you could find forgiveness for the other that you could each allow this moment.
I am relentless on myself. Relentless. I do not allow me to have all the normal things a human being does. I am always at fault and always responsible.
My relationship with myself needs to change. It’s still so harsh and judgmental, and I am still so lost to the generosity and compassion I so easily offer others.
The next morning to my surprise I was alive and it felt much better. I will say if I didn’t have leftover pain medication from my ablation I would have needed to go to the emergency room. and now hopefully I can just laugh at my tenacity and enthusiasm that often takes for granted my own needs. I am working towards getting better at recognizing and honoring them.
Needless to say we will go for shorter sessions even though I’m quite capable of the long ones in the moment, it’s the after effects sometimes you must watch out for. 😉 what is living if not for learning.
I expected to talk more about my trauma either I’m avoiding the specifics…. Wait a minute. I just did. I plan on getting down/out some of the reasons I’m so far removed from my own reality, trusting my own lived experience.
It will all make sense when you hear more about my childhood, and it’s interesting how having a therapist who keeps all your story, can help you see the blind spots. She sees me better than I see myself, and through the process I can become known to me.
For now I’m enjoying my new creativity and attempts at self expression. It’s taken a lifetime to get back to the self that was taken from me at such a young age. The pursuit of this was always necessary and through judgments all it has made me look is selfish. Selfish for something necessary. Always out of order the chronology of me is an interesting thing…..
There are so many places I could be judged as selfish, but the worst of all is it I betray my own knowing by what other people think. I’m not selfish. I am generous and compassionate and considerate and loving. But I was never going to have any stable ground under my feet or operate dependably, consistently…. To be able to maintain…. Without a relationship with myself in tow. It was not possible and I did not know that.
The quieter it gets, it’s always still there….there’s just more room to love and be loving because peace of mind is a choice. No matter how you feel and what exists and what doesn’t, peace of mind I have found is always a choice.
The two main things that stuck out from my last therapy session have unleashed a revolution in me. I’m noticing so many patterns. Such as how after a few days without therapy my mind starts to return to over-thinking, second guessing, painful ruminating on things not in the present. As soon as I get back into that safe space and process things out I return to grounding.
I am catching my triggers before they hit the ground now.
Knowing this helps me to tell myself anxiety and trauma is lying to me and operating as a mechanism not as a mindful choice and to be still and ground and make everything ok again by doing so. It works. If you do the work, the work will work for you. It fucking works.
I could be afraid of being dependent on therapy. There are worse things to be dependent on. If self-growth, grounding, and awareness is a way of life for me, which it is with or without therapy, then is that the worst thing? No! There are far worse things. I’ve lived (autocorrect changed lived to loved and I almost left it) them, over and over.
I think there will come a time when I’ll move on to the next phase of my therapy and growth from relating in general, and rather than make that time happen, I will trust in the timing and the work I am doing. That is after all the most important thing, and it’s also something I’ve lived 40 years of my life without.
So the two takeaways from therapy. In a personal journey to forgive myself for so many things right now and to see myself in ways I’ve always deserved, in my full spectrum of humanity, I have worried about impulsivity. I mean I literally tried to take anything available and make it into forever. I did this every single time. And while all of those situations were worthy of such a pursuit…. What I have learned is something truly can already exist available, without doing all of that work. Holy shit that’s a revelation that I can know cognitively, but embodiment will take much longer. That has to become real.
So my therapist asked me to consider the difference between impulsivity and irresponsibility, because I’ve been using them interchangeably. She said I’m not irresponsible and of course my pain wants to resist. My harsh relationship with myself says yes I am, because if I didn’t have that out of balance I felt I would not hold myself accountable. Except I hadn’t updated my software to my new self, the one I’ve been becoming for years.
Because trauma makes us invisible to ourselves. Often times trauma survivors can see others and the world with a staggering clarity, but during all their pain they left themselves to survive. I left myself to survive, and I never came back. Until my brink of 40 awakening. Wherever you go, there you are.
Here I am. I am here to stay!
I believed for years, mired in my health symptoms that I would be snuffed out early, and this past year I’ve had some habits that haven’t felt that. My energy healer and I identified those old coping comforts as self betrayal and that really helps me make one healthier decision in front of the other. One step at a time becomes a way of thinking and life, rather than a cheesy rhetoric.
Because no one wants to be uncool. But cool is such a different thing than can be seen on the outside. Cool is a heart that refuses to surrender in the fight of pursuing a life that feels it’s direct making: path. That’s fucking cool. Watch me work and peel back all these layers of gunk that built up at one time to protect me.
How could I see myself so poorly.? Easily Christina. You were not seen. But once you see yourself for all the beauty there is no turning back. I’ll never abandon me again. And that’s a scary concept, but not a disconnected one. So scattered, my mind so shattered, I thought I wouldn’t find my way out of the dark wood, and now I’m basking in the light.
It still smarts. There are new scars. The tissue is pink, they burn in the sun and in the sand, and the tears slide down my cheeks, but I feel and I am alive and connected with me. I’ll never lose this, you can’t take this from me.
So I was thinking how shitty it’s been to refer to myself as impulsive. You wouldn’t tell a Veteran they are being impulsive when they jump under a car because a muffler backfired down the street, you would feel compassion for them. The design of my life and my own ability to shoulder my own burdens never wanting anyone else to be uncomfortable by my story, has led to shame and misunderstanding after misunderstanding.
And I scrambled to explain myself, to beg to be seen. Something felt off, not connecting. Could I really be selfish in the way I was being accused, and I mean look at all the evidence.
I had to fucking recover and reclaim me, my right to exist. And if you’ve never had to do that then all I ask if that you listen no matter how many times I need to talk about it, because if it makes you uncomfortable imagine what it’s done to my insides. My fucking insides, screaming, tight. My intestines tightening, roiling, and I’d keep all that away from anyone else and the fact I couldn’t breathe, to make sure not to upset anyone. Because when I saw their upset even if it was compassion for me, it was so distressing.
So I internalized it all. And now I need to get it fucking out. Out of me. I need to talk about it, without being afraid of hurting someone else. And I need to be able to say aloud when I don’t feel well, like everyone else does. Instead of silently praying it will just get better and pass and if I make less of a big deal about it, maybe I won’t get so anxious.
I’ve tried every trick in the box to manage this burgeoning insanity (trauma) so it would never make anyone else uncomfortable so I wouldn’t have to drown in shame. I tried it until it consumed my body. My body began attacking itself, and I was forced to wake up and journey. However that was so scary and so painful that I just kept trying to find a safe space to belong and cling so my kids were kept safe while I felt so shattered.
And then that too became a fault and a problem and a bad thing about me, then I was co-dependent and this and that and finally my out of congruence landed me as the ultimate monster…. And I’ve had to walk my way through the ruins of that, finding the compassion for the battle itself, rather than me being a ruthless bomber of Pearl Harbor magnitude.
I’ve had to stop that.
So now here we are. Walking, crying, talking, learning, laughing, leaning, breathing, connecting, aloneing, singing, playing, and so many other things.
The second thing from therapy is again this concept of not accommodating, and being on egg shells, because I’ve been in such scarcity the only thing I knew how to do was chameleon. I can’t say what I want need or feel because it always seems to be a burden. And the suggestion that anyone you can’t be yourself with, your whole self (well that’s a lot, see that’s what immediately think). That’s not your person and those are not your people.
So not making myself smaller to belong or be comforted. Being my full size.
And then….. now….. my story and then books and teachings…. They will emerge.
It is in this year of my life that I’m able to see every mechanism to cope. Every irritability with my kids was all the pain I’ve been in, and now it’s time to release it so I can enjoy them and living…. Life itself, with my whole heart.
I want to educate parents about trauma and how they can misunderstand because of it. How we can mistranslate one another. And help them connect the dots to finding a relationship with their children that feels like the one they want, with realistic expectations, which are so hard if we have never known what those are.
Blackwing 602’s…. A new discovery and wanting to do some song writing…..
I’m quite sure one of the keys to a balanced existence is to be able to think and feel at the same time. I’m also quite sure repeated trauma particularly in infancy and beyond creates a brain that disconnects that wiring to protect you.
I over thought everything and I under thought everything. I literally had all my wires crossed. And in addition to this: It’s a lot of responsibility being a writer, our lives and often our emotions are not even our own.
I found out in therapy yesterday I probably don’t have ADHD. Crazy because if you saw me you’d think for sure I do. The same therapist has said for sure I do, but that was before I shared with her details about how medication affects me. She said that if Xanax works well, and I got a terrible headache and irritability on ADHD meds that means I don’t have it.
I said, but then how to explain never sitting still and talking in class, and being annoying to others etc. I was trying to be seen. I was lonely. The result of that was more negative feedback which I deeply internalized because there was no one else. If I talked to my grandparents it would be well what are you doing, they always made me feel ashamed.
I’m just reflecting on my appointment yesterday. Where I validated that trauma before the age of two and after has made such a dramatic impact on my life. It has changed my brain and I’m literally RE-wiring myself right now. I’m watching the changes and slowing my speed and taking everything one step at a time.
I’m having trouble focusing, and being still enough to have the deep relationship with myself to prioritize and recover my creativity. I don’t even know what it looks like, but also I do. Deep somewhere I do. Trusting that and investing in it is scary. Not trusting and investing in it is scary. Everything is so fucking scary. Thinking of EG in big magic.
Anyway I was telling my therapist that I think maybe I want to try medication, but I’m not sure because I hate how almost all of it affects me. I was telling her how I love playing piano and love my lessons. But when it comes to practicing I just look at it and freeze. I get lost in the day and everything else, everyone else, and continuously abandon me.
Although that’s a harsh narrative because so many choices I’m making are moving away from self abandon. I can’t even see me sometimes. I’m invisible to myself, while I see everyone else so well and clearly, and that just doesn’t work. I have to continue to fight for visibility and a relationship with me.
The only thing I knew how to guide my attention was deep conversation with others, which became deep connection, but I never knew what to do, or how to choose what space they occupied in my life or how to organize them I suppose.
My boundary less existence prior to the dark night.
Now I am organizing and having boundaries and giving myself whatever time and space I need to decide what’s right for my kids and I. And I hardly know what to do with this new self. Some of these concepts are so foreign and the sense of peace that is coming. Peace for me is almost a trigger. In my childhood if you settled into anything peaceful and abrupt stop would come and not in a pleasant way.
I will likely live with the feeling the other shoe is going to drop forever. Or at the very least it will be a reflex that attempts to kick in, and hopefully the solid foundation of peace I have built will override.
When I began this blog this was the battle I was having. I talked about ADHD and PTSD a lot. I had a lot more questions, and a lot less answers, and yet there are still so many questions.
I look around and almost can’t believe how I could have lived in that much pain for so long. So scattered, so much panic, so lost, so locked up, so locked down, in agony. Relieving it only by using my gift and feeling some sense of confidence from that. But no other solid footing. I thought that was all I needed, until I realized there was more healing that needed to happen.
I believe in therapy in a whole new way now. And now I will finally be able to be a human in my own life and not rely on connecting because of my sight. To wait and see what another person sees about me besides that and offers in terms of reciprocity and availability.
Providing resources from what I know but not feeling a desperate need to fix or change or that something isn’t ok. I am just being and I hardly know what to do with this new self, but here we are.
Lots of beautiful new things on the horizon. Stay tuned for my new attempts at creating…. Whatever that may be. I don’t know yet. That used to have an ominous devastating tone… now it’s I don’t know yet and a big smile spreads across my face.
Never have I understood grief the way that I do now. Never have I had connected empathy versus cognitive, the way I do now. This morning I went on a journey watching old videos of my life, my kids, our dogs, our found family members and I saw so much happiness and play and joy in them. I forget/forgot those existed as I stayed trapped inside a cage in my own mind. My own personal hell played over and over, which can be described as constant thoughts of what I was doing wrong or could do differently. That was my default.
I was talking to my dear friend Jen on the porch yesterday morning. We often talk about mother’s. And I said to her that I’ve played scenarios in my head a hundred times what I will say or feel when I get the call my mom has died. And resoundingly where I land lately is my mind screaming “it’s over”. That I will weep for all my pain, and also release. And what I realize about what I will let go is the struggle inside of me that if I just did something different could we have a relationship.
I would have done anything to love her better, I mean love her so much she became better, felt better. I would have tried everything and I did at one point. But I couldn’t ignore the anxiety and illness that plagued me as a result of that one-sided love and intermittent lashing out mixed with just enough of a crumb (so she didn’t look like a bad mother to other people).
I still feel like I abandoned her or being a daughter and not like I got out alive, the way I deserve to be able to feel. My mind plays tricks on me. It is not in my wiring to abandon. I have to be able to be honest and work through things, but it is not in my nature to abandon. Except I abandoned myself a long time ago, right along with all of them. And I’ve been reclaiming her for my whole life, while also trying to be a mom, with absolutely no template.
Sure there is no instruction manual, but I didn’t even have a rough draft. And I made myself into a good parent anyway. Not a perfect one, thank God, but a good one.
Chip dropped off potato salad this morning and then groceries later. I made breakfast burritos and dropped twin A at work, she drove and did well. Life just keeps happening around me, and now I am here too.
The entire energy in my home has changed. I never thought I would be here, never thought my best could get this good. It didn’t seem possible.
We had our first good therapy session as a family this past Friday night. For so many weeks I felt filled with bullet holes of all my mistakes and shortcomings. I would go home, cry and fall asleep and get up and try again.
You see I promised I would never supply myself with my children. That my need would be confined to an adult capacity and I would keep them kids. And when I look now I have been pretty successful at that. And they still have their experience with me as a mother and my shortcomings and wounds, but no longer are they distrustful of that.
They are able to get perspective and hear normalizing of the difficulty in the best of circumstances between parents and teens at this age, that it’s natural, and I have to hear that too, because for me…: the other shoe is always going to drop.
So here we are a year and a half of intensive two times a week therapy, including emdr, their individual therapy, and now our family therapy and there is some light. We are able to see the identity of our family with its own story rather than the constant comparisons that flay us raw. Make us feel less than.
We are our own story and it is a beautiful one. Our cast of charactersis unmatchable. I wouldn’t change a fucking thing.
If I had gotten what I wanted when I wanted it all of my energy would have once again been abandoning myself and this family, and while the dream and heart had the right idea, in practice Everything happens for a reason and in its own time. I held on so hard to the dream and a story, and didn’t trust my own reality.
The gift is that I’ll never do that again. I have a relationship with me, and a relationship with them. And a new relationship with life itself where there is a semblance of trust. It will likely always have a tinge of something bad possibly happening at any moment. There’s a lot of that in me, and that’s ok because I will and have learned to support myself through this and to choose supportive fellow travelers.
My work has deepened, and my relationship with self and others.
My story is far from over, in many ways it’s just beginning. Another life within the millions. Today I played piano. It’s been a long time since I could sit down and focus. I have an idea I can or will but then I just stare frozen. I can’t will my body to try.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been tallying the losses I’ve had. I won’t go into explaining how I’m not doing this to be negative I won’t do this to me. I am honoring my experiences.
In the past two years I’ve lost a home I lived in for 8 years, my first secure space. I’ve lost many possible pregnancies and a couple of heartbeats, I lost a dream of having a baby with a woman I love in a healthy relationship. I lost a dream of being a foster parent and providing more of what I didn’t even have. Needed to have it first. I lost a father in-law and a family. I lost a wife and more importantly an unconditionally loving human being who adored me and held me and supported me.
I lost a beloved pet and now a new one because we weren’t ready.
And then I lost my self respect personally and professionally. I lost touch with myself. And then I lost reality nearly altogether. I nearly lost my mind, and I definitely lost some of the health I’ve worked so hard for by spending my life walking away from unhealthy and toward freedom. I could have lost my life quite a few times over the past year.
I lost a soul relationship with a new family, kids and all, and a lover who still haunts my bones. I’ll love them forever, all of them in their own way, because they were a before and an after moment of my life. I send them love every chance I get, even when I’m hurt and angry. It just exists. I remember every single moment.
And I wouldn’t be me if the losses didn’t make me naturally think of the gains… I don’t have to try. So let’s see. I gained friendships that I didn’t even know I had because I’ve been so numb and removed from myself. They were there but I couldn’t feel them like I do now. I gained appreciation for family and attachment for the people who held me this past two years.
I thought I was grateful before, it’s nothing like it is now. I gained humility, awareness, a greater capacity for healthy self sacrifice. I gained a new home that now feels friend versus foe. I gained many lessons as a clinician and lost many doubts in my abilities ironically.
I gained a relationship with sex and my body that feels fulfilling and embodied and whole. I gained believing in my capacity for exercise and endurance. I gained pieces of my identity I would never have uncovered. I gained faith in my tefloness. I gained earned security. I gained the ability to value myself as lovable and deserving. and that line brought the tears.
I gained being less scattered in my burning brain. It has a permanent layer of salve on it. It’s soothing…. cool. Healing.
I gained the ability to be present over being lost in my head. I gained piano and enriching my already immense relationship with music. The ability to delay gratification and to not justify things in the name of scarcity.
I gained integrity……. one I was already built with but didn’t know how easily I could lose. I gained an intimate relationship with grief, and the understanding of how it can affect choices and so much more.
There are so many more, but these are the ones I can think of now.
So what now ?
The rest of my life being able to be present and not jumping ahead or freezing, for more than a little before I lovingly catch myself in a bear hug and ground, …..
I don’t worry whether I’ll write a book or not or what kind. I enjoy thinking about it and creating space inside my head for the discipline and dedication to breathe life into it.
I’ll be here writing, reading, connecting, singing, dancing, playing, working, living, and loving…..
90 days……. she’ll love you if you love her like that……now the day bleeds into night fall…..she’ll love you if you love her like that.
Music begins my days and the songs speak to me. I realized this morning I’m in love again. This time I’m in love with my whole life and myself. I get it now. What being still means because now I can see my whole life and all my connections and my ability to carry on and connect beautifully with others, the world, and myself.
I get it now.
I’m on my front porch and the other chair isn’t lonely or empty, it’s often filled by some of the strongest and most beautiful people. The kind I aspire to be and am lucky to love. My life is surrounded by those that get it.
For the last 5 years or so I’ve been rebirthing myself. Contained in the watery womb that is my bath. And now I’m outside. I’m outside with the world, standing in all that I am. The musicians and authors they are by my side. They are my ancestors. Loyal brave and true they surround me with the art they have had the fortitude to get out into the world. They are encouraging me.
“You gotta get up and try”
And I always do.
That’s beautiful
I cry on my front porch in the mornings. I cry for the pain in the world and for the beauty. Grief is beautiful it means we have tried for something, and when it doesn’t work out it doesn’t mean we aren’t enough. It means we had the courage to try for something we wanted. The courage to pursue our dreams.
This morning I thought deeply about my beautiful friend’s birthday. About how strong she’s had to be and how her light still shines through the personal darkness she navigates. We are kindreds. Both vibrating with anxiety to the point it consumes. Wounds we were left with. Bullet holes bleeding, and still we rise.
She posted a photo with her grandparents from her birthday dinner last night and I could see the little girl there. The one who just wanted to be celebrated and seen. The thing we all desire. And it broke me open to seeing everyone’s child, the child in everyone just wanting to know who they are and what to do with themselves in the world.
Who am I? What is my purpose? Will I be loved? Will I be safe?
This finally feels like home. My house isn’t not a home because I’m not sharing the experience with a partner. My house is a home because I belong here. I am home. My home.
I can finally see the beauty in the flowers, in everything, in my own life, not just others, desperately wanting them to see too, so that can be a shared experience.
My whole life I was so driven and focused on obtaining this one main thing I thought would make me safe and happy, but discounting me and everything I am. Unless I was healing I didn’t know where I fit in the equation. Unless I was useful.
Now all my connections are important, no tunnel vision, not just one at a time. I can finally appreciate me for the way that I connect to others, and now to myself too.
My son didn’t do the dishes last night though he was reminded and asked and this morning I thought on the porch of how many times I’ve harshly pushed, asked him why he didn’t do them, not if he’s ok. Not a hug. Not warmth. Because that was my relationship with myself, because that was the relationship I was given from the cards I was dealt. It’s taken my whole life to get it. To understand the power of are you ok? How are you doing ? How was your day? Are you connected? Do you need something? The dishes can wait. They are not the most important thing. But that is what I knew how to do. My model my template. It’s as far as I could get.
Until now……
From now on…..
I literally couldn’t get myself to open warmly and hug and ask those things. Inside I’m screaming to do that, but I get stuck inside myself. In Pinks documentary she said a line, about how she wishes she could reach inside herself and give that little girl a hug. This is why the rebirth was needed.
Over the past year and a half I’ve been on a mission to reclaim that little girl. I didn’t know that was my mission. I thought it was something else. So often life is like that. We misunderstand. So my kid can connect with my kids. So I could replace harsh drive with enthusiasm for living. Warmth. Everything I accuse are only things I couldn’t find in myself.
Always disconnected with me, always begging for connection with someone else. Thinking that would crack the code and it never did. How many times do I need to crack open I thought? How much more breaking.
Breaking let’s the light in. You can hear all the quotes and read all the memes but in my experience you can’t embody the experience until you’ve walked the path yourself.
So this morning I’m outside, not locked inside myself. I’m in the light. I am the light. I’m in the world and I love everything. In love with myself (I was typing my life and it changed it to that and I left it).
I’m not afraid my existence is a burden any longer. I won’t live that way anymore. I am here and I have a voice and a right to exist. I won’t hide for hours in the bathtub trying to figure out how to fix what is broken. I don’t need to anymore. We aren’t there anymore.
Once you grow you can’t go back. One could say why would you want to, but of course it’s tempting because being new and open and ready can sometimes feel an overwhelming responsibility. I was overwhelmingly responsible for everything during my childhood. I get it now.
Now I am responsible to myself to allow myself to exist in all the light I have to offer and to enjoy that.
My heart is bursting with love and I don’t need to aim the arrow at anyone to feel safe and wanted. I can be love. And I already have love and I already am love.
I get it now. And this morning my heart felt so much love for everyone that has ever dared to love, and for everyone who has ever grieved anything, because grieving isn’t easy. It hurts to be human.
The people we connect with makes the hurt worthwhile.
It’s not the stuff, the milestones, the achievements. It’s always about connections. We try to make meaning and know what that is, we try to control. We beg to be enough, belong, to be seen. And those things are our natural birthright.
We have to claim that.
If we have shared a journey I love you. For your strength, your pain, your resilience, your harder moments. I love it all.
I have always loved life itself, and life is the unreliable narrator, but never again will I tell a story or believe one that hurts me. Not for long anyway because after all
