Tag: #lifeinyourownway

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Shame is an Ocean I’m Battling

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.

https://www.healthline.com/health/chronic-illness/childhood-trauma-connected-chronic-illness

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.

Thank you….

Resources

Complex PTSD

Pete Walker From Surviving to Thriving

The Body Keeps the Score

The Human Magnet Syndrome

Alice Walker The Drama of the Gifted Child

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Trauma and shame

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.

To have them and to be them…..

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Scattered attachment

I’ve busied myself my whole life and now it seems all the pain that was buried unearthed itself all at once. Primal terror. I am reading Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. It like its predecessors, Conscious Uncoupling, and so many others reaffirms that everything I have been going through is easily explained by evolutionary theory, and not some personal deficiency.

I remember when I was interested in Bowlby, the pioneering researcher on attachment, before I even took a college class. I had articles printed by him as a young thing before schooling was ever a glimmer in my eye.

It helps me to not shame myself now, as I’m going through one of the hardest patches I have ever had and am tasked with giving myself grace.

For I am and have been in so much pain and for the most part unless you’ve gotten really close or seen my patterns you wouldn’t have any idea. I have always tried to carry it alone, anything else has felt like I’m feeling sorry for myself, asking for too much, grandiose to want to be seen, embarrassing, shameful, and a whole host of other things.

My mind is so scattered all the time I can barely breathe, and no I can’t tell a story any longer that I have caused this or that it’s even plain old ordinary adhd. That’s bullshit. My abuse was immense and intense and I have shielded everyone from it by becoming my own rescuer and trying to bring others along with me.

But sooner or later that river of hurt was always going to rise up. Now my question is what do I do with it? Raft it? That would be appropriate as I remember my adventurous teen self on the Rogue River. I wondered often how I went from being so adventurous to later being so anxious, and the answer is very simple. I had nothing to lose at that time, and no connection or value to myself.

It wouldn’t have mattered if I lived or died. That painful thought haunted me and through me into a 4 year long battle with my own body as I struggled and feared death. That was the first step in my awakening I suppose. Becoming aware enough of myself to realize if I died or got married or any of it I didn’t feel like one person would be there supporting me.

So of course I clambered to be loved and chosen and belong in a family as quickly as possible. What kind of expectations have I had for myself that I could shame myself for that.

I was supposed to have developed into an adult and it is assumed I’d be able to securely attach. Why wouldn’t I? Because you have never seen what is beneath the surface. I love hard to try and heal it. That’s what I do. I stay open and trying no matter how many mistakes to try and heal it the right way, rather than merely exist.

I deserve to thrive not to just exist, but if you had any idea the amount of work it takes for me to have understood love and connection more than merely studying it, but to actually feel it and stay.

My expectations when there are any always seem too much, when in reality they are below the bare minimum. Someone willing to see, to try at least to understand, and be willing to keep doing the work.

I only leave when there is no attempt to understand made for me. If I am expected to do all the work alone, that’s a place I’m too familiar with and something I don’t want. I want to work with someone, nothing more and nothing less.

The first break was due to sexuality and that nearly killed me before counseling. Being divorced was unthinkable. And I tried everything and I mean everything for it to be different. I felt horrible.

The next break was because I kept trying to patch the holes fast so the ship didn’t sink. There were three kids on that ship, sinking was not an option.

The next break was an accumulation of grief so great I cannot even begin to explain to you, and the pregnancy failures/losses were only a piece of it. The unmet needs were immense. But the needs of my children at face value seemed to be met and I prioritized that in ways that no one may ever understand.

I was not seen or heard. And I don’t think marriage was ever able to mean to me what I wanted to believe it did. I didn’t really know what it meant beyond survival. You choose a safe and good person and you try and make it work is what I felt was realistic. Fearing all the time my wanting and needing and very dreams were too much.

So that’s what I did. I had a dream. My dream was to have a fulfilling and safe partnership, and to be able to have a baby in the sexuality that felt like home, while my kids were still young enough to appreciate that, before beginning a second life. Perhaps I thought we would feel more like a family.

I wanted to be a family, as a lesbian woman, have a healthy partnership, and be invested in that dream with courage and enthusiasm. That is my dream.

I want to be seen and understood and asked about things too. How I feel, what I want, what I need, and what my life has been like for me.

What do we do when we can’t get what we want? Well I can only answer for me. I became it. I became interested in peoples stories their whole story beneath the surface. I still wanted that for me.

To be seen and noticed and appreciated not for what I do or provide, but for the whole story of who I am.

And I will concede it’s possible that maybe even as that was happening I couldn’t even see or feel it because I was moving too quickly.

My brain is in pain. It hurts to be this scattered. It’s harmful to me. So for now I will try and understand this pain and find ways to relieve it so I can carve the dreams I deserve and want and stay the course I choose, and do that from a place that’s using my knowing.

Right now just please hold me in your thoughts because I am in pain.

Always

C

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Gentle and Fierce

My mind is fierce yet I am determined to keep my heart gentle. My experiences were fierce and I’ve been determined my whole life to stay soft. It’s a constant battle.

My grief is not gentle, it is fierce.

I become fierce in groundlessness.

Fiercely overwhelmed.

Everything is overwhelming right now, and I wasn’t supposed to be doing any of this alone.

I’m allowed to not want to be and I was allowed to try for love in all the ways I did with all the needs I had.

My life and myself evolving too quickly to keep up. Many disjointed parts out of alignment. Sometimes I feel like a bag of broken glass. My second to last energy healing she spoke about seeing shards of glass and beautiful light and something about them coming together and a friend recently spoke about a kaleidoscope and mosaics have been coming up for me.

When I look out over even this past year I have an extraordinary life.

I always set out for that and I have one.

I have deep and enduring friendships that mean the world to me. Some new and some old, but all of them incredibly meaningful. I look at all the pictures of my tears, roads I have walked, my smiles, excursions, moments with my kids, this home. It’s a full life surrounded by love.

From within and without.

Perspective is a soothing balm to the open wounds all throughout me right now. Attachment fractures that feel like fault lines that can erupt at any moment. It feels terrible to be so acutely aware of this. The pain is unbearable at times. Almost all the time right now with glimpses of peace.

I just went through an intense period of “seeing red” I call it, threat everywhere, the intrusive thoughts get so loud I can’t hear any security. This will all be taken from you in a thousand horrible ways, bad things will happen, you are the bad thing, you had no business being born, you tarnished the family reputation, fix your mother, go soothe her, be quieter good little girls play with their paper dolls in the corner, children are meant to be seen and not heard. Why are you so….., let’s play the quiet game, all of ways you are inadequate. These weren’t complexes these were my actual beginnings. So much threat.

I work hard to calm these thoughts, and I fill my life with the opposite as one means of doing so. Pursuits that are worthwhile, but when there is no relaxation of the kind I need, those struggle too.

I am adjusting slowly but surely. It’s hard to collect my thoughts right now. That’s the worst thing. My nervous system is in overdrive all the time and I’m looking to connect to the things that used to calm it, and unfortunately these days that makes it worse.

Alone is a trigger for me I am finding.

I am capable of being alone. I’ve been very alone in so many ways. I’m allowed to not be I cry out. But I made this choice and here I am.

I don’t want to be figuring out the reorganization of my home alone. I never wanted that. That was not the plan. But these are the consequences of my choices. So I’ll take the hits, they feel like they just keep coming. I can’t breathe.

My grief is not calm and gentle it is fierce.

Being back at this place again. It’s like the ground hog day from hell. That movie is kind of appropriate actually. He’s an asshole until he gets it. His day repeats over and over until he becomes a different person and appreciates everything differently, and then the cycle is finally over. Intelligent writer there.

Something broke open last week, I hit a wall of awareness, or rather it hit me in the face during a therapy session with my daughters. I don’t want to be this snarling and snapping thing, it’s not natural for me, and nothing, and I mean nothing is worth losing yourself.

I have felt unworthy most of my life to connect with my children, so scared I would harm them, that I busied myself doing everything I could do well to keep them safe in so many ways. I didn’t even want them to see I didn’t know how to connect.

And as I wade daily through the stories of others the struggle became normalized. I recognized my own humanity in everyone else’s and reattached to myself in a slow painful process.

I remember my first energy healing. I could hardly be touched. I laid on that table struggling to be vulnerable and just breathe when so much rose up in my body. It was so defended. I remember her saying she couldn’t go anywhere near my heart, that it was too guarded and my mind was swarming like a hive. It’s so painful. If you had any idea what the moments of calm and gentle mean.

So that’s exactly what I’m attempting to become, with myself, and with my children. I hold on for dear life. Hold my breath and clench everything to survive. Then I spend all my time trying to undo that, to deal with the effects. The migraines, the pain, and the only thing soothing is safe adult presence preferably in the form of nurturing and attentive partnering with a good balance of give and take. I’ve long known this is the secret to a happy life. We are meant to be connected, and it certainly is for me. It feels a cruel joke the vulnerabilities that lie within in me with regard to that. The ones I’ve had to painfully uncover layer by layer, so I could be known to myself.

And now I’m supposed to like what I see and believe anyone else could ? The tasks asked of me seem impossible most days.

Am I a samurai sword ? Being beaten into submission so I can be what?! A weapon of truth? I’d rather be a beacon of light, peace, and warmth. How can one so fierce also be that ?

It’s all too much sometimes.

A screenshot from long ago stands out in my mind, it was our relationship can be unnecessarily intense at times. This coming from a person who held all the cards and the control and had me dangling on a wire. And you have the nerve to assess or speak about my behavior in the midst of deception and manipulation. How dare you make me the problem when I showed up and you didn’t. When I show up without excuses no matter the pain and cost to me.

Also that she would ask what I was doing, anxious about my whereabouts more than how I was doing. Yuck.

I’ve been shamed for the impact of my trauma in a variety of ways my entire life, and most people truly didn’t know what they were doing. They saw behavior as behavior and couldn’t or wouldn’t look deep. Looking deeper has become my life’s work.

Will anyone ever look deeper into me and stay ?

And will I stop trying to do that in the wrong situations and choose the healthy ones?

Stay tuned

Ps my last energy healing my heart was open and she put her hand over it awhile.

My heart was open.

My heart is open. That’s why it’s so painful.

It’s happening in my therapy sessions and I’m reconnecting with my kids and friends and appreciating differently. Don’t let the intense emotional moments shared fool you, it is happening. My first energy healing she had put her hands under my back and I recoiled and tensed but she didn’t stop, I thought she would, I worried about her having to feel all that pain. I didn’t want her to. My body screamed don’t hold me, but she stayed, and I softened, and my grief poured out of me, down the sides of that table, and back into the earth to be recycled. That day was a beginning in many ways. I sobbed and I thought she would say it was too intense or let’s stop, that I would be shamed again, that it would be too much, that I was too much.

What is too much is what I have endured in my life the danger and the loneliness and what legacy that has left me with to clean up.

It’s still extraordinary…..

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Feral children Feral Parents

Have I really operated like a scared animal most of my life, much less felt like one. Wow. I sit here and think about that. What it feels like to be scared. Like really think about it, the sensations, and what your mind tells you. The toll it takes on your body.

I am listening to Esther Perel podcasts of actual couples therapy sessions Esther Perel relationship podcast

And it’s making me think. What stood out to me in this one is how she made the couple aware they each operated from their own internal worlds for 20 years deeply affecting the quality of their marriage. Imagine misunderstanding someone for 20 years! They each operated from their own world view, fears, etc, but they did not deeply listen to the other.

Both feeling rejected and shameful from things that weren’t actually what the other meant. When they felt unworthy the ended up making the other feel that way from frustration of not knowing what they wanted or needed, or not allowing themselves that.

I have been thinking about what I’m meant to share. It always seems like it’s all been done, and everyone does is better. Imposter syndrome at its finest. That’s what happens every time. Usually when I listen to another therapist work I hear everything I must be doing wrong, or polar opposite I think wow I’d do that differently. My ego is often in full protective mode and that blocks out learning and trying for something. I like to think of myself as not like this, that’s probably why I’m so good at pointing it out in others.

My own arrogance disgusts me sometimes and facing it down in the mirror is not easy. Particularly when it comes to connecting with my children. With their experiences rather than my parent ego blocking being able to see life how they do. We are doing therapy together and it’s unbelievable. To see myself, the therapist gently confront, to feel that burning shame after when I realize how wrong I am doing things. God it hurts.

Trying to redirect to if you’re willing and trying you are ahead of the game, it’s those who avoid that that create harm for generations. So I sit in the burn.

I sit in the shame of how hard I clamp down and hold on tightly to the only thing I have ever been able to, my resolve. My strength. It’s the only home I’ve ever known.

I realize this morning what an unrealistic view of love I have and how painted by my trauma that portrait is and I am humbled. Unrealistic expectations of others, myself, and my children. I keep trying to get them to understand my experience, when I am not understanding theirs. Because it’s too scary in there. I could be my mom. It’s terror. Terror. And so I shut down completely and the only thing they are able to translate that as, is that I must not love them.

Which couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s a line in the movie Riding in Cars With Boys that always stopped me in my tracks. A young selfish mom, makes sense right 😉 who’s sons very existence seems to vex her and he knows it. The kids are playing and Drew Barrymore says to Britney Murphy, “we love our kids but like do we really love them or do we just have to love them.” And Britney responds that “she thinks sometimes we love them so much that if we felt it all at once it would kill us”, so we don’t always realize or can’t always be in that feeling.

Like how do you switch from protecting and providing to loving and nurturing. I clamped tightly to a role and held on for dear life I think. Nothing fluid or gentle, because my life was not those things.

I got very intense at one point last session with them, feeling attacked for everything and why don’t they trust me, I’m mom , don’t they know how hard I’ve worked, and the clinician gently said something along the lines of maybe it’s because of something like this. And I burned with shame and pain. And then later the hot wet tears of release and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

And all the other people who have called me intense. All the fucking shame, the finger pointing, and so few have ever been curious and interested enough to stay to know why I get like that. I want people to know. And I don’t want people to know, and I’m locked in here.

It’s a cage.

Feeling like some kind of reject that doesn’t know which emotional response to choose out of the jukebox at which time. I turn my head in shame, and the tears come down.

Hurt people hurt people and I don’t want to hurt anymore or hurt them. Burning pathological loneliness. How do I make them understand I don’t know how? That I freeze. And when they don’t know how I just push them forward because that’s all I’ve ever done in my life.

Frozen and thawing. Frozen and thawing. The seasons of my life. This perhaps the most difficult which means the most fruitful.

I cried a lot while writing this, and I thought of her, how similar our wounds are and how they separate us from receiving any relief, and how does it have to be that way…. too much relief and you don’t grow, too little and you don’t either. There has to be something in between numbing and ecstasy. A grey area. Realistic and one step at a time.

For now I’m just practicing this with myself…..

Always

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Loyalty and acts of God

Someone once told me if you have my loyalty it would take an act of God to break it. 

I’m thinking about those words today. 

I am thinking about how I fancied myself to be the same, and about how once certain circumstances collided that did not stand up. 

We all want to see ourselves a certain way. Having integrity, who we want to be, and then we all have circumstances, or maybe I will call it our own personal story, that often has aspects we are blind to. These can lead us to behave as we never thought we could or head down roads we never expected before. 

Most of us don’t like to admit this, but if we don’t it can’t get any oxygen. What isn’t acknowledged cannot be healed. That will always be the case.

That’s why I am always trying to talk things out, if I can’t hear myself say them, or I can’t read them on the page, I’ll continue to operate with these templates that are often outdated, and end up causing a lot of suffering.

Lately I’m having a really difficult time sorting out between who I am, who I want to be and what my path is. Maybe that could just be chalked up to a lack of trust in myself. And that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt I require a trusting relationship with myself above all things. I desperately want to place the responsibility for this in somebody else’s hands, for someone to come along and save me from myself. Paradoxically this is bizarre because I’ve always saved myself, I guess that’s why I’m so tired. But it’s not really saving we want, it’s faith in who we are. How do you ever get that when survival has been the primary concern, but you’re so good it doesn’t even look that way. 

Oh the disconnect of how things look on the outside to how they are on the inside. I always aspire for those to be in alignment, but then still get dazzled by seeing what appears to be for others, that never seems to be for me.

I have been thinking a lot lately about this idea of being legitimate and what constructs we need for things to feel that way. Are all the customized paraphernalia from major life events, rings, vows…. are those enough?! What do they mean even. But if you never have any sense of these things, whether they be traditions or events, then how do you define security. 

Oh elusive security. Scrambling for it outside and inside all at once is quite the chaos. Trust me, I know a little about this. Then you have The Little Prince and his fox and existential philosophy and Pink Floyd who says all you’ll touch and all you’ll see is all your life will ever be. Moments of impact as Channing Tatum says in the Vow. And so much noise about what it means to love anr be loved and what that is supposed to look like. 

If you have the courage to create your own you’ll never know whether you’re doing it right or not, but you can be sure others will put in their two cents whether they have been inside your whole story or not. This can cause a lot of suffering. What if we dared to love people anyway, for their whole story, not just the chapter you arrived on. 

Who am I loyal to? Am I loyal to myself? Do we ask that question enough. I think what does required an act of God, or God as you know him as they say, is breaking through the various shames imparted on us by a society that doesn’t even know our story. 

Personal stories are so important to understand. That is always the goal for me and I am always interested in a persons story. Always. It’s a huge part of my identity. And right now I am trying to piece mine together in a way that makes sense and is an accurate representation of the truth, with barely any of my own memory. 

There’s that lack of trust again, a worthy opponent. I won’t be giving up anytime soon. 

Stay tuned….

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Christina Herself

New Year’s Day hike, Southford Falls, Connecticut

Alright let’s see what this new year makes of me.

I’ve set some intentions, some I’ll keep and some undoubtedly I will bend simply for the fact that I am lofty with my goals and ideas, and my human self cannot always keep them.

I do however have faith that this year I will be able to use and access my knowing a little better than the year before. What more can anyone ask of themselves than that.

My main focus right now is trying to keep a clear mind and be able to regulate my emotions more from within rather than the coping mechanisms I have used most of my life. This is not easy. Particularly as someone who has lived most of their life using one of the four f coping mechanisms (see the work of Pete Walker on C-ptsd).

I like most, had convinced myself that my life was my own, and that my decisions were solid etc, as it turns out it’s not so easy to be slapped in the face with radical awareness of lifelong patterns. This threatens to drown one in shame and self-loathing. The information almost too much to bear.

Try to trust yourself when you keep having to re-start because, because you have a particular path, a destiny. I always knew mine wasn’t easy, but this time period really takes the cake. Just wow.

From surviving to thriving indeed.

This chapter in my life includes so many changes I feel like I am on the gravitron ride at the county fair. My head is spinning, and when you’re in that kind of state, doing anything to still it for a moment takes precedence over rational and careful thinking.

Am I in charge of these changes, or are they in charge of me? I have always felt overly responsible and therefore in my quest to claim my god given right for a childhood where I wasn’t, I slip into bouts of under responsibility that are uncharacteristic of my nature and my age.

I’d like to think of it as diving hundreds of feet to a shipwreck and the only way I was ever going to recover my true essence and the gifts I’m meant to enjoy and share is this journey. It could also just be bad behavior and this can be seen as a justification I guess you would have to be able to watch my whole story on a screen (maybe someday), or magically know what’s inside my heart.

I don’t think many would be willing to give up all their comforts and safety time and time again, a pursuit that always ends up feeling a fault, a shortcoming, selfish, and many other things. I’m trying to reach a place where I don’t take more pride than is necessary to fuel myself, or more shame than is an average amount that makes one look at themselves and be able to follow through with authentic change.

Everything is on a spectrum after all. Believing a story can provide temporary comfort, but it doesn’t create an interesting life, and change is too complex for that.

I had all but given up this past year with the amount of pain I have been in, spiritually, personally, all of it….. and so caring for myself well, while improving in certain ways, had become worse in others.

So this year I am on a mission to feed my body and my mind only healthy uplifting things, and to tackle any habits that undermine my success and authenticity.

I am reading Martha Beck’s allegorical novel Diana Herself. I am at the half way point and it just made me extremely emotional. Without spoiling it I will say that she is a girl from a difficult background (we have that in common) and as a result has these voices that follow her telling her how unloveable she is and how she can’t have what she wants etc. her spirit guide in animal form in the book suggests she use a method of turning around any negative narrative she has about herself. This is based on the work of Byron Katie I suspect. As she is one of Martha’s mentors. So for example she says no one wanted me they all left me etc, and upon further examination she left them because she was too precious and good to be around that. She had the story backwards all along.

It’s stories like these that resonate that someone else gets it, that brings magic to life. Something I hope to do for others some day.

The key to unlocking this is recovering a relationship with myself that is filled with wonder and nurturing and as a result connect this way with my children, who are teenagers, so that would fall under the category of lofty goals. Watch me 😉 I will do, and hopefully you’ll appreciate and learn from my many stumbles. I need to add some humor to this process. It’s been serious and dark a long time. That’s what I knew after all.

So many of my goals are feed my mind with words if people I admire and things I want to learn about and stay with that rather than becoming distracted, chaotically just anywhere.

To DECIDE how to spend my energy, always knowing it’s value.

Read, write, walk, breathe, feel, sense, try new things, see new places, and not keep my world small with anxiety.

I’ve spent some time reflecting on how much anxiety I have overcome. Literally debilitating intrusive thoughts, panic attacks, healthy anxiety, a total preoccupation with fear of death, and I truly believed for a long time I would die at any moment. It threatened to shrink my world and I didn’t realize how much I huddled inside in my comfort, but also how much I badly desired to adventure free from fear.

This year I have burned off the most of my health anxiety. I no longer anxiously check my heart rate, or obsess over my disease. I simply will get care if a problem worsens or persists, but generally from this relaxed space they don’t. I’m still reminded sometimes of my limits, but I’m also constantly pushing past them.

This past years victories include piano lessons, even though my hands shake, and I get hard on myself when I don’t practice, etc. battling lots of shame there. The courage to be seen.

As well as going to a trainer regularly, more exercise than I ever have. I am still threatened with stops and starts but the time lapse between shrinks and getting back up is much easier now. I can no longer believe a story that enables me to defend my weakness.

I am realizing that my particular brand of freeze has resulted in my mind making so many things more difficult than they actually are. It’s liberating!

FREEDOM!!!!!!!

I intend to bring my readers along with me as I explore myself in relation to the world this year. I am often lonely, and rather than scramble for a source outside myself I shall invest in a relationship with her and chronicle my adventures. This is my intention.

💜 always

Grateful today for…. having brunch with twin B (Victoria), that twin A (Rian) enjoyed breakfast out with her sweetie and that it’s a healthy relationship, that my son Tyler is doing him and living his life. For my friend Chip who stops by and shares delicious food he has made and always has a hug for me. That Sophie turned 5 months today and is finally getting a little better with behavior :p. For my bath time, beautiful home, and books.

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August’s Rhapsody

Flashback to August 2019. Flash forward. We don’t bounce back we just bounce forward.

“The music is all around us, all you have to do is listen.”

My wife being brave….

If I don’t write this blog post I think I might spontaneously combust. I just have to start somewhere. Being out of the habit all the old doubts have had time to creep in. The self-consciousness clinging to me as close as the tiny beads of sweat that have been my constant companion since moving here. We have no central air in the new house, who would of thought something could be so “central” to one’s existence.

We live in a new home, in a new beautiful town. My wife’s father is dead. We didn’t even know he was going to be dead. It was thrust upon us, as death often is. It was unannounced and a swift blow upside our happiness.

The very real threat of a victim story unfolding and a woe is us why so much grief in one year trying to barrel roll me to the bottom of the bayou and choke out any remaining life. Yes it’s been this intense.

From movers that didn’t arrive til 7 pm (scheduled at 3), and moving until 4 am the next day right before our closing, while her father was in the ICU. We found out there wasn’t any hope the same day we signed our papers for our new home.

Everything was out of place. Our hearts and souls were like the many packed boxes. Jumbled and scattered. Unfound. Riddled with broken items we have held dear, the natural losses any move yields.

Unimaginable timing. My wife and her two siblings standing wide eyed with horror bracing themselves for an unknown journey of probate and estate settling, while packing their grief away for the time being.

And my wife said to me the other day, “and life just keeps going”, as in that’s it. It’s just over. He was here for so much of their years on this earth, meant so many things, and he is no longer. What do you do in the wake?

I feel like we are in the upside down. I didn’t actually even watch Stranger Things much, but the reference somehow feels right to me. Everything dark and unknown, and not being able to get back to what once was. A delineated before and an after.

I think as humans we are tricked into expecting a happily ever after once we have done so much work, as I have, to find your person. And we have immense happiness together. Is that why we are being offered up so many challenges? Four failed pregnancies, one ending in surgery and utter sadness, and the loss of a parent, and a move in the period of about one year.

No baby, a funeral, and a whopping amount of change all at once. I feel as if the tectonic plates of my life are shifting, constant earthquakes, and the aftershocks are still coming. When will my earth feel secure again? And if anything all this has done is made me know that anything can and will happen anytime. You are not guaranteed any kind of happy. So if you have it even for a minute absorb that shit! Pay attention to it. Be grounded. Be grateful.

The tears just started to pour. I can’t explain what it feels like for me to write, or maybe I can and will right here and now. Your first sip of water after being stranded without for days. That first touch of warmth after being cold with no relief. It’s an inhale and an exhale. It’s holding on and letting go. It’s a communion with my higher self. It’s joy and ecstasy. It is raw. It’s August’s symphony. If you haven’t seen August Rush, see it now.

It is the most profound relief to put my heart on the page. It is everything.

Amidst everything going on around me there is a lot going on inside of me. I am approaching my 39th year. The last year of my 30’s. My body is changing, my mind is changing. How can someone simultaneously become more confident than they have ever been as they are also acutely aware of the descent of their metabolism and a great many other bodily related factors. Just how?

August Rush. A fairytale. I downloaded the song of course so I can listen to a beautiful composition with so much heart as I am doing just that. This movie. A lost perfect boy with amazing talent, who plays music to find a set of parents who both want him as much as he wants them. A fairytale indeed. Good for you August…. no genuinely good for you.

Watching a set of siblings grieve their father, my wife grieve him. I couldn’t help but have a huge missing portion of my life highlighted. The best case scenario is that I say at least I was able in a strange way to have that experience. I’ve been grieving the absence of my parents my whole life. And it’s made me who I am in so many ways, the good and the bad.

I watch from the outside an alien. I watch the humans with my nose pressed to the tank. Human in moments, robot in others. Carefully choosing which emotion suits me the best because naturally feeling them was abandoned long ago. It sounds so sad when I say it. Don’t saaaaaay it. But it’s so beautiful too.

What a paradox that the more a person suffers the more kind and open hearted and brave they become. Why do these qualities require such suffering?

So here my wife are on this journey. Somehow together, which is my greatest privilege. And living with our whole hearts. Which people can actually see and they respond to it. Two people building their confidence in a world that would keep them small if it could.

My wife has been taking singing lessons and watching her battle through her self-consciousness to that glorious moment that makes it all worthwhile. And I am doing the same thing with my clothing and with my counseling. We are being brave, blazing trails, and enjoying one another in this life.

Even amidst all the sorrow I just described. What I am finding is that life is both, all the time. Your best hope is to fashion a self that can manage the hurdles. To be humbled by the losses, and to carry the people we love, even if only in memory all the days of our lives.

I am stitched together by moments….and to my beautiful wife and to my children… you are my greatest. I’ll climb through hell and back a thousand times just for one more with you. I’ll fight all my demons to show up for you, and live my life with great heart.

I hope you know….

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More than Our Scars

My own little zen garden…. building a fortress for my heart :p

So I’m at the beach

Listening to the sounds of children playing in the water, an older couple who always occupies the same spot, the gentle lapping of the water against the shore, the gulls, the wind, and my own heart.

It’s a roller coaster of emotions lately. Some days it’s anger, some it’s sadness, all days it’s grief. How can it be possible to grieve so much at once ?

Some moments I don’t think I’ll survive this.

“At least if… This would’ve all been worthwhile” What is the point of it all if not for…” How do I have so many words in my head, that are not even my own? How did this happen? So many others grief in my arms too by the particular blessing and curse that is the way that I love.

Were we just a distraction from the real stuff ? Is that what all this is about ? What will be true on the other side of this pain? Will I ever be on the other side of it?

And tears, and rage, and blood, sweat, and teeth biting hard into my soul. They bite down hard. It used to be a pleasant sensation, pleasure and pain mixing perfectly.

Now it’s just teeth sunk into my heart, blood running down its chin, the enemy. Whatever it is. People’s opinions, shame, guilt, fear. “Comfort the enemy of progress”, the progress used to be my comfort.

There is none now. Everything is blank. A blank page used to excite, now it’s empty, what is a blank page without a pen and ink. I am a few tools short right now, of the things that make me sing and dance.

Memories mix with reality and the entire picture becomes a blur. It comes into focus for brief moments, before going under again. Out of view. Everything goes black.

Unconscious. Subconscious. What’s the difference anyway. Is there one?

Acceptance I am finding is a dish served cold. And not the good kind, like tuna tartar or sushi.

Fuck

There just isn’t a better description than that.

What is on the other side of all of this?

If nothing else this has shown me how much of my life I lived in pure naïveté. And I want it back damnit. I was impervious. I thought I could just make my mind up and make it happen. As it turns out that doesn’t work so well in baby making and in love. I was duped into a false sense of security with my first go around with those things. I got them too easily maybe ? I don’t know.

It was all so “easy”, it came so easy to me, but maintaining it, that’s when it gets difficult. Even then though with the right ingredients I thought I could make it work, make something out of it.

Instead what I’m learning is there really are a lot of forces beyond my control. I don’t think I believed in destiny because I had such a will forged I believed I could create anything. Because that belief is all I had.

Now that I’m stripped down to the bare bones, who will I become…. that’s the scariest thing.

Who will I become?

Mary Lambert, Sum of Our Parts….

“I want to know who ever broke you

I want to know how you can grow bigger

And don’t go lookin for some kind of rescue

You are the only one who can save you

We are we are more than our scars

We are we are more than the sum

Of our parts…..

I didn’t know I was a phoenix
Till I learned how to speak
Even with ashes in my mouth
I was still born to breath
I wonder are you like me
Were you left in the fire
Are you raising yourself
Above your father’s empire”

There’s a sun shower right now And it’s the oddest sensation. Droplets of water started to hit me when it’s bright and shiny out and no sign of rain. I thought I was sweating considering I just wrapped up errands at BJ’s.

Is there a cosmic meaning ? Who knows :p

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A Matter of Existing

My existence makes waves.

Does Every Existence Have it’s Own Prewritten Destiny ?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and how my upbringing, if you could call it that, has lent me always to believe those waves are a bad thing for anyone who comes across them.

Perhaps this is why I have dedicated my life to trying to make my existence useful and positive for others. And yet I continue to battle with the notion it’s the opposite.

Do I really have to make up for myself ?

I don’t have to do anything but exist to make an impact.

To try and be seen or attended to at all, my greatest trick was running my mouth. A chatter box, a blabber mouth, a chatty Kathy, a nuisance, a burden. I vacillated between this and making myself invisible to relieve the stress on my caretakers. I tried all manner of things to be seen with joy. I sold all my dreams and my soul to become small and quiet.

I learned to stand up for myself by doling out a wounding that might keep them away, so I wouldn’t be confused any further. Because trying to be loved by the sources that keep wounding you is an endless purgatory. I never knew what I was going to get. How does one adapt to that amount of uncertainty. The only thing I have ever been certain about is in my own ability to anticipate the next change so I can be ahead of it. Survival.

Evolution developed a sharp tongue on an otherwise loving individual. An array of defense mechanisms like many tangled weeds around my pyramid.

The closest I got to myself was finding some people scattered throughout the world who found my presence to be enjoyable, usually for the insight and unique way I had about me for seeing the world. A rare few took notice. They may never know how they saved my life.

I still feel great guilt and anxiety for how much space I take up in a room. I clamber to try and make up for my own existence. I embrace it and then apologize for it. I get excited about the impact I’ve had and then ashamed for it.

I am all in or all out. All good or all bad. Even when I have an understanding most don’t about all the shades of grey in a life.

My very existence is a contradictory thing with a life all it’s own. It constantly pulls me about the world saying, try this, no wait over here try that, until I collapse in resignation. Resigned to what though? I produce more questions than I create answers.

I am always looking for a place to call home that is a consistent shelter from the storm that is living. When things strike one as this profound every moment of every day it’s exhausting. My shelters are always temporary. Was I only ever meant to adopt and choose myself ? It’s not as if I haven’t been the one to leave the homes I find. When you’re on a mission how does all of that work? Spoiler: I never knew either. I just have a courage that makes me stupid enough to keep trying.

An ignorance I am strangely grateful for, while simultaneously longing for the fears that bind. I want the binding to be ties not fears. There’s a difference.

I get that confused with me being the exhausting thing, and once again try and make up for, clean up, my own existence.

I dream of creating something of beauty (besides my children) that can pay my debts for the pain I caused my family. Not every birth is celebrated. What becomes of the ones who aren’t. The jury is still out. Stay tuned.

When I see a Broadway show I imagine what it would feel like to be the beloved person who created that. To be celebrated. I am told that I should be celebrated just for existing, but this is too close to the grandiose roots from whence I came. A foreign concept at best. One I try and bestow upon others, but struggle with myself.

My most resonant prayer is that my children never face the exhaustion of existing that I do. Not in the way that I do at least. My rabid and vicious thinking that’s most often received by people saying, “you think too much”, or “too much introspection isn’t good” (my father), “you’re too sensitive”.

They might as well just say you shouldn’t have been born. I shouldn’t have. In the name of religion it was the worst thing that ever could have happened to my mother and therefore the image of my family. What is a family if not their image.

Perhaps that’s why I prefer to live in the depths, where true meaning exists, because that’s where my existence is beautiful.

So I’ve spent most of my life trying to find, and then give myself permission to be who I am. To claim my own voice and story and believe it’s contents. And while most of this post sounds terribly sad, I’ve experienced such beauty in my 10,000 lifetimes amongst this one.

And this season of my life is no exception.