Tag: #lifeinyourownway

Posted on

At Home in a Heart that is Warm, and the Heart is Mine

Piece by piece she restores my faith that a person could be kind and stay ….. piece by piece she filled the holes that you burned in me at six years old…..

I woke up grumpy this morning. It’s a long day ahead, many bills to pay, many admin issues that need addressing. Ones that are intimidating. I’m tired. My b12 has been low, and I’m getting weekly injections. All of my therapies while deeply helpful, leave me gutted of energy by the end, and that leaves me fallen behind in other areas.

I’m mortal after all, not a God.

My tone inspired by the finishing of The Song of Achilles this morning.

Then as I’m in the bath attempting to rejuvenate my spirits and soak my sore body, I hear twin B singing of all things. I’m just a small town girl….. living in a lonely world…

It immediately lifts my spirits. I smiled from ear to ear. Then even more she texts requesting some time with me. I know it is backwards to need love from your children, (or is it just human all too human) but they are my only flesh and blood connections, and the only ones that have been my motivation to fight so hard against the dark experiences that marked my beginning.

I was waiting to enjoy them…. Wish I knew I didn’t have to wait. But I did. I had to connect with me first and that was nearly impossible.

We have had a turning point in family therapy. And even if it’s just a glimmer of hope (I think it’s more, that this is real), I am overjoyed with it.

Finally all being clamped down in our own story, corners, and pain…. It is relenting…. The icy grip releasing.

Could this thaw too?

It must Christina. You did. So how could it not? Remember what it took to get here.

The pool is getting fixed in the next couple of weeks. If nothing else to preserve the value of this home as improvements continue. A trip to a hot tub store in Milford last week ended in us getting the motivation to clean the thing out. I’ll have to post some before and after shots as I learn how to make the pictures blog sized and not make the whole post not work.

I can’t believe we cleaned that thing out. It has sat for four years and I thought there was no hope. That sounds familiar. Then you give a little time and attention and look what happens.

Look what a little presence does…..

Magic

Not a story, with intensity and a movie like script that must be followed or it can’t develop but everyday magic. These little moments….

I’m watching my kids become me in certain ways, and also them of course, but seeing my strength in them is exciting, and of course that I have not done every single thing wrong. The tale my mind so often weaved. Painful. Excruciating really.

Sometimes it really is all in your head. And that doesn’t make the difficulty any less or it any less real.

I spent my whole life running from my pain. Willing it away by just good ol’ elbow grease. I’d create a family. It’s just that easy. I was naive and foolish and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I had ideas, ran with them, then those ideas crashed and burned painfully. Being redirected was not my strong suit. I would stand defiantly arms crossed and be stubborn against my own behalf and not even know it.

It’s interesting to think now that all my rushing for self work was exactly what I needed to be doing because I could have missed out on connections with my kids. I think I just barely made the boat. On real live ones, not trying to figure it out cognitively, but feeling them in real time.

I have come back from the dead. I was dead inside. All the feeling parts. Maybe not fully dead, almost dead, almost lost, only a small part of human left in there. I had to fight myself, my mind, all while simultaneously figuring out how to support myself, to have healthy relationships, to choose a family for myself of people who show up for each other well.

I had to do the opposite of what I was… to slow down. To show the pain, so it could be seen, so I could be helped. Masking was suffocating me.

Last family therapy session I feel like I breathed for the first time ever. My first breath of oxygen as a flesh and blood human, not a robot who just works constantly and can’t feel.

It’s the most beautiful thing, but I’m also the most exhausted I’ve ever been and the most emotionally raw. And this of course coincides with a busy client schedule with some major shit (shifts) going on in the world, that people are feeling.

And some are not making it. Children taking their own lives, and how to hold space, but also not get trapped in the enormity of that reality.

To just smile at dinner or focus when earlier you sat in this pain with someone and your mind is beckoned to go there, and to the possibility of that happening to you.

I thought I knew what heart break was until I recognized how the very thing that saved me was keeping me emotionally distant from my children. That is heartbreak.

I just expected myself to exist without my story attached, without even speaking of it. I didn’t want it Or me, or my mother to hurt them, but It was always going to pass down to a degree. I held it back with everything that I have. Carried it really. Until I recognized the heaviness was crushing me, and that wasn’t serving anyone.

Now that I’ve set it down I don’t know that I’ll know what to do, how to be. I’ve been existing this way a long time. In reality I’ve been setting it down piece by piece and I’m getting to the part where I’m starting to feel naked without it. To shiver and shake with the new.

When it comes to new and trauma survivors, good or bad doesn’t matter, new has a high threat quotient.

Settle…. Stay…..ground

You’ve worked so hard to be here

Home in a heart that is warm despite the amount of cold it has felt….

Posted on

You’re Giving me Nothing but Shattered Dreams

Darkly Dreaming Dexter Drastically Disturbs Dramatically Dulls
Pain

https://open.spotify.com/track/5DHQKZCOZhGNTbYBCekWx0?si=ZcId9_tnTA2BqYgKLU85ag&context=spotify%3Aartist%3A6fOMl44jA4Sp5b9PpYCkzz

Good morning! From the bath, because where else would I be on an easy like Sunday morning…

There’s a new Dr. Teals and I’m enjoying it. The house is cleaning person clean (something I never imagined having), and I’m trying to find ways to keep it that way. They carve a path and make a special reset, and we scuttle around attempting to emulate.

Do you want to emulate or carve a path?

The girls are being celebrated (Graduation) in upstate New York, with beloved friends and family. Just us chickens here. Chickens ha. A phrase my grandparents would say. I remember more these days, about the little things that weren’t as terrifying as the others.

Speaking of terrifying, the other morning I was driving to an early morning appointment in New Haven. Just relaxing and driving on the highway. Right lane around 55 mph, slow for me 😉 and Bang….. my drivers side window explodes. I mean explodes. So dazed. Looking for a bullet hole. Confused. Pull off the highway onto some exit and into a laundromat liquor store combo near West Haven. I think.

Parked across two spots, door open, standing. What does one do when each movement risks a cut, never mind getting home. It’s natural for me not to panic in panicky situations, I save that for nearly all regularly daily situations. Backwards in every sense of the word. The panic tried to mount when I realized I had an ass full of glass literally. And as I tried to wipe it away began to cut myself and my back.

Still looking for a bullet hole that shock prevented me from feeling. Thinking when I’d lift my shirt up there would be glass lodged into my back. A wound matching the emotional distress I was under that made sense of it all.

I’ve been looking, hoping maybe even, for that visible wound my whole life.

I wandered into the liquor store at 8 am…. And they sent me next door to the laundromat where there was a dirty bathroom and a gentleman on a folding chair drinking a Corona. Didn’t have the bandwidth to worry about that. Was not however going to ask for assistance with glass removal. I’ll do that myself. Normal for me.

Got the glass out of my pants, though scratchy parts within the waistband would remain. Went back outside and used glovebox napkins to break out the rest of the glass so it didn’t hit me as I was driving home. It’s all down inside the door and sounds like a box full of broken glass when the car down is open or shut. Tinkle tinkle.

Came home made calls, Google searched and attempted to understand. The most interesting aspect of this for me of course was my response of trying to figure out how I felt about what happened. Not surprisingly I didn’t know.

As I observed myself throughout the day my focus was nil. Just very out of it. Like it hadn’t happened. By the afternoon I began to entertain the idea it was real and did actually happen and imagine getting in the car again and hearing that noise and began to shake.

Finally it registered that one of my favorite and safest places, sacred to me had just been changed probably forever, at least in some small corner of my mind. Forever is a long time. I’ll always wonder now if that will happen or could happen to one of my children. I’ll always wonder what would have happened it trauma hadn’t given me military like training to remain completely calm in a situation like that.

I should have been in an accident. Swerved. All sorts of things. Instead that typically dissociative reaction took over. Silver linings, am I right ?!

By the late afternoon I ached so bad and couldn’t hang on another second and canceled my evening. I broke down in tears as I allowed myself to think about the lack of safety I had just experienced and to entertain it in reality Vs the dreamlike state our brain tries to keep us in when unthinkable things are happening.

Unthinkable things…..

My nervous system is shot, it was already shot, and pardon the metaphor.

So anyway that happened. The window will be fixed, just like new …. Maybe? But will I ever trust a car window again!? One more layer of jumpy, like the cherry on top. Just what I needed, ironic it’s a Cars song I enjoy.

Am I being dramatic? The question we women particularly are trained to ask ourselves. The answer of course is always yes. Programming is powerful stuff.

Dark humor sticks a toe in the water and I’ve thought of why do you keep me walking on broken glass. A fave old Annie Lennox song. I’ve been nostalgic lately.

Once you have become unsafe enough even when something breaks you lose the ability to feel about it. Desensitization. Therapy is at times RE sensitization. It’s hard not to get all what’s the point about it, when one realizes how quickly safety can be shattered, seemingly, again…. And again.

I spent a couple of years in the shards of shattered dreams. Every where I turned, everything I would touch, tiny cuts. Tinkle tinkle. Oh another song …. https://youtu.be/hVNBC1LI8hs. I will never get tired of the 80’s. Johnny Hates Jazz.

Am I being dramatic?

Today it’s a relaxing Sunday. There is no glass. Going for a nice drive and to see James Taylor this evening. Wading in my dreams in the bath this morning. Gentle. Warm. Safe.

Preparing, always preparing to enter the harrows of the world again.

What dangers may lurk in a typical mundane concert filled evening…..

Stay tuned

Posted on

You Might as Well Face it You’re Addicted to Love….

A childhood memory. There are very few. My skin sticking to the leather in summer. Before seatbelts were a thing. Listening to Robert Palmer with the woman who gave birth to me. I thought she was so beautiful then. She was everything. Oh so cool. Beautiful. The Sun shown on her regardless of how dangerous she was for me.

This morning I’m thinking about addiction and how it eats everything in it’s path.

I’m thinking about my own propensities towards it, and the differences between those with the actual gene and me. The ones I believe to be true anyway. I’m not sure if I have it too and I’m just committed or if I truly don’t understand the disease.

Well that’s not entirely true as I work myself through. We still have the power of choice and no one said those are easy. Not easy but still a choice to get help and stay a course that leads to feeling better in the bigger picture versus the moment. God it takes a lot of work.

I watched 28 Days last night. They do such a good job portraying the blur and how easy it is to not care about those around you while in the throes. God it’s painful. For the person struggling and their loved ones.

Today in therapy I will be working on some of my own triggers around addiction, and I’ll go see Julie after my traditional therapy to bolster that work. My energy healer. I don’t know what I would do without both, all of my therapies. I’d be lost. I’ve been lost. It isn’t pleasant.

My triggers. The sights, smells, sounds, the tiniest Indication of addiction in so many capacities. Even the attitude an addict has. I have no patience or compassion in this area. I know I’d be told by loved ones that I’m being hard on myself.

Let’s see if I can walk myself gently into my own truth. A favorite form of healing. By being able and courageous enough to write out my truths, even if they could hurt someone else.

Addiction has affected my life so profoundly and from a young age. I’m not alone in this. In fact it probably has most people in one way or another.

I’m honestly not sure how mine compares, but I am sure the comparing doesn’t matter. So let’s find the facts if I give myself permission. My predatory father got my younger mother into cocaine. I know that. I was born a product of that. An unhealthy unbalanced relationship between an older married man (as I have been told) and a teenage woman raised Footloose religious style.

What I remember of this was the powder on the mirrors with the razor blade. A blur of drugs and alcohol and bad men, and my mother being wildly unpredictable emotionally. The scars are immense. The triggers that I don’t even know when they happen. They take me over emotionally. It feels embarrassing and shameful to have things inside that can be activated without your consent and make you react so intensely and then be ashamed about it.

Shame is the ultimate addiction isn’t it? Along with co dependency. The attempt to distract from all of this by focusing on what other people should do to get better, to the exclusion of the self.

Sigh. How does anyone figure this out.

I get easily addicted to comfort, after having gone without so long. And sometimes it blinds me to my own higher truths and I have to force myself outside it so I can balance my reality and get a clear look.

Clarity is something I often focus on in my energy healings. My lens is often dirty with the carnage that the triggers leave. It’s so desperately painful to live like this. It’s also infinitely beautiful, the awareness and gratitude it creates. That alone leaves reasons for living when so many from my background succumb to addiction or take their own lives eventually.

They remain haunted and often don’t find ways to cope that are sustaining or healthy.

God I hope my nearest and dearest find their way through the dark wood. I don’t want to have to do life without their smiles and hearts warming the way. I don’t know what I would do.

I am in many ways finding mine, but I am committed to awareness and not repeating my mistakes. That I will say. When there’s always so many new ones to make it would be boring to run on an infinite loop. But patterns themselves are heavily woven into the dynamic.

Anything can be addicting. Grief. Pancakes. Dogs. Sweaters. Books 😉 I mean I could go on forever. It’s harder to see where we don’t need more of a good thing. Notice I did not list cats 😉 a trauma trigger in and of itself.

The only thing you can do with someone struggling with it is love them, never withdraw love, but have radical boundaries so you don’t explode with anger and resentment daily. That is what I’ve learned most recently about the beast.

To take care of yourself even better, battle your own demons with even more passion, so you can show the way. Showing the way is much more productive than telling it I have found. Practice more, preach less, and just be in your own integrity. And to do that you can’t get caught up in the emotional traps the dynamic sets up. Anger, resentment, rage, futility, draining of energy.

All of that merely feeds the disease.

I am learning…..

The first rule of addiction is don’t lie, to yourself or anyone else. Don’t lie about anything ever. Lying lowers your vibration and takes you out of your integrity. I would say lying is the hallmark of addiction. Withholding, shaping the truth to try and reduce shame.

I can feel a lie immediately. I feel it in my bones, and even when I believe the best in things the truth eventually accumulates and rises to the surface.

I can’t think of anything more painful than a lie. It causes so much destruction in its wake for so many. Lies are felt whether they are discovered or not. I cannot abide a lie. There are some special rules for the people who have been neglected and abused in childhood. You cannot lie to one of them. They had their soul stolen at a young age, they cannot tolerate anything else. They should not have to.

I should not have to. I cannot.

If you break my trust you break my soul. If someone I love breaks my soul, that is the one thing that can lead to giving up on myself, which is addiction. Depression. Giving up.

My heart can handle breaking. It’s not ideal, but I can understand the natural changes of life and human nature. It’s understandable. Someone that says they love you lying to you, that isn’t.

I’m not interested in excuses. Mine or anyone else’s. I’ve been accused of being hard on people, but I do not believe this is too much to ask. To choose to be surrounded by people who show up for themselves and live in integrity.

That is my expectation for my one precious life and I won’t back down from that.

Onward …..

Posted on

“Deprivation Runs Deep, it Creates Blank Spots in Us”

And longing ….

It’s late for me to be writing a blog post. Only one or two times have I ever attempted this feat. As if we are talking about extreme sports or something. Kind of.

I put on K.D Lang’s Constant Craving, it mimics how I feel right now. But what?! Could be so many things. Presence? Warmth? Food? It goes along with the title of my Memoir: Starved.

Am I doomed to be restless forever? Even as so many things are so good in my life?

I’ve been working hard. Harder than I ever imagined. I’ve become more me than I ever thought possible. A self, a real self. I’ve been working to make amends with my children, and building trust in myself has everything to do with it. As outside changes take place can I maintain those stabilities? Yes.

I watched The Tender Bar the other day and also have Hillbilly Elegy on the radar. I purchased both memoirs and have been researching the authors. Better at purchasing books than reading them. Another addiction? Maybe…..

I’m reading Beyond Codependency, and a line today struck me. “Deprivation runs deep, it creates blank spots in us.” That line alone could release grief, torrents. I read the passage during several sessions today. My people. The walking wounded. The brave.

I guess that’s why I feel starved no matter what I do.

Listening to Exile by Taylor Swift and Bon Iver, on repeat. The piano. Haunted. JR Moehringer writes about the ache of hearing his father’s voice while never having a relationship with him, and how being at the bar was at least something: his uncle Charlie teaching him the man sciences.

The ache …..

No story or obsession can protect me any longer. I live as a real human now. Sometimes I wish I could go back. No, I wasn’t better off. My mind spun. I was in a frenzy. My mind burned. Now it’s so quiet that sometimes the silence is deafening. It’s so still.

Peace is still so foreign and yet I’m better. Better to and for others, better with myself. Softer somehow. Grief has softened me. Every where. :p I struggle with my relationship with my body. Without my all or nothing and my addictions I can’t command myself into whatever is needed, because there is no longer a compelling why.

The last being the anxiety of being good enough. I know I am. So have I lost my edge, or Just my ability to torture myself into performance. I could go numb before and just obey. I know you know what I mean. I gave that up. The dark gift (passenger). The ability to swiftly disconnect. I traded my safety, for a real human life.

I guess I know why the Buddha is round ha. He’s so happy though. I too am happy. I scarcely know if I’m allowed, but my toe is in the water.

My mind is so still, if you saw the difference you would cite demon possession. Perhaps I had a lobotomy in my sleep. So now where is my story in here? Who am I without my coping mechanisms, without the guards. Most of the time I’m too guarded to even trust emdr I have found. But I grieve ….oh do I grieve.

I grieve that chaotic frantic woman ….. she was my constant. I don’t know what to do, as this new self. I’m quiet sometimes because it’s hard to trust new, even when it’s better.

And I love…. As hard as I ever have….. and I get up after getting knocked down….

My whole heart on the line. This is a gift the way that I live. With every fiber of my being. People crave this existence and a touch that makes all the difficult worthwhile. And I have it all, and I give it all.

Every day I live a year long. I’m so fulfilled at the end of each day, even when I’m restless. I fall asleep hard and fast and sleep deeply. Movie reels playing all night long, safely far enough from consciousness, but they are there. My dreams. Body slack. Not waiting for a pin to drop.

Mostly I am humbled daily by the work. Asking for forgiveness, learning, gently having my own back. Self supportive. What even is this….?!

Honing in on what to learn next. Realizing that while I lost a dream there are so many I didn’t realize I was already in. I’ll have grandkids, and I’ll be there every step of the way consistently engaged because I can and want to. Simple. Like how Charlie loved JR.

Sometimes the simplicity of love is startling. What is even more unsettling is how natural for me it is to complicate everything.

The kids and I are going on vacation soon…. West Palm bound. We sat around the table tonight playing skip Bo and talking about the different things we want during that trip. There was no tension or fighting. After all this time, we get to relax together. And the relaxation doesn’t have too high of a cost like it would have before. Stress somewhere else.

If you asked me if I would have been able to afford this vacation by myself or any of the other things we have I would have laughed. The life I live now is one that I saw as out of reach not that long ago. Impossible.

Even better I am rich in the knowing that my children have emotional safety. It was touch and go there for a minute, but I was never a lost soul. I’m too much of an advocate for that.

Sometimes arriving begins with breaking the silence without a plan in mind. This is a jumble of many potential blog posts I never chose to write. It’s tempting to feel it’s less good in its jumble but maybe the habit is the most important part. Just putting words to the page. Say anything…..

One post that’s rattling in my brain is “time will tell….” I think I’ll make that my next. I’ve said plenty here.

Goodnight 💜

Posted on

The Creativity of Clarity and Connection

I’m still squeezing the poison of abuse and neglect out of my veins. I am still confronting the ways I can do and be those things, and eradicating them from my emotional vocabulary.

I am still learning…. I will always love learning. It keeps my sometimes beastly mind busy from turning in on itself.

Lately an old message received plays in my mind. “We are both ruthless creatures.”

I’ve been watching Pieces of Her. We are on the finale tonight. The last episode Nick Harp refers to his daughter as a beautiful creature, and I got chills. Then he does this head cock. Studying.

I study people too. I study because I’m genuinely curious and also because the modeling I had most of my young life was ruthless, clueless, terrifyingly confusing. I study to do better, not to take advantage of. But for the longest time I was confused about that. Because I was painfully aware I wasn’t supposed to feel and think in the ways I did.

So here I sit…. Laying down good behaviors and extinguishing bad ones. I don’t have it all figured out. Not even close, but I do know people are dynamic magnificent human beings. In all their glory whether that be crazy sick sad shit (to quote a favorite movie), or being at their peak, their best selves.

They are not toys, toasters, or something to be manipulated.

I’ve found the secret to not falling in with such a crowd is to not manipulate stories yourself. Not regulate oneself by changing the story and then behaving accordingly. Knowing the connection between thoughts and behavior is very helpful. Thanks college degree and to the “streets”, where I learned the most, often the hard way.

Mostly, these days I’m trying to learn balance. Knowledge is power. However if you use knowledge too much without heart and intuition (soul), you’re being operated by fear, and it’s not very fun. If you are all heart and intuition without knowledge, you fall prey more easily to a life that is not your own.

Balance

Balance for me used to feel impossible. Every answer just created more questions down the knowledge rabbit hole. I learned some boundaries are hard, you don’t make different rules or call it something that permits forward motion without the calm still waters that create a clear view.

Clarity

I learned trusting oneself with a solid foundation of self is priceless.

I’ve learned a lot these past years of my life. It’s a good thing I enjoy learning.

Letting go of the past is hard. The attachments, the mistakes, the pain even that became a constant companion. Life right now if a free fall into the unknown, but with plenty of lifelines that are solid and trustworthy. That’s the point all along right ?! Connection.

Connection

I will always wonder what my life would have been like if I didn’t have to make my own solid ground. I won’t spend much time in it because it’s moot, but more a gentle musing from time to time. Where I intend to land solidly though is all the magic that has been created by the process of making my own self.

Darkness and light intermingling…. My own and the world’s. There will always be both. And people are humans not creatures. Becoming is beautiful.

On the living front recently I booked vacation for the kids and I to Florida. Blue water, warm Sun. I’ve waited my whole life to be in a position to do this. There is some anxiety, but mostly joy. This will be the girls first flight. And only our 3rd ish trip together just us. Where we get to play…. We have all done so much work. I had very little play in the mix. I’m glad I tried to give them people and experiences where they could have that. When I felt I didn’t know how.

Play is supposed to be natural. Someone took those gifts from me, but I have been determined to find them in a healthy way. Not only playing in and with the darkness. I needed some light too.

Thanks for all who have braved the journey of watching me become who I always was. It’s taken the love of so many. The encouragement. The support. The seeing of it all, to help me understand the good in me…..

Posted on

The Tank is Full

What makes life worth living for me….

I cry for how long I’ve judged my process and my decisions and choices. I cry for how hard I’ve been on myself when I’ve been surviving my whole life. Just because no one could see it. Judged for the ways I chose to save myself. Because I’m a mother, these choices meant I was selfish. The worst part is I allowed myself to believe those criticisms and as a result pulled away from my children.

I pulled away because I didn’t want to infect them with my particular disease. Survival is a great burden, and it’s hardly understood, except by those who have had to. I didn’t want them to understand, and then to feel close I needed them to. And that too became and unrealistic demand. I judged myself so harshly, and held on tight to that.

Holding on and letting go. Figuring out what to hold on to and what to let go of. The stakes feeling so high. I’ve softened all of that. Mistakes are the portals of discovery. In fact some of my most recent joy had so many in the beginning and that is what has made it feel perfect. The imperfect.

Because it’s real. You know? 😉

This morning on my sacred Sunday I am reflecting and wafting through my life. I’m listening to Exile by Taylor Swift and Bon Iver. I am just overwhelmed by the abundance I’ve created in my life by the self-work I’ve done. I’ve done the impossible, changed my wiring in so many ways. People don’t do this, but I am. And I’m fucking proud.

I’m so emotional lately…. That is when I can stop holding my breath. I still do that. I hold on and wait for the bottom to drop out, but I know when I’m doing that, and when I’m not, and it makes such a difference and when I’m feeling safe, when I can reflect, the tears immediately come. The gratitude. The joy.

I made it out alive and I kept my self on ice, ready for exploration once safe. Now I’m here, and so often I’m overwhelmed that it feels like I won’t get the experience in some way. Even when I’m right here in it.

This is a journey not a destination. This journey is so beautiful it brings me to my knees with emotion. The good, the bad, and everything in between.

I ran so fast and so hard. I ran on empty so long, that it’s hard to know how to operate on a full tank, and not just keep watching the gauge. No matter how many times I check, it’s full, won’t stop me from trying. Some things are hard wired.

I’m operating this new soft self. My mind tries to drag me to every worst case scenario and exhaust me into that familiar irritability, but I’ve hedged my bets with all the support I’ve allowed myself permission to seek, and to accept it.

My authentic self is finally taking the lead…. Slow and steady wins the race. I am steady. I am a rock. I am reliable and trustworthy. I am consistent and nurturing and so loving. I can see myself and it’s overwhelming.

I spent most of my life overwhelmed by fear, and now I get the privilege of being overwhelmed by love.

I just took a deep breath. Whenever I’m overwhelmed now, that’s what I do. The restless settles into security and then the fruits of my labors shine and sparkle all around. I blink my eyes and try to bring them in and out of focus. Yes Christina this is real.

It isn’t any longer all or nothing. My life is piloted by self trust, not story telling. And I will not shame myself for what developed out of survival, for I have always lived the philosophy of Maya Angelou. Once you know better do better. And I always have.

And now after 41 years on this planet I’m in my body. Through hell and back so many times. Fighting myself, fighting every battle that crossed my path, permanently in fight and flight mode. The story protected the mechanism and as long as that was the case the pattern repeated.

Now I am broken free. Out of jail and purgatory. It’s like having to learn everything from the beginning again, so vulnerable and raw.

I’m so exhausted, prone, in a good way. Laying spent across the earth finally without all the thoughts of illness and death.

Everything is a first right now in so many ways. Out of the dark night. Reborn. Now when I don’t want something to be over rather than dissociation, I open wider and connect more. It’s never over, the moments, they become absorbed into my being.

Becoming solid, whole, and present.

I am present, alive, for the first time in this way. Overwhelmed by possibility….. life is beautiful. I know I always believed in that, but I never felt it, not like this.

Recovery is a long road, and it can be beautiful. It doesn’t have to be dark. Turn on the light. Allow the universe to have your back and shine its gifts on your pain. Everything is connected….

Stay tuned

Posted on

The Simple Things and On Writing

Hi. I can’t remember the last time I said hi and meant it in the way I’m thinking of now. Actually I can.

I just read a passage in Stephen King’s On Writing that has inspired this post. Page 56. When you write a story, you are telling yourself the story, he said. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.“ Gould said some thing else that was interesting on the day I turned in my first two pieces: “right with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out.”

I made a promise to myself that I will finish this book from cover to cover before the end of the year. It feels like a good goal. A few years back I read the first half, and it felt so sacred and emotional, that I could not bring myself to allow it to be over. Or at least that’s the story I tell. Also I couldn’t focus on one thing at a time or move slowly.

I am relieved these days that I can be still. I had a spiritual experience this morning. The weather is beautiful and I just sat in my living room looking around and the abundance I have created. I had everything I ever set out to do right under my nose the whole time. People tried to tell me this so bad often, but I wasn’t ready to let go of my pain. Or to let it let go of me.

When I slow down and comb through my life I have so many things I didn’t even pay attention to. I was amassing and moving more quickly than I could appreciate. Now I am slowing down and looking through the piles and boxes and dark corners and making new discoveries all the time.

Like this mornings which was a video by Esther Perel on listening. Esther Perel on Listening there were several gems in this. My favorite aspect of it is her owning mistakes as a counselor. I believe in this, but hadn’t yet found the courage to do so. She helps me. We learn more from our mistakes and it also helped me with some work I’ve done recently.

This afternoon between driving one of my twins to her job (we are down a vehicle currently) a pending ski trip motivated some closet cleaning. Amidst some of that were maternity clothes new and still in the bags, as well as many sentimental artifacts from 2019 until now.

The last time I did the first round of this cleaning I thought the emotions would kill me. It’s refreshing to see that this time I’m able to do it, feelings still in tow, but with a lot more acceptance.

The gift I have received from all of this darkness is presence. In the Esther video I referenced above she talks about languishing and about how the opposite is eroticism. Of course that caught my interest. The things that make us feel the most alive. The most present for the sensations. I recalled a time on the beach when I had met a lover I was quarreling with. We could not communicate or come to any understanding. So I requested we sit at the beach together, but not be allowed to say a word.

Now I can appreciate this creativity and effort so much different than I did then. I still remember that day fondly. Today as I was thinking of it I was thinking about eyes closed and just feeling what sand flowing through your fingers feels like. Whether it’s cool or hot, lumpy or smooth, moist or dry. The full sensory experience and how if you tune out the world and tune into the sensations, we are capable of the miraculous, without any cost, …. So simple.

I think of how my traumatized mind made simple things more complicated as my mind jumped to every possible scenario the very epitome of anxiety.

I think of how any trip I embarked upon was riddled with intrusive thoughts of bad things happening, and how I never understood why my mind did that, and worse, I felt defective, crazy, or bad. I shrank inside myself to try and make sure that didn’t infect anyone else.

I tried to protect others from even the possibility of becoming something “bad”, and I have a lot of appreciation for the things I did to adapt, and those that I faced.

I’m making a tender and soft self to operate from these days. Presence and intentionality. If I take a day or two to think about things I’ll usually see how I feel and what I need to do with so much more clarity than I ever was afforded before.

My ego runs the show so much less. It’s not nearly as fragile. I say I’m sorry and thank you for reminding me, and don’t have expectations for my children I couldn’t even keep up with when no one is looking. They truly are my greatest teachers. The work I’m most interested now is working on my listening and doing research around this.

After almost a year of horrible family therapy, now that I see what a good relationship really looks like, with a committed therapist, it’s a true game changer. I was so vulnerable I didn’t even know it shouldn’t have been like that. And I’m a therapist!!! We can’t see ourselves no matter how smart and aware, and vulnerability and grief changes the whole game. I wish I knew this sooner, but I’m glad I do now.

I appreciate Esther and Stephen’s company and guidance today. Fast friends. For now I’m going to listen to some old school Eminem and finish cleaning out my closet.

Merry Holidays Everyone. Life can be anything you want it to, if you’re committed and consistent.

Posted on

Healing Can Bring About Some of the Most Brilliant Light

This feels like a nice moment to blog. I finished Saturday sessions. Hadn’t eaten so I made some chicken, rice, and broccoli. Had to throw in a veggie for good measure. Chicken and rice is universally my favorite dish I think or with mashed potatoes etc. the most likely to be digested properly meal for me. Simple and I love it.

It’s a dreary day. I see these as more external encouragement for relaxation. Last night I hung out with a couple of good friends and watched 10 Things I Hate about you. Collectively we are all going through heartbreak and helping one another. I never expected to find that, but here it is: everyone doing a part in easing the others burden, caring for one another. I never imagined to find all these sources scattered about it in moderation versus all or nothing.

Basically that’s what all of my work right now is about. Battling addiction I suppose. Also coming to terms with how we tell stories to ourselves to be able to deal with things, and I think that’s why I developed the habit of trying to throw as many true words out of me as possible so I would be forced to stay in the truth even when scared, because I prefer to live that way, even when it’s hard.

I suppose I learned that from the writing of Paulo Coehlo first, or at least to notice and value it. I remember reading his works and listening to them while stocking produce at Trader Joe’s.

What I’m overwhelmed about the most these days is something I referred to as “the crushing weight of possibility”, in my energy healing yesterday. Shifting from a scarcity program to an abundance mindset, as it turns out, is not for the faint of heart.

My energy healer Julie worked on my kidney Meridian, which unsurprisingly corresponds to fear, anxiety, feeling inadequate, etc. she said it was very blocked the first pass over, the second moved nicely. She asked me about my experience with the healing, and my first feedback was that I can receive so much more readily. And sure enough there are people seeing me, thinking of me, sending me things, helping my own work of seeing myself as worthy and deserving.

I feel comforted, held, seen, and am now willing to accept that expecting that entirely from one primary partner was not only unrealistic, but not good for either person involved. I’m learning.

This does not mean I’m not lonely or have hard days. I do often. It does however mean that doesn’t send me in a panic upon which I feel I’ll never recover, and dear God I deserve that break from my own pained mind.

I have long stood in my own way and made life way harder than it ever had to be. Takes one to know one, because that’s what I knew, what I felt I deserved, and was mirroring the relationship I had with myself.

I have clients who have put in five plus years of work and I’m watching them transform before my very eyes. For complex ptsd there’s no such thing as solution focused therapy in my opinion. That would grossly underestimate the level of suffering they have endured. That doesn’t mean good therapy can’t work quickly, but it takes a lot of repetition to lay down habits, and to pull the old ones up. Challenging long held beliefs is tricky business, especially when life is already so demanding on its own.

I’m getting sleepy. I anticipate more writing in the coming days as theories and thoughts keep circling back around to see if I’m ready to contract a creative process with them.

In my energy healing what she heard was The mind is not God. Separating myself from my thinking realizing they are different. Not needing to rely on my mind or fear my scattered mind. And that because I’ve been working at such a deep level such a long time that’s how rich essentially my life will be. It has enriched my work, my relationships with others, and my day to day life, and for that I am tremendously grateful.

Some things I’m grateful for: helping new friends make their new lonely spaces feel homey and less alone, bonding with people who I share trauma with, good food, people thinking of things I would like or that make me happy or comfortable, my Christmas Tree, cozy things, having enough money to buy the people I love gifts, having enough money to do improvements on my home. My continuing efforts at reducing overwhelm and fear based thinking. And for most of all, beginning to believe once again in my power to create the life I want, that that isn’t over, and perhaps was even just beginning.

Hopefully yours,

C

Posted on

The invisibility of domestic violence ….

I was getting kind of used to being someone you loved

It’s Tree Day and Koenig Family Therapy is getting a facelift, a new front door. I’m sad to let the original one go, but it just didn’t fit right, cold air was coming in, and it wasn’t working. It’s bittersweet, what a metaphor.

I finished the limited Netflix series Maid last night. It was a show I wasn’t going to watch because I’m careful with my psyche and triggers, but as it turned out it’s something I needed to see. It’s so ironic that my initial training was in domestic violence. My first internship was at a shelter, and at that time I was so naive.

I was more caught up in work dramas and my own head to fully capture in my mind the importance of the work we were doing and the great minds I was around. That internship yielded a mistake that would teach me one of my greatest lessons. I was so green at that time. I made a lot of excuses for myself. I remember a supervisor there, not mine, helped point that out to me and coached me through a situation. She told me just to say I made a mistake and not all the reasons I felt I made it.

I took that lesson and kept it and cultivated it. It was a seed that’s still growing and still needs to be nurtured. It helped me learn at that time the significance of being with our mistakes. And if that isn’t what I’m having to do right now.

I’ve told so many stories about what was going on. They matched my ability to tolerate discomfort about myself. It doesn’t leave you much to trust when you know you can lie to yourself to feel better, but that won’t get you very far. Most of this isn’t conscious unless you do the work for it to be.

Sometimes I’m ashamed of the work, it feels heavy and too serious and the bullies of the world would tell me just don’t think so much. I’ve been told that my whole life, but what wasn’t happening was people having the understanding of why I was so serious. They just didn’t get it, so I for sure couldn’t and didn’t. More low self esteem just got internalized. The walls of the shame house got reinforced until I was inside a cel.

My trauma has been a solitary confinement I was longing to be out of, but I’d reinforced my survival mechanisms so much that it felt (it feels) impossible sometimes. Until my therapist reminds me I’m already out of the cel I just don’t have any program for this new life.

Stockholm syndrome is real and so is domestic violence. The worst part about it is that often no one can see the mental prison: I’ve been in a mental prison, for so long, that freedom feels like a heavier burden than captivity. I longed for my captor and my mistake. I longed for rage and contempt and mercurial torture, and then I shamed myself for that too.

In an episode of Maid yesterday which I sat and watched by myself…. you watch her lose herself inside the abuse, and it cried hard. It punched me in the face. It punched me in the gut, it beat me raw with the truth.

When she goes to the shelter again and she just rests for days, and can’t tolerate anything. When she doesn’t remember her favorite color, it slapped me across the face hard. It hurt so much I couldn’t breathe. How she walked away from the healthy person who loved her well and ended up back with her abuser because he’s the one who understood her mother and what she came from. It’s excruciating.

She went back for herself….. I went back for myself. When I stood there that day refusing to give up my ground it was about ME. I didn’t have any relationship with me. I didn’t even have a favorite color. I didn’t know what I liked, It was anything goes.

Everything I set out in the world to do was to not ever choose an abusive relationship. I’d abuse myself first and that’s what I did. I held myself to the fire to become someone worthy, all of these years. I squeezed every drop of me that ever emerged to make sure and stay on task. To make something of myself.

I held myself together for my kids, and every person who has ever judged me for my behavior has never seen what I was trying to do. Holding a River of shame that roared beneath the surface constantly at bay. I’ve been fighting for my life. I was holding back all of these memories that felt like they would kill me. I just tried to get away from them.

I used my whole will to try and make the nightmares stop, to walk away from fucked up love, to leave my mother. And even when I watch something like Maid I feel guilty and bad for leaving abuse. I feel guilty and bad for getting out alive. No matter how sick I got in the situation.

I’ve been fighting for my life. I was fighting for my life when you met me, and in that way I did put my kids first, even though I’ve been consistently called selfish. You have no idea what burdens I’ve been carrying inside. I separated myself from them so I could function all these years, but what I didn’t realize is I couldn’t have a self either.

I’ve been going back into the burning building and collecting her one piece at a time. I’m not a hero, I’ve made so many mistakes, but I am a warrior. And I’ll never give up the fight.

This is an excerpt from my morning pages. It’s been a tear filled morning. “Set the bed on fire…. Teddy. I had a rough wake up. Talked to Jen and didn’t even know how bad I was feeling. What about for the people who have choices as far as domestic violence. I chose to stay. The less visible something is the harder it is to get out. I felt empowered by choosing despite being the target of a rage that dialed right into the stream of shame that always ran just beneath the surface. Think the pink goo from the original Ghostbusters. I kept trying to dam it up, rather than drain it. Hustle for my worthy…. Thinking of Beene. That’s the only love I’ve known, the hustle. A narcissist demands loyalty without actually providing anything except rage and contempt. I cry for the little girl in me that thought that was love. I’m living with the consequences and the growth. I was always going to have to go back for me. I put it off until my kids were 20 and almost 18…. I patched holes in a sinking ship furiously. And now I’m a variety of tired I can’t even describe and a loneliness that’s like I’ve been hollowed out. I creak and rock. My bones call to you from their separate skin. I make myself translucent to let you in…. In the absence of fear, a Jewel lyric, I’ve loved a long time. This doesn’t make me any kind of hero, a warrior maybe, but I sure don’t look like one to all of the people I’ve tried to do love with, and since I could only view myself externally I just internalized more shame.

It has been vicious this pain and abuse. I’ve been fighting for my life. In my own head where I was banished to live…..

Knowledge is power, once someone gets their story clear, healing can happen. This is a cause I can get behind with my whole being. It’s what I do, and as I live out my own story with courage I become more and more capable to do this.

Clarity and Connection has resonated a lot with me this year. Yung Pueblo. It will hopefully be named poetry book of the year.

The fog lifts and I emerge and that’s almost the heaviest burden of all. When the wires are so crossed that possibility feels like a heavier burden than limitations.

Scarcity is a cruel master…. I have to actually learn how to accept abundance. ….

Posted on

I am Tired and I am Yours

Party of One

“Sing your sad soul to sleep…..”

I’m still trying to figure this out. I’m trying not to feel ashamed that I’m still trying to figure this out. I had a dream and now I need a new one, and I don’t want a new one I wanted that one.

I’ve been determined for years to get to have the experience of having a baby in my authentic sexuality. And most people can’t understand when I’m on the brink of “freedom” why I’d want anything else to take care of. I don’t think I see it like that at all, and maybe that’s the concerning part.

So I’m processing about what is this baby thing about, when I could do this or that thing. It boils down to I want intimacy and I want to experience that intimacy with a woman I’m on the same plane with. Is that so much to ask.

I’m in so much pain. Last night was one of the lowest I’ve had in a long time. I had a long day, therapy, and then tattoo therapy. I was exhausted and hurty and I just wanted to talk about my day with the same person, one person that I feel I want to tell everything too. Is that so much to ask? Ugh I sound so whiny. No we aren’t doing that.

I’m a whole adult now (as they say) and I will not compromise on what I want and deserve or just automatically reach out to any source that isn’t present in a healthy way for me.

I love who I am and where I am, and I love what I do, how I spend my time most of the time, but I greatly dislike my life right now. I am really fighting against labeling this co dependence, I’m so tired of labels.

I am a love person: why can’t that just be who I am. Because Christina if that were true you wouldn’t attract abuse or chaotic energies into your life and that end up badly. I can still be about love though. So is this about patience. Nail on the head as usual :p. And or about faith. It feels like it doesn’t exist, if I don’t rush and make it happen. The food and the love never came. Except I have all of that in excess, but I do not have a partner.

It’s been almost two years now I’ve cruised through the agony more than once of wishing I was doing Gottman cards and relationship exercises with another person, and all of it. Watching clients discuss their partnerships, even the hard parts with envy. That ship has sailed and I’m still treading water.

I’m so fucking stubborn about certain things. I watched King Richard last night. Such a good movie. Most people don’t like the movies I do. They think they are boring or sad or weird. I’m not in it for the entertainment value. I’m there to experience a real human experienced as recaptured in artistic fashion.

Richard was stubborn and it was insinuated not the best man in certain aspects. Perhaps it’s from a lens of scarcity of not having a father I would have killed to have one dote that attention and affection on me. He wanted something better for his daughters and for his family. And he did it in a way that didn’t compromise their beliefs as a family.

I would have just swallowed the first contract whole without a second thought, just to have the experience. Strong is so attractive to me. And then I thought of who I think of when I think of strong and I realized my wires are crossed there. I had to undo the affection and warmth and reality check myself real quick. I do that a lot these days, and return my focus on me, on my strong.

It’s me who is strong like that, but it never appears that way to anybody else. If a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound? Unseen, unheard, lonely, and sad.

I fucking hate the holidays. I do. I love them when there is healthy love present in my life or at least the illusion of it, but right now I hate them.

Nothing is making me feel better. Granted this is just an emotional wave and it will pass. It’s the lowest of the low.

Last night the crackling fire comforted me: it reminded me of a good aspect of my roots, being from Oregon.

I miss something I haven’t even had yet, a phantom.

Yesterday in therapy I wanted to be excited about my progress, but instead my therapist holds my feet to the fire, and doesn’t let me float off into fantasy. All she did was ask me what I want now that my dream has changed and the tears were hot and immediate and body racking sobbing. I’m so fucking tired of crying. I’m so tired.

My found father will be here soon with a hug and I’ll hold on tight for each moment like that where I can breathe right now. Thursday night dinner… I have an energy healing soon. Moments with a new soul connection in the form of a neighbor.

It all still feels like crumbs and I feel so ungrateful saying that. It’s the pain talking so please don’t shame me, because I’m trying to learn how not to shame myself. For not even knowing what I want anymore.

Taking down a dream is hard, doing it over and over is unbearable, feeling that’s you’re fault and you’re irresponsible and a whole bunch of other things is self-harm.

I curl up in a ball on my couch and beg for a few minutes of distraction that feels like a healthy choice for me and wait for the morning sun to warm this barely beating heart.

For me it was always about love. There are so many kinds of love. I’m experiencing so many including the new baby shoots of loving myself. But right now there’s such an extreme lack of talk, touch, and all those little routines between two people.

I miss intimacy of all varieties. It’s hard to jot slip into being hard on myself here. All of the ways I am responsible I don’t have that in my life. It is always a double edge sword.

I am tired. Three words could have been this entire post….