Tag: #lightwriter

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Coming Home to Myself…..

“Inside my skin there is this space, it twists and turns, it bleeds and aches. Inside my whole heart there’s an empty room, it’s waiting for lightning it’s waiting for you. And I am wanting….and I am needing you here. Inside the absence of fear. My bones call to you from their separate skin, I make myself translucent to let you in…. “ Jewel My favorite set of lyrics from way back and all time, and believe me there are many.

These days I’m most often looking at the nature of my relationship with myself. I am sifting through my history more objectively than I ever have. It’s a good feeling. I know that it means I’ve moved forward in health with my mind.

I’m seeing myself with such compassion and so realistically these days. My light and my dark, and their origins. Blame or spirals or deep dark thinking seem far away. There is a lightness of being.

I am present with and for myself and the simple things become special. Like a haircut and seeing a movie on a Sunday. And moments with my loved ones. There is gentle where savage pain was.

I felt inspired this morning to write some truths I’m thinking about myself.

I spent years living with a myriad of health symptoms that signaled to me I was dying or would at any moment. This made my world very small. I became afraid to do things out in the world. The truth is I was having intrusive thoughts anywhere and everywhere and using all my energy to act as if I wasn’t. To try and stop the thoughts they made me have about myself.

Lately I’ve been noticing my coping so much more clearly. I’m able to know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it and speak my truth. Those words, just words, hold so much power. They rock me to my core. That is a safety I’ve earned and provided and no one can remove it.

I in fact do a schmorgasbord of coping mechanisms daily at the slightest hint of something that could become “unsafe” and it’s tremendously affected by the moods, tones, and behaviors of those around me.

So unsurprisingly parenting teenagers was a special kind of hell for all parties involved for me. I was being triggered constantly and fully reacting from that place. After the trigger comes the shame spiral, and after the shame spiral being a puddle on the ground that must resuscitate herself. After the whole process usually a week of symptoms. Flare, migraine, stomach pain, crippling exhaustion.

I must forgive myself for what I did not yet know…..

All the while showing up for myself and my work. Knowing I must give more than I take there, or I’d lose the one source of positive feedback about myself. Yes as a counselor I was also co dependent and I knew if I didn’t get that under control I wouldn’t be able to have a good relationship with myself or a healthy one at work either.

I reflect on the “one source of positive feedback about myself” and my heart aches with the lonely and scarcity of that statement. Things were out of balance. They were always going to be while I was separated from myself for safety.

I was my very own authoritarian parent abuser.

I could make the marionette dance, but not feel things. There are limits to that power. I sought a more gentle source. How when feeling feels immediately threatening to anything solid, and all you began with was a single plank a thousand feet in the air over a pit of poisonous snakes.

I spent a good forty years pacing anxiously back and forth across that plank until I finally sat still and accepted my circumstances and started being curious about what I could do to make things better. Not only was nothing else working, but I kept repeating cycles that affected more than just myself, so more evidence I was bad.

I was really trapped inside myself.

The only signal of distress was for my body to become sick, because it’s the only model I’ve ever had for getting to a point where I could allow myself to receive. If you know you must be sick to receive you will be sick I can tell you that.

These epiphanies have just clicked for me lately: with the help of many therapies. Julie, Melissa, love from my people, and most of all a connection to myself, rather than being disconnected from her. Always vigilant for her to mess everything up, and become horrible at any second.

So right now I’m grieving a deepest layer. The way I have regarded my tender beautiful self. My mouth gets dry and the tears come.

So lately I’m walking a lot and being with my mind. My poor frazzled scattered brain and how quickly it darts to all the horrible scenarios. I’m just providing lots of comfort and safety like I would have to those foster children, if I didn’t need it more for me at the time, and not even know it.

I needed to love me, not always look to be able to love me by loving someone else. And I have only grace and compassion now for the fact love was so foreign to me. It’s different when you learn it through concept and not experientially. It’s different.

I am still learning. I will always be devoted to learning and to being loving and gentle and steadfast. I crave consistency and I insist on building it. There’s nothing else I will accept at this stage in my life.

Of that I am sure.

In other news I saw Bros yesterday and I was so delighted to see gay men allowed to be seen in a major motion picture. I was also sad at how much we forget how much pain minorities have to endure, and how much is insidious and viewed as if it’s all ok now.

I loved seeing Ptown on the screen and all the gay culture references and it did make my heart swell with pride. Just two people each being who they were in all their stereotypes, boring, too much, all of it, showing their true colors to one another and finding love.

Trying for love to build it. You don’t find it, you must create it. Love is crafted.

Yes, I will always be a sappy idealist when it comes to love. No, I’ll never let it allow harm to come to myself again.

The light and dark of a life well lived. (put it in my tombstone folks, but not too soon ok, I have shit to say first)

Please

I have lived and I’m not even close to done yet. Let’s go as my teens would say. Lol.

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Writing Down the Bones while Exploring this Wild Mind

Pilgrimage

It’s time. To be here now. Deep breath. Ocean Eyes by Scvrina is on.

I just attended Cheryl Strayed writing workshop Wild Awakenings. She was live from The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck. It walked me back through my experience there in 2015, on scholarship. Elizabeth Gilbert was promoting Big Magic and spoke.

I was wanting to be a writer then, permission for something already mine. There are too many takeaways from the course that are amazing to shuffle back through.

I remember sitting there feeling so frozen inside myself. I looked to others to try and figure out what I should be doing. They looked like they had it figured out. I felt alien and cold and emotionally stopped up and exploding all at once. All of this carefully contained by a scratchy wool sweater.

Other people smiled and spoke freely with one another. I was sweaty and terrified.

In this particular workshop unbeknownst to me we got put into breakout rooms on zoom cameras and read our pieces and I did not balk. Not one shred of fear or self consciousness on the camera. Because why. This is me. It’s how I look and what I have to offer, and why is that any less or more for that matter than anyone else.

So I’ll talk about my experience. I just chose a prompt and wrote for 10 minutes each writing exercise and was shocked at the results. I was shocked at how much I have repressed about my own experience because of how I’m supposed to think, be, do.

I realized I don’t lose control on the page, the one place I am supposed to (able to). I still don’t, because what will it mean?! That folks is anxiety programming in action. To make our thoughts mean more than they need to before they are even processed yet.

My writing means nothing but someone else’s interpretation when shared, and everything to me. That’s what it means. It’s my flow. My self on the page. My wild mind. Scattered or with blank spots, flooded, however it is it’s mine and there are reasons are minds are as they are: some more mysterious than others.

So don’t process at all?! Well you know my every heart beat is based on the belief in the process and yet I stopped trusting my own. I stopped trusting everything really. That’s such an unpleasant place to be in. My well of passion dried up via suppression. That realization feels like a rock in my stomach.

I guess that is part of the freeze after deep pain, regret, etc.

Balance is a tight rope walk of acknowledgment of the things we can let go of, the destructive thoughts about anything. I didn’t know I could let go. I’ve been holding on tight for so long.

So it’s October and I’m finally going to begin (already have) and finish On Writing by Stephen King. I had read half breathlessly and was afraid of it being over. That’s an example of how scared I am every single day. I’m scared of attachment. And I created so many self fulfilling prophecies with this wound.

I did it by rushing. I did it by being a coping mechanism. Now I’m trying to be a human, and not just any human, my SELF. It’s a little harder than one might think with all this wiring.

I’ve lived with so much fear. I’ve lived so tamed. I thought being highly emotionally reactive at times meant being untamed, but it’s the opposite. That’s the result of constantly taming oneself. I watched The Luckiest Girl Alive last night and I don’t think I’ve ever resonated with a movie more. Hillbilly Elegy is up there.

Please be careful with that movie. But right down to the intrusive thoughts. I was / am so much like her and I didn’t even know it until I saw this movie. In some ways I’m just cracking through another layer of ice. All along my ego defenses need to shout how far along we are. I’m ready to give up that battle.

I too am trying to look like I have a normal life, be normal and safe and whatever else. And that does not work. I need to find who is really in here. All of it.

This writing class was a good beginning it shook a lot loose. For example I realized it’s not nothing to say as the freeze often suggests. A dirty dirty lie. I have “too much” to say that could be disturbing and Cheryl addressed this perfectly when she told the story of taking an amount of her dead mothers ashes into her body for keeping.

A gorgeous testament to her raw pain and her love for her mother. Her fierce love for her mother made me long that my children will ever feel that way about me. I’m not sure it’s ever in the cards. I know they love me, but it just doesn’t feel like our story.

I realized in my energy healing this past weekend that my head compensates for my feeling parts, and I realized that the wires are crossed on that. I thought that kept me safe. It did Christina, a long time ago. But now it just keeps me from the warmth of the fires of my own passion. Careful control. I don’t even believe in that, but it’s a subconscious default in so many ways.

I just wrote anyway, and then erased it 😉

Cheryl talked about how a reviewer of Wild had become disturbed by the ashes scene and said it’s just too much and threw the book in the trash. She said that person’s feeling and reaction was hers and as valid as the good reviews and that alone taught me so much.

She let go of her attachment to people understanding and allowed her own experience. Let go of control. See the work of David R Hawkins on letting go for some practical tools and lovely wisdom in this area. It’s one of my current sources.

I spent so much of my life letting people who didn’t even have my back get under my skin. Their review of me. Trapped in purgatory of what other people think, while not even knowing what I do.

That is my compelling why in exploring the depths of myself.

To do this I’ve been walking a lot lately. Once I’m off, one foot in front of another it’s meditative. My thoughts settle into sentences and become available to me.

My own thoughts available to me?! I take for granted at times the magnitude of my own healing. I could have easily spent my entire life a very different way, where the above does not exist.

I need to develop a healthy relationship with my self and my thoughts. Rather than viciously sort them into categories of good and bad. Be with them, understand them.

My deepest wound for a very long time is feeling misunderstood. It’s what much of my emdr centers around. When I deeply misunderstand myself, it’s much more likely I’ll do that with others as well and blow my life up. Or at the very least turn the possibility of a lot of gorgeous moments into a minefield of reactivity.

I’m quiet a lot more, and I want to be more quiet. To be with nature. I’ve been craving a morning hike lately. It’s been beach for a long time, maybe it’s time for some woods. Solitude doesn’t have to be some grand voyage, it can be a few hours a day.

For anyone reading this who is interested I recommend Julie my Angel. My energy medicine practitioner. She has changed my entire life, primarily by helping me ease my anger by the belief that we choose our paths for specific reasons. I do believe this. When I was particularly lost inside my pain, this thought was outrageous to me. But as the threads to the tapestry begin to reveal my path. That tingle is irreplaceable, I become a believer.

My mind is a skeptic, of course it is. It’s hyper vigilant to a fault. My special skill set to identify even the potential of threat in any given set of circumstances and have an itchy trigger finger.

The gun is down and these days I’m working on my own self.

I am loving and tending to my home, the physical one here and earth and my meat suit lol.

So look forward in the very near future to seeing some practice writing pieces, perhaps with prompts perhaps not. Poetry. Pieces that I feel and felt when I wrote them. Unedited and raw the way I like to live life. The way I aspire to allowing myself to live.

It’ll always be easier to talk the talk. I am a human who is committed to walking the walk.

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It Was Always Going to….Be a Lifelong thing….

I hope your soul is changin’……

Healing

I think I’ve seen this film before and I didn’t like the ending….

Happy Sunday from sunny Florida. Tiny lizards are cute, palmetto bugs are nope. Humidity is death, the bath still brings life.

Hot. Cold. Sweaty. Calm. Breathe, just breathe.

Be still.

My whole life I ran. I ran and I didn’t know I was running. I thought I was just living with gusto and a strong will. Where’s there’s a will there’s away would have been my motto. Until I hit a period where will was not all that mattered, a period that brought me to my knees. Kesha Praying.

Will could only take me far, and take me far it did. I’ve been marveling lately at all the life experiences I have, they have grown me. I wouldn’t change it, and that’s new because my ruminating signaled that I lived in a swamp of regret. I’ve visited don’t get me wrong, but it’s not a place I could ever live.

I’ve been so hard on myself for every single thing I didn’t ask for, and judged me for how I coped or didn’t, all the while not even realizing how much coping I was doing, because I didn’t call it that. That signals there’s an issue right ?!

Yesterday we watched Pieces of Her, not the series that was very good by the way, the movie with Shia Labeouf (had to look up how in the hell to spell that). Spoiler alert ahead.

The movie starts with an intimate birth scene, very well done I might add. Raw. Beautiful. I was nauseated during it, for her, but of course I was. The movie took me on a ride of emotions. I was experiencing it. Few movies do that. Recently the Starling also did. The fact these move me the most is no surprise to those close to me.

Anyway this movie! Things I noticed in the beginning. Sean, her partner, stayed calm, was a rock for her, strong. Inside of me twinged with the wanting of that, back then. I didn’t know I didn’t have it, and frankly I know my memory is so fucked up. But the idea of a man who knows himself, is strong in that, for better or for worse, already through recovery at that time. So he had that experience and owned it, and worked at it.

They hold their baby for the first time…. It’s gorgeous. Shortly after the baby turns blue and well I can’t even say it.

The rest of the movie shows the various ways they cope and don’t. How they take it out on each other. How one shuts the other out, and the choices they both make. Suddenly all of the things that happened aren’t such a mystery.

The family dynamics were so interesting, but at least they each said their truth. How they really felt. What is that even like? Not a family who you could cut the tension with a knife, all covered in pretty outward smiles with gnashing teeth.

I’ve been clenching my teeth at night. This is a new phenomenon for me. Of all the ailments. Sigh. Clenching so hard. Despite being more healed than I’ve ever been, and sleeping very well.

Last night there was a little girl in my dream, it was vivid. We had a pleasant interaction, it was warm, and one of her mother’s was accepting, not forgotten, but forgiven. Life moves on and I felt peaceful by it, not tortured. A whisper that everything is as it should be. I felt warm.

In my own life there are fires. One of my girls will be leaving for the other coast and the other family. There was no middle ground to meet on, so it’s not the best of circumstances and that’s creating an unbearable pain.

A difficult labor is quickly forgotten once the child is in your arms and you’re more than occupied with the many new tasks at hand. A fractured relationship of this magnitude that can’t get any oxygen and is turning blue is a different kind of hell.

One at the moment I can’t find my way out of, or see a way to just distract myself. It’s excruciating. And two months ago I didn’t know it would be this way. I didn’t dupe anyone. This is real and it’s mine and I get to be allowed to feel how I do without dismissing or distracting, and while still loving and supporting myself.

This is new. A new relationship with myself, where I don’t pressure myself, and stand up quickly saying, I’m ok. Where I don’t force myself, or get lost in unhealthy coping mechanisms. This is new.

I’m not ok. I’m scared, and locked down, and in this. And it’s going to take a little adjusting, and healing.

Who knew being a mother was so important to me. Everyone else. The problem is I didn’t regard myself in that way. I couldn’t see myself as anything more than her daughter. There was no myself, No herself. A Martha Beck reference from Diana Herself.

Here I am and I’m fiercely showing up, and I’m not ashamed. It’s a new look for me, and it’s going to take awhile for the training wheels to come off, and to rub the cobwebs out of my eyes to get a clear view in the mirror.

It was always going to happen..

My grief and my story are real, and what I’m realizing is that healing from the beginning let alone now is a way of life. For me it is, and that has to be ok. Not heavy or unfun, just real. It will ebb and flow. This creative heart recovery there will be periods I’m under, and periods I’m out, periods I’m dancing and playing, and one’s where I’m stuck to the floor.

Because this is what life is like when you feel it all, and take it all in, and learn to keep some of it out. This is a whole story of becoming whole, from the pieces of her.

This movie rocked me. It made me remember my birth stories and what was going on at that time, and how did you feel when you held your babies the first time….

Probably not just romantic, probably I was scared shitless too. And I get to be that! Because that is what’s real, and I felt that way having no idea what I’d actually have to face to be a good enough mother.

I had no idea the lengths I’d need to go to to not be triggered, to not use my children to comfort my emotions or take them out on. To keep them safe, even from me, when I didn’t know how unhealed I was, but I did at some level.

Intuition trauma blocked.

What’s a gal to do besides study and heal and study and heal and heal and heal and heal. It takes a village and daily practice and lots of support. It is happening though and for that I’m the most grateful.

That I am able to feel things as I am. I could just be numb. And there’s nothing worse. My dear friend is struggling with this just now, and I’ve learned, am learning, to judge less, and love more.

I’m learning a lot…..

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Something I’m Learning is You Learn a lot about Loving from Death

I remember it all too well and Taylor Swift’s Clean were on repeat this morning.

Despite the repeated migraines, nausea, joint pain, and other afflictions, I had to get out and walk this morning. To move some energy. My thoughts were dark and intrusive. I’ve been clenching my jaw and tossing and turning.

There’s a combination of distressing things happening currently, and all around that is regular every day life. Life that I love. The distress threatens to swallow, but it can’t with this spirit. It’ll never break my spirit. Et Lux Intenebris Lucet.

An ex lover and partner’s mother is actively dying. In one year’s time cancer has ravaged her. I had no idea how something like this would feel. The memories it would walk me through. I’ve never been so close to death before. I never realized how entirely I love, and that no longer being connected to the people never removes it. It just exists there.

It helps me to experience myself as loving and I need that right now with everything else I’m going through. The threat of parental alienation is real. I was programmed to always believe it was me, that’s bad, wrong, causing things. And while I’m by no means perfect my perception of myself has been the biggest battle in my life.

It’s plugged right in. People have plugged right in to my trauma and taken over where the previous left off, and the worst part is it felt like home. Love that wasn’t love at all, but a mask for insecurity, a bizarre attempt at control, a lot of things. But not love.

The impending loss of this woman who was a mother to me, one of very few, surrogate mothers. Who cried as I wore a wedding dress. Who loved my children and I…. sits like a stone in my stomach. I am heavy, foggy, and struggling with focus.

I burst into tears to her and her husband when I asked permission to marry their daughter and I meant it. I meant it. I didn’t mean to be the way I was, to not have room for anyone else’s feelings to exist. To be consumed inside my mind. To not stay. Those I didn’t mean. There was a lot I didn’t understand much less meant.

She is happily married now to a person who is well suited and she’s happy. She still loves my children and her partner holds that connection sacred. So they visited a few weeks back. I was nervous and they handed me their little one. Welcoming. Another baby I wasn’t able to have with a woman.

They are about to have their second, any day, while any day the glue and the matriarch will take her last breath. Vibrant, laughing, alive, kind, loving, Karen. It is unthinkable. I cannot even think it because what comes with this will be all manner of intrusive thoughts of myself or my loved ones going like this.

I stare numbly at the wall.

It’s almost show time. The time I show up for my client’s and give all I’ve got until I run out. My energy, focus, love, wisdom. What meaning would my life have without this exchange. It is not a question, it’s a statement. It’s everything. The sharing of knowledge that could make a moment of passing even a tiny bit lighter. I hope..

I hope for the family who is saying goodbye that the new lives beginning, at times provide temporary anesthesia for the pain.

Mother daughter relationships are complex. I’m struggling immensely in my own right now. This morning my mind is busy sending it’s energy to my former lover and friend because I know what that connection means to her, and what losses she’s already endured.

In some ways this is one of my first. The first up close death of one of my surrogate mother’s, and a loss to people I love deeply.

When love is true it still exists whether near or far. There is so much of that in my heart right now. Love and loss, the full spectrum.

I am learning it’s just still all right there. Ulay Ulay….

I am grateful for my deep connections and all of the love that’s helped me get connected to myself, every thread is honored.

Twin A begins college today…. Twin B prepares to move out West, a one way ticket for now with so many possibilities, my family is changing. It is a beautiful agony. One that I don’t know if I could have ever prepared for.

There will be a funeral soon. Life is just an endless cycle of birth and death I suppose after all, and this clinician is most concerned with the meaning between the lines and what’s beneath the surface. It’s not a bad way to live. It’s not too shabby.

Remembering and forgetting moments all while simultaneously creating new ones, because never give up is something that I live by. For me there is no other way.

Will you hear my heart tearing when the plane takes off, and the last breath is taken? You never know the last time you’ll see someone, hug them, appreciate their laugh. That’s a lot to be with, that reality.

What I do know today however is that real love never dies. It only transforms and is transforming. What a comforting sentiment amidst all of this existential suffering…..

💜

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When Stories are Told in Safe Spaces Shame Dies

All of these lines across my face…tell you the story of who I am, so many stories of where I’ve been and how I got to where I am. But these stories don’t mean anything when you’ve got no one to tell them to. It’s true I was made for you.

Being loved is overwhelming….

This is my realization this morning.

This is why I have chosen partners that were not capable of healthy love in one way or another, and I wasn’t either.

Would I always have unbalanced love outside, and frozen love inside ?

I’m just beginning to be able to see the light at the end of that tunnel.

And it’s scary to be 41 years old, I almost said 42, I always round up. I guess so I’m already prepared. So much of my life is geared around being prepared, for anything. It’s scary to be 41 years old and feel like an infant at times, that vulnerable, because everything is new. I’ve never been this self before.

“I’m not the explosion guy”, that’s my father.” I think of Silver Lining Playbook. The pain that’s involved in families where a member had an unidentified mental illness or personality disorder. The shame and pain that passes through the generations. No treatment. No relief.

No relief. Let those words land.

Just shouldering those burdens trying to look and be normal. Swallowing it down. I get so angry with the injustice of that. The silenced pleas for help in the form of various “negative” behaviors in children and they just internalize and absorb it into themselves and become sick. Which looks like defiant, odd, impulsive, and a whole range of other things.

Then exiled from others because they don’t fit.

Understanding is the salve that heals. I apply it generously in my office. Often while having so many unknowns on my shoulders. Feeling like a small mistake could cost an entire life. Anxiety often weaves that tale. Sometimes the stakes feel so high, and then I have to readjust to “I can only do my best.” That’s been a game changer.

I don’t have peoples lives in my hands, I have their possibility of healing in them. The choices I make can impact their healing, but my role is not enough to stop the results of a lifetime of suffering if the train is already blurring down the tracks. I can’t stop a bullet, but I can apply a vest.

When you grow up feeling responsible for everything, and utterly by yourself it becomes difficult later in life to know what’s yours and what isn’t. A major task of therapy.

A major task of mine…..

I had a 20 k client day yesterday. Sometimes it goes so deep and so heavy, that one day feels like a week. I’m in a daze and don’t even know what day it is.

I do know I bring my whole heart and I lay my energy on the front line daily; and though I may never have a hero’s celebration. Let’s be honest I would probably squirm with discomfort. I need to learn to celebrate myself and what I do, and pause. I can’t always just keep going, but tell my mind that.

There’s a community that lost a teenager to suicide a couple of weeks back, and it haunts me. The pain of those affected haunts me. The intrusive thoughts when I see a sign in one of mine haunts me. The pain of those parents haunt me, and I’m not even first degree attached. But I am a human and I can’t even fathom that pain, or maybe I can.

The threat was always there in my own life. A not so gentle reminder of my trauma. My trauma. The thing I don’t talk about because to access it extinguishes my breathing almost immediately. I shudder and shake with it in the therapy office. I don’t want it spoken. What if I made it up.? I wish I made it up.

And it’s just easier to press forward and pretend it’s something that can be left behind. It can’t. It infects the next generation and the next until it’s spoken, understood, and loses it’s power.

I think my true self inside wanted a simple life. And resents the enormity of this role. I think my therapist would laugh at this. That’s just my whining about the acceptance of the things I didn’t choose. My energy healer disagrees, she believes our souls contract before they entire the body fully knowing what their destiny will be.

Did I sign on that dotted line? Was it inked in blood?

I have stories locked down inside me. Guarded by dragons. Dragons I shouldn’t have had to face then, let alone now. To access my memories. It doesn’t seem fair to go through what I have to do to do that.

I spent a life trying to create something I didn’t have to forget and if I want to heal I need to remember enough to also get that little girl out alive.

Confusion. Exhaustion.

Nobody wants that. They want fun and to believe in happy endings. But what about happy beginnings. I’ve realized lately those really do and did exist in those other people. The ones who don’t shudder when a voice raises.

Those happy people you’ll never be understood by, is how it felt. Separation, desperately seeking belonging.

Desperate.

Now that I’m no longer desperate how do I do life? It’s all new, and new is overwhelming even when it’s good.

Patience. Security. Safety.

A loving self ….

I created one.

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We All Become Our Parents in the End? I Don’t Think So

Christina Aguilera Just a Fool is todays angsty song …..

Random thoughts before I begin my client day. I’m out walking around the green. Looking longingly at benches to read on. Longing….

I’m contemplating words of an ex partner, some of the worst that could ever be said to me. We all become our parents in the end was the gist of it. I vehemently disagree and in my case I’m no where close, but being accused by scorned lovers when the relationship died was very unpleasant.

I went to lunch at Edge of The Woods yesterday. Their wraps have really gone down hill since the pandemic. The experience was lovely though. Exploring and finding new things.

I’m in the midst of discovering and becoming, finding the kind of adventures I want. Without that being daunting and feeling filled with land mines.

The sun beats down on my skin….. sweat drips down the small of my back and my neck and I love it. Primal.

Peaceful and primal is possible? I should think yes.

I bought a gardens something protein powder yesterday and I’m excited to make a smoothie with it this morning, even though it never tastes like smoothie king. Oh well. Drip drip….. sweat.:.. music…. Movement…: dreams!

I’m craving and pursuing health in all matters and as a human that’s hard. Consistency is hard, but I love the fruit of this labor. The flavor melting in my mouth. Descriptives.

So I wrote this the other day and didn’t post it. And now I’m in Asbury New Jersey. Joisy. Sun, sand, walks, reading, kiddos (little ones not mine), and just observing life.

And now this is weeks later again and I’m home on another adventure. I have a date with twin A today. My eighteen year old beauty who loves horses, and has a gigantic heart. We are getting lobstah rolls and then let’s be honest probably icecream. Mmmm.

It’s a Friday, therapy in the mornings, often a client or two peppered in to offset the ending of financial support from the other parent, and then an endless span of hours that’s usually filled faster than they can unfold. Today is pest control (mice ick), and notes, many many notes.

I bought a microphone, the one doctor Ramani has, lol. On Amazon Prime day of course. Will it be another item in my collection to dust, like the video camera and pulse oximeters to do Gottman therapy with. Sigh. Will I have a podcast? How can I choose just one thing?

Where is there room for me in my life. It’s all about you, the critic from past relationships gone bad chirps. Everything is always about you. Nothing was ever about me. Cognitive dissonance. Trapped, in the past, in the future, inside a coping mechanism.

Caged

Free

All or nothing

This is me….

I was talking to my therapist the other day about how I had imagined my life. As it turns out my first divorce still haunts me in the form of how that has effected my children’s lives. The way things were dealt with or not dealt with.

Anyway, I was telling her I had always had a dream of being with that one person your whole life. Knowing them in a way where you know all their selves. Where you grow together. I was devastated by divorce and realizing I was gay, it was a betrayal of everything I had dreamt of and everything I set out to do.

(Everything after became a dissociated blur in so many ways. In such a hurry to correct. To still have that with someone while my kids were little. And all the rushing was always the thing that made life the hardest. I had no discipline or no secure foundation to know that. To know there was another way. I didn’t know. Can you forgive me? Can I forgive me. Please.)

Which was to create a family that stayed through it all.

Now I just try to find where I fit ….into life, into my self, into another person, another family…. It’s often overwhelming, it’s often beautiful.

Mostly lost, a little found, inside a life where insecurity used to abound. There’s a budding security.

She reflected that I had that with my kids, but it doesn’t feel like it, because I was always desperately searching for my lost self.

I was

And desperately seeking to be loved, and more to be understood, when I didn’t understand myself.

And maybe that means they were searching for me…. That’s heartbreaking, but when I go back and look I held, I read, I snuggled, I was right there. I had the privilege of being home with them their most formative years. Do their little bodies remember? Will my painful mind?

What do I do with all of this now?

I get up and try again…. To be more loving, more present, to listen and hold space. To believe it’s not too late to be the mom I dreamed of having and being. It’s much more difficult now as I have to translate this to a template where they have their own lives and need me differently.

I want to go back and also I don’t….

I keep moving forward….

Being the change

At the conclusion of this post, which is now, I’ll be full circle to where the post began. Feet hitting the pavement….. pounding.

Walking my way through recovery.

Dancing my way through life….

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“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 💜

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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…..

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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

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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.