Tag: #lightwriter

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If you can’t trust your mind…..

This line stops me in my tracks. Trust my heart?! Have you taken a look at my life lately? But somehow I know it’s true.

I am reading Words on Bathroom Walls. It’s simple style makes me want to think and write that way as well. It just seems so straightforward, so easy, nothing like my mind.

Adam (the main character) and I have that in common about our minds. You never know when your mind will be your enemy or your best friend. One moment you can be so sure of the truth and everything, and the next shattered.

One moment I can have the galaxies of the universe on the tip of my awareness and the second I attempt to capture it, everything goes blank.

Like when I opened this blog post I had a wave of inspiration and in the time it took me to open the app on my phone, poof. Into the abyss. I sit very still hoping it will alight gently on my shoulder any minute now.

Thursday nights are dinner at my favorite restaurant. It’s nice having a favorite restaurant and being a regular. Another aspect of belonging of course. It’s comforting. Last night I felt comfortable in my own skin and confident and not socially anxious and not overly preoccupied with anything, even though I always manage to create something to be overly preoccupied about.

A regular I hadn’t seen in a long time, a tall dark and handsome man (rare for me to interact with LOL) told me that I looked great and asked what I was doing. You know to look so fresh and perky. I’m forty I’m not sure perky applies but we will go with it. It felt nice to be noticed (seen?) those are different I suppose. See over thinking again. Can you really over-think or is that just a way society shames us for using more of our gifts than we should?

Anyway later in the evening my friend who I dine with on Thursdays (friend is such an understatement fellow traveler and family more appropriate, and many others), went to go speak to someone and said tall dark and handsome enters seat next to me. He commented on my posts on Facebook and said he needs help. To clarify I believe he needs light like the rest of us, not exactly help. Light helps you create your own help as an inside job.

Once again the fact he would share that with me, and I’m that person, it never ceases to amaze me, humble me, excite me, and make me feel special in all the ways I never did in childhood. The universe has a funny way of making up for what your earthly coils lacked. It’s one of my favorite things.

I have a doctors appointment this morning. Sometimes it feels like my whole life is filled with them and then I think don’t feel sorry for yourself it’s not like you have cancer or something. And I toggle back and forth between validating and invalidating my experience. I just summed up how I spend most of my mental energy. Funny and not funny at all.

I’m dreaming about vacation lately and trying to get a vision for what that looks like. The toggling happens here too, a lot. Can I use those resources when there are so many loose ends in the air. Should I use it for this or for that. Time and resources apparently feel always running out despite the abundance I’m surrounded with.

Maybe I have more in common with Adam than I thought. I mean it’s not an accident I’m reading the book and love the movie so much. My perception can be completely skewed, and also it can be so completely perceptive to the ends of the earth. If I stayed solidly in that place I wouldn’t wander in my mind, in the ways one needs to wander to be a healer. Hmmm. See during the act of writing this that arose and felt damn true and good too. That’s why I do this.

Deciding how and when and to whom I process to, these days that’s a whole other matter. It’s more of a sacred decision than I ever valued it as, but also there’s so many less ways to go wrong (such an intense word) than I originally thought.

Highly sensitive people spend a great deal of time trying to find how they are wrong so they can fix it, presumably because their major intent is the betterment of humanity. Betterment of humanity detriment to themselves. Is it always that way for healers or just when you’re out of balance!?

What kind of healer am I? Was psychotherapist just the beginning? I mean it felt like the total destination and I already have a purpose. So what now? I’m always on the brink of something. I suppose that makes me an adventurer.

That felt nice to write. Not crazy and bad? No Adam we are not crazy or bad. We that invaluable shared experience with another that can also be found in books and movies and just so happens to be there when you need it.

I had a client share with me yesterday that the yucky depression voice is barely hanging around these days and maybe it’s just coincidence (see we all want to minimize our accomplishments), but that they noticed.

Something in the book that struck me is how Adam gets to know Maya, and the things he notices about how she operates and who she is. He knows her very well, the light and the dark and this happens slowly over time. Have I ever allowed that? Leaps and bounds subsisting off crumbs, existing primarily alone. I see myself so different now.

But I have no idea what that will mean going forward. That sort of groundlessness used to plunge me into pathological loneliness so easily and it would take days to recover and it would always be a patch job.

I’m sailing a yacht now and the compass and all the equipment is working and that in and of itself is terrifying. It’s a lot of responsibility, our own happiness. Much easier to play out templates and patterns from our upbringing and be in a part that is rehearsed rather than breaking through to our own.

I’m scared of my own abundance and my gifts and power. I’m actually scared I can’t complain or default ? Wow.

Who will I be outside the story I make up for myself daily to create relief. Outside the story what is real and what isn’t? Could it be possible that real is whatever I perceive and create and that’s ok?! That feels too simple and too complicated all at once.

I only have a few more pages left on my journey into Adam’s journey. Who’s will be next and what will I learn ?

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Getting the Story Straight

This past year for me could be best described as transformative. The passage has been filled with discomfort, anxiety, severing, breaking, death and rebirth, and a whole host of other things.

It is in helping others that my own wounds became visible to myself. Having constant companions on this journey has been invaluable. Having made this my life’s work is something bordering on the miraculous. I now believe in miracles and magic.

So I wanted to run through and summarize some of my process with this. Re-claiming an identity, while simultaneously forging a new one that is integrated. Becoming whole.

How does one become whole ? In my case I broke over and over and was unable to default to self betrayal coping mechanisms, and boy did I try. I worked hard, desperately even, but without a few very important ingredients. One being vitamin L as Ross Rosenberg calls it. You can listen about this here Self love recovery.

My first tool in this recovery was the morning pages. This is a tool by Julia Cameron that consists of writing three pages of longhand upon waking each morning. I created a sacred ritual of connecting with myself. Know thyself. That is the mission here.

The closest I could get to a relationship with myself was anything someone else mirrored about me, but I was then dependent on that, without it I would fall apart. I was arrested in this childhood phase of development. Having never had a parent figure to successfully mirror kept me locked in this developmental phase. I developed coping mechanisms, but never reached the root.

Maintaining Morning Pages even with ebbs and flows as a discipline was a great beginning, but I had a lot more to go. I was able to create a secure relationship with this activity for over five years now.

The next step was healthy relationship boundaries, and the way I found the need was by realizing a very hard lesson about having none. So creating healthy boundaries is essential. People not raised in a healthy family system struggle immensely with their own right to exist without having to do something to earn it or feeling guilty for everything when there was no wrong doing.

I couldn’t sit with myself without wanting to crawl out of my skin if I wasn’t being loved or touched in some way nearly every second. So most of my energy was spent trying to obtain that source but not being able to maintain a healthy relationship and healthy relationship behaviors. Since it’s expected at my age you be able to do that much shame ensued.

The reason I love being a counselor so much and an advocate is sitting with people as they turn shame into understanding of their own experience so they can grow into who they always were and who they deserve to be. I created a career that has kept me not alone on that journey. And my gift of being able to easily connect, while probably born out of need, has served me to be able to create real and genuine relationships around me as a mooring.

Becoming an earned secure out of frightened attachment and terror has been a daunting journey. It has been one I’ve needed to manage while also needing to prioritize the care of others and achieving enough financial security to even be able to.

Battling all or nothing, battling the desperate need that comes from operating from the wound. I lived my life operating from wounds and coping mechanisms and the struggle with myself was draining me constantly.

It has been my life’s art to develop the tools to get my story straight and to excavate myself from the ruins of my childhood.

I spent the last year investing in myself, it wasn’t an option, it was necessary.

I was often called selfish by the people that I chose to invest in the most. It is in fact all about you when you’re trapped in childhood. This created more wounds and I don’t know how I ever got out. It’s still a work in progress but I’ve come so much further this year.

It is the people that see me through all of it that have saved my life. The new ones and the old. Some old have arrived on the scene anew, some new have departed in shattering ways.

This is the portrait of a life lived courageously. Not right or wrong, good or bad. Just a human story being lived.

My education was another secure relationship. Something no one could take from me, though it did not come without being criticized that I put that before my children. When we needed me to have an education for many reasons.

It’s interesting to see people who live out a more normative timeline. They have babies once they are secure to do so and that process looks so different. I was a baby who had babies, but I was determined to become a mother I did not have. It has taken me most of their lives. So I hope I get enough years left to enjoy the fruits of my labors. To be able to play and create family traditions with the ability to do so, while now not flying or freezing with terror.

Shame is an enemy I battle daily, and I am healing every day.

It’s hard to be steadfast when you are creating a self and reclaiming one. I tried to do everything all at once, because it always felt like I was running out of time. It always feels like I’m running out of time because I am awake.

Learning, determined, and awake….

My next tools have been understanding the effects of being raised by a family that has a narcissistic/co-dependence dynamic and how that lends itself to not being able to trust myself or my own reality. I would try and moor and then stumble chaotically out of port the second there was a disruption in the fabric. It’s hard not to shame myself, particularly when you can see the effects this has had on my own children. My God it is hard.

But shame never heals anything, it only wounds. Love and understanding and mercy and grace and compassion are the antidote.

I stand humbly before the world asking what service I may be of to my fellow humans, because it is there that my most profound healing exists.

I commit to living bravely and vulnerably so I may be of service to others, and so I never betray myself again.

Moving from being the storm to becoming the lighthouse has required getting my story fully in alignment with my being.

Et Lux Intenbris Lucet

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There’s no place like home

It kills me how your mind can make you feel so worthless, so before you go…..

Before You Go…..

The girl who tried to figure out her life from the movies. Who tried to learn about healthy versus unhealthy. I’ve been teased my whole life about a variety of things. I’ve often wondered what has made me such a target for that. Do I wear a sign?

“The music you listen to is always so sad.” Teased about my romantic comedies or watching movies, listening to songs, on repeat.

The truth is those were my friends. That’s how pathologically lonely I was. Those were the closest things I had to connection. Just another 80’s kid raised by the boob tube. That was my most innocuous “parent”.

So this morning I’m thinking of how certain movies shaped periods of time in my life and how they represented what I wanted most and many aspects of who I was, that I didn’t yet know. Like an archaeologist trying to discover myself and create myself.

And with the movies came the music, Pink, Lewis Capaldi, Andy Grammar, Calum Scott, XX Ambassadors (I can’t tell how many times I’ve listened to Unsteady) Kelly Clarkson Piece by Piece and so many more…..

2016 was characterized by a few main movies. Stuck in Love. The Vow. Julie and Julia. The Holiday. And Me Before you. These movies represented what I wanted that I didn’t feel I had, and who I was that I didn’t know as well. Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci, graceful in their love through thick and thin. I wanted to have that and I wanted to be it.

“We don’t talk to each other like that”, the Vow. So much in there… a woman who left her family for its toxicity and found healing in love and then tragedy hits them anyway, and can they find their way back to each other. After a traumatic brain injury she forgets why she left her family and that’s of course what she seeks comfort in, what she goes back to, and why she left and her love with her husband is lost with the accident. Will she find her way back? He has to watch her knowing why she left in the first place and his only choice is to watch her have to figure it out herself, as he stands there having lost everything.

Stuck in love, a young writer feels everything so much. He’s sensitive and different and falls in love for the first time with an addict and the pain that is involved in that. While his writer father and sister navigate their own stuff.

Me Before You. Can a person with a special spirit and zest for living even while having very little, help a quadriplegic who never wanted for anything reclaim his will to live when he can’t live the way he used to. Can he help convince her there is more to life outside her little bubble. Live bravely Clark.

The Holiday. Cameron Diaz tries to be able to cry (this was me at one point) to be anything but a workaholic, while across the world Rose McGowan travels the perils of unrequited love and her brother tries to navigate being a single dad and feeling if anyone could ever love all of them as a package. They cross paths and learn and try for love amidst the wreckage. People finding themselves.

So much pain inherent in the human experience.

I watched from the outside, nose pressed to the glass of the proverbial fish tank. The screen of a television. Are the answers in there somewhere? How could the answers for my life be in someone else’s? But where else was I supposed to learn from.

So considering I patched together an identity loosely from anything I could get my hands on. Tv, watching people, my thoughts, but never anything consistent. There was never anything consistent except fear. Anxiety was my other companion. Movies, television, and anxiety. And I watched everyone and everything to try to crack some code. How to survive?

Looking back I did it well I think. But in it, in it I was always wrong or bad. Always running from the bad inside me that must have been to not have connections like other people did. Why did they have them and I didn’t? I was bad by default. I begged to be seen and loved, and then the world came along and asked me why I tried so hard. And told me I was too intense, too this, too sensitive. Too little of this and too much of that. I was always wrong.

Always trying to prove I was good, I wasn’t a burden, I was worth loving. God it hurts and then shamed on top for every behavior I ever used to survive. I think that’s the worst part.

So my movies of 2020 (the end of 2020 most of it I didn’t watch anything). Five Feet Apart. The Greatest Showman. The Secret Life of Pets. Silver Linings Playbook. Mermaids. And Life Itself.

The 2016 movies were what I wanted to create for myself, what I longed for. What I tried to make. And when that all fell apart without my own solid identity, the 2020 movies were part what I needed…

Touch, to believe in what I was capable of accomplishing, to accept myself the way I am as is (“can you say the same fucker, can you love all your dirty parts”), to be adopted to belong, and that when life brings you to your knees, when you’re lower than you think you can ever go, if you stand back up, you’ll always find love.

I needed to find mine. Because I was just existing to be useful, and I was never going to create my own destiny or write my story unless I could be connected to myself.

I didn’t even know anything about that. But the world expected me to. It’s a given right? It wasn’t for me, and rarely does anyone truly see that about me.

And when you try to figure out your life from the movies that feels insane and bad and wrong. I was supposed to have my own identity and since I didn’t I must be fucked up right ? Missing some important thing that other people just seemed to have. So much shame.

How could I do that to myself for the things I developed to make it out alive.

Also when you try to figure out your life from the movies as it turns out you can act like you’re in one and live in short snippets characterized by dramatic changes and never realize the full impact.

I figured that out this past year. I figured out a lot of things besides just how to not chew spearmint gum while wearing a mask and sunglasses, and how to survive the apocalypse. After my life it’s going to take a lot more to do me in.

I’ve been searching my whole life for consistency in connection outside myself, when it was there with me all along. This blog post is probably incredibly disjointed just like my mind. When I think it it’s beautiful and organized and poetic, when it comes out through my shattered parts, you’ll have to make a mosaic…. just like I have.

Click your heels three times Christina, there’s no place like home.

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The Dynamic of Transcendence

Heaven and hell is what exists on earth depending on the choices we make.

I remember as a child listening to the song that says ooh heaven is a place on earth, Belinda Carlisle. I liked that song.

I am thinking this morning in my 40th year, how many decisions of my life I’ve made based on trying to ascertain what was good or bad.

What was good or bad inside of me, who is good or bad. I have a lot of awareness about where this came from, but I focus more on that than how it affects my decision making now.

I was raised very religious and it has taken me a long time to decide what of those lessons I believe, what I don’t.

It’s all very overwhelming.

Here are some of the things I am realizing. All of the constructs in the Bible are all lessons or rules to be applied to humanity.

All portrayal of evil in horror movies or in the Bible respectively, the battles of good and evil, are battles of human beings in an attempt to transcend their own humanity (for whatever reason lies within their belief system), their own wounds, patterns of behavior and conditioning, and the fault lines laid down before they ever had a choice in the matter.

Later in life I attempted to ascribe to an integrative approach, light and dark, parts work. This is certainly more effective, but harder to stay consistent in because it is less rigid and defined.

Angels and demons, Good and evil, are all just stories about various human experiences in the ways we choose interpret and respond to them.

Heaven and hell are both places on earth, they are state of existence depending on our choices. To trust oneself is heaven, to perpetually doubt oneself is hell.

To be in a trusting loving relationship with mutual respect and good communication is heaven. To be in a relationship filled with manipulation and deceit, circular argument of which the goal is to be in control or get one’s way, is hell.

To have an exorcism, is to remove from oneself The patterns of thinking and behavior that cause a person to exploit another for their own benefit.

All the horror movies you have ever seen are literally just graphic representations of lost battles between a human being and them self. They lost the battle for discipline and to work hard at changing the things in themselves that could make them have a better existence, and they settle on low vibrational behaviors that harm others.

There are three sides to every story is an interesting phrase. Yours, mine, and the truth. Supposing there is one objective truth that could be figured out. Reality is that each person’s lived experience is their own story, and life itself is truly the unreliable narrator.

I have spent so much of my life trying to figure out what is right and wrong, what is my own reality, and having such a struggle in doing that, so much resulting anxiety. I state out loud firmly a desire or intention and then try desperately to live it. All good intentions, but I had poor attention to the details that mattered most before I made these statements.

If we boil it down to qualities of character, a strong character interested in the greater good of those involved with them, and seeking the truth at all costs of comfort, not exploiting anybody else in the process, is something I can be satisfied with.

To move forward I had to find a level of satisfaction where there was none. There could be no satisfaction amidst heinous acts and betrayal.

I have betrayed myself so many times to try and be accepted, Found to be lovable and loving, and to belong.

The unmet needs bubbling underneath the surface from my childhood threatened to always undermine my dreams. This is the battle I have always fought.

In the process of this fight I have emerged an advocate for myself and others. While I still do not know the breadth and depth of this work, it is emerging as a result of the process.

Today I close this book of the first half of my life, and I open a new one with a fresh pen and paper, and thankfully perspective.

I set forth with a realistic set of expectations for myself and others, and strive for people to have safety and warmth when they are near me, and that I am able to find those things in the assessment of my self.

I haven’t been able to capture my story on the page yet, anymore than here, as if that is not enough. Because I am the living story, and well life may be the unreliable narrator, however I choose not to be an unreliable character in it.

This is taken the most work for me. To say what I mean, and mean what I say, and organize myself so I can be satisfied with my existence while I have breath in my lungs.

I am currently reading the book the language of emotions. 

The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591797691/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_6HX4BF6V14NAZGYQ2JE7

It is like listening to my self talk. I have just begun and I am reading it slowly and digesting each part before moving onto the next thing. Something I was never capable of doing before. I am treating my body with the respect and love it has always deserved, listening to what it needs, and slowly and carefully making those changes. This alone has increased my comfort and confidence inside myself, in the world.

All or nothing never was sustainable or accomplished any of the things I was so determined toward. Determination is important, but it needs to be balanced by consistency and discipline. 

I am learning those one step at a time…

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I will fight for you

I talked the talk but I had never walked the walk. I was a walking talking coping mechanism. A projection of an idea of how to do life. Ahead in my thinking, behind in my development, the chronology of me is a many scattered thing.

It’s Sunday. Glorious Sunday. And I’ve had some lessons as of late. I thought it would never happen, that I would never be on the other side of the immense painful losses I’ve been wading in. Now don’t get me wrong I’m no where near finished with this journey, we shall say I’ve turned a corner.

What has broken through is not being able to keep the habits of thinking that have been deeply embedded. The sheer terror my mind goes to at the first sight of anything, and how I try to find myself wrong or bad as a means to force the humanity out of myself, so I can be a good little soldier.

My eyes are welling as I write that and of course that makes me nervous that I’ll have another migraine. Yesterday was the first day I’ve been migraine free this month. It’s interesting to be full circle on truly realizing and not just theorizing the toll that trauma wreaks on a body.

All my old anxiety symptoms resurfaced. The last time I was feeling like this I was in a relationship that wasn’t meant for me, but was again so good for my kids that the only conclusion was I had fucked it up. I can look back and see that wouldn’t have been a good situation and I did the right thing but all I’ve done as I’ve attempted to carry my trauma flawlessly all these years is internalize more shame due to its impact. Wow I really just said that out loud.

After a year of intensive therapy two times a week including emdr and energy healing as well, and music therapy.

I now have a clearer picture of the impact on me, and not just the impact of me on others.

The toxic shame is finally lifting if even a little so some light can come in. Not a distraction or addiction but some actual light.

As it turns out staying a course consistently does do what they say. The mystical they. There is something other than just darkness and fear on the other side.

What’s on the other side? Compassion and the ability to value myself. Holy shit! That can’t be a real. Ok now I actually am crying.

It’s surreal.

I can be embarrassed at the way I’ve operated, ashamed, self flagellate. Or I can in the words of Elizabeth Gilbert kiss my tiny hand and forgive myself.

Elizabeth Gilbert who told an intimate story at the international women’s summit two years ago of how she was to take care of her partner Rayya as she was dying. And she in her overwhelm wasn’t removing the sticky film on her pain patches so her partner was in excruciating pain for days before they figured out why. The moment they figured it out she looked over at Rayya who looked her with compassion, knowing she would feel terrible. And Elizabeth was unable to receive that, as she was being so hard on herself.

So the story she told was that so ashamed was she that she took herself into the bathroom and cried and rocked. She then thought of a friend who had turned her back on her toddler for a second and the child got into an accident in the home and died. And she thought if she could be able to forgive herself for that that she must. So she kissed her tiny hand and emerged.

She of course told the story much better. She hugged me that week after a luncheon, after reading some of my words. I’ve had encounters with her before but was too scared to bother or approach her. This time with a little help I was able to have the courage.

She didn’t let go first. She hugged me. Not like a fan that she had to hug it was genuine and it was life changing. I went back to the room and sobbed and literally couldn’t focus on the rest of the workshop. Elizabeth Gilbert via Eat Pray Love was the first person who ever gave me permission to be a messy human and still love myself.

So it makes sense she also taught me one of the best lessons on mercy, which was a theme of the conference. On what it truly means to live.

So as I sit and find mercy and compassion for myself from this last year of my life and reflect on the work I’ve done and how that is revealing the quality in my life…. I am in awe.

I never thought it would get better. And here we are the kids are thriving and it’s not the worst thing in the world. It has felt like it, and that resulting attitude and behavior was the bad part. Once I dropped into my heart everything began to shift, and I couldn’t have done it without my children (my greatest teachers), my friends, my therapist, my energy healer who is amazing by the way, my piano teacher, and my clients.

My clients being brave is often the thing that inspires me most.

It’s humbling to realize I thought I could fix my past just by being a counselor. I hadn’t even scratched the surface on my own work yet. I had myself convinced I had. And that was part of a carefully crafted defense mechanism made by my childhood. I came with a lot of those, that operated completely outside my consciousness. I wanted to believe otherwise. Denial is a powerful powerful seductress.

So if you want a realistic account at least from one persons journey of deep healing work. How it really works is so slowly you can barely notice. Unnoticeable shifts…. so slow that sometimes you fall into despair because you feel it will never be better, and sometimes epiphanies are like a fireworks show big and bright and exciting.

Staying the course of having my own back, and getting out of toxic shame. If you’re going to live a courageous life you will make mistakes. I believe it’s what you do with them. I believe in more of an embodied way now because I lived it. It’s not just some theory about behavior spewed forth. It became a journey.

I never had pieced together all of my health symptoms to my trauma. I was too hard on myself and too determined to make it my fault or something else. I couldn’t even be in public without severe anxiety. That’s how bad it was. Without flushing episodes and bizarre symptoms. It was allergic reactions. It was anxiety. I’ve carried crippling anxiety and my entire trauma history with me into everything I’ve ever tried to do. And instead of realizing it I made myself defective and tried to hide. I was ashamed of my own symptoms. They were inconvenient and I thought no one would love me with them. So I tried to will them away. Tried to hide away.

But life kept throwing things at me that made me face all the pain I’ve been carrying with me. My past has been living in my body. Ravaging it from the inside out.

It was time to let go of these stories I had about myself and find new coping mechanisms and a new way of life.

I am hopeful now someday that trauma won’t run my life. That I won’t keep running with my mind or my feet and I’ll allow myself to live. Which is simply as I see it to be present.

For a trauma survivor to be present is a privilege. Our entire bodies hijack this away from us. When being present was too painful our bodies create a system to manage. I’ve been living with a system override that has made living so painful for me.

Coming to terms with that is life altering at best.

Be still and at peace Christina. You’ve worked so hard. Now feel what security feels like without wanting to crawl out of you skin.

This has been my song to me as of late: Don’t give up on me…. my 2020-2021 theme song

Always,

C

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Girls that Run with Foxes

“Don’t take any shit”

For as long as I can remember I have been teased for feeling things deeply or appreciating things that make you feel things. It’s like it makes the rest of the world feel bad that their disinterested sarcasm or repression of all their wants and desires is not the only way.

Corny they call it. Cheesy.

Because when we connect to our feelings it creates power.

I have always known knowledge is power.

What I didn’t know is the power I would have when I connected the force of my heart with the knowledge. I still won’t see the full effects of that because that journey is in progress. It is just beginning in some ways, and has been underway for years in others.

I remember that I loved the movie Foxfire. I minimized this to it indulging my gay tendencies that I didn’t know I even had when first I saw it, but today I realize it was so much more.

The movie is about women standing up against abuse and being mistreated. The struggles that causes with addiction, and many other aspects.

It is no wonder that my first tattoo would be a variation of the flame they each tattooed on one another’s breasts. Again I minimized this to a shallow interest, when it never was. I shamed myself for my corny first tattoo, and this interest as well as many others.

People tease me that my music is always sad. Why do people tease instead of wonder ? Are we that uncomfortable with feeling something ? Maybe it is me who had it figured out, and they didn’t ? What if that was true?

I connect to art where I can feel what the person was trying to say. Where I can feel their experience. If it doesn’t make me feel what was required of them to get it into the world it’s a waste of my time. Don’t waste my time with inauthentic art. Talent without passion and integrity.

I am interested in the brave and the courageous and their stories.

Lately shame is public enemy number one. I will make myself wrong for anything if it helps me to do the right thing when I had no model. And lately I think there has to be a less exhausting way to exist. And lately I know there is.

I would rather leave no man behind than abandon the hope that they too can do the things I have with my healing. I want to make what’s already in my life work rather than trust in life itself.

How could one trust in something that keeps leaving them in situations that are harmful? (I created the situations so I could heal my trauma) My only choice is to believe everything happens for a reason and trust the process and more importantly myself because being a victim is boring, even when one is actually a victim and not creating a story to comfort themselves.

Either way it does not lead to a courageous and full life. Something I have always been determined about.

Now can I appreciate how I am capable of loving and stop running any outdated narrative about that?

Can I claim my power and rights ? Enjoy some of what I have created without latching on to sources that wish to take rather than to give.

Can I walk the walk, not just talk the talk?

Can I choose that when it means giving up all that once felt comforting to me.

Comfort hasn’t been comforting in a long time Christina. It was an idea.

Now that it doesn’t it’s excruciating this place between selves. I can’t go back, and I was resisting going forward as well. Being loyal to an idea of something that never materialized and letting go seemed more painful than hanging on.

An intricately designed web.

That makes me think of No Doubt and their song Spiderweb. The song lyrics are actually very appropriate. Walking into spider webs

Abuse recovery is no joke ladies and gentleman. The way it RE-wires you. Changes connection forever. You’ll always look over your shoulder. You’ll never trust the darkness, the light, or anything you can’t see. Until you’re ready to face reality and your own healing work.

Unhealed draws in unhealed. A valuable lesson from 2020.

20/20 vision, no more rose colored glasses, or little white gloves.

Only survivors

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I Celebrate Myself…..

Sophie at approximately 6 months old. She’s heavy now. I didn’t move because the cuddles were too sweet. Why can’t human love be as easy as dog love?

The thing about love and I, is that I tried to make it and mold it and choose it the rest of the way I did my life. With intention and actions, but done by me.

I didn’t allow it to unfold organically ever. And if you had seen the beginning of my life you’d understand. Natural and organic for me, didn’t turn out so well.

I applied all the things I knew how to do to survive to love as well. I never trusted it. I didn’t have any faith. Maybe that’s what this process has become about.

Actually let me craft this better. I didn’t ever wait and allow someone…

Ok I see. I’m always trying to make myself responsible. I always was responsible. I had to be. I’ve never not been. And in this time now I’m responsible for and to me. It feels surprisingly good.

To know that I’ve put down my exhausting tasks and going to replace that with faith. That love will show up a fully formed thing and it will be safe and interested in me for nothing other than who I am. When it comes that will be what it looks like. Not for material or status gain, or for a perceived lack of other options. Scarcity.

For the pure enjoyment of the occasion. I celebrate myself. Stop this day and night with me….

Song of Myself Walt Whitman

The sun isn’t up yet on a Sunday. There are so many possibilities in this day. So many hours that can be filled by simply just being and noticing. One breath in and one breath out.

I’m noticing my kids a lot lately. How long had I been holding my breath waiting for something terrible to happen like that would change the level of pain felt if it did.

How long has life been a blur of longing and trying. What have I looked like to them? They just missed me while I was figuring myself out. Wanting more of me, not less, even as they pushed me away.

They are the only ones allowed to send me confusing messages about love.

They are trying to figure out their paths and separate from me some but still feel my warmth on them as they walk about the world. I’ve been lost to me and them, and it has cost a lot.

I have a migraine brewing, must be the pressure of the impending snow, or it’s Crohns Disease. My stomach is red hot coals this morning. 🙁 This is why I don’t drink. See still trying to blame myself, when it’s always been the stress.

Victoria came in and kissed my head last night while I was sleeping and my heart melted. We are figuring it out. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it, that single act of loving.

They are more able to be loving and open and warm than I ever was. It always made me feel defective when it came to them. The way I sometimes freeze up when emotions are too overwhelming. It’s only when I’m caught in shame.

When I don’t think I’ll be safe or good enough. I was never that. Life was that for me. And that made me start to cry. The words bring the emotions, and the emotions create the will to write the words.

This won’t help with the headache and the nausea.

My children are magnificent. They keep trying to better themselves. All three of them. I just hope their pursuit with that will not be as rabid and desperate as mine. That it can be relaxing and filled with peace. I guess that is my next task to model for them. It has felt impossible. RE-wiring. A break and rebuild.

My bed is so comfortable and my new bedroom color is lovely. It’s been a slow transformation. Who would have thought, and I am finally able to recognize while I wasn’t even looking….

I’ve been slowly transforming too.

That is a warm thought. I never thought I could find comfort outside the safety of another human until I was left so unsafe as an adult. A situation I never thought I would put myself in.

Love is always a risk worth taking. I have no regrets. Life is not meant to be lived fearfully and I stand behind my philosophy. I needed to be forced into recognizing myself as I am and not as I had crafted myself to be.

As it turns out this is even better than my representative. Read Love Warrior. We all have our path.

That was exhausting.

This is peace.

The only thing I’ll allow the rest of my life. Allowing. And I’ll leave creating for writing and not for love until love shows up for me without me doing anything. Natural.

Let the problem wear itself out. Rather than wearing myself out. Who knew that was an option.

Ok my coffee is beckoning and I’m going to need to take a migraine pill. My morning pages and my novel await.

Perhaps my unfolding as a poet and writer will happen right here… in live format. I mean it already has, but the consistency I was yearning to be.

Always,

C

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Shame is an Ocean I’m Battling

Sometimes the only thing I have is my voice (my writing). Things have been so hard lately. For a lot of it I haven’t even been able to get glimpses it will ever be better. No glimmers in sight.

I also have music, Pink in particular, my barber, my therapist, my work that I love immensely, my friends, my kids, my health though that’s sometimes questionable but for the most part, and food and shelter.

The way I survived my childhood was to get away from it, and the way I did that was through my connections with people, and my tenacity and ability to get a job in five minutes or less of being in an establishment.

I made a family naively, quickly. I will never regret that. My sadness is that I didn’t have a situation that cultivated any safety or investment for me to know who I was and what I wanted beyond survival.

I wanted to be a mother because I didn’t have one. I needed a father not a husband at nineteen years old.

Why didn’t anyone see that? Why didn’t I? I was just expected to function like anyone else did, and damnit if I wasn’t going to try.

I was like a giant enthusiastic puppy about life. They couldn’t take that. But it got translated into a single focus, belonging anywhere and loving as hard as I could so I could feel safe. So my nervous system could calm down. I didn’t even know why it wasn’t.

I didn’t know what complex PTSD was, hyper vigilance, etc. I remember my ex husband would get upset with me or tease me that I couldn’t remember how to get somewhere. I couldn’t focus. Even when I started going to college I’d read the same line over and over and walked around in a blur. My friend Abby as I mentioned, she was kind to me anyway.

She was never unkind. Not mocking or teasing. That energy. Backhanded compliments, or criticism. I pick up on them at the most subtle levels. And now when I look back…. at what I endured on a daily basis and no one put it together.

I dedicate my life to connecting the dots for others. It’s what I do.

My whole life changed when I began taking foster parent classes last October or so, and that was just one of the many changes that occurred. I realized at that moment when I watched the graphic videos of kids in abusive situations that I was watching my my life. Wanting to be the foster parent, I ended up the child. I felt sweaty and like I would vomit, and I knew during those classes that I had held this at bay my whole life.

I rushed into relationships because that was the only place it all stopped. The way I felt safe (er). My nervous system was calmed by safe people to be around. And that was love to me.

Safety was love, and love was safety.

Until it wasn’t……

Demi Lovato. Warrior (Music always talks to me while I’m writing, this just came on)

It took one of the safest relationships I had ever had to unlock enough of my security to get into my next abusive one. Why?! There really is some kind of sense that if we have struggled we deserve this or that. And based on my experience it doesn’t work that way.

If you are self-love deficient (see the work of Ross Rosenberg and the Human Magnet Syndrome), then you can avoid pathological loneliness by attracting unconsciously the very type of situation that feels most like home.

I am struggling with shame. I’m a mental health counselor. How could I end up in an abusive relationship? Someone abusing the unconditional regard I gave them. A shared experience leading me to believe we would be one another’s safe space when it was anything but.

The effects are immense. My childhood trauma in my face with a vengeance while doing EMDR, and trying to hold it all together.

Now I am a mess of trust triggers and health symptoms and my children bare the brunt.

I was always going to need to heal these things if I was ever going to move forward on my path. One of the most devastating parts is the acceptance of the story as I actually experienced it. I was perfect for also wanting it to be a certain way, and creating that in my mind over trusting myself and actual reality.

The good news is that will never happen again. The bad news is the trauma I am wading through every day. And whatever toll it is taking on my body that already has Crohns Disease.

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

I tried to hold my trauma at bay by feeling this alone pairing up with another person with a good heart. I tried to keep myself safe, and I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. It’s conscious now because I can see the blind spots. It wasn’t before.

I have complex PTSD and I intend to speak about it as I move forward. As all of this happened and layers of shamed piled on while very few actually knew what I was experiencing. I hardly knew.

There is always so much beneath the surface. Look! That’s all I can say is look. Ask! Educate yourself and be brave enough to understand. If you see the light in someone’s eyes go out, you have no idea how instrumental you could be if you’re kind and you don’t make assumptions or judge.

I’m in so much pain right now. A shadow of myself. The misunderstandings almost killed me. The shame. An ocean of shame I’ve been drowning in. I look forward to this.

For those that have seen me and loved me in small ways and big this past year, who believe more in me than the things society defines us by. The ones who see my heart and always have. You have saved my life so many more times than you know.

You have stitched together a patch work quilt I huddle under right now for warmth. All those that reach out, the people who see me.

Thank you….

Resources

Complex PTSD

Pete Walker From Surviving to Thriving

The Body Keeps the Score

The Human Magnet Syndrome

Alice Walker The Drama of the Gifted Child

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Respectfully, Abby

My bath feels life giving this morning. I need rest. My wheels finally have stopped spinning and I just want to read novels and breathe.

This morning two primary topics are on my mind. Angels on the earth (my friend family), and societal expectations/ our expectations of mothers.

It’s no secret to anyone by now I have been going through a difficult time for about, well in total we will say three years, but that also had many healing moments and ups as well as downs. But it culminated last December and hasn’t stopped. I was always able to get it to stop before, but how I remedied things became part of my own prison I didn’t even know I was in.

I had the key the whole time, but didn’t know it.

So after a particularly difficult few days, therapy with my daughters, and feeling beat up in only the way tiny mirrors of your own design can reflect; I hit another breaking point.

The best thing that ever came out of my entire masters degree is my friend Abby. Abby is the very definition of loyal when it comes to a friend and she has stuck by my crazy butt even after I didn’t always respect her well. I hurt her once (or twice even) and I’ll never forget. Over the years she always reaches out occasionally. I haven’t responded much, completely caught up in the whirlwinds of my own insanity.

My favorite memories of Abby include: our laughter during classes. She was impeccably organized and I was a Tasmanian devil who couldn’t keep a straight thought. She was (and apparently still is) my compass. Quite literally I’d ask her every single day where our class was. Abby’s dog Princeton who was a rag doll of a baby and made the kids laugh. Our favorite movie was Bridesmaids and we watched it several times and quoted it more times than I can count. She held my hand all throughout grad school.

Abby is brave in that soft and gentle way, but also not afraid to kick a little ass. She texted me yesterday morning that she had a dream about me in which a lot of people we coming in and out of my house (a party) perhaps and that she beat someone up to protect me. That’s the very short version.

I couldn’t help but get emotional, I was already raw, at this concept of being protected. I got upset a few weeks ago at my therapist, it was the peak of something that had been brewing for not protecting me, and a lot of the pain I’m in right now with figuring out boundaries and myself is the result of a lack of any protection in childhood.

The night before last I had a rough therapy session with my daughters and the morning after even worse. And there she was. I felt too vulnerable and almost cancelled our scheduled meeting time just before I was crying and having a breakdown.

I took the call anyway. I am so grateful I did. It was what I needed and so many things I needed to be reminded of, and this person, this gift in my life. How does she see me all these years later? I made that lasting of an impression.!? I never see myself like that which is the entire core of the things I’ve been struggling with.

All these years later and hardly any contact and this woman, who in many ways shares similar wounds, saved my life. It’s not dramatic. She did. She chose to see me and stay connected to me enough to have a dream that matched things happening in my life, to reach out, and spend her time reminding me what I need to see and hear.

If that doesn’t show you we are all connected and have a purpose in one another’s lives that is so vital to our path. I don’t know what does. At the exact moment I needed to feel less alone in my struggle and hear exactly those things, there she was. I cannot hold onto a story of suffering more than the gratitude at what I am given. It’s not possible.

She shared with me her mother had similar struggles with a situation and that she regrets to this day how she treated her, and reminded me that with the passage of time things will become more clear to anyone who is judging or criticizing, and that the things I’m doing are building blocks and I just can’t feel better right now, but that doesn’t mean that anything is as terrible as the feelings associated from these growing pains.

Oh my god the pain is searing. And I always think I can’t take anymore, but then the light comes. Et Lux in tenebris lucet. The light always comes.

This of course does the actual situation little justice for the relief. I napped after our talk, a dead dead rest and reset and was able to complete my five evening sessions when I didn’t think I would be able to.

Abby always signs her correspondence “respectfully” and when she does you can see and read the sincerity. Someone who makes you feel safe, which is typically the product of that person dwelling in a lack of safety for a very long time. In my experience. And one of the very best parts about her is her sense of humor. She told me there are very few things that can’t be fixed by doing funny squats throughout the living room while expressing whatever it is you need. Her kids are very lucky to have a mom like her.

I’m working on finding my humor outside anyone else. To be able to make light of the dark, rather than just try to find a glimmer of it anywhere. Which is where grief leaves us. I’m not sure mine will include squats my trainer can attest to my lack of agility in this department lol! Maybe shoulder openers :p

Also I shall submit for your amusement something she sent me last week that I cannot watch without laughing. Especially if you’re a therapist or anyone really.

Stop It!

I sent it to some of my clients that it was appropriate for and told them this was my new approach. They laughed. I guess I use more humor than once again I’m able to view myself as. Dark and serious.

My god I need the light right now, and in my life it always shows up. Just not always in the ways I’m looking for.

So I guess societies expectations of mothers will have to wait because this became a longer post than I imagined. What I will say about that for now as I’ve gone through hell and been lost to myself is for a good period of time my kids expressed their missing me as why am I not doing my “motherly” duties. It’s been a parent should, a parent should, a parent should, as I’ve been fighting for my life in every imaginable way. And I finally broke and the essence of that is mother’s are not super human beings we need help during certain times in our lives as well, and Should not be shamed for it.

I will not be shamed for the things that I’ve needed to heal in myself. I love my children fiercely but if I can’t pick myself up off the floor to make dinner, there’s probably a serious problem and it needs addressing. I’m full of wounds right now. And I’m going to need to heal. My only expectations is that you cultivate a certain amount of understanding and gratitude for all I am and have done rather than constantly throwing at me how I’m not meeting the mark.

This a product of whence I came. The martyrdom of the unhealthy mother who then resents her children. Well guys I won’t resent you, so instead you’ll get me standing up for what I need, and you’ll get the opportunity to be resilient as well. I recently revisited my roots on Little Women, the new version. I could never understand the character Jo before. I was always Amy, desiring only to love and be loved, nothing more.

I now understand our (women) history so much better and identify more with Jo. Many lives within one life. Also the sisterhood between women caring for one another when things are hard brings me back to my dear friend. Which makes me warm.

I watch the Greatest Showman lately as well when I’m lonely. It reminds me both of how I have risen and also why to remain humble. The best of both worlds.

Respectfully,

Christina

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Scattered attachment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Always

C