Something has changed within me Something is not the same
Hello dear readers, I wish to be intimate with you today ….. I miss this (writing), this you, so much in its absence.
Sometimes the silent spaces in between are the most important, and you don’t see until much later.
Life is a great mystery and if you’re brave, a great story of your own making unfolds.
As it turns out when you’re not reacting to life all the time there’s a lot less to say.
That’s the quiet that’s been deeply reverberating right now.
These lines have been sitting here awhile. I keep missing the boat on waves of inspiration that hit. But this is ok because I no longer feel a sense of panicky desperation.
I’ve been learning a lot about what love is and about what it isn’t. A researcher of love above all things.
What makes it safe and trustworthy?
I do. By being responsible for cultivating that in myself.
I’ve been navigating the letting go process of deep bottom of the heart, grief, for the last four years. For my whole life really, but this new awareness has the last four years more standing out.
You don’t get high on it, but you don’t crash either. A new kind of magic unfolds.
There’s a trust in the unfolding now. A deep breath and a sigh. A meandering walk among the halls of my heart, lined with many many shelves, and many stories.
I walk among them.
Deep wisdom settles under my skin, and I can draw from it as needed. Not running from myself, chasing someone else.
In this stillness the universe whispers and we become fast friends.
I am watching myself step into my gifts and twirl around in the mirror admiring them without self recrimination or admonishment.
The way my body reacts I had understood as anxiety, and it sent me into a panic. What that really was, is the depth in which I’m able to feel things.
It’s what empathy feels like in the body. The most powerful force on earth. Misunderstood I thought my body was trying to sabotage me. Not have a simple conversation and guide me.
Who knew ?!
So much opens up now.
Everything becomes a possibility. Everything always was, but now it’s known and felt.
I have long loved Wicked. We saw the movie the other day and I thought I might crack right open with feelings that movie evoked. As someone who saw herself as wicked for being the truth teller, and reacting to the many mistreatments.
As someone who has worried she was bad in some way.
During the dance scene at the oz dust ball I about cracked in half with emotion. Shaking with it. It was the first time I recognized my anxiety as “powers”. It clicked.
Suddenly I can see all the love around me I’ve created.
As the patriarchy falls and a new revolution takes place.
How love is the furthest thing from control. How control suffocates love out of the equation.
Years and years of attempting to control myself through manipulation and will, as a means of surviving those who would have tried to control me.
The misunderstandings of it. The trouble. The gift all of it.
I was driving home yesterday from a trip to Salem with my twins, plus friend and boyfriend.
I do not recommend Salem by the way, not in this season anyway. Disneyland is easier to navigate. We ended up eating Indian food of all things because we couldn’t get into any of the adorable shops or eateries, due to massive crowds and lines.
No thank you. Not even for witchy shit.
One of my twins was saying about how she never knows how to rate her pain when going to a medical professional. I can relate. Which is so interesting because you rate your pain by being able to express how you’re feeling.
So what about for those of us with wounds of expression?
It’s in this stage of life I can see how my traumas have passed to my children. I can see mine even through them. It’s jarring to say the least. It requires a healthy ability to be able to handle the truth, to hold space, to heal. Rather than going into a spiral of guilt, fear, despair.
I would say the most influential work helping me to achieve this is understanding consciousness and the energy it vibrates at. How courage moves us into a new level and more able to eventually achieve actualization.
Letting Go by David R. Hawkins and his maps of consciousness.
So during this conversation they were commenting only from what they have been taught about a time their brother as a young child went to the emergency room for acute stomach pain. He was in ultimate distress. So much so that they called a surgical team assuming his appendix had perhaps burst and gave him morphine right away.
It ended up he had some very bad gas. Which by the way can also cause acute pain. And most importantly none of us knew what was happening. It is natural to seek help and support for pain like that.
No labels of dramatic necessary.
We are healing wounds of being critical in our family at this time.
I am finding the words to share to soothe. The salve.
My hyper vigilance and trauma led me constantly to scanning my environment for threat. It also led me into relationships where I was mistreated and I mistreated right back.
Things I am not proud of. There are plenty.
The only thing that helps is to heal. To make amends. And this is the journey I’ve been on for several years now. Figuring out what supports this work, and what doesn’t.
Getting into my own channel. Channeling.
Ultimate healing.
Anyway I wrote my daughter this morning owning and sharing about what healing I want for us. To be less critical of self and other, without losing an ounce of heart discernment which is very important.
The sensitivity is not the problem.
Pain is the problem. The problem is the problem.
Sensitive is strong and beautiful.
Boundaries are a different matter. The more secure those are the easier the healing journey will be. No more all or nothing.
Heart opening is the work I’m continually doing. Telling others what to do less, listening more. Listen this is absolutely a work in progress. I’m in recovery. I’m not perfect.
But my god I love the journey. Even with its tough moments.
At some point you crest a hill and get a glimpse of the water, when you’ve been walking in the desert.
More and more glimpses of what is possible.
You are possible. I am possible.
On an earthly note I need to walk before doing my writing immersion.
This next couple of weeks will be a series of timing vaccines and pills in safety prep for Bali departure.
I can’t believe I’ll be where my spirit mother first journeyed and later again on her healing journey.
Fewer things do I love more than the smell of walking into Barnes and Nobles and hot coffee or cocoa….. sigh
This phrase has been on my mind so much lately. As someone who tried to turn everything into a lifetime because the original blueprint left something to be desired for. How to know what plugs into where. Square peg and a round hole is a particular speciality of mine. Cafe name ?! Maybe !
Apparently you’re supposed to use your emotions to figure these things out. Who knew those weren’t secondary or even unnecessary dead weight. Even someone who can feel them at a level that is super sonic.
Today I dreamed of owning an indie book shop with a running title Sips and Sentences. Coffee of course. Maybe sandwiches named after various literary characters. But maybe just coffee. Definitely dessert. My motto lately: keep it simple sweetie. Or kiss. I talk to myself real gentle and sweet for the most at part these days.
I’m listening to music and walking in the dreary twilight under a slight drizzle. That we will call ambience.
Lake Missoula by Richie and the something is what my Spotify Dj has picked for me. I have Linda R Long Long Time stuck in my head.
These days so many good sentences, strong ones, sprout from the dirt of my mind. And yet somehow the will to commit them isn’t quite where I want it.
Some life force piece missing. For a know it all type I’m pretty blank on this one.
Walks feed my soul.
Sunday dinners too.
I finished Book Lovers today by Emily Henry. My third romance novel this year. Whoa! Something’s happening. Towards authenticity or away?! Hmmm.
My 20th book this year, 2 behind my 30 goal. My queue (I can never spell this word), is burgeoning bursting at the seams. Life’s too short for all I want to read. But I will write a great American Novel. Someone will probably just have to organize it for me.
I’m a little over self help (a total lie), or maybe I just know I’m more full and g shit than I’d like to be. Like most of us I suppose. I think that’s really a beginning. When you end up back at start over and over to get a layer deeper into life. I should be at the center of the earth by now.
And enlightened soul would probably laugh at how much of a beginner I still am.
That’s ok…..
I truly enjoyed it (the book) A lot to relate to actually. Color me surprised.
I like when life surprises me. Sometimes anyway. Ok universe don’t get too carried away with that one. I know what you’re capable of.
Caramel conversations and Apple kisses. It’s about to be fall and I’m feeling it all as usual. My colors are changing too. My leaves about to drop. Naked and shaking again. Visceral, literal, liberal love, haunted pages.
Light and dark fights for the stage. Desires in my sights. Old and young all at once.
When I put words to a melody magic happens.
Each song brings something else forth.
Unlock me. Unravel. Time is a lie. Only energy matters.
How can you be frozen and flowing all at once.
Today I was thinking about getting coffee and I knew there was a Dunkin’ at a particular stretch near Oxford. And that the Derby Starbucks has closed. I immediately knew Dunkin was not going to be where it’s at.
And I wondered at what moment I became a full fledged Starbucks girl. Like where I’d never look back.
I realized we never know when these moments will be sometimes until years later.
I chose nostalgia of a different kind and went to Safari Kaffeine. Too sweet. Not how I remembered. Not the taste I was going for.
I’m becoming and unlocking and blooming and blossoming. Particularly as a writer. Yet there are still glaciers inside me.
Which is fine because one just can’t go melting all over the place can they?!
I’m no drip….
Anyway that’s it for my evening musings…. Walks over.
I want to play all day amongst the shelves of Barnes and Noble.
Finally I can breathe again (when I write). I’m on Belmont. Home. Starbucks in hand. Grande hot caramel macchiato half sweet and upside down. Swoon. This is a treat now. In the morning before 11:30 it is I’ll take it black please. Most recently I see their green apron blend and want to try it. It’s on my ever expanding list.
Therapy with Melissa yesterday was so so good. One of the best sessions yet. Funny how relationships build in this way, who knew. Melissa gives me back to myself each week. I feel seen. It’s the most healing thing, and it inspires me as a clinician to work in such a way to provide that to my clients.
To not fear emotions or my capability and just keep doing what I do in the way I do it. Being magic brings magic. Like attracts like.
That was one part of the session. Talking about a central theme of how to know what is real. When the mind, especially a traumatized one, can be such a skeptic. And she explained energy to me in a way that makes so much sense, and that I know in my cells I believe. Hmmm.
When you have more than you ever thought you would sometimes it’s so overwhelming, the emotions of that, that it’s like it doesn’t exist at all. Like if I feel it I’ll just explode. Like maybe there’s a wrinkle in time, and if someone finds out I’ll return to the life that seemed destined for me.
Something else she said is that the mystery is why some people have an innate will / spirit / something that makes them make their lives so much different than they “should be” by their metrics.
I want to leave my children a legacy of safety, and freedom. To change our stars. I want to leave them with abundance and security, and I won’t stop until that is accomplished.
But I also wouldn’t drive myself into an early grave to do it. So writing the blue prints is filled with the necessity of balance.
While I’m writing this I’m digging Anywhere Away from here, Rag n Bone man and Pink. It has the right combination of piano and raspy vocals that set my spirit soaring. I could cry right now. I might.
I don’t think I told you that I feel out of place….
Will I come sit out on the beach today?! Probably not, but it will be one of my go to’s.
I was a fragrant chef this morning. Trying this and that. I am soaking in the last weeks of my daughters being at home. Oh yeah there are the tears sigh. Who knew I could have just cleaned all day and not thought. I’m recognizing left unchecked I’d have some serious OCD. The way my other letters ADHD contribute to hyper focus or none at all. Sigh.
I also talked in therapy yesterday about my relationship to food. No one taught me Melissa said. I don’t think about that or like that, I just move forward. Which is why it’s easier for me to cook with no one watching or present so I don’t get overwhelmed.
Then I find my flow and I’m singing and dancing and creating and all is right with the world.
I cook things patched together (like the quilt my life truly is) from past lives with people, friends, lovers, families. A mixture of creole, Spanish, Italian, a blend. I’m still trying to perfect red rice and beans, sweet plátano etc, as a white girl the odds are against me. But I am determined and my life has given me enough spice to persevere.
I got my haircut last night. Took an hour and a half. But my barber was teaching. And the cut is perfection. It’s taken years to realize which cut for which season. Went shorter this time because it’s HOT!
Speaking of hot. I have a black car with leather seats now. A Jetta R line. I can’t believe I don’t have a Honda. I love it though. Just need window tints eventually and I’ll be happy as a clam.
The great car buying crisis year of 2024 is one for the books.
Driving here today I saw a dragon fly that seemed to hang with my car for a long while. Hi team. My ancestors, my loved ones, the universe.
I saw 30 people this past week and have 32 scheduled this next one. I’m jamming. My work deepens. People weave in and out, stretch their wings, and then return. My client family.
I’m on the 4th book in the Dune series, getting out of it a little, and need to get the umph to finish. I hope to finish it this weekend along with Normal People that I’m listening to on audible.
On the day to day there’s been a lot of Groundhog Day lately. Chop wood carry water. And it’s becoming so satisfying, the simple tasks. I was always a simple things girl with a complicated mind.
I do more outside and in the world than I used to and have much less anxiety. I can’t remember the last time I took a Xanax now it just makes me feel icky. I don’t like it.
I over think much less, my mind no longer being a prison. There are less and less spaces and relationships in my life I feel emotionally trapped in.
I only allow full authenticity without discounting a single drop as far as what each has meant to my life. I am fiercely protective of myself, without needing to be fierce at all anymore.
Love is the answer….. the love of life itself.
I love the smell of Barnes and Noble and could literally move in there, and coffee shops nearly equally. Recently I read my poetry in front of a small audience in Fayetteville. Due to the belief of someone very special in me, who ever pushes me to be the best version of myself. I still can’t believe that. I was shaking so much!
I just looked up to see a couple walking in their bathing suits. I notice in the rear view some silver grey hairs catching the sunlight and glinting in it. I have more than I’ve had, and yet I’m younger in so many ways these days.
Able to play
I still carry my grief and my scars. It just isn’t so heavy anymore. I still look for some people and things in everything I do. My attachment system is something to be reckoned with. But I can no longer keep stories of things that never existed but were only dreamt.
It’s not fair to me and to my life and to my work.
I don’t have to say goodbye because it all lives inside of me. Every page of my story I am keeping. I don’t need to burn them. I love the whole thing.
Amor Fati
And this is what’s going on with me…..
Now if this can please open the doorway to more consistent blogging. I need to be writing. I was offered love from the universe and a spot in Victoria Erickson’s autumn immersion.
I had the house to myself for a bit which was so strange. A foreshadowing perhaps. And tried to watch Remember Me with Robert Pattinson. It’s going on four days to finish. Ha. I will also finish that tonight I think.
This day is slipping away from me more and more. Once I go home and read a little, it’ll be time to get Sunday stuffs for twin A’s homemade caramel sauce, and a few groceries for the week. And before I know it bedtime….
Always Remember Us This way will serenade me on my drive home.
Happy Saturday everyone
Ps a line from Dune before parting: “and it’s the survivors who maintain the most light and poignant hold upon the beauties of living.”
Somebody bring me some water, can’t you see I’m burning alive……
When safety is the primary concern, growth can hardly exist. And yet it springs at the gate begging to be set free.
It was me I didn’t trust.
I’ve been yearning to write a blog post. But my thoughts have been so many that it’s hard to capture what I want to say, and what my audience is. That is always the question isn’t it? And an answer: if I write what’s in my soul, what does that matter. If there are readers or no readers. It’s the traumatized child inside who concerns herself with this, in her perpetual state of loneliness and fear. I embrace her often now.
So here I sit in a rare occasion of writing in my office chair rather than quickly capturing shower or walking thoughts.
So I’d imagine this will read as an update and not a wave of inspiration. But in chicken or egg fashion perhaps one will open out of the other.
Here I sit on a throne surrounded by the method by which I tame the sheer madness that is my brain, which is books. They are all around me. My friends. In this way, it’s a strange return to childhood. For all its trials, books were introduced and subsisted upon.
My grandmother made audiobooks before they were a thing. On an old school tape recorder with a silver and black microphone.
This morning I began Jung’s Red Book. Red leather bound. I’m so jealous of his relationship with his dreams, when I can barely remember mine. I set this useless emotion aside and continue to work to recovering and repairing mine. If that’s possible.
Down a rabbit hole of taking supplements like 5htp, l tryptophan, sulphorophane (broccoli sprouts I’m growing) ps they smell bad guess they are getting thrown in a smoothie. Quercitin and fiesetin. Brain food, plant food. Based on the shamanic work of Alberto Villodo Grow a New Body. And listening to living and dying the shaman way on audiobook.
Traditional psychotherapist meets shaman, Akashic records Amazing ! , and whatever else will be next. Check out Wendy Casey in the link.
How the hell did I even get here ? If you had asked me a year ago if I’d be doing a fire ceremony and blessing the four directions etc, I’d have looked at you like you were nuts. Or I’m nuts. Definitely. And I don’t even care.
Life is strange and surrender is beautiful. And this is where I’m at.
I’m also reading the I Ching, the gene keys what?! The Dune series. And I still want to read the whole Wrinkle in time series. Somehow this is a summer craving. Some memories are just programmed in. Ahhhh so many things to read so little time.
My practice continues to flourish and it feels almost magical. I am nearly working entirely with my ideal population, and it doesn’t even feel like work. My screening process is worlds away from what it used to be. I stand back in awe at all I learned from working with anything and anyone. But also at my ignorance and naïveté in so many areas, which some times facilitated beautiful happenings, and sometimes regrettable moments.
I don’t agonize over documentation or any cancellation, or administrative. Nothing is any longer this awful monster breathing down my neck. And I think how was I living like that?
How was I living like that. Not well that’s what I can say.
I now have a fully embodied understanding of the mind being unwell. The way it races to terrible conclusions and feels as if it’s constantly outrunning some terrible thing. I could cry for how I lived for so long. The way the mind and the body are not integrated, and one fears the other. No sense of peace, just constant persistent terror.
At times I’m able to get really still with everything. All the love that never fully became, the lives I could have lived, and the ones I did. I sift through and contemplate no longer with a great sickness of the mind. Terrible thoughts about myself. Those core wounds are brutal.
Let there be no mistake I am always healing and learning. I have not arrived anywhere, except perhaps face to face with my humility. In this space there’s so much love. It flows freely, it does not need control. Control cannot exist it extinguishes love immediately. Like the absence of air and fire.
If I saw anyone I’ve ever loved on the street I wouldn’t turn away, heart racing, sweaty. I would simply emit love, and own my mistakes. My ignorance, my impulsivity, my wounds.
I atone with myself and would offer healing communications with all who seek them.
And I don’t know what’s next. Tabula rasa. Bookends of it. I begin and end that way.
How may I be of service and lead me there. I’ve had it all. Love and loss. 10,000 lives within a life.
My work is to heal my brain and body so that I may help others with my journey. I no longer agonize over my memoir, what I will write, and what I won’t.
I know there’s important work for me to do. I don’t need to know what it is or how I will accomplish it.
I simply surrender.
Now to process and alchemize these emotions and thoughts and experiences. To continue to go through them and learn from them.
On a more earthly note, both my twins have been in major car accidents. Something I have not had a first hand experience with. One of them still has back and neck issues and daily headaches. Not entirely sure if the accident is responsible. So we are going to my energy healer Julie today. I’m excited that my children are open to this and also learning to benefit from this and massage and other healing modalities.
We will be moving twin A into UConn in August as a junior, and twin B will be nannying for a time for her baby cousin in Long Island, as she completes her core requirements for school. The little prince is beginning a relationship journey with his partner. Learning about the responsibilities of life, and himself respectively.
There is love at the table of my life.
Surrounded by friends and family, and so much less pain from the absence of loving parents and blood relatives.
I sometimes take walks through my graveyard. The relationships that did not show up and stay, and marvel at the beauty and tragedy in love. And also the resilience of it. How it never really leaves, energy can neither be created or destroyed. It just is.
But more often I am looking through the windshield, that’s why it’s bigger I am told. And learning about the true actions of love. How it behaves, what it commands and demands respectively.
The art of story telling and myth and legend in teaching great lessons. Things I would discount as frivolous or unreal become rich playgrounds to explore for healing metaphors and methods.
Women Who Run with Wolves….
Recovery
Recovering my dreams and authentic childhood self from the ashes of traumatic experience.
I hope that I have something to share that will help others heal….
Book. Thought. Book thought. Toggle. Rinse. Repeat. Show up consistently. During each workshop more of my childhood emerges more clearly. The understanding and integration becomes mine to harvest.
I am finding my way after a year of writing immersion to how to write on my own. How to build it into my schedule and not do stops and starts, but a consistent relationship.
I believe this will be my first Mother’s Day I am not haunted. If you could ….
I will not lose my life force in being haunted by the things that have hurt. I will rise above them and sit peacefully sharing the knowledge that has been hard earned.
I finished Dune book one this morning. So much in there. I think of the foreshadowing of Ulay, how I became the bomb, and 90 days and everything in between.
I think of how next week I’ll sit at my daughter’s graduation and instead of wanting to crawl out of my skin w sensory overload I will own my seat. I will bask in the glow of our accomplishment having the difficult bloodline we have. Very little support, and also so much, just from a different form, a harder one to recognize or acknowledge for it requires belief.
I will be able to feel why I am there, what we are celebrating, rather than a desperately disconnected seeking numbness that pervaded everything and mirrored back such awkward desolation.
New lands…..
Belief is a powerful thing. May I always examine mine carefully to make sure it is from love and not fear, for the rest of my days.
I must not live haunted because if I do I cannot learn. I need all my focus and all my heart open to the world, so I can receive also.
To make you feel my love. My love will be felt. Not just my fear. The heroes journey.
To have alchemized scarcity and hardship into peace and abundance.
I had never planned so far that I’d make it out alive, because it never felt that way.
Awake is all I can ask for. Not existing inside a story or the bonds only of fear and trauma. A lineage I refuse to pass down.
And now I rest….
I got a b12 injection yesterday for the first time since November. Sometimes I forget I was ever so sick at all. Those people treat me like the best thing since sliced bread and I chuckle to myself of all the time I spent in a dark cloud of feeling unloved.
Love was all around. Love is….
There are turning points. New chapters. New books to be read and to be written.
For nearly 43 years holidays (so many of them) have been a nightmare. The nightmares held me captive even when some were good but inside all that roiled and rose up like bile. being told I should appreciate with little understanding, and worse treating myself that way.
A good little soldier
I will not allow it to persist into 44.
Another turning point.
A million lives within a life….
And I have every part of my story inside me and I won’t cut off a single thing.
A whole
Shattered segments gathered and made whole with gold….
Happy Mother’s Day to all the loyal curse breakers just doing their best with impossible tasks everyday.
I love you all more than you can imagine
And to the lost ones….. my people also
My heart is with you
There is light
With great courage there is light and your path is your own.
So here I am reading the I Ching without scarcely an idea why, and all at once knowing exactly why, at some level beneath consciousness. Lately I say things and think what am I saying. I ordered the gene keys on recommendation of my energy healer, and a day later bought I Ching having no idea how connected they were. Interesting stuff!
My mind has traveled far from its skeptical damaging that has controlled it for most of the years of my life.
I think of Melissa Etheridge … make me a believer baby. I want to believe in the power of love, and I do.
She’s all heart this one.
Can I survive all the implications, even if I tried…..
Henri is preparing to depart soon. Not sure how soon, but soon. I will not preserve her for my benefit if she doesn’t have a quality of life. We have had to carry her upstairs for some time now. She has had two episodes of vestibular disease. They are kind of like strokes, both resulting in ER visits.
So many memories, cuddling on the couch, reading Harley Loco…. Thousands of them. One of my favorites is Jeep rides with the kids, so perky and excited. She still gets that way every once in a while, a glimmer.
How will I go on without her in my life. She is the glue of our family as much as anything. I understand this in a way I never have allowed myself before.
All this heart opening is beautiful but exhausting. I rest a lot. She and I are alike in that right now. She slumbers softly in her bed near to me. My little prince books of various types line the wall behind her head. My heart squeezes and releases with emotion.
I cannot say more about it right now, it’s too much.
The only constant is change, and a steady heart, and my studies.
Coming into my 44th year. An auspicious one. I was saying auspicious before I met the I Ching. Parts of me are always steps ahead in ways that only become illuminated to me in retrospect.
I’m tapping my foot to Melissa…. It’s time for a walk. One hour before show time still. Before I’m in my chair and divining with the universe and humans and creating to the end of improving the human experience for their trips around the sun.
A recent Akashi records reading has allowed me to enjoy things I had closed my heart off too long ago due to associations with my mother. Now I can journey on my own to loving the parts of me I attempted to shut out due to any association.
I’m softening my heart, and strengthening my boundaries. This process equals emotional freedom.
My mission is to forget the self. My desires, my terror, my anxieties, and to open up to everything else. To be entirely open, gentle, to approach the world with a love I was so often outside of. To do it anyway, with fire, and with passion. The kind only someone who went without for so long can fully appreciate.
Maybe that’s true I don’t really know.
I don’t know anything.
I just live…..
My children are becoming now. I am the witness and no longer steering the vessel. I gave it my all, even if that was saving myself as much as anything, before it was too late to provide them with a safe home base before they launched. I made it just in the nick of time. There were many moments of held breath not being sure which side I would come out on. I would have never abandoned that task. Never.
A strong heart. I’ve always had one and a will and a desire to choose love. The path of love.
Ahhh now we are on I wanna come over…..
My music is so random and yet it’s not whatsoever random.
I am drawn to Kripalu every opportunity I get. Sober. I walk. I breathe. Taking it all in. I get closer to myself, my story, my ancestry even, the light and the dark, without needing any contact with those that have not chosen to remain in my life as a consistent safe presence.
I’ve spent one year in writing immersion, Tuesdays and Sundays, six hours weekly. I am preparing to depart from that for now and I’m terrified to be without it. Out of the nest right along with the kids ! My comfort zone and love, but intuitively I know it’s time to get out on my own with it all for a little. To trust myself in a way I never have before.
I am letting go and tuning in…..
Go on close your eyes it shouldn’t bother you….. if that’s what it takes to get you through….
I had so much pain I never dealt with. I’m only just coming to terms with how compartmentalized I was and the whys and the how’s of it.
I went swimming yesterday. Floundering awkward. More tuned to everyone else at first hyper vigilant non breathing. As it turns out rhythm and breathing is essential to swimming and well every other aspect of life.
I used to experience such shame for being so out of sync and step with those that were given acceptance and love.
I could feel it radiating through me as if I myself were a neon (because I was born in the 80’s it’s neon lol) beacon of different.
I am trying to wear that proudly now and to teach as I go. To advocate for myself and others to not be silent or more accepting. To not cut off parts of our stories or ourselves in favor of making other people more comfortable. I won’t.
In fact I am doing the opposite I’m excavating my story and working at believing it myself, getting it down, getting it out, writing it.
This is not easy. I have a thousand suitcases (white oleander reference), and it’s so overwhelming to even try. It makes me short of breath to even try.
So that’s where I am. I won’t be ashamed or change trajectory for anything. This is me.
I’m doing all body therapies currently and stretching only to my edge moderately until the muscle gives a little. Gentle yoga. Regular kills me still. Being in the water. Taking too much in, feeling headachy from being stiff and awkward and scared.
Just breathing …. Acknowledging…. Being with….
I took this season of writing immersion off to better balance some other things that need attending to and I’m scared shitless to lose the flow I found. But I often share in sessions we can’t lose “the work” it’s integrated and part of us. Accessible anytime, think Dorothy and her Ruby slippers.
I am reading It’s Not You by Dr. Ramani, I read it in like a day. That’s what happens when material makes you feel seen, you know it’s for you. I am reading Fight Right, which helps me hone my relational skills. I am reading Lessons in Chemistry. I am reading the list goes on!
I am watching This is Us. I’m shocked I missed the bus on this emotion porn, but also grateful because any sooner and I think it would have just made me feel worse about myself.
To speak to that I read something in Dr Ramani book, about permanent grief. Is that what I’ve been in?! That would make sense why I didn’t even know or couldn’t even feel other ones at times.
I became a doing. There was no being. And what has brought this so boldly into my attention is how my children felt in relation to me. As if their only value is when they are doing. Oh the heartbreak and regret.
So I’m working at becoming an open hearted and loving human being literally one minute at a time. The guards are many and they are intense. I have body guards upon body guards that I never asked for. Constantly telling me what I can and cannot do.
So much control. Lose control. No control. All control. Organize around others. Perform.
No breathing. No living.
So now I’m figuring out what this living thing is all about. Making friends with my emotions and my body. Introducing myself to them. We are pioneering uncharted waters here. So I guess it’s way finding then.
That makes sense !
Anyway that’s it for now but there may be more posts as I spend time with me this weekend.
First it’s a long walk for the dog and then gentle yoga and then massage.
I am reading A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. As I continuously recognize the magnitude of trauma through the story of others, I close the distance gaps between mine and me.
There’s a line in the book about how a human being could be so thoroughly bifurcated, and that has haunted me ever since.
Is that what I was (am), bifurcated?
And much more specifically not just from my other half, an other half, but from my personality, my soul’s essence. It’s heartbreaking to even write. As the truth seeps inside my skin and takes root.
I recognize, that I recognize the magnitude and then it disappears before my very eyes like the proverbial bird in the magicians cage once the cloth has been drawn back.
Each day a blank canvas in the way that only a survivor can understand, as if nothing has ever existed before. The only thing holding a human life together at times is the glue of the people around them, who they hold shared experiences with. I’ve taken for granted that hallowed glue, and yet I haven’t.
I have known how important and this knowing led me to rush desperately, or maybe it was the trauma and not the knowing that caused that, and to create these unions out of a place of desperation.
See what I do there? How I take responsibility for things I couldn’t possibly be responsible for. But then how does one figure it all out anyway. What is theirs and what is not theirs and what is fair has no place in the realm of humanity. Because things are simply not fair.
Fair is a striving if anything, it is not granted by some mystical or even judicial force, and it’s certainly not a perfect system.
Rather these days I think what is the lesson, and the lesson is always love. Not in simply a romantic sense but an all encompassing one.
Is material like this this so relatable because of my many life experiences and similarity or some divine force that has me connect with exactly what is needed at the time?! Both.
Do I bore you going on and on and answering my own questions in your presence? I cannot attach to that it isn’t my business anyway if you’re bored or not. And besides what do I always say?! You’ll never be bored. I’m not boring and my life is certainly not, though it can be quiet and peaceful now.
I’m learning to allow that.
Anyway this book and watching This is Us for the first time, has me breaking open daily.
There’s something about watching two people sharing life together that want their children that work hard at loving them well, that well just flays me open.
No surprise there.
Watching a father love his children and do his best, and the same for a mother. And how they balance their dreams and their own desires with that.
And how fucked up my path looks in comparison, which is why we don’t do that.
If I look at my life individually the whole story it’s so much easier to see the beauty in it. Watching families who love each other and have traditions and traditional anything just sets my skin aflame like the emotional burn victim I am.
Do you see my scars?
This book though. This show though.
Piece by piece I’m collecting me and I’m putting together a self that has all her original essence, from all the shards.
It’s slow.
There is no longer a rush. It’s slow and beautiful. Everything is art. Every meal cooked and eaten. Every dark thought banished by compassion.
This book opens me. My clients open me. Life opens me. It’s exquisite and excruciating and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
A continual surrender. A cease fire on myself. And finally burying my armor and replacing it with something realistic, something lighter…..
