Tag: #lovemakesafamily

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Bronchitis and Snowy Reflections

There’s a certain permission that comes with being sick that it seems you (I) can find no other way. The permission to sit even slightly more still, even for a second. Which has allowed me to reflect a lot.

I’m recovering from bronchitis and had no idea it could lay me up so much. But here I am.

The snow is finally cascading down today, it is almost a relief existentially; climate change as it is and all. The flakes are ice coated and making a tiny crunch sound as they topple and flit here and there.

I’m just sitting here marveling at how much has changed around me, and it really does seem like all I did was blink.

I’m sitting in the kitchen part of our finished in-law portion of the home. This has been a dear friend and roommates kitchen, when her and her son lived down here, and her second son was born in this home, about 4 years ago. It’s how I paid my mortgage, and also how we both stayed sane. I was less anxious living alone, and we have become a sort of family to one another. Seeing the other through bests and worsts.

It’s brisk down here, but I’m wrapped in a warm red blanket, and sitting in and oversized brown lazy boy recliner. It’s interesting to get this kind of perspective on the home. Not a space I would normally sit. I could pick apart its imperfections: the low ceiling, white tiled floor, the basement like feel of it all. But what I’ve been doing most today is marveling at how far I’ve come and how blessed we all are.

I don’t think I ever even set my sights high enough to home ownership. I think I had planned on a retail job (management if I was lucky), and a small clean apartment, the kind I sometimes saw my friends in when I lived in Oregon.

I’ve been moving through life so frantically, so panicked that simplicities are now what I long for. What comes when you enjoy what you have like it’s the best thing on earth. My ability to hear for example or to taste, to appreciate the finer details in any mundane thing.

My wife and I recently were deciding if perhaps we might move to Milford or Fairfield Ct, out of the valley, up into a different class (and tax bracket). Funny how the important things to me about this move are still in the small details.

I would like taller ceilings, the feeling of room and space, a wood burning fireplace for smell and ambience, and a very nice bathtub. I’d like to see some woods or nature out my window. Bookshelves, many many bookshelves. Mahogany and teakwood smells and feels. An office so my papers and documents are not constantly strewn about. And we have the means to get into this nicer home now, but only to be stressed or house poor again seems not the right way this time. So we may just refinance and fall in love with all we already have! For a couple more years at least anyway.

Perhaps poor the love into this home and choose to see it in a way that serves us, rather than trumping up dissatisfaction as a means to motivate us into an action that may not even end up with us any happier in the end.

Tomorrow we are all as a family going to see Hamilton on Broadway and stay overnight in the city. Another extravagance I never would have dreamed of before. Some of us are not feeling so hot, hopefully that can be mild so there’s nothing taken from our experience.

I have found myself ahead rather than behind, perhaps not as much as my dreams could imagine, but then my dreams always were very expansive anyway.

It’s interesting the creaks and sounds down here. Now a part of other’s memories who have occupied this space. It’s housed a woman post recovery and pre-discovery. Another who was fleeing a bad roommate situation and stayed over here. Our home is a space of comfort, warmth, shared meals and affection. How could I not have seen this before?!

It’s everything I ever set out to create, and so am I. Not a single thing lacking. What a delicious discovery to stumble upon as I am sitting here listening to a different angle of the home I’ve occupied for 7 years.

This chair is very comfy, yes it would look nice next to a roaring fire, but I can imagine one just as easily……

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A Self on Ice

In my morning pages today I found myself pondering whether I like my new tattoo or not. I’ve posted it here, 2 birds in flight, it matches with my wife. It represents our identical twin pregnancy flying away, a dream removed without warning or time to prepare. A major disappointment. An earth shattering grief. The pain can be recalled at any second, but as we humans are wired for resilience we are back up and running and re-shaping our plans.

We got the tattoo on a moments notice in downtown Ansonia. I had just cut off all my hair, and my head was freezing, and my identity shaky. Who was I now? I went from the girl next door with her long hair that often hinged on the, “but you don’t look gay”, and “you’re so pretty” compliments for shelter, to someone I didn’t recognize in the mirror. Shocking.

I was suddenly transported back to childhood when I would stare long hours in the mirror wondering if the soul that was housed within, was the same as the body without.

Could anybody see me really.?

I’m still looking in the mirror and wondering. Waiting for evidence this way or that. If suddenly a client leaves then it must be my radical new appearance, analyzing everything. A disease really. Could the tattoo on my wrist so unlike my conservative self that was deeply forged in childhood, the one taught to constantly be observant for shame, signal something about me I don’t want?

Will someone think I’ve been to jail? I look at it and sometimes identify myself with some of the judgments people make about tattoos and that helps me connect to compassion for all misunderstandings we have about ourselves and others in this world.

My mind expands and so does my heart.

As I was writing my morning pages I wanted to share an excerpt because this is trauma and what it does. It may not go across as meaningful as I experienced it. But what I can tell you is that the words cascaded onto the page almost as if someone else wrote them and they evoked emotion.

That has to be the real magic they talk about of writing. It happens through us. It isn’t thinking, its feeling set to open space and room for what arises without judgment. That last part is the toughie. Without judgment, how does one do that amongst so much?

Loving myself better, for the right reasons, and thoroughly inside and out has been a life long pursuit for me. I’ve been fortunate enough to navigate myself into a position to teach others what I have learned about this journey through my counseling practice, and really through the way I live my life personally. And there’s still much work to be done. A lot of thinking this morning on how I want to be in my loving, when to be soft, when to be strong, when to bend so nothing breaks and knowing the boundaries on what is my part of the work, and when it’s outside of my control and something laid down long before I stepped on the scene.

Loving myself with my analytical nature, loving myself for my quirks, loving myself when I’m making mistakes, and being gentle, as I navigate this I’ll be better at doing the same for others.

This journey is not for the faint of heart.

So I was writing about my battle between nice girl next door who is nervous about what everyone thinks of her, and rebel without a cause who gives 0 fucks. I try to make my way toward the second, but my body even defies this option. I will always care more than I want to about everything it seems….

“A self on ice”

(A depersonalization separation disassociation until reunification)

A rebel whose stomach quivers

At the slightest disturbance,

I am a fraud my harpy critic shrieks.

All these selves will give way to

A little girl huddled down for safety

Holding her nighty night blanket

Sucking her thumb.

Where is she?

Give her back to me, I need her.

I left her.

When I am cold and hard,

I’ve left my child

And I’m guilty for it.

I stumble forward numb

Hoping to feel any connection

Scrambling for it.

That smile she had,

It was beautiful,

She lit up a room with her enthusiasm.

She’s died

A thousand times I’ve mourned her.

Each self built she went further

Underground

Until I stopped to dig and find her.

These years of doing that have

Been the hardest and the best.

I knew to love as you all deserve

I had to look at her,

See her suffering,

And not turn away in shame.

I had to hold her,

And I keep having to do so,

And it’s changed my whole world.

Fierce drive no longer cuts it,

Stopping to think how I feel,

And others as well,

Beats cold stubborn drive any day.

Now it does anyway,

But in the world of the trauma

Survivor

It’s one minute to the next,

Frantically meet that need at all costs

Zoom zoom

Leave all feeling behind

Assess situation,

find safety,

seek comfort

Run fast

No where in that is

Stop to feel

Be at peace

Love yourself

Rest

Now I am here

Seeking

Balance

No one told me

That thawing out

Could be this hard

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Let’s talk numbers

So recently I’ve been having all sorts of sales numbers rushing through my brain. I must admit they take up a lot of space and I’ve asked myself a lot if I belong here (Vivint Solar). Then recently I attended their annual conference and things made a lot more sense to me about why I am doing this.

Originally I did it to face my anxieties, exposing myself to knocking on people’s doors seemed a good test to see if I could get used to that, without my heart hammering away in my chest. I also did it with a goal in mind of buying a beloved cottage which seemed a key to writing my memoirs. These were my two main motivators.

Then the unthinkable happened and we experienced the devastating loss of our identical twin pregnancy that we had spent a year working towards. This was a month long road paved with nails, and we are only now in the recovering stages.

I found myself having a dark and stormy attitude, and as a very influential person I knew this was not me, but I couldn’t find the light. It’s actually the spirit of the Whalers (another story), my New England descendants that brought me a little bit closer to myself again.

New Englanders being the first to have such a crazy person to suggest that we could change our stars around by getting into a tiny boat with a sharp stick and bringing down a whale. It is no surprise we have such sharp edges. I say we like I’m from here originally and not from the land of hippie tree huggers in Oregon 😉

Rather than seeing this whole business as sales and not who I am as a person I chose to see myself as having the privilege to be a part of something special. Helping our community to convert to clean energy, being a pioneer, a warrior, a whaler! Going out with my harpoon and stick and believing I can single handedly change my stars and protect my people and my planet. Not being skeptical, but positive and full of the live I always have been.

The power had been down on my panels, and it was time to fix my system.

I possess this grit, this sense of urgency. The ability to press the gas harder over a bumpy road, which actually works better than going slow. I’ve been this way my whole life. And in the midst of these people who are brave and overcoming their own personal limitations I kept thinking oh look I’m home. So there has to be something to this whole solar thing.

And this is where I have landed for now. So for this morning I’m going to share a post one of the top sellers posted, full of life advice I wish I’d had years ago, and what I wrote to my children about when I shared it.

Credit Thiago Barros from Vivint Solar

This is one of the big sellers for Vivint.

It’s interesting because what I like best is being amongst other very driven people. I’m not sure where or if I fit here. I’m afraid of working too much and missing you guys…. I have dreams of owning a bed and breakfast together and or a coffee shop together and working all of us around each other. And not sure without some capital how to make that happen. My dreams always were bigger than my wallet. I’m just sitting here appreciating all of you each for what you bring to my life.

Kids I’ve been pondering over your Letters and you and they make me a better person always. To learn to create space for your feelings. To have the space to give. It’s all new to me. Like being reborn 1,000 times.

I put the cart before the horse so many times in my life that now I want to teach you from my mistakes how to dream big but like this guy says above to not buy the thing til you have earned it.

I want to be home and cook more and hustle more and and and. Always driven. In the Vivint conference we were just at the guy was talking about how successful people have this sense of urgency, almost like they are distracted, they get weird he says. And I identified with that a lot. It never was a matter of not loving you, but a product of having so many dreams in this life.

It’s actually not a very easy existence in certain ways. My mind tortures me and calm is very hard to find. Peace of mind. When I look at you I see it, but sometimes it feels so far away to touch.

You guys are always my why, why I work so hard, and why I push myself past my fears, and why I get out of bed when I’m tired, scared or don’t feel well.

I want to thank you for being patient with Courtney and I as we have been so consumed with trying to bring this family a baby and with the pain when that dream didn’t go as planned. I know it’s been a little dark for awhile. A little (lot) less present. I’ve been coping with Vivint I guess, and learning a new thing. I realize we have heard very little about how you guys feel about the disappointment. Probably trying to shield you from our pain and not let it effect you, but it does anyway I see.

When a dream that has become a framework, and you think it’s on its way to success comes crashing down around you, it takes awhile to see and find the light and energy again. You will experience this at some point in your lives and I will be right there for it. I’m going to do my damnedest to be by your side for everything you want me to. Every important moment. I hope to use my analysis less 😉 and my heart more. For someone with a history of trauma this is very difficult, some might argue impossible. You become wired differently. And I’ll fight even wiring and my genetics for you. You inspire me everyday and please always tell us how you’re feeling. Even if it’s not received perfectly in a moment, we hear you and see you…..

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Love heals all wounds

Slowly very slowly I am becoming myself again. Grief takes you away from everything you are and everything you know. That’s what I have learned recently. As the storm clears however, what I am finding is a new appreciation for all that I have and all that I am.

This year I do feel as if January was the lost month. And that’s a lot of time to lose for someone who doesn’t want to miss a second. But was it really lost? Or did we only stand to gain?

Gain?! How can I possibly suggest watching our dreams crumble could result in a gain? I can hardly believe what I’m typing! But yes you gain something. Perspective and Presence with capital P’s.

Now I am here finally able to wipe the tears that kept smudging the blueprint of our lives and begin to draft again. This 2 months has felt like a single lifetime.

Recently I had my kids write me a letter (to lift their grounding from the dog peeing on the couch). They were to write an essay on their experience with me as a mother. At some point I may share them in their entirety, but to summarize for now. They love me, they really love me. It’s unthinkable they wouldn’t right?!

But often times I don’t feel loved like the humans do, it’s part of what I come with.

Recently someone told me at the end of the day we are who we are. Seemingly simple advice right ? Why is it that it’s the most simple of advice executed at the proper time that is the most profound?!

I’ve spent a lifetime fighting what I thought I could become, because of the things I saw and experienced when I was little. If there was any chance I could be that, I wasn’t going to take it. I was a vicious slave master over myself, and I did not use kindness to meet my goals.

I found as a mother I could keep the same viciousness I treated myself with away from my children, but that meant I had to keep a large portion of me distant as well. I replaced me with more warm and safe characters. Until later in life I began to realize they had their own dark sides as well, and maybe I wasn’t so terrible after all. I grew and I grew.

I have always done it backwards. Their love saved me, when it was “supposed” (such a nasty word) to be my love nurturing them. I loved better and more than my memory allows me. Again that terrible slave master who was constantly whipping me when I would come even close to the behavior of my mother. It was exhausting to be that vigilant over myself and much of their young lives they have seen me tired and stressed.

Until finally I put the whip down and began to give myself nurturing and affection.

Again seemingly selfish in the world of society’s view of the mother. But society never knew my beginning, and kindness was the medicine I required all along. I could never be warm, gentle, and kind with my children when I couldn’t be with my own child. It was always incongruous and disconnected. And I was always aware that I was. Not a fun combination. That shit needs to stay in your subconscious so you can survive. I’m an odd breed. Always aware when I constantly wished not to be. My gift and my curse.

Thoughts like, “it’s too late”, or “you did this the wrong way”, only harm my soft new self. Like a baby from the womb my new self isn’t ready to take care of itself yet. I needed nurturing, and I found that in my love in my 36th year, and the rest as they say is history.

Not co-dependent love, despite my sometimes fear of bordering on that 😉 not all consuming love, not burning love, not scathing or scarring love,

Generous love. Benefit of the doubt love, trusting love, gentle love, infinite love, graceful love, warm and available at all times love. Patient, oh so patient love.

Love heals all wounds. And I hope to love my children and family with this healed self for the rest of my days, and I hope to tell my story so they can know how hard I had to work to be available to them. So that they know I fashioned a self out of scraps. And what it takes to do that in the way that I did.

My gratitude continues to grow by leaps and bounds and perhaps this new self that is growing and being raised with all this love will have the courage to write books and talk you the world about her experiences.

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The couch of mixed emotions….

I’ve been going through the ringer lately. Personally. Professionally. Motherly. Wifely.

Is there some kind of unwritten rule after your 100th post you fall apart?

How does one come back from a dream over a year in the making, financially and emotionally expensive, crashing down around them? I guess I’m figuring that out right now.

Breaking and trying to rebuild only to be so fragile the whole structure just breaks again, and you get even more discouraged and start having a tantrum.

I’ll grasp at any other dream right now to try and calm the pain. That’s how I work. I move forward while suffering, and the forward movement becomes my saving grace somehow, even when I can’t see it or feel it yet.

A dear friend of mine was recently talking about presence. So not surprisingly it has come up for me this morning. My wife and I had an argument yesterday. A fight really and honestly in two years we haven’t had much of one. We got into that space where neither of us could hear the other over our own feelings, and both felt justified, but all the while missing each other and wanting to find our way back. But every time we would try to come back, it would flare again. My wife is much softer on the outside than I am. When any kind of intense or overwhelming situation occurs for me I can go to a very cold and dark place, and I’m not accessible or pleasant when I’m in there. I am seeing that I will not escape talking about trauma as my legacy. I’ve tried for a long time. After all I’d like to be one of the “normal” people, that does not become filled with terror at the slightest hint of someone’s upset with me. It feels wriggly to admit that 🙁 even in this sage space with those who love me. They are deep inside feelings.

Anyway more in trauma later I promise. For now a quick summary of the argument includes the couch story. Have I ever told you guys this story? Well Courtney (my wife) came with this god forsaken piece of her history. Her and her ex partner had purchased a very very expensive designer, custom made couch. It is fabric and had plush down cushions and should only be washed by the hands of the Gods. Basset furniture professionals.

Anyway we saw a therapist for a few sessions to transition and blend her into our family. One thing I remember distinctly this woman saying was do not bring that couch into your home with kids and dogs. We kind of knew she was right. However the problem is she had just used a giant chunk of her savings to pay the thing off and we couldn’t have gotten 1/4 of the cost of it. What a loss! We decided we would rather have this nice piece of furniture while agreeing we understood the risks. Never in the history of the world has a therapist been more correct.

My Frenchie Sigmund Freud has a bad habit of peeing on anything fabric if he isn’t taking out just about every hour of the day. We have tried everything about this. Sprays, trainings, quarantine. Another problem is he is such a love bug that if he’s not on you at all times he will cry. He’s extremely high maintenance.

So he has christened the couch no less than several too many times, and trying to fix the problem is a whole production. To the point I am nervous that damn couch will become my children’s trauma. As any good mother knows washable pleather is the only reasonable choice for one’s sanity in the realm of children. This is why we can’t have nice things is a phrase often tossed around in our home.

Teens will be teens, and I think if they wandered around anxiously terrified something will become dirty I would be so much more concerned than them being careless. Is this bad ?! I see what pressure does. I see what people who can’t relax end up like, body wise and heart wise. Given the choice more mess, less stress would always be my credo. But the average person who has never lived with children, never mind navigating the complications of cohabitation in general, likes to have order and cleanliness. And don’t get me wrong I like those too. But for me it came down to that or my sanity. Sanity won out and I had to battle what everyone would think, the possibility of feeling like bad mom, etc.

So this is what happens. My wife and I try to go away to get some time to revive an us, to not get lost in the shuffle and our current grief pit. But whenever we do all hell breaks loose at home. The kids are too old to need a babysitter for one night, when the neighbor across the street is there and vigilant, and too young to be expected to have the weight of the world on their shoulders while trying to do well in school, and have their own things going on.

So we got to Vivint’s annual conference in MA, and whilst there get a barrage of texts about the state of affairs at home. The bulldog has claimed the couch his with his signature marking, a gift to us I’m guessing he thinks. And the kids are scrambling in terror to blame whoever is responsible, and we are a state away and now our presence is taken from the conference and stress ensues. The kids are stressed, we are stressed, and that boils over into a few trauma triggers for me. This will be continued as I said because I think it’s really important to speak openly about.

After a few hours of anxious albeit blessed rest I have to clean up the mess I caused the day before any a fury. Threatening to get rid of our dogs, almost sleeping on the couch, and this is a land I haven’t lived in for oh so long. And clearly not helping the kids figure out how to be better while also letting them know they are always loved and safe. I withdraw because I don’t know I’m loved and safe so often. My mind goes elsewhere seemingly no matter how hard I try. It swims to me being a burden, and I cause a partner stress, and all of this chaos.

Anyway this morning. Argument resolved with my wife, though both drained and sad by the interaction, and me trying not to blame myself for being so intense about such things…. and now will come clean up with the kids. So much shrapnel can be left from only a minor interaction such as this. 🙁

So my takeaway was this: I ended up looking at the bulldog this morning and thinking how much I love him and could never give him up, and then stop and picture my kids and how proud and grateful I am, and my life. I am present fully awake, not frenzied by this or that fear or thought, and I feel love and compassion for all of us on this crazy adventure that is my creation. When you create a big life and have big dreams, it’s also a big responsibility, and mine is never to resent it, and always to cherish it, and to continue to learn to stay in my heart.

I want to stay in my heart. I want to be nurturing and not just furiously driven. I beg for the strength to calm my wounds and do this.

I want my wife to know this couch is something we are grateful for. We have had amazing memories on it. The teenagers hang with their friends, we snuggle on it. It isn’t perfect but it means so much to us to be loved, and for her to take a risk on coming so much out of her comfort zones. Does she know she has saved several lives, and is our personal hero? I hope so!

So this was what I wrote this am regarding this:

You know the kids and the dogs are the same concept. Pause and look at them and slow down to take care of them and appreciate what they bring to life (that isn’t just stress) and you’ll smile and feel happy thoughts. Rush through things in a frenzy, don’t stop and look, be running on a healthy dose of stress, and want them to just function independently

and well without any nurturing, and you’re in for a nightmare !

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Trauma never dies…learning to walk again

It only fades further into the rear view as the years roll on, but it’s legacy lasts forever in the wiring, in the very bones of the survivor.

Let’s talk about trauma for a minute (let’s not and say we did my brain yells). By the way “let’s not and say we did”, is a phrase my mom often said. Not surprising that upon the immediate mention of trauma she comes to mind even subconsciously in the phrase I used. The opposite of that phrase as she continued on was, “let’s do and say we didn’t.” This one more her credo in life I’d say.

Let’s talk about other people’s trauma like I’m the expert my brain tells me, because I’ve worked on mine. I am the healer and the healed is much more comfortable than I am the quivering curled up ball on the floor crying because a trigger happened.

Do you want to know what I think has been holding me back from writing my memoir? Shame, yes of course. And also as long as I can be the therapist and use what I can recognize so effortlessly to help others, then maybe I can just keep moving forward and not realizing and recognizing what an intense effect trauma has had on my life.

It is in all of me, and yet I walk around so assured and so confident. People praise me for this all the time. Only the very closest to me see the physical ailments I often struggle with, the bouts of insecurity and intense anxiety ridden discomfort. The lashing out and responses that are way more than necessary when “disagreed with.” My ex husband will attest to that.

Though it’s not about me not being able to handle someone not agreeing with me. It is always always the suggestion I may be some hideously selfish breed of person or emotionally unstable. That’s my hot button and anyone that’s ever been close enough to me to know it, and disappointed in our outcome, seems to use it. Against all their other knowledge of my many positive attributes and giant soft parts, this will take over.

Ego really is larger than awareness almost always.

We become what we were bathed in, no matter how hard we try, unless we are hyper vigilant to not become it, all the days of our lives.

Do you know how hard I’ve worked to beat my crazy? The things I saw and lived through. I deny that they were even true. Even as a child I took all the responsibility into myself for all the goings on.

I was never a child, there was never a childhood.

I think tenderly of Dexter here. Yes of Dexter, the boy born in blood who wants to be a good person, the one who struggles with his dark passenger because of something he never asked for. Because someone saw the human inside of him he had found a channel to work out his feelings with, that was the most right he could get to given his circumstances. “I’m a very neat monster”, he says. Only later to realize through the power of loving and being loved that he was more human than he ever gave himself credit for. Only to lose his wife and step kids, then his sister, a woman he later fell in love with, and his very own son. The season ends with him having condemned himself in a purgatory of physical labor and isolation. Not the stuff of Disney movies is it?

Thankfully feeling dead inside or the urge to harm anyone was never my burden. Interesting that should even have to cross my mind to be grateful about, but it does and I am. Others are not so lucky as to have whatever this fierce enthusiasm to believe endlessly in the good of human beings, even in the face of such the opposite.

A way I have been unkind to myself is to believe that I suffer from anxiety and chronic illness. Pain, migraines, stomach issues, flushing, extreme fatigue, etc, separately from the trauma that created that.

My spirit fights my body every step of the way. I’ve been fighting for life/light for as long as I can remember. So when a setback touches me, it feels like the entire world I have built will come shattering down. I can know logically this isn’t how it works, and I’ve been my own electrician attempting to re-wire, and build a safe and secure home in my body.

But I’ve been trying to do this largely myself using my will. My will was no longer enough anymore. I needed to find how to allow myself to be loved. I needed to thaw. And now I might need some of my own help with some of this trauma wiring, but I am seeing first hand how difficult it is to find someone to have a full spectrum of knowledge on the topic.

I need trauma body work and yoga and relaxation therapy probably often and probably for the rest of my life. I deserve those things. I deserve to speak about my experience without worrying about wrath coming down on me, not being loyal, or that it will kill me to RE experience this in full color without the careful separation I’ve created for myself from those experiences.

But when we separate ourselves into fragments to survive, piecing the whole thing back together while trying to also do life in the ways it demands is its own purgatory. And these wounds aren’t visible to anyone, but a rare rare chosen few, if ever.

And what if I don’t want to write about trauma? Well there goes my memoir. What if I can’t figure out that careful balance of giving attention to the reader versus feeling sorry for myself. No one wants pity, especially a trauma survivor, it only creates more shame.

How is one to proceed from here?

This is my 100th blog post, it has taken 100 delvings into myself to get to this next peak. Where to from here ? I don’t yet know. But I do know that I will keep going, I have to keep going. But I don’t want to run anymore. I am tired.

I think I’ll need to learn how to walk without fearing being eaten or chased.

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Suffering and Parenting Consciously

Anyone who reads this without a transcription has the patience of a God, lol. But somehow it seems more authentic.

Sometimes I think who writes like this to their kids. And the shame gremlins chime in about how perhaps “children” (though they are not anymore) should maybe not be meant to understand such adult matters. Others two cents have stated that they would have given anything to know what was going through a parent’s mind. There’s a lot of different ways to do things out there. That is for sure.

Given that we lost identical twins and my wife had a D and C five days before Christmas and two before my birthday, the year is off to a slow start enthusiasm wise. We are just navigating this perilous terrain of grief, and I wanted to share something I just realized.

A day deep in grief can seem as endless as a lifetime. Each one day spent seems like a year. Time stands still as if the beating of our hearts just stopped as well…. as if they couldn’t go on. Then for awhile your hollow chest realizes the thump is still there, and the rest of you will have to acquiesce eventually. You know you’re alive, but you can’t feel things the same way.

Everything is different and you never even gave permission for that to be so.

So here we are at the beginning of week two of 2019. Wandering numbly through the mine fields of the memories of our whole experience thus far trying to conceive. Who would ever go back for a second tour I think. But then one day I imagine we will find ourselves smiling at tiny new babies again and our dreams will re-shape themselves from the nightmares they became.

Moments of relief are where we are at now, peppered with lots and lots of sadness shrapnel. As we figure out our new expectations of ourselves, each other, and even consider a plan to move forward.

Daunting or exciting ? Do the emotions set that tone based on where we are at on our grief terrain? Or do we decide we want to be excited, AND accept the moments of suffering that just can’t be avoided as a human being?

We can only outrun or block out the inherent being of suffering for so long, it will get all of us eventually.

A dear friend is reading Eckhart Tolle’s, A New Earth. She shared with me a passage about suffering consciously. Sitting with the feelings and learning from them. That this is the only solace and way to transcend the pits of despair as it were. And even then I shall say from this experience when you’re IN suffering it seems like you’ll never get out. But somehow the resilience of the human spirit can’t help but cut through the dark. We are just made like that.

As a lighter side emerges that Chumba Wumba song, I get knocked down, but I get up again comes to mind… and all it’s silly lines.

I’m just here trying to figure it out. Trying to catch the next wave of joy, even as it seems we are swimming with sharks right now. I refuse to get out of the ocean even if I could get eaten. It’s a strange and marvelous thing this humanity.

I think of Elizabeth Gilbert often. She doesn’t even know who I am, but to me she’s a mother I never had, a best friend, a kindred spirit. I think of her grief of the loss of her partner Reyya. The other day she posted her delight at her Uber driver on the way to the airport, and that you can find joy anywhere. She is so right!

Speaking of her being a mother I never had. It’s funny how she never had children, and that was such a big deal to her at one point, other’s judgments and opinions and her own of that process. And yet I wonder how many spiritual children she has. I am certainly one. She has been a teacher, a warm shelter in the storm, and a friend in times of need. All through her beautiful words she is these. What is a parent if not these things?

Perhaps she chose to sacrifice certain aspects of individual meaning for the whole good of humanity? I wonder if she ever looked at it like that? Rather than selfish …. etc…?

Anyway yesterday my wife and I were in the car and trying to count how long it had been since surgery. We both literally estimated a month or more. We were shocked to find only a little over two weeks. I’m still thinking about this.

Time is irrelevant when it comes to the matters of the heart. I have always believed this to be true.

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How sales is changing me or how is sales changing me.

The new insights that are coming from solar slaying are fascinating. It’s learning people from a whole other angle. In their homes and directly in their lives. A couple is making cream of chicken soup over a beautiful stove, they share warmth and hospitality with me. A man who smokes Newport’s and drinks Budweiser in his pajamas during the day, shares with me that his wife has been cranky lately because he has lung cancer.

New couples trying to afford to live and make it in this world, financially and emotionally. Being out on the doors as we call it and talking to people is also much like doing therapy. But I can see even more of their lives, and therefore learn more is the idea there maybe. But then I am only with them a brief time and the temptation to drop by with flowers or to stop in for a coffee is always present. I closed a deal last night and the woman seemed so sad I wanted to reach out and comfort her. I can still see her grief filled eyes and I want to do something.

Should I, shouldn’t I!? The answer is you always should when you can. Perhaps I’ll bring her flowers. The resilience of people astounds me. Recently I am included once again in this category but in a new way. We have suffered a great loss and are currently waiting for a new equilibrium as a result.

I’ve had many blog posts bouncing around in my brain like many a brightly colored rubber ball, but then the energy dwindles as fast as it comes and my pursuits are demanded elsewhere.

Some things I’ve noticed so far on the doors is that my brain moves even more frantically and settles in to write less. Produce produce produce. There is always some incentive and always the want for more. I already know ahead of the curve that once the money starts coming in, the desire for more will pique. What was once unheard of will become normalized and you’ll need more to be excited.

Life normalizes invisibly and we don’t realize it until often our behaviors have caused us issue. Many a change we never saw coming. My gift is seeing ahead by the way if intuition and much life experience to draw off of, and a deep understanding of human behavior.

This is yet again when I have to put some work on knowing my boundaries and what my priorities are, otherwise I will be swept up in the hustle. The glitz and glamor of it all. The streets that are paved with cheese. Notice I said cheese and not gold. Any small sentence can give you a clue into a human beings deepest desires.

The promise of more… there can always be more. But more is not always more of what you really want. So it’s sort of ironic that I’m working more and more on (not to be confused with moron;) ), to get to a peace filled existence of writing, reading, and being present with those I love. Is it the way? Or is this just another learning curve on the way to the way. As if there was just one way.

Will this cabin on this sacred space be an answer to my writer’s heart? A spiritual healing. Will the idea turn out as I imagine it to be ? Or will it be sinking a 50,000 (ish) ship and that being yet another lesson. Oh the woes of being a whimsical risk taking dreamer, versus a pragmatic, careful, financially minded planner.

Could I become a “salesman” that becomes more and more hungry and just keep telling myself it’s for my family. So many do you know ?! Probably the smartest course of direction would be to pay off my student loans and invest. Who else can pay off their student loans in the span of one year? That is the promise here. That’s always the smartest course of action. In the real dream scenario I will be able to do both, but that will require time and sacrifice.

If you asked my kids they would probably tell you they just want even five minutes of true presence from me over all the riches in the world. If only I had ever loved myself enough to know that when they needed it even more. But that as usual is the harshest possible version. The truth usually lies somewhere in the middle. And I forgot the long ago truths such as how I didn’t have to balance work and motherhood in the early years.

It was me who held them every single time and I looked down on them with a love burning with the power of a thousand suns. I remember that in moments, but the trick is they can’t. Their logical memories can’t anyway, perhaps their feeling ones can. Perhaps that’s why they do so well now, but because I pushed them so hard, but because I loved them better than I give myself credit for.

There are many ways to love. For me as a mother my love was shown primarily by working on my self so carefully so I didn’t cause them some of the damage that was bestowed upon me. Somethings with that plan worked really well, and others left something to be desired for.

But either way my every though in every breathing moment of my life all comes down to them. It doesn’t matter how caught up in dreams of love I was and then they crashed and burned. What I saw as my motivation and my dreams always had them in mind. This is something I rarely gave myself credit for when I listened too much to the critic(s).

Isn’t it interesting how different the idea of what I will write is compared to what I actually do? The post I thought I had inside was much reflection on the past year, and how I want to use that in this new one. It will probably still come, but this is what was on the presses today.

Hot off the presses of my mind. A life lived quite uniquely, or perhaps not at all. I just am not privy to the many other minds like mine out there.

Happy New Year everyone! I can’t wait to see what adventures 2019 brings all of us!

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Connected

*I guess we are all one phone call from our knees. *

I don’t think I could have bargained for all the gratitude this experience is bringing me. I can’t feel it too much yet, everything is just so painful. But I know that it’s there, and growing, and that this experience has already profoundly changed me.

If I do it right it’s going to make me realize all the things I take for granted each day. It’s going to make me realize what a gift and blessing my kids are in a new way.

We need to hit the refresh button on life often folks! Not just when bad things happen, but consistently. Not just once a year. Refresh, open your eyes, and look around at the landscape of your life.

My God I could have never imagined this. I never believed I would trust or love myself as much as I do now.

I would have never believed I’d be here living out my dreams. Here I am.

It’s interesting to choose a person early on because of a hunch and an intuition and then watch them unfold and get to know them with faith and trust the rest of your lives together. Love grows as you go through things. We have been through a lot this short time together.

Prior to this I moved quickly into love also, this was a need based approach it wreaked if desperation and seeking a buoy in the ocean with sharks swimming around. I’ve finally climbed onto an island and am relaxing. I did not purposely use those people. I didn’t even know my own bs as most of us don’t, until hindsight affords clarity. Hurt people hurt people. It isn’t nearly the intentional process believe I don’t think.

Now if you realize this is what’s happening and you don’t do something about it that’s a different matter.

Love now:

We know one another’s soul, and yet we learn new small things about the other each day. We become more and more familiar as time moves on. A confirmation of the original hypothesis. The other times were disproving and they were as devastating a loss as any for both parties.

Life is a learning playground is it not? I’ve rarely seen people set out to harm another, that’s a different category all together. But I’ll tell you what I still scan myself often and thoroughly for signs of being what I came from. I still take any feedback that could be construed as negative about me and make sure it’s twisted into that either way. This is one of my greatest areas of work.

Am I taking up too much space with my big feelings? Am I selfish? Am I like them? Do I make people uncomfortable with my rawness, and is that the same As the chaotic discomfort of my beginning. It is not the same. Thank God!

As I work for Vivint I’ve been meeting lots of people who lost their loved one recently or within the last few years, and my empathy as a person grows. After having something like this I get it. I’m already aware of the depth of suffering I’ll have when I lose it. I’ve never been able to cruise along in blissful ignorance, though I’ve often envied (probably falsely) those who have.

If you had told me two years ago that this year I’d be spending trying to get pregnant with the love of my life, I would have thought you were crazy. If you would have told me I would get so close to this dream after so much hard work, and then lose it suddenly and have to push it back again significantly, I would have told you I wouldn’t make it through something like that.

And yet here we are.

The courage of my wife astounds me. Her grace and kindness and gentle soul. Some people are just made angels from the very beginning, and others have lives that make them need one. We are the perfect match. Blissfully she seems to feel it’s the other way around. I’m still trying to figure out how that’s possible.

I am able to know I can be kind and unselfish when things are hard because she believes me to be that person.

I am trying to put this into practice with my children. Coming from a life of hyper vigilance and a huge lack of trust this has been very difficult. I’ve been RE wiring myself as long as I can remember and it’s difficult for anyone who doesn’t know what this work is like to understand the profound exhaustion that comes with it.

I am not exhausted from my children. They are my reason for getting this far. But over the years if you looked at my life you might have thought that, or that I valued my romantic relationships above them. Something I’ve long been accused of. I knew I needed a certain kind of love to heal parts of me, so those parts didn’t damage them. I had the foresight to know this.

And foresight is serving me again with this tragedy we are currently experiencing, because I can already see how the awareness it brings is challenging me to love better.

To my kids: I know it has taken my entire life to become a whole loving person that you deserve. I know this journey hasn’t been easy for you. I think the only redeeming part is that your lives will be better for it in ways you may only ever see when you’re my age. Distance brings clarity. I hope your lives end up as full as mine has been. Full of adventure, challenges, new experiences, real feeling, and the love I worked so hard to find, and to help you connect to it.

I’ve worked to connect with others and myself despite incredible connection difficulties.

And now here I am a connected and real person and boy does it feel different.

During times like this for a small moment I wish I could still be safely disconnected from my real feelings. But that never worked I always felt separate from the humans like that. It was terribly lonely.

I am connected to my self and currently my suffering too, and to the Universe, and to everything.

I am grateful for that. Thats what the smile below is about. It’s a different approach at times to this grief. For me great grief also brings great gratitude I have any of this at all. That I have someone to be sad with and lose something so important with. And we can try again for this, but this love is a once in a lifetime love. It’s the kind that always helps me love myself more, and I needed a lot of that.

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Ritual

I turn 38 on Saturday. In so many ways I never could have imagined my life would be where it is right now. I couldn’t have even dreamed this.

Today I am turning to my blog again as a healing medium. I don’t have well organized thoughts. I just know I need to write.

I could never have imagined being so sad and so grateful and blessed all at the same time. A blanket of numb sadness has set in this morning. I’m just trying to feel something. Anything.

I needed to renew my drivers license this morning so I came to Hamden DMV before my Vivint meeting. It was shockingly fast. I had anticipated a 2 hour wait, and running into my meeting late. But I was in and out.

If there was a Guinness Book of World Records for bad drivers license photos I would be a strong contender. The cameras are way beneath you. Why do they do that?! Is it the only satisfaction they have in their lives? Don’t they know women need a steep downward angle as they near their 40’s and grow softer under the chin and more robust around the middle?

So I did a thing!!! A nearing 40 thing… and I’m sitting here trying to process what it means to me on the deeper spectrum.

It means to not be seeking acceptance anymore. To not be shaking in my shoes that someone won’t like me for how I look, a long held legacy stemming of course, back to childhood. It means to play with life a little and try new things without it being so serious. So yesterday my wife and I set out on an adventure. We went to a local barbershop and had a great old time. It will now be filed away in memories I hold dear to my heart.

The barber was amazing! Goodfellas Barbershop Ansonia CT. Fary Palacios. All the guys in there had a blast watching me get my very thick and long locks shorn off. It was a hoot.

Then we went to a local tattoo shop and got matching birds on our wrists to commemorate our twins and loss. To honor this pain and this process. This one hurt. Not worse than many moments in each day lately, but certainly was intense.

Food doesn’t really taste like anything. My brain can’t grasp on anything to focus. We have a 2 o’clock appointment today to find out what we are going to do and I know more waves of grief are imminent. My eyes look sad and dark, they have bags under them. I don’t want this to be my reality.

I don’t feel anything holiday like or like celebrating anything. My heart is breaking over and over each day in moments. One of the deepest cuts I have ever experienced. I’m trying to hold it shut myself, and clearly I need medical intervention. Irrigation, anti-biotics, and stitches. But I have become to not feel like I can trust those institutions to be careful with us.

Like a cornered wild wounded animal. Protective. Angry. Sad. Scared. Flayed open. Raw.

I am writhing with pain on the inside, and just trying to keep it together on the outside .

Help me please I just need some peace. It’s too in between.