Tag: #lovemakesafamily

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Nightmares and Dreamscapes of the Shattered Mind

“It’s never too late to be who you should have been”

The pain has woken me up. Or maybe it’s the words that woke me up. Or did the pain wake me up to the words.

Until the events of the past couple of years I never realized how much pain I was in all the time. I wouldn’t have realized anymore because I fashioned a soothing and capable self for others as a means of survival. I must have found it made the pain stop.

I had an epiphany as I was awoken at 4 am out of a dead sleep that as I only had myself to rely on I decided to make her so attuned and soothing to others because that also made me feel safe. As I soothed another I was soothed, and I recognized they were comforted, but I couldn’t recognize myself.

I’ve lived my whole life trying to make the pain stop in what I thought of as a healthy way. And perhaps it’s a lot healthier than where I could be. I’m driven intensely almost all the time to find ways of existing that make the pain stop. The anxious thoughts, the many physical symptoms I deal with regularly. The fact I can’t concentrate to save my life and my mind feels broken.

I found ways around the shattered self that lives inside to the point I was afraid I was a sociopath. Because I carefully select an emotion based on practicality before I’ll let myself feel it. I need to know if it’s safe and acceptable to others. If it will bring me belonging or desertion, warmth or isolation.

Are there others like me? Where are the other people who raised themselves, lived through terror constantly, and made a strong self in the outside and spent their life afraid they were bad or wrong? Where are the other people that coped the way I have ?

The things I found to make the pain stop weren’t numbing, they were the opposite, tuning in not tuning out. I wanted to make my mother’s torment stop. I knew that. And my aunts and my grandparents , and my little brother’s, and all the other chaos that swirled around me. I was determined. I am nothing if not determined. I clamp down like steel, my iron will and my nostrils flaring. I was years before they ever did so in a calm primal manner that meant anything but terror.

The problem with fashioning a self out of many trial and error tries, to make sure you don’t become what you’re from, is that your true self is lost. Many people don’t have their true selves in tact for one reason or another. I’m far from alone in the pain of being pathologically lonely.

The problem with all of this above is you can never really trust what’s real and what isn’t. And you’re vulnerable to the same fantastical thinking that probably took you to a safer place. See how I slip out of first person when it gets close to the wound?

My beautiful writer and dreamer mind, the childlike one preserved on ice betrayed me a couple of years ago. Is this real is the first thing I asked my therapist in the first session. The one where I would ask if I had to choose between passion and safety and what each of those things meant. What I was referring to was a feeling that shook the tectonic plates of my world.

The feeling was as real as you and me. What meaning I attached to the feeling and why was the ultimate betrayal. Escapism at its finest. Why couldn’t I just be a gamer at this point. That wouldn’t have cost me my sanity. Or maybe even an alcoholic. The jury is still out on if that would have.

I think I was trying to recover a sense of faith in something along the way, and I really clung to spirituality. Everything happens for a reason I bought into that when it came to this. And as it turned out it did, but the reason I was so very wrong about. And once you’ve felt so very wrong so many times and for so long, the joy, the manufactured joy, begins to get further and further away.

The only thing that brought me relief in childhood was being brought into other families and feeling seen, and the possibility of belonging. I became childlike and wide eyed. So when I attended a couple of family events and felt I belonged there, with someone telling me also that I did, and they wanted and saw me, I became attached to that notion and all of the players involved.

The intoxicating mixture of the words expressed and the want coupled with the family gatherings at the right time of loneliness and the hook was set, and the story was laid down, and I wanted to believe that magic more than anything.

As it turns out when you set out to find what to believe in, and it’s never in who you are, you’re in for a lot of pain. No foundation for me knowing who I was got laid down. So I’ve flitted from here to there trying to make the pain stop.

The thing that does that the most for me is touch. Touch forces me to be reminded I exist and I’m less likely to float away in my mind. It grounds and comforts. It is something I spent a long time not understanding why I didn’t care for it when I longed so much. These days I can be touched by kindness, even a smile and it gets me through.

And once I did figure that out nothing was going to prevent me from that joy. I was determined and racing through life because I wanted a story book story. The years together, the wedding where I am celebrated. I am never celebrated anywhere. It was the opposite. So when the attention is on me in that capacity I wriggle with discomfort, but also desperately want that, with the wanting of a child.

Whenever I started to get serious with someone and attempted to piece together some of my memories to explain to them my life it always felt unreal. Like a lie. I felt like I had made it up. I know I didn’t, but even the telling feels like that can’t be a thing. It must have made it up it must be me. I felt like snakes were crawling all over my body and I was going to vomit. And desperately I wondered if they were going to want to choose me once they knew. so I stopped trying. It’s too dark and I know instinctively people don’t want to believe things like that exist. Conceal don’t feel… don’t let it show. A child knows who the world (parent) needs them to be. We are much more attuned.

I never even got to know that because I moved things along so quickly out of panicky desperation every single time, all the while looking exactly the opposite on the outside so sure. Is it any wonder I can’t trust myself.

Part child, part adult…. My own personal science experiment. Let’s try this or that and see how it feels. But I don’t know how I feel. Let me look at how other people seem to feel is that how I find out?

Why am I so different from other people? I’d imagine the answering of this question will be a part of my work. I feel like my therapist would say Christina you know why, and I’d stare blankly that way I do when my brain runs out of knowledge and explanations and I long to just feel.

I very much veered off of the poetic musings about pain that my mind made me wake up for. That post would have been beautiful. It split immediately off into my thinking mind grappling to explain it make sense of it, and left the feeling.

I’ve lived my whole life trying to make the pain stop while also “being a good person”. Or feeling like I needed to feel like one. As it turns out I’m all too human to be a good person all the time. I’m a person who feels the feelings of others when I’m at a comfortable distance. As it turns out once I’m up close the stakes are too high on that and I can camp down immediately and be completely blank, and therefore banish myself from my own graces as a result, rather than trying to understand. U

nless of course I can be soothing to that person, then it’s the perfect drug for the both of us.

In my life time bridging the gaps of understanding for others split off from themselves or their loved ones…. It stops the pain. When someone outside of you sees you with the most generous perspective and truly understands, it lets the pain out. The pain of not being understood. I put the words together to help the person understand how their coping has been shaped and how their trauma changed their stars, and how to find meaning in that, that at bare minimum can lessen the pain.

The scarcity I’ve lived with is trying to get the pain to stop, and the irony is to become connected to myself so I can have a foundation I’ve been tasked with being directly in it until I become real.

Until I become visible to myself, and develop my own consistency outside of anyone else and my own self. Not develop that’s what I did before. Uncover what was already there. “It’s never too late to be who you should have been.”

Pain itself has changed and shaped me in so many ways, as well as the things I tried to do to get the pain to stop.

I have learned if you get or are in enough pain for too long you’ll do almost anything to make it stop. There’s no calm reasoning and then you lose faith in yourself to be consistent and dependable and it’s just a cycle of pure hell.

I’m in so much pain it’s like being burned alive, and you’d never even know if you looked at me, although I’m quite sure I look different now, that now it’s beginning to show in the lines of my face and in my weary bones.

It wakes me up and memories float in and out without my consent. I can only sift through the ashes, as the tears make them stick to my face. I toss and turn all night some nights and others I sleep soundly and it is the day that is the nightmare. A gauntlet full of memories that pull me back to a place that harms and I have to start all the way over.

One little fragment at a time I recover myself from all of this, all the while having no idea who I’ll be and rather than the idea of having a solid foundation being exciting, I just get to be viciously aware it should not be happening at this time in my life. That I’m all out of order, because I get to live seeing that confusion and loneliness on my children’s faces. They’ve had to fashion selves too, in the absence of me.

What’s normal and what isn’t during this time ? How do I relate? What’s safe and what isn’t? What’s right and what’s wrong? Chaos and anxiety.

These days my strategy is finding calm and soothing from inside myself. Finding the impossible.

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What Kind of Writer and Life will Emerge from All of This….

All the intellectualizing falls away and only I emerge. A singular woman with simple details and a complex set of coping strategies.

Life is simple right now. I sit on my couch and marvel at how on fire my mind was and how on edge all of my senses were a mere year ago today.

Today I watched Bourne Identity, with my son, after clients. I ate comforting fall type food. I stayed comfortable, and I napped hard. Hard deep sleep. I browsed hotels for the girls and I since the air bnb cancelled, annoying, but not life altering. Something better must be out there.

I sift and waft through memories, but no longer do I feel the battles and emotions of life and death. What is this variety of living. This might be my heaven, even in the absence of all I thought I wanted.

Utter groundlessness. Only moments of impact. I am just calm. There is nothing else. When I’m not calm, I’m really not calm. I’m a triggered frantic wild primal animal. Thankfully I am rarely that anymore. Life doesn’t burn as bright either, however it’s settling into something real, something spherical, no jagged edges. Something wholesome and good.

An assassin of the senses who is finally allowed to retire. “It’s over”. What is it? Possibility? Is that dead? No! But all possibilities thats are not healthy and transparent and what you see is what you get. All of that is over.

I’m also reading, because of course I am, a book called Every day. And a part I just read inspired this post. “I have to decide the importance of each and every memory. I only remember a handful of people, and in order to do that, I have to hold tight, because the only repetition available- the only way I am going to see them again – is if I conjure them in my mind. “

“I choose what to remember, and I am choosing Rhiannon. Again and again, I am choosing her, I am conjuring her, because to let go for an instant will allow her to disappear. The same song that we heard in Justin’s car comes on – and if only I could, I’d make a deal with God….”

“I feel the universe is telling me something. And it doesn’t even matter if it’s true or not. What matters is that I feel it, and believe it. The enormity rises within me. The universe nods along to the songs.”

In some ways I feel like I’m office space that I have been hypnotized. I just walk around dazed wondering what to do next. Unable to get extremely stressed about details, and also unable to feel intensely good either.

I look out over the landscape of my life, At everything I’ve conquered, every possible ending beginning and everything in between.

I live in the present now, which means I live in moments rather than in stories. I look around most of the time and can’t even believe the possibilities or that this is my home and I have the means to make any decisions. I forget that when I become instinctively overwhelmed from old programming. When I forget that I have stability and options.

I’m working on refinancing this home: I can do that now. I’m looking at the possibilities more than the devastation and somehow that doesn’t feel real. I must be missing something. This is all mine. I created it and it’s stable. If I need a new refrigerator I can pay for it in full. I don’t need to take out a line of credit and wonder how I’ll pay the bill.

I must be missing something. I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it probably will, it just won’t be what I think. It won’t be what’s on the radar and that’s scary.

Deep breath, and one at a time.

What unforeseen thing will happen that is unimaginable. It isn’t possible that fairy tales exist, only moments, and I’ve already had so many. Could things actually get good beyond my wildest dreams, as I do.

If you had seen what I came from. I never imagined I’d have all these adult choices to make, or that I’d even live this long. Now my overwhelm is from abundance and not scarcity.

Now I can what if over all the choices and no one to bounce it off of. Why is it so impossible to believe I’ll do a great job, beyond great even.

I’m getting sleepy now. I didn’t expect that because I napped. I’m so tired lately. I do need to move my body and get some energy, that’s highly out of whack right now, but I will.

I have this beautiful home, these beautiful children, and this whole world, and life says that could change at any time. I can’t be too fragile for difficult circumstances, however I can also still believe in dreams.

I think of the things people regret, and I’m listening to that in the Midnight Library, and of course it’s having me take inventory. I realize in my life there’s very little to regret. I was so lost in all of that. I’ve made mistakes, I have issues yes, but nothing so much worse than anyone else.

In my 40 years I’ve become a mother, on that first day, those first days, and every day after. I didn’t wait for perfect conditions. And for better or for worse I’ve left a legacy. I’d like to think better. I’ve gone after a meaningful career and found my way to something I love doing, and it’s in no way over. I can still do so much with it. And love I’ve worked as hard as any human ever has to crack that code, with all my attachment wounds.

I’ve done therapy. I’ve lived in many different states. I’ve met people. I’ve taken risks. I’ve tried and failed at many things, and succeeded as well. If I were to get that phone call tomorrow, no portion of my live is unlived. Nothing has stopped me:

The rest of this is literally just getting to choose what I want and having that choice and being capable to make it for the right reasons and in the right ways.

Everyone is all strapped in tightly together and come what may….

Come what may.

There isn’t a single stone of my soul unturned. I am not afraid. I have comforts. I am not dying any longer burning alive in fear alone in this over sized bed. I can go to bed at night and be comfortable. Don’t get my wrong it’s not my preference, but I also don’t need to abandon any parts of my soul to go after what I want.

Empowering.

I went back and got all my childhood pieces and United them, and I don’t need anyone to understand this journey, because the right people already do.

Watch me live now…. My life is beautiful. I burn off insecurity by the second. There is nothing left to fear but fear itself, which sucks the joy out of life.

💜

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Committed to Creating the Story, not Believing Everything my Mind can Come up With.

Don’t believe everything you think.

Emerging…. Becoming….. belonging …..

I saw my energy healer Julie in her new home yesterday. The drive was nice other than the nausea that has been plaguing me. My crohns is not wonderful right now. In October we shall get an inside look on that. My favorite. Colonoscopy number six. Is that like mambo number five? Honestly I’m so much more surrendered to navigating this disease and able to honor my path with it.

I loved the old healing space so it was pleasant to not even notice, now that I’m thinking about it, the difference, because it truly is about the person and the work. I’m less about the space although it’s nice to make it homey. The work happens through the person.

I am reflecting on my first energy healing and how rabid and wild running my mind was. I could barely sit still and when my body was, my mind was racing. A mine field of disaster ridden and frantically paced thinking. Brain in overdrive. I am so very grateful to be healing and have it be so different now.

It’s nice to find myself ahead of my own game. I had shared with her some older wounds I had really already worked through, but I was afraid as always I hadn’t. It was so lovely for that to be reflected in the table work. Holy shit I can relax now and I can receive. I went to be loved and nurtured and I could not ask for more support. We find our tribe. Whether or not we start out with them, we can find them. It takes a courageous and pure heart though. At least in my experience.

The most important thing Julie said to me was that I am committed. How do I not see this about myself, just as my piano teacher said I was consistent (until I wasn’t). I haven’t been able to touch the piano, I was so lost in the darkness. But I’m ready soon to keep going with that.

I am thinking now of the past four years in the bath recovering my self from the depths. How that’s what it took to access me, that much quiet, warmth, security, etc. 4-5 years in the tub rebirthing myself. My baths are much less frequent because they are now a joy, then they were a necessity. Should I not be lost in the depths of my own suffering.

Over the past year my therapist reminds me that I’m all in…. Dedicated to my work and clients. When I’m afraid all the time I’m doing something wrong or I’ll do something bad. No, bad things happened to me repeatedly most of my life, and I’ve taken those and used them to become my most authentic self.

The tragedy truly was never seeing the reflection of what this life has created. Which is a loving human being who is always spreading knowledge and love. Generous with knowledge and love. I could never see myself at all really, let alone well, and in that dark and triggered space is where true hell exists.

It isn’t the battle of good and evil outside of us that needs contending with, it’s the inside one. What we will believe about our character and capabilities, the reason for things, and the security of our gifts within the world.

Heaven or hell truly is a state of mind, not a state of being. This however is no easy task to reconcile with. But how how the lost will ask. I am the lost too, so I know.

Heaven for me is a moment when I connect with my children, a moment when I see the beauty in these things and in myself. Heaven is the food that has been made with love, and or shared with loved ones.

Hell is being exiled from the beauty of oneself, by a shattered perception, a lost identity or sense of meaning. Hell is judgment, fear, misunderstanding, hate…. Hell is a separation from our divinity. Divine purpose.

I am the fallen and the risen. I am me and I am you. We are all one.

Heaven is a pot of warm soup, the house smelling nice. Making someone’s cold feel warm again. Heaven is being held by someone who loves you, and being held can be so many things. Being listened to, understood, shown up for, loved consistently with great care. And even to be fought with, if both parties are fighting to understand the other and fairly.

Heaven is watching my kids learn the world in a way that isn’t filled with terror. Belinda Carlisle has it right 😉 oooo heaven is a place on earth.

Heaven is the trees in my backyard in bloom, it is my cozy office where people show me the parts of them that are hurting, and also share their successes as well.

I have created heaven on earth in the form of my life. I’m fortunate enough to have crawled my way out of hell enough times to be able to appreciate it, and that makes all the difference.

I know I will not occupy this space for long. The wide open expanse of this peacefulness. Not because I can’t, but because my mission is learning. I enjoy it. Now don’t get me wrong suffering does not need to be inherent in that process, however realistic expectations are important. That natural ebb and flows of the tides of a life where the emotions are in tact and have not been abandoned.

I’m excited to see what work is able to open up in me as a result of my commitment. My studying and perseverance, and even more excited to tackle the rest of this living securely attached to my true self.

I am so far from the deep pathological loneliness that has plagued me most of my life. I desperately wanted to cling to my suffering story to validate my existence. What I learn from Julie is I don’t need to validate something in that way.

I am already divine.

I vow to commit to joy in my life rather than suffering and I understand the undertaking that this is.

Watch me work 😉

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The Greatest Force on Earth

Unhealthy love claims lives, healthy love saves them…..

I have always believed in the power of love, and this portion of my life has been learning the limits of it, and of my capacity for enduring what should never be endured.

This lesson has been one of the hardest and one of the greatest. Coming to terms with myself in a fair and balanced way while also understanding what happened to me in the past and in the present.

I am coming to believe our psyches literally prevent us from accepting the existence of certain things. Perhaps that is what mythology has derived from, the human yearning to make sense of an experience.

Knowledge is power. It eventually can put the pieces back together of something broken. If that broken thing is a story, then we can see either the devastation or the transformation of a human being.

So what makes the difference?! The intention behind it. The true intention not the stated one. Someone once told me we judge other people on their actions and ourselves on our intentions. The very definition of manipulation I suppose.

To simplify the complexity: does the person care about the well being of another, and to what extent and under what circumstances…. Wait see even I’m doing it. No Christina. Does the person care about the well being of another ?

We care as much as we are capable of based on what we have been taught, our values, and a complicated elixir of our innate temperament mixed in.

Where things can go really really poorly is when it’s obvious the impact you’re having is negative and not only do you keep doing, but you’re gaining supply from it all while continuing to shout poor you.

This is the lowest of the low. And when a person high in empathy consistently identifies emotionally with that persons wounded parts (because of their own), and forgets the ways they are different, the troubles arise.

One exploits with no genuine desire to follow through correcting their behavior so it no longer harms. The other painfully devoid of support and resources keeps trying to get out of the issue by using the same thinking that started it and failing.

The victor is the person who stays in the fire of their own mistakes long enough for it to change them.

My programming is immense. My coping mechanisms are survivalist in so many ways, however I can finally be able to see who I actually am, from seeing who I am not.

I’m thinking of Stephen King a lot lately and wondering what motivated him to attempt to capture the dark sides of humanity and also the hope, in his landscapes and characters. What happened to that man? Who was he really ? He sublimated and I’m attempting to do the same.

I tried to protect my kids from anything I could become from scarcity and survival instincts by keeping them with family systems that felt safe, however my self was not able to develop. It was frozen somewhere on ice. And now I’m so out of chronological order and so aware, that shame threatens my forever separation from others.

So hyper sensitive to threat and criticism and then feeling awkward and lonely, the perfect food for a predator. And who looks crazy?! The victim that’s who. Driven to the point of insanity purposely. The victim looks crazy.

I’ve never been able to accept what happened to me then or now, because it makes me feel like it’s me. That is what abuse does. People incapable of loving in a healthy manner perpetuate suffering that is almost incomprehensible to the human psyche.

We, including doctors, counselors, people in privilege and power, don’t want to believe it when it’s right in front of our face.

Abuse

So we tell stories. And we learn about character and behavior through story that we hope a man sets forward in motion those qualities in him that are protective and virtuous in nature.

If anything I’m so protective that sometimes ends up harmful because I’m easily triggered and who to protect in what way or moment can become very overwhelming for me, and as a result of that overwhelm I act out of character and then doubt myself.

This whole process is clearing. Along with it the digestive issues, headaches, tight muscles, nausea and nauseating levels of self doubt and low self worth.

The not enough of it all. That season in my life is over. There will always be scars, but never again will I abandon my own knowing to feel loved in a moment, while not even being known let alone loved.

I didn’t think it could happen to me again….. I didn’t think it actually did the first time, the abuse.

I sound crazy right ?!

I assure you that I am not and I am. A lifetime of neglect and poisonous manipulation will make anyone crazy.

Google the symptoms of complex ptsd for a very good description of what it feels like to be “crazy”.

Do you know what crazy actually is to me? Someone who doesn’t listen to someone they love when the person says “this is hurting me”.

I vow to always listen to myself. I wanted marriage vows to save me from myself and the life I had. That security of belonging. Instead I just keep becoming visible to myself in a realistic light. My light and my dark, and I assure you all of it is enough and that I’ve had enough abuse for a lifetime.

What heals is holding myself accountable to listening and being gentle with those I love and continuing to invest in healing and believing in myself.

Enough. I am enough and I’ve had enough ….. enough ..

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Grief Will Drag You to The Depths of Who You Really Are…..

I’ve been hiding and it’s time I come out. I’ve been hiding how pain I’ve been in and how hard my life has been for me from everyone, because I thought if I did that I’d have a better chance at being loved.

People don’t want someone who is set so far back with themselves, people want people who are strong and confident and ENOUGH, which was the theme of my EMDR this morning.

I’ve proved every thought or fear I’ve had wrong about myself over and over, and yet I never get to benefit from my own warmth and love. I’m kept out in the cold from me. Always pressing my nose on the glass peering in at the warm family events.

And ironically enough my devastation would begin at one such an event. The complicating elixir of feeling like I could belong and hold my head high without being numb or shaking with anxiety. Dear Evan Hansen. We will get to that later. I was excited to be out in the world belonging, but where and to whom did I belong and why?

This is the level of lost I’ve been at for going on three years now. And I committed to the unthinkable which has been staying with and in my pain to dig myself out. Even writing those words I begin to cry hard. A hard guttural wild animal cry with frantic panicky eyes.

The things Evan Hansen did to try to become visible. Does anybody see me or hear me? And the answer was no. I became so effective at being seen as I needed to be to obtain love and affection. And my God if I never shame myself again for how I’ve needed to save myself.

This is the commitment I need to become fierce about. To repairing this constant demon of not enough (or worse bad and toxic) that is so deeply entrenched in my programming it’s threatening to squeeze the life out of me. I’m stripped to the bare bones of just who I am to lean on, and not what I do. What I do to fix it, what I do to understand.

I’ll get a breath and then get dragged back down to the bottom of the ocean with an anvil on my foot and drowning over and over again. Sputtering fighting for oxygen, every day of my life unless I became part of someone else’s family which always temporarily numbed the pain and made me feel safe and loved. But that could never be sustained because I was empty of myself. There was no self left that I could see. There were too many words inside my head that conflicted and too many emotions flashbacks.

I can’t get any oxygen. Help me.

I’ve been saying help me so often now, and it brings up shame every single time and more waves of unworthiness. Will this battle ever come to an end, or will these memories, thoughts, and genuine body harm and tired take my life along with my soul.

I’ve been battling for my life and the worst part about that is I don’t look like someone who is battling for their life. There are no scars that can be seen, no marks. This is why we teach visibility by example and why we protect.

Dear Evan Hansen…. I am you. That scared lonely child, who still tried to fight to be seen and then felt bad about that too. For shouting or crying because I learned to gaslight myself out of my own reality to try and survive with my mental faculties.

I think of Viktor Frankl here and why I connected so much with that paper on his book in grad school, and why I have my tattoo and why it means so much to me. He kept his by having meaning, and that meaning was the love he derived from his partner, that’s what he held onto, it was love.

The only meaning I could get in my childhood was acts of service, doing. That’s the only way I got attention of any variety and usually that was to obtain more of what I had to offer. It was not to protect, invest, and be interested in me just for the sake of being so, for the joy.

The purgatory I’ve been has been wanting to be the parent I didn’t have and to be able to do that for my children and trying every way known to man to achieve that. I knew I felt the most alive in the things I’d been so deprived of. So I tried for love.

And then I felt selfish and was told as much and became my mother who also wanted love, but she didn’t give it either, and I do. I am not my mother.

I am not her.

Most days I don’t think I’ll come out of this alive, that is my truth right now. Most days it feels like too much work to breathe. This trauma work while having no love needs met or secure family system and feeling horrible I’m not only not offering that to my children, but I’m not able to access it in myself well going through this. I’m all locked down and sick.

This illness of being lost to oneself and not having much in the way of relief is deadly. It’s a deadly game. I can’t digest food and my head feels as if it will explode. For so long the things I did to comfort were also harmful and I’m aware. I’m viciously aware. I can’t get out I’m trapped in here help me.

The more I say help me and the more I allow myself to be loved only in the safe ways I need to be that the universe constantly puts in my path, healing tries to take hold. And my nasty worn out mind tries to swat it away, and I crumble.

I can only hope that this experience leaves me in such a heap that I never forget I don’t know what someone else is going through and I become kind by design even though life has not handled me gently. The warrior of the light.

All of the ways I was responsible and disciplined long before I ever should have been eroded the very thing I would need in adulthood to sustain the love I so badly desired and deserved.

And this latest period watching my children shout at me to figure it out mom, we need you, except they don’t say that as teens, they say I hate you and you’re going to end up cold and alone because you’re so difficult to deal with. What I’ve been dealing with has been unbearably difficult and I’ve been primarily alone in it. Too ashamed to get any help or even visibility because I chose this right ?

Every time its my fault. Wired for abuse return to abuse. Every time its my fault. And the tape begins you’re selfish, you’re your mother, you’re….. and it breaks my spirit, soul, and heart. Never mind that happening from the outside I’m adept at always doing it from the inside. I could really go for a good coma right now. Yes Moira.

And then when the person that you love tells you in so many ways this is your fault, that’s a rock bottom that knows no bounds. And when you identify with their wounds, but miss all the differences, and you are betrayed and betray yourself and internalize more shame, it’s easy to get a full understanding on how people get to the point where they take their lives.

That will never be my path because it just is not. Not because I’m better than anyone who has. I am not. No more or less just different. If I don’t continue to make meaning out of this suffering by learning my story and then sharing it so others can get the words to heal, that being the healing, it will have been for nothing.

It’s not in me to give up, and I hope I passed that along to my children. I just need to figure out right now how to keep myself full of love and safe, and stay away from anything that is not that.

For my beginning today I reached out to my energy healer and my first step is to go see her, and what I will say is I need your love and support. I have no thinking left. I’m not there to think w her or come up with solutions. The solution is love. And I’m going to be it, and ask for it, and work on recovering.

This is what it looks like to grieve a childhood you never had, and both parents, and a broken and confused reality and scattered mind you have to live with. To grieve all the potential of who you could or would have been with the right ingredients.

This is messy, grimy, slippery, dirty, painful grief. I am going through these things, but I am not these things.

I am enough

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Stubbornly Stuck in Love with Everyone Except Me

I am stubborn when I love. This may just be my greatest downfall, and my most grace filled salvation all wrapped into one. I am stubborn in love, for love, about love. I am stuck in love with everyone but myself, the constant agitating wool sweater of my current existence.

The necessity for self love and identity has not only entered the race, but it’s pulling just a millisecond in front ….

Is it winning the race ? Do I even want to be in it!? Sometimes winning is not playing at all. I’m not playing very often these days, but I’m trying to learn how.

Today is a nausea day, a pit in my stomach day. Then the pressure and shame of another beautiful day wasted and struggling in these chains of feeling I’m responsible for this or it’s my fault or I could understand it, or if I could understand it….

That’s what not letting go looks like. Did I mention that I’m stubborn and fierce and relentless, much like my grief right now, they are identical twins fighting for some aspect of separate identity.

Everything is uphill. Breathing is a battle. I’m am survived by the love of my friends and people who see me. That’s the only thing keeping me afloat at the moment. They help piece together the losses and remind me why I’m feeling this way.

I’m starting to scare myself, and them too I know. It feels like it won’t end, and certainly like it won’t end well. An important person in my life had a parent who was loving and good and she had a stroke. That person begged for it to be over, for “the end”, and I would so often tell them they won’t know how they will feel when it actually ends, it may not be what they expect, and to try and be present.

I feel like a fraud thinking about that now. The privileged one who has not endured such a thing sharing well meaning comforts so I can feel meaningful.

Is any of it meaningful? Is any of it “made a difference to that one” starfish stories ? Does any of it really matter at all. The prince, the rose, the fox? Or is everything just whatever story we tell in a moment and nothing more.

Faithless and unfaithful and lost…..

Nothing stops this pain. There is no fantasy to rely on no knight in shining armor. I am tasked with saving myself over and over, and I thought that would be over by now. I had expectations.

I had a dream, lots of them. And now those are dead and I’m petulant about making any new dreams. Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face Christina, that’s not who you are. You know better and you know why.

My knowing is in tact. It might be the only part of me that is.

The rest of me is just a bag of bones right now. (My favorite Stephen King novel)….. I rattle and haunt the halls of my broken home carrying around my bleeding heart. Maybe they will make a museum out of this house, a funhouse of terror, the place of a future tragedy….

It must be nearing October with all this Halloween talk.

My dreams have turned to nightmares. I don’t sleep. It’s fitful and violent. EMDR is brutal.

I am lost and ironically reading All is Not Lost. Leslie Charles, one of the first author speakers that I looked up to. Two of my favorite pieces of art work that are now in my only office, were made my students at West Conn for the survivors of homicide conference. If that isn’t dark ….

What about the survivors whose souls were stolen in childhood, due to repeated terror and an utter lack of capability. Survivors whose were sentenced to a lifetime of extreme struggle without their consent, and then shamed for the bizarre ways they choose to save themselves and self destruct over and over.

Purgatory is a place the living inhabit, not anything to fear in death.

Death would be peaceful compared to this. Don’t worry I’ll always return to the All is Not Lost camp….. for right now however I’m Six Feet Under.

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Casi Sielo: I Was Blind but Now I See….

“Oh thinking about the younger years….” a little Bryan Adams this morning. Appropriate…

I’m in a blog writing mood this morning. Now that I feel alive after another death. Which was probably just raging hormones. Isn’t that supposed to stop at some point? Let’s play is it trauma, depression, grief, or hormones. Do all 40 somethings play this or just ones with significant trauma history? I’d like to speak to the person in charge please. Of the Universe ? Yes exactly. Always take it straight to the top.

I guess I’m a little punchy this morning. That makes sense. Last night was the first satisfying night of sleep I’ve had in what feels like forever, but in reality is about a month now. A month can sometimes feel like a year.

Yesterday was one of those days where I felt like a lead block and numb and like it was too much work to breathe. I woke up like that. And just kept thinking this feels like dying to be that low. I’ve been scary low lately. I’m lucky to be aware enough to know this is truly un-becoming. Lol not in the sense of not attractive as my father would have used that phrase, what is and isn’t becoming of a lady. Vomit. But unbecoming in the Paulo Coehlo sense.

Nobody warns you how truly excruciating this process is. Burning off old patterns and coping mechanisms and re wiring. Everyone outside of me keeps saying “I’m doing the work”, for me it just feels like dying of terror over and over and beginning a new day to do it again. Doesn’t that sound like fun guys? Now I know why the “enlightened” are so popular, and also why not many embark on this.

Listen I’m no guru or saint, most days I feel like a lost soul, though everyone tells me I’m not. I was for most of my life. Once was lost and now I’m found, …. Amazing Grace. Holy shit (lol) now I understand that song I heard a million times in childhood. Religion another story to comfort our weary souls.

Funny I should mention comfort. I’ve lived my entire 40 years begging and striving for just that. And my whole life feeling unsafe and scrambling for security in any shelter possible. Anything that could bring my nervous system relief and then I’d try and try to maintain it, having none of the knowledge or tools to do so.

I’m not a victim I’ve hurt people along the way. There’s hurt that’s been burning inside of me that I didn’t ask for. This is trauma folks. People often judge and shame, too much, too sensitive, too intense. What they never did was understand and connect the dots to why someone is being the way they are. That simple inquisitive nature inside of me has saved my soul, and I’d like to think the sharing of this knowledge has and will save others.

Sound dramatic? Yes it is. It doesn’t sound dramatic it is. If you could see it on a screen you might understand a little better. I used to say all the time I wish I could just show movie clips of my life, because I desired to be understood.

The thing about trauma is you have to be responsible for something you never asked for, for the rest of your life. You have to carry it whether you want to or not. And most trauma survivors spend their life running for it, for shelter, punching the air, crawling underneath something and hiding, or frozen and staring into space, imagining fantasies of grandeur and someone doing nice things for them or coming along and offering support and comfort.

I had a client say to me the other day that they know they won’t reach the potential they would have without this “brain damage”. And my heart broke. And as I watch myself as a counselor I scramble to fix it, but what I did on the way home was think how I don’t want to jump so quickly to do this or do that, I want to truly keep holding space and validating. You’re right and you deserve to be as angry and sad as you want about that without anyone giving you directions how to fix it.

They are correct their potential has been changed and it often feels an uphill battle. The only thing I would say is you don’t want to keep a story you don’t want to be shackled by. I can’t buy that my life will be less meaningful or I won’t reach a full anything and rather I choose to believe it is significantly changed by my trauma, but I refuse to let myself be lessened by it. And I acknowledge that it tortures me daily.

A tortured meaningful existence huh? Did I not read the contract? of course I didn’t I was never afforded the privilege to concentrate long enough.

So here I am and I really how much over the last couple of years I’ve censored myself. How much shame has kept me from truly bringing my story to the table. And in the coming time I’m not going to do that. I will get comfortable with my uncomfortable feelings and stay in my truth and my course, and burn off shame and put down the burden of any terrible stories I can tell about me, for how I’ve tried to survive.

I never intended anyone harm by rushing for comfort, and each person is responsible for their own choices. AND I’m sorry more than can be seen from the outside for pain that was caused from the coping mechanisms that came from my trauma. From me having been separated from any sense of self in childhood. I need to own and stand proud in this story and hold my ground.

I’ve been like a wild frantic animal for all the years of my life and keeping all of that tame for everyone else so I can still try at a life and try to love. I didn’t even expect to be loved. I don’t ever expect it. Why would I? I expected myself to work really hard at love, and believed that was the way.

But I couldn’t work really hard at everything all at once, and I couldn’t have this without that and I scrambled and scrambled. I’m egg at this point.

And now I am still and forging a relationship with myself that refuses to be anything but healthy no matter how tiring, boring, etc, that is.

This is me….

So yesterday I moved my therapy appointment to make sure I got to my daughters soccer game. They are on varsity which means they often don’t get to play. Which breaks my heart for them, but hopefully they know they are an equally important part of the team. I hope they get their shot soon. We won 3-1 against North Haven yesterday.

I arrived early to the game. I was numb and lead and could barely keep my eyes open. So despite the late of it all I went into Starbucks. It’s a place I still love. There was a time I couldn’t go in there, but I’ve returned to allowing love, as I have the solid trust I’ll never allow anything to let me betray myself.

I’m allowing all the love I feel for all of the people in my whole story. Anything else is manipulation and I’m not doing that to feel better or stronger or for any other reason.

So in the calm waters of this new phase of grief I bought myself a tall half sweet caramel machiato which I thoroughly enjoyed sipping while talking to a soccer mom from way back, and a LB of 2021 Casi Sielo. Which means “almost heaven”…. I think I’ll take that as a sign of the direction I’m going. I drank a little black, a learned behavior, the student is also sometimes the teacher. And I allowed myself a moment of sadness that I had no one purchase this for me, and also joy that I can enjoy buying it myself and wafting through the memories old and new.

And that in my life there is no need to deny any part of my story, or to manipulate myself or anyone else. That my friends is freedom.

I allowed my Apple Watch to flash me pictures I hadn’t been able to look at in a long time. I took screen shots. I sipped my warm life giving beverage and I burned off some more shame.

Now I am organizing my life, finding my priorities, planning vacations with my children and feeling like I’m safe to do so. I believe I’m capable of these things, things I thought I couldn’t do without another human being. Because I never felt safe. Imagine spending 40 years not feeling safe?! Imagine what that does to a person. So I’m not going to be ashamed for it any longer.

I’m so proud of myself for staying in this pain long enough to find the truth of who I am, what I need, and what I want, and never to settle for anything less than my entire story as is without shame.

This is me…. 💜

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Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow, but the Show Must Go On….

How is it possible saying goodbye to an office is like saying goodbye to a lover? It’s saying good bye to a time, to a place, to a different self, and to a thousand memories. I became a counselor in this space. This is a second home to me. A refuge. I thought I would be ok, but now that I’m actually doing it I am overcome with emotions.

I don’t know if I can…. Perhaps I’ll just keep it forever. Eccentric. Why does it feel like ripping off my limbs? Nothing about this is ok. I had so many dreams for this office. So many big dreams. So many dreams in general. I couldn’t have bargained for all the changes I’ve made, and that have been made for me. For how this all feels, the changes it has made in me.

Writing in this office cuts through my insides like a cold blade. My guts wrench. I spent the first half of my life being able to Men in Black shiny thing myself (erase my memory) and begin over and over. And now my past haunts me daily. I sleep terrible and throughout my life that hasn’t been an issue since I was little.

I just want to run out of this space, leave everything and never come in it again. How does anyone do this grief thing. I was in this office when we found out we lost the second identical twin boy. We were supposed to graduate to the regular doctor that week. What the actual fuck. Searing hot. Scars burning. I found out over a screen with an adolescent in my waiting room: I thought I was doing the right thing as a provider. Only appointment I ever missed. It doesn’t matter now.

What matters is how fresh all of the pain is and the only difference is it doesn’t drag me under anymore, or to versions of myself I don’t like. I’m learning grace.

I have thousands of memories in this office, some burn brighter than others, all of them legitimate and a huge piece of my history. I am aching. My heart is aching.

I had hairapy this morning. It’s beautiful out. I have hope in my heart. But one more goodbye? I don’t know if I can handle one more goodbye. Almost six years this relationship with this space and it’s time to let go.

I am taking a vacation in October, a whole week, just me. I am so happy about that. I have needed this for so long. I’m finally making a home within myself. It does get better. All of the stinging is still there, but I can breathe again in so many ways. Lean into the sharp edges.

I have no idea what the rest of my life will look like and that’s oddly comforting as the terror releases it’s grip on me.

I finished Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids last night. I finish things now. I just keep getting back up after I get knocked down. The second sentence is old, the one before it new.

I stay.

I can’t be here anymore with this legal pad and pen staring at me. I’m going to throw up. Please …..

I remember every second of every moment in this office. Every single one. I can replay them like some fucked up episode of black mirror. The blessing and the curse of high sensitivity and a nearly photographic memory, never mind sensory memory. I can close my eyes and always access all of it.

My eyes are burning hot and wet, the tears trickle and drip. Ok no more for now. I’ll come back to this later. I don’t want to miss Chip’s visit.

I want to do fall things. To watch Hocus Pocus and Beetlejuice and to go to ciderys. It’s later and I’m utterly exhausted. I’m going back in forth between reading The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz, and writing in my journal.

I’m very sleepy and deciding if I have enough time to nap before picking up my curbside order at Bj’s and making dinner with twin A.

This day couldn’t be any more beautiful. The wind is gently teasing the leaves on the trees and they are rustling with joy. Dancing and talking to one another happily. They are good company. This house continues to become a home, not unlike how I continue to become a human. Visible to myself, friend even.

Slow and steady wins the race. I’m glad I’m no longer in the rat race.

My new ink is in the itchy phase on my elbow it’s bending and driving me nuts. I relocated my office lamps to my bedroom, well one for now, I’ll need to make another trip. So hoping that feels a little more homey. I brought some of my artwork home as well. Bittersweet.

My office is a mess currently so maybe I’ll spend some time on straightening that. So many projects. One at a time and just finding joy in them is the goal versus became overwhelmed and being down a rabbit hole of anxiety. No point in that.

Everything is quiet these days, well besides the teenagers. I’ve never been so still. It’s so peaceful and so lonely. But nothing at all feels rushed or chaotic and for that I am grateful in my bones.

I’ve been doing little outings and day trips. Last night I had dinner at Gusto in Milford. I had never been before. Sal my piano teacher played there and the staff was so great. My server was so nice. I was able to be at peace by myself. I didn’t look around much at all I don’t have the gathering of families together. I thought of the opportunity this was to be with my thoughts and that there will be plenty of time for gatherings and I have plenty of warm and loving connections.

My next outing I want to do is to go to Bad Seed Cidery, it’s on Pancake Hollow rd in Highland NY, nearly 2 hours away.

I added a couple more Stephen King books to my collection from used bookstores. I will spend time with me until and then after because, I enjoy my own company. There’s so many things to do and see and I never realized it before. I was completely blacked out.

Lately I’ve been spending time with my neighbor. She has a new puppy and she’s so cuddly and cute and I don’t have to be responsible for her. Just two women; each alone, living in these giant houses next to one another. She’s so strong. I admire her tremendously. We enjoy one another’s company. And isn’t that what it’s all about anyway.

I’m between lives and selves right now and it’s a strange but not unhappy place to be. My mind continues to wander in and out of the many memories and stories of the past few years. I’ll just keep attempting to capture them and my journey and immortalize it via the page.

Onward….

Ps I think I’ll watch Mermaids tonight or Julie and Julia. I’m in a comfort mode, not lost in it fortunately, but it’s a lovely place to visit occasionally.

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A Counselor in Need Without Self Awareness is a Danger Indeed.

I’m watching ATypical with my oldest. We are catching him up on episodes one and two of the newest season. The kids and I watched the first few seasons, what feels like years ago. So it’s nostalgic and warm to be watching this now.

Comfort. This is a lot of my goal right now. As I learn healthier ways to do it, I realize how unhealthy some of my old coping was. This is a lot to sit with. A lot to sit with.

As life starts heating up to a boiling point I’m able now to marvel at how I take hard circumstances, criticism, etc, and use it to push me to keep making myself better at a reasonable pace. Well the whole reasonable pace thing is new 😉 as many of you know, lol. This is making me think of how I resonate with Black Widow, the new movie. Pain only makes you stronger, it can, but it can also make you crazy if you can’t make sense of it. If there is no structure that is safe to heal within. My current safe healing structure is friends who know me when I’m lost to myself and a therapist that models good boundaries and is objective and consistent. Safety. Deep breath.

I would have lost my mind long ago if not foe therapy and my own healing process with writing.

Truly an epic battle of light and dark inside of me, and I won’t give up the fight or outsource my self knowing to anyone else.

So today is my beloved Sunday. I’m too in my head and not enough into a project and moving around so I need to get out some energy in that way shortly or to do some walking. After Chip’s visit I will.

Today is filled with reflecting, writing, and reading.

Today I reflect on an unhealthy counseling relationship and the damage it has caused, and how dark things have been in our world for the last while. How to turn these crisis into opportunities for growth and bonding and using a creative approach.

Today I’m going to share with you how counseling can go wrong. It can go wrong when Clinicians are trying to juggle too much and or as a result not having continuity of sessions and making sure to validate change. If we don’t catch and validate change it doesn’t become reinforced and if it doesn’t then it won’t stay (stick).

I’m going to be working on some counseling models in the up and coming days. Well I already am, but talking about it here.

There must be grace because during Covid it has been tough for us all, however we have an ethical code to do no harm, and a responsibility to own when we have due to blind spots and our own unhealed areas.

Recently during a family counseling experience I am learning a lot more from what didn’t work than what did. I’ll give you a hint if the counselor is talking about themselves in any way that does not pertain to your counseling and enhance it, that’s a red flag. If the counselor seems to not be following and staying focused on your need etc, please share this with them so they may grow.

Counseling should always be focused on the client need and progress should be validated and followed up on. And if something in the relationship isn’t working, if the client tells you, be willing to repair. And also be self-monitoring with integrity at all times. It’s more work, but this is our responsibility to our ethical code.

Lazy counseling is damaging. Someone who is in it for the wrong reasons or past their expiration of energy to expend. It’s as bad as distracted driving. We have people’s mental well being in our hands. They come to us sick and scared. If we are not dedicated to this work for the right reasons we can inflict great harm.

I personally am taking this situation and using it to slow down and pay attention, listen better, talk less, and truly be with the client experience versus wanting to fix it to gratify ego. This is a lifetime process. It’s nice to see my clients faith and sticking with me over the years as I am imperfect and grow, but they know my heart is in the right place and that I’m always growing myself to better meet them where they are.

A client is the expert on their own lives, a clinician who is skilled, competent, and there for the right reasons will only enhance the clients own knowledge about themselves using an empathic mirror and warm guidance. It’s a difficult balance and a very challenging career. The only one for me!

Never give up. That’s my motto. And keep curiosity larger than fear. Keep moving forward. Makes me think of the movie Meet The Robinsons and the song Little Wonders. I think I’ll go have a listen….

Enjoy your Sunday…

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Warrior of the light, prisoner of my own dark.

Relax and Write…

Strengthening the Therapeutic Bond. Yalom

When Things Fall Apart.

That’s where we are now.

Things fell apart my whole life. I became the glue, at the expense of knowing who I was or what I wanted or needed. I became a machine that met the needs of others, while begging to be loved.

So it is not surprising that healthy love was a complete mystery for me and while I’ve spent lots of time trying to solve that with my own experimentation. Simultaneously I’ve been living in a manner of consistently seeking to make the pain stop.

I’d do anything to make the pain stop for a few moments. And then became shamed and shamed myself for it.

This is the cycle I’ve been living in for nearly 41 years of my life.

And the only way to make the pain stop is to acknowledge the experiences that shaped me and how that has affected the children I brought into this world. Which brings another red hot wave of searing pain.

The only time the pain really stops is when I can use it for meaning, which in my life means to serve others with the knowledge I’ve gained. And to also be less alone in those moments. To stay in my humanity, rather than falling into insanity. A tether to belonging that has become consistent, and hopefully modeling that to myself.

It hurts to become.

My work makes me enthusiastic and hopeful and useful enough to make the pain stop. But rarely if ever is anything unconditionally provided to me. I have to look to the Universe for that. Nature, which also usually feels like an enemy as it bites me and makes me burn and itch, and in its vast unknown presence I always feel in danger.

So I return to the ways I know how to make the pain stop.

While this is happening I have tried to raise my children to the very best of my ability. Always doubting in that, my ability. Why wouldn’t you doubt something you’ve never known ? Something that was only dangerous and painful.

The tears slide down my cheeks.

The self doubt is probably the most painful part, and what I have drawn into my life, what I’ve chosen to invest myself in are things that end up harming me further. Then I harm myself with my choices.

I feel an experiment in human suffering and would victimize myself if I wasn’t so damn curious and concerned with meaning. My saving graces. The light shines out of the darkness, but not very much right now.

The message is to rest. But how when you have never known it, and when there is no loving touch to soothe to sleep.

Craving and starving touch, constantly leading to choices that harm some more. Self harm. Way more than cutting. There are far worse wounds to be had.

It gets good when you do. They say. The mystical, mythical they. The generalizations of our time.

I do good and I feel good. I do bad and I feel bad. What goes up must come down. My mind spins round and round.

Suffering. Relieved by service.

Will I always be fragmented or am I becoming whole and I have no vision for this because there is no template programmed into me.?

It’s all meaningless my existence except for moments. Moments of relief is what my life has been characterized by, with a lot of chaos.

I hope one day to see myself differently.

In the wake of all of this grief hope is difficult to find at the moment. It is times like this we just stay the course.

Steady as she goes…. Becoming steady out of chaos, that is the path of the warrior.

It takes one and it makes one.

This warrior is weary ….