Tag: #lovewarrior

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Beauty is a curse, I’ve long known this

I’ve got approximately two and a half hours left of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and I’ve been savoring it. I’ll feel incomplete for a short while in its absence. I’ve been all or nothing so long, it’s nice to read it bit bit and then process and listen to music. I have a nice groove going on.

I walked to Natural Kitchen and got a bowl today. I think the tuna from there makes me a little allergic, probably some preservative they use. A major goal in the new year is to begin working with a nutritionist and allergist and really attend to my health.

Another goal is to spend very little and see if I can pay off my student loans. I’m coming up with a strategy with my financial advisor. I want to leave my children with a good financial situation and also make sure in case anything happens to me with my Crohns that I have wiggle room. So they and we are safe and don’t have additional stress.

*don’t worry I’m not leaving anytime soon, I just think that far ahead. It’s a part of me.

When did I suddenly become such an adult ?! Who knows!?

I was able to do quite a bit for those I love this year for Christmas and it’s all done. I’m usually panicking the night before. It’s pinch me unreal the things I’m able to do.

I’ve been that way most of my life though, pinching myself at things I just never could even have seen for myself. How rich my experiences have been. No corner of my life unturned and I shall continue living this way.

I wore my only human sweats today and grey under armor sweater with beanie and just felt cool ha. Feels silly to say but I did. I felt cool despite having my winter weight on, some breaking out on my face. I just don’t torture myself anymore and that feels very nice.

To not nitpick myself apart about perfection. Now if I could just continue to do that with writing.

Go easy on me baby….. appropriate.

Henri is asleep at my feet. The cat dog that she is. The little prince is cleaning up after his ugly Christmas / cookie extravaganza last night. Thankful those are few and far between, and also grateful to be able to be that house and have such a good group of kids.

I feel like Diane Lane in the end of Under the Tuscan Sun, something I want to read by the way. I’ve only seen the movie. She had felt so low at one point, like she was never going to have what she wanted and then realizes she did even though it’s completely different than she thought.

Yep my face is definitely flushing from this food. I get much less anxious about these things anymore. I go with I’ll be fine, and if I’m not I’ll know and be able to get the care I need. Not going to eat this bowl again. But I will for sure walk to places to get my food and even shopping. I love walking when I can instead of driving.

Maybe next I’ll bike everywhere and keep costs down. Anything can be an adventure. I could be happy the rest of my life walking back and forth to the library and eating a picnic lunch out in the sun with a book.

The simple things…

I just want to make sure my loved ones are safe and cared for and myself and we have experiences. That’s what I’m focused on lately, and that I make choices that are congruent with that. Yes a therapist word for sure. Shocking 😉

Writing a book lately feels like more of a when, than an if. That feels so nice. I could cry just to say it, but most important that I feel it. A sense of security and that it’s solid. If my circumstances change I still am solid. That’s taking root.

It’s my birthday tomorrow. It feels different this year somehow. I’m acknowledging it and not saying it doesn’t matter and I don’t need anything. It feels calm and safe.

In fact I need to see a show, A Strange Loop on Broadway and the tree and have a nice dinner in the city with my loved ones. I’m not anxious. Well maybe a little. About not finding a bathroom or anything that can happen, but the excitement outweighs. Mmmm.

I have more than I need. I can begin thinking about what I can do to give to my community and to my field and all of it.

I have so much more to write maybe today will be a twofer or tomorrow morning I’ll take some time for me to contemplate the brink of my forty second trip around the Sun.

I was going to talk about Evelyn’s sixth husband because that’s where I am. And how I feel for people so beautiful they get trapped in the upkeep of it all, it’s one thing to enjoy taking care of yourself, pressure however is quite another.

Ok so I wrote this a couple of days ago and didn’t post. It’s more an update than passion ridden prose. A theme I suppose. I have therapy now on Christmas Eve eve. Then walking and family time. I anticipate a lot of writing as I am present and coming to the end of Evelyn’s story.

And still well at the beginning of mine 💜

Ps and in true Christina fashion I didn’t talk about the title subject much at all. Stay tuned it will come along somewhere…. Soon. I think. Maybe

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Fearless Love…. Fierce Recovery. Finding Faith.

I’m having a rainy morning walk. I love it. I feel alive.

Found The Little Prince’s Rose this morning

I had a scary episode last night. I’ve had very little focus on any health anxiety and very few symptoms. But last night in a therapy session I was talking about my mom, and my trauma. My heart started to feel like it was stopping and flipping over, but for much longer than just one beat.

So I looked at my heart rate, it was 114 bpm. I took a few deep breaths and it immediately went to 70. My usual is a fib or palpitations but this was different. I consulted “the google” I like to call it this because it makes me feel my actual age and not my chronological one, which is around 90 years or so.

The Google says it was an SVT, maybe of course as neither of us have a PhD. I’m so grateful for no longer going down rabbit holes, but I also want to find the line of not ignoring something serious either. Sigh.

What’s indisputable is how trauma has ravaged my body. I’m angry. I’m angry!

Anger can be restorative. It restores our boundaries. It’s not to be dismissed as merely a negative emotion. A good lesson from The Language of Emotions and this past couple of years.

So I’m thinking about that girl that was plagued with terror and health symptoms. About how I understand now that’s what my body thought it had to do to get any needs met. Until it didn’t make any sense and I became discredited in my health anxiety, and had to figure out how to internalize less and ground more. Find new ways to meet my need, that didn’t require me to be sick.

This morning I was talking about how once upon a time I loved a little girl with my whole heart. That happening so naturally changed something in me. It was the beginning of some important lessons in love.

Children really are our greatest teachers.

Listening to my guy Teddy, sing about find something you can hold on to, find someone who will be there for you, because that’s all that really matters in the end. It’s hard to tell the truth when you lie to yourself, always give too much of yourself to someone else…..

Yes Teddy! That’s all that really matters in the end….

I feel alive and awake. Something that used to be a rare moment that often led me to dark places when I didn’t understand the full picture.

Now I take the time to do that. You take and make time, you don’t find it.

In my head my memoir is taking shape, as I read more, I hear more hints and glimmers of what my story will look like on the page. And why it’s important that I tell it. Made a difference to that one.

And mostly for my children because my story is also their story. A Life Itself reference.

Should I do another lap? I want to it feels so good, but it’s wet and cold, which isn’t bothering me, but I don’t need to increase my odds of getting sick. They are already high.

I need breakfast. I don’t want to interrupt this flow. Story of my life, except now I don’t drown in fear it won’t all be there when I need it.

My shattered and scattered mind. I see it more and more clearly every day. S. King would have suggested one less more there. Oh I also need to finish his book too.

I’m standing on my porch remembering. Remembering the pain all the times I tried to yell to be seen. All the days I sat here and cried and felt deeply. All the friends who were here to soothe. All the visits with my stand in father bringing groceries and unconditional consistency. I doubt he will ever know the depths of what he has meant to my story.

The difference between life and soul death is a fine line. I’ve walked it many years.

Love never goes anywhere…. It always exists as do all the moments. That’s what I’ve learned. You keep them, download them. It can be bitter sweet you aren’t able to make more, but we are all responsible for our choices.

I’m listening to the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and I am captured. My full attention. And let’s be honest we all know how rare that is. I’m laughing heartily on my front porch. We are friends now.

I remember an old post about can you fall in love with a house. And the answer is yes, but that girl at that time knew very little about real love. Only an idea of love. Trapped in a coping mechanism that required creating fantasies and then attempting to occupy them.

Over and over I rode that haunted roller coaster.

Now I just sit here and observe, and I DECIDE what I absorb and what I don’t let it.

I was looking in an old journal of mine, I had written those letters large DECIDE. I learned about the power of our choices and Senja Foster taught my to have crystal clear boundaries and only participate as a whole person, with another person who had done that work themselves.

I show up and I always will, and I promise myself to never believe those rotten stories about her again. It makes me sad and sick to think of my relationship with me, it was the most abusive.

I made amends to myself when I walk and it’s changing me.

And I am fucking grateful! For every single moment, even the hard and bad ones, because I can walk back through them in my mind, and because I can now see where my boundaries are.

I was borderless. My phone tried to change that to borderline how funny. That’s how that type of crazy feels. It’s not a good feeling.

I choose peace now, and I live in it, and no one can take that, and I made it out of nothing.

Fierce and loving ….

I won’t settle for anything less…. Melissa Etheridge sings. That’s the energy I was writing the last few minutes in, her song Fearless Love.

Thanks Universe 💜✒️💪🏼

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Walking my Way Through my Own Truth

Nothing else matters

I love feeling myself getting stronger. Trimming the fat in so many ways. Building self. I feel my muscles strengthening and celebrating the movement. I definitely want to stretch more though as I move forward.

On my walk this morning I am thinking about the kinds of being alone. There’s the kind where all your thoughts echo it’s so empty, and you’re at their mercy. If you want to grow you just sit with them until you understand. There are mean time’s. There’s temporary alone, when a loved on travels and it’s a short time.

There is the alone in your head that you are every single day. With your own thoughts that no one else knows. Unless you’re reading this blog 😉

There’s alone after a spouse has passed away. An empty cavern, with the crushing weight of figuring out how to re-draft every day processes. Lost.

And then there’s another kind. The kind I’m thinking about today. There’s the violent kind of being alone.

This is when you don’t expect to be alone, but you find that’s the case over and over. The kind where the words don’t match the actions. The kind that causes illness, despair, and for some people even tragedy. The kind where the dishonesty makes you feel crazy. Your mind wants to believe in the love you thought you felt. The love you were continuously sold.

The kind where the person doesn’t know how to relate in a healthy way. Lost souls. So they manipulate others to meet their need.

I’ve never been lost like that, but very close to it. I do understand. There’s never been anything wrong with my understanding.

I’m a lucky one, but I worked hard for it. So luck is probably not the right word.

Not swathed in a story, I sat in my stuff.

I sit in my stuff.

And you know what it has made me a better human being. Most importantly a better parent. With much more space and awareness for empathy for the experience of others.

A far stretch from a perfect one, but better each day.

That’s what I chose to do with that. And to only forget as much as is necessary to do my work and live a fulfilling life. But never enough to be naive like that again.

I miss that naïveté. In some ways I wish it was never taken in such a manner, but then I can’t, because I wouldn’t be here now feeling what I am.

Presence. Peace. Love. Connection.

The alone melts away and with it the anger and pain.

Love is not an emotion. It’s sturdy. It is a choice and a promise.

I’ve never been very good at the consistent aspects of love. So built for survival I am. The only moment is now. A men and black reset each day.

So I’m working on my consistency and sturdiness of self, also not an emotion. I work on them by being consistent with my every day small behaviors and choices. Those are building a solid ground inside me.

This way emotions are allowed to do their work to keep the balance between my head and my heart. To protect and serve, rather than turn against me. Karen McLaren The Language of Emotions, a Bible of mine lately. The passage love is a steadfast promise around page 120 or so.

This is literally a manual for healing trauma. I bought many copies to give to those in need this Christmas. Clients and friends alike. That and Letting Go by David Hawkins. Those are my go to sources right now.

I’ve been reading that passage in sessions, when warranted, and I get goosebumps and usually both parties tear up.

For all the pain and suffering in the world there is always the possibility of healing.

Choose

It’s a choice, not a feeling. You can’t feel better without the choice and commitment.

Now excuse me while I sit here and enjoy how my coffee tastes after the walk. It tastes better, more satisfying. And try not to fret about my baby having surgery this morning, far away. I sent her a “fever frog” from 1800 flowers. That thing is so damn cute. It sings and dances and comes with chicken soup. It was the only option that stopped me from buying a plane ticket and being there. That silly singing frog. Sigh.

Trying to care less about being cool these days and hip. Never really was in the cards anyway lol. I want to play. To help people in my presence feel lighter when they are heavy. Rather than going to their place automatically with them and then freaking out about it.

The above I’m working on a lot. As a recovering chameleon. Thinking of The Luckiest Girl Alive in this moment.

Balance

Lighter by Yung Pueblo is another good one.

I don’t want to sell anything to anyone. I want to align myself with those who prioritize their own healing and the ones that understand love is a choice and show up consistently.

My vow is that if I want this I will also be it.

I must

Good morning on this beautiful fall day! Finally a chill in the air. It’s extra delicious this year, with the warmth in my heart maintaining my temperature.

Peace

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I Feel it in My Fingers, I Feel it in my Bones…..

Love is all around….

I’m on a plane, crying in plain sight while reading part five of What my Bones Know. How her partner’s family treats her…. What it took on her part to receive. The fact she stayed. There’s a little girl across the row eating pretzel sticks and suddenly I’m transported back in time. To a life that could have been, to a precious memory.

I’m able to realize now my memories are not a betrayal of the present. I get to keep my whole story and my whole self. I get to waft in and out as I please and take what I want, and leave what I want.

Is this freedom?

A baby cries…. Not mine. There won’t be another.

One of the most unbelievable aspects of life is how much it can change, and how amazing those changes can turn out to be. And that my heart can still swell with love for all that ever was, because it’s all part of me.

My shoulders are sore, the gentleman at my favorite nail place wailed on me this time. Fresh pedicures and fresh bruises abound. There was some drama on the plane about the stowing of luggage as we set out. This is our second flight, we will land in West Palm.

A family I didn’t stay in will visit in a couple of Sundays. A former lover and friend who now has a lovely wife and baby, and one on the way. The kids will get to meet and bond with the little one. And all the adults will potentially have some forms of closure. There will be joy, and no hard feelings. That’s what happens when all people with good hearts are involved. When no one intended any harm, we were just young and immature and ill equipped in so many ways.

The plane is up in the air now. I no longer need Xanax to fly. My first years absolutely adventurous of spirit, until the intrusive thoughts and nightmares began, until I became afraid of my own shadow, body, and every possible thought.

The next years obfuscated by a lack of understanding or time or resources to obtain it. The next years trips inside myself and back out again recovering what I could from the rubble of my life.

A self has emerged. She wasn’t perfect, God knows she wasn’t.

But today I am flying to Florida with my kids. And in my mind I’m crafting letters to them for therapy acknowledging their experiences that have hurt, and hoping for a closeness I never thought possible. There’s a post it on my desk that says “it’s not too late”, and it isn’t.

At the end of this book it talks about estrangement, and how much more common than we know.

I’ve never met another person until Stephanie (the author) that describes so eloquently how although she was invited to things, how she couldn’t feel the things one is supposed to about it. I’ve never felt as seen as I do now, or attached to an author.

I hope that means I’m getting closer to my own. I’m not even sure that needs to be part of my story anymore, it’s just becoming so much better each day.

Eek a little turbulence. I should be well schooled in this from my life, but alas I am someone who wants to feel her feet on the ground even if her head is often in the clouds.

I’m a little nauseated, that’s what waking up at 2:15 am will do. I’ll be too excited to rest until it’s time, but this whole thing is about rest right ?! And bonding let’s not forget that. A wise friend would tell me to keep my weight back when it comes to expectations. He’s not wrong. Be careful with those things.

I’m ready to sip a beverage out of a coconut shell in a beach chair already, and to watch my kids, now nearly adults, enjoy some of the finer things in life. Like a vacation for example.

Hopefully going forward it’s a yearly occasion and there’s plenty more time for bonding, and I’ll be involved every step of the way.

God I love my kids…. Outside all the triggers and fears they wouldn’t learn what they need to be ok, when I see them, really see them, it’s almost blinding.

Kind, considerate, warm, bright, welcoming, loving, intelligent, curious, empathic, funny…. I could go on. It’s almost surreal at times.

Anyway that’s it for now. I hope to write plenty more during this trip.

All my love,

C

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Healing Can Bring About Some of the Most Brilliant Light

This feels like a nice moment to blog. I finished Saturday sessions. Hadn’t eaten so I made some chicken, rice, and broccoli. Had to throw in a veggie for good measure. Chicken and rice is universally my favorite dish I think or with mashed potatoes etc. the most likely to be digested properly meal for me. Simple and I love it.

It’s a dreary day. I see these as more external encouragement for relaxation. Last night I hung out with a couple of good friends and watched 10 Things I Hate about you. Collectively we are all going through heartbreak and helping one another. I never expected to find that, but here it is: everyone doing a part in easing the others burden, caring for one another. I never imagined to find all these sources scattered about it in moderation versus all or nothing.

Basically that’s what all of my work right now is about. Battling addiction I suppose. Also coming to terms with how we tell stories to ourselves to be able to deal with things, and I think that’s why I developed the habit of trying to throw as many true words out of me as possible so I would be forced to stay in the truth even when scared, because I prefer to live that way, even when it’s hard.

I suppose I learned that from the writing of Paulo Coehlo first, or at least to notice and value it. I remember reading his works and listening to them while stocking produce at Trader Joe’s.

What I’m overwhelmed about the most these days is something I referred to as “the crushing weight of possibility”, in my energy healing yesterday. Shifting from a scarcity program to an abundance mindset, as it turns out, is not for the faint of heart.

My energy healer Julie worked on my kidney Meridian, which unsurprisingly corresponds to fear, anxiety, feeling inadequate, etc. she said it was very blocked the first pass over, the second moved nicely. She asked me about my experience with the healing, and my first feedback was that I can receive so much more readily. And sure enough there are people seeing me, thinking of me, sending me things, helping my own work of seeing myself as worthy and deserving.

I feel comforted, held, seen, and am now willing to accept that expecting that entirely from one primary partner was not only unrealistic, but not good for either person involved. I’m learning.

This does not mean I’m not lonely or have hard days. I do often. It does however mean that doesn’t send me in a panic upon which I feel I’ll never recover, and dear God I deserve that break from my own pained mind.

I have long stood in my own way and made life way harder than it ever had to be. Takes one to know one, because that’s what I knew, what I felt I deserved, and was mirroring the relationship I had with myself.

I have clients who have put in five plus years of work and I’m watching them transform before my very eyes. For complex ptsd there’s no such thing as solution focused therapy in my opinion. That would grossly underestimate the level of suffering they have endured. That doesn’t mean good therapy can’t work quickly, but it takes a lot of repetition to lay down habits, and to pull the old ones up. Challenging long held beliefs is tricky business, especially when life is already so demanding on its own.

I’m getting sleepy. I anticipate more writing in the coming days as theories and thoughts keep circling back around to see if I’m ready to contract a creative process with them.

In my energy healing what she heard was The mind is not God. Separating myself from my thinking realizing they are different. Not needing to rely on my mind or fear my scattered mind. And that because I’ve been working at such a deep level such a long time that’s how rich essentially my life will be. It has enriched my work, my relationships with others, and my day to day life, and for that I am tremendously grateful.

Some things I’m grateful for: helping new friends make their new lonely spaces feel homey and less alone, bonding with people who I share trauma with, good food, people thinking of things I would like or that make me happy or comfortable, my Christmas Tree, cozy things, having enough money to buy the people I love gifts, having enough money to do improvements on my home. My continuing efforts at reducing overwhelm and fear based thinking. And for most of all, beginning to believe once again in my power to create the life I want, that that isn’t over, and perhaps was even just beginning.

Hopefully yours,

C

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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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Getting the Story Straight

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learning, determined, and awake….

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

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

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

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

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

Et Lux Intenbris Lucet

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Shame is an Ocean I’m Battling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Safety was love, and love was safety.

Until it wasn’t……

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you….

Resources

Complex PTSD

Pete Walker From Surviving to Thriving

The Body Keeps the Score

The Human Magnet Syndrome

Alice Walker The Drama of the Gifted Child

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Childlike Enthusiasm

You have to live spherically – in many directions. Never lose your childish enthusiasm – and things will come your way.

Federico Fellini

In my lifetime I have tried to crack a lot of codes. Usually this is focused around other people, rarely is it focused on me. I am learning that if I don’t focus on me, I won’t be able to teach others how to love me in the way that I need. Or engage with life in the way that I am meant to.

I am a meaning centered person. I am a person who has always wanted to share meaning with others. I am a person who seeks and finds meaning and lives in the depths of it.

I am learning that when I perceive others to take away my child like enthusiasm it’s a huge trigger for me. I am learning that I need to be enthusiastic about myself and my dreams, whether somebody else is or not. I cannot always bring someone else on that journey. They must arrive willingly.

All the things I was naturally enthusiastic about in childhood were constantly shot down. I was told to be quieter, smaller, less of a burden. And as an adult I’m trying to correct that in a meaningful way that works for my life.

This is no easy task. Not for the faint of heart, spirit, and soul.

Reclaiming one’s child like enthusiasm, it’s not easy when it was removed at such a young age. It is a chaotic process. I am not chaos I am calm, but chaos has been my legacy in life, so much that I will end up creating it over and over.

We re-create our childhood wounds until we are strong and capable enough, give ourselves enough permission to resolve them. To heal.

I am healing. This is a beautiful and perilous journey.

It is an honor to be a warrior for myself. To reclaim what was taken.

The Warrior of the Light



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The Arena

So lately I’m sitting in my stuff. It’s been a long time since I’ve been intimate on here because of shame. Isn’t that always why we withdraw?

I have been battling shame. A lifetime of it. For how I’ve needed to live to survive. I’ll shame myself. Because how I’ve lived to survive has impacted others along the way, in sometimes very painful ways.

I am trying to tow the line of taking accountability for that and also realizing that we don’t grow and change without pain, and have that be a universal truth and not a justification.

I will say in my battle of shame that I have never in my life purposely misled anyone. I have primarily not even known myself, and I look like someone who knows a lot. Sound like someone who knows a lot. I have a lot of information.

However having integrated that information into creating a whole person. I’m not even close. I’m as scattered as my adhd and c-ptsd ridden mind. That is true.

It is deeply painful for me. That is also true. And becoming involved with me on an idea of who I am without knowing the depths of what is in here can be very painful for others. And for me!

Only took me until (almost) 40 years old

To figure that out.

But what each person does with their pain is their own responsibility.

My pain is no one else’s responsibility as it’s filled with my interpretation of the world and what is just and what isn’t. I’m the only one who can save me.

So many Bruce Almighty moments. “Smite me mighty smiter.”

I’m the girl who tried to figure out human connection from 80’s movies. That’s probably why I’m so good at cheesy romance 😉 and then like the ending of a 90 minute movie there’s another broken heart.

But my heart breaks too. I experience another loss I never wanted too. And when I lose someone I lose everything. My family. My identity. My safety. My pain reliever. My grounding force. Because that’s what another human being always had to be: everything.

That’s what happens when you begin with nothing. Forced co-dependence. You never stood a chance against it, without an entire RE-wiring.

An idea of who I am as a human being. Trying on lives trying to find something that fits. It’s the most exhausting clothing room try on. The lights are fluorescent and they burn.

They burn.

So I am going to burn for awhile into ashes. I think rising as a Phoenix at this point is a tall aspiration. I think I need to stay ashes for a bit.

Like an addict recovering I think I’ll try to keep a house plant alive for awhile. You have to walk before you can run. I flew before I could breathe. I was an adult before I was a child.

I’m all out of order.

The chronology of me is a painful thing.

It’s created one hell of a ride.