“Our scars remind us that the past is real, I tear my heart open just to feel.”
My irritability is a symptom, my reactivity is a symptom, my intimidating is a symptom, my being hard on myself is a symptom, so I didn’t slip off the edge of the cliff into an infinite abyss of depression. It felt like the only way to not drown in my own sorrow. It was my coping mechanism and is a symptom. These are not choices folks.
And yet we well meaningly tell people what they should do. Just think less. Are you fucking kidding me, think less. If only I could. A clear and present mind is a privilege. If you have one call your supportive parents and thank them, for doing a good enough job.
Even as I make these posts there is shame. Don’t be too loud about your pain. It’s self indulgent to be able to speak your truth out loud. It’s taking. It’s bad. It’s shameful.
Do you know how painful it is to think of someone being afraid of me? That me being direct is intimidating? You know what’s intimidating? Emotional abuse where it looks a certain way on the outside and is different inside.
For me being direct is safe. Being transparent. My strong is a symptom. Just because someone’s demeanor is strong and direct does not mean their heart and mind are not in the right place.
Fellow warriors describing perfectly the process you read in my blog. I am grateful.
Strong on the outside, puddle of goo on the inside, and never the two should meet. Except they must, and now they are. And I am attempting to reach an equilibrium with this reunification burning fresh like pink scars shining in the sun.
There are different ways to be loving. I love by working hard at connecting the dots from my now functioning to my experiences, and there’s so much grief attached to that. That each trip in sometimes leaves me with illness for days. This is not rumination. Not mental masturbation. Not any of the judgments. This is necessary.
It was always going to be necessary that I received love to be able to give it, and I’m trying to do that now. I just expanded my sources from one romantic partner, and all the pressure on them, not even knowing, I didn’t know either. To receiving from and abundance of resources that also receive by giving. My energy healer being a number one source.
Loving healing touch, time, and attention. So I can give that also to my children. I work so hard and so fast because I’m determined in this lifetime to be a parent I didn’t have, and as it turned out that’s a lot harder than I realized.
It has taken a long time to realize I can do this with love and lovingly, and it’s not just the realization again you can’t squeeze water from a stone. It has taken a ton of healing.
I’m on my way…. Watch me….I love my children enough to burn and rewire. Enough to take a thousand trips into hell instead of living on the surface. I love them in such a way where I want them to be exactly who they are, and I want to give more than I take. And with my life to be able to accomplish that is nothing short of a miracle….
To be clear, this is what grief looks like, my process of uncovering myself. From now on I’ll use all painful things I need to sit with to heal. By not minimizing, dismissing, numbing, ignoring. I’ll say my truths loud and forever, because it works.
Tonight I’m angry that I was robbed of my childhood, and my spirit respectively. It feels extra raw tonight. As part of family therapy it’s been suggested to me I can be intimidating and the possibility my children fear me or I make them anxious: this feels unbearable. It’s not because that’s how we don’t change. So I will feel it. It’s a punch to the gut. It feels like I’m making excuses when only I know truly the on and off switches that often operate against my will.
I can’t even explain the variety of abuse I endured and how it was consistent mental torture that always left me guessing my reality. Gaslighting, manipulation, shame, guilt, fear. How everything was on my shoulders: I was to take care or myself and if I had a need it was such a bad thing.
I can understand logically now caregivers were burdened beyond capacity and I was not that burden. But it does not make the imprint on me any less severe.
For a long while each new realization of how my trauma has impacted my choices, my relationships especially with my children, and me, left me feeling filled with bullet holes and left to bleed out and die. Every Friday night I would feel this way, and often Tuesday evenings as well as I travel through emdr exercises.
I have just wanted the pain to stop so many times. And I do not mean in death, I mean through living in a way thats enriching and authentic.
I have been severely lacking in support, and left to my own devices to figure it out, and then shamed for that as well. The more I lack support the more I scramble like a wild animal to quickly meet my needs. A frenzy. And then shamed for that too.
I kept my children safe from anything I could unwittingly become due to the lack of trust wired into me. Everything feels like a danger for me. My new tattoo, could get infected, could be allergic to it, could be my fault, could be irresponsible. Who do I think I am to have something I want and think there won’t be a tragedy to quickly follow.
Do you have any idea how much pain I live with daily ? And I’m not a martyr. I refuse to make anyone else responsible or sorry for me or be a victim either. I sure sound like one above don’t I. Except that is a judgment, and so too is what I just said I suppose. If my scars didn’t burn so hot. My grandmother running around wringing her hands and letting me fix it and soothe her. Poor Joyce with the mentally ill daughter.
Poor Chris. People would do nice things because they felt sorry for me, all the while shaming me for my acting out behaviors. A tragedy. All the whispers I felt them clawing through my skin. Don’t be nice to me because you feel sorry for me. Have the courage to see who I am and why I am and love me anyway.
If you want to love me be enthusiastic about me, knowing me, being around me, talking to me. That’s all I want. If you’re not enthusiastic about it then just don’t…. Simple. But don’t feel sorry for me.
They all stood idly by because no one wanted to upset anyone. So they whispered about my grandparents being the poor ones saddled with a mentally ill daughter who got pregnant. I became lumped in with her. I was Lisa’s daughter. I was not a child who never should have been in that situation. No one spoke up about that: everyone was so fucking afraid to upset anyone. So that became my burden to shoulder, and now because of it the other adults in the world shouldering their parents wounds trying to also be parents themselves find their way into my knowledge.
Knowledge is power.
I have only ever wanted understanding and support. Those are the things I wanted. Instead people are horrified at the mother when she appears any less than the societal standard for nurturing. We cannot do what we have not had. We can try, we can circumvent, we can fabricate and hope the knock off passes. But people can only do as well as was done by them, when they were defenseless and innocent.
I made sure I always met my needs with another adult so I never ever spewed all of my dysregulated emotions or all of my unmet needs onto them. I literally did the best that I could, and on top I keep working towards being a calmer, kinder, better mother, against all my wiring and all of the pain I carry.
Don’t you dare feel sorry for me. Just be kind to me and understand me and never be a place that harms me. That’s not too much to ask.
I only want peace, that’s all I want. And to be able to be peaceful while living with all of these triggers, all this sensitivity to sound and anything that moves, and all of what’s stored in my body.
I want to be able to make a decision without freezing or flying. I want to not be irritable when my kids are simply playing because everything that moves agitates things inside of me I never fucking asked for.
If I could count how many times I’ve been gaslighted by society. Just do this. You think too much. You’re too sensitive. You’re intense. I am fucking intense. Life has always been intense to me, and then I got shamed for it. I’m angry: furious.
I don’t feel intimidating, I feel intimidated all the time. And like I won’t be safe and won’t be loved. And the parent isn’t supposed to feel that way. But I do, and it’s not my fault.
I need to only be responsible for my healing right now. And battling the shame that comes with speaking about it even. People don’t know what to do. You must be crazy. They look away from things they can’t make sense of and decorate their homes and stick their head in the sand.
And I’m not. I’m looking. And fighting. And trying. And breathing. And crying. And claiming myself from the lost and found.
I broken spirit is the hardest thing to recover. A broken heart mends, but a broken spirit is almost fatal. They broke it over and over. Every enthusiastic thing I tried to share some strange cold critical remark was made. I shrank inside myself, and became everything they needed, because that was the only way to even get a crumb of worthiness.
My children can be loving. They approach and hug me with warmth and passion and I want to be the same way. I know I am logically, but I’m all locked down inside myself.
I love with drive and I love with passion and I love with intellectualizing. I love with acts of service and reliability in financial support and keeping myself sane. This is how I love. I soak in hugs and warmth and affection, but giving them is always a carefully calculated world with me because what if it isn’t sincere. It never was in childhood it was a game. And then came the torture of having any affection given to meet an end, swiftly removed. Kicked in the teeth and punched.
I was not a child I was a pawn. I was not a child I was a therapist. I was not a child I was a punching bag. I was not a child I was a chew toy, a back scratcher, a gratifier of egos. I was not a child I was a burden. I was not a child I was bribery and image. I was not a child I was a meal ticket something to get welfare and praise. I was not a child I was a poorly behaved monster, and they made sure I knew it.
I’ve spent my life trying to be loved and belong somewhere. And in that process garnering even more shame. All of the fucking shoulds. You should have felt what I did or seen what I came out of. The fact I’m breathing is a miracle. And that doesn’t mean anyone owes me anything or I expect anything, except to be treated with compassion, understanding, and respect.
My abuse included the continued shattering of a spirit, with very few reprieves. Psychological damage continuously administered, to the point I was almost a robot, a machine. Responsive to the needs of others and deeply giving, but with no self. If you asked me what I needed I would stare blankly.
I’m intimidated by the smallest of tasks, things that for someone else is a phone call and a few quotes. Will I do something horribly wrong and end up not able to support my children somehow immediately is always in my mind.
I always feel unsafe, even without any evidence. Do you know how tiring that is? It’s not conscious. It’s a reflex, something that lives inside.
And maybe the happiest I’ll ever be is the only thing I’m programmed for which is my dark passenger and my saving grace: the gift of sight to clearly point out dynamics and needs in others; because that’s always so clear to me from my life.
Where do you think I got this knowledge? It only cost my humanity. If this feels dark, or intense, or difficult to read. If you’re uncomfortable with words like this said aloud, then you have just experienced a little of what I live with every day.
Abuse is intimidating isn’t it ?
This is my commitment to my children….. I will do the best I can….
“There are many kinds of joy, but they all lead to one: the joy to be loved. Every story is a never ending story.”
It’s going to be a two fer today. Who could have guessed. This is the downswing. The loneliness settles in right around now. I’ve surrounded my day in all the ways I wanted it. I’ve indulged, relaxed, and spent my day with the writers I love.
I finished Wild Game, and am now onto Amy Tan’s, Where the Past Begins. She of course is talking about the writer’s process, and the longing sets in.
She dedicated her book to her editor because he took her many frenzied emails and listened to them. It’s me! It’s me! I’ve tried every way around this. I know I can open an email and write to myself, to a friend, to my therapist, but nothing is the same as when it’s fueled by the passion of the excitement of becoming known to one another. It brings me to life. A huge part of who I am. I feel lifeless and listless without it.
She writes, “my emails were not carefully composed. They were dashed off with free-form spontaneity, a mix of rambling thoughts off the top of my head, anecdotes of the day, and updates on my dog and perfect husband. In contrast, Dan’s emails were thoughtful and more focused on my concerns, although they also included notes about Moroccan cuisine. He sometimes responded to my off hand remarks with too much care, thinking I had expressed serious wringing of my soul.” This last line be still my heart. Me too. I feel seen.
Later she goes on to say what had enabled her to write those thousands of emails was spontaneity. I underlined and starred this. If I applied that to writing a book, I would be able to finish quickly. Spontaneity is the answer. This thing I continuously fault myself for as impulsivity. My wires are always crossed towards seeing me in some horrible light. When what comes into view most often is how right I have been and am. Just because something hurts does not make it wrong. Not in the ego sense of right. In the spiritual sense. I am on my path damnit. I am enough, and I will figure out this balance while also being compassionate and loving to myself.
Longing will be the theme of this evening and post I believe. I can do all the self work I want, but it’s not moving this period of time in my life. Amy writes about how her writing in an email is different, and the hairs on my arms stood up. I’ve never heard anyone describe the differences in modalities in a way that made me realize how much I miss writing letters to a lover.
That is my thing. My truest self comes out to play in those correspondences, and I was in love with that consistently exploring myself with another person, and hitting the ball back and forth, as much as anything else. I’m thinking how wanting to be known is a theme of recent.
And entirely different self emerges when I open my laptop (which I haven’t written on in months). I just felt a stabbing pain at the realization I don’t even write my blog posts on there, because touching that keyboard is as much touching the skin of my lover. That is the place I would go. I would open up the screen, describe some of the surrounding details and fire away.
Did I have a lover to facilitate my writing, or my writing facilitated the love? Either way I wanted that consistent space, but I never wanted to stop writing, or working at love. Recently someone suggested to me “does it have to be so hard though, or that they didn’t think it need be so hard all the time.” And I’ve been sitting with that and thinking about it a lot. I think of how I differentiate good hard and bad hard, and good tired and bad tired.
Is consistent engagement in a variety of ways using creativity and feeling alive hard? Does it have to be? For me it’s hard not to be those things. And for some I suppose it feels like work. When work is fulfilling it ceases to be work, for me at least.
I am lonely ….. deeply lonely. Longing to be known and engaged with in a way where someone shows up, is consistent, reliable, interested in building, engaged, and all in. And that isn’t something available to me right now and so it’s stretching my limitations to go day in and day out without. I’m constantly threatened with falling into bad habits or pits of despair. And knowing that if I can’t maintain on my own.
You know what that’s crap! What if I can’t because I don’t want to, because we aren’t made to be alone like this. I don’t buy it. At least I’m not. But there is no default either.
I read a post by Brene Brown today about how she’s ready to go down the writing spiral and how her process is all or nothing and she gets lost. And in another book I read just today as well, about a supportive family tip toeing around the writer knowing that’s who they are and what they need, and I think what must it be like to have that kind of support.
I can’t write with love and I can’t write without it. Although I think not being able to write with it was prior to the crucible that has been this past year and a half. I was desperately disconnected in so many ways. I could have never written anything without the connection to me.
But now I want that playground for my psyche that is the art of e-mail and all the other forms of connecting, that is that secure grounding of that one main place you go when you want to be your full real self. And here come the tears.
Melissa would say just be with that feeling. It won’t swallow me, end me, and truly I finally know that. But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck completely.
I want to be held and touched and considered and from someone who can show up as a whole person to want to be consistently engaged with me creating a life together. The loneliness is like jagged teeth biting into my flesh. There is very little relief. I get moments and glimmers, and I know I’m on path.
I’m frustrated with feeling impatient, or too intense or this or that…. Those are judgments. Just because certain things did not turn out the way I thought doesn’t mean any of that is true. But that’s my constant battle. Which means I still have work to do on my relationship with myself. I will always have work to do and I’d still like to be held, touched, worked for and with, by someone enthusiastic about me, that is able to stay two feet in and fully engaged.
It’s not too much to ask and it is ok that it hurts right now. That the loneliness stings…. I think the biggest area where I hurt myself is still being used to turning something that is not something into something. Straw into gold. I need to be still and do me until I invite a fully present and enthusiastic individual into my orbit.
The lens of scarcity colors everything different than abundance does. Moving slower helps to see what’s really there. I see why I just tried to use my will and determination before because sitting in the disappointment is sometimes unbearable. It’s especially unbearable when I go to that old place of alone in childhood; where there was no reprieve and no relief. At least if I told myself life was what I made it, and boy did I live by that, it gave me something to focus on that kept me alive and sane.
Burning right now. Burning good, versus burning bad. There’s a light at the end of this tunnel. I can’t feel it yet, but I can see it, and that’s something.
“You can see when you’re wrong, but you can’t always see when you’re right.” Billy Joel -Always remember me this way….-
Somewhere I always knew that the answers lie in books, cumulative knowledge that lies dormant until the appropriate combination of lived experience and wisdom collides into epiphany. Im sure it’s part of the reason I want so badly to write one…. Many.
More apt the answers lie within ourselves, but books are the mirrors, particularly in the absence of a loving and safe parent relationship, that help us become known to ourselves.
I cannot for the life of me remember who recommended me to read Wild Game by Adrienne Brodeur. I think I know, and I know that has no correlation with what the person means because they are no less than soul tribe as this book connected life changing dots for me at this time in my life. How did they know ? It stands to reason the people that venture to love us in one way or another, can often see us better than we see ourselves. This is certainly the case with me, as we all know by now I’m often invisible to myself.
I’m awaiting my Sunday treat of a visit from Chip. He brings groceries, the things a parent might do. I can only hope to fashion myself as half the person he is with consistency and thoughtfulness. These are things I now have the space and knowledge to cultivate within myself. I can truly feel and see the joy in tending to my children. I never wanted it to be a thankless duty, a burden, or to take more from them than I gave. To use them for my own benefit unwittingly from the life that was dealt to me.
I have been determined about that, as much as anything else. Though to me it has only seemed about my love life. I couldn’t see the rest of me, only my mistakes. There isn’t a fate worse than that. Purgatory.
I am finally realizing who I really am is not the worst possible assumption, even in the face of many eyes that could see me that way: there will always be those that truly appreciate my full real self. I am rambling now as Oslo and my daughter’s boyfriend are visiting and I cannot miss these moments. It’s no longer a raging battle and desperate attempt to get my words down before they escape. I mean it still is, but my priorities are no longer backward, making my children feel as if they are irritating to my existence, rather than the thing that has always breathed meaning and life into it.
If I had only ever just been less overwhelmed with survival, with life, with myself…. But if I had I wouldn’t be me, and have my cast of characters and a rich landscape to create from. Life has to be lived forward, but can only be understood backwards. No truer words. Kierkegaard
It’s not where you get lost that matters as much as where you land. Character (not a forced kind, but the kind that emerges from the genuine caring for another’s well being before the self) is everything, it will always emerge outside of the mistakes. It stands tall, when momentary clips of life fail to capture the big picture.
I always wanted to be closer to my kids. I just didn’t know how. I believe an onlooker could scream common sense or just easy, but for me this was not. Desperately terrified at any second I could morph into something that I came from, and as a result of that fear, a self fulfilling prophecy. Moody. Short fused, vibrating with anxiety.
When I read this book I see how much worse I could have done, and it answers a lot of questions for me. I could have used my children as my confidante, and because I didn’t know how to not do this, as it’s how I was raised, I stayed always an arms length away. It is my sincere hope that through therapy and this reconnecting with myself, this now can heal. Because it was never the truth of my affection for them, or my true desires and motivations.
I always put love first from what felt like a place of necessity, despite others judgments including a therapist recently who suggested some shoulds and that I could have hired a nanny. Interesting perspective and I’m wondering with what resources, emotionally or financially. The truth is we can harm others with our world views and belief systems, while never having lived a moment in their shoes. I hope to always be mindful of this, when it’s so easy to forget and just blurt out words.
I am not perfect, sometimes I say things carelessly, in sessions even. I can always tell by the immediate reaction in my client. To the best of my ability I attempt repair then and there, if I am unable at that time. I make sure not to repeat the mistake, because I’m able to pick up on how it made them feel. I can feel the immediate shift, as they tense up under the weight of sometimes their own judgments, preceded by my well meaning launch of passionate preaching.
Something I love most about my clients is I believe the majority of them know my heart, character, and intentions, and feel my repairs. I believe that’s why my clinical relationships are so deep, meaningful, and continue to evolve. When they are not or do not parting is not a trauma it’s done with care, concern, and an appropriate amount of honesty. So we both are allowed to grow in the absence.
Anyway this book. I could feel the stab straight through my heart as the main character waited loyally for a bond, recognition, etc from her mother that never came. On her wedding day it was not about her in the least. Her entire life it was about her mother. My heart aches for all the hopes that were born and died in vain, and the toll that took on the host.
This book helps me sew up a long time gaping wound of abandoning my mother. Always wondering if I had it wrong, am wrong. This books help me see what would have been had I tried to belong somewhere that truly never saw me.
And the benefit is two fold because it gives me even more motivation to be genuinely about the lives of my children, interested and invested. While striking that delicate balance of still having my own life. Something worthy to strive for. And nothing about this can be all or nothing. It’s truly one foot in front of the others with my priorities straight and it’s working. It’s no longer the mythical they, or any other myth.
Reality is that we are healing and reuniting and it’s not grand gestures or manipulation of facts, painting a reality over their lived experience. It’s sincere change.
This book has helped me see what would have been. Even as I read it I longed for the being wanted and normalcy of her marriage to Jack, that stability and to be adored, the honeymoon and all that shared experience and closeness. And yet her mother’s affair and lack of presence gave her no arena to create a relationship with herself. The result depression, disconnection, and her suffering.
It was at this very moment I’m realizing all I dreamed I didn’t have is not the stuff that matters most, and that I truly am more than capable and aware of those things, which will lead to a life that is fulfilling in ways I haven’t begun to imagine yet.
I wonder what it will look like for my kids that their mother is catching and correcting, the very second she could, and also sitting with the burn of all the years I was consumed and distracted with my own pain. The guilt could swallow me sometimes, but when I understand that too is selfish, and pick my head up and carry forward with my corrections, is better than trying to go back to understanding or halting my ability to exist in peace, because if I am to create space for them to learn who they are, I must find acceptance and eventually joy for my whole story.
The unknown is not outside…. For that is scary enough…. If the unknown is inside it is the impossible. Existence of the unknown is excruciating….
One healthy decision in front of another. I was tired and depleted last night and I wanted some usual less than healthy comforts. Instead I commanded my body to take me on a walk. It starts out creaking and groaning. Protesting why after a long day of work we must do more, it feels like having to do more. However once a rhythm sets in, the walk gives more than it takes. Isn’t that always the answer? Making choices that give more to us than they take. If it takes our self-esteem, confidence, and worthiness. Is it worth it?
The walk felt amazing and I got so many good pictures of things I appreciate about my life living in Milford. Downtown Milford is beautiful. Lavender sky painted backdrops over harbors of boats. The smells of many local restaurants making me glad I didn’t have my credit card on me. I wanted to disappear into one and indulge. I always want to indulge. The walk gave more than it took, and after the craving passes, I feel alive and attractive. Buzzing with vitality.
So last night a line in my book Wild Game stopped me in my tracks… I’m a little over half way in the book and Adrienne (the memoirist, has a new friend, and is now in college. Her new friend says to her that her mom is lonely. And Adrienne scoffs and says she has dinner parties every night, and has been juggling two men for years. That her mother is not lonely. And the friend says “you’re wrong, loneliness is not about how many people you have around, it’s about whether or not you feel connected. Whether or not you’re able to be yourself.” Adrienne: “I was at a loss for words.”
“The lonely feeling comes from not feeling known.”
This is the thing we all want, to be known. To show our true selves, our soft underbellies.
Feeling lonely and unknown can lead to a series of not so good things. Depression, anxiety, loneliness, and actions that cannot be undone. Only healed and moved forward from.
The promise of being known in a way that seems unique in all the world can lead to breeches of sanity that are almost unimaginable. A promise without a follow through is potentially one of the cruelest things to live through. Karma is real. It’s not in fact a bitch, contrary to popular slogan. It’s the thing that it used correctly, that keeps us on path to integrity.
The biggest route to change is fully feeling, an embodiment of experience to the point that discipline outweighs desire, and compassion and understanding lead, rather than impulsivity and greed.
I am learning you can’t simply know the lessons cognitively. To become real, it must be the journey that brings them to life inside of you….
It is painful to have realized how disconnected from myself and others I was. How my desperate mind was buzzing from threat to attachment, threat to attachment. how unsafe I felt in my own body and home, because in my mind it was still a haunted house.
I cannot speak enough about how presence is a gift and a privilege and how many people are not able to be in it, for a variety of reasons. I think of how it must have felt for my children to see my eyes so blank. Wild with terror….beyond any loneliness. Shattered, scattered, and lost. In ways that no one understood or put together. The logical conclusion was selfishness. When one doesn’t have any presence with themselves they cannot access executive function and the higher ordered thinking, regardless if they have empathy or not.
They were never blank like my mothers, my eyes were never those of the uncaring, the permanently disconnected….
The quieter it gets, it’s always still there….there’s just more room to love and be loving because peace of mind is a choice. No matter how you feel and what exists and what doesn’t, peace of mind I have found is always a choice.
The two main things that stuck out from my last therapy session have unleashed a revolution in me. I’m noticing so many patterns. Such as how after a few days without therapy my mind starts to return to over-thinking, second guessing, painful ruminating on things not in the present. As soon as I get back into that safe space and process things out I return to grounding.
I am catching my triggers before they hit the ground now.
Knowing this helps me to tell myself anxiety and trauma is lying to me and operating as a mechanism not as a mindful choice and to be still and ground and make everything ok again by doing so. It works. If you do the work, the work will work for you. It fucking works.
I could be afraid of being dependent on therapy. There are worse things to be dependent on. If self-growth, grounding, and awareness is a way of life for me, which it is with or without therapy, then is that the worst thing? No! There are far worse things. I’ve lived (autocorrect changed lived to loved and I almost left it) them, over and over.
I think there will come a time when I’ll move on to the next phase of my therapy and growth from relating in general, and rather than make that time happen, I will trust in the timing and the work I am doing. That is after all the most important thing, and it’s also something I’ve lived 40 years of my life without.
So the two takeaways from therapy. In a personal journey to forgive myself for so many things right now and to see myself in ways I’ve always deserved, in my full spectrum of humanity, I have worried about impulsivity. I mean I literally tried to take anything available and make it into forever. I did this every single time. And while all of those situations were worthy of such a pursuit…. What I have learned is something truly can already exist available, without doing all of that work. Holy shit that’s a revelation that I can know cognitively, but embodiment will take much longer. That has to become real.
So my therapist asked me to consider the difference between impulsivity and irresponsibility, because I’ve been using them interchangeably. She said I’m not irresponsible and of course my pain wants to resist. My harsh relationship with myself says yes I am, because if I didn’t have that out of balance I felt I would not hold myself accountable. Except I hadn’t updated my software to my new self, the one I’ve been becoming for years.
Because trauma makes us invisible to ourselves. Often times trauma survivors can see others and the world with a staggering clarity, but during all their pain they left themselves to survive. I left myself to survive, and I never came back. Until my brink of 40 awakening. Wherever you go, there you are.
Here I am. I am here to stay!
I believed for years, mired in my health symptoms that I would be snuffed out early, and this past year I’ve had some habits that haven’t felt that. My energy healer and I identified those old coping comforts as self betrayal and that really helps me make one healthier decision in front of the other. One step at a time becomes a way of thinking and life, rather than a cheesy rhetoric.
Because no one wants to be uncool. But cool is such a different thing than can be seen on the outside. Cool is a heart that refuses to surrender in the fight of pursuing a life that feels it’s direct making: path. That’s fucking cool. Watch me work and peel back all these layers of gunk that built up at one time to protect me.
How could I see myself so poorly.? Easily Christina. You were not seen. But once you see yourself for all the beauty there is no turning back. I’ll never abandon me again. And that’s a scary concept, but not a disconnected one. So scattered, my mind so shattered, I thought I wouldn’t find my way out of the dark wood, and now I’m basking in the light.
It still smarts. There are new scars. The tissue is pink, they burn in the sun and in the sand, and the tears slide down my cheeks, but I feel and I am alive and connected with me. I’ll never lose this, you can’t take this from me.
So I was thinking how shitty it’s been to refer to myself as impulsive. You wouldn’t tell a Veteran they are being impulsive when they jump under a car because a muffler backfired down the street, you would feel compassion for them. The design of my life and my own ability to shoulder my own burdens never wanting anyone else to be uncomfortable by my story, has led to shame and misunderstanding after misunderstanding.
And I scrambled to explain myself, to beg to be seen. Something felt off, not connecting. Could I really be selfish in the way I was being accused, and I mean look at all the evidence.
I had to fucking recover and reclaim me, my right to exist. And if you’ve never had to do that then all I ask if that you listen no matter how many times I need to talk about it, because if it makes you uncomfortable imagine what it’s done to my insides. My fucking insides, screaming, tight. My intestines tightening, roiling, and I’d keep all that away from anyone else and the fact I couldn’t breathe, to make sure not to upset anyone. Because when I saw their upset even if it was compassion for me, it was so distressing.
So I internalized it all. And now I need to get it fucking out. Out of me. I need to talk about it, without being afraid of hurting someone else. And I need to be able to say aloud when I don’t feel well, like everyone else does. Instead of silently praying it will just get better and pass and if I make less of a big deal about it, maybe I won’t get so anxious.
I’ve tried every trick in the box to manage this burgeoning insanity (trauma) so it would never make anyone else uncomfortable so I wouldn’t have to drown in shame. I tried it until it consumed my body. My body began attacking itself, and I was forced to wake up and journey. However that was so scary and so painful that I just kept trying to find a safe space to belong and cling so my kids were kept safe while I felt so shattered.
And then that too became a fault and a problem and a bad thing about me, then I was co-dependent and this and that and finally my out of congruence landed me as the ultimate monster…. And I’ve had to walk my way through the ruins of that, finding the compassion for the battle itself, rather than me being a ruthless bomber of Pearl Harbor magnitude.
I’ve had to stop that.
So now here we are. Walking, crying, talking, learning, laughing, leaning, breathing, connecting, aloneing, singing, playing, and so many other things.
The second thing from therapy is again this concept of not accommodating, and being on egg shells, because I’ve been in such scarcity the only thing I knew how to do was chameleon. I can’t say what I want need or feel because it always seems to be a burden. And the suggestion that anyone you can’t be yourself with, your whole self (well that’s a lot, see that’s what immediately think). That’s not your person and those are not your people.
So not making myself smaller to belong or be comforted. Being my full size.
And then….. now….. my story and then books and teachings…. They will emerge.
It is in this year of my life that I’m able to see every mechanism to cope. Every irritability with my kids was all the pain I’ve been in, and now it’s time to release it so I can enjoy them and living…. Life itself, with my whole heart.
I want to educate parents about trauma and how they can misunderstand because of it. How we can mistranslate one another. And help them connect the dots to finding a relationship with their children that feels like the one they want, with realistic expectations, which are so hard if we have never known what those are.
Never noticed the sticker on that container before whoops lol…. Life’s little imperfections
I’m trying to explore my own writer’s process. As inspired by the talented and handsome Casey Hurt. His brave lately and posting about his process is inspiring me. Also didn’t hurt that he sent me some writers goodies in the mail today. A journal that has the most buttery paper. To go along with my new blackwing pencils. Swoon. And the illustrated version of Strunk’s The Elements of Style, which I didn’t know was even a thing.
We were talking on the phone the other night and he was calling me on my excuses of being frozen and locked down and feeling a fraud, and it’s pulling me out of my repressed existence, and also having me explore the origins of that.
So today I pulled up Glennon’s new podcast about addiction, had my coffee, the book Attached. My new notebook and pencil and I started my very own jam session. Kind of how he does but with books, and companions who have put their work in the world, the place I want to go. And I just started vibing and finding my rhythm. Resonation…. Like a tuning fork seeking a home. There was a rhythm and a beat, and they were my mind and heart. Bliss and flow.
I would listen to a few minutes of Glennon, pause reflect and jot down some notes. Then text a friend and jot some notes from that. Listen to a song and take notes from that. All in my new notebook of course.
Receiving, Recognition. Reciprocity. Kindred connections….. life itself….
So here is some of my writing time from today…
I dissociated from myself. At a young age I split off from all of the things that I would one day come to know as integral parts of who I am. It was at that time that I began to give everything I was to everyone else. And to be invisible to myself. A relationship with myself and my art as well was non-existent and it’s taken miles of recovery, that in many ways is just beginning.
I became my own parent, but not the kind I ever wanted to be. Since I didn’t know how to be a parent at that time, I became one with a harsh authoritarian tone who tried to seek out anything and everything I was doing wrong, so I wouldn’t become those things.
And I sort of used that approach for everything, and it has been harmful to me my whole life.
People so often say things that imply everything isn’t about trauma. I so often have what I say redirected and I wonder sometimes if that’s their own discomfort.
Because for me it’s me still trying to find my real story. Trying to acknowledge years of the unacknowledged. Lately that’s been happening a lot. I think they just want me to feel better or see myself better. Normalizing can be helpful and it can also be harmful.
“Everyone goes through something”, with all due respect on that I think we need to respect the differences of people’s experiences as much as our shared humanity. The things I have been through are not often the same, and to to be heard, honored, have space held and listened to. Tell me more rather than shut it down I’m too uncomfortable.
People need to tell their stories as many times as they need.
I was also gifted a pasta maker, which was very thoughtful. I just had a profound moment of joy at being thought of in all of those ways. It feels like a long time since anyone has sent me things that reflected that I am seen. And that’s happening more lately as I choose myself.
Something about this blog post felt incomplete so I was going to finish it, but then days went by and I’m already in a totally different space with me. The alien pod in the corner dripping with goo from the emergence 😉
Get ready for today’s,,,,, walking between worlds, inside and out….. I will be writing it now.
Blackwing 602’s…. A new discovery and wanting to do some song writing…..
I’m quite sure one of the keys to a balanced existence is to be able to think and feel at the same time. I’m also quite sure repeated trauma particularly in infancy and beyond creates a brain that disconnects that wiring to protect you.
I over thought everything and I under thought everything. I literally had all my wires crossed. And in addition to this: It’s a lot of responsibility being a writer, our lives and often our emotions are not even our own.
I found out in therapy yesterday I probably don’t have ADHD. Crazy because if you saw me you’d think for sure I do. The same therapist has said for sure I do, but that was before I shared with her details about how medication affects me. She said that if Xanax works well, and I got a terrible headache and irritability on ADHD meds that means I don’t have it.
I said, but then how to explain never sitting still and talking in class, and being annoying to others etc. I was trying to be seen. I was lonely. The result of that was more negative feedback which I deeply internalized because there was no one else. If I talked to my grandparents it would be well what are you doing, they always made me feel ashamed.
I’m just reflecting on my appointment yesterday. Where I validated that trauma before the age of two and after has made such a dramatic impact on my life. It has changed my brain and I’m literally RE-wiring myself right now. I’m watching the changes and slowing my speed and taking everything one step at a time.
I’m having trouble focusing, and being still enough to have the deep relationship with myself to prioritize and recover my creativity. I don’t even know what it looks like, but also I do. Deep somewhere I do. Trusting that and investing in it is scary. Not trusting and investing in it is scary. Everything is so fucking scary. Thinking of EG in big magic.
Anyway I was telling my therapist that I think maybe I want to try medication, but I’m not sure because I hate how almost all of it affects me. I was telling her how I love playing piano and love my lessons. But when it comes to practicing I just look at it and freeze. I get lost in the day and everything else, everyone else, and continuously abandon me.
Although that’s a harsh narrative because so many choices I’m making are moving away from self abandon. I can’t even see me sometimes. I’m invisible to myself, while I see everyone else so well and clearly, and that just doesn’t work. I have to continue to fight for visibility and a relationship with me.
The only thing I knew how to guide my attention was deep conversation with others, which became deep connection, but I never knew what to do, or how to choose what space they occupied in my life or how to organize them I suppose.
My boundary less existence prior to the dark night.
Now I am organizing and having boundaries and giving myself whatever time and space I need to decide what’s right for my kids and I. And I hardly know what to do with this new self. Some of these concepts are so foreign and the sense of peace that is coming. Peace for me is almost a trigger. In my childhood if you settled into anything peaceful and abrupt stop would come and not in a pleasant way.
I will likely live with the feeling the other shoe is going to drop forever. Or at the very least it will be a reflex that attempts to kick in, and hopefully the solid foundation of peace I have built will override.
When I began this blog this was the battle I was having. I talked about ADHD and PTSD a lot. I had a lot more questions, and a lot less answers, and yet there are still so many questions.
I look around and almost can’t believe how I could have lived in that much pain for so long. So scattered, so much panic, so lost, so locked up, so locked down, in agony. Relieving it only by using my gift and feeling some sense of confidence from that. But no other solid footing. I thought that was all I needed, until I realized there was more healing that needed to happen.
I believe in therapy in a whole new way now. And now I will finally be able to be a human in my own life and not rely on connecting because of my sight. To wait and see what another person sees about me besides that and offers in terms of reciprocity and availability.
Providing resources from what I know but not feeling a desperate need to fix or change or that something isn’t ok. I am just being and I hardly know what to do with this new self, but here we are.
Lots of beautiful new things on the horizon. Stay tuned for my new attempts at creating…. Whatever that may be. I don’t know yet. That used to have an ominous devastating tone… now it’s I don’t know yet and a big smile spreads across my face.
Never have I understood grief the way that I do now. Never have I had connected empathy versus cognitive, the way I do now. This morning I went on a journey watching old videos of my life, my kids, our dogs, our found family members and I saw so much happiness and play and joy in them. I forget/forgot those existed as I stayed trapped inside a cage in my own mind. My own personal hell played over and over, which can be described as constant thoughts of what I was doing wrong or could do differently. That was my default.
I was talking to my dear friend Jen on the porch yesterday morning. We often talk about mother’s. And I said to her that I’ve played scenarios in my head a hundred times what I will say or feel when I get the call my mom has died. And resoundingly where I land lately is my mind screaming “it’s over”. That I will weep for all my pain, and also release. And what I realize about what I will let go is the struggle inside of me that if I just did something different could we have a relationship.
I would have done anything to love her better, I mean love her so much she became better, felt better. I would have tried everything and I did at one point. But I couldn’t ignore the anxiety and illness that plagued me as a result of that one-sided love and intermittent lashing out mixed with just enough of a crumb (so she didn’t look like a bad mother to other people).
I still feel like I abandoned her or being a daughter and not like I got out alive, the way I deserve to be able to feel. My mind plays tricks on me. It is not in my wiring to abandon. I have to be able to be honest and work through things, but it is not in my nature to abandon. Except I abandoned myself a long time ago, right along with all of them. And I’ve been reclaiming her for my whole life, while also trying to be a mom, with absolutely no template.
Sure there is no instruction manual, but I didn’t even have a rough draft. And I made myself into a good parent anyway. Not a perfect one, thank God, but a good one.
Chip dropped off potato salad this morning and then groceries later. I made breakfast burritos and dropped twin A at work, she drove and did well. Life just keeps happening around me, and now I am here too.
The entire energy in my home has changed. I never thought I would be here, never thought my best could get this good. It didn’t seem possible.
We had our first good therapy session as a family this past Friday night. For so many weeks I felt filled with bullet holes of all my mistakes and shortcomings. I would go home, cry and fall asleep and get up and try again.
You see I promised I would never supply myself with my children. That my need would be confined to an adult capacity and I would keep them kids. And when I look now I have been pretty successful at that. And they still have their experience with me as a mother and my shortcomings and wounds, but no longer are they distrustful of that.
They are able to get perspective and hear normalizing of the difficulty in the best of circumstances between parents and teens at this age, that it’s natural, and I have to hear that too, because for me…: the other shoe is always going to drop.
So here we are a year and a half of intensive two times a week therapy, including emdr, their individual therapy, and now our family therapy and there is some light. We are able to see the identity of our family with its own story rather than the constant comparisons that flay us raw. Make us feel less than.
We are our own story and it is a beautiful one. Our cast of charactersis unmatchable. I wouldn’t change a fucking thing.
If I had gotten what I wanted when I wanted it all of my energy would have once again been abandoning myself and this family, and while the dream and heart had the right idea, in practice Everything happens for a reason and in its own time. I held on so hard to the dream and a story, and didn’t trust my own reality.
The gift is that I’ll never do that again. I have a relationship with me, and a relationship with them. And a new relationship with life itself where there is a semblance of trust. It will likely always have a tinge of something bad possibly happening at any moment. There’s a lot of that in me, and that’s ok because I will and have learned to support myself through this and to choose supportive fellow travelers.
My work has deepened, and my relationship with self and others.
My story is far from over, in many ways it’s just beginning. Another life within the millions. Today I played piano. It’s been a long time since I could sit down and focus. I have an idea I can or will but then I just stare frozen. I can’t will my body to try.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been tallying the losses I’ve had. I won’t go into explaining how I’m not doing this to be negative I won’t do this to me. I am honoring my experiences.
In the past two years I’ve lost a home I lived in for 8 years, my first secure space. I’ve lost many possible pregnancies and a couple of heartbeats, I lost a dream of having a baby with a woman I love in a healthy relationship. I lost a dream of being a foster parent and providing more of what I didn’t even have. Needed to have it first. I lost a father in-law and a family. I lost a wife and more importantly an unconditionally loving human being who adored me and held me and supported me.
I lost a beloved pet and now a new one because we weren’t ready.
And then I lost my self respect personally and professionally. I lost touch with myself. And then I lost reality nearly altogether. I nearly lost my mind, and I definitely lost some of the health I’ve worked so hard for by spending my life walking away from unhealthy and toward freedom. I could have lost my life quite a few times over the past year.
I lost a soul relationship with a new family, kids and all, and a lover who still haunts my bones. I’ll love them forever, all of them in their own way, because they were a before and an after moment of my life. I send them love every chance I get, even when I’m hurt and angry. It just exists. I remember every single moment.
And I wouldn’t be me if the losses didn’t make me naturally think of the gains… I don’t have to try. So let’s see. I gained friendships that I didn’t even know I had because I’ve been so numb and removed from myself. They were there but I couldn’t feel them like I do now. I gained appreciation for family and attachment for the people who held me this past two years.
I thought I was grateful before, it’s nothing like it is now. I gained humility, awareness, a greater capacity for healthy self sacrifice. I gained a new home that now feels friend versus foe. I gained many lessons as a clinician and lost many doubts in my abilities ironically.
I gained a relationship with sex and my body that feels fulfilling and embodied and whole. I gained believing in my capacity for exercise and endurance. I gained pieces of my identity I would never have uncovered. I gained faith in my tefloness. I gained earned security. I gained the ability to value myself as lovable and deserving. and that line brought the tears.
I gained being less scattered in my burning brain. It has a permanent layer of salve on it. It’s soothing…. cool. Healing.
I gained the ability to be present over being lost in my head. I gained piano and enriching my already immense relationship with music. The ability to delay gratification and to not justify things in the name of scarcity.
I gained integrity……. one I was already built with but didn’t know how easily I could lose. I gained an intimate relationship with grief, and the understanding of how it can affect choices and so much more.
There are so many more, but these are the ones I can think of now.
So what now ?
The rest of my life being able to be present and not jumping ahead or freezing, for more than a little before I lovingly catch myself in a bear hug and ground, …..
I don’t worry whether I’ll write a book or not or what kind. I enjoy thinking about it and creating space inside my head for the discipline and dedication to breathe life into it.
I’ll be here writing, reading, connecting, singing, dancing, playing, working, living, and loving…..
90 days……. she’ll love you if you love her like that……now the day bleeds into night fall…..she’ll love you if you love her like that.
Music begins my days and the songs speak to me. I realized this morning I’m in love again. This time I’m in love with my whole life and myself. I get it now. What being still means because now I can see my whole life and all my connections and my ability to carry on and connect beautifully with others, the world, and myself.
I get it now.
I’m on my front porch and the other chair isn’t lonely or empty, it’s often filled by some of the strongest and most beautiful people. The kind I aspire to be and am lucky to love. My life is surrounded by those that get it.
For the last 5 years or so I’ve been rebirthing myself. Contained in the watery womb that is my bath. And now I’m outside. I’m outside with the world, standing in all that I am. The musicians and authors they are by my side. They are my ancestors. Loyal brave and true they surround me with the art they have had the fortitude to get out into the world. They are encouraging me.
“You gotta get up and try”
And I always do.
That’s beautiful
I cry on my front porch in the mornings. I cry for the pain in the world and for the beauty. Grief is beautiful it means we have tried for something, and when it doesn’t work out it doesn’t mean we aren’t enough. It means we had the courage to try for something we wanted. The courage to pursue our dreams.
This morning I thought deeply about my beautiful friend’s birthday. About how strong she’s had to be and how her light still shines through the personal darkness she navigates. We are kindreds. Both vibrating with anxiety to the point it consumes. Wounds we were left with. Bullet holes bleeding, and still we rise.
She posted a photo with her grandparents from her birthday dinner last night and I could see the little girl there. The one who just wanted to be celebrated and seen. The thing we all desire. And it broke me open to seeing everyone’s child, the child in everyone just wanting to know who they are and what to do with themselves in the world.
Who am I? What is my purpose? Will I be loved? Will I be safe?
This finally feels like home. My house isn’t not a home because I’m not sharing the experience with a partner. My house is a home because I belong here. I am home. My home.
I can finally see the beauty in the flowers, in everything, in my own life, not just others, desperately wanting them to see too, so that can be a shared experience.
My whole life I was so driven and focused on obtaining this one main thing I thought would make me safe and happy, but discounting me and everything I am. Unless I was healing I didn’t know where I fit in the equation. Unless I was useful.
Now all my connections are important, no tunnel vision, not just one at a time. I can finally appreciate me for the way that I connect to others, and now to myself too.
My son didn’t do the dishes last night though he was reminded and asked and this morning I thought on the porch of how many times I’ve harshly pushed, asked him why he didn’t do them, not if he’s ok. Not a hug. Not warmth. Because that was my relationship with myself, because that was the relationship I was given from the cards I was dealt. It’s taken my whole life to get it. To understand the power of are you ok? How are you doing ? How was your day? Are you connected? Do you need something? The dishes can wait. They are not the most important thing. But that is what I knew how to do. My model my template. It’s as far as I could get.
Until now……
From now on…..
I literally couldn’t get myself to open warmly and hug and ask those things. Inside I’m screaming to do that, but I get stuck inside myself. In Pinks documentary she said a line, about how she wishes she could reach inside herself and give that little girl a hug. This is why the rebirth was needed.
Over the past year and a half I’ve been on a mission to reclaim that little girl. I didn’t know that was my mission. I thought it was something else. So often life is like that. We misunderstand. So my kid can connect with my kids. So I could replace harsh drive with enthusiasm for living. Warmth. Everything I accuse are only things I couldn’t find in myself.
Always disconnected with me, always begging for connection with someone else. Thinking that would crack the code and it never did. How many times do I need to crack open I thought? How much more breaking.
Breaking let’s the light in. You can hear all the quotes and read all the memes but in my experience you can’t embody the experience until you’ve walked the path yourself.
So this morning I’m outside, not locked inside myself. I’m in the light. I am the light. I’m in the world and I love everything. In love with myself (I was typing my life and it changed it to that and I left it).
I’m not afraid my existence is a burden any longer. I won’t live that way anymore. I am here and I have a voice and a right to exist. I won’t hide for hours in the bathtub trying to figure out how to fix what is broken. I don’t need to anymore. We aren’t there anymore.
Once you grow you can’t go back. One could say why would you want to, but of course it’s tempting because being new and open and ready can sometimes feel an overwhelming responsibility. I was overwhelmingly responsible for everything during my childhood. I get it now.
Now I am responsible to myself to allow myself to exist in all the light I have to offer and to enjoy that.
My heart is bursting with love and I don’t need to aim the arrow at anyone to feel safe and wanted. I can be love. And I already have love and I already am love.
I get it now. And this morning my heart felt so much love for everyone that has ever dared to love, and for everyone who has ever grieved anything, because grieving isn’t easy. It hurts to be human.
The people we connect with makes the hurt worthwhile.
It’s not the stuff, the milestones, the achievements. It’s always about connections. We try to make meaning and know what that is, we try to control. We beg to be enough, belong, to be seen. And those things are our natural birthright.
We have to claim that.
If we have shared a journey I love you. For your strength, your pain, your resilience, your harder moments. I love it all.
I have always loved life itself, and life is the unreliable narrator, but never again will I tell a story or believe one that hurts me. Not for long anyway because after all
