Something has changed within me Something is not the same
Hello dear readers, I wish to be intimate with you today ….. I miss this (writing), this you, so much in its absence.
Sometimes the silent spaces in between are the most important, and you don’t see until much later.
Life is a great mystery and if you’re brave, a great story of your own making unfolds.
As it turns out when you’re not reacting to life all the time there’s a lot less to say.
That’s the quiet that’s been deeply reverberating right now.
These lines have been sitting here awhile. I keep missing the boat on waves of inspiration that hit. But this is ok because I no longer feel a sense of panicky desperation.
I’ve been learning a lot about what love is and about what it isn’t. A researcher of love above all things.
What makes it safe and trustworthy?
I do. By being responsible for cultivating that in myself.
I’ve been navigating the letting go process of deep bottom of the heart, grief, for the last four years. For my whole life really, but this new awareness has the last four years more standing out.
You don’t get high on it, but you don’t crash either. A new kind of magic unfolds.
There’s a trust in the unfolding now. A deep breath and a sigh. A meandering walk among the halls of my heart, lined with many many shelves, and many stories.
I walk among them.
Deep wisdom settles under my skin, and I can draw from it as needed. Not running from myself, chasing someone else.
In this stillness the universe whispers and we become fast friends.
I am watching myself step into my gifts and twirl around in the mirror admiring them without self recrimination or admonishment.
The way my body reacts I had understood as anxiety, and it sent me into a panic. What that really was, is the depth in which I’m able to feel things.
It’s what empathy feels like in the body. The most powerful force on earth. Misunderstood I thought my body was trying to sabotage me. Not have a simple conversation and guide me.
Who knew ?!
So much opens up now.
Everything becomes a possibility. Everything always was, but now it’s known and felt.
I have long loved Wicked. We saw the movie the other day and I thought I might crack right open with feelings that movie evoked. As someone who saw herself as wicked for being the truth teller, and reacting to the many mistreatments.
As someone who has worried she was bad in some way.
During the dance scene at the oz dust ball I about cracked in half with emotion. Shaking with it. It was the first time I recognized my anxiety as “powers”. It clicked.
Suddenly I can see all the love around me I’ve created.
As the patriarchy falls and a new revolution takes place.
How love is the furthest thing from control. How control suffocates love out of the equation.
Years and years of attempting to control myself through manipulation and will, as a means of surviving those who would have tried to control me.
Just landed in sunny Florida….. “I’m in a hurry to get things done I try and try … all I really have to do is live and die, I’m in a hurry and don’t know why…..”
As I sit here on a plane, halfway through Ross Rosenberg’s new book The CoDependency Revolution. I was just slammed with a memory of that single counseling session in a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia.
I recall bristling and reeling at the therapists suggestion I maybe consider looking into some resources on co-dependency. That tumbled and rolled me down a whole hill. I wanted to resist, deny, unhear, but I could not. It’s not in my nature.
It’s a testament to the profession that the counselor was as straightforward and honest in a very early on couples session. Would I have been so brave, so bold? So not co-dependent.
Now on this airplane a few tears shed at watching father’s with their baby girls, being part of a team with the mother, being affectionate and cutesy with their daughters. In other words I’m having a moment.
As far as the rest I’m on a plane with no anxiety, did not take a Xanax, and am on my 4th week of intermittent fasting. The eating is greatly helping me iron out more securely my boundaries with food, which is a beginning step towards my fit by 50 goal. As you can see I’ve given myself plenty of time.
I have learned to do this over the past several years. To hold my sensitivity and nervous system needs sacred and holy, and fully allow myself to seek and share my needs.
Getting better each day one step at a time.
Speaking of that I rarely take Xanax anymore. It gives me a slight headache and unclear feeling that I detest. Which makes it very clear to me that it works for a panic attack when it needs to, but in the absence of that acute level of anxiety, no thanks !
I’m 333 days sober today. I’m not sure what’s in store for me with balance around this. I may remain a non-drinker for health reasons, and for solidarity for all of those harmed by its presence. I may not. I may choose to have a drink on an occasion and indulge in wine pairing with a fine meal.
I don’t know yet…..
I finished Stray (also an old running title for my memoir, now it’s Starved) by Stephanie Danler, in two days. It’s raw and gritty and everything I hope to be as a writer. Albeit with my own voice, which is becoming clearer each day.
Ever since 2020 this has been a tough time a year for me. Reminders of events I am not a part of, and many other things. However there’s a reason the rear view mirror is smaller than the windshield and I will not live the rest of my life in a form of sabotage. In one tomb or another from all the lives that weren’t.
I am most interested most of the time in the life that is. Though my old selves, and those they loved, and wanted to be loved by are now wholly part of the package.
On an errand to help out twin B. My solid as a rock not so tiny any more bundle of love, joy, possibility, and so many things. Following a car accident she has been having post concussion issues which include difficulty driving. So we have moved her home to convalesce and are now collecting her vehicle and her things from Florida.
Upon examining my flying anxiety I realize it to be a product of the combination between my writer’s imagination and my cptsi (complex post traumatic stress injury) symptoms, mainly intrusive thoughts. A helpful dose of CBT, steady frequent reminders that a thought is not reality without at the very least a choice, and voila a much better experience.
I choose to believe when it’s my time it will be my time and nothing I could have done differently would have changed that. This of course assumes a relatively healthy and balanced lifestyle. I allow this to comfort me now. When previously I believe that I subconsciously felt relief by being in a nearly constant state of terror of some kind or the other, because then nothing could catch me off guard.
I feel my memoir / whatever book I will write taking shape. It comes to me in the early hours of waking, in the shower, on the road. I hear powerful lines from it, and when I’m lucky enough I capture them, like butterflies in my childhood net.
Nature at least provided some solace that people did not. See there’s one now 😉
So between the reading I’m doing and seeing these men be fathers on this plane a post emerged. I hope the rest of my trip is so fruitful with the writing….
Somebody bring me some water, can’t you see I’m burning alive……
When safety is the primary concern, growth can hardly exist. And yet it springs at the gate begging to be set free.
It was me I didn’t trust.
I’ve been yearning to write a blog post. But my thoughts have been so many that it’s hard to capture what I want to say, and what my audience is. That is always the question isn’t it? And an answer: if I write what’s in my soul, what does that matter. If there are readers or no readers. It’s the traumatized child inside who concerns herself with this, in her perpetual state of loneliness and fear. I embrace her often now.
So here I sit in a rare occasion of writing in my office chair rather than quickly capturing shower or walking thoughts.
So I’d imagine this will read as an update and not a wave of inspiration. But in chicken or egg fashion perhaps one will open out of the other.
Here I sit on a throne surrounded by the method by which I tame the sheer madness that is my brain, which is books. They are all around me. My friends. In this way, it’s a strange return to childhood. For all its trials, books were introduced and subsisted upon.
My grandmother made audiobooks before they were a thing. On an old school tape recorder with a silver and black microphone.
This morning I began Jung’s Red Book. Red leather bound. I’m so jealous of his relationship with his dreams, when I can barely remember mine. I set this useless emotion aside and continue to work to recovering and repairing mine. If that’s possible.
Down a rabbit hole of taking supplements like 5htp, l tryptophan, sulphorophane (broccoli sprouts I’m growing) ps they smell bad guess they are getting thrown in a smoothie. Quercitin and fiesetin. Brain food, plant food. Based on the shamanic work of Alberto Villodo Grow a New Body. And listening to living and dying the shaman way on audiobook.
Traditional psychotherapist meets shaman, Akashic records Amazing ! , and whatever else will be next. Check out Wendy Casey in the link.
How the hell did I even get here ? If you had asked me a year ago if I’d be doing a fire ceremony and blessing the four directions etc, I’d have looked at you like you were nuts. Or I’m nuts. Definitely. And I don’t even care.
Life is strange and surrender is beautiful. And this is where I’m at.
I’m also reading the I Ching, the gene keys what?! The Dune series. And I still want to read the whole Wrinkle in time series. Somehow this is a summer craving. Some memories are just programmed in. Ahhhh so many things to read so little time.
My practice continues to flourish and it feels almost magical. I am nearly working entirely with my ideal population, and it doesn’t even feel like work. My screening process is worlds away from what it used to be. I stand back in awe at all I learned from working with anything and anyone. But also at my ignorance and naïveté in so many areas, which some times facilitated beautiful happenings, and sometimes regrettable moments.
I don’t agonize over documentation or any cancellation, or administrative. Nothing is any longer this awful monster breathing down my neck. And I think how was I living like that?
How was I living like that. Not well that’s what I can say.
I now have a fully embodied understanding of the mind being unwell. The way it races to terrible conclusions and feels as if it’s constantly outrunning some terrible thing. I could cry for how I lived for so long. The way the mind and the body are not integrated, and one fears the other. No sense of peace, just constant persistent terror.
At times I’m able to get really still with everything. All the love that never fully became, the lives I could have lived, and the ones I did. I sift through and contemplate no longer with a great sickness of the mind. Terrible thoughts about myself. Those core wounds are brutal.
Let there be no mistake I am always healing and learning. I have not arrived anywhere, except perhaps face to face with my humility. In this space there’s so much love. It flows freely, it does not need control. Control cannot exist it extinguishes love immediately. Like the absence of air and fire.
If I saw anyone I’ve ever loved on the street I wouldn’t turn away, heart racing, sweaty. I would simply emit love, and own my mistakes. My ignorance, my impulsivity, my wounds.
I atone with myself and would offer healing communications with all who seek them.
And I don’t know what’s next. Tabula rasa. Bookends of it. I begin and end that way.
How may I be of service and lead me there. I’ve had it all. Love and loss. 10,000 lives within a life.
My work is to heal my brain and body so that I may help others with my journey. I no longer agonize over my memoir, what I will write, and what I won’t.
I know there’s important work for me to do. I don’t need to know what it is or how I will accomplish it.
I simply surrender.
Now to process and alchemize these emotions and thoughts and experiences. To continue to go through them and learn from them.
On a more earthly note, both my twins have been in major car accidents. Something I have not had a first hand experience with. One of them still has back and neck issues and daily headaches. Not entirely sure if the accident is responsible. So we are going to my energy healer Julie today. I’m excited that my children are open to this and also learning to benefit from this and massage and other healing modalities.
We will be moving twin A into UConn in August as a junior, and twin B will be nannying for a time for her baby cousin in Long Island, as she completes her core requirements for school. The little prince is beginning a relationship journey with his partner. Learning about the responsibilities of life, and himself respectively.
There is love at the table of my life.
Surrounded by friends and family, and so much less pain from the absence of loving parents and blood relatives.
I sometimes take walks through my graveyard. The relationships that did not show up and stay, and marvel at the beauty and tragedy in love. And also the resilience of it. How it never really leaves, energy can neither be created or destroyed. It just is.
But more often I am looking through the windshield, that’s why it’s bigger I am told. And learning about the true actions of love. How it behaves, what it commands and demands respectively.
The art of story telling and myth and legend in teaching great lessons. Things I would discount as frivolous or unreal become rich playgrounds to explore for healing metaphors and methods.
Women Who Run with Wolves….
Recovery
Recovering my dreams and authentic childhood self from the ashes of traumatic experience.
I hope that I have something to share that will help others heal….
Book. Thought. Book thought. Toggle. Rinse. Repeat. Show up consistently. During each workshop more of my childhood emerges more clearly. The understanding and integration becomes mine to harvest.
I am finding my way after a year of writing immersion to how to write on my own. How to build it into my schedule and not do stops and starts, but a consistent relationship.
I was called to my water to write this morning. I just got waxed, ow. Sometimes I feel half my life is concerned with hair removal. Did you chuckle ? I did. But for real it’s not even about how I look, it’s a sensory thing.
I am finally accepting my high sensitivity and empath ness and trying to work with it rather than deny, minimize, outright reject, or attempt to reverse the adaptation that’s about being adaptable. Ironic isn’t it.
A barrier to this was always worrying about being grandiose or the way some people use being an empath in toxic ways. As always if you’re worried about it it’s probably not something to worry about.
So can I finally accept my birthright and my gift and use it to help me achieve a better quality of connection to myself and the universe.
That’s a resounding yes !
Speaking of ironic Alanis and the episode of we can do hard things on high sensitivity! Boom. It is ironic oh yes I really do think.
Time seems my most elusive currency lately. How lucky am I that my life is one where I want more time to do and experience the things I love.
How lucky am I that I’m working at better understanding myself, and having a healthier relationship with me.
It turns out I’ve been looking for her in everything, and everyone, and everywhere she’s not.
Inside of me.
So that’s what I’m spending the most of my valuable currency on.
Writing my poem, my story, my lyrics, my melody, my script and on and on.
I have so many things to write about, but sometimes once I open the post I just relax so much nothing intelligible comes. It’s when I don’t have the pressure of the page that my thoughts float gently to the surface of my consciousness and tickle my fancy.
My fantasy
Lately I’ve been loving the lyrics of Zach Bryan. My girls led me to him. Some of them are just well wow. Your head in my neck is weightless.
This morning I’m re reading The Highly Sensitive Person I love and it’s already blowing my mind, in showing my experience to me with a lens that helps me cope.
Deep and profound love is often the kind that doesn’t last, and then there’s the kind that does that is also those things.
I was trying to crack the code on love using logic. Now that’s ironic.
Now I’m using all of it, and most often working to get the story straight, keep it simple and direct, and develop a consistently healthy relationship with myself.
The work is delicious, no longer a burden. I am blessed.
The work takes the charge out of the pain, rather than rivers of it threatening to flood at anytime. I’m building a dam. Speaking of that I’m often thinking lately of slowly doing more DIY things. Like fix the drywall in my basement. I’m not sure yet whether that’s an idea and my schedule and sensory stuff means it’s not really conducive. Stay tuned on that one.
I’m watching this is us, and oh my god the triggers and the insight and bliss. Kevin’s twins being born and just watching the trials of these three’s lives. The nuance and the variety of topics covered in this way.
I’m enjoying it immensely….. not have I enjoyed a timing of a show to show me some things since Six Feet Under. This one is a profound love.
I’m reading Dune which is so odd for me. It is and it isn’t. What I appreciate is being attuned to intuition and that that is real.
I want my dreams back, and to be connected. I am figuring it out. Softening, thawing, warming, while also reinforcing my non-negotiables and boundaries.
It’s absolutely pouring.
The waves are crashing around the cement dock that I’ve walked to the edge of so many times and felt like I was standing in the middle of the ocean. Like I could walk on water. Don’t worry no delusions of grandeur here.
Anyway I have more to say later probably or tomorrow. I’m needing woods and water and empty hours.
I am reading A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. As I continuously recognize the magnitude of trauma through the story of others, I close the distance gaps between mine and me.
There’s a line in the book about how a human being could be so thoroughly bifurcated, and that has haunted me ever since.
Is that what I was (am), bifurcated?
And much more specifically not just from my other half, an other half, but from my personality, my soul’s essence. It’s heartbreaking to even write. As the truth seeps inside my skin and takes root.
I recognize, that I recognize the magnitude and then it disappears before my very eyes like the proverbial bird in the magicians cage once the cloth has been drawn back.
Each day a blank canvas in the way that only a survivor can understand, as if nothing has ever existed before. The only thing holding a human life together at times is the glue of the people around them, who they hold shared experiences with. I’ve taken for granted that hallowed glue, and yet I haven’t.
I have known how important and this knowing led me to rush desperately, or maybe it was the trauma and not the knowing that caused that, and to create these unions out of a place of desperation.
See what I do there? How I take responsibility for things I couldn’t possibly be responsible for. But then how does one figure it all out anyway. What is theirs and what is not theirs and what is fair has no place in the realm of humanity. Because things are simply not fair.
Fair is a striving if anything, it is not granted by some mystical or even judicial force, and it’s certainly not a perfect system.
Rather these days I think what is the lesson, and the lesson is always love. Not in simply a romantic sense but an all encompassing one.
Is material like this this so relatable because of my many life experiences and similarity or some divine force that has me connect with exactly what is needed at the time?! Both.
Do I bore you going on and on and answering my own questions in your presence? I cannot attach to that it isn’t my business anyway if you’re bored or not. And besides what do I always say?! You’ll never be bored. I’m not boring and my life is certainly not, though it can be quiet and peaceful now.
I’m learning to allow that.
Anyway this book and watching This is Us for the first time, has me breaking open daily.
There’s something about watching two people sharing life together that want their children that work hard at loving them well, that well just flays me open.
No surprise there.
Watching a father love his children and do his best, and the same for a mother. And how they balance their dreams and their own desires with that.
And how fucked up my path looks in comparison, which is why we don’t do that.
If I look at my life individually the whole story it’s so much easier to see the beauty in it. Watching families who love each other and have traditions and traditional anything just sets my skin aflame like the emotional burn victim I am.
Do you see my scars?
This book though. This show though.
Piece by piece I’m collecting me and I’m putting together a self that has all her original essence, from all the shards.
It’s slow.
There is no longer a rush. It’s slow and beautiful. Everything is art. Every meal cooked and eaten. Every dark thought banished by compassion.
This book opens me. My clients open me. Life opens me. It’s exquisite and excruciating and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
A continual surrender. A cease fire on myself. And finally burying my armor and replacing it with something realistic, something lighter…..
“I’m out of my mind but still I’m holding on like a rolling stone. A thousand miles from anywhere.”
I’m soft and squishy this morning. The aftermath of another wave of grief. My grief is very physical. This episode I didn’t see coming. It’s rare for me to not see something coming. The rarest, and some of the most beautiful, and the darkest things have been of that variety.
Yet what is living if you can’t let go, and let life surprise you, and take the wheel sometimes.
Love is the most powerful force on earth: you simply cannot control it. Though I’ve tried my whole life.
Having so little experience with the stuff, I’ve tried most of my life to bend it to my will.
I’m not God. I wouldn’t want that job. Believe it or not 😉
So now I need faith. How do you believe in something that was never a natural part of your life. Something you’ve tried to learn logically while you still have oxygen in your lungs.
I’ve been in a hurry to learn love, until love had its way with me.
I’ve put all the narratives down. The shields. The sword.
I am naked.
Bare.
My story is all that stands left, unedited. No parts cut out. The whole thing.
Here I am.
It all matters to me.
I’ve put pathologizing down too. Trying to keep others safe from me, just in case, and instead causing harm any way. And I’ve had harm caused to me. It’s all part of living. No one is getting out of here alive.
I’m sober. I may not stay that way forever but right now I can’t afford emotional ups and downs more than I already have as an artist. I feel everything all the way through.
Everything except compassion for myself, for having survived this all or nothing existence, cut off from my own emotions.
My whole life I’ve been a coping mechanism, and now I’m healing into a human, and I’d almost prefer to go back, because the breaking and resetting is excruciating. There is no description that does it Justice. Yet 😉
I finally understand why people give up. I really do.
It’s not in my nature and my work is too vital. Those are my main motivators right now.
Most days I’m in agony and I’ve been ashamed of that. Like it might rub off on someone, like they can catch it. Like I’m supposed to just be ok and move on, because if not I’m sick like my mom. Always this demon lurking over me. Accidentally watched White Oleander the other night before bed. Not a good idea. Give me a good Disney movie. Oops.
I’ve been purging demons lately. That’s what trauma work is, quite literally. It’s what being possessed is…..
In giant waves of illness and stillness and comfort and rest after. The migraine melts immediately as soon as the true root of the pain is expressed. The robbing vice releases, and I can stop throwing up.
I haven’t thrown up since I was young.
Too much control. Too little love.
Now I have it all around it and I am it, and I’m adjusting. Why is love an itchy wool sweater for me?! There’s more than the judgment, there are other things too.
I’ll write them out. I’ll go in. I’m all in. Committed.
I began a new journal today, and ended my hamsa one yesterday. This one is all black with a skull and four gold leaves on the cover. It smells of Italian leather and reminds me of Día De Los Muertos. Makes sense and is a good dead of winter book.
Maybe it will contain more about all my dead selves than I’ve ever captured before.
I’m in writing immersions with Victoria Erickson. Learning to allow my life force and energy to flow, come what may.
Slowly working on home improvements. New office carpet, stairs and a railing going in, in the next few weeks. It’s so cozy in my sacred space. Just want to make sure it’s safe for my clients.
I made a contractor friend who is going to teach me how to do dry wall, and a few new things.
If I’m not learning I’m not happy. That’s a fact.
I want to learn everything all the time.
I’m beginning Barbara Streisand’s new memoir ! I love it already she’s so funny and real.
I am scheming a project to write my barber’s memoir. It’s been a spark for a long time. If you’re a person of the passionate variety, that’s all you need, and pretty soon it will catch fire.
I finally had the courage to pitch it, after last haircut. Today the spark became lit. He’s excited.
I’m hoping the practice will help me unlock mine. Not doing it alone helps.
Go Easy on Me just came on.
Flying twin b home from Florida for Thanksgiving. We will all be together in this home. That’s all I want is family. It’s all I’ve ever wanted really. No fight about where anyone will go, just offering love, and allowing those who want to gather.
To love my work, to be cozy with a good book by the fire, to continue to learn, and to connect with other human stories like myself, and share.
I’m the most myself I’ve ever been, and it’s been so much to get here. I cannot even tell you. There’s still so much work to do, it will never be done, but I’m so happy doing it.
I’m in uncharted waters. Exhausting and exciting. Always keep curiosity just a little bit larger than fear.
I’m burning off layers and layers of shame and pain. With every mile, every word penned, every sunrise and set.
I’m having a mad love affair with the song evermore this morning. I want to touch the keys of my piano and tune my ear to the sounds. The ones that make people feel. Rhythm that can’t be ignored. A siren call. Satellite call.
So many empty hours before me wanting, needing.
No desperation,
only stillness.
I’m learning a course in miracles, lesson 8 this am is about how the egoic mind clings to the past and creates it to replay over into your present unless you become aware of this.
The only true thought is that the past is no longer present: makes room for new creation.
New lessons,
rather than loops of old ones,
chasing your tail.
I’m getting used to these orthotics. Right now arch support feels like arch assault. But I think ultimately the whole posture is positively impacted by the right nurturing. Isn’t that about right for a metaphor for life.
I saw killer of the flower moon yesterday. The new Scorsese film. Really eye opening. So much to unpack there about manipulation, privilege, and a whole variety of things.
I enjoy seeing movies in the theater. What I’m really finding important about this now is not multi tasking. Just being present and absorbed into someone’s creation. So many pieces went into it.
How good it feels to be with the present moment. And there are many ways that’s hard also. The losses creep up and haunt.
While what might have been no longer consumes me, it’s sometimes a bitter pill.
This is where faith is really important. And letting go of control.
Allowing
That’s my current mission.
Tonight is family time at the Figg cooking school.
A friend is visiting. I’ve known him since way back, he visits every year, and every year it’s a motivator to plan things together. Kinda sounds like family right ?! That elusive promised thing, that was so missing for so long.
But look at me I make one wherever I go. I create family easily, and that requires an open heart. Before it was at times a desperate act without enough thought to not also create harm. I’m sorry.
No
I’m really sorry.
Sorry doesn’t cover it. For irresponsible actions on my part that caused pain. And I’m also aware if we are going to risk anything in this lifetime hurt will happen. I will not use that as a justification, but I will use the understanding to allow healing.
That’s where I am right now.
I walk, I think, I read, I love, I understand…..
Funny Miley Cyrus is now singing I miss me more. May I everyone find that really important aspect of love.
In balance with one’s own desires and destiny if you will. If you won’t that’s ok too. My beliefs are solid and also open to modification as I understand more.
Two miles, that’s good for now. I have admin to enjoy doing, and some chores.
I love being in my office. It’s my own home within my home. Sacredness is in there. People come there to heal, to feel their hurts, and I do too. Beautiful love and life.
Tomorrow I write. I can’t wait. I’m waiting breathlessly for that ability to be fully me, to fully express everything anything I want.
Writing is safe.
It’s my constant loved one.
Consistency is so nice these days, but also not rigid or caged within it. Consistent forward movement come what may.
Walking and blogging is the thing today. Rain on shine it’s always time to feel relaxed and refreshed, and listening to music of course. This morning it’s Is That Alright, a Star is Born.
So I’m on the brink of my 43rd trip around the Sun. I am ahead of time as usual, ironic as so much of my life I agonized about being wrong, bad, and behind. Sigh. All of that stress.
So goals by 45, and then of course we will talk about accomplishments.
To have written one book poetry or otherwise, whether it’s published or not doesn’t matter. I’ll be notified about next steps after this one that’s dear to my heart.
To be in shape. Be able to do push ups sit ups a pull up within reason. To get where I need to go without being winded. To know and honor how I need to eat and drink for my body to feel secure, and in a good state.
To be caught up professionally with all my CE and getting licensed in the states I want etc, and to feel relaxed about it. October 24, my national certificate requires 100 CE, which should in theory be so easy for me. However, the last ten years has been filled with chaos, stops and starts and a lot of disorganization. Soooooooo. We just clean up. No biggie.
This means an item on my to do I continuously avoid, which is entering the things into NBCC, which requires gathering and finishing some courses. Not a big deal, but do need to put some attention on this, ahora.
That’s pretty much it. Consistency, follow through.
I have some new interests and the space in my life to pursue. One being New York City. This one has come as a surprise to me. A big one! I used to be so anxious about the city. Which seems silly now. I love the pulse. I love the wandering. I love the people watching. I love the inspiration.
Perhaps it’s the resilience and heart that attracts me.
I see it so differently now. Something I used to see as cold and frightening. Is alive with heart and warmth and things to discover.
So I’d like to find an apartment/ space to lease or even just more day trips in and write there.
It has taken a lot of letting go for me to allow life to surprise me a little. This is where I’m at Letting Go of control and allowing life to guide me where it will.
I love this for me.
I am writing. Tuesdays 6-9, and Sundays 12-3 in an immersion that is allowing myself to be shaken loose from all the debris in there. Glaciers melt. Heart opens. Here we are !
I get to get to know me. A privilege. It’s a privilege to know this is an option. That I could be enthusiastic about it. Who knew ?!
I’m allowing myself to allow writing to be my priority without judging it, criticizing, avoiding, deflecting. Yes I have done those things, do them at times.
Banishing the internal abuser, is a big part of my work right now. On the other side of that process awe awaits.
True juicy moments filled with heart and humanity.
Ok so accomplishments. When I look out into my life I see that I’ve raised three humans. I can’t even believe I just wrote that. I’ve raised three humans that are full of heart and have strong minds and I couldn’t be more proud. Especially since along their journey at times they were left to raise themselves while I needed to rise, and at times they had to raise me.
I am allowing myself to let go of the shame and guilt around that so I can be free to love better now, especially them.
To make you feel my love, is my mission. That I take care of myself in such a way that, those around me can feel my love in a way that’s nourishing.
And the truth is I’m still learning how to nourish myself. I’m so grateful to be here now alive, and able to pursue this. Me, myself.
It’s a miracle.
It’s not small task.
And I couldn’t be more excited about it.
The icing of accomplishments is healthier relationships with my children and myself.
A thriving and vibrant career that’s alive and well, and with no more panic about really every single thing.
I cannot believe how long I survived living in the state I was, and what it was doing to my body. It makes me tear up just thinking about it. Or should I say makes my eyes sweaty.
My thoughts were going a mile a minute. So perhaps one of my greatest accomplishments is being in my body, a continuous returning, and living to tell the tale.
I can organize and relax now.
And ….
Write
All my love,
C
Ps a new writing Instagram may be under way. I’m told I need a social media presence for my writing. We will see given my aversion to social media these days, how this goes. I am excited about learning. Always excited about learning, and there’s always something to learn.
I realize it’s been too long since I’ve written in here. Beginning again requires no grand gesture, except to splay my words upon the page.
Life is so different now than it’s ever been for me.
The kitchen window is open. I can hear the cars splashing through the wet pavement on High st. There’s a bathroom window open, and it’s making a door creak slightly every so often.
I’m reading Stephen King’s Needful Things. Marveling at how he takes a concept and a belief of his, sets it to quirky characters. Creates a setting based on a place he loves, and takes his shot. His art. How small town washed up people become prone to obsession over items that bring them nostalgia or comfort. What they are willing to do to anyone, to be able to feel better.
In the movie, a young Ed Harris plays Alan Pangborn, the town sheriff. The book is better of course.
I marvel at how I can read a chilling description of two women killing each other and not be kept up at night. Perhaps my ability to find the art in this fiction stays my traumatized mind from its post. I typical do not like to fill it with horror. I have enough reels of my own, should I want a chill during spooky season.
I’m mostly focused on being present. And realizing how much I wasn’t. How unwell and dissociated I had been a lot of my life, without really being aware of it. That has been a slow burn. Burning off shame. Shedding self-consciousness ,and seeing what lies under all of that.
That’s where I am.
It’s a process that requires time and cultivating, and I’m committed.
I’m still figuring out balance with that regard.
Since I’m forty I moved wrong the other day. I am now on steroids and doing physical therapy two times weekly. Lol. So that’s happening. I used to freak at the smallest setback physically. So now I just allow life to pause me when needed.
I began working with a new client last night. They work in a profession I’m intrigued with. The person was very solid and grounded, and my energy matched suit during the session. The person is in their 60’s so that makes sense. Of course that’s not the only factor. But I really enjoyed holding space for their story, and having the privilege of them entrusting their heart and pain to me upon our first meeting.
People’s beautiful resilience and heart captivate me in such a way. I am starting to be able to believe I could be captivating too.
Without being constantly pushed by any force to get out into the world, I now believe it is beginning to happen naturally. And I believe those that have told me the world needs to hear what I have to say.
So I’m working on gaining security behind my voice. Peeling back layers of shame and trauma that attempt to sabotage my goals and dreams.
I read, I walk, I write, I counsel, I love, and therefore I am.
My relationships with my children are healing nicely. It’s still a lot to be with the ways I’ve caused them pain from my own ignorance and my own traumas. I have to continue to make amends and forgive myself, and that’s no easy feat.
I love my clients past and present. I think about them in my daily life and send them love and light.
I think about my life experiences and those I have loved deeply. With every part of me, and how those experiences have shaped me.
I’m doing a course in miracles.
I’m about to go on a cruise to Bermuda. Only slightly nervous about the possibility of motion sickness, as my body likes to feel firmly planted and in control. Ha, what an illusion. I don’t know if that, or the fact I won’t work for 8 ish days is the more frightening prospect. Both are uncharted territory.
Which is a theme lately in my personal counseling. I am in uncharted territory my counselor said to me the other day. Mostly outside my pattern in most way, maybe some days slipping inside it a little.
What can I say I’m a work in progress.
I’m really happy I wrote this post and I’m hopeful I’m ready to make this a weekly if not a daily practice.
Oh and I’m obsessed with learning Spanish on Duolingo. I marvel at how my brain can recall so much and it’s just there without even trying. I often struggled at age normative times to learn another language. And it’s thrilling to realize that was likely because so much space was taken in my brain by hyper vigilance.
I marvel at the gift of being able to be understanding of myself now, and to be able to communicate in a way I feel understood, which is the real magic.
My heart is continuing to open. I’m more consistent with so many things, and that’s a path I’m very grateful to be walking. No longer beating myself into submission. Less remissions, sparsely placed omissions. Oh there I go rhyming. Can’t help it.
I got nailed by mosquitoes in a short while this morning. Under attack. The rage rises. Story of my life. It rises so quickly at times I admit to myself.
I’m nearing the end of Sober Curious by Ruby Warrington. I’m beginning a Life of One’s Own by Joanna Bigs and probably the Gunkel because it came up so randomly in two of my sessions yesterday and I have it on my shelf. I’m back logged with books as usual, but these days I’m developing a sense of trust in the one I need / want / desire will be there for me and that is all the difference in the world.
Life is in such a transition right now I’m wobbly. I’m having some major major epiphanies. I’m being with myself and not abandoning her and learning to listen and honor. I am unlearning my own self gaslighting in such profound ways. Undoing all those written stories and writing in clarity. It makes me emotional just thinking about it.
I’m thinking about sobriety. Not just alcohol or substance use (by the way the song Angel by The Wings by Sia just came on and it’s perfect I’m head nod writing in resonance with my own journey), but emotional sobriety. Not riding waves of highs and lows, but committed to staying steady. That’s my mission right now.
Earned secure. I’ve been practicing it for years and it’s an ongoing journey not a destination. I’m realizing this as a truth settling into my bones, rather than an idea.
Not what I should want, but what I do want, and need. If I can’t be honest with myself about it how could I have healthy relationships.
I’m updating my bio metaphorically and soon it’s time literally. But I’m also fully committed in my relationships and rooted and I don’t need re-branding or any form of change. That comes anyway like it or not. What I need is to be steady. Stay steady and firm and grounded and clear.
I hate alcohol. I hate it for so many reasons. One of which is it’s seduction that I have ever needed it for any reason. To have or to be fun, more relaxed, let loose. Fuck off. That’s actually not what alcohol has done in my life ever. It has manipulated me.
Don’t get me wrong I’ve manipulated too. It’s not black or white or right or wrong. Just peeling back layers to reveal new skin that has been built under the old. Sloughing off.
I pull away from alcohol and yet I so easily fold to belong and feel accepted and to feel less anxious, but actually if I’m paying attention it does the opposite.
I am sifting through my booze story and remembering the last time I was 7 months sober (but who’s counting because I’m not an alcoholic right ?! Just any other kind of addiction compulsion impulsivity). Ick my own bullshit angers me the most. Deep breathe. I’ve got you. I’m angry and I love you and you’re safe with me most profoundly in that I’m committed to being honest with you (me).
I was 7 months sober, and at the time when I looked back I thought I was doing that so someone else in my life would follow, and in solidarity of their loss of a loved one to alcoholism.
I had all of these stories, none of them were about my relationship to alcohol.
I drink it when I’m in so much pain I can hardly see, and also to “just have fun at social events” I pretend I can without an up and down roller coaster ride of terror. The smell makes my pulse beat faster. The glazed over eyes. I hate the stuff. I want to be clear and slow and peaceful.
A liquid lake of love and learning.
I want to be addicted to learning if anything, but not desperate for it. Allowing of my desires in a safe way.
I don’t want to preach and I don’t have to just because I want to be sober and I will learn to stop ducking gaslighting myself.
I don’t care to debate whether I’m an addict (compulsive comfort seeker) or not. I am. I went years without my emotional needs met, I was always going to be. I’ve allowed myself to involve myself in things unhealthy for me to seek a feeling. I’ll forget everything to that end. I’ll explode my whole life.
What’s interesting about this is it’s also a gaslight. I made the right decisions for me, and I didn’t make them in a way that’s in alignment with who I want to be in certain ways. The right decisions in some wrong ways, welcome to living where we have to learn. Have the space and privilege to do so, and many of us don’t.
If I find myself having to scream to be heard I am in the wrong situation no matter how I feel or how real I think something is.
I was 7 months sober and I can’t even remember the moment I undid it but I know it was to be closer to someone or something and doing the same thing makes me feel that way at such a basic level and I take for granted at times all the work I’ve done to move beyond that.
The first question I asked my now therapist on day one is can something like this really be real. And the answer I’ve found for myself these years later is yes it can and yes it was.
And that doesn’t mean the path is going to take you where you think you want to be. There are some things that may remain a mystery maybe forever.
But one thing that won’t is my own emotions and self concept being in my awareness. I’m attuning to me and I won’t allow anything to change that journey for me. I am learning that those that can see it and appreciate it (me) will show up on their own. I don’t have to fight for love or to be seen. I need only to remove my own blocks to the awareness love has always been my birthright.
Love is my birthright and being loving is meant to be a joy and not an impossible task. I just have lots of rocks to push up hills until each time I’m grateful when I reach the top, even if I just start again tomorrow.
