My whole life I feel like I have been out on a limb. In so many aspects. Somewhere along the way I learned to take the risks. During more of the unsure times in my life these risks could definitely have been categorized as the unhealthy kind. So I internalized, as I do so well, more bad information about myself.
In this second half of my life my “risk taking” is the exact thing that has yielded some of the biggest pay out. I still look at those people who cross all their t’s and dot all their i’s with great admiration. And a serious dose of black and white thinking: they are right, I am wrong.
Here in the state of Connecticut I have found that risk taking could be as simple as speaking to someone in line at Starbucks. They don’t do that sort of thing here. Stay in your lane baby girl. Mind your business. More people starving for connecting here, than I have found anywhere else. Perhaps that’s why me, the queen of connecting, ended up here.
I met one of my dearest friends in life, a man closer to the end of his life than the beginning. A good man who likes the Hallmark channel so he can get a dose of real emotion when he needs. A man who loves his son and grandson, and a wife who doesn’t deserve it so much (from him, everyone deserves love).
I tell our story sometimes to clients and they are always baffled. You did what? Yes we borrowed sugar and an egg to make cookies. We asked a neighbor to borrow something. Naive as usual, I had never received the memo that people in Connecticut absolutely under no circumstances do this sort of thing. Psycho. Go to the store like everyone else does. Nevertheless this yielded a friendship that would become a surrogate father, and person who tells me I am their normal.
I tell him if I’m his normal he is in serious trouble. We loved him on birthdays when no one else showed him how special he is, and he loved me with all of my insecurities. He listened to a thousand anxious emails, worried I would never be loved the way I was hoping to, worried I was bad. Only one of those worries very occasionally threatens to crop up. I consider myself very blessed.
You see thoughts about going out on a limb come to my mind, and they won’t be dismissed in the name of anything. They keep tugging at the strings of my heart until I am forced to unleash them on an unsuspecting world. This wasn’t so well received when I was younger. I scared the hell out of people. I was called too intense more than you can imagine. Which of course triggered my family stuff. Too much, somehow not good that you’re around. I made myself smaller. My self became depressed, shrank.
I tried to just do day in day out with no magic. It never worked for me. When I ignore that urge to reach out when I feel that vibration, later the regret drives me mad. I know I missed out on the hidden secret the universe had wrapped in many papers and then in box after box, like those Russian nesting dolls. And the determination it takes to be brave enough to keep opening after not only finding empty ones, but also being ridiculed for trying.
I needed to belong somewhere, anywhere. That need trumped coming into my own. So it has taken me a long time to be here now. And when it comes to trusting myself I am still a baby deer wobbling on it’s new legs. Self-doubt had been my constant companion, ptsd has hard wired it into my system. But I always knew I belonged out on a limb.
Out on a limb you’re alone, nervous you will fall at any moment, and precarious. You face rejection, being discredited, and boat loads of shame. Why would anyone do that? Especially in Connecticut. If there ever was a state you do not do that, it is here. I often muse to myself that instead of being the “Nutmeg state”, we should be the repression state. I guess “Repressers” doesn’t ring as light and fun as “Nutmeggers, but I would venture it rings true to many.
Now before you’re tempted to think I’m generalizing in a terrible way, I’m not finished yet. Underneath a thin layer of steel, people here are warm and gooey just like all of us human beings. I would argue they may even be more passionate here. Whether it’s being fueled by the unbeatable fall seasons here, or the determination to make our own sunshine after a long cold winter, there is as much heart as anywhere.
The heart is in tact. And I have found people are just wanting those brave people to make that first move to connect in a real way. Sure some aren’t ready for it, that is their cross, and it is heavy. Another best friend heart (bless her), one who has known me at my worst and still seen through.
She once gave me a Globe from the show Wicked. She taped “keep defying gravity” in a small note she taped to the bottom. If the house ever caught fire this is the one thing I would grab. After the live animals of course. :p Her heart was crushed from birth perhaps, a thick skin became very necessary for her, and I broke through for a real friendship. My self-doubt made it feel invisible sometimes, afraid I wasn’t good enough, and so I kept myself away, as people who feel that way tend to do. I hope she always knows she is my person.
At that time I was an uncultured swine (ok that’s mean, a broke, single mother) and could certainly have never seen that show. I was as lost as a human can become and my behaviors sucked, and yet she still believed in some part of me. These people are two of many of my supreme gifts the Universe has given me. These people are how I help so many now. I had to be lifted up, to lift others. They are my angels and the light that shines through my eyes.
To be allowed to have the love I knew was behind a particular soul, more big risks, more limbs. I’m pretty sure she thought I was nuts in the beginning, but something bade her to keep going with it. And now we are standing on the precipice of a great dream, neither of us knew we had before.
This woman never wrongs me for the risks I take. Every time I go to talk to her I project she will tell me no way and that I’m not thinking and all sorts of other things. But she trusts me and our love to such a pure degree I HAVE to trust it also. It is unwavering. Her love and trust for me is UNWAVERING. And like the grinch who had been so hurt and rejected he had reached the point where he was bristly and mean on the outside, the parts of me that still threaten to become that way, just stop. I think my heart has expanded larger than my body, and all the light is just constantly radiating outwards.
I am a lighthouse for others, and I am beginning to believe that is true, and to love parts of myself that I shut down (to keep safe) long ago. Her love is my constant kerosene, and it’s a reflection finally of all the love I splashed at the world. A world who wasn’t ready for it, a girl who wasn’t ready to give it to herself.
Here I sit today, on the end of this limb, calmly having a picnic, dancing on the tip. For me this is the only way to live. Love is everywhere, inside of everything… Connecticut is no exception and neither are you….
We watched this beautiful soul at Daryl’s House in Pawling New York. I am tearing up just thinking about it. I’ve never been like this before. Openly emotional and all heart outside my chest beating for all to see. Her first few words made the tears come immediately, something I never thought was possible for me.
Which helps me also acknowledge how hard my life has been and allow that. Allow it without worrying that I feel I’m special, or in comparison with someone else, or betraying another. I am realizing journeying out of PTSD is a lifelong pursuit, it cycles over and over, until enough security is built to let safety and peace take over.
And now that I am standing here (a little), I am feeling all my feelings I minimized before. My whole body shakes with them at times. I am feeling them with a new story. The work is exhausting. I am ragged lately. I dress comfortably and often don’t even wear make-up. At face value many things could be said, but since I go deeper, and I’m loved deeper, it doesn’t matter anymore.
Trying to live to be seen and loved has lost all its power, and in this new place I am finding all of mine.
I found something in Mary Lambert last night. I said to my wife that “she must have suffered a lot/suffer a lot”, and that “she does music the way I do therapy.” I could feel every word of her music wrapping my heart and soul in support and love. I could feel her giving to others with passionate truth.
The tears just kept running down my face. I didn’t wipe them away, or smile awkwardly in shame. They are mine and they are important. I want to live Bold like her. I do on the outside, but my insides still scan my self for wrong and bad things. Hyper-vigilant to my core.
Watching Mary Lambert move her body proudly, unbridled, and with great joy; makes me know I have to love mine as fiercely.
I’ve spent most of my life desperately insecure about how others would see me, squirming with it. Trying to sell myself, and so often feeling rejected and less than. Uncomfortable in my clothes, and my very skin. Always looking to others for answers.
Mary helps this great hurt. Her voice goes straight to my soul. She is a healer also. And again I catch myself wishing I could be enjoyed like that. She gives comfort and often times I remove it in favor of growth. People watch her and enjoy themselves. People come to sit with me and ache and bleed.
I give permission to feel feelings also, but there’s no sweet background music. Maybe there should be đ I’ll have to think about that.
I still don’t have all the words for my feelings right now. What I can tell you is I am a person who has dedicated her life to healing, and I am only now realizing the full extent of my wounds, and the time and medicine it takes. I am hoping to do some important work for others with this.
Love,
Christina đȘđŒđ
Ps wanted to share my Facebook post that came out in the raw last night.
Music gives us permission to fully feel our feelings. Tonight the music of Mary Lambert opened up my heart and emptied it, and filled it, again and again. It was a spiritual experience. This past year I feel like Iâm walking around with no skin on. Everything is raw. Itâs beautifully painful.
This past year Iâve come back from the dead. My body was present and I could give, but my emotions were so far away from my reach. As a result Iâve feared myself, questioned my character, and been drenched in immense doubt for most of my life.
I ran hard and fast from myself. I had huge feelings I didnât know what to do with. I held them on top of me. I couldnât breathe. I havenât breathed a true sigh of relief most of my life. So now when I do it could blow down a building. Iâm a tidal wave force of emotions. The choice of the powers always to decide for good or evil. I was always good. I had the hardest time believing that story. My feelings are valid.
I refuse to ever let myself believe again like I am not worthy of every one of them, and Allowed to express them. I used to write songs, but then I forgot. I forgot my joy and my beauty. I packed them away in many a suitcase. I padlocked them, wrapped them in chains, and let them sink to the bottom of the Ocean. The current took them to extreme temperature depths ,and they froze there.
I just tried to find the template for living after that. I looked around, and then said, âI guess Iâll try that.â And that and that and that. A great enthusiasm on the outside, and endless pit of doubt on the in.
Now I have the permission to create. I gave it to myself. And this brave brave woman tonight, has given me more than I can express in this moment. Simply by fiercely loving herself, so I could see how beautiful that looks on someone, and know I could be beautiful too.
âYouâre the mom and Iâm the babyâ, she always said. No truth could ever illuminate my early life more. That first time she held me and looked into my eyes, she also said âyou had a wisdom in your eyes I knew you already were beyond me.â Sometimes I wish she didnât take that so literally.
That day was the first and last day I was a baby. Now at thirty seven I might as well be eighty eight. Iâve often felt like an alien in this life. The self-doubt was the worst part, when you are your own parent how do you know if youâre going the right way and doing the right things.
I had an innate curiosity and enthusiasm that rocked me tightly through the storms. I was conscientious to a fault. I remember watching movies and always wanting âto be the good guy.â My insides would tighten when someone was harmed or in danger. I wanted to jump through the screen and protect them, the fatal flaw was that I always believed that I could. And that I never included myself in that equation.
How could I, I was born to be strong. Thatâs what they all needed from me.
I sought my Father for safety, nose pressed to the glass a hundred times he didnât show. My heart broke again and again. Bonded and left wondering. He smelled like Polo cologne, the green bottle. He smoked a pipe, was strong and smart, and had big dogs I adored. He was the safer bet I thought. Except he didnât bet on me.
My salvation, is that so many others have.
My human angels that just reached out and saw my heart. They loved my enthusiasm and my smile. To them I wasnât too much. To them I was someone to be enjoyed. They brought me into their families and I watched and learned all I could.
My grandparents meant well and they tried. Good church going folk doing the right thing raising their daughterâs out of wedlock baby. Whispers through the church they were the saints, I was the sinner, and my mom was never mentioned except with pity, as those with mental illness often are. Rigidly religious, shame was the ruler of this roost.
Everyone had sympathy for my birth and praise for the grandparents who saved me. Similarly later in life everyone pitied my husband, a good man, when I left him after the realization I was gay. Inside I struggled for years, wanted to end my life, and entered therapy. Outside I had an affair, and my character diminished. I was always dark and twisted, something to be feared. Why then did others see so much light in me? The ultimate confusion.
I became everything I hated and wanted to fight against. I had already been that for quite some time, but strong always speaks louder, in these situations. So naturally now that I had the whole big answer: being gay. I pressed fiercely forward towards love. I fell in love fast and hard. Dripping with desperation.
I needed a parent not a lover, but I didnât know at the time.
When Love was the vehicle that finally illuminated all my broken parts, I could begin the healing process. The critics were immense. There were more than those that cheered me on. Self-doubt again was my constant companion.
Another trip into hell, and another trip… it would take me hundreds before I emerged.
As a result I have this gift. People feel seen and safe in my presence. When I expected myself to be everything that saved just one, all my own triggers were brought forth. Through the process of honing my healing powers in graduate school, and with the teachers that sprung forth my heart was thawing out. Boundaries were a constant lesson, and the better I got at them, the more healing occurred. I could help people without pouring my entire being into them.
I could find a real and genuine empathy for others I was closely involved with, and not just the strangers on the street. My heart was thawing. The tears could finally fall freely. I had learned to refer to myself as a good mother without flinching and immediate disbelief. I began to learn how to play. I found healthy love, and a meaning filled career. I wake up each day looking forward to it now.
The title of my memoir that has rolled over and over in my head emerged:
I’m not doing so well with my pages this morning. The season has shifted and the feeling is almost immediate. Last night we randomly, with no planning whatsoever, began to pull out the lawn mower, and get some new yard tools. My yard looks like the Secret Garden before it’s magical transformation. It has been 6 years of neglect of having an owner whose last primary focus was it. The yard that time forgot. I’d be ashamed, but how can I rightly do so when I’ve opened a successful counseling practice, learned how to do billing, become a better parent, learned to manage Crohn’s Disease and all that comes with it, gotten a much better handle on my anxiety, and found a love that makes me a better person every single day.
So I guess now it’s the yard’s time for a little attention. To hopefully help me slow down as I learn to tend to it’s needs. To take the effort to do something that doesn’t yield an immediate gratification and to enjoy task for the sake of being tender and nurturing, without requirement from the task. It seems daunting at first this under-taking. How do I even attach this blade to this long handled saw? Am I qualified to prune trees? I’ll probably kill them. I’ll probably cut off a finger, and then I won’t be able to write. I’ve always had a black thumb. Honest. I used to tell people that if you truly cared about that plant to give it a different home. But perhaps over time I’ve become more able to attend and nurture and maybe I could be a gardener now. We can try on a new self anytime we want. Did you know that? I sure have and boy have I learned a lot along the way. It’s what I have learned the most from.
Could I be the environmentally conscious person with a compost pile and dirt under my finger nails? Ok I couldn’t do the dirt under my finger nails, that strikes fear into my highly sensitive heart. That’s why I can’t keep finger nails. I would obsess about the dirty nail until I had to take it off immediately with or without the tools to do so.
I would also like to try out being the person with an exercise routine. And maybe even one who runs a 5 k. Also could I be someone who has the edgy fun short hair cut without worrying that my weight gain would make it unflattering or someone won’t take me seriously in my career with the hair. Why do we give ourselves such little permission for the things we really want? Conditioned and trained with so much outside commentary about who we should be and what we should do. Lately I am feeling like rebelling against this in every way possible. I recognize the pain caused to self from shame and feeling not enough or too much in some way. I’m spending lots of time thinking about this.
Guess what person I am though? I realized this after my post and this is an edit actually to the original. I remembered how good it felt last night. We played and worked outside together. I was the house in the neighborhood that kids wanted to be at. They played four square in the court that someone who isn’t in our lives anymore, but loved us at an important time we needed it built. We have been loved and supported, so we can also give love and support and a space to others. This is how it looks. The more we receive the more we have to give. And I realize in this moment I’ve never been short on receiving. I just had a lot of expectations about where I was supposed to get things from, and what they were supposed to look like.
I am in love with my life. Truly, madly, and deeply. I complain and get cranky sometimes and my kids probably think I’m the strictest mother ever. But I am seeing us all becoming more compassionate of one another and conscientious people, and that’s always been important to me. And I have moments where everyone is laughing and playing and I’m surrounded by love and being love. Those moments are my gold.
I’m less in the mood to think and write as I am to DO this morning. To be present with people I love and to share the joy I’ve found in myself. The only thing nagging at me is all the supposed to’s of my Sunday expectations of self. Cleaning, shopping, and most importantly to my heart right now. Preparing myself for Martha Beck’s Light Writing Course. I am going to be a Light Writer! I am already one is the conclusion I’ve come to from listening to the initial materials on the psychology of light writing. Basically it’s how to access our higher selves, the compassionate less reactive ones. I am relieved to notice that this is my life’s work already. I just didn’t have the language for it she does. So I’ve found my place. That’s one of the best feelings.
Another new feeling of belonging. Belonging has been on my mind a lot lately. It’s been one of my biggest battles in life on so many different fields. I never feel like I belong even when I could. And now I’m trying to give myself fierce permission to belong to myself so I’ll never have to fear the sting of taking personally that I don’t belong somewhere for some reason outside of myself. Belonging, like love, is an inside job. It’s whether we feel worthy to belong, and in the face of much information towards the opposite it feels impossible.
I am a light writer and I am a being who who accesses her higher self a good portion of the time. And when I don’t I am committed to looking at my part in things and learning to be humble and take the lesson. I think this writing course will also be humbling for me, it will show my painful parts to me and I know I need to be up to the task. I admit I’m a little nervous.
So I will be here guys tending to my internal garden and the external one and writing about everything along the way. Thank you for supporting me. You are the kerosene, the candle, the electric current, and the sun to my shine. I’ve never been alone. I believed I was for so long, and that belief held me back. All my supports were just waiting for me to reach out and find them. For me to love myself enough to ask and to teach, those willing to learn how to love me.
Ask people what they need and how we can love them better!
I am having an inspired morning and want to share a couple of things. A realization I had just this morning is that we need to learn how to love one another beyond loving in just the ways we know how. What I knew about love for a long time left me not behaving very well. I didn’t create space or have room to let love grow. I had deep and crushing insecurities and at the drop of a hat (or more appropriately the pull of a trigger), they would explode like shrapnel tearing apart my relationships and then my life. I would have to rebuild again, and I did this under the weight of crushing shame. I had friends even stop hanging out with me, because I had a new partner, they didn’t like that change. Did they think I did? Did they think that my relationships didn’t work because I didn’t desperately want them to? We need to stop shaming others people.We need to learn how, and when, and why we do this so we can stop.
I had to learn my way out of this space and way of existing, and the cost of that learning has not been cheap. I’ve lived bathed in anxiety. I have a chronic illness now, whether you say it’s genetics or extreme stress most of my life has been exhausting. Lots caused by my thinking as much as my circumstances. This is why we need to be educated on these matters, and the time and encouragement to fully explore our own thoughts and minds without being called selfish, or crazy, or somehow wrong! Without being told how to live and love based on one perspective.
Parents tell their children how to live all the time, and don’t realize they are showing them by modeling, not with their words. We are sometimes accidentally angry with our children for not being who we want them to be, even when they may be being courageous. We can accidentally crush their tiny spirits with all of our fear of failure as parents, and we need to be aware of this.
It isn’t just natural knowing how to live we need to be taught, and these days we are taught by the extreme opposite of thinking about who we are and what we want of life and how we want to be loved, and if we are loving others well. These days our teachers are YouTube videos and scrolling Instagram, and my kids are left alone on those platforms as well, while I’m busy. Now I’ve given out some great recommendations to clients and friends about fantastic YouTube videos, it isn’t all bad. But when kids are just left to learn from whatever they come across with little guidance or presence because it has been replaced, then we are heading to a scary place.
Do you know that our children are scared to death right now? They are in my office all the time. All they hear about is that the sea is rising, and that you can be shot while in class, and that they won’t have any financial future. Where is the hope? We have to teach them how they can rise to any occasion, because it’s what humanity is famous for. Someone will rise and they will lead, and it can’t all be bad. Our children are stressed, and anxious, and depressed, and lonely. They need us to rise. THEY NEED US TO RISE.
This means we are the teachers of compassion, empathy, understanding, and hope. The teachers of how small changes can make a difference, rather than doing nothing because of overwhelm. This has been one of my biggest battles. As an HSP I feel so much I become crushed under the weight, leading to my main focus being how to comfort myself. I’ve had to learn my way out of this cycle. We need to make the change from bogged down hopeLESS to hopeFULL.
Our children watch every action we make and every word we say. So spend some time thinking what they are seeing you do, because ultimately that is the cycle they will repeat until they resolve their personal tasks. We can make that an easier or a more difficult process for them. The number one thing they want is to see you interested in who they are as a person, not who you wish they would be. We must see our children, and our lovers, and our friends and neighbors, and the stranger on the corner through generous eyes.
We must do this whether or not it is deserved in a moment. We must do this because of who we are, and not because of any inauthentic reason. Because a person who is believed in and encouraged is a thousand times more likely to be successful at becoming who they are.
This does not mean we allow ourselves to be treated badly by subjecting ourselves to poor treatment. That isn’t what I’m suggesting. Always exercise and be aware of your personal boundaries, that is loving of self. When you’re confident in your boundaries it becomes easier to love with your whole self and heart, that healing variety of love, because you’ll trust in your ability to know where your energy is productive and where it isn’t.
Our children need us people… WE MUST RISE. We must educate and love harder and with more of a depth to our understanding. So kids have permission to understand themselves and to grow. So kids have permission to expand, and we aren’t unintentionally asking them to shrink to fit our expectations.
Even good intentions must be examined, because many things we do are not conscious.
*Everything in moderation. Unless you are ADHD, then it is everything all at once immediately as soon as you want it, and deal with the consequences later. With a force and a fury that feels impossible to get a handle on.
It’s blog post Sunday. The girls are blasting Hamilton, playing Jenga (which is really cute), and also playing with Siggy and his new toy. There is a pot of chicken soup with veggies and potatoes simmering on the stove. These are the warm and comforting things of family that I have created and now have the privilege of basking in, for moments at a time at least. Directly before this calm one teen was yelling at me, and then at the other. It felt like a grenade had gone off in the kitchen, but I am noticing that as quickly as the waves of anger and frustration come, they can become diffused and calmed, or turned into a nuclear explosion. I am constantly working on myself to learn which choices create the best outcome, and then having to undo my wiring and humanity to force myself to behave differently than I feel in a moment. It takes a lot of awareness, practice, and patience with self and others.
In my “pages” this morning I named my gremlin. For those just catching onto my blog, “gremlins” are the name I ascribe to the tiny little havoc creating beings of malice that tell me messages of self-doubt and attempt to undermine my attempts at creating and being my truest self. I named the leader or a particularly bad one Besmirch. I was being playful and creative, and it gave me pause and wonder. I had a quick moment of clear vision where I saw me as DOING what I have set out to, versus just talking about it, and always feeling not enough. When we are in the midst of actual changes we can rarely see them as they are happening. It is only in hindsight and reflection. Really these days my whole life has become reading and writing, it is always what I do in free moments. I am BECOMING exactly who I want to be.
We went to Courtney’s cousin’s wedding last night. It was at the Union League in New Haven. The kind of affair where frantic employees dressed to the nine’s, flit about with small silver trays containing a single shrimp in a shotglass of cocktail sauce. I had some realizations about myself one that I liked and one that I didn’t. The one I liked is that I feel like I may have been the only person who when alone with the service staff asked them how their evening was going. They seemed genuinely surprised that I would think to do that, and perked right up. Even a quick kind smile and polite word to them seemed to be received not unlike a man who has been in the desert for 2 days with no water and who just has the first sip. I notice things like this. Perhaps because I feel more comfortable on the worker’s side of things serving the rich. I was always on that side. On the side of the actual guest I felt out of place and at times undeserving. Hmmm.
The thing I didn’t like: I am a CONSUM-ER. Not one who purchases things. Ok, wait I think I should have said it this way. When I am nervous particularly, I think that I hyper focus on food and drink. Let’s be honest I don’t need to be nervous for this to happen either. I watched those hors d’oeuvres like a hawk. Fun fact about me when I was young I read things way above my level, and I would pronounce the word for these delightful little treats whore-DO-VOORS. lol. For the purpose of this tale I wish I could remember the exact moment that it dawned on me how much I had butchered that word, and how many times I’d said it aloud. Anyway an issue for me currently is gluttony. It as if I need to experience ALL of the Seven Deadly Sins just for good measure. That by doing so I will more readily be able to relate with all of humanity, not just the portion of whom I aspire to be like. If we are looking at this from a clinical model (because why not) I have a terrible terrible time with impulse control in many areas of my life. And lately I have absolutely no self-control when it comes to eating and drinking.
If I am not being obsessive about something… well I might not know, because I think I am always obsessive about one thing or another. Now that I’ve found love, and a career that is fulfilling, and my life feels really nice it seems my last self-destructive vice that could very realistically put my life on the line (at some point) is eating and drinking. Eat drink and be merry. Since I have the merry part down so well, most of my mind is occupied with when and what I am going to eat or drink next. I will begin to think about how that particular thing tastes, what it smells like, what it’s served on, and then am relentless in it’s pursuit until I am satiated. Then guess what happens. I don’t just have one, I have two or three. My pants begin to fit less, and I currently have an entire closet of clothes that are for someone who is a size 6, 8, or 10. When I am rapidly approaching a size 16. I am loathe to be honest about this on here, because part of me feels I’m betraying young women everywhere, especially my daughters by obsessing over this. You see though it isn’t attached to my self-worth any longer, so I thought I could just live, but what I am realizing is something else is happening.
 I love that I don’t hate myself enough anymore to torture myself into losing weight. But what is happening is that as a Highly Sensitive Person the sensory experience of pants being tight on my waist is driving me nuts. When I feel as if I am going to burst out of my clothing at any second it drives me nearly mad. It isn’t because someone will have an opinion of me that will be less than favorable, it is because physically I feel like I am about to burst out of my skin. There are many more symptoms to this. There is the swelling of the hands and feet with very much salt for me. There is the terrible bloating with my Crohn’s Disease that makes me look immediately 5 months along in a pregnancy. I am dreading the day that someone mistakes and thinks I must be carrying and comments as such. I already have a difficult history with feeling comfortable in my clothing for an entire variety of reasons. Gender neutrality and fluidity were not a think of my generation. I preferred to shop in the boys section and always have, but then I began to realize what people wanted from me to be accepted into the herd. I tried and tried to feel comfortable in those clothes, but if I am in something I don’t feel comfortable in I obsess about it, and can’t think about anything else. I am aware of the fact that I look like a hobbit in women’s traditional thin and demure dress shoes. I desperately want to be one of the beautiful women in heels, but I just can’t hate myself enough for that kind of torture. And mostly again for others it might just be uncomfortable, but manageable, for me I can’t think about anything else.
So the only solution here is to begin to make healthier choices and get more consistent about it. The barriers to this? EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE, or that’s how it feels. Long unpredictable schedules that can change on a dime, life with teenagers, my wife’s schedule to balance, and mostly my own angst and emotional psyche. I think the angle I am going to try and take with it is that when I am comatose with food or beverage my mind is not sharp in the ways that I enjoy most. It is the opposite of creative, it is escapism.
It’s going to be hard to pick this back up since I got distracted with the kiddos hours ago and am now not in the same thought train. So I guess we can just sum this up as I am trying to do some self-work on fitness and wellness in general, which makes me consider my incredible impulsivity and wonder how I can curb it without ADHD meds working for me. I am doing research and using myself as a guinea pig.
Ok this is now Monday so going to post for now. Stay Tuned….
It’s been a weird couple of weeks. I wonder if it’s something in the Universe and others have felt this way as well, or if it’s just unique to me? I feel like when I haven’t written (on here) in awhile, I need to find my way back to my writer self. The muscles groan and protest, as if they are saying “you can’t just come and go as you please and expect us to function, this is a commitment. That’s how it feels anyway.
I’ve been consumed in not feeling well lately, and exploring the emotions that arise here. Lots and lots of anxious thoughts, and worst case scenarios. Probably not helped by the fact that I recently saw a campaign to raise money for a woman with stage 4 lymphoma. The woman was someone who traveled in circles of friends of mine at a significant time in my life. During my newly being “out” as a gay woman phase. I knew people who dated her. I hadn’t thought about her since. And here she is with a wife, two adorable children, and cancer.
As humans we protect ourselves in a variety of ways. One of those ways is a powerful, fully operational form of denial. It is constantly present. This idea that could never be you. The less degrees of separation bordering you from a truer realization or your fragility, enter more anxiety. I often function by thinking thank goodness that isn’t me, and quickly busying myself with a protective layer of every day life that holds no room for morbid thoughts. But I am the type of person who possesses a keen awareness of the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as much as my human mind can comprehend. Often I wish I wasn’t, because then my mind would not be able to drive me as crazy with its frenzied thoughts of madness. To live fully is also to be mad I think. Mad with desire and mad with fear. Because if you know how much true beauty there is to be had in even the simplest of moments, you also know how fleeting those are. Always outracing an invisible force, that only I seem aware of. Or only I appear willing to acknowledge, and when I talk about it frankly I know the darkness in my thoughts frightens others. It’s like we know but don’t say it. You’ll jinx it. What superstitious creatures we are.
The first of the not feeling well began with some odd pain in my upper back, and extreme fatigue. I remember laying with my partner and feeling the first 2 fingers on both my hands be sort of numb and tingly. This driving me crazy of course, firing all my alarms there’s something wrong here, and the story tells if worse horrors then a flare up. It always does. I couldn’t get warm to save my life. I’m often cold. As all the weird feelings took their turn on my body I steadied myself in her arms. A safe space. Thank God for my safe space these days. It’s the only reconciliation I can find for knowing that my days are numbered. All of ours are, and someday maybe, like my grandparents, we will be resigned to checking the obituaries page daily and reading aloud to one another about the latest friend who has passed away.
The episodes include flushing. A delightful thing that is triggered by being over-tired, alcohol such as red wine, and sometimes stress. It feels like you’re on fire, mostly just your face. Hot, head achy, and dizzying. All you can do is lay down, maybe and ice pack and wait to it to pass. Often this is followed by a bad stomach and then elimination that leaves you shaking and freezing in an exhausted heap after. Either too hot or too cold always, the days you feel good being remarkable in their noticeability due to rareness. During times like this it’s a guessing game of what yuck Unidentified symptom will be the flavor of the day, and how you will keep the silver linings ever present as protective cloak. After only so many days you feel your spirit being eroded away at, and the irritability sets in.
Being overwhelmed happens so easily when you’re trying inside your head to manage your invisible symptoms so no one worries or feels sorry for you. Trying to feel normal. If you fall into the trap of thinking about them too much, or too much validation you run the risk of letting it take over your spirit. I refuse to do that ever. But then I think of how draining this is, and cannot imagine fighting cancer to keep my life. It’s hard now. I fear I would not be up to that task.
After the couple of draining days follows a moment of hope, a good day. I bask in it, soaking it up to carry me through the rest. And then the back injury, ironically it happened when I wrote my last blog post. Sat too many hours in a tall kitchen chair without lumbar support (apparently). Because when I got up my back was sore and I couldn’t figure out why. But with as many ailments I thought par for the course and carried about my day. What was supposed to be a quick trip to The grocery store to drive my son to work, became a nail in the tire and 3 hours at a shop with bored twin teenagers. We ate McDonalds, gross no wonder I’m sick đ it was 16 degrees and the only walkable distance to bide our time. By the time I sat and got up a few dozen more times into that evening I was nearly paralyzed. Could not walk without agonizing pain. Since I’ve also been down this road I called a physical therapist I know and trust and got in right away. This story could become so long… so let’s just say I finally won the round for much needed pain medication. I may have won the round, but it feels like I lost the game. Going on two weeks of limited everything. Co-pays, heating pads, one wrong move and spasm again after so much hard work… the back let’s up and I get 1/2 a good day and the migraine strikes. Pulsating, furious, making me nauseous. I take the migraine medication and feel weird like I may not actually be breathing, like my heart may have stopped altogether, like if I go to sleep I may not wake up. All this has been in between work and life and dogs and snow and ice and teenagers.
So here I am today at the beginning of two much needed days off, and I’m so afraid they will need to be spent resting, because the migraine remnants have left nausea and a sapped spirit in their wake.
Amidst all of this writing is my breath of fresh air. This is me when I can find hardly the will to do anything still fighting for what I love. I have wanted so badly to write, and yet my mind has been consumed with pain. It’s nearly impossible to think when your body is racked with one symptom or another and you’re just trying to catch your breath in between. This is my way of honoring my experience. When I see it on the page I judge myself. I sound so dramatic, it’s not as if I have stage 4 cancer. This perspective becomes a slow dance with denial, so I can live as fully as I want to. I was blessed with an iron clad will. My gift from the Universe. It must have known I would need it. I choose my reality regardless of my circumstances. I have chosen for it to always be this way.
This is an experience I am having currently with chronic illness. Right now it refuses to be ignored, and constantly sucks at my writer’s soul. Stay tuned because I refuse to give in. Stay tuned because between the night sweats, pain medication roller coaster, confusion of “the correct approach at healing”…there is wisdom between the lines, and between the symptoms.
*this blog became by unrefined process very disjointed. So here’s a little help. If you are interested in parenting and the struggle involved, if you are a Highly Sensitive Person, if you struggle with Chronic Illness. If you are seeking balance in your life in any way. If you have a blended family, or are struggling with co-parenting with an ex partner. If you enjoy reading other people’s story, and delicate weavings of past, present, and dreams for the future, then you may enjoy this. If you are willing to sit through a writer who goes off on tendrils of branches, and who is currently finding her rhythm and tone.
So here I am in the midst of daily struggles with teenagers. I want to share with you a raw accounting of my personal experiences, again so you may resonate and find something helpful within. I do this for myself and for my readers: gorgeous reciprocity. I know intuitively and from my daily work in my career that I am not alone in this battle. I spend the largest chunk of my time trying to sort through the insurmountable task of ever keeping the big picture in mind versus getting caught up in moments. This feels nearly impossible. I believe in fact we are wired to respond and react to what is right in front of our face in any given moment, and it takes a considerable larger amount of effort to sort through how we choose to act on any given impulse or reaction to the entire process. Exhausting. I am exhausted a lot of the time. So let me first lay forth the extra complexities of my personal situation at hand.
Factors to consider: I am divorced, their Father is involved and pays his share, which lessens my burdens considerably. I am always aware of this, and how much better I have it than others. Since scales of comparison are rarely helpful I usually don’t use them. But I am careful because parenting is the hottest of all topics I think. We are ever wanting to do it well, and mostly in situations that feel like we are failing.Everytime we figure out the system and make a grand jump over a hurdle clearing it with strength and agility, the course switches up on us, landing us on our faces.
Back to the factors: Despite his support and involvement in the kids lives that I am ever grateful for, our working together to parent has intense complications. He remains at a certain point in our lives that I have moved much further beyond, this means that he has an idea of me that is constantly creating complications. Think believing in the worst possible version of someone, and this is of course MY interpretation and I am aware of that as well as the fact like we all do, I have blind spots. I think it’s being revealed to you this is a loaded topic. So for the purpose of not losing sight of the original plan of this post we shall summarize as the logistics currently are probably the most difficult part. This means that due to his career in the Coast Guard he has mostly lived far away during their lives. Ohio, then Boston, and now Staten Island. He comes for all things important for the kids and shows up, which is lovely. BUT he has no space near here to have them at overnight etc. This is further complicated by the fact that Tyler now has a job and needs rides to it, and he can’t just go to his Grandparents in upstate NY on the weekends. So the time I was able to have just for me while they are with their other parent is really only decided last minute, and often with just hours spent with him, but not overnight and all of them away. This allows for tensions to build between us and difficulty to arise and not much of a break to get insight and recharge. I understand that with families not in divorce perhaps they get no breaks, but also this is their set up. Each of us have unique struggles. I can only write so intimately from my pool of truths, and subsequently learn from those.
I am definitely going into detail to the degree that I might be losing “the point”. I am learning about how my writing process works or doesn’t haha. I try to be concise and summarize, but perhaps in the feeling space, that is more difficult to do. You are getting unrefined writing here. Perhaps the flavor is not nearly as good as something that has been perfected, but we are not there yet. We are just beginning.
So factors: An ex who isn’t my biggest fan and navigating his military career and how that changes the choices, and map of how we handle divorce and co-parenting. The careful tip toeing of honoring another parent’s journey with their kids in the face of criticism and bitter old wounds, that the smallest of things seem to resurface, even all of these years later. A non-traditional, non-consistent custody schedule, a new partner that they are learning, after several partners they became used to who departed, (severed connections are no joke on the heart) their personalities, my personality, their wiring, my wiring. Add in a healthy dose of misunderstandings, high sensitivity, strong strong personalities and character which I love, but is impossibly difficult in practice….
I used to go eat out at buffet’s when I was little. My grandparents loved buffets. Always buffets. JJ North’s Chuckwagon and Home Town Buffet, low in quality and large in quantity and variety, food excursions. They disliked needing to tip (which I think that you are still supposed to, what can I say they lived through the depression), being limited to one type of meal, and not “taking care of it themselves I think”. Also they appreciated the affordability. And my Grandmother bless her church going soul, loved to pack as many cookies as she could possibly nab from the dessert area into napkins and into her cavernous handbag. I recall snickerdoodles and peanut butter being favorites. I chuckle at this memory. He most egregious of sins being all the VHS tapes we rented that she copied with glee and a touch of shame (as the warnings exclaimed that this was a federal offense), and her stolen cookies from the buffet. I imagine she experienced much guilt over this, and yet another part of her was exhilirated with the mischief. Anyway the point of this story was that if life was a restaurant I would choose a buffet (even though I won’t eat at them now, yuck) and I would fill probably 5 plates full of every possible food, and try to eat them all. Yep that’s what I do. And then I end up sorting through the indigestion and gastrointestinal distress of it all. Which is quite the fitting metaphor for someone with Crohns Disease.
Maybe I should have just called this blog post factors? Maybe I’ll just keep going and it will be the book. “Maybe it’s Maybelline at this point”…this popped into my head, a charming and witty line from a dear person who has been in my journey from their blog that I highly recommend. Credit Kat “the Wizard” from. http://www.seekerandthewizard.com
So here I am at present day with three teenagers whose turn it is to be allowed to learn/audition to navigate the world, when some parts of me are still so delayed in my own process. Here my partner and I are trying to establish a new connection and have enough time and resources for that, while having our main task be loving and teaching these kids well. This has gone quite poorly in the past, and my assessment of readiness and also the want to spend life in this way of people I chose in the past did not end up working out in the whole story. But in the scheme of things I have embraced each of those journeys as completely necessary and can find nothing but affection and gratitude for each of them.
We have a full home. We enjoy entertaining and offering what we have in love, food, comfort, and space to others. We both, all of us really, enjoy this. We like entertaining and cooking for others and inviting them over. We are very social creatures. However that takes a huge amount of effort in terms of upkeep. We have two dogs. One of them an overly neurotic border collie with a gargantuan pile of issues, whose favorite pastime is barking at the highest pitch you can imagine at the mail person the entire time they are on the street. We have a couch, it’s a funny story really in the scheme, perhaps I will tell it at some point. But both my person and I came with “stuff” from our past. We have a very over-priced couch she was forced to pay for in their break-up, and it has no place in our home of children, and misbehaved pets. So a great deal of time and stress is keeping this thing nice in a house that is not a museum. We even had a therapy session surrounding it once. This couch is the perfect couch for a single couple (gay of course because of it’s impeccable taste ;)), and for dinner parties and a gorgeous, clean, non-chaotic, floorplan. So both dogs attempt to scale the couch to get into the bay window to bark at anything they could possibly bark at. They are breaking down the cushions and increasing the wear and tear. And my second dog Sigmund Freud the therapy bulldog occasionally likes to mark it as his and relieve himself on it. This of course distressing my person greatly, as if nursing the wounds of the financial inequalities of that relationship were not enough, now the thing she was forced into buying herself is being peed on. To keep perspective I suppose if one of us was to fall ill the couch would become an after thought, as we should train ourselves to make it be without. Learn to have it be a funny story based on a lesson. I know personally I luxuriate over having such a piece of furniture as I probably would have gone my whole life without ever đ There are a variety of ways to look at this.
So we have five different personalities under this one roof. Five different people who each hold their priorities and process sacred, and need to learn to work together to acheive balance individually and as a family. How does anyone do this? My guess is with a lot of space, a great sense of humor, and not taking life too seriously? And this is a problem in our home. Highly sensitive people take everything seriously, and they also become easily overwhelmed. If you aren’t overwhelmed by reading the factors in my daily life, whether you have the High Sensitivity trait or not, I would be shocked.
Let’s list the complex factor’s without going further into each one, the blog itself will do that. I’ll just list words and see:
ADHD (most of us, if not all), High Sensitivity, Stubborn, Opinionated, all internal factors of our wiring and personality, how to fit each person’s needs and balance with their wants. Crohn’s Disease, Financial concerns, namely cleaning up after beginning my career very late, and being a “single” mother in the state of Connecticut for many years. I have debt that is impeding the larger than life dreams that I have. Which includes the possibility of another child, wanting to travel and explore, actually more of late really wanting to move to another Country, but seriously. Knowing with evermore certainly that some windows on my dreams are closing in that I cannot have them all. I have to CHOOSE. I have to choose which dreams to give life, and this is a Sophie’s Choice for me. This is deeply painful for me. Apparently I can’t list without elaborating, that has always been present, now how can I capitalize on it rather than thinking it is wrong? In addition to this I want to author books, I want to organize and produce theories from all my labors of love and learning as a counselor. I want to tour, and to talk to others, and to teach. I want to share my gifts on the largest scale possible, not for the wealth and the fame of it (in fact I think I would hate that), but for the purpose of it. I want to help. I want to contribute to society, and my process of needing to heal myself before I had room to do so has been lifelong and taken up so much space. I am aware and grieve that. I can’t help but indulge the what if’s of that.
I burn with desire, sometimes I burn up, and it’s not good at all,…..I burn to create. It is a drive, a compulsion, a non-choice it always seems. It is a brooding and painful thing all of these thoughts, that if I could just untangle I could help. My mind is painfully cluttered, and as I try to de-clutter it, more piles just topple over into the space I have cleared, and on top of it I just continue to add more ALWAYS rather than staying with what I’ve got and putting down roots. This task before me now is to SLOW DOWN and STAY with things, see how much more richness can be produced by choosing three things in particular and sitting with them and seeing them, and allowing my eyes to graze over my greatest works of art. And the fear in this? In this noticing? Is that it could hurt that much more if the connection is ever severed. And severed connections have been a thing most of my life, they are more consistent than safe ones. It’s all I know in a way. Being severed from these: unthinkable. I stop breathing even thinking about it. So I stand at a careful distance at times, from my own life. It is terribly painful knowing my kids can feel that, and may perceive it differently, personally as a way I feel about them, or don’t. And part of my life’s work is at least trying to put down in words enough that they will be able to read and understand who I am inside, and the why’s of my choices. That was something with both of my parents that I will never know. If I do nothing else right in my life: I will always show up for my kids. They may not always understand this or interpret it the same. Sometimes they will have to sort through the pain of their experience, without it being unthinkable to me or a threat to my ability of parenting. We are not there yet. I am a work in progress. But I will never stop trying. I’ll always show back up. These are connections that only death will sever, and perhaps not even that. This is the thing I’ve been so thirsty for in my life, and yet I so often am blind to the ones I already have. Or I move too quickly to stop and see. This is my current task as a person to slow down and develop my relationships I have now, and find a way to still do that while helping others along their journey.
My writing continues to take on a life of it’s own and go on a direction I never planned at the beginning. This is like all of life though. This is something we can count on. So I’m going to try for that to be ok for now, until my next victory opens up before me. They sneak up on you, you know. For one thing I’m writing so much more in so many more ways than I was last year. I write more, and more comes. It is unfolding.
I lost sight of the blog that was meant which was to describe a singular situation that happened with my daughter this morning, and to explain the different choices and outcomes of how it was handled. To illuminate what I have learned. Let’s hope I can learn to come back to this and also make that post. Or maybe it will get lost in the land of ADHD and life in general.
Thanks for listening….I wrote this in the midst as you can probably tell. The midst of real and everyday life. Not at a writing retreat, not on top of a quiet mountain. In the midst of scheduling, random questions (many), my daughter being up set over an overwhelming project, the dogs, the phone… LIFE… I write in the midst of life and I have ADHD, and I am trying to find out how I can produce great works of art without sacrificing my childrens childhood. Without us both missing out. How to be a driven thinker requiring quiet space, and a fully present mother. It is difficult. I think of Pema Chodron and her admissions on parenting at the end of Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better. This was comforting to me.
Or who are having a hard time this year. This is for you.
This is for those that the thought of family doesn’t leave them so warm and fuzzy. For those who try to put their smile on so no one is brought down on their holiday. I am here with you. You are not alone.
I thought I had it beat this year. Having an amazing and healthy love. Having a career I am constantly in love with. Having wonderful intelligent children who are loving, kind, and get good grades. I have a home, and heat, and Lord knows more food than I need đ But I can’t shake this. So I am going to write about it so perhaps even one person will feel less alone in this. Another human sitting in their kitchen by themselves this morning feeling sad may come across my words and find a warm embrace.
This is what the Holiday feels like for me when I am alone with my thoughts, and don’t keep myself distracted. My Dad died a few days ago at this time last year. We were not close since I was little, which actually makes it a lot worse. Because I don’t know how I am allowed to feel or not. Complicated grief is no picnic. This means that I haven’t even really thought about it, not on the anniversary day did I even, because if we weren’t close in life why would it matter in death? But for some reason it does. That there is hardly anything of “me”, where I came from left. My grandparents who raised me have both passed away, and I wasn’t close with them either, those are complicated relationships as well, but they did “raise” me. My mother is out there who knows where. I don’t know whether she is healthy or well, happy and safe on this holiday or in a really bad way. Most likely the latter. I wouldn’t be able to ascertain that anyway since you can never tell what is real or what isn’t with her anyway. Which is why we are not in touch, but I still can’t help but wonder today. I wonder where she is and how she is doing, and this is what the Holidays mean for me.
My 1/2 brother who I grew up in the same house with. He appears from a distance to be struggling with addiction. We have never been able to be close, because I was more of a mother to him always than a friend or a sister. I held him down when he threw a fit to help out my grandparents. At that time I laughed about it, because I was a child and didn’t know any better, it just seemed weird and troubling, but I was physically strong and I wanted to please my grandparents. He would spit on people and bang his head on things, and I woudl come to the rescue and basically restrain him. That doesn’t make for much of a relationship when you are older. He lost his grandparents (parents who raised him), and I was over here on another Coast protecting myself from that life that was poisonous to my soul. I left it all behind, and it’s probably been the healthiest thing for me. But sometimes I look through the “window” at that life and wonder if I could have helped. Why I can help other people now but I couldn’t help then/them. He will most likely kill himself one way or another, and I won’t know how to feel then either. Probably guilty, but in a far removed sense. If I removed myself because it was healthy, why does it feel like such a weight on  my shoulders?
I received a package from my Aunt the other day. She is the only one I even have somewhat of a relationship with. Several years back I went out to California and helped them with my dying grandfather. I went to say goodbye. That is the last time I saw her. I spent most of the visit trying to prove myself, that I wasn’t bad. Because that is the last impression she had of Lisa’s daughter. She tried to help her parents with a difficult teenager and I was seen only ever for my behavior and poor choices, and never for what I was feeling. So I have committed my life to sitting with people in their feelings and staying, not turning away from them, or judging them on a supposed to or should scale.  In the package was this picture of this boy who I don’t even  know or remember, the note says hope this isn’t a sad memory. Am I supposed to know this boy. Do you know what it feels like to receive a package from a sort of family member with a picture of someone you are supposed to know? It made me uncomfortable, and then I feel bad for feeling uncomfortable because at least this family member is trying. And I feel bad because I don’t reciprocate because something feels strange and foreign and obligatory about it, the receiving. I can’t seem to feel a connection there, and to try and make one feels like I am trying to earn a love or something. Which is what I spent a good portion of my life doing, and I refuse to do it anymore. I reached a place where I realized that those who will see me, will SEE ME, not because I do anything to make them see. If love isn’t free then I don’t want it. So I worked to earn the love and respect of my self, to align my childhood self in the warmth I can now provide her that she couldn’t have before. So we aren’t separate anymore, and experiencing great conflict from it. We are together now. I have pieced myself into a whole person, and I love supporting others in their work to do the same. This is why I am a counselor.
I can’t just estrange myself from these thoughts and feelings. And Christmas gives them the perfect opportunity to surface. Christmas is about family right?! And I love that sentiment and I also hate it. I have a complicated relationship with family. I love the one I created, and I am terrified of the one I came from, and that I could be anything like that ever, and yet I am supposed to have some kind of attachment towards them aren’t I? It wasn’t all bad was it? But maybe it was? You see its just pure confusion. And Christmas, it creates the space to think about these things. Perhaps in this case distraction is best. Which is why my bestfriend invited me to her family’s home this morning. So I am trying to get all of the sad off of me before I go so I don’t infect their family with this. And the truth is I don’t know if I can go without being depressed while I am there. I am afraid it will backfire on me. I am going to be surrounded by warmth and love, and I know I am loved and seen as special there, but I am still a stranger to so many of the extended family. I stranger among family and friends. But then I think that no one would be a stranger in my home. I would never feel that way about them. But not everyone is like me. It’s confusing all these feelings, so I write my way through them.
When my defenses are secure… the ones life has helped me to have to protect myself, then I think things like “why are the Holidays any harder for anyone”. I mean there are Christmas cookies and lights and trees, and everything feels magical. And then this morning I was hit with a dose of a reality that will only deepen my connection to others who are feeling this way. I can only help more from all of my hurt, and this is why I am good at what I do. Because I allow myself to experience the full spectrum of human emotion, even when it is hard. Especially when it is hard, that is when it is the most valuable. So I am here today to tell you to feel all of your feelings. They are not wrong. You won’t infect anyone else. Ask for the help and the love that you need. There are people who will love you with open arms. They may not be the people you were originally provided, and that is OK. You’re not wrong or bad or defective or any less worth loving. And even if you don’t ask for it, can’t find how to do that, allow yourself to receive the love you deserve, it is out there. In fact in my opinion the Universe conspires to protect and love extra those that need it. I have always been given those gifts. I have many people who love me, across the United States. People who would love to have me present at their holiday and who would enjoy me. So I hang onto those feelings and moments, and they warm me.
So while I began the day crying in my kitchen and feeling torn and ripped apart. Writing through these feelings and putting them out somewhere where they don’t have to be alone or unacknowledged is my medicine. After I write it feels like a huge storm has passed, and on the other side the sunshine is always there to warm me, and maybe even a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end of it. Please be a pot of gold đ
Love to all those warriors who are working through their shit this holiday season. You are my people. You are not alone and I am not either.
I havenât been able to write lately. It isnât a  block. Itâs more of this all or nothing. Iâm on a roll and keep going, but when being present in life demands more of me itâs tempting to get pouty and give up. But I wonât this time. This is me not giving up this time. My morning writing reveals many things, even to me…. usually as our love approaches a year itâs revealing my gratitude and somehow I feel shame about writing about that. I feel it might be bragging, I might make someone else feel bad, I might be sharing too much of our life or gushing (you know one of those people). But truly itâs taken me nearly 1/2 a lifetime to learn healthy love. That has been my biggest battle, and Iâm going to tell you the story of why. Iâm going to tell you my story. And Iâm going to tell it in a thousand pieces because thatâs how itâs been for me. My self is a patchwork quilt I have crafted. Itâs like someone took me before I was born and scattered me across  Universes and tasked me with putting myself back together. Iâve been patching myself up for so long. Then one day I realized I was extraordinarily beautiful just like this. I used to be so afraid. I wanted to be the pretty, normal, manufactured name brand product. I really did. The one people already knew was legitimate and loved from first sight. As a person I am a patchwork quilt and all the love I have received in small pieces are the threads that have held me together all these years. I am beginning to cry as I write this. Crying with the relief of placing true words, my true words on the page bravely for all to see.
I feel shame somehow for some unknown reason at how deeply I feel. Like I should just zip it up and keep it neatly away from others. Somehow like it isnât fair I get to be this happy or it doesnât belong. Like itâs too much or too big or will make people wince. Â But the wincers are the hardened. And I donât want to get through life by being hard inside any longer. I am thawing daily and encompassed by overwhelming, glowing, warm, love. It feels like wrap it up quick before someone sees you arenât supposed to be allowed to live this whole.
So as I sit in the bath this morning. My sanctuary. These words floated in the air all a jumble and I had to tumble out of the bath soaking wet and slipping all over the place catching them. Covered in bubbles and tears. But here they are!
This (below) is the Facebook post that came out of my bathtub feeling space this morning. The place I can think. The place I am allowed to be fully me. The place where I donât have to worry if  my jeans are digging into my belly or if I should be paying a bill or doing an administrative task. The place I can be naked in all senses of the word. This is where my writing lives.
âShe gets me. Do you know what that feels like ? It feels like getting air after a lifetime of suffocating. What it feels like to not fight over petty things. She has the tiniest ego Iâve ever seen. If others are gonna brag about size Iâm gonna take a min đ seriously though. She gets everything that Iâm about and how Iâm wired and how I work, and that anything that really does become an issue we will talk through. Sheâs patient when Iâm like a giant Labrador puppy filled with enthusiasm. I bite off more than I can chew, I love too hard, and I work at my missions too long and then drop into a tired puddle, and she mops me up. But Iâll light our way with my fire.
Sheâs so brave and half the time she doesnât even know it. Sheâs willing to have not just one but 4 relationships. She shows up every single day, even when sheâs scared. It has changed our lives to be loved like this. To not feel like an obligation, a burden, or a giving up of something. She only acts like sheâs won the lottery in family and love, and being adored like that is transforming. There isnât a better word.
I can say anything to her. I can be 100 percent myself without watering down or filtering. In our year together Iâve never had to be afraid she wonât choose me because of something small. For someone who has had to earn every inch of her security this is beyond imagining.
If people knew this kind of love existed they would never spend years unhappy. We let the other be who they are and operate in trust. We invite more into our lives because of it. We create space for shortcomings and fears and hold them carefully with one another.
Iâm allowed to be my full warm open self and adventure into the world in my connecting with people and it isnât a threat. I want her to be all of her too, to be allowed to glow and be a guide to others with her gigantic heart and passion.
I think I write less about our love because I feel like Iâm bragging or making others feel bad who donât have that. But really I want to help anyone who is interested to find this as well. I want to teach because itâs inspiring.
Iâve found and created my family. At almost 37 I can say I wouldnât have it any other way, and I can mean that now. I am ready to own my whole story and enjoy it, rather than cowering from the cover and letting it dust. Wishing I could only take out the good pages and make a compilation. I own my whole story, and I want to help others do the same, and I want to do it by her side with our amazing kids. And I do it armed daily with gratitude for all who have supported me, who have lifted me up when I was scared at one point. Every single word of encouragement is tattooed on my heart and now radiates to others as I lead. Thank you !!! This life is full of magic, but I spent a lot of time doubting, primarily myself. So thankful to not be in that place anymore. It is beyond words.â
I am filled with love lately …. almost beyond words love. And the root of all of it is gratitude….
