Tag: #parenting

Posted on

Suffering and Parenting Consciously

Anyone who reads this without a transcription has the patience of a God, lol. But somehow it seems more authentic.

Sometimes I think who writes like this to their kids. And the shame gremlins chime in about how perhaps “children” (though they are not anymore) should maybe not be meant to understand such adult matters. Others two cents have stated that they would have given anything to know what was going through a parent’s mind. There’s a lot of different ways to do things out there. That is for sure.

Given that we lost identical twins and my wife had a D and C five days before Christmas and two before my birthday, the year is off to a slow start enthusiasm wise. We are just navigating this perilous terrain of grief, and I wanted to share something I just realized.

A day deep in grief can seem as endless as a lifetime. Each one day spent seems like a year. Time stands still as if the beating of our hearts just stopped as well…. as if they couldn’t go on. Then for awhile your hollow chest realizes the thump is still there, and the rest of you will have to acquiesce eventually. You know you’re alive, but you can’t feel things the same way.

Everything is different and you never even gave permission for that to be so.

So here we are at the beginning of week two of 2019. Wandering numbly through the mine fields of the memories of our whole experience thus far trying to conceive. Who would ever go back for a second tour I think. But then one day I imagine we will find ourselves smiling at tiny new babies again and our dreams will re-shape themselves from the nightmares they became.

Moments of relief are where we are at now, peppered with lots and lots of sadness shrapnel. As we figure out our new expectations of ourselves, each other, and even consider a plan to move forward.

Daunting or exciting ? Do the emotions set that tone based on where we are at on our grief terrain? Or do we decide we want to be excited, AND accept the moments of suffering that just can’t be avoided as a human being?

We can only outrun or block out the inherent being of suffering for so long, it will get all of us eventually.

A dear friend is reading Eckhart Tolle’s, A New Earth. She shared with me a passage about suffering consciously. Sitting with the feelings and learning from them. That this is the only solace and way to transcend the pits of despair as it were. And even then I shall say from this experience when you’re IN suffering it seems like you’ll never get out. But somehow the resilience of the human spirit can’t help but cut through the dark. We are just made like that.

As a lighter side emerges that Chumba Wumba song, I get knocked down, but I get up again comes to mind… and all it’s silly lines.

I’m just here trying to figure it out. Trying to catch the next wave of joy, even as it seems we are swimming with sharks right now. I refuse to get out of the ocean even if I could get eaten. It’s a strange and marvelous thing this humanity.

I think of Elizabeth Gilbert often. She doesn’t even know who I am, but to me she’s a mother I never had, a best friend, a kindred spirit. I think of her grief of the loss of her partner Reyya. The other day she posted her delight at her Uber driver on the way to the airport, and that you can find joy anywhere. She is so right!

Speaking of her being a mother I never had. It’s funny how she never had children, and that was such a big deal to her at one point, other’s judgments and opinions and her own of that process. And yet I wonder how many spiritual children she has. I am certainly one. She has been a teacher, a warm shelter in the storm, and a friend in times of need. All through her beautiful words she is these. What is a parent if not these things?

Perhaps she chose to sacrifice certain aspects of individual meaning for the whole good of humanity? I wonder if she ever looked at it like that? Rather than selfish …. etc…?

Anyway yesterday my wife and I were in the car and trying to count how long it had been since surgery. We both literally estimated a month or more. We were shocked to find only a little over two weeks. I’m still thinking about this.

Time is irrelevant when it comes to the matters of the heart. I have always believed this to be true.

Posted on

We don’t love like the humans do….

This experience is leveling me to the ground. And whilst I am laying here I can see perfectly clearly using my lenses of hindsight.

I never noticed what a true miracle the three kids I have already created are. They are miracles. They made it through pregnancy, through my immature phases, through so many changes. They love hard still. They are wide open and warm. And I have hardly had the vision to notice this. I think if I had I would have spent day and night afraid I would lose them also.

My children have had to wait for me to come back to life from traumas so severe my only choice was to become numb and survive. The mechanics that make you that way do not lend to calm and gentle seeing presence.

“You cannot be everything you want to be before your time.” I have always wanted to be everything for them.

I love them more than I am able to convey in ways that feel like presence to them. Some people I’m guessing are able to choose to abandon any other thing to choose one. Their kids are their entire meaning. My kids are also, but if I didn’t make my own growth and healing a priority I would have only ever been able to love them at 50 percent capacity of my being.

They would have seen pain behind my eyes. You cannot hide things from children. You can lie to yourself that they don’t see, but children see the world much more clearly than us jaded adults do. They are much more capable of magical thinking and beliefs and therefore likely to be able to be happy, creative, and kind.

I know no matter how I look back I will always see the things I missed, some of them quite profound. I was there, but I wasn’t. If I couldn’t be fully present with myself, if I abandoned her too because that’s what I knew, of course I would be too afraid to accept their love and endless faith in me.

I am often envious of the partners I have given my children too out of desperation. Financial desperation, anxiety desperation, fear of myself as a mother desperation. It has often felt like I would be swallowed by my feelings. So I saw these happy people who were functioning and I wanted them to always have that. I could be more of what I was around. I was just trying to choose the right thing to model myself after.

So many times what looked warm and safe turned out to be much different underneath. An in tact family is not the only criteria for a good situation. It took me years to learn that. To see through the very alluring most attractive parts to me.

When you have subsisted on crumbs for so long, half a moldy cookie on a table looks like a Thanksgiving feast. And this is an expression of my path and pain. No person I have ever shared my heart with was a moldy cookie. The health of the relationship for various reasons (many due to my attachment fractured beginning), was the rotten part.

Some family of any kind is better than none right ?! So why wouldn’t I have stayed? Stayed for the kids, stayed for me. Perhaps many of the kinks would have worked themselves out over time, or perhaps I knew beyond my consciousness in some way what was best for us. This thinking seems correct based on where we are now.

But what have I caused up til this point?

And you see there it is. Taking responsibility for everyone and everything.

This is a product of trauma. The person is forced to become self-sufficient to a level beyond them, and this is a side effect. And later in life they suffer immensely trying to be an island, needing to be one, but also wanting to belong and connect. The obfuscation is immense. The dark wood feels seemingly endless.

Until that one person, or many along the way, see something in them they can’t yet. Hence the reason I am a counselor, it wasn’t a choice, it was written in the muddled beginning.

I needed people to see the good in me. I needed it so much that was the only factor it took for acceptance into the fold of our family. It fed me to be seen. I have been accused of feeding off of others to meet my needs. And I accepted that fate again as the bad guy, but finally I am able to see there is so much more to that story.

We watched Cheaper by The Dozen last night. A comfort. It was making me think of all the movies that have resonated with me over the years, made me get goosebumps, and how I would watch them over and over, and listen to songs over and over. People would tease me about my love for sappy movies or my behavior of repeatedly watching them. But these were me comforting my heart and shaping my dreams. Watching stories of people’s lives drafted in artist interpretation. Trying to find something to model after.

It would take me a long time to differentiate the romantic portrayal of movies and the grit it actually takes in real life to create a healthy and thriving family.

I wanted my story to be something more than it felt the first half of my life. I’ve fought tirelessly for that. And the fight has left me so exhausted in my soul, that often times regularly expected trials and tribulations of life now feel too much to bear. And it doesn’t take much invalidation, even and especially accidental, to wound me. Just think positive, well yes but that takes for granted every way that has wired me as far as my experiences. “You’re too introspective, you’re exhibiting frightening mental states like your mother.”

For me I just need to vent my feelings. To know they are there. To pinch myself to make sure I’m still capable of feeling. To lay my hand across my chest to make sure it still rises and falls.

The love of my life understands this about me. This line brought more tears to my eyes. There have been many the past two days.

I’m trying to accuse myself of wanting more than I already have right now. Worst case scenario-ing my character at every turn. It’s what I am best at. My very own valid feelings end up becoming some fatal flaw. And this is what I am working on in myself right now.

I have to make sure this life I have often rushed to create now takes into account the feelings of all participants and not just mine, I wasn’t so good at that in the past.

But I see I didn’t just force this onto my family, this is all of our dream now. We have always wanted another child to share our love with. I have known that from the time one of my best friends rented our downstairs and gave birth to her son in this home. As I often kidnapped him for snuggles and a bottle.

I have accused myself of wanting children for selfish reasons, and not because I have all that is required inside of me to properly nurture them. I will always be hyper vigilant that I may not. If you saw what I came from you would understand.

I have long wished I could just play some scenes from my childhood back on a tape so that the people knowing me could know. I’m torn between not wanting them to feel sorry for me, see me differently, and between desperately seeking understanding for the differences in me that feel like the separate me from the humans.

Thankfully I am loved by someone now who can see it without having me show them, and they love me harder for it. And that extra love that was missing has filled in all the gaping holes.

I am healing. I am still healing.

It’s no co-dependence, it’s not taking advantage, it’s not pathology, it’s not selfishness. It is healing. It’s taken this much. I could have turned out so many ways. But what I need for those I love to know the most is I’ve worked so hard on myself so I can belong with them. So I can feel my heartbeat near theirs, and not shrivel away for fear of damaging them with my damage.

We want to bring a child into the world to share all of what we have learned in our new story together. The kids want this baby too, and the transition from “babies” to baby is utterly painful right now. Seeing my wife’s pajama bottoms with the blood soaked through on the floor still because we were too exhausted yesterday to do anything about it is devastating. Not knowing whether the rest of the pregnancy will make it through this turbulence or not is gut wrenching. And that’s all ok. I still love my first kids that much too.

I still know it was early and blah blah. I feel things this much. So fucking what! This is who I am. It’s how I’ve been made, and I can’t help a thing about it. Except to do this (write) to cope, and to allow my story to be shared, whether or not anyone reads it.

So here I am wide awake with all my feelings always at the crack of dawn. In my morning watery womb of my own creation RE-birthing myself daily into the person I know I can be.

Here I am wondering with faith in one hand and science in the other, and what the universe has in store for our family.

Posted on

A Very Thankful Thanksgiving….

As all these big feelings wash over me (they used to crash, now they cascade), I can tell it’s time to bring my heart to the blog and weave.

I am bursting at the seams with gratitude this Thanksgiving. Holidays as a rule are difficult for me, and that’s an understatement. I am always a guest in someone else’s Family Stone Family, the one whispered about when I leave the room. Thankfully nothing like Sara Jessica Parker in the actual movie. I was the Claire Danes, but still….

I was always liked that was never the problem. The problem was I chose my partner for the kids and for safety and love. I was at such a deficit. And don’t get me wrong all the people I’ve shared my time with are special and I learned so much from them. I really have no horror stories in my love life. Sometimes however I fear I became theirs. A taste of love and belonging and then yanked away. I experienced those losses too though, whether they were my decision or not. Another family, another warm heart beat pulled away, excruciating.

They weren’t a fit because their hearts were as unsure as mine if we could pull the whole thing off. I wonder at times if I had more faith in life and myself if it would have been different. But then how could it be when I am this happy now, and they are in their journeys towards happiness as well.

I figure those who take the actual time to read through this whole thing deserve to know our IVF has worked. We are 5 weeks today I believe. And once we hit 2000 HCG (we are at 1100), blood level then we will begin ultrasounds. We won’t make any official announcements until it progresses a bit further, but that whole thing is so superstitious and sort of the opposite of faith. I hate the whole privacy idea in a way. Sure it might be exhausting to share bad news with your loved ones, but you will need them right ?!

We need each other, all of us beautiful fragile human beings. Why isn’t that allowed.

We are so fucking careful and so private. I’ve never liked that, but since my life isn’t just me anymore I have to walk that line a bit more carefully. I do not want to live scared of anything ever again. I’ve spent most of my life anxious. Anxious I won’t be loved or even liked for that matter, and often I wasn’t. Anxious I wasn’t enough. Anxious I wasn’t smart like other people. Anxious about my health. Anxious about how everyone around me feels, if I have somehow hurt or bothered them. Anxious about money. Anxious at any minute something terrible could happen. And it always could.

On fucking eggshells most of my life. Profound exhaustion. And now I’m stepping out into the light and loving myself enough to stop stressing my body and my heart with these anxieties. I am practicing enough self love that when someone else doesn’t see me how I’d like to be seen I can weather that storm.

Rian just popped in the bathroom and said, “you should watch Courtney butter this turkey, it’s making me uncomfortable” bwhahahahhaah! I told her to butter that bird up with love and she’s doing just that. There is actually a video, but I’m not allowed to post it 😉 sorry guys!!

My latest self-inflicted therapy is of the exposure variety. I am going to get over my profound nervousness of if people like me or not, by exposing myself to the highest possible annoyance. Arriving on their doorstep to tell them about how solar can save them money and the environment.

Last night a lady told her adorable children who came to the door to tell me to get away. The house was so cool too and I was warm and friendly. Scolded like a bad dog, and instead of reacting I simply smiled and thought of a time I would have done the same because I was overwhelmed, and thought I needed to protect myself from someone trying to take advantage of me. So I get it lady. You keep paying your giant electric bill and teaching your kids to be rude. Ok so I’m as enlightened as I can be, but still human 😉

But these interactions don’t up end my world anymore, reaffirming a long held belief that I’m bad, wrong, and unworthy. I’m learning to let them roll off my back, that they have nothing to do with me.

And sure enough I landed a nice couple with a giant electric bill, amazing sun on their roof, and it warmed me right up. They also had a 6 month old baby who adored me and laughed the cutest and it made me so excited to be a mom again soon enough !!

“There will always be light and dark in life, and often we never know which we will find behind the door we knock. We must knock anyway, even if it’s mostly dark, because eventually you’ll land the right door, and things can change in an instant.”

The dark is always more seductive, it gives us permission to blame and to throw our hands in the air. We had a deep rejection this holiday, and I’m surprised to find myself watching this one from the outside. It’s been so long since it felt like my sexuality was a shameful thing. I should say since someone else shared they thought our sexuality was a shameful thing. It cuts like a knife to the heart, we will feel the sting and the loss today.

But it will never be as bad as the pain of living a life inauthentic. I always know that truth. Sad, scared, and unhappy people will always spread those feelings, the best we can do is to love them anyway. From a distance. I’m proud we won’t let this be a dark cloud on our happy time. It hurts, but it won’t block out our sun. See what I did there 😉

I’ve created my own solar panels for how I receive energy in my life, and it’s clean energy. I’ve chosen the kind of want to focus on and absorb and learning to protect myself from pollution.

This Thanksgiving is the first one where I feel like I belong. I am about to be 38 years old. It seems like that story would be a sad one, but I assure you it is anything but.

I belong here and am not a guest. I am grateful beyond measure for my kids who believe in a mother who has made herself from scratch. I am grateful they let me make mistakes and love me anyway. I am grateful for my beautiful wife who is the glue of this whole operation. I always thought I had to be the glue and fell into resentment at times, but it turns out she is. She is the constant warmth that keeps me glowing. She made this house a home in so many ways.

I am in radical gratitude this year!!!

My life gets better and better with time. Thank you to all who follow my journey. You are definitely a dedicated reader, and you are part of me being able to believe I am not too much.

A toast to family, red wine, and turkey basters to all of you 😉

Posted on

Ivf Retrieval Day

It’s retrieval day!!!!

It has been feeling like the (an) end to this journey, but it’s actually just the beginning.

It’s the end of hormone injections and the related symptoms, and the end of a great many questions and nervousness. The end of three failed iui treatments and all the associated emotions. And yet it’s the beginning of an even more intense period of waiting for phone calls from the lab on the development of our little one (ones).

It’s beginning again down a road into a dark forest and not knowing what’s on the other side.

Will we get lost in there? Another gigantic disappointment, another cycle to wait and more hormones before a frozen transfer if this one doesn’t stay? How much of this roller coaster can we take? It’s been such a wild ride. But for the first time in my life even amidst sometimes crushing disappointment nothing feels like life or death.

I never even pictured having another baby, ever.

I spent most of my life worrying I didn’t deserve, nor was I up to the task of the first three. So to find myself standing here, calmly walking toward my next dream with confidence and joy. It is a dream like no other. I’ve already won the lottery, and written the best seller, and recognized my singing voice on stage in a moment of sheer shock and gratitude. Finding my love already feels like all those things mixed.

It has changed me so profoundly I am becoming rewired.

So many of my anxieties are calmed. And this isn’t a momentary high from idealizing something that turns out much differently. This is the real deal. Steady on my feet and walking headfirst toward another amazing dream, one I never saw.

It’s not very often life surprises me.

This is because whenever it did when I was young, and that was often, those were not good surprises. I became hyper vigilant and carefully in control of each happening to avoid further pain. But that has its side effects. And finding this love has surrendered me back into a childlike dreamer I was always meant to be.

I’ve turned my Stephen King movie into a John Hughes one. Sorry Stephen I love your work, I just wouldn’t want to be in one…. again.

And I used to be too fragile to be in the creation of a dream. Any setback would crumble and tumble me, and lead me down a path of dark thinking and misery.

Now I am finding faith and a well balanced way to view reality.

So it’s neither fantastic or terrible, but a mixture of both of those moments on a steadfast bridge of love.

I have a family of best friends on there with me, and I’m finally adjusting to life in partnership and belonging that I couldn’t feel I deserved before. Now I am accepting this as my life, and everything that comes with it.

So here we are…. I’m about to be a “nearing 40” new mother. Here I am, the happiest I’ve ever been.

At another new beginning….with knowing there will still be so many more.

Posted on

Time. A most valuable asset.

Time in reflection is so necessary for gratitude.

There was a time that I ordered one meal at a restaurant and split it three ways for my kids. A time we all rented a small room upstairs in the home of a generous woman as I labored through school. A time when we finally got our first real home approx 7 years ago. Nicer and larger than any space we had occupied as a family. There was a time when in this home a relationship didn’t work out, and I didn’t know how I would pay the mortgage. This is when friends who became family moved in and we made it work.

There was a year I was so lost and lonely. Alone on Christmas Eve, I watched The Holiday and cried, and cried the whole day because I wanted that forever family with a person who saw me, didn’t resent me, and is a woman 😉 I never thought I would find that with how full our lives already are. I had been told and shown that a lot of people prefer to create their own from scratch, not learn how to mesh in an already made world. It’s not shame or in need of pity it’s just true.

I’m a lot. I think a lot. Strive a lot. Dream a lot. And before I was loved as I am now I panicked a lot! I wasn’t always kind when I was scared. I own those truths, and I need to live with them, and continue to try and be a better version of myself…

And now this a time where I get a constant infusion of unwavering enthusiastic love streaming through my veins. A partnership where we truly are best friends and want the same things. My wife teaches us the art of small ego each day. She doesn’t take things overly literally or get bent out of shape easily. She is genuine and loving. And we can be lighter, and more genuine and loving as we learn from her.

This is a time where being kind is more important than being right. A time when it’s ok to slow down and feel feelings and moments without rushing. Without rushing. Unimaginable for me. If you only knew.

This is a time where I have money in my bank account and have paid down debts, and can love myself more for those efforts. A time I am learning to put off instant gratification just a little bit more to create a safety net for my family.

This is a time I can play and enjoy life a little bit, there was a time that I thought I would never have time like this.

All the time I have left in this world is yours….

💜💜💜

Posted on

Money, Divorce, Stress, and Highly Sensitive People

There has been some improvement on the battlefront, but the war has taken a toll.

It’s a humbling experience to realize how many things there are always still to learn, no matter how far you have come. I’m in one of those growth phases right now. My iron will keeps me fighting until I have to surrender and it’s when I do that the real change and healing can happen. The exact thing we avoid, the breakdown. Due to all the what if’s and self criticism and fears, we stay trying to bear down and white knuckle it, until our bodies fail.

For me my body giving out under stress has been a big part of my recovery. I’m experiencing tremendous amounts of stress right now and I want to describe from the point of view of the mental health counselor that is supposed to have all these answers, what this feels like.

This feels like shortness of breath, heart palpitations, painful flushing, feeling like I might be getting early onset Alzheimer’s (lately I’ve been using the wrong words for things), stomach problems, self-esteem problems, extreme fatigue, frequently tearful, overwhelmed even more easily than usual, heartburn lots of heartburn, feeling out of it, trembling, and the list goes on…

When you begin to fantasize about jail as a simpler alternative to everyday life, you know some back to the drawing board brainstorming is necessary.

It’s only now that I can look back on situations I have experienced with kindness, or what I might have tried. I wouldn’t have known then what I needed, and now that I can see with new perspective, I see what an impossible order. And how being hard on oneself is such a dangerous thing.

Once again being divorced is a hard thing for everyone, and to not be hard on oneself because of it.

The stars aligned and schedules cleared (after some controversial tactics that once again open me to criticism), and this morning we did what is always needed and we talked. We somehow avoided the many land mines that can end any attempt at conversation with another blowout. Tread carefully, but still be able to talk about difficult things, but don’t be unkind.

How does anyone ever get through this intact?

Money is the root of all evil and in divorce it’s particularly complicated. As life changes demands change, and children do what children do, they ask for what they want and what they need. And the parents have to figure out what to say yes to, what to say no to, and everything in between. There are so many complicating factors. People who get along and love one another often have hard times agreeing about finances in the best of circumstances.

Now take people who have opinions more than understanding and don’t have a good level of communication. The result I’m sorry to say was, “ask your mom, and mom says “ask your dad”, and the kids hear the stress and want to shrink into a corner and avoid that at all costs.

So in my Highly Sensitive teen son’s case, since like me, he can barely tolerate the discomfort of someone he loves, he decided to try and solve this by taking on the world himself. Suddenly he became like a 40 year old man trying to raise a family and pay bills in his stress level, and all this was happening inside of him.

Folks I cannot stress enough to you that what you see on the outside, especially with adolescents and young adults is often falling short of what is really going on. I’m a therapist and I missed it. I let the face value behaviors make me react and tell a story. I’m not a therapist at home. I’m a human with blind spots, and short comings, and everything I came with from my beginning.

Highly sensitive people are highly conscientious, and they often know ahead of someone else what the need is. When they attempt to accommodate this without the right tools and understanding things can get difficult.

The thing I have found most important in life is to be able to talk to each other. So we can find out what’s really going on. So we don’t say harmful things, so we don’t make decisions we will regret later. So we don’t hold onto pain, and a limited story, and then suffer unnecessarily.

So this morning that’s what we did, and we are now that much closer to understanding and hopefully to a more peaceful home environment. To be able to be our loving sensitive selves more of the time.

🤗💜😍

Posted on

Untangled thoughts are a bridge in my world…

This is my life in the raw. I’ve done my best to be the judge and jury and find myself guilty in any way possible of incorrect parenting/living. I’ve spent most of my life fearing this, and the journey I undertook only gave more evidence. It is now that I am finding my way out of that. Because now everything makes a lot more sense.

A letter to my son: bless anyone with the courage to brave my handwriting. This is how I spend my mornings. Deep in thought and reflection, and I’ve learned to stop finding that to be wrong as well. “Too much introspection, you’re too serious, too too too.”

Perhaps I should type the transcript for ease? I can’t right now because now I need to scramble like eggs to at least put clothes on for work.

I am here feeling radically grateful for the love I’ve had the courage to spend a lifetime weaving. I love myself enough to be brave enough to put pen to paper and to show my heart to the world.

You should know I criticize myself. Or I try, but it just isn’t as loud anymore. I am corny, inappropriate, shouldn’t this be private between him and I? Aren’t these emotions too intense for a child to hear from their parent. I’m not sure on this one: but I know it’s almost impossible to explain my story, and they are the ones who really need it. So they will never have to doubt my love for them.

I’ve created many critics along the way, but do you know what was harder to find? Someone who was willing to look further into me and to invest. That is what we all want. To be loved like that. And I hope and pray I get enough time on this earth to teach my children this self-acceptance and love I’m only finding now.

Is that even possible ? Or don’t they probably have to have their own journey with its trials? Isn’t that the beautiful part even, would we want to skip it in the name of less suffering. I finally know I wouldn’t. I used to think if only I had suffered less I wouldn’t be so crippled in so many areas. Now I not only know logically, but have lives, that the “wound is where the light enters.” -rumi

Love should never be private. Perhaps if we showed more of our scars and trials to the world, more people could love themselves better as well. And then their gentle hearts could also be accessible to their children, and not just their drive and protective instincts. Not just their advice and guiding.

The kids are all right. They will find their way. It’s the adults who are fragile and scared. Scared of not enough, scared of too much, scared of the unlived portion of their lives.

Kids still believe in magic and hope and play. I want to more like kids in the second half of my life.

Posted on

The Great Room Cleaning Stand-off

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?

My seventeen year old son is brilliant, kind, generous, sensitive and anything a parent could want in a child. However lately we have reached a place where we do not see eye to eye, and I am wracking my brain to crack the code on this situation.

To give you some background I could be described as middle of the road when it comes to cleaning. My wife and I do not fight over household chores. We generally ebb and flow with effort in this department and when one of us ebbs, the other tries to flow. We do this dance fairly seamlessly unlike the resentment filled arguments with past lovers. We came into this both having thought through the complexities of the situation, and choosing to be grateful we have the other, all bags included.

We don’t ask for made beds, or color coordinated sock drawers. We understand that if our room becomes cluttered at times when we are exhausted or extra tired that this will happen with kids sometimes. Our expectations are that things are sanitary, somewhat kept up with etc, and that every couple of weeks you do a deep clean. Sweep, mop, vacuum dust kinda deal. That maybe 2 times yearly you go through all the crap that has amassed, and your clothes and see what you need and what you don’t. And for the love of all that is holy change your bedding at least every two weeks. For obvious reasons :p

About a month ago give or take I noticed that my son wasn’t eating hardly anything but fast food, potato chips, and gummy candies from where he works, Trader Joe’s. These empty containers could be found tucked behind the bed, in drawers etc. The regularity of showering diminished, the laundry piled up, pay stubs cluttered everywhere. The room took on an unsettling odor. And even the smallest task seems to appear insurmountable to him.

I chalked up this struggle to ADHD, as his computer had already been removed from his room so he could get into some kind of organizational routine. So we tried Vyvanse. Thus far the room isn’t clean and his mood is worse. He has new behaviors of lying, being more verbally aggressive, and placing all blame for his current predicament on me.

He got into my phone and read text messages he shouldn’t have, and I’m quite sure this breach of boundaries is the largest culprit of held anger. If you read something out of context and put it through your own fears and emotions it can be a deadly weapon. The result a poisoned relationship. As highly sensitive people it is hard on both of us that this is dragging out in this way.

As a child I wasn’t really raised per say. My grandparents talked at me, but they rarely followed through. And we had no structure built into any family unit. Once I reached a certain age they just often said they didn’t know why I didn’t help around the house etc. I was shamed in front of friends. They felt helpless and would say “you don’t keep your room like hers right.”

So for me I wanted my kids to not only feel part of a family, but to participate as a part of a working unit as well. This has been part necessity and part purposeful through the years. Most of the research I have read suggests children who help others and learn hard work are better off than those with everything done for them. I tend to agree based on my struggles and lack of that in my upbringing.

I know all about choose my battles and I’m confident many parents who would give their eye teeth for a child like mine would say, “just clean it he gets good grades”, or another camp who couldn’t stand the disarray and therefore would clean it out of their need.

I somehow feel it’s extremely important that he cross this hurdle on his own, and that he understands none of us are entitled to anything in this life. It is important to me my children are grateful, humble, and respectful. I was not. I can go on and on about our differences in upbringing there are many, most importantly of which is a lack of any invested parent on my end. However my behavior either way sucked, and it took me most of my life to relearn a better way. I don’t want my son to have this same struggle.

I’m quite sure the more we see the less desirable versions of ourselves in our young charges that we really become upset. And in these moments it’s difficult to be gentle and nurturing. I want to hug him and help him, and by God I also want to slap him. Such a confusing concoction of emotions.

So the stand-off is this: in an effort to not let him off the hook for accountability and responsibility that he will need in this life, and before he goes away to college, I have removed his privileges. A car we have provided and help pay his insurance on, a phone his parents pay for, etc. Now I can’t figure it out. If I were a senior and had to ride the school bus I would have that room cleaned in 2 hours flat. One swift upswing of motivation, be it rooted in anger or whatever.

Motivation! I am providing the motivation. He has dug his heels in and refused. I have bent and tried a more gentle approach after the storms calm. I had given back the car at least to get to work so he doesn’t use all his money on Uber and Lyft. Again 30 bucks for a ride or clean your room?! I bent to try and be an understanding parent. And my reward for having been a willow tree? He lied about the time he got out of work, and then caused a huge scene and protest. To which Courtney’s beloved co-worker and great friend helped defuse. It takes a village folks it really does! And we are lucky.

In all of this what hasn’t happened is him owning his behavior. He will say things like gee why would I lie? You think because I miss my friends. And that I am controlling his life. Now he is determined that he needs help, is depressed, and doesn’t know why he can’t clean his room. So his statement is that he physically can’t clean his room. Is it odd that I can’t understand this?

I have recognized he was over-scheduled with work and lots of high level courses. I can spot the signs of burn out a mile away, and he kept citing these as reasons to again break the rules. So I’ll offer practical solutions to him. I had suggested before classes began to reduce work hours and focus on school. But I won’t let him out of accountability and responsibility in the name of his emotions. In my opinion this does a person a great disservice.

I’ll meet part way. When he asks for help between one of his three parents, and a multitude of extended family, and even my ex partners who love him, he receives it.

And still nothing gives.

Stuck.

And I miss my son.

His response to this is to lay in his room, when he could have just cleaned the room and step into accountability. We each up the bar on stubborn, when what we really need is to let go….

So internet land help?! Share your experiences as a teen or a parent. How did you get through these battles and not lose your hair or your sanity?

Posted on

I’ve been transitioning my whole life…

Into who I truly am. This for me is a process of divine evolution, and it encompasses so many aspects of my self.

I wrote this Facebook post this morning and wanted to share it. It was inspired by a dear friend who came forward to me with information that has strongly impacted her life. We must lift her up right now as the media feels like waves crashing onto her shores. She deserves to be lifted and held right now.

I had a dear friend share something very important to them yesterday and it left me thinking this morning and I want to share these thoughts. I would also like to tag some of my personal heroes for fighting so hard to be authentically who they feel inside.

I wanted to tell you so far what your share has done for me. It’s making me wonder how many other things were not as they seemed in childhood, how many other fucked up things.

For those who don’t know I was raised in a strict Seventh-Day Adventist household. My mother got pregnant with me by an older man when she was 19, he was much older. I was a thing of shame.

I was shamed most of my life for how I behaved, for how I looked, for being her daughter. I was left by him, my father. I took care of my mentally ill mother. If reading these makes you uncomfortable then imagine what little me felt like. I was DCF involved. I wandered around an apartment complex alone and was molested by a young boy. I felt disgusting to share with anyone. I felt wrong. It wasn’t the boy in this case it was the lack of parents. I was removed from her care at this point, but she moved in with my grandparents with me.

I was alone. I was always alone. Until I found other families. Pam Jenkins Gena Rahenkamp LeMert John Enders John D Enders and many more. And even now more people come forward in my inbox and told me I was special to them then. My Aunt Linda who took me for normal childhood things like Disneyland.

I am a survivor because you loved me when I needed it most.

I am coming forward.

It’s actually making me wonder if I lived in a different time with different parents if they would have helped me transition to being a boy. Do you remember that me?! Masculine behavior as well, always wanting to protect and serve. “Hi I’m Chris”. I got called gay (proudly wear that now, but then it meant you’re scary and different and I don’t like that), a dog, told to go piss on a fire hydrant.

I didn’t want to kiss the boys I wanted to fight them for the girls.

I didn’t want to be rescued by the Disney Prince I wanted to look like him and love a princess.

I actually wanted to be a boy. I only favored boy clothes and swam in trunks with my shirt off. I used to play cards (pretend poker) at the table with my shirt off. I use to imagine peeing standing up (yes we probably all did,lol) but I mean regularly. And so many battles with my grandparents to not wear a dress and to shop in the boys sections. I felt uncomfortable in every possible way most of my young life and very alone. I got praised in my home for being strong and helping with my mother. Being sent into the lions den because she would be better with her own daughter right ?

Do you know I left that self behind in favor of acceptance?

We would do anything for acceptance in this world, and I needed it more than many, because of my home base. I was shamed to death there. Don’t be a slut like your mother. Don’t sing your voice sucks. Don’t talk too much. Good little girls are seen and not heard and they play with their paper dolls in the corner. “ Don’t talk so much, chatter box. It felt at the time that everyone wanted/ needed me to be less there, less of me, and if they were going to sacrifice by taking care of me please don’t make it any harder than it already is.

Do you know my blonde hair, I kept the same for many years was like Samson from the Bible. That wretched book that dictated so much of my shame. This is MY experience I am not putting anyone else’s religion down.

I met someone along the way Crystal Leckner who showed me how to be adventurous and myself, and my life opened up after that. Another personal hero. She changed her style more than you can imagine, and her hair, and I looked up to her so much. Another personal hero!

“But I don’t want to be a good little girl.” I didn’t want to be a girl at all, but I also don’t hate my body parts, and don’t want one more difficult journey. I love my wife and me as I am now albeit I think I am realizing clothes are still a struggle.

Last night we went to the philharmonic and anytime getting ready for something for me is still a battle… with what to wear. Partially now because I’ve gained weight, but also because I feel awkward in my clothing. I’ve settled on leggings and sweaters…. I dream of short hair cuts, but always afraid of not looking feminine, because then I’ll be treated badly again. I earned so much privilege when I became “a pretty girl”. 😕 I sold myself. I’d like to think I had to at that time to have any place to belong.

But is it still going on now?

I don’t even dance because dancing was bad and wrong and by the time I broke out of that I felt so awkward in my own skin. And then unknowingly people shamed me for my dancing. Why don’t you move your hips? Because the way I do feels different than how I’m supposed to look as a girl.

And then she danced is the running title of my memoir.

Do you know that my wife keeps that awkward photo of young me by her nightstand and I almost cried to look at it because I didn’t want to be that girl anymore. But since she loves it so much I am forced to love that her too. And that is healing.

No one should experience the abuses coming forward right now. However, the dark forces our light to shine more and helps us come together as we really are. #fighton #comingforward

How much of my acceptance is based on my appearance? If I begin to dress differently will people not come back to see me? If my gender is not immediately revealed will it lessen my credibility.

The fucking things people have to go through to have permission to be who they are in the world.

I wanted to share this so you now how proud I am that you are supporting your daughter. What a warrior! You’re doing for someone what no one did for me. You’re so brave and a beautiful person. How much of your brave is because of having to be? Would you be this warrior for your daughter without your experiences? This is the only way I make sense of my abuse. I wouldn’t be the therapist I am now without it.

Also maybe if someone had given me a better haircut it would have been a little easier 😂

-C

Posted on

Victim or survivor ? What is your story….

Things have been very difficult for me lately. And because of this I’ve lost so much good writing to the madness. (Victim statement eek) To getting caught up explaining myself to sources that have never sought to understand. (I can only choose to stop explaining to those who don’t see). Challenger versus victim.

Let’s put the Karpman Drama Triangle to work right here. The actual truth is that rather than taking my writing away from me, the difficult experiences humble me, and give my writing back to me in a more authentic way. But surrounded by the feeling it doesn’t seem that way.

I am a slave to my triggers right now. And as a mental health counselor RE-visiting this place feels such a threat. It feels like it could take everything away. And when I am in this place I am scared and rabid. I lash out and flood with texts based on the emotions I am feeling.

I don’t like this self. It is an old one. It is a self my critics would like me to be because it will validate their story about me, and for this as much as anything I’ll have the courage to dive into my own behavior and rescue myself out of the perils that are causing this version of myself to be more accessible right now.

I have complex PTSD. Wordy clinical article to distinguish some things

More reader friendly information on C-PTSD

This means that I am hyper vigilant and distrusting primarily when my character is challenged. Because that was the really big problem in my childhood. My grandparents used guilt as a means to try and control me, and so they often told me how I was behaving and why I shouldn’t. No one came along that understood what was going on in my home. This is why I am a fierce advocate in my counseling office of seeing the unseen and unspoken. It was nearly invisible and I suffered but didn’t know what to call it, so I internalized.

Invisible wounds are the most dangerous, both to the wounded, and to those they will unintentionally wound as a result of their pain.

Now as an adult my weapon of choice is awareness and speaking my truth loudly. And yes I too must realize when my perceived truth is clouded by painful Triggers and symptoms of C-PTSD. It is arduous work. And then when I am in it, because of it’s invisibility to others I am sized up very simply as being selfish. Because of who we see a parent should be.

It’s easy to sit in a glass castle and throw stones. Anyone can have an opinion. The internet is rampant with them. The persecutors are ashamed of their own privilege so they lash out at those already afflicted with wounds and wrong them further.

Thankfully I’ve never known and therefore liked easy, but also it has caused me to make things harder than they need to be. I clamp down furiously on my truth and hold on for dear life. I got better at being iron clad over my young years, not being soft and gentle.

Now I’m taking the responsibility to learn this late in life. It’s taken me surrounding myself by people who see the good in me, the true colors, but those too were mostly conditional, and again when my poor behaviors would escalate I would be criticized. But do you know what didn’t happen? No one came along and looked at the whole picture and said hey look at what’s going on here this sounds an awful lot like complex PTSD. Let’s look at your whole life and see what’s going on here. No one besides a few very brave mental health counselors who changed my life.

This is why it’s my greatest privilege in this life to take the heavy heavy burdens of misunderstanding of this nature off of people’s back. They leave them in my office and we hold them tenderly, unpack, RE-frame, develop strategies, and show the importance of the interaction between wiring and experience in shaping a person’s behavior.

We must take responsibility to educate ourselves, to see beneath a surface and try to understand. To see beyond our hurt feelings and stories to look for understanding.

We have two choices with witnessing or being effected by someone’s behavior. Persecution or understanding. If the behavior is absolutely destructive and unsafe then our only responsibility is a boundary and seeking help from a mental health professional.

But most of the time, almost always without fail, if we help someone see the best version of themselves (believe in that story) and accept the parts that hurt too, they become more of who we believe them to be.

Innate in being human is a struggle between our light and dark selves, we all possess the capability for both, and who we become depends on such a complicated variety of factors. But the ingredients for the best outcome include unconditional positive regard (Carl Rogers of course). The magic of counseling is believing in someone’s best self. Seeing the unseen in this way until there is enough encouragement for them to emerge.

I have emerged and yet the journey is never over. If you surround yourself or become bogged down with your critics and you have fragile attachments from the beginning you’re at a great risk.

I have never really wanted to own my whole story. I think that’s why my memoir won’t come. I want to be the strong, not the weak, but I am both. Both a hurt child and an advocate for others. I am a wounded healer, but at the start of my career I’ve been too afraid of being invalidated for my hurts, to allow myself to be whole.

I cut off my beginning and searched frantically to replace it with something that looked better. I might as well have cut off my limbs. My whole story matters here and I don’t tell it because it fills me with shame and self doubt, which threatens the stronger self I’ve built over the years. I don’t tell it because I’m afraid I’ll be viewed with pity or as a victim or accused of that, and that is what every abuse survivor is up against. This is why people don’t speak out.

We would rather not be uncomfortable with someone else’s discomfort, let’s just be honest here. So they shouldn’t really say anything because look at all the mess their speaking up causes. Then someone else will have to feel marginally as uncomfortable as them.

My selves will have to unite into a whole for me to write my memoir. And I’m so afraid it will all return, the nightmares, the insecurity, the foundation always feels like a thin plate of glass no matter how many layers I lay down.

The last time I was vulnerable with one of the two people who you hope will love you unconditionally, he accused me of being emotionally unstable like my mother, and then he died. This was our last interaction.

My children’s father believes me to be selfish and emotionally unstable, and I prove him right with my behavior lashing out in texts. In truth any parent in my position would be stressed and venting. Raising teenagers isn’t for the faint of heart, but when it’s me because of a belief system I’m emotionally unstable. Trigger. I instantly become the less calm and grounded self. This is why considering the source to trust for feedback about yourself is VITAL folks.

And anyone can go to someone for validation and tell them a story and get feedback based on that. Counseling is so much more than that. It’s beyond validation to challenger, and what is your part in this? My part is my triggers and how they cause me to behave and I will always find the courage to face and work on them.

My father, I’ll never know why he didn’t fight harder to protect me if he knew the dysfunction I was in, and why as an adult he wouldn’t be able to connect the dots. I had just been diagnosed with a disease. I was telling a story at that time that mine would be like my mother’s. Toilets filled with blood, multiple bowel resections, daily throwing up, fistulas, and many scary medications. I felt like it was a death sentence. I did feel sorry for myself and like a victim.

My ex husband of course was a replacement for my father. It doesn’t take a genius to see that, so it’s pretty simple to see how seeking his acceptance against all logic still feels important. And this is a beast only I can slay. On long walks, in books, in the counseling office, and in the arms of someone who sees the WHOLE STORY. And someday everyone will know my whole story…

My saving grace?! I can never stay there long. I can never stay in a victim role long because there’s no creativity in it. Through awakening my creative self I’ve found The Karpman Drama Triangle, and am using it constantly. Another tool for healing faulty, surface, thin perception that only leads to inaction and unhappiness.

The Karpman Drama Triangle and Relationships

I still deal with the struggles of Crohn’s Disease. It has made me more compassionate to myself and others. It has taught me to care for my body when it needs. I still struggle with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It helps me see these behaviors in others and to help them find a secure grounding and create new behaviors.

What we all want is to be seen and understood for our whole best selves, to be accepted and encouraged. For someone to see why we act the way we do when we aren’t our best selves. To be understood wholly.

If you can create more of that in yourself for someone else then you will be reaching towards enlightenment. Kindness, compassion, understanding that is not conditional upon something. That is given because you have found it.

This is what I strive for….