This feels like a nice moment to blog. I finished Saturday sessions. Hadn’t eaten so I made some chicken, rice, and broccoli. Had to throw in a veggie for good measure. Chicken and rice is universally my favorite dish I think or with mashed potatoes etc. the most likely to be digested properly meal for me. Simple and I love it.
It’s a dreary day. I see these as more external encouragement for relaxation. Last night I hung out with a couple of good friends and watched 10 Things I Hate about you. Collectively we are all going through heartbreak and helping one another. I never expected to find that, but here it is: everyone doing a part in easing the others burden, caring for one another. I never imagined to find all these sources scattered about it in moderation versus all or nothing.
Basically that’s what all of my work right now is about. Battling addiction I suppose. Also coming to terms with how we tell stories to ourselves to be able to deal with things, and I think that’s why I developed the habit of trying to throw as many true words out of me as possible so I would be forced to stay in the truth even when scared, because I prefer to live that way, even when it’s hard.
I suppose I learned that from the writing of Paulo Coehlo first, or at least to notice and value it. I remember reading his works and listening to them while stocking produce at Trader Joe’s.
What I’m overwhelmed about the most these days is something I referred to as “the crushing weight of possibility”, in my energy healing yesterday. Shifting from a scarcity program to an abundance mindset, as it turns out, is not for the faint of heart.
My energy healer Julie worked on my kidney Meridian, which unsurprisingly corresponds to fear, anxiety, feeling inadequate, etc. she said it was very blocked the first pass over, the second moved nicely. She asked me about my experience with the healing, and my first feedback was that I can receive so much more readily. And sure enough there are people seeing me, thinking of me, sending me things, helping my own work of seeing myself as worthy and deserving.
I feel comforted, held, seen, and am now willing to accept that expecting that entirely from one primary partner was not only unrealistic, but not good for either person involved. I’m learning.
This does not mean I’m not lonely or have hard days. I do often. It does however mean that doesn’t send me in a panic upon which I feel I’ll never recover, and dear God I deserve that break from my own pained mind.
I have long stood in my own way and made life way harder than it ever had to be. Takes one to know one, because that’s what I knew, what I felt I deserved, and was mirroring the relationship I had with myself.
I have clients who have put in five plus years of work and I’m watching them transform before my very eyes. For complex ptsd there’s no such thing as solution focused therapy in my opinion. That would grossly underestimate the level of suffering they have endured. That doesn’t mean good therapy can’t work quickly, but it takes a lot of repetition to lay down habits, and to pull the old ones up. Challenging long held beliefs is tricky business, especially when life is already so demanding on its own.
I’m getting sleepy. I anticipate more writing in the coming days as theories and thoughts keep circling back around to see if I’m ready to contract a creative process with them.
In my energy healing what she heard was The mind is not God. Separating myself from my thinking realizing they are different. Not needing to rely on my mind or fear my scattered mind. And that because I’ve been working at such a deep level such a long time that’s how rich essentially my life will be. It has enriched my work, my relationships with others, and my day to day life, and for that I am tremendously grateful.
Some things I’m grateful for: helping new friends make their new lonely spaces feel homey and less alone, bonding with people who I share trauma with, good food, people thinking of things I would like or that make me happy or comfortable, my Christmas Tree, cozy things, having enough money to buy the people I love gifts, having enough money to do improvements on my home. My continuing efforts at reducing overwhelm and fear based thinking. And for most of all, beginning to believe once again in my power to create the life I want, that that isn’t over, and perhaps was even just beginning.
“Oh thinking about the younger years….” a little Bryan Adams this morning. Appropriate…
I’m in a blog writing mood this morning. Now that I feel alive after another death. Which was probably just raging hormones. Isn’t that supposed to stop at some point? Let’s play is it trauma, depression, grief, or hormones. Do all 40 somethings play this or just ones with significant trauma history? I’d like to speak to the person in charge please. Of the Universe ? Yes exactly. Always take it straight to the top.
I guess I’m a little punchy this morning. That makes sense. Last night was the first satisfying night of sleep I’ve had in what feels like forever, but in reality is about a month now. A month can sometimes feel like a year.
Yesterday was one of those days where I felt like a lead block and numb and like it was too much work to breathe. I woke up like that. And just kept thinking this feels like dying to be that low. I’ve been scary low lately. I’m lucky to be aware enough to know this is truly un-becoming. Lol not in the sense of not attractive as my father would have used that phrase, what is and isn’t becoming of a lady. Vomit. But unbecoming in the Paulo Coehlo sense.
Nobody warns you how truly excruciating this process is. Burning off old patterns and coping mechanisms and re wiring. Everyone outside of me keeps saying “I’m doing the work”, for me it just feels like dying of terror over and over and beginning a new day to do it again. Doesn’t that sound like fun guys? Now I know why the “enlightened” are so popular, and also why not many embark on this.
Listen I’m no guru or saint, most days I feel like a lost soul, though everyone tells me I’m not. I was for most of my life. Once was lost and now I’m found, …. Amazing Grace. Holy shit (lol) now I understand that song I heard a million times in childhood. Religion another story to comfort our weary souls.
Funny I should mention comfort. I’ve lived my entire 40 years begging and striving for just that. And my whole life feeling unsafe and scrambling for security in any shelter possible. Anything that could bring my nervous system relief and then I’d try and try to maintain it, having none of the knowledge or tools to do so.
I’m not a victim I’ve hurt people along the way. There’s hurt that’s been burning inside of me that I didn’t ask for. This is trauma folks. People often judge and shame, too much, too sensitive, too intense. What they never did was understand and connect the dots to why someone is being the way they are. That simple inquisitive nature inside of me has saved my soul, and I’d like to think the sharing of this knowledge has and will save others.
Sound dramatic? Yes it is. It doesn’t sound dramatic it is. If you could see it on a screen you might understand a little better. I used to say all the time I wish I could just show movie clips of my life, because I desired to be understood.
The thing about trauma is you have to be responsible for something you never asked for, for the rest of your life. You have to carry it whether you want to or not. And most trauma survivors spend their life running for it, for shelter, punching the air, crawling underneath something and hiding, or frozen and staring into space, imagining fantasies of grandeur and someone doing nice things for them or coming along and offering support and comfort.
I had a client say to me the other day that they know they won’t reach the potential they would have without this “brain damage”. And my heart broke. And as I watch myself as a counselor I scramble to fix it, but what I did on the way home was think how I don’t want to jump so quickly to do this or do that, I want to truly keep holding space and validating. You’re right and you deserve to be as angry and sad as you want about that without anyone giving you directions how to fix it.
They are correct their potential has been changed and it often feels an uphill battle. The only thing I would say is you don’t want to keep a story you don’t want to be shackled by. I can’t buy that my life will be less meaningful or I won’t reach a full anything and rather I choose to believe it is significantly changed by my trauma, but I refuse to let myself be lessened by it. And I acknowledge that it tortures me daily.
A tortured meaningful existence huh? Did I not read the contract? of course I didn’t I was never afforded the privilege to concentrate long enough.
So here I am and I really how much over the last couple of years I’ve censored myself. How much shame has kept me from truly bringing my story to the table. And in the coming time I’m not going to do that. I will get comfortable with my uncomfortable feelings and stay in my truth and my course, and burn off shame and put down the burden of any terrible stories I can tell about me, for how I’ve tried to survive.
I never intended anyone harm by rushing for comfort, and each person is responsible for their own choices. AND I’m sorry more than can be seen from the outside for pain that was caused from the coping mechanisms that came from my trauma. From me having been separated from any sense of self in childhood. I need to own and stand proud in this story and hold my ground.
I’ve been like a wild frantic animal for all the years of my life and keeping all of that tame for everyone else so I can still try at a life and try to love. I didn’t even expect to be loved. I don’t ever expect it. Why would I? I expected myself to work really hard at love, and believed that was the way.
But I couldn’t work really hard at everything all at once, and I couldn’t have this without that and I scrambled and scrambled. I’m egg at this point.
And now I am still and forging a relationship with myself that refuses to be anything but healthy no matter how tiring, boring, etc, that is.
This is me….
So yesterday I moved my therapy appointment to make sure I got to my daughters soccer game. They are on varsity which means they often don’t get to play. Which breaks my heart for them, but hopefully they know they are an equally important part of the team. I hope they get their shot soon. We won 3-1 against North Haven yesterday.
I arrived early to the game. I was numb and lead and could barely keep my eyes open. So despite the late of it all I went into Starbucks. It’s a place I still love. There was a time I couldn’t go in there, but I’ve returned to allowing love, as I have the solid trust I’ll never allow anything to let me betray myself.
I’m allowing all the love I feel for all of the people in my whole story. Anything else is manipulation and I’m not doing that to feel better or stronger or for any other reason.
So in the calm waters of this new phase of grief I bought myself a tall half sweet caramel machiato which I thoroughly enjoyed sipping while talking to a soccer mom from way back, and a LB of 2021 Casi Sielo. Which means “almost heaven”…. I think I’ll take that as a sign of the direction I’m going. I drank a little black, a learned behavior, the student is also sometimes the teacher. And I allowed myself a moment of sadness that I had no one purchase this for me, and also joy that I can enjoy buying it myself and wafting through the memories old and new.
And that in my life there is no need to deny any part of my story, or to manipulate myself or anyone else. That my friends is freedom.
I allowed my Apple Watch to flash me pictures I hadn’t been able to look at in a long time. I took screen shots. I sipped my warm life giving beverage and I burned off some more shame.
Now I am organizing my life, finding my priorities, planning vacations with my children and feeling like I’m safe to do so. I believe I’m capable of these things, things I thought I couldn’t do without another human being. Because I never felt safe. Imagine spending 40 years not feeling safe?! Imagine what that does to a person. So I’m not going to be ashamed for it any longer.
I’m so proud of myself for staying in this pain long enough to find the truth of who I am, what I need, and what I want, and never to settle for anything less than my entire story as is without shame.
Things fell apart my whole life. I became the glue, at the expense of knowing who I was or what I wanted or needed. I became a machine that met the needs of others, while begging to be loved.
So it is not surprising that healthy love was a complete mystery for me and while I’ve spent lots of time trying to solve that with my own experimentation. Simultaneously I’ve been living in a manner of consistently seeking to make the pain stop.
I’d do anything to make the pain stop for a few moments. And then became shamed and shamed myself for it.
This is the cycle I’ve been living in for nearly 41 years of my life.
And the only way to make the pain stop is to acknowledge the experiences that shaped me and how that has affected the children I brought into this world. Which brings another red hot wave of searing pain.
The only time the pain really stops is when I can use it for meaning, which in my life means to serve others with the knowledge I’ve gained. And to also be less alone in those moments. To stay in my humanity, rather than falling into insanity. A tether to belonging that has become consistent, and hopefully modeling that to myself.
It hurts to become.
My work makes me enthusiastic and hopeful and useful enough to make the pain stop. But rarely if ever is anything unconditionally provided to me. I have to look to the Universe for that. Nature, which also usually feels like an enemy as it bites me and makes me burn and itch, and in its vast unknown presence I always feel in danger.
So I return to the ways I know how to make the pain stop.
While this is happening I have tried to raise my children to the very best of my ability. Always doubting in that, my ability. Why wouldn’t you doubt something you’ve never known ? Something that was only dangerous and painful.
The tears slide down my cheeks.
The self doubt is probably the most painful part, and what I have drawn into my life, what I’ve chosen to invest myself in are things that end up harming me further. Then I harm myself with my choices.
I feel an experiment in human suffering and would victimize myself if I wasn’t so damn curious and concerned with meaning. My saving graces. The light shines out of the darkness, but not very much right now.
The message is to rest. But how when you have never known it, and when there is no loving touch to soothe to sleep.
Craving and starving touch, constantly leading to choices that harm some more. Self harm. Way more than cutting. There are far worse wounds to be had.
It gets good when you do. They say. The mystical, mythical they. The generalizations of our time.
I do good and I feel good. I do bad and I feel bad. What goes up must come down. My mind spins round and round.
Suffering. Relieved by service.
Will I always be fragmented or am I becoming whole and I have no vision for this because there is no template programmed into me.?
It’s all meaningless my existence except for moments. Moments of relief is what my life has been characterized by, with a lot of chaos.
I hope one day to see myself differently.
In the wake of all of this grief hope is difficult to find at the moment. It is times like this we just stay the course.
Steady as she goes…. Becoming steady out of chaos, that is the path of the warrior.
To be clear, this is what grief looks like, my process of uncovering myself. From now on I’ll use all painful things I need to sit with to heal. By not minimizing, dismissing, numbing, ignoring. I’ll say my truths loud and forever, because it works.
Tonight I’m angry that I was robbed of my childhood, and my spirit respectively. It feels extra raw tonight. As part of family therapy it’s been suggested to me I can be intimidating and the possibility my children fear me or I make them anxious: this feels unbearable. It’s not because that’s how we don’t change. So I will feel it. It’s a punch to the gut. It feels like I’m making excuses when only I know truly the on and off switches that often operate against my will.
I can’t even explain the variety of abuse I endured and how it was consistent mental torture that always left me guessing my reality. Gaslighting, manipulation, shame, guilt, fear. How everything was on my shoulders: I was to take care or myself and if I had a need it was such a bad thing.
I can understand logically now caregivers were burdened beyond capacity and I was not that burden. But it does not make the imprint on me any less severe.
For a long while each new realization of how my trauma has impacted my choices, my relationships especially with my children, and me, left me feeling filled with bullet holes and left to bleed out and die. Every Friday night I would feel this way, and often Tuesday evenings as well as I travel through emdr exercises.
I have just wanted the pain to stop so many times. And I do not mean in death, I mean through living in a way thats enriching and authentic.
I have been severely lacking in support, and left to my own devices to figure it out, and then shamed for that as well. The more I lack support the more I scramble like a wild animal to quickly meet my needs. A frenzy. And then shamed for that too.
I kept my children safe from anything I could unwittingly become due to the lack of trust wired into me. Everything feels like a danger for me. My new tattoo, could get infected, could be allergic to it, could be my fault, could be irresponsible. Who do I think I am to have something I want and think there won’t be a tragedy to quickly follow.
Do you have any idea how much pain I live with daily ? And I’m not a martyr. I refuse to make anyone else responsible or sorry for me or be a victim either. I sure sound like one above don’t I. Except that is a judgment, and so too is what I just said I suppose. If my scars didn’t burn so hot. My grandmother running around wringing her hands and letting me fix it and soothe her. Poor Joyce with the mentally ill daughter.
Poor Chris. People would do nice things because they felt sorry for me, all the while shaming me for my acting out behaviors. A tragedy. All the whispers I felt them clawing through my skin. Don’t be nice to me because you feel sorry for me. Have the courage to see who I am and why I am and love me anyway.
If you want to love me be enthusiastic about me, knowing me, being around me, talking to me. That’s all I want. If you’re not enthusiastic about it then just don’t…. Simple. But don’t feel sorry for me.
They all stood idly by because no one wanted to upset anyone. So they whispered about my grandparents being the poor ones saddled with a mentally ill daughter who got pregnant. I became lumped in with her. I was Lisa’s daughter. I was not a child who never should have been in that situation. No one spoke up about that: everyone was so fucking afraid to upset anyone. So that became my burden to shoulder, and now because of it the other adults in the world shouldering their parents wounds trying to also be parents themselves find their way into my knowledge.
Knowledge is power.
I have only ever wanted understanding and support. Those are the things I wanted. Instead people are horrified at the mother when she appears any less than the societal standard for nurturing. We cannot do what we have not had. We can try, we can circumvent, we can fabricate and hope the knock off passes. But people can only do as well as was done by them, when they were defenseless and innocent.
I made sure I always met my needs with another adult so I never ever spewed all of my dysregulated emotions or all of my unmet needs onto them. I literally did the best that I could, and on top I keep working towards being a calmer, kinder, better mother, against all my wiring and all of the pain I carry.
Don’t you dare feel sorry for me. Just be kind to me and understand me and never be a place that harms me. That’s not too much to ask.
I only want peace, that’s all I want. And to be able to be peaceful while living with all of these triggers, all this sensitivity to sound and anything that moves, and all of what’s stored in my body.
I want to be able to make a decision without freezing or flying. I want to not be irritable when my kids are simply playing because everything that moves agitates things inside of me I never fucking asked for.
If I could count how many times I’ve been gaslighted by society. Just do this. You think too much. You’re too sensitive. You’re intense. I am fucking intense. Life has always been intense to me, and then I got shamed for it. I’m angry: furious.
I don’t feel intimidating, I feel intimidated all the time. And like I won’t be safe and won’t be loved. And the parent isn’t supposed to feel that way. But I do, and it’s not my fault.
I need to only be responsible for my healing right now. And battling the shame that comes with speaking about it even. People don’t know what to do. You must be crazy. They look away from things they can’t make sense of and decorate their homes and stick their head in the sand.
And I’m not. I’m looking. And fighting. And trying. And breathing. And crying. And claiming myself from the lost and found.
I broken spirit is the hardest thing to recover. A broken heart mends, but a broken spirit is almost fatal. They broke it over and over. Every enthusiastic thing I tried to share some strange cold critical remark was made. I shrank inside myself, and became everything they needed, because that was the only way to even get a crumb of worthiness.
My children can be loving. They approach and hug me with warmth and passion and I want to be the same way. I know I am logically, but I’m all locked down inside myself.
I love with drive and I love with passion and I love with intellectualizing. I love with acts of service and reliability in financial support and keeping myself sane. This is how I love. I soak in hugs and warmth and affection, but giving them is always a carefully calculated world with me because what if it isn’t sincere. It never was in childhood it was a game. And then came the torture of having any affection given to meet an end, swiftly removed. Kicked in the teeth and punched.
I was not a child I was a pawn. I was not a child I was a therapist. I was not a child I was a punching bag. I was not a child I was a chew toy, a back scratcher, a gratifier of egos. I was not a child I was a burden. I was not a child I was bribery and image. I was not a child I was a meal ticket something to get welfare and praise. I was not a child I was a poorly behaved monster, and they made sure I knew it.
I’ve spent my life trying to be loved and belong somewhere. And in that process garnering even more shame. All of the fucking shoulds. You should have felt what I did or seen what I came out of. The fact I’m breathing is a miracle. And that doesn’t mean anyone owes me anything or I expect anything, except to be treated with compassion, understanding, and respect.
My abuse included the continued shattering of a spirit, with very few reprieves. Psychological damage continuously administered, to the point I was almost a robot, a machine. Responsive to the needs of others and deeply giving, but with no self. If you asked me what I needed I would stare blankly.
I’m intimidated by the smallest of tasks, things that for someone else is a phone call and a few quotes. Will I do something horribly wrong and end up not able to support my children somehow immediately is always in my mind.
I always feel unsafe, even without any evidence. Do you know how tiring that is? It’s not conscious. It’s a reflex, something that lives inside.
And maybe the happiest I’ll ever be is the only thing I’m programmed for which is my dark passenger and my saving grace: the gift of sight to clearly point out dynamics and needs in others; because that’s always so clear to me from my life.
Where do you think I got this knowledge? It only cost my humanity. If this feels dark, or intense, or difficult to read. If you’re uncomfortable with words like this said aloud, then you have just experienced a little of what I live with every day.
Abuse is intimidating isn’t it ?
This is my commitment to my children….. I will do the best I can….
All I know so far….. “you throw your head back and spit in the wind…. Let the walls crack because it lets the light in. “Perhaps this image will go on my upper arm in portraiture. Hmm
Good morning. So as it turns out I’m way more of a bad ass than I thought and at this point a lot of the habitual anxiety that I carried with me throughout my life is free to go. Thank you, but your services are no longer needed.
I’m working on a tattoo sleeve and in many ways not even sure how I got here. To be getting one. I’m a naturalist and I love the look of natural skin and I can be judgmental of myself while loving them on other people. What even is that?! Fear? Yes fear. That absolute asshole that separates us from a bold expressive existence that is our own. I have lived riddled with it, and it has obstructed so much of my joy.
These days what I am trying my hardest to do is honor and acknowledge what happened to me in a way that encompasses a wide range of compassion for my needs and desires. I was talking to a friend yesterday morning, my dear Mary and Pippin, outside in her beautiful oasis of a backyard, and talking about the difference between needy and needing. Lately I’ve been using this re-frame in my office. If someone says oh they are so needy, or oh I am so needy, my immediate question is: what are they/you needing? And it immediately changes the energy.
It’s literally astounding to the person asked that it could be seen any other way.
I am astounded by my life right now, and many days I’m not sure whether that’s a positive or not. It is not at all where I imagined I would be, and some of that borders on the miraculous and some if I am not careful threatens me with an impenetrable sadness.
I am deeply lonely right now, and also so far from alone. I’ve never understood things more or been closer and connected to ny loved ones. I am literally surrounded, and I can feel it and be present in it. It and I, are not invisible. That is priceless. I sleep well, for the most part, although this week has been riddled with anxiety and restlessness. I was so so anxious about this tattoo.
And I’m so grateful for that because it has shown me I am thinking less impulsively. Did you hear that? Not only thinking but behaving less impulsive. It felt impulsive or a mid life crisis. What a judgment there right ?! Who am I to have art on my body that is sacred to me if it means I could be judged or worse judge myself.
I looked at an arm that was not my own this morning and keep getting anxious I’ll reject it or won’t like it like that. It’s new and permanent, and it’s making me think of Attachment. I am continuing to read the book Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. I have been reading, absorbing, life rafting with that book for months. I believe I can finally mark it read soon. And not be so far behind in my reading goal in Good Reads.
The truth is I am slowly ever so slowly reading and writing more now. It has snuck up on me, this ability to attend and be still in a moderate way. Learning my way out of all or nothing, fight or flight, into real relationship.
The days that led up to my tattoo I was anxious for three nights, waking up all the time, strange dreams, and I’m remembering my dreams lately. The morning of (yesterday) I was nauseated with it. It’s insane to feel things this much, but I am beginning to embrace it.
In 2016 I got my et lux intenebris lucet (the light shines out of the darkness), Viktor Frankl quote on my inner left arm. I was so anxious I thought I would drop dead, pass out, get an infection. My intrusive thoughts were insane. My threat level was at a constant defcon 5! I didn’t realize even then why that was. So now in 2021 to have sat for 3 plus hours and got more done than I imagined. A half sleeve well underway. And I enjoyed it. Relaxed. Learned more about the guys at the shop. We shared trauma stories and I love them. Connecting. People stopped in and cared for me, my children got excited for me. I am literally surrounded by love and affection.
I noticed that I still want to ask other people, do you like this or it and go with what they say. It is still my tendency to be anxious and want approval, but now I pause and land on how do I feel and do I like this and I find my knowing. That is priceless.
Navigating anxiety, rather than it controlling me. I am driving and anxiety can be in the toddler seat, buckled in, where it belongs. I never even knew it spent most of my life driving me. I breathe a sigh of relief and the tears roll down. I am unashamed of the things that I’ve dealt with, and that make me me.
I am unashamed of my softer forty year old body, that’s sometimes hard to love. The changes in my skin, somehow slacker, and more lines than their used to be. I can’t even get lost in that because my eyes dance and are alive and not darting nervously, wanting to crawl out of my skin. You can’t unknow once you have decided to love yourself with the same ferocity and unconditional nature you would bestow upon someone else.
I am going to have fun with the images I put on my tattoo sleeve, the represent my life, my pain, my joy, my story. Sitting and having them emblazoned on me, is time and attention I deserve to bestow on myself. It is not an act of rebellion, it is an act of love, and I don’t need anyone to understand it.
But only to gravitate toward those who are gracious with their time and attention and desire to hear my story and appreciate it. and to let the rest burn. Not rejected, always redirected. Always path….
It’s Thursday and I love Thursdays because I get to have the best dinner company. I love it because I’ve never had anything this consistent in my life and it teaches me about love and life. It has stabilized me over the events of the past year and a half, and for that I am forever grateful. Does the man with the sad eyes and gigantic heart know that I don’t need to be walked down the aisle or spend every Christmas with him to understand that “because I knew you I am changed for the better, for good.”
The characters in my story are brilliant and I am loved, and I love them immensely and forever.
It is as legitimate as anything else in life. It doesn’t need to fit a traditional box and neither do I. I don’t need to be outside that box either to be validated.
Just walking that line of bravery between belonging and creating…. I love learning to walk that line. And the very act of living and creating an epic story with every moment of my life…..
Blackwing 602’s…. A new discovery and wanting to do some song writing…..
I’m quite sure one of the keys to a balanced existence is to be able to think and feel at the same time. I’m also quite sure repeated trauma particularly in infancy and beyond creates a brain that disconnects that wiring to protect you.
I over thought everything and I under thought everything. I literally had all my wires crossed. And in addition to this: It’s a lot of responsibility being a writer, our lives and often our emotions are not even our own.
I found out in therapy yesterday I probably don’t have ADHD. Crazy because if you saw me you’d think for sure I do. The same therapist has said for sure I do, but that was before I shared with her details about how medication affects me. She said that if Xanax works well, and I got a terrible headache and irritability on ADHD meds that means I don’t have it.
I said, but then how to explain never sitting still and talking in class, and being annoying to others etc. I was trying to be seen. I was lonely. The result of that was more negative feedback which I deeply internalized because there was no one else. If I talked to my grandparents it would be well what are you doing, they always made me feel ashamed.
I’m just reflecting on my appointment yesterday. Where I validated that trauma before the age of two and after has made such a dramatic impact on my life. It has changed my brain and I’m literally RE-wiring myself right now. I’m watching the changes and slowing my speed and taking everything one step at a time.
I’m having trouble focusing, and being still enough to have the deep relationship with myself to prioritize and recover my creativity. I don’t even know what it looks like, but also I do. Deep somewhere I do. Trusting that and investing in it is scary. Not trusting and investing in it is scary. Everything is so fucking scary. Thinking of EG in big magic.
Anyway I was telling my therapist that I think maybe I want to try medication, but I’m not sure because I hate how almost all of it affects me. I was telling her how I love playing piano and love my lessons. But when it comes to practicing I just look at it and freeze. I get lost in the day and everything else, everyone else, and continuously abandon me.
Although that’s a harsh narrative because so many choices I’m making are moving away from self abandon. I can’t even see me sometimes. I’m invisible to myself, while I see everyone else so well and clearly, and that just doesn’t work. I have to continue to fight for visibility and a relationship with me.
The only thing I knew how to guide my attention was deep conversation with others, which became deep connection, but I never knew what to do, or how to choose what space they occupied in my life or how to organize them I suppose.
My boundary less existence prior to the dark night.
Now I am organizing and having boundaries and giving myself whatever time and space I need to decide what’s right for my kids and I. And I hardly know what to do with this new self. Some of these concepts are so foreign and the sense of peace that is coming. Peace for me is almost a trigger. In my childhood if you settled into anything peaceful and abrupt stop would come and not in a pleasant way.
I will likely live with the feeling the other shoe is going to drop forever. Or at the very least it will be a reflex that attempts to kick in, and hopefully the solid foundation of peace I have built will override.
When I began this blog this was the battle I was having. I talked about ADHD and PTSD a lot. I had a lot more questions, and a lot less answers, and yet there are still so many questions.
I look around and almost can’t believe how I could have lived in that much pain for so long. So scattered, so much panic, so lost, so locked up, so locked down, in agony. Relieving it only by using my gift and feeling some sense of confidence from that. But no other solid footing. I thought that was all I needed, until I realized there was more healing that needed to happen.
I believe in therapy in a whole new way now. And now I will finally be able to be a human in my own life and not rely on connecting because of my sight. To wait and see what another person sees about me besides that and offers in terms of reciprocity and availability.
Providing resources from what I know but not feeling a desperate need to fix or change or that something isn’t ok. I am just being and I hardly know what to do with this new self, but here we are.
Lots of beautiful new things on the horizon. Stay tuned for my new attempts at creating…. Whatever that may be. I don’t know yet. That used to have an ominous devastating tone… now it’s I don’t know yet and a big smile spreads across my face.
Some dreams you take down, and some dreams come together unexpectedly. I’m hopeful for the latter.
In this period of utter groundlessness I’m sifting through mine.
I had a dream a little over a year ago to become a foster parent. If you have ever seen me pursue a dream you might chuckle, but for those who haven’t I’ll describe it. It’s a sprint. My mind is quite effective when focused so within a few months of the idea we had a crib set up in our room, bunk beds in another one of the rooms, and the mounds of paperwork were being cruised through.
I set the scene swiftly and effectively. There’s a gift and a curse in this way of doing things.
For me it takes much longer to dismantle a dream (particularly if I’m not ready to let go of it) than it does to try and create the conditions for it to exist. Perhaps I heard the Wendy’s commercial of Dave whispering “if you build it they will come” one too many times in childhood. Once again my entire life shaped by the television.
Anyway my family and I took cpr classes and we attended the foster classes and that’s when I realized so much of me was still the child rather than someone capable of steadfast patience in the face of a child that can’t regulate. I saw myself in the videos and vignettes of children experiencing abuse, and I wanted to look away, but I didn’t.
I remember avoiding the call and exit interview of the class teachers who thought we were the perfect candidates. I could not face that down at the time. I couldn’t face a lot of things.
Being honest with myself about that was one of the hardest moments of my life and everything that came after… the stuff of nightmares.
Lost identity, lost security, lost dreams, lost self, illness, terror…. I cannot even go in further into that.
My 100 yard dash came to a screeching halt and I set out to see myself and the relationships with my own children more clearly. This very difficult task continues. I am humbled daily. I am ill equipped to parent teenagers and the struggle for self love during this time is immense.
Anyone who heard me say ill equipped would laugh I suspect, anyone but my ex husband and a few scorned critics out there. In the traditional sense I’m not, but most often weathering the. “You’re ruining my life phase” and the bite back from rules is extra difficult for me because of my ten thousand triggers. Some newly acquired unfortunately, and many old.
I’m a piss poor punching bag who is simultaneously acutely aware of the need of teens to practice their independence with their parent and the parent still loving them. My off switch is immense. The love is never off but the response is and that breaks my heart. I’m working on it 🙁
Boundaries are hard. I’ve had to create the whole system from scratch. I’m getting emotional as I write this. I wonder if anyone in their whole life has ever tried so hard to become a mother while underneath the weight of their burgeoning painful mind filled with trapped and inaccessible memories that would run their life subconsciously. Now that I wrote that I’m sure many. That makes me sad.
I’m sad most days, which is better than irritable, scattered, panicky etc. Sad is ok apparently, according to my therapist. I don’t want to waste a second of life, but I’d imagine acknowledging and connecting to my own emotions is anything but a waste.
I woke up sad today. There’s many things behind that, many reasons. So I’ll just hang out in the bath where my tears can trickle freely and it’s warm and quiet and safe.
I can barely figure out what I feel like eating lately, and whatever the mood is for does not go well with my stomach. This loss of love in enjoying the art of it all is disappointing, nay, soul crushing. My soul feels crushed by an emotion like sadness and I want for that to have some balance.
On the flip side when I am able to come up for air, everything is new and beautiful. The pink blossoms are blooming on the trees in the backyard, and that alone is a comfort beyond all comforts. It helps me ignore the rotting wood of the deck that needs replacing, and the current state of the pool. And all the other things in my life that are falling apart that are teaching me it’s ok for one thing to come together at a time.
Deciding which thing to focus on always felt like the problem. Little did I know the extent of that. I will abide in a state of surrender and let the problems wear themselves out rather than me wearing myself out.
If I had it to do over… an open letter about the effects of my trauma on my children.
Lately so many things are clear and it’s left a lot of truth that’s difficult to sit in. College planning meetings for my Junior twin daughters is illuminating certain things.
I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for my whole life and lately I’ve been letting it out, cautiously.
I never realized how much anxiety I had and how much of my life was governed by trauma. I thought I was the boss of me. I was but as it turns out not such a nice one. When you are your own parent, for me I made a harsh one to keep me out of what I came from. That’s the best I could do.
My own parent and then their parent has me exhausted in ways that someone never should be, and all of that has impacted them. For better and for worse.
I wake up and realize my children all took honors classes and did well. They have all earned the ability to go to college and the privilege of spending some years just discovering who they are. My heart hurts at my own pain of this line, and also the pain I’ve caused.
I am humbled and I’ve been forced to stop shaming myself because ultimately it’s not productive and not the only way to get myself into action.
The song From Now On from the Greatest Showman, has been my go to lately. One right step in front of the other. Full presence with myself and my children, and the rest will figure itself out.
I cry a lot lately. There’s a lot of grief in here.
The piano tuner, a friend of my teacher, will be here at 9 am. I’m excited about that. Maybe it will get me to practice. And I’m going to have lunch with my son.
What has emerged once I finally stopped scrambling wildly in panic is someone who does want to be present and focused on her kids. I always did. Just the best I could do at the time was supporting them in all the other ways, emotionally I wasn’t available to myself. So afraid of being a refrigerator mother or doing something awful like mine I stayed frozen, away from their love too and joy even.
Over the years I’ve been thawing. If you pull someone too quickly from the ice they brought down through they will die. You have to let them adjust slowly.
My thaw has been excruciating. I’ve been living in this pain all of this time and still functioning and I’ve hurt people along the way, especially myself. And I’ve done a lot of good too. My heart is always in the right place but my god I make mistakes.
And right on cue Andy Grammer comes on singing I will fight for you. Watching Five Feet Apart resonates lately because I too have been fighting for my life, to get my spirit and soul back and connected to my body. To feel safe. But it wasn’t visible. So painful.
So I can really take in how beautiful my children are and this life is. What even is that to be privileged to see life this way? To think calmly. My eyes well up as I write this.
All I can do is show up. That’s what I’m doing right now. Not talking about it doing it, because it’s the right thing for me, because I feel it. I had to show up for me first, not the act of selfishness it can appear. It was something else. Something hard to explain or understand but real nevertheless.
Showing up, one interaction at a time with presence, support, warmth, attachment, encouragement. This is what the reduction in panic has given way to.
I am here and I’ll love you fiercely. I had to claim me first and I had to figure out how to do that.
I will be here the rest of your lives cheering you on and watching you.
Sometimes the only thing I have is my voice (my writing). Things have been so hard lately. For a lot of it I haven’t even been able to get glimpses it will ever be better. No glimmers in sight.
I also have music, Pink in particular, my barber, my therapist, my work that I love immensely, my friends, my kids, my health though that’s sometimes questionable but for the most part, and food and shelter.
The way I survived my childhood was to get away from it, and the way I did that was through my connections with people, and my tenacity and ability to get a job in five minutes or less of being in an establishment.
I made a family naively, quickly. I will never regret that. My sadness is that I didn’t have a situation that cultivated any safety or investment for me to know who I was and what I wanted beyond survival.
I wanted to be a mother because I didn’t have one. I needed a father not a husband at nineteen years old.
Why didn’t anyone see that? Why didn’t I? I was just expected to function like anyone else did, and damnit if I wasn’t going to try.
I was like a giant enthusiastic puppy about life. They couldn’t take that. But it got translated into a single focus, belonging anywhere and loving as hard as I could so I could feel safe. So my nervous system could calm down. I didn’t even know why it wasn’t.
I didn’t know what complex PTSD was, hyper vigilance, etc. I remember my ex husband would get upset with me or tease me that I couldn’t remember how to get somewhere. I couldn’t focus. Even when I started going to college I’d read the same line over and over and walked around in a blur. My friend Abby as I mentioned, she was kind to me anyway.
She was never unkind. Not mocking or teasing. That energy. Backhanded compliments, or criticism. I pick up on them at the most subtle levels. And now when I look back…. at what I endured on a daily basis and no one put it together.
I dedicate my life to connecting the dots for others. It’s what I do.
My whole life changed when I began taking foster parent classes last October or so, and that was just one of the many changes that occurred. I realized at that moment when I watched the graphic videos of kids in abusive situations that I was watching my my life. Wanting to be the foster parent, I ended up the child. I felt sweaty and like I would vomit, and I knew during those classes that I had held this at bay my whole life.
I rushed into relationships because that was the only place it all stopped. The way I felt safe (er). My nervous system was calmed by safe people to be around. And that was love to me.
Safety was love, and love was safety.
Until it wasn’t……
Demi Lovato. Warrior (Music always talks to me while I’m writing, this just came on)
It took one of the safest relationships I had ever had to unlock enough of my security to get into my next abusive one. Why?! There really is some kind of sense that if we have struggled we deserve this or that. And based on my experience it doesn’t work that way.
If you are self-love deficient (see the work of Ross Rosenberg and the Human Magnet Syndrome), then you can avoid pathological loneliness by attracting unconsciously the very type of situation that feels most like home.
I am struggling with shame. I’m a mental health counselor. How could I end up in an abusive relationship? Someone abusing the unconditional regard I gave them. A shared experience leading me to believe we would be one another’s safe space when it was anything but.
The effects are immense. My childhood trauma in my face with a vengeance while doing EMDR, and trying to hold it all together.
Now I am a mess of trust triggers and health symptoms and my children bare the brunt.
I was always going to need to heal these things if I was ever going to move forward on my path. One of the most devastating parts is the acceptance of the story as I actually experienced it. I was perfect for also wanting it to be a certain way, and creating that in my mind over trusting myself and actual reality.
The good news is that will never happen again. The bad news is the trauma I am wading through every day. And whatever toll it is taking on my body that already has Crohns Disease.
I tried to hold my trauma at bay by feeling this alone pairing up with another person with a good heart. I tried to keep myself safe, and I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. It’s conscious now because I can see the blind spots. It wasn’t before.
I have complex PTSD and I intend to speak about it as I move forward. As all of this happened and layers of shamed piled on while very few actually knew what I was experiencing. I hardly knew.
There is always so much beneath the surface. Look! That’s all I can say is look. Ask! Educate yourself and be brave enough to understand. If you see the light in someone’s eyes go out, you have no idea how instrumental you could be if you’re kind and you don’t make assumptions or judge.
I’m in so much pain right now. A shadow of myself. The misunderstandings almost killed me. The shame. An ocean of shame I’ve been drowning in. I look forward to this.
For those that have seen me and loved me in small ways and big this past year, who believe more in me than the things society defines us by. The ones who see my heart and always have. You have saved my life so many more times than you know.
You have stitched together a patch work quilt I huddle under right now for warmth. All those that reach out, the people who see me.
My bath feels life giving this morning. I need rest. My wheels finally have stopped spinning and I just want to read novels and breathe.
This morning two primary topics are on my mind. Angels on the earth (my friend family), and societal expectations/ our expectations of mothers.
It’s no secret to anyone by now I have been going through a difficult time for about, well in total we will say three years, but that also had many healing moments and ups as well as downs. But it culminated last December and hasn’t stopped. I was always able to get it to stop before, but how I remedied things became part of my own prison I didn’t even know I was in.
I had the key the whole time, but didn’t know it.
So after a particularly difficult few days, therapy with my daughters, and feeling beat up in only the way tiny mirrors of your own design can reflect; I hit another breaking point.
The best thing that ever came out of my entire masters degree is my friend Abby. Abby is the very definition of loyal when it comes to a friend and she has stuck by my crazy butt even after I didn’t always respect her well. I hurt her once (or twice even) and I’ll never forget. Over the years she always reaches out occasionally. I haven’t responded much, completely caught up in the whirlwinds of my own insanity.
My favorite memories of Abby include: our laughter during classes. She was impeccably organized and I was a Tasmanian devil who couldn’t keep a straight thought. She was (and apparently still is) my compass. Quite literally I’d ask her every single day where our class was. Abby’s dog Princeton who was a rag doll of a baby and made the kids laugh. Our favorite movie was Bridesmaids and we watched it several times and quoted it more times than I can count. She held my hand all throughout grad school.
Abby is brave in that soft and gentle way, but also not afraid to kick a little ass. She texted me yesterday morning that she had a dream about me in which a lot of people we coming in and out of my house (a party) perhaps and that she beat someone up to protect me. That’s the very short version.
I couldn’t help but get emotional, I was already raw, at this concept of being protected. I got upset a few weeks ago at my therapist, it was the peak of something that had been brewing for not protecting me, and a lot of the pain I’m in right now with figuring out boundaries and myself is the result of a lack of any protection in childhood.
The night before last I had a rough therapy session with my daughters and the morning after even worse. And there she was. I felt too vulnerable and almost cancelled our scheduled meeting time just before I was crying and having a breakdown.
I took the call anyway. I am so grateful I did. It was what I needed and so many things I needed to be reminded of, and this person, this gift in my life. How does she see me all these years later? I made that lasting of an impression.!? I never see myself like that which is the entire core of the things I’ve been struggling with.
All these years later and hardly any contact and this woman, who in many ways shares similar wounds, saved my life. It’s not dramatic. She did. She chose to see me and stay connected to me enough to have a dream that matched things happening in my life, to reach out, and spend her time reminding me what I need to see and hear.
If that doesn’t show you we are all connected and have a purpose in one another’s lives that is so vital to our path. I don’t know what does. At the exact moment I needed to feel less alone in my struggle and hear exactly those things, there she was. I cannot hold onto a story of suffering more than the gratitude at what I am given. It’s not possible.
She shared with me her mother had similar struggles with a situation and that she regrets to this day how she treated her, and reminded me that with the passage of time things will become more clear to anyone who is judging or criticizing, and that the things I’m doing are building blocks and I just can’t feel better right now, but that doesn’t mean that anything is as terrible as the feelings associated from these growing pains.
Oh my god the pain is searing. And I always think I can’t take anymore, but then the light comes. Et Lux in tenebris lucet. The light always comes.
This of course does the actual situation little justice for the relief. I napped after our talk, a dead dead rest and reset and was able to complete my five evening sessions when I didn’t think I would be able to.
Abby always signs her correspondence “respectfully” and when she does you can see and read the sincerity. Someone who makes you feel safe, which is typically the product of that person dwelling in a lack of safety for a very long time. In my experience. And one of the very best parts about her is her sense of humor. She told me there are very few things that can’t be fixed by doing funny squats throughout the living room while expressing whatever it is you need. Her kids are very lucky to have a mom like her.
I’m working on finding my humor outside anyone else. To be able to make light of the dark, rather than just try to find a glimmer of it anywhere. Which is where grief leaves us. I’m not sure mine will include squats my trainer can attest to my lack of agility in this department lol! Maybe shoulder openers :p
Also I shall submit for your amusement something she sent me last week that I cannot watch without laughing. Especially if you’re a therapist or anyone really.
I sent it to some of my clients that it was appropriate for and told them this was my new approach. They laughed. I guess I use more humor than once again I’m able to view myself as. Dark and serious.
My god I need the light right now, and in my life it always shows up. Just not always in the ways I’m looking for.
So I guess societies expectations of mothers will have to wait because this became a longer post than I imagined. What I will say about that for now as I’ve gone through hell and been lost to myself is for a good period of time my kids expressed their missing me as why am I not doing my “motherly” duties. It’s been a parent should, a parent should, a parent should, as I’ve been fighting for my life in every imaginable way. And I finally broke and the essence of that is mother’s are not super human beings we need help during certain times in our lives as well, and Should not be shamed for it.
I will not be shamed for the things that I’ve needed to heal in myself. I love my children fiercely but if I can’t pick myself up off the floor to make dinner, there’s probably a serious problem and it needs addressing. I’m full of wounds right now. And I’m going to need to heal. My only expectations is that you cultivate a certain amount of understanding and gratitude for all I am and have done rather than constantly throwing at me how I’m not meeting the mark.
This a product of whence I came. The martyrdom of the unhealthy mother who then resents her children. Well guys I won’t resent you, so instead you’ll get me standing up for what I need, and you’ll get the opportunity to be resilient as well. I recently revisited my roots on Little Women, the new version. I could never understand the character Jo before. I was always Amy, desiring only to love and be loved, nothing more.
I now understand our (women) history so much better and identify more with Jo. Many lives within one life. Also the sisterhood between women caring for one another when things are hard brings me back to my dear friend. Which makes me warm.
I watch the Greatest Showman lately as well when I’m lonely. It reminds me both of how I have risen and also why to remain humble. The best of both worlds.
