Tag: #raw

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What Kind of Writer and Life will Emerge from All of This….

All the intellectualizing falls away and only I emerge. A singular woman with simple details and a complex set of coping strategies.

Life is simple right now. I sit on my couch and marvel at how on fire my mind was and how on edge all of my senses were a mere year ago today.

Today I watched Bourne Identity, with my son, after clients. I ate comforting fall type food. I stayed comfortable, and I napped hard. Hard deep sleep. I browsed hotels for the girls and I since the air bnb cancelled, annoying, but not life altering. Something better must be out there.

I sift and waft through memories, but no longer do I feel the battles and emotions of life and death. What is this variety of living. This might be my heaven, even in the absence of all I thought I wanted.

Utter groundlessness. Only moments of impact. I am just calm. There is nothing else. When I’m not calm, I’m really not calm. I’m a triggered frantic wild primal animal. Thankfully I am rarely that anymore. Life doesn’t burn as bright either, however it’s settling into something real, something spherical, no jagged edges. Something wholesome and good.

An assassin of the senses who is finally allowed to retire. “It’s over”. What is it? Possibility? Is that dead? No! But all possibilities thats are not healthy and transparent and what you see is what you get. All of that is over.

I’m also reading, because of course I am, a book called Every day. And a part I just read inspired this post. “I have to decide the importance of each and every memory. I only remember a handful of people, and in order to do that, I have to hold tight, because the only repetition available- the only way I am going to see them again – is if I conjure them in my mind. “

“I choose what to remember, and I am choosing Rhiannon. Again and again, I am choosing her, I am conjuring her, because to let go for an instant will allow her to disappear. The same song that we heard in Justin’s car comes on – and if only I could, I’d make a deal with God….”

“I feel the universe is telling me something. And it doesn’t even matter if it’s true or not. What matters is that I feel it, and believe it. The enormity rises within me. The universe nods along to the songs.”

In some ways I feel like I’m office space that I have been hypnotized. I just walk around dazed wondering what to do next. Unable to get extremely stressed about details, and also unable to feel intensely good either.

I look out over the landscape of my life, At everything I’ve conquered, every possible ending beginning and everything in between.

I live in the present now, which means I live in moments rather than in stories. I look around most of the time and can’t even believe the possibilities or that this is my home and I have the means to make any decisions. I forget that when I become instinctively overwhelmed from old programming. When I forget that I have stability and options.

I’m working on refinancing this home: I can do that now. I’m looking at the possibilities more than the devastation and somehow that doesn’t feel real. I must be missing something. This is all mine. I created it and it’s stable. If I need a new refrigerator I can pay for it in full. I don’t need to take out a line of credit and wonder how I’ll pay the bill.

I must be missing something. I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it probably will, it just won’t be what I think. It won’t be what’s on the radar and that’s scary.

Deep breath, and one at a time.

What unforeseen thing will happen that is unimaginable. It isn’t possible that fairy tales exist, only moments, and I’ve already had so many. Could things actually get good beyond my wildest dreams, as I do.

If you had seen what I came from. I never imagined I’d have all these adult choices to make, or that I’d even live this long. Now my overwhelm is from abundance and not scarcity.

Now I can what if over all the choices and no one to bounce it off of. Why is it so impossible to believe I’ll do a great job, beyond great even.

I’m getting sleepy now. I didn’t expect that because I napped. I’m so tired lately. I do need to move my body and get some energy, that’s highly out of whack right now, but I will.

I have this beautiful home, these beautiful children, and this whole world, and life says that could change at any time. I can’t be too fragile for difficult circumstances, however I can also still believe in dreams.

I think of the things people regret, and I’m listening to that in the Midnight Library, and of course it’s having me take inventory. I realize in my life there’s very little to regret. I was so lost in all of that. I’ve made mistakes, I have issues yes, but nothing so much worse than anyone else.

In my 40 years I’ve become a mother, on that first day, those first days, and every day after. I didn’t wait for perfect conditions. And for better or for worse I’ve left a legacy. I’d like to think better. I’ve gone after a meaningful career and found my way to something I love doing, and it’s in no way over. I can still do so much with it. And love I’ve worked as hard as any human ever has to crack that code, with all my attachment wounds.

I’ve done therapy. I’ve lived in many different states. I’ve met people. I’ve taken risks. I’ve tried and failed at many things, and succeeded as well. If I were to get that phone call tomorrow, no portion of my live is unlived. Nothing has stopped me:

The rest of this is literally just getting to choose what I want and having that choice and being capable to make it for the right reasons and in the right ways.

Everyone is all strapped in tightly together and come what may….

Come what may.

There isn’t a single stone of my soul unturned. I am not afraid. I have comforts. I am not dying any longer burning alive in fear alone in this over sized bed. I can go to bed at night and be comfortable. Don’t get my wrong it’s not my preference, but I also don’t need to abandon any parts of my soul to go after what I want.

Empowering.

I went back and got all my childhood pieces and United them, and I don’t need anyone to understand this journey, because the right people already do.

Watch me live now…. My life is beautiful. I burn off insecurity by the second. There is nothing left to fear but fear itself, which sucks the joy out of life.

💜

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Warrior of the light, prisoner of my own dark.

Relax and Write…

Strengthening the Therapeutic Bond. Yalom

When Things Fall Apart.

That’s where we are now.

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.

It takes one and it makes one.

This warrior is weary ….

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Onward… How to do branding without the selling part.

Had to break the drought it was time….

It was a series of unfortunate events that would ultimately lead me to the most secure relationship with myself I have ever embarked on. My story is taking shape. They say you write better from a more resolved place. Cheryl Strayed for example didn’t write Wild until around ten years after her hike through the Pacific Northwest.

So I’m sifting back through the events lately, as I also remain firmly in the present reality. Whirlwind after whirlwind when it came to relationships, and all because I never had one with myself, or my own identity for that matter. And that’s scary. No wonder I didn’t trust the world or myself. The very definition of anxiety. Homework: write fifty I am statements. The first time I attempted this I had around 3 or 4, and they were just titles.

Now I’m on the ground, and while my feet feel a little unsteady sometimes, I’m enjoying having more peace and clarity. I will be fiercely protective of that. My relationships with my children are becoming real and solidifying. They are no longer this touch and go, terrified thing.

I can tolerate being present now, without being swallowed up by fear and anxiety.

So often I look back at the girl who was consumed by intrusive thinking almost constantly. It was incredibly painful. No wonder my first objective was always shelter. And that to obtain that shelter I looked for the fellow vulnerable. I didn’t want to be alone. Except that I never was, I just couldn’t feel any different at that time.

I often tell my clients that our feelings lie to us, particularly if we suffer from ptsd or an anxiety disorder. Then our feelings can be really unreliable. We must get to solid ground and not be flailing about before we assess and certainly before we decide. Feelings are not facts.

So this morning I’m thinking about the ingredients and prescription for change. The thing people come to me for. Some want me to do it for them and have the answers, some want nothing from me, and come because they have been told they should, but aren’t willing or open. And my favorites the ones I work the hardest to show up for, are in earnest desire of change and willing to hear hard things, sit and be in uncomfortable feelings, and stay the course with trust and conviction. No wonder they and this work inspires me so much.

This is what I always aspired to be and do, but a lot of the information I needed was missing.

I didn’t know I was co-dependent and what would subconsciously feel like home time and time again, is someone to heal or fix, so I could also be doing that. That the relationship would be dependent on our mutual need and addictions, and not mutually independent and parallel. If I was alone I was lost to myself and frozen with thoughts of fear and inadequacy. Love become confused with desperate need, and boy does that create blind spots.

I have such hard nights so often. Last night in particular. Nights I just want to be held, feel someone else’s heart near to mine, smell their skin, sync my breath, and my whole nervous system responds. But being safe with a person means so much more than that now.

What it means primarily for me these days is that said person has the courage to hold themselves accountable and a secure relationship with themselves. This is something I’ve asked my therapist a hundred times if it even exists, as I stared blankly off, completely removed from myself. I couldn’t answer what I wanted or needed when I began.

I was in so much pain all the time, my only energy seemed to be to obtain momentary comfort, over anything lasting, secure, and that met my needs.

What I find myself wanting most sincerely (I was tempted to say desperately but that’s old, and I am new), is someone who wants to work as hard as I do on themselves, and stay parallel to me in that process. That we ebb and flow and dance. Secure attachment, which you can only do with another secure. I’ve been spending my life becoming an earned secure. Security is anything but natural for me, but I was always going to crack that code.

An integration of mind, body, and soul: bringing all the separated on ice parts, home. Reconnecting the nerves and the tissue. It’s been a lot of surgery lately. 2014 the year of my graduation from my masters, led to the beginning of the thaw. I found Morning Pages. I finally had some time that was my own, and some hope for financial security. It was my first toe in the water of living rather than purely surviving.

2016 the thawing gave way to whole hearted enthusiasm and I jumped quickly into a marriage. We didn’t even know one another apart from that we both had genuine hearts and were kind, and seemed to both want the same things. I can only speak from my experience of course, but what we really needed was a relationship with ourselves not with another person.

We didn’t legitimize ourselves or our own experience. We hid away in shame and feared that others wouldn’t trust our union. A self-fulfilling prophecy when you don’t know or trust yourself.

I have a personal belief we grow more in relation to others than we ever do by ourselves. But there’s a time and season for each, and that growth doesn’t always have to be found in romantic partnership. That has been a big lesson this past year. My determination sometimes preceded all logic. I can chuckle at that a little now, and appreciate that in myself. It has made for a lively story.

I am now growing in relation to lots of others, and primarily myself as I sit with me and pause and reflect and that feels safe. Holy shit I can’t believe I just said that. When I have ever felt safe all alone in the world. Except I don’t feel alone, and I don’t feel adrift either.

I am in pain, agony really, so many times throughout the day as I sift through the wreckage of all my past attempts at a dream, and now I’m am restructuring as the architect of my own life.

I am learning to live without outsourcing some of the most incredible aspects of my life, because I feared I wasn’t good enough. Often it feels like being in quicksand, that at any moment I’ll be pulled back under to that old existence where I couldn’t breathe. But then I look around and realize I’m in a beautiful field, and not on the edge of a cliff.

My goodness I missed this. I believe there are many good things on my horizon. The most forefront of which is thinking about what I need to say to the world, and how to say it. I’ve been working a beyond validation model for counseling for years, and I think I may breathe some life into that.

I have this magical ingredient as a counselor and it’s difficult to even put into words, and I think I’ll take some time doing just that. If I have a valuable resource I need to, actually scratch that I want to describe it so I can share. The thing about me is I want to share not sell, so I’m nervous about that whole process. I don’t want to brand or market, I just want to be my authentic self.

I’ve made such a transformation this past year and a half and I want to share that journey. Perhaps it’s so fresh I’ll need to share more previous ones first and trust that, my own memory and lived experience.

Why ultimately do I want to share it? I would have said before to feel less alone, which means I needed too much to be able to do so in integrity. I want to share it so I can empower others to have more satisfying lives. It’s so automatic who am I to do so? Until I look around and realize this ability to consistently self reflect and put this into practice with follow through is rare. So rare in fact that’s what led to the lonely feeling.

Where are the others doing this? They are working and sharing. Brene Brown, Nicole Lepera, Anita Morjani, Byron Katie, Martha Beck, Elizabeth Gilbert, Dr. Ramani, Ross Rosenberg, Melody Beattie, Anne Lamott, Stephen King, and so so many others….

I need to stay the course with my work and my relationship with myself no matter what… I said that to the tune of Callum Scott of course. Dancing on my own… I never intended it to be that way, but touching lives and being present has me feeling much less alone than I ever have.

I know in forward motion my task is to only entertain situations that make me feel less alone, not more.

Onward…. (Now I understand why this is the word Liz uses). It’s solid. It carries with all the lessons and the pain, and also still goes forward. It has conviction and strength, and also softness. The things I aspire to.

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Courage the Cowardly Dog and Running

So I’m walking / running to my water and thinking of my favorite coward. And mother effing her up one side and down the other. Then I think where are your manners Christina. You’re being positively uncivilized. You’re an animal.

And out of nowhere the show courage the cowardly dog pops into my mind. How I was always drawn to it despite how effing bizarre some of the content is. Then I thought why is it called that and who wrote it. Because well …. Me. That’s what I do.

I’m supposed to be walking. I’ll probably get hit by a car or wander into traffic. Don’t put that out into the universe. As if my self preservation and hyper vigilance would let that happen.

Near the Sundae House. A piece of history. Anyway this show…. Courage was scared all the time, and yet when someone needed help he did the thing anyway. That’s what I recall. And now I’m wondering more about that creepy woman and man he lived with. Did the writer have narcissist parents, probably! And that’s a way I was held in childhood and didn’t even know it.

Perhaps I owe my empathy and fixing tendencies to courage the cowardly dog…..

My skin is loving the sun. Next threat after pancake, sun death (fainting). Isn’t anxiety fun?!

Good thing my knight in shining Buick shall be showing up with Gatorade and Groceries. I have changed the rule of our visit game today. Without any warning. My speciality. He had learned to just go with it, lol. A patient man. I would say a saint but he would give me this incredulous look like I might be crazy!

Guess what I am! Spoiler alert. But you’ve known that a long time. What’s that Alice in Wonderland quote, something about being mad, and the best people are. Veronika Decided to die, the alchemist, City of Girls, Alma Whitaker ….. Brene.

Abby and Glennon….. nobody puts baby in the corner. 80’s movies. Young love between the popular rich and the other side of the tracks girl/guy.

Tale as old as as time…. The battle between good and evil. The truth and the lie ! Rayya and Elizabeth…. That Brazilian guy, Craig.

All the breaking and the bleeding. Back breaking metaphorphisizing change.

All your posts about blame. Shall we call it displacement of responsibility for emotional comfort ? Is that more mannered for you.?

Selling an idea of how things should be while not actually possessing an ounce of the courage I do.

As I’ve been seen the faint of heart need not apply and I’ll shout this from the roof tops. Mary Poppins style with the chimney sweeps, they raised me after all.

As it turns out reclaiming my original soul has not been without its wounds. They burn and ache so good. Like my feet and my heart right now.

But not only am I alive, but I am loving my own life. It may be lonely and full of mistakes, and I’m ok with that. Watch me work. Spin straw into cold. Kiss a princess, and go on an adventure…..

Watch me….. kiss me…… tell me.

Show me I have no use for your empty words…… they won’t activate anything in me anymore.

Show me a warrior. Loyal Brave and True…..(and yes I am those things as it turns out yoy do have to be loyal to yourself first in certain ways that are the opposite of selfish, had to learn the very hard way, as usual) because that’s what fairy tales and made of and magic is made by the bravery of our hearts, not the passive longings of our childhood selves.

It requires follow through….

Now watch me practice what I preach because I was always going to….

New and most real danger, walking into a telephone pole or street sign or mailbox just almost did that. Moving to the side of the street where I can watch the cars because the drivers are often doing what I am, and pancake is still also a threat.

There’s always a threat outside but what I can confidently say is the one from within is being purged daily.

Ok head up and eyes forward and weight back as my knight says ….

The water is on the horizon any second….

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Heartbreak that Registers a 9.5 on the Richter Scale!

If You Knew How Lonely My Life Has Been

I’m very emotional this morning, this week really. Something is happening. The winds of change are blowing and truly this time I don’t know what.

I am genuinely a blank canvas right now. Actually that isn’t true at all. I’m more like a beautiful landscape with a cottage by a lake. The door to the cottage is open, and I’m in a chair by the lake…. Reading, writing, and smiling. Calm.

It’s my sacred Sunday and I’m thinking of her. There are several hers for me to think of, loving is easy for me. I enjoy it. And you can find so many things to love about and connect with others. I love each for their own reason and in their own way. For what I’ve learned on my journey with them. This Sunday morning I’m thinking of being by the water, and the last time we had coffee together on. Sunday morning, in that foreign living room. We talked, that was always my favorite part believe it or not.

How does that quote go ? Love is a life long conversation. The empty chair on my beautiful front porch staring me down, Or me staring it down. I’m filled with love in so many ways all the way around. Love of my chosen family, my children, for my work, for writing and reading, for nature.

The other side of my king size bed is cluttered with clean folded laundry, books, journals, a people magazine with Pink on the cover, and probably dust. The other side of my bed depresses me, whether I am happy or not.

So many brief stops and starts. Always stopped before it started. Heartbreak of a 9.5 magnitude on the Richter scale.

Recently my therapist brought up the concept of lost souls, and my response was so naive. As if that is not possible. If you just love hard enough, they can transform. No man left behind. The real result is actually the pain of this naïveté and the journey has been transforming me.

These days I can only fix and rescue myself and life gets better because of it. It gets good when you do. I remember my mom had this shirt when I was growing up. It was hideous, sleeveless and blue, and in typically rocker chick 80’s the bottom was frayed, long dangling strings of fabric. She was a fan of this style. I never was. She also had a mullety haircut at this time. The shirt was blue with white writing. I’ll find a photo and post it.

The shirt said, “good girls go to heaven, (but or and I can’t remember), bad girls go everywhere.” If there ever was a shirt to sum up my mother. My grandmother hated it, that says it all about their relationship. In this moment I wish I had known the little girl her, except in a way that’s all I ever knew of her. She never grew past/up. Interesting how we stumble into things. I had no idea I’d write this when I began.

I hear a plane flying overhead and think of the girl who would always ask me, “where do you think it’s going”, that wound is fresh. Full of unknowns. Not even closed over. No bright pink tender scars yet. Plenty of those in other spots though. The path of the warrior. Warrior of light as Paulo says. The pilgrimage just popped into my mind. One of his best as far as it resonating with me. I took the journey years ago. Half the book was underlined. Look how far you’ve come Christina. That’s what people keep saying to me.

Sometimes I can’t see myself in relation to time: the chronology of me is a fascinating thing.

I am the walking wounded right now. If you could walk inside me you would find a museum of love. So many artifacts of war, dusted, rusted out. Water logged, bullet holes. Trauma. But oh the stories you would find. The courage that resides in these memories.

I am not without. I am within.

I was teetering between worlds. Almost a lost soul. Nearly dead. That assessment is only because of how invisible to myself I had become in wanting to love everyone else back to life, because loving myself seemed and insurmountable task. It still does, however I’ve been working towards this awhile now.

I hear the world waking up from my beautiful upstairs room. I opened the blinds, the French doors so I can experience the outside while I am in. I imagine people preparing breakfasts, or to go to brunch, their Sunday best. Sacred sacred Sundays. A full day of unlimited hours spread before me to do as I wish with. Mmmmm

I can feel the promise of fall in the air this morning. My favorite months are on the tip of my tongue. I can taste them.

There is magic in the air. The magic is me. The way I choose to see the world and live regardless of the pain. The choice of being fully alive and feeling no matter what. Now a stream of songs are coming at me. It will be time to take a walk with my headphones and see what the universe has to say to me through music today.

I am begging for a reprieve of these restless nights. For fall to run its fingers through my hair and cradle me. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends lately and doing this not as a result of a person is new.

Muse ? Is that you ?

Yes.

I am always always here…..

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Those not willing to do the work need not apply… don’t distract those of us that are….

The FIRST TIME. This isn’t an issue of compromise or lacking it, when will that be acknowledged. That’s where you would need to begin …. That if you did different this would be different, you’re in the outcome of your choices.

Also the image upload is having an issue and I haven’t the patience to fix it today. Sundays are for relaxing, and rain and grief apparently, at least this one is…..

It’s a rainy Sunday. I am in grief today. Not getting what I want is often a blessing in disguise I realize. It forces me to slow down and know me. I’ll know me good soon.

I can’t practice the piano, every week I want to. I go to my lessons without fail, but for me touching that piano is something I’m passionate about. And lately every time I try to get passionate it gets cut off at the knees. So today I’m passionately angry and passionately exhausted and passionately lonely.

I can’t touch this piano. Once again I was trying to move grief faster than it’s ready to move….. I cannot afford to be immobilized, my life is passing me by too quickly. To be so aware all the time feels like a curse. Peaceful, joyful, and aware, is needed.

I’m angry, furious, wanting to crawl out of my skin. I am going to thoughts of indignation at people not showing up, and then I bring myself back to the wounds I have caused and try to right the sinking ship of reality. I do this so I can grow properly.

I didn’t follow the rules. But whose rules am I following? I am following my path, but along that path I made contracts I couldn’t keep. I didn’t keep. See what I did there. There are no victims. I will never believe myself to be one. I did them for practical reasons in entirely impractical ways. That about sums it up, that line brings me back to a light humorous self, it brings me home.

I keep coming home to what I deserve and who I am, and when it shows up whole I am ready. Nothing else will suffice and I do not need a story to make myself feel better. I am not a coward. I do not need a rigid set of rules to make my feel safe in my life.

My contract and my vows never included being willing to abandon myself to accommodate fear. It never would have and it’s never will.

The clue app popped up serendipitously to make sure I knew I wasn’t entirely losing my mind, or that if I am I’m in my own right to blame these feminine cursed hormones I’ve been blessed with.

I no longer bleed but you can bet your ass I make up for it in tears and the pms symptoms that cause emotional tidal waves are alive and well. Fun.

I want to sit and read but my concentration is shot, only something physical will suffice. I may run until all my anger, longing, unmet need has been thoroughly pounded into the pavement. I want to be like Forest Gump and just keep going.

I am suppressed inside all of the supposed to’s and the shoulds and the things that are not understood and I’m going to explode. Don’t go wasting your emotions, lay all your love on me. Who? Who do I lay my love on? I don’t have that answer, but I do know who not to…. Anyone not fucking showing up for themselves.

What is the common denominator of these lucky ones that have a partner. These ingredients are not magic. They are respect, devotion, choosing, seeing, and above all neither party can abandon themself to be with the other. They must have a developed self, not state they have one, actually have one.

Which means Christina the only thing you can do right now is keep working on yours and breathe. There’s my higher self. I don’t want her wisdom right now. I want to be held. I want raw hot sex. And more importantly than either of those things I want to talk about life, love, and all these feelings to the same person every day of my life consistently.

It does not need to be perfect. In fact imperfect is perfect, but it has to be consistent and devoted and secure for all of the days. I could tell a story that I bailed on that, and believe me I have, but I know me well enough to know that I won’t bail on someone authentically themselves who does their own work and can stand healthily on their own two feet.

I know this with all of my heart. I’ll never buy another bullshit story. Ever!

I keep attracting every manner of emotionally unavailable person, which can only happen if someone themselves is emotionally unavailable. Breaking into emotional availability is not for the faint of heart, and especially if you allow yourself to be wronged by those that came before. The shame inhibits you to see things clearly, yourself clearly.

I’ll take accountability because I desire learning, but I will not take your criticism or judgment of me, when you were there too, and had choices too, that created outcomes.

I will always stay with the correct ingredients and I don’t need to blame anyone. Blame is boring and weak and leads to emptiness.

I keep creating stories to think I have those correct ingredients. I keep going back and forth between pick your favorite train wreck and roll with it, which I want to believe in, make something work.

But only Christina, only with someone as two feet in as you are with their own self awareness, investment in their own happiness. Only then! That’s it. Don’t try and make something else work, or invest, you’ll suffer every fucking time.

Put some skin in the game or get off of my field. I won’t be accepting anything less than 150 percent these days of your own personal determination towards self mastery, peace, and joy. Unhappy people need not apply.

If you’re unhappy I’ll sit with you and have a conversation and wish you the very best, but don’t distract me from my mission w doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

I want someone to make magic with and that’s not asking too magic. Magic is coffee in bed and talking about life. Practical magic.

Not too much, and I’ve had enough.

I want China pavilion in solidarity of a fellow griever whose pain knows no bounds today. He is about to learn another before and after lesson, and I’m sure he’s angry too. 💜 a last breath was taken during the night. Heaven gained an angel somewhere between yesterday and today, and her loving army will be in hell for as long as it takes to adjust to her absence. Broken hearts abound.

Can soul pain be fixed with food? Not too much of it, but food that’s cooked with love perhaps…..

I’m not stubborn, well I am, but this is not the issue here. You’re not there and you know it. No more gaslighting….. if you can’t talk about the issues specifically with vulnerability why even do it. ?

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No Turning Back

I’m on the brink…. Of turning around and never looking back. I can’t hurt like this anymore. No man left behind is not working for me. My attachment system is failing my health and wellness. I’ve done this before and it’s how I got out alive. It’s time to do it again.

I need to stop sifting through the wreckage of my old life and accept that it’s time to focus on my new relationship with myself and what is head, rather than what is behind.

I would do anything to make things work, all on my shoulders. I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough. Another wave of grief when will they stop. Sometimes nothing helps. No amount of tattoos, distractions, good moments, nothing helps. Sometimes you just sit in it. For me it feels like it will swallow me, but somehow I’m still here breathing.

I’m just so tired of these waves of grief, the price of love, and trying for something. I’m starting to not punish myself, so that’s good. But I’m real tired of this grief. It’s relentless. Pulling me under. Taking the oxygen out of me. There’s no where to turn for comfort.

I’m reading Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club and there was a part yesterday where she talked about planning to run away and it included the rest stop bathroom she would live in and how she could afford a corn dog a day. It flashed me back to my own childhood and a memory long forgotten about my own Taco Bell budget for running away and how often I planned it. I didn’t stop planning it and at 17 I executed. I never looked back.

I remembered the playhouse that was my mom and aunts and falling apart and how in my mind I made it a palace, which is what I did with every bad memory. I just turned them into what I would do differently so my life wouldn’t be like that. I took for granted that someday it would all catch me and add up in my functioning. That the cracks would show. No matter how hard I work the wounds are there.

And this relationship with myself that at one point kept me going is now abusive and must give way to something much more vulnerable. I am raw. I am scared.

I think about how immobilized I become with decorating. I think of how no one was ever excited about anything to do with me. So I didn’t have my own things, that I liked. I was just put wherever I could go, and I had to make my own happiness out of my imagination. To constantly go somewhere else in my head.

I sat in that scarcity yesterday. And connected it to becoming frozen now when asking myself what I like. How that’s still such a process and how I’d still like to outsource it due to the sheer overwhelm I experience when trying to make a decision in this area.

Why does it feel life or death or impossible. Just pick up the phone and schedule something. Just fill out the forms. Just make that phone call. Why is it harder than it should be. Why can’t I just accept what happened to me and the outcome of that? Because accepting feels like surrender to all this lack. All or nothing.

I’m in so much pain all the time. And the thing I believe that makes it somewhat bearable is connection. And for me that connection needs to be consistent, safe, and someone who sees me. That connection needs to be with me, but how to even maintain with no fuel.

Running on empty, trying desperately to fill. Tired of how intense everything feels.

I just need to rest and stop involving myself with things that hurt. No matter how much I care. Just when I think I’m getting somewhere I keep getting plucked up and back at the starting line. I know Melissa would tell me right now how far I’ve come, how far from the starting line I am. And I know that’s true.

But I mean specifically with connection. That is empty in terms of partnership, and please don’t try and tell me I have it all in all these other areas. I know and I’m grateful, but that doesn’t stop these holes from bleeding.

I’m tired….. and the suggestion that both are feeling the same so why can’t they just be together is abusive as all hell, when one was always loving and caring, and the other was not.

When the truth teller and the golden child fall in love the gates of hell burn with excitement because everyone is going down.

When the truth teller and the rescuer fall in love it seems like all can be fixed, until the bubble bursts. It’s equally as painful because a rescuer is no more emotionally available. The rescuer rescues everyone but themselves.

I’m not that anymore. And I can’t go forward, and I can’t go back. But I am going forward.

The truth teller just needs to make sure to maintain all by herself because nobody likes the truth. Nobody she knows anyway, certainly not the rescuer or the golden child.

Here I am lost in all these feelings again…..

I’m not abandoning myself this time, and that’s a new kind of lonely, and a new kind of hell, for now.

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Family Therapy: Gains and Losses

I thought I was…… I was wrong

Never have I understood grief the way that I do now. Never have I had connected empathy versus cognitive, the way I do now. This morning I went on a journey watching old videos of my life, my kids, our dogs, our found family members and I saw so much happiness and play and joy in them. I forget/forgot those existed as I stayed trapped inside a cage in my own mind. My own personal hell played over and over, which can be described as constant thoughts of what I was doing wrong or could do differently. That was my default.

I was talking to my dear friend Jen on the porch yesterday morning. We often talk about mother’s. And I said to her that I’ve played scenarios in my head a hundred times what I will say or feel when I get the call my mom has died. And resoundingly where I land lately is my mind screaming “it’s over”. That I will weep for all my pain, and also release. And what I realize about what I will let go is the struggle inside of me that if I just did something different could we have a relationship.

I would have done anything to love her better, I mean love her so much she became better, felt better. I would have tried everything and I did at one point. But I couldn’t ignore the anxiety and illness that plagued me as a result of that one-sided love and intermittent lashing out mixed with just enough of a crumb (so she didn’t look like a bad mother to other people).

I still feel like I abandoned her or being a daughter and not like I got out alive, the way I deserve to be able to feel. My mind plays tricks on me. It is not in my wiring to abandon. I have to be able to be honest and work through things, but it is not in my nature to abandon. Except I abandoned myself a long time ago, right along with all of them. And I’ve been reclaiming her for my whole life, while also trying to be a mom, with absolutely no template.

Sure there is no instruction manual, but I didn’t even have a rough draft. And I made myself into a good parent anyway. Not a perfect one, thank God, but a good one.

Chip dropped off potato salad this morning and then groceries later. I made breakfast burritos and dropped twin A at work, she drove and did well. Life just keeps happening around me, and now I am here too.

The entire energy in my home has changed. I never thought I would be here, never thought my best could get this good. It didn’t seem possible.

We had our first good therapy session as a family this past Friday night. For so many weeks I felt filled with bullet holes of all my mistakes and shortcomings. I would go home, cry and fall asleep and get up and try again.

You see I promised I would never supply myself with my children. That my need would be confined to an adult capacity and I would keep them kids. And when I look now I have been pretty successful at that. And they still have their experience with me as a mother and my shortcomings and wounds, but no longer are they distrustful of that.

They are able to get perspective and hear normalizing of the difficulty in the best of circumstances between parents and teens at this age, that it’s natural, and I have to hear that too, because for me…: the other shoe is always going to drop.

So here we are a year and a half of intensive two times a week therapy, including emdr, their individual therapy, and now our family therapy and there is some light. We are able to see the identity of our family with its own story rather than the constant comparisons that flay us raw. Make us feel less than.

We are our own story and it is a beautiful one. Our cast of characters is unmatchable. I wouldn’t change a fucking thing.

If I had gotten what I wanted when I wanted it all of my energy would have once again been abandoning myself and this family, and while the dream and heart had the right idea, in practice Everything happens for a reason and in its own time. I held on so hard to the dream and a story, and didn’t trust my own reality.

The gift is that I’ll never do that again. I have a relationship with me, and a relationship with them. And a new relationship with life itself where there is a semblance of trust. It will likely always have a tinge of something bad possibly happening at any moment. There’s a lot of that in me, and that’s ok because I will and have learned to support myself through this and to choose supportive fellow travelers.

My work has deepened, and my relationship with self and others.

My story is far from over, in many ways it’s just beginning. Another life within the millions. Today I played piano. It’s been a long time since I could sit down and focus. I have an idea I can or will but then I just stare frozen. I can’t will my body to try.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been tallying the losses I’ve had. I won’t go into explaining how I’m not doing this to be negative I won’t do this to me. I am honoring my experiences.

In the past two years I’ve lost a home I lived in for 8 years, my first secure space. I’ve lost many possible pregnancies and a couple of heartbeats, I lost a dream of having a baby with a woman I love in a healthy relationship. I lost a dream of being a foster parent and providing more of what I didn’t even have. Needed to have it first. I lost a father in-law and a family. I lost a wife and more importantly an unconditionally loving human being who adored me and held me and supported me.

I lost a beloved pet and now a new one because we weren’t ready.

And then I lost my self respect personally and professionally. I lost touch with myself. And then I lost reality nearly altogether. I nearly lost my mind, and I definitely lost some of the health I’ve worked so hard for by spending my life walking away from unhealthy and toward freedom. I could have lost my life quite a few times over the past year.

I lost a soul relationship with a new family, kids and all, and a lover who still haunts my bones. I’ll love them forever, all of them in their own way, because they were a before and an after moment of my life. I send them love every chance I get, even when I’m hurt and angry. It just exists. I remember every single moment.

And I wouldn’t be me if the losses didn’t make me naturally think of the gains… I don’t have to try. So let’s see. I gained friendships that I didn’t even know I had because I’ve been so numb and removed from myself. They were there but I couldn’t feel them like I do now. I gained appreciation for family and attachment for the people who held me this past two years.

I thought I was grateful before, it’s nothing like it is now. I gained humility, awareness, a greater capacity for healthy self sacrifice. I gained a new home that now feels friend versus foe. I gained many lessons as a clinician and lost many doubts in my abilities ironically.

I gained a relationship with sex and my body that feels fulfilling and embodied and whole. I gained believing in my capacity for exercise and endurance. I gained pieces of my identity I would never have uncovered. I gained faith in my tefloness. I gained earned security. I gained the ability to value myself as lovable and deserving. and that line brought the tears.

I gained being less scattered in my burning brain. It has a permanent layer of salve on it. It’s soothing…. cool. Healing.

I gained the ability to be present over being lost in my head. I gained piano and enriching my already immense relationship with music. The ability to delay gratification and to not justify things in the name of scarcity.

I gained integrity……. one I was already built with but didn’t know how easily I could lose. I gained an intimate relationship with grief, and the understanding of how it can affect choices and so much more.

There are so many more, but these are the ones I can think of now.

So what now ?

The rest of my life being able to be present and not jumping ahead or freezing, for more than a little before I lovingly catch myself in a bear hug and ground, …..

I don’t worry whether I’ll write a book or not or what kind. I enjoy thinking about it and creating space inside my head for the discipline and dedication to breathe life into it.

I’ll be here writing, reading, connecting, singing, dancing, playing, working, living, and loving…..

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We are all connected…..

90 days……. she’ll love you if you love her like that……now the day bleeds into night fall…..she’ll love you if you love her like that.

Music begins my days and the songs speak to me. I realized this morning I’m in love again. This time I’m in love with my whole life and myself. I get it now. What being still means because now I can see my whole life and all my connections and my ability to carry on and connect beautifully with others, the world, and myself.

I get it now.

I’m on my front porch and the other chair isn’t lonely or empty, it’s often filled by some of the strongest and most beautiful people. The kind I aspire to be and am lucky to love. My life is surrounded by those that get it.

For the last 5 years or so I’ve been rebirthing myself. Contained in the watery womb that is my bath. And now I’m outside. I’m outside with the world, standing in all that I am. The musicians and authors they are by my side. They are my ancestors. Loyal brave and true they surround me with the art they have had the fortitude to get out into the world. They are encouraging me.

“You gotta get up and try”

And I always do.

That’s beautiful

I cry on my front porch in the mornings. I cry for the pain in the world and for the beauty. Grief is beautiful it means we have tried for something, and when it doesn’t work out it doesn’t mean we aren’t enough. It means we had the courage to try for something we wanted. The courage to pursue our dreams.

This morning I thought deeply about my beautiful friend’s birthday. About how strong she’s had to be and how her light still shines through the personal darkness she navigates. We are kindreds. Both vibrating with anxiety to the point it consumes. Wounds we were left with. Bullet holes bleeding, and still we rise.

She posted a photo with her grandparents from her birthday dinner last night and I could see the little girl there. The one who just wanted to be celebrated and seen. The thing we all desire. And it broke me open to seeing everyone’s child, the child in everyone just wanting to know who they are and what to do with themselves in the world.

Who am I? What is my purpose? Will I be loved? Will I be safe?

This finally feels like home. My house isn’t not a home because I’m not sharing the experience with a partner. My house is a home because I belong here. I am home. My home.

I can finally see the beauty in the flowers, in everything, in my own life, not just others, desperately wanting them to see too, so that can be a shared experience.

My whole life I was so driven and focused on obtaining this one main thing I thought would make me safe and happy, but discounting me and everything I am. Unless I was healing I didn’t know where I fit in the equation. Unless I was useful.

Now all my connections are important, no tunnel vision, not just one at a time. I can finally appreciate me for the way that I connect to others, and now to myself too.

My son didn’t do the dishes last night though he was reminded and asked and this morning I thought on the porch of how many times I’ve harshly pushed, asked him why he didn’t do them, not if he’s ok. Not a hug. Not warmth. Because that was my relationship with myself, because that was the relationship I was given from the cards I was dealt. It’s taken my whole life to get it. To understand the power of are you ok? How are you doing ? How was your day? Are you connected? Do you need something? The dishes can wait. They are not the most important thing. But that is what I knew how to do. My model my template. It’s as far as I could get.

Until now……

From now on…..

I literally couldn’t get myself to open warmly and hug and ask those things. Inside I’m screaming to do that, but I get stuck inside myself. In Pinks documentary she said a line, about how she wishes she could reach inside herself and give that little girl a hug. This is why the rebirth was needed.

Over the past year and a half I’ve been on a mission to reclaim that little girl. I didn’t know that was my mission. I thought it was something else. So often life is like that. We misunderstand. So my kid can connect with my kids. So I could replace harsh drive with enthusiasm for living. Warmth. Everything I accuse are only things I couldn’t find in myself.

Always disconnected with me, always begging for connection with someone else. Thinking that would crack the code and it never did. How many times do I need to crack open I thought? How much more breaking.

Breaking let’s the light in. You can hear all the quotes and read all the memes but in my experience you can’t embody the experience until you’ve walked the path yourself.

So this morning I’m outside, not locked inside myself. I’m in the light. I am the light. I’m in the world and I love everything. In love with myself (I was typing my life and it changed it to that and I left it).

I’m not afraid my existence is a burden any longer. I won’t live that way anymore. I am here and I have a voice and a right to exist. I won’t hide for hours in the bathtub trying to figure out how to fix what is broken. I don’t need to anymore. We aren’t there anymore.

Once you grow you can’t go back. One could say why would you want to, but of course it’s tempting because being new and open and ready can sometimes feel an overwhelming responsibility. I was overwhelmingly responsible for everything during my childhood. I get it now.

Now I am responsible to myself to allow myself to exist in all the light I have to offer and to enjoy that.

My heart is bursting with love and I don’t need to aim the arrow at anyone to feel safe and wanted. I can be love. And I already have love and I already am love.

I get it now. And this morning my heart felt so much love for everyone that has ever dared to love, and for everyone who has ever grieved anything, because grieving isn’t easy. It hurts to be human.

The people we connect with makes the hurt worthwhile.

It’s not the stuff, the milestones, the achievements. It’s always about connections. We try to make meaning and know what that is, we try to control. We beg to be enough, belong, to be seen. And those things are our natural birthright.

We have to claim that.

If we have shared a journey I love you. For your strength, your pain, your resilience, your harder moments. I love it all.

I have always loved life itself, and life is the unreliable narrator, but never again will I tell a story or believe one that hurts me. Not for long anyway because after all

I am human….

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The present of presence….

I don’t think most people realize that presence is a privilege. I’m here to tell you it is.

Learning to listen to my children has become one of my greatest triumphs to consistently strive for. Given the world I came from and so many automated switches that shut me down it is nothing short of miraculous. Truly. This isn’t black and white, all or nothing. It’s ebbs and flows. Sometimes I’m a better listener than others, but always I care enough to try and follow through with a repair.

Now I do. Yes now, because now is when I am able. I wasn’t before and that is the reality and as long as I allow space for their feelings around this we will be ok. Everything else can be figured out.

Everything else genuinely figures itself out as long as the secure attachment moorings are in place.

I guess that’s why so much of my life took so long to recover/uncover.

The Mother’s Day triggers are in full effect. It’s coming. Winter is coming. No matter how many times well meaning people instruct me to focus on this day in terms of who I am you cannot remove my pain from me, nor should you. Pain demands to be felt. If we don’t feel it, deal with it, and heal it, it spreads like cancer to those around us in the form of our treatment of them. Sigh

I’ve been going since 5 am today. I had a GI apt at 8 am. Labs are good all is well. I need to get my good and bad cholesterol a little better on each number, but total isn’t bad. I just need to exercise more and for my mental health as well. I start so many things that I don’t finish. Story of my life. And now my teenage son is struggling with this as well.

I imagine follow through is a universal problem, as well as getting our priorities straight. An art that takes a lifetime to craft, and maybe that’s the beauty of it all.

Some things however are consistent. Like how I feel when I drive onto Belmont Street and begin to see the water. Every part of my body smiles. Similarly to when I hear the piano or a vocalist that I love. Or when I feel that right touch in just the right way and every part of me sings and dances. The things worth living for. I just have to keep fighting for that.

When my writer self crafts that perfect sentence that just lands. There’s no feeling like it.

Funny I came here to talk about the pain associated with Mother’s Day and how we should learn to respond to people in a way that creates space for them, and many other things and what I find is my appreciation for beauty instead. Evolution.

I have lots to talk about in terms of life’s lessons. As I watch my kids learn them. I cut so many corners not reflecting my degree of conscientiousness, but rather my need for survival in so many areas. Can the clean up be delicious rather than the tragedy the pain sometimes makes it?

You can tell I’m busy by my scattered thoughts. I keep getting interrupted by calls for medical things. It’s a full time job by itself keeping care of a body. How does anyone even function?

For future blogging will be pool ownership pitfalls and probably more Mom shit. I mean does that ever end really ? I’m anxious. I’m anxious about a medical procedure tomorrow and the after. I’m nervous and secure. An anxious secure LOL. How can I ever be lonely when I entertain myself so well?!

I was doing some cleaning in my office this morning and I’m going over old letters that my kids have written me…. one in particular about how “you would think it’s really great to have a mom as a therapist”…. and all they want is my presence, the one thing I didn’t even have for myself. My own presence. Could it actually be a present?

Stay tuned …..