Tag: #recovery

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I am who I am, and who I am is allowed to change and move and grow….

Can’t make this up…. I was thinking of Dirty Dancing this morning and boundaries. Right this second I can’t even recall the exact thought (because a lot goes on up here), but Hungry Eyes just came on as soon as I opened this post.

So story time? Maybe. First, I put on a shirt this morning. I felt like looking human because I felt like it, and because admittedly I have new clients coming in today. That’s right I’m going to do some couples work and I’m a little nervous about it. So silly considering my confidence in my gift. However the events of the past couple years could explain my lack of confidence in that arena. But I just never forget that’s in my personal life not my professional one. I never was much of a compartmentalizer, in fact I hardly believe in it.

Anyway I put on a shirt that’s kind of feminine thinking that I wanted to look nice in a way I’m used to viewing as nice, and the shirt is nice. How it looks on the hanger and at the store and how it feels on turn out to be different and if that isn’t a metaphor for everything and life itself. See what I did there 😉

I’m not looking to ask someone else if they like it or not I now know if I want to wear it or not and am going to let it go because it’s not me. And it’s a nice shirt. I’d like it to fit or some external validation to help me to like it. But try as I might (and why would I, that is a million dollar question right now), it doesn’t feel right.

Also a top my to do list is to get some bras that don’t make me want to lose my will to live. That feel comfortable but also I feel good about my figure in. What a challenge already anyway. But how I feel in it has become more important than how I look to someone else because I can’t concentrate on anything if I don’t feel right in my own skin and clothing, and if I’m not who I am.

Getting to know me is starting to become enjoyable rather than a burden, exhausting, impossible, etc. I’m starting to enjoy getting to know me and I just smiled ear to ear as I wrote this so I know it’s true. what a relief. Deep sigh.

The blog post that was brewing this morning was other aspects of who I am and how desperately I want someone who knows that to show up and stay, without me having to do anything besides be me and work on me. And I will hold out for that.

Lately I’ve been sharing this as part of client work, helping them understand when their standards raise as their self love does, that it’s normal to be lonely when you aren’t accepting just anything, and how that’s actually a good thing. I tell myself as I tell them. It’s part of the magic.

I am coming to life, living. It’s been so hard to let go of this old self and the people who have been on the journey who began this, but in letting go I am free to live. I experience freedom. I can’t fix or change anyone or anything but me, and I can enjoy rather than being overwhelmed or daunted by that process.

Anxiety was running so much of my life, and I thought I was through with all of it, but really I was just at another opportunity to level up. This is me. Here I am.

Earlier in a session someone was mentioning how we would rather stick with a terrible president for example than venture into the unknown, because it could be worse and it was making me think of some emotional blackmail I’ve witnessed that connects with this. It’s so sad to me, how people won’t let themselves grow and change in the name of fear and anxiety. It’s brutal. And then I bring myself back to letting go of those feelings because it’s not mine. My work is right here.

Hey spaghetti arms this is my dance space and this is yours….oh hey I wrote my way to it. Boundaries. A dance and no one stepping on anyone’s toes or standing on someone’s feet being whisked around the dance floor. No matter how romantic that may seem. One step two step, and how follow through and self trust are the lessons of this season in my life, and how I’ll never compromise that again. There are plenty of mistakes but that particular lesson is laid down.

Lately in therapy I am confronting my damaged programming and my broken attachment system. It’s humbling and gorgeous and I’m the most me I’ve ever been, and I am enchanted by the work and that infects the rest of my life.

I have my voice in tact now rather than waiting for decisions to be made for me.

I watch my fellow co dependent travelers who would romanticize death if it meant they would permit themselves to relax, or who hope for a car accident to prevent them from having to go into work, rather than feeling the ability to choose and handle the outcome of their choices.

It makes me grateful for my healing to be privileged to witness the space they are currently in. I smile because now I know it isn’t a forever sentence, just a stop along the way.

Humbly yours, with my self in tact, learning….

C

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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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Victims and Perpetrators

“There are three sides to every story”, makes me want to throw up.

https://medium.com/the-ascent/in-an-abusive-relationship-there-are-not-two-sides-to-the-story-dc833dbc3af5

Who would’ve thought that taking responsibility for your own joy and happiness could be so difficult.

Who knew that it’s much easier to place it in the hands of others. (I think of Iyanla and myself before I came across her saying a relationship with others is only a reflection of our relationship with ourselves, ok good so a pervasive lack of self trust and some major attachment shit? Fun) Easier in the moment and more difficult in the long run.

Story of the ultimate human battle: discipline over satiation. Long term satisfaction over immediate. Well when you don’t think you’ll even live to see the next day now it all makes sense.

The legacy of the trauma survivor in so many ways is being sentenced to only live life in the current moment, and at times inside their own imagination because that is the only safe route.

Momentary safety overrides all other mental processes.

I’m thinking a lot about roles and boundaries lately. This makes sense as I am parenting teenagers, or as I like to call it herding cats 😉 Pema would say trying to get all the frogs in a bowl, and nobody likes a bowl of dead frogs lol. Fail, fail again, fail better she says.

Am I failing better these days or sentenced to life without parole inside my pattern? Stay tuned. I am failing better, but the fall is no less hard. I am angry at the fault lines inside of me laid down without my consent. Angry!

It’s lonely right now and yet it’s not. It’s lonely in a new way. A secure loneliness perhaps is taking over a desperate one, and maybe that will make all the difference in the world.

My thoughts are ahead of their time and I’m always ahead of myself. That’s a lot to come to terms with.

The proverbial cart is always before the damn horse. “How did you get the beans above the frank”, I’ve turned silly now. There’s Something About Mary reference and I suppose no better metaphor for the situations I get myself in could be had, no less painful.

There is no greater pain than to not be able to trust oneself and reality. This is a suffering I wouldn’t wish on anyone. In a matrix of my own making. I guess when you lived alone with only your imagination and your initiative this makes sense. And frantically looking for answers outside, rather than anyone helping. And worse being used and manipulated. It’s worse than I thought….

The benefit of childhood wounds directly at the surface is the opportunity to RE parent and become steadfast and solid. Not the same thing as boring and stagnant but they can often be confused for the other.

No black and white and there isn’t 50 Shades of Anything. A ridiculous fantasy. There’s just one foot in front of the other and I intend to taste and be the damn rainbow. Whatever that means. Like I said stay tuned.

The chronology of me…. another potential book title. Throw it in the pile with the rest as my attention threatens to betray me at every turn.

Just when you don’t think you can’t handle any more betrayal ….

I betrayed myself. And there’s nothing worse than that.

It’s a long way home…

And then she danced….

That’s been the longest running book title.

It and I are a work in progress that currently resembles a pile of raw meat. Shredded. Pulverized. The perpetrator and the victim and there is no reprieve.

Pema would say lean into the raw vulnerability. And I would cry out I’m exhausted of that, and some other voice from far away would say, hush Christina, you are just beginning, not ending. Why won’t you see it. You’re the only one who doesn’t.

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Fault Lines

“Sweet dreams are made of these and who am I to disagree. I travel the world and the seven seas, everyone is looking for something.”

It’s funny all these years later this song lyric is on my mind this morning. I have always loved it. I wrote it as my tagline for my original live journal, the birth place of blogging. Foxfire_1 I was ahead of the times and didn’t even know it. I always felt behind. Story of my life.

I am visiting Virginia and a home of a family which contains one of the key players in my life. Now they have all become key players, they are stitched into the fabric of my being. My mind is swimming with thoughts as usual and as usual I am trying to untangle some of them.

It’s an interesting mixture to be both a deeply feeling person and also a scientist who studies the humans. The only way to study me as thoroughly as I would like is to see myself through the eyes of others, as well as by learning from watching the many ways people do life. There are so many ways to live a life. I look around my environment in their home and marvel. I take things I want to emulate and I notice things I might do differently.

One thing I’m learning about this visit is it is one of the Hallmarks of great friendship that you help the other see themselves with a balance of generosity and also clarity. When done properly you have a powerhouse of a friendship that can make you both better. Both my friend and I tiptoe on eggshells in certain ways, but not the bad kind.

The bad kind is fear someone will blow up at you because you’ve hurt them in a way you didn’t even realize you were doing. This kind of eggshells comes from two people who have turned sensitive from the many ways they were harmed in life. This is the good kind of eggshells, and the remedy is trust that is built from being allowed to share with the other what is seen, and that the other translates this through a filter of love, rather than judgment or criticism. Not an easy task when the topics are on raw hot nerves.

For as long as I can remember this woman has been teaching me about being a mother, and a friend. She’s much better at it than she realizes, and I’m sure the same could be said about me. “We never know just how we look through other peoples eyes”, a lyric from a strange song on the Dumb and Dumber Soundtrack, because movie soundtracks were always a thing for me. So of course I had to look up the song, and it was as bizarre as I recalled. Pepper by the Butthole Surfers. LOL.

The lyrics so appropriate though in so many ways. I listened to this song in a cabin at outdoor school. It was the olden days when you actually had to carry a pile of cd’s and a discman anywhere you went. Our generations equivalent of walking to school six miles uphill barefoot in the snow. Kids these days cannot imagine the horrors we were subject to.

“They were all in love with dyin’, they were drinking from a fountain
That was pourin’ like an avalanche comin’ down the mountain

I don’t mind the sun sometimes, the images it shows
I can taste you on my lips and smell you in my clothes
Cinnamon and sugary and softly spoken lies
You never know just how you look through other people’s eyes”

We always have adventured together. Why do we adventure with other people, but then fall into depressive ruts when left to our own devices. Or is that just me?

We fall into deadly routines and forget to be alive while living. This friend of mine and I always wake one another up, but then we tend to drift apart and go right back. When you look from the outside it appears she adventures on with or without me, but then don’t I also? I don’t know since I can’t see myself from the inside. My adventures might just be different. Typically inside the minds and lives with others rather than feet on the trail. Maybe I need more of the latter. Or maybe I don’t. I don’t know.

By adventuring I suppose I mean having the motivation to do something out of the ordinary and then having the means and resources to follow through on that. I get daunted so easily it often takes another human being and a large leap outside my comfort zone to make any of this happen.

But the ingredients to have an adventure are quite simple. It’s the process that’s complicated, because it takes so much more energy to do something different. Paradoxically it also breathes life back into you. I am at a place in my life where I could use all the life breathed back into me I could get.

I was standing by my coffee maker this morning, impatiently waiting, as it dripped the steaming juices of life into my new favorite mug. And I closed my eyes and imagined what it would feel like to have someone I loved come up behind me and put their arms around me and rest their chin on my shoulder and just stand there. Holding me. It’s been so long since I’ve been held emotionally or physically. This is something I’ve fashioned my whole life around making sure I had an ample supply.

I never imagined myself being in this pandemic lacking human touch the way that I am now, and perhaps only slightly more important than touch, communication.

Anyway if you want a clue to knowing your unmet needs, notice where your mind goes when it wanders. The benefit of all of this is I realized it doesn’t kill you, and you can adjust to anything, but why would you want to.

Then I think about those that have been together for years who take those touches for granted, shy away from them even, or are so depleted that they feel like more work, an obligation. I think about the seen and the unseen. How much of the inside of people’s lives we know nothing about. We only see the surface unless you get up close. I am fortunate enough to be up close anywhere I am because people allow me that privilege and I earn it by being a safe space.

To see things with new eyes we have to get outside our comfort zones in healthy ways.

It isn’t always easy to find ways to do this, especially with the put your nose to the grindstone mentality, and all of the stresses life can throw at you. Like many a crisp new white baseball with its brilliant red stitching, launched at 60mph repeatedly from a ball thrower. That’s likely not the technical term 😉

Most people don’t even know the power they have to just switch the machine off at any time. Some cover themselves in padding and continue to stand there, some leave the stadium, the self assured believe they can just duck and weave armor less, the wise ones know how to find a delicate balance of all of it adjusted to timing and life circumstance and keep improving their technique.

Visits between our families include warmth, food, shared responsibilities, adventuring, pitfalls, moments of overwhelm and irritation for any given member, laughter (so much laughter), light treading, hard treading, growth, learning, and so many things I could not contain them in a single post.

One of the most special things about all of this is that it’s the product of the meeting of myself and one woman, when we were both such different versions of ourselves. Everything between us now has taken on such a new life of its own and there are so many new players since the beginning. In the beginning it was just two very lost young women each with a little boy and a husband that was not meant for her in one way or another.

Between then and now we both have acquired and lost, succeeded and failed, in a variety of ways. And yet we can still come together all these years later and know this is a special friendship that is meant to withstand the test of time, no matter how far we each travel on our own in the interim.

I am so blessed to have so many friendships like this. People who enrich my life and who I can connect with. People to share in the joys and the sorrows. People who are willing to pick me up when lately I fall repeatedly.

It is so shame filled right now. It’s not something noble or uncontrollable like cancer. This is suffering at my own hand because of my personal landscape and humanity. They are showing me patience and grace. They are loving me for free, and while probably being very frustrated at seeing someone function at such a small portion of their capacity. That’s the harsh version, the soft one is, it’s hard to watch the ones we love hurt. But eventually if you do the same thing over and over that grace turns to frustration.

They love me anyway…. they love me anyway…. and isn’t that the best kind of love.

Except when it isn’t, and that is the very difficult part right now. Sometimes loving someone anyway with faith and hope for someone they are not yet is an act of courage and worthiness, and sometimes it’s an act of self betrayal.

Sometimes faith is an act of betrayal.

When given blindly without evidence or reason, it can lead us to places we never want to find ourselves. I never imagined myself looking around thinking how did I get here. Not with all the self awareness I possess. It isn’t enough apparently. You do have to use logic to choose what is healthy and what isn’t no matter how you feel. This being one of the hardest lessons of all.

I like to learn my lessons the hard way that is for sure.

Oh the fault lines that are within me.

The Weakness in Me

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A human wedding

I think what is preventing my regular writing currently is being in awe. Yes that word hits the nail I believe. Often, just to make really sure, I’ll look up a definition to see if it fully captures what I’m trying to convey. So let’s do that.

Awe: A feeling of reverential respect filled with fear or wonder.

Yep, nailed it.

Not only have I found, but I am also creating my forever family. In so many ways it’s off the beaten path that I can’t even register or recognize how special, and often my mind tries to tell me it’s inferior to something else, and it will all come crashing to a halt. Like a huge “just kidding” moment. Back to what you know was always your lot.

And when I stand outside and look at how hard it is for me to feel this good and great life is real, I now have compassion for myself. It really was that bad. I didn’t make it up. I really do have C-PTSD, it isn’t me being dramatic. I shake with fear at times, and yet I keep going.

Now I badly want to figure out how to put into words how I achieved these transformations. So others can know this level of healing is possible. So others can know the way they express emotions and the timing of them isn’t something wrong with them, it came out of deep surviving. Living in emotional wastelands barren and devoid of their most essential needs.

And not having a narrative or understanding about this makes it all that more confusing.

Last night we witnessed my wife’s brother’s wedding. It was exquisite. I’m almost human during those events now. I still feel eerily somewhere else inside and hoping no one will notice. The place I go is to wondering if I belong among the people who belong. And my beautiful wife sees me and never calls me out, she just invites me back to earth with her warmth and smile. I am able to ground and my thoughts don’t need to go to the foreign nature and the sadness that I’ll never have a father daughter dance, or a mother daughter anything.

I do sit at events like this and wonder what it might have been like if I had parents, even a parent. If I didn’t grow up in an emotional war zone. Someone who loves you so much they are moved to tears watching you take this momentous step in your life. So many of my tears are still frozen. I wait carefully to decide how to feel, which is something prior to this point I faulted myself for. Awareness can also be a sword.

I think of a time I felt so much that I cried like that. When I got hugged by my hero, Elizabeth Gilbert. When she read a few words I wrote. I dream of her reading my story and seeing me, and yet she already has.

Another time I cried that way is when I married my wife. When she cries I cry, and I never could do that very well before. I felt it, but it all stayed choked up inside. What I realize now is I have to be safe enough to feel anything. And no one should ever have to be emotionally harmed to that degree. Ever.

But since life can be rough and hurt people can hurt people the second best thing is that we can heal. This is where my passion lies. I will sit with you while you uncover your truths, while you hurt, and while you heal. It heals me too.

The fact I am strong and capable on the outside and can be so put together and yet I carry an immense lack of safety every single day that I was wired with. I can do all the work in the world and yet my mind will still travel to terrible scenarios so I can keep myself safe.

Safety isn’t a logical process it’s actually an emotional one. It can seem like you would be safe, but inside can tell you you aren’t. And that battle is exhausting. To try and live like the humans do.

Where do I belong at a human wedding and at all the other special human events. Will I be able to dance with my children at their weddings with a feeling of belonging and safety? Or will I be somewhere else in my head. In my own painful past.

I fight for presence and I am thawing and I am healing. So I can feel every ounce of life in real time. And most of all so my kids can feel how I love them. At the deepest part of my wounding I could never feel the presence of a parent. There it is. And so my deepest darkest fear (that’s actually a very real one) is that they won’t feel mine. And I know how often they don’t. I am almost always some place else.

But what I have found now and what I want them to know is that I’m finding my way back to them. I’m doing the undoable. Breaking my very wiring. I am forgiving myself for what I can’t control and what came before me. And that breaks my heart open enough to learn connection. But it’s raw and shaking and takes all the energy I have each time. Then I must rest.

I burn myself up and out and then rest in this battle for presence. It isn’t logical it is emotional. And if you’ve been in a war zone as long as I have you would understand. And if you read my book someday you’ll understand too.

I just have to get safe enough, and I have to prioritize my family connections with the humans and that takes all of my energy and then some, because I wasn’t wired this way.

I’m just standing here most of the time in awe this is my life. And this awe is still and quiet. It doesn’t spill over with all the emotion that churns inside, because I still need to make sure I’m safe before an emotion comes naturally to the surface. And it should never have needed to be this way. A child should be loved and protected and ENJOYED!

And I intend to enjoy mine and the safety I create for other children, bringing my own healing full circle. So stay tuned as we get registered to foster care, Courtney goes to school, and we breathe some life into our many dreams, and as I play with the humans.

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Connected

*I guess we are all one phone call from our knees. *

I don’t think I could have bargained for all the gratitude this experience is bringing me. I can’t feel it too much yet, everything is just so painful. But I know that it’s there, and growing, and that this experience has already profoundly changed me.

If I do it right it’s going to make me realize all the things I take for granted each day. It’s going to make me realize what a gift and blessing my kids are in a new way.

We need to hit the refresh button on life often folks! Not just when bad things happen, but consistently. Not just once a year. Refresh, open your eyes, and look around at the landscape of your life.

My God I could have never imagined this. I never believed I would trust or love myself as much as I do now.

I would have never believed I’d be here living out my dreams. Here I am.

It’s interesting to choose a person early on because of a hunch and an intuition and then watch them unfold and get to know them with faith and trust the rest of your lives together. Love grows as you go through things. We have been through a lot this short time together.

Prior to this I moved quickly into love also, this was a need based approach it wreaked if desperation and seeking a buoy in the ocean with sharks swimming around. I’ve finally climbed onto an island and am relaxing. I did not purposely use those people. I didn’t even know my own bs as most of us don’t, until hindsight affords clarity. Hurt people hurt people. It isn’t nearly the intentional process believe I don’t think.

Now if you realize this is what’s happening and you don’t do something about it that’s a different matter.

Love now:

We know one another’s soul, and yet we learn new small things about the other each day. We become more and more familiar as time moves on. A confirmation of the original hypothesis. The other times were disproving and they were as devastating a loss as any for both parties.

Life is a learning playground is it not? I’ve rarely seen people set out to harm another, that’s a different category all together. But I’ll tell you what I still scan myself often and thoroughly for signs of being what I came from. I still take any feedback that could be construed as negative about me and make sure it’s twisted into that either way. This is one of my greatest areas of work.

Am I taking up too much space with my big feelings? Am I selfish? Am I like them? Do I make people uncomfortable with my rawness, and is that the same As the chaotic discomfort of my beginning. It is not the same. Thank God!

As I work for Vivint I’ve been meeting lots of people who lost their loved one recently or within the last few years, and my empathy as a person grows. After having something like this I get it. I’m already aware of the depth of suffering I’ll have when I lose it. I’ve never been able to cruise along in blissful ignorance, though I’ve often envied (probably falsely) those who have.

If you had told me two years ago that this year I’d be spending trying to get pregnant with the love of my life, I would have thought you were crazy. If you would have told me I would get so close to this dream after so much hard work, and then lose it suddenly and have to push it back again significantly, I would have told you I wouldn’t make it through something like that.

And yet here we are.

The courage of my wife astounds me. Her grace and kindness and gentle soul. Some people are just made angels from the very beginning, and others have lives that make them need one. We are the perfect match. Blissfully she seems to feel it’s the other way around. I’m still trying to figure out how that’s possible.

I am able to know I can be kind and unselfish when things are hard because she believes me to be that person.

I am trying to put this into practice with my children. Coming from a life of hyper vigilance and a huge lack of trust this has been very difficult. I’ve been RE wiring myself as long as I can remember and it’s difficult for anyone who doesn’t know what this work is like to understand the profound exhaustion that comes with it.

I am not exhausted from my children. They are my reason for getting this far. But over the years if you looked at my life you might have thought that, or that I valued my romantic relationships above them. Something I’ve long been accused of. I knew I needed a certain kind of love to heal parts of me, so those parts didn’t damage them. I had the foresight to know this.

And foresight is serving me again with this tragedy we are currently experiencing, because I can already see how the awareness it brings is challenging me to love better.

To my kids: I know it has taken my entire life to become a whole loving person that you deserve. I know this journey hasn’t been easy for you. I think the only redeeming part is that your lives will be better for it in ways you may only ever see when you’re my age. Distance brings clarity. I hope your lives end up as full as mine has been. Full of adventure, challenges, new experiences, real feeling, and the love I worked so hard to find, and to help you connect to it.

I’ve worked to connect with others and myself despite incredible connection difficulties.

And now here I am a connected and real person and boy does it feel different.

During times like this for a small moment I wish I could still be safely disconnected from my real feelings. But that never worked I always felt separate from the humans like that. It was terribly lonely.

I am connected to my self and currently my suffering too, and to the Universe, and to everything.

I am grateful for that. Thats what the smile below is about. It’s a different approach at times to this grief. For me great grief also brings great gratitude I have any of this at all. That I have someone to be sad with and lose something so important with. And we can try again for this, but this love is a once in a lifetime love. It’s the kind that always helps me love myself more, and I needed a lot of that.