Something has changed within me Something is not the same
Hello dear readers, I wish to be intimate with you today ….. I miss this (writing), this you, so much in its absence.
Sometimes the silent spaces in between are the most important, and you don’t see until much later.
Life is a great mystery and if you’re brave, a great story of your own making unfolds.
As it turns out when you’re not reacting to life all the time there’s a lot less to say.
That’s the quiet that’s been deeply reverberating right now.
These lines have been sitting here awhile. I keep missing the boat on waves of inspiration that hit. But this is ok because I no longer feel a sense of panicky desperation.
I’ve been learning a lot about what love is and about what it isn’t. A researcher of love above all things.
What makes it safe and trustworthy?
I do. By being responsible for cultivating that in myself.
I’ve been navigating the letting go process of deep bottom of the heart, grief, for the last four years. For my whole life really, but this new awareness has the last four years more standing out.
You don’t get high on it, but you don’t crash either. A new kind of magic unfolds.
There’s a trust in the unfolding now. A deep breath and a sigh. A meandering walk among the halls of my heart, lined with many many shelves, and many stories.
I walk among them.
Deep wisdom settles under my skin, and I can draw from it as needed. Not running from myself, chasing someone else.
In this stillness the universe whispers and we become fast friends.
I am watching myself step into my gifts and twirl around in the mirror admiring them without self recrimination or admonishment.
The way my body reacts I had understood as anxiety, and it sent me into a panic. What that really was, is the depth in which I’m able to feel things.
It’s what empathy feels like in the body. The most powerful force on earth. Misunderstood I thought my body was trying to sabotage me. Not have a simple conversation and guide me.
Who knew ?!
So much opens up now.
Everything becomes a possibility. Everything always was, but now it’s known and felt.
I have long loved Wicked. We saw the movie the other day and I thought I might crack right open with feelings that movie evoked. As someone who saw herself as wicked for being the truth teller, and reacting to the many mistreatments.
As someone who has worried she was bad in some way.
During the dance scene at the oz dust ball I about cracked in half with emotion. Shaking with it. It was the first time I recognized my anxiety as “powers”. It clicked.
Suddenly I can see all the love around me I’ve created.
As the patriarchy falls and a new revolution takes place.
How love is the furthest thing from control. How control suffocates love out of the equation.
Years and years of attempting to control myself through manipulation and will, as a means of surviving those who would have tried to control me.
I want to play all day amongst the shelves of Barnes and Noble.
Finally I can breathe again (when I write). I’m on Belmont. Home. Starbucks in hand. Grande hot caramel macchiato half sweet and upside down. Swoon. This is a treat now. In the morning before 11:30 it is I’ll take it black please. Most recently I see their green apron blend and want to try it. It’s on my ever expanding list.
Therapy with Melissa yesterday was so so good. One of the best sessions yet. Funny how relationships build in this way, who knew. Melissa gives me back to myself each week. I feel seen. It’s the most healing thing, and it inspires me as a clinician to work in such a way to provide that to my clients.
To not fear emotions or my capability and just keep doing what I do in the way I do it. Being magic brings magic. Like attracts like.
That was one part of the session. Talking about a central theme of how to know what is real. When the mind, especially a traumatized one, can be such a skeptic. And she explained energy to me in a way that makes so much sense, and that I know in my cells I believe. Hmmm.
When you have more than you ever thought you would sometimes it’s so overwhelming, the emotions of that, that it’s like it doesn’t exist at all. Like if I feel it I’ll just explode. Like maybe there’s a wrinkle in time, and if someone finds out I’ll return to the life that seemed destined for me.
Something else she said is that the mystery is why some people have an innate will / spirit / something that makes them make their lives so much different than they “should be” by their metrics.
I want to leave my children a legacy of safety, and freedom. To change our stars. I want to leave them with abundance and security, and I won’t stop until that is accomplished.
But I also wouldn’t drive myself into an early grave to do it. So writing the blue prints is filled with the necessity of balance.
While I’m writing this I’m digging Anywhere Away from here, Rag n Bone man and Pink. It has the right combination of piano and raspy vocals that set my spirit soaring. I could cry right now. I might.
I don’t think I told you that I feel out of place….
Will I come sit out on the beach today?! Probably not, but it will be one of my go to’s.
I was a fragrant chef this morning. Trying this and that. I am soaking in the last weeks of my daughters being at home. Oh yeah there are the tears sigh. Who knew I could have just cleaned all day and not thought. I’m recognizing left unchecked I’d have some serious OCD. The way my other letters ADHD contribute to hyper focus or none at all. Sigh.
I also talked in therapy yesterday about my relationship to food. No one taught me Melissa said. I don’t think about that or like that, I just move forward. Which is why it’s easier for me to cook with no one watching or present so I don’t get overwhelmed.
Then I find my flow and I’m singing and dancing and creating and all is right with the world.
I cook things patched together (like the quilt my life truly is) from past lives with people, friends, lovers, families. A mixture of creole, Spanish, Italian, a blend. I’m still trying to perfect red rice and beans, sweet plátano etc, as a white girl the odds are against me. But I am determined and my life has given me enough spice to persevere.
I got my haircut last night. Took an hour and a half. But my barber was teaching. And the cut is perfection. It’s taken years to realize which cut for which season. Went shorter this time because it’s HOT!
Speaking of hot. I have a black car with leather seats now. A Jetta R line. I can’t believe I don’t have a Honda. I love it though. Just need window tints eventually and I’ll be happy as a clam.
The great car buying crisis year of 2024 is one for the books.
Driving here today I saw a dragon fly that seemed to hang with my car for a long while. Hi team. My ancestors, my loved ones, the universe.
I saw 30 people this past week and have 32 scheduled this next one. I’m jamming. My work deepens. People weave in and out, stretch their wings, and then return. My client family.
I’m on the 4th book in the Dune series, getting out of it a little, and need to get the umph to finish. I hope to finish it this weekend along with Normal People that I’m listening to on audible.
On the day to day there’s been a lot of Groundhog Day lately. Chop wood carry water. And it’s becoming so satisfying, the simple tasks. I was always a simple things girl with a complicated mind.
I do more outside and in the world than I used to and have much less anxiety. I can’t remember the last time I took a Xanax now it just makes me feel icky. I don’t like it.
I over think much less, my mind no longer being a prison. There are less and less spaces and relationships in my life I feel emotionally trapped in.
I only allow full authenticity without discounting a single drop as far as what each has meant to my life. I am fiercely protective of myself, without needing to be fierce at all anymore.
Love is the answer….. the love of life itself.
I love the smell of Barnes and Noble and could literally move in there, and coffee shops nearly equally. Recently I read my poetry in front of a small audience in Fayetteville. Due to the belief of someone very special in me, who ever pushes me to be the best version of myself. I still can’t believe that. I was shaking so much!
I just looked up to see a couple walking in their bathing suits. I notice in the rear view some silver grey hairs catching the sunlight and glinting in it. I have more than I’ve had, and yet I’m younger in so many ways these days.
Able to play
I still carry my grief and my scars. It just isn’t so heavy anymore. I still look for some people and things in everything I do. My attachment system is something to be reckoned with. But I can no longer keep stories of things that never existed but were only dreamt.
It’s not fair to me and to my life and to my work.
I don’t have to say goodbye because it all lives inside of me. Every page of my story I am keeping. I don’t need to burn them. I love the whole thing.
Amor Fati
And this is what’s going on with me…..
Now if this can please open the doorway to more consistent blogging. I need to be writing. I was offered love from the universe and a spot in Victoria Erickson’s autumn immersion.
I had the house to myself for a bit which was so strange. A foreshadowing perhaps. And tried to watch Remember Me with Robert Pattinson. It’s going on four days to finish. Ha. I will also finish that tonight I think.
This day is slipping away from me more and more. Once I go home and read a little, it’ll be time to get Sunday stuffs for twin A’s homemade caramel sauce, and a few groceries for the week. And before I know it bedtime….
Always Remember Us This way will serenade me on my drive home.
Happy Saturday everyone
Ps a line from Dune before parting: “and it’s the survivors who maintain the most light and poignant hold upon the beauties of living.”
Somebody bring me some water, can’t you see I’m burning alive……
When safety is the primary concern, growth can hardly exist. And yet it springs at the gate begging to be set free.
It was me I didn’t trust.
I’ve been yearning to write a blog post. But my thoughts have been so many that it’s hard to capture what I want to say, and what my audience is. That is always the question isn’t it? And an answer: if I write what’s in my soul, what does that matter. If there are readers or no readers. It’s the traumatized child inside who concerns herself with this, in her perpetual state of loneliness and fear. I embrace her often now.
So here I sit in a rare occasion of writing in my office chair rather than quickly capturing shower or walking thoughts.
So I’d imagine this will read as an update and not a wave of inspiration. But in chicken or egg fashion perhaps one will open out of the other.
Here I sit on a throne surrounded by the method by which I tame the sheer madness that is my brain, which is books. They are all around me. My friends. In this way, it’s a strange return to childhood. For all its trials, books were introduced and subsisted upon.
My grandmother made audiobooks before they were a thing. On an old school tape recorder with a silver and black microphone.
This morning I began Jung’s Red Book. Red leather bound. I’m so jealous of his relationship with his dreams, when I can barely remember mine. I set this useless emotion aside and continue to work to recovering and repairing mine. If that’s possible.
Down a rabbit hole of taking supplements like 5htp, l tryptophan, sulphorophane (broccoli sprouts I’m growing) ps they smell bad guess they are getting thrown in a smoothie. Quercitin and fiesetin. Brain food, plant food. Based on the shamanic work of Alberto Villodo Grow a New Body. And listening to living and dying the shaman way on audiobook.
Traditional psychotherapist meets shaman, Akashic records Amazing ! , and whatever else will be next. Check out Wendy Casey in the link.
How the hell did I even get here ? If you had asked me a year ago if I’d be doing a fire ceremony and blessing the four directions etc, I’d have looked at you like you were nuts. Or I’m nuts. Definitely. And I don’t even care.
Life is strange and surrender is beautiful. And this is where I’m at.
I’m also reading the I Ching, the gene keys what?! The Dune series. And I still want to read the whole Wrinkle in time series. Somehow this is a summer craving. Some memories are just programmed in. Ahhhh so many things to read so little time.
My practice continues to flourish and it feels almost magical. I am nearly working entirely with my ideal population, and it doesn’t even feel like work. My screening process is worlds away from what it used to be. I stand back in awe at all I learned from working with anything and anyone. But also at my ignorance and naïveté in so many areas, which some times facilitated beautiful happenings, and sometimes regrettable moments.
I don’t agonize over documentation or any cancellation, or administrative. Nothing is any longer this awful monster breathing down my neck. And I think how was I living like that?
How was I living like that. Not well that’s what I can say.
I now have a fully embodied understanding of the mind being unwell. The way it races to terrible conclusions and feels as if it’s constantly outrunning some terrible thing. I could cry for how I lived for so long. The way the mind and the body are not integrated, and one fears the other. No sense of peace, just constant persistent terror.
At times I’m able to get really still with everything. All the love that never fully became, the lives I could have lived, and the ones I did. I sift through and contemplate no longer with a great sickness of the mind. Terrible thoughts about myself. Those core wounds are brutal.
Let there be no mistake I am always healing and learning. I have not arrived anywhere, except perhaps face to face with my humility. In this space there’s so much love. It flows freely, it does not need control. Control cannot exist it extinguishes love immediately. Like the absence of air and fire.
If I saw anyone I’ve ever loved on the street I wouldn’t turn away, heart racing, sweaty. I would simply emit love, and own my mistakes. My ignorance, my impulsivity, my wounds.
I atone with myself and would offer healing communications with all who seek them.
And I don’t know what’s next. Tabula rasa. Bookends of it. I begin and end that way.
How may I be of service and lead me there. I’ve had it all. Love and loss. 10,000 lives within a life.
My work is to heal my brain and body so that I may help others with my journey. I no longer agonize over my memoir, what I will write, and what I won’t.
I know there’s important work for me to do. I don’t need to know what it is or how I will accomplish it.
I simply surrender.
Now to process and alchemize these emotions and thoughts and experiences. To continue to go through them and learn from them.
On a more earthly note, both my twins have been in major car accidents. Something I have not had a first hand experience with. One of them still has back and neck issues and daily headaches. Not entirely sure if the accident is responsible. So we are going to my energy healer Julie today. I’m excited that my children are open to this and also learning to benefit from this and massage and other healing modalities.
We will be moving twin A into UConn in August as a junior, and twin B will be nannying for a time for her baby cousin in Long Island, as she completes her core requirements for school. The little prince is beginning a relationship journey with his partner. Learning about the responsibilities of life, and himself respectively.
There is love at the table of my life.
Surrounded by friends and family, and so much less pain from the absence of loving parents and blood relatives.
I sometimes take walks through my graveyard. The relationships that did not show up and stay, and marvel at the beauty and tragedy in love. And also the resilience of it. How it never really leaves, energy can neither be created or destroyed. It just is.
But more often I am looking through the windshield, that’s why it’s bigger I am told. And learning about the true actions of love. How it behaves, what it commands and demands respectively.
The art of story telling and myth and legend in teaching great lessons. Things I would discount as frivolous or unreal become rich playgrounds to explore for healing metaphors and methods.
Women Who Run with Wolves….
Recovery
Recovering my dreams and authentic childhood self from the ashes of traumatic experience.
I hope that I have something to share that will help others heal….
Book. Thought. Book thought. Toggle. Rinse. Repeat. Show up consistently. During each workshop more of my childhood emerges more clearly. The understanding and integration becomes mine to harvest.
I am finding my way after a year of writing immersion to how to write on my own. How to build it into my schedule and not do stops and starts, but a consistent relationship.
I was called to my water to write this morning. I just got waxed, ow. Sometimes I feel half my life is concerned with hair removal. Did you chuckle ? I did. But for real it’s not even about how I look, it’s a sensory thing.
I am finally accepting my high sensitivity and empath ness and trying to work with it rather than deny, minimize, outright reject, or attempt to reverse the adaptation that’s about being adaptable. Ironic isn’t it.
A barrier to this was always worrying about being grandiose or the way some people use being an empath in toxic ways. As always if you’re worried about it it’s probably not something to worry about.
So can I finally accept my birthright and my gift and use it to help me achieve a better quality of connection to myself and the universe.
That’s a resounding yes !
Speaking of ironic Alanis and the episode of we can do hard things on high sensitivity! Boom. It is ironic oh yes I really do think.
Time seems my most elusive currency lately. How lucky am I that my life is one where I want more time to do and experience the things I love.
How lucky am I that I’m working at better understanding myself, and having a healthier relationship with me.
It turns out I’ve been looking for her in everything, and everyone, and everywhere she’s not.
Inside of me.
So that’s what I’m spending the most of my valuable currency on.
Writing my poem, my story, my lyrics, my melody, my script and on and on.
I have so many things to write about, but sometimes once I open the post I just relax so much nothing intelligible comes. It’s when I don’t have the pressure of the page that my thoughts float gently to the surface of my consciousness and tickle my fancy.
My fantasy
Lately I’ve been loving the lyrics of Zach Bryan. My girls led me to him. Some of them are just well wow. Your head in my neck is weightless.
This morning I’m re reading The Highly Sensitive Person I love and it’s already blowing my mind, in showing my experience to me with a lens that helps me cope.
Deep and profound love is often the kind that doesn’t last, and then there’s the kind that does that is also those things.
I was trying to crack the code on love using logic. Now that’s ironic.
Now I’m using all of it, and most often working to get the story straight, keep it simple and direct, and develop a consistently healthy relationship with myself.
The work is delicious, no longer a burden. I am blessed.
The work takes the charge out of the pain, rather than rivers of it threatening to flood at anytime. I’m building a dam. Speaking of that I’m often thinking lately of slowly doing more DIY things. Like fix the drywall in my basement. I’m not sure yet whether that’s an idea and my schedule and sensory stuff means it’s not really conducive. Stay tuned on that one.
I’m watching this is us, and oh my god the triggers and the insight and bliss. Kevin’s twins being born and just watching the trials of these three’s lives. The nuance and the variety of topics covered in this way.
I’m enjoying it immensely….. not have I enjoyed a timing of a show to show me some things since Six Feet Under. This one is a profound love.
I’m reading Dune which is so odd for me. It is and it isn’t. What I appreciate is being attuned to intuition and that that is real.
I want my dreams back, and to be connected. I am figuring it out. Softening, thawing, warming, while also reinforcing my non-negotiables and boundaries.
It’s absolutely pouring.
The waves are crashing around the cement dock that I’ve walked to the edge of so many times and felt like I was standing in the middle of the ocean. Like I could walk on water. Don’t worry no delusions of grandeur here.
Anyway I have more to say later probably or tomorrow. I’m needing woods and water and empty hours.
“I’m out of my mind but still I’m holding on like a rolling stone. A thousand miles from anywhere.”
I’m soft and squishy this morning. The aftermath of another wave of grief. My grief is very physical. This episode I didn’t see coming. It’s rare for me to not see something coming. The rarest, and some of the most beautiful, and the darkest things have been of that variety.
Yet what is living if you can’t let go, and let life surprise you, and take the wheel sometimes.
Love is the most powerful force on earth: you simply cannot control it. Though I’ve tried my whole life.
Having so little experience with the stuff, I’ve tried most of my life to bend it to my will.
I’m not God. I wouldn’t want that job. Believe it or not 😉
So now I need faith. How do you believe in something that was never a natural part of your life. Something you’ve tried to learn logically while you still have oxygen in your lungs.
I’ve been in a hurry to learn love, until love had its way with me.
I’ve put all the narratives down. The shields. The sword.
I am naked.
Bare.
My story is all that stands left, unedited. No parts cut out. The whole thing.
Here I am.
It all matters to me.
I’ve put pathologizing down too. Trying to keep others safe from me, just in case, and instead causing harm any way. And I’ve had harm caused to me. It’s all part of living. No one is getting out of here alive.
I’m sober. I may not stay that way forever but right now I can’t afford emotional ups and downs more than I already have as an artist. I feel everything all the way through.
Everything except compassion for myself, for having survived this all or nothing existence, cut off from my own emotions.
My whole life I’ve been a coping mechanism, and now I’m healing into a human, and I’d almost prefer to go back, because the breaking and resetting is excruciating. There is no description that does it Justice. Yet 😉
I finally understand why people give up. I really do.
It’s not in my nature and my work is too vital. Those are my main motivators right now.
Most days I’m in agony and I’ve been ashamed of that. Like it might rub off on someone, like they can catch it. Like I’m supposed to just be ok and move on, because if not I’m sick like my mom. Always this demon lurking over me. Accidentally watched White Oleander the other night before bed. Not a good idea. Give me a good Disney movie. Oops.
I’ve been purging demons lately. That’s what trauma work is, quite literally. It’s what being possessed is…..
In giant waves of illness and stillness and comfort and rest after. The migraine melts immediately as soon as the true root of the pain is expressed. The robbing vice releases, and I can stop throwing up.
I haven’t thrown up since I was young.
Too much control. Too little love.
Now I have it all around it and I am it, and I’m adjusting. Why is love an itchy wool sweater for me?! There’s more than the judgment, there are other things too.
I’ll write them out. I’ll go in. I’m all in. Committed.
I began a new journal today, and ended my hamsa one yesterday. This one is all black with a skull and four gold leaves on the cover. It smells of Italian leather and reminds me of Día De Los Muertos. Makes sense and is a good dead of winter book.
Maybe it will contain more about all my dead selves than I’ve ever captured before.
I’m in writing immersions with Victoria Erickson. Learning to allow my life force and energy to flow, come what may.
Slowly working on home improvements. New office carpet, stairs and a railing going in, in the next few weeks. It’s so cozy in my sacred space. Just want to make sure it’s safe for my clients.
I made a contractor friend who is going to teach me how to do dry wall, and a few new things.
If I’m not learning I’m not happy. That’s a fact.
I want to learn everything all the time.
I’m beginning Barbara Streisand’s new memoir ! I love it already she’s so funny and real.
I am scheming a project to write my barber’s memoir. It’s been a spark for a long time. If you’re a person of the passionate variety, that’s all you need, and pretty soon it will catch fire.
I finally had the courage to pitch it, after last haircut. Today the spark became lit. He’s excited.
I’m hoping the practice will help me unlock mine. Not doing it alone helps.
Go Easy on Me just came on.
Flying twin b home from Florida for Thanksgiving. We will all be together in this home. That’s all I want is family. It’s all I’ve ever wanted really. No fight about where anyone will go, just offering love, and allowing those who want to gather.
To love my work, to be cozy with a good book by the fire, to continue to learn, and to connect with other human stories like myself, and share.
I’m the most myself I’ve ever been, and it’s been so much to get here. I cannot even tell you. There’s still so much work to do, it will never be done, but I’m so happy doing it.
I’m in uncharted waters. Exhausting and exciting. Always keep curiosity just a little bit larger than fear.
I’m burning off layers and layers of shame and pain. With every mile, every word penned, every sunrise and set.
Lap one: My head is full and distracted. My body groans and rebels. I am preoccupied, filled also with all that isn’t mine.
Lap two: I begin to feel free. My muscles lubricate and begin to remember their innate abilities, outside of the domestication.
Lap three: the emotions, truth, and calm surface.
Lap four: at this point beyond my threshold so things begin to groan and grind.
I listen better to my body now. I listen better to you.
I’ll never scream my needs again, over and over making my throat raw.
Running ragged in bloody circles.
Out of my own bounds.
I can love you better like this.
When I meet my own needs.
For me being whole is a full time job. That’s not forever. It will settle into a natural rhythm, just as the tides and the seasons.
I’m enjoying my Dj feature on Spotify.
Posting the songs that resonate with my heart at this time.
Bliss
I won’t make promises I can’t know if I can keep. A promise to myself. Not selling some version of myself or seeking some magic panacea.
I have everything I need to live simply the rest of my life. I don’t need all I began to complicate my life, with when I got excited about abundance.
I am paring down to the essentials….
My idea of it now is simplicity, not being able to buy or do anything I want. That’s a perk of a hustle I call a passion, and it’s a natural side effect, not the compelling why.
Alignment
That’s what I’m focused on.
Me focused ?! Did you hear that right. Ha. I laugh at myself.
I used to take myself too seriously and everything felt like life and death. I’m happy to no longer be burning through the years I have like that.
No matter the feeling, if something is incongruent or you have to cross your own boundaries, it won’t work.
Real or unreal is an unnecessary question. The distracting one. The scaffolding. The illusion.
It’s all real and all part of my story. That’s what it is.
Now claim it Christina
Only reality is king, and when we argue with it we suffer tremendously.
I am devoutly interested in reality as it is. Not distracted with grandiose fantasies, thousands running through my brain to distract it from the pain in there.
I hold pain differently now. On my good days. On the bad ones I pray and I walk and I rest.
This is the first time I’ve done the third lap in a long time. Will there be a cost?! Who interested in a but I enjoy defying my own gravity when it’s not too harmful.
Walk the talk.
Working at staying humble.
That’s what works for me.
While still getting a little excited at the strength of my own voice.
I don’t want to be a star. I want to be a servant.
Time andMoments are all there is…. In the wanting so much is lost.
And I’m thinking about scarcity and what it does to a person. Autocorrect has changed that to for, and I pause for a moment to ponder if it may have known something I didn’t. Except it will always be a program and I more complex.
This morning I finished my 12th book of the year. 30 was the goal I set and I think I’ll set it to 60 next….. why so high ?! Not so I’m forced to meet it, but because it’s what I want.
I can choose what I want and don’t have to remain programmed.
A beautiful human thing.
I’m wise enough to know that I needed enough abundance to be here now, and that I didn’t create it alone. But I am the one making the time to reflect and get this journey down. And without knowing what that will become.
That is trust…..
As someone who has experienced many births and many deaths I feel such a parallel to Adeline, the Invisible Life of Addie Larue. I finished it’s pages this morning. I read other things too, in this meantime.
So many full circle things right now and strange things are happening, real ones.
No longer all or nothing relationships with anything.
And I’m falling in love with nuance and mystery. With being able to be surprised. Not starving when I’m hungry. Not dead when I am hurt.
Does this change the curse?
The fairytale ?
My relationships are softer with more room to grow especially the one I now have with me. I trust her.
I lived in my head
Not on the earth
Now after so many rebirths
I’m grounded
And ready for real love
Mine
If I trust me I don’t need to trust you,
But I want to
It’s a work in progress
She says to her
I
All the sensory stimuli that created fear and pain, works the other way too.
It makes life burn so bright without an illusion of poison and pain seducing me… reducing me to a primal self.
I can be primal without the pain.
Sing and dance in the rain
Not spend all my time calculating possible losses and gains
Lost in my brain
Drained
Stained with the blood of our broken hearts
Now it’s in a vial around my neck
Not so strange when you understand it
Anyway I’m walking and breathing, sensing and reeling
What is this feeling ?
We went to visit a past life the other day, I held a baby boy that could have been mine if I had stayed. I enjoyed the presence I felt, the invitation, the welcome and the warmth.
Those that can hold space for nuance in a human journey.
And it has nothing to do with making new sets of rules or burning others.
It’s a cool surrender.
My love is a part of their world now and their’s will always be a part of mine.
That’s what connection does. It can be nurtured or not, but like energy it isn’t destroyed. Transmuted or redistributed maybe.
Our will and choices are what we have to manipulate.
More to life than being locked in a relationship with controlling emotions, when all you had was fear anyway.
Wanting will kill you if you can’t appreciate being. The simple things.
I appreciate time and will make anything out of what I have.
I no longer need to know the exact right formula before moving. I never did really, but oh did I get lost in the story.
So I’m on a health kick, actually let’s call it a revolution because it’s a lifestyle change, it’s whole. Rarely in my lifetime have I lost weight in a healthy way. I’m just realizing that now. I’ve lost weight in being devastated or starving myself so I could feel more attractive to someone else but never for me.
I’m realizing how much effort I must put in to trust. To repair my relationship with my own trust. That’s what sobriety is about for me. Repairing my trust in myself. Which a) I don’t think I’ve had much in a consistent way, and b) there were some significant breaks in it that when misunderstood I used my own information against myself. Fell on my own sword.
So now I wield the thing a lot more mindfully.
I wouldn’t say carefully because I have that much self awareness. There’s an edge and a fierceness and a pace of me that I’d like to think is part of my authentic self and there for a reason rather than a set of symptoms. Sorting through my rubble and piecing together a self I want to leave as a legacy has been my life’s work, and I’m less ashamed of that and more proud these days.
A former partner’s spouse has reached out to me. They are moving far away for two years, they asked if we would come have dinner before they leave. I find myself thinking about it this morning. That some of my relationships yielded lifelong bonds where love still exists and is allowed. Nothing wrong about it. Those with healthy boundaries and senses of self are able to do that without there being anything dangerous present.
Clean. Clear. And I can receive that love. And not worry where I belong or drown in a pool or self made shame. We have moved on, we are all adults, and what’s beautiful is what we meant in one another’s lives.
What’s beautiful is the way her wife honors her connection with my children and is open.
I think about some of my pain at a past situation where my reaction appeared not supportive of family first and I almost gaslight myself in hindsight but then I don’t. These days I have my back vehemently. The difference is my feelings on the matter would have been considered as part of the equation.
My greatest work these days is being mindful beyond my trauma reflexes and responses, of how those things affect those I love. I am the worst with affect and effect. Why is that one so hard for me?!
Anyway this morning I’m marveling at how big my family is. Family defined as those that want to be near your energy simply because they appreciate what it brings to their life. That’s the ticket folks. Or it’s my ticket anyway to the show I want to be at.
I am a writer who is writing. I am a mom who is momming. I show the fuck up and I intend to be loud and proud about that without believing it to be grandiosity or demanding or something it’s not. Something I’m not.
Fear will not drive my car, bus, airstream, tank, nervous system, choices, anything. It’ll be buckled into the toddler seat.
We watched instant family last night and I recognize why I get so emotional at that movie now. I relate so much except I never got those parents who didn’t give up on me, and you know what?! I became one anyway, somehow, and I’ve traveled through my own hell to be on the path I am on now.
I’m proud every day of myself. I’ll shout it and fly my flag. So many types of pride for me, in everything I am and everything I will become.
Theories and dreams were always foreshadowing and I recognize that now.
So today I’m two weeks sober. Quitting all addictions that don’t serve me one step at a time. So there’s more room, for learning, for reading, for loving. More room to discover my gifts and to share them. How I want to be living my life.
Anyway I have a client walking down into my office very shortly….
So I’ll write more soon…
But for now you can find me getting consistent about movement, being joyfully in my body and reading and writing….
I got nailed by mosquitoes in a short while this morning. Under attack. The rage rises. Story of my life. It rises so quickly at times I admit to myself.
I’m nearing the end of Sober Curious by Ruby Warrington. I’m beginning a Life of One’s Own by Joanna Bigs and probably the Gunkel because it came up so randomly in two of my sessions yesterday and I have it on my shelf. I’m back logged with books as usual, but these days I’m developing a sense of trust in the one I need / want / desire will be there for me and that is all the difference in the world.
Life is in such a transition right now I’m wobbly. I’m having some major major epiphanies. I’m being with myself and not abandoning her and learning to listen and honor. I am unlearning my own self gaslighting in such profound ways. Undoing all those written stories and writing in clarity. It makes me emotional just thinking about it.
I’m thinking about sobriety. Not just alcohol or substance use (by the way the song Angel by The Wings by Sia just came on and it’s perfect I’m head nod writing in resonance with my own journey), but emotional sobriety. Not riding waves of highs and lows, but committed to staying steady. That’s my mission right now.
Earned secure. I’ve been practicing it for years and it’s an ongoing journey not a destination. I’m realizing this as a truth settling into my bones, rather than an idea.
Not what I should want, but what I do want, and need. If I can’t be honest with myself about it how could I have healthy relationships.
I’m updating my bio metaphorically and soon it’s time literally. But I’m also fully committed in my relationships and rooted and I don’t need re-branding or any form of change. That comes anyway like it or not. What I need is to be steady. Stay steady and firm and grounded and clear.
I hate alcohol. I hate it for so many reasons. One of which is it’s seduction that I have ever needed it for any reason. To have or to be fun, more relaxed, let loose. Fuck off. That’s actually not what alcohol has done in my life ever. It has manipulated me.
Don’t get me wrong I’ve manipulated too. It’s not black or white or right or wrong. Just peeling back layers to reveal new skin that has been built under the old. Sloughing off.
I pull away from alcohol and yet I so easily fold to belong and feel accepted and to feel less anxious, but actually if I’m paying attention it does the opposite.
I am sifting through my booze story and remembering the last time I was 7 months sober (but who’s counting because I’m not an alcoholic right ?! Just any other kind of addiction compulsion impulsivity). Ick my own bullshit angers me the most. Deep breathe. I’ve got you. I’m angry and I love you and you’re safe with me most profoundly in that I’m committed to being honest with you (me).
I was 7 months sober, and at the time when I looked back I thought I was doing that so someone else in my life would follow, and in solidarity of their loss of a loved one to alcoholism.
I had all of these stories, none of them were about my relationship to alcohol.
I drink it when I’m in so much pain I can hardly see, and also to “just have fun at social events” I pretend I can without an up and down roller coaster ride of terror. The smell makes my pulse beat faster. The glazed over eyes. I hate the stuff. I want to be clear and slow and peaceful.
A liquid lake of love and learning.
I want to be addicted to learning if anything, but not desperate for it. Allowing of my desires in a safe way.
I don’t want to preach and I don’t have to just because I want to be sober and I will learn to stop ducking gaslighting myself.
I don’t care to debate whether I’m an addict (compulsive comfort seeker) or not. I am. I went years without my emotional needs met, I was always going to be. I’ve allowed myself to involve myself in things unhealthy for me to seek a feeling. I’ll forget everything to that end. I’ll explode my whole life.
What’s interesting about this is it’s also a gaslight. I made the right decisions for me, and I didn’t make them in a way that’s in alignment with who I want to be in certain ways. The right decisions in some wrong ways, welcome to living where we have to learn. Have the space and privilege to do so, and many of us don’t.
If I find myself having to scream to be heard I am in the wrong situation no matter how I feel or how real I think something is.
I was 7 months sober and I can’t even remember the moment I undid it but I know it was to be closer to someone or something and doing the same thing makes me feel that way at such a basic level and I take for granted at times all the work I’ve done to move beyond that.
The first question I asked my now therapist on day one is can something like this really be real. And the answer I’ve found for myself these years later is yes it can and yes it was.
And that doesn’t mean the path is going to take you where you think you want to be. There are some things that may remain a mystery maybe forever.
But one thing that won’t is my own emotions and self concept being in my awareness. I’m attuning to me and I won’t allow anything to change that journey for me. I am learning that those that can see it and appreciate it (me) will show up on their own. I don’t have to fight for love or to be seen. I need only to remove my own blocks to the awareness love has always been my birthright.
Love is my birthright and being loving is meant to be a joy and not an impossible task. I just have lots of rocks to push up hills until each time I’m grateful when I reach the top, even if I just start again tomorrow.
