Tag: #Selfawareness

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Connecting the dots of health related anxiety and trauma

So I’m sitting at the dentist (again) waiting. I had the temporary crown that was put in yesterday come out last night. I wasn’t even eating. Grrrrr. It’s kind of a funny story actually because the technician who was assisting the dentist had assured me that they are good and this won’t come out, when I told her she could expect it would.

So this has me thinking about a few things. It makes me think of the recurring nightmares I had as a child of my teeth falling out, and how terrifying they were. I remember that they were vivid and explicit and that I wanted to hide it so it wouldn’t disturb anyone else in school. And if that isn’t a metaphor for my life and what I’ve done with my pain and shame. Wow. It actually makes my eyes burn.

These guys are so nice at this office. When it comes to medical professionals niceness has always made all the difference for me. Because I have a lot of anxiety that has bordered on terror before lots of work, and I didn’t even know why. I shamed myself.

Made myself defective and wrong, as usual.

And that’s exactly what I did with this latest upheaval in my life. My fault it’s because I did this or that I’m this or that bad thing. And as a result I kept myself separate from my kids so as not to hurt them any further with my bad, when that is the thing hurting them. What a difficult situation.

Shame is the nastiest beast of them all. I have fashioned myself as a shame slayer while the entire time I was still bathing in it and didn’t even know it.

Some areas of my life incredibly over developed and others completely under developed. No wonder I have caused confusion and pain. I was in more of it than I ever realized. And now I know there’s a very good reason for that.

Because this has been pure hell. Dante’s dark wood. A dark night of the soul. And any other word to describe. What I can confidently say you emerge from it with is there’s nothing left to fear. I no longer fear death or the dentist because I’ve already been in hell. I know what it’s like. It’s filled with loneliness, rage, regret, contempt, fear, anxiety, and shame.

Living in shame is hell.

So now I am trying to forgive myself for my many mistakes as I’ve navigated my own story, and I’m trying to stand in it. To stand in the light and be at peace with myself, so I can be peaceful with my family, friends, and live my days that way.

So yesterday for the first time in my adult life I had dental work and didn’t shake like a leaf in terror. I believed I would be ok, I was safe, they would take good care of me, and if a problem did occur that involved extra pain or something scary I would be able to get the help I needed.

I was playful I made the dentist and other helpers laugh and they enjoyed my presence and I was able to continue to build on I am lovable versus any of the other shameful things.

This isn’t the most of my health related anxiety and intend to talk more about it in the coming weeks. If I get to that. We all know how I work. But like my beginning I block things out easily, my gift and my curse. I often don’t give myself the credit, validation, etc I deserve for the things I have overcome. The many ER visits, tests on my heart, unexplained symptoms and that no one made the connection between my trauma and these things until I came across The Body Keeps the Score and the same things in my clients.

It took them to see myself in them, that’s how invisible I’ve been to myself. So I am working on visibility and asking for my needs and knowing what they are, and organizing my painful painful mind to make proper sense of what’s happening in the present when it so terribly wants to use a template that keeps me disconnected from myself and those I love.

I am healing.

I intend to keep conquering my fears, anxieties and demons.

Thank you for using your most precious resource, your time, to hear and see me.

Always

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August’s Rhapsody

Flashback to August 2019. Flash forward. We don’t bounce back we just bounce forward.

“The music is all around us, all you have to do is listen.”

My wife being brave….

If I don’t write this blog post I think I might spontaneously combust. I just have to start somewhere. Being out of the habit all the old doubts have had time to creep in. The self-consciousness clinging to me as close as the tiny beads of sweat that have been my constant companion since moving here. We have no central air in the new house, who would of thought something could be so “central” to one’s existence.

We live in a new home, in a new beautiful town. My wife’s father is dead. We didn’t even know he was going to be dead. It was thrust upon us, as death often is. It was unannounced and a swift blow upside our happiness.

The very real threat of a victim story unfolding and a woe is us why so much grief in one year trying to barrel roll me to the bottom of the bayou and choke out any remaining life. Yes it’s been this intense.

From movers that didn’t arrive til 7 pm (scheduled at 3), and moving until 4 am the next day right before our closing, while her father was in the ICU. We found out there wasn’t any hope the same day we signed our papers for our new home.

Everything was out of place. Our hearts and souls were like the many packed boxes. Jumbled and scattered. Unfound. Riddled with broken items we have held dear, the natural losses any move yields.

Unimaginable timing. My wife and her two siblings standing wide eyed with horror bracing themselves for an unknown journey of probate and estate settling, while packing their grief away for the time being.

And my wife said to me the other day, “and life just keeps going”, as in that’s it. It’s just over. He was here for so much of their years on this earth, meant so many things, and he is no longer. What do you do in the wake?

I feel like we are in the upside down. I didn’t actually even watch Stranger Things much, but the reference somehow feels right to me. Everything dark and unknown, and not being able to get back to what once was. A delineated before and an after.

I think as humans we are tricked into expecting a happily ever after once we have done so much work, as I have, to find your person. And we have immense happiness together. Is that why we are being offered up so many challenges? Four failed pregnancies, one ending in surgery and utter sadness, and the loss of a parent, and a move in the period of about one year.

No baby, a funeral, and a whopping amount of change all at once. I feel as if the tectonic plates of my life are shifting, constant earthquakes, and the aftershocks are still coming. When will my earth feel secure again? And if anything all this has done is made me know that anything can and will happen anytime. You are not guaranteed any kind of happy. So if you have it even for a minute absorb that shit! Pay attention to it. Be grounded. Be grateful.

The tears just started to pour. I can’t explain what it feels like for me to write, or maybe I can and will right here and now. Your first sip of water after being stranded without for days. That first touch of warmth after being cold with no relief. It’s an inhale and an exhale. It’s holding on and letting go. It’s a communion with my higher self. It’s joy and ecstasy. It is raw. It’s August’s symphony. If you haven’t seen August Rush, see it now.

It is the most profound relief to put my heart on the page. It is everything.

Amidst everything going on around me there is a lot going on inside of me. I am approaching my 39th year. The last year of my 30’s. My body is changing, my mind is changing. How can someone simultaneously become more confident than they have ever been as they are also acutely aware of the descent of their metabolism and a great many other bodily related factors. Just how?

August Rush. A fairytale. I downloaded the song of course so I can listen to a beautiful composition with so much heart as I am doing just that. This movie. A lost perfect boy with amazing talent, who plays music to find a set of parents who both want him as much as he wants them. A fairytale indeed. Good for you August…. no genuinely good for you.

Watching a set of siblings grieve their father, my wife grieve him. I couldn’t help but have a huge missing portion of my life highlighted. The best case scenario is that I say at least I was able in a strange way to have that experience. I’ve been grieving the absence of my parents my whole life. And it’s made me who I am in so many ways, the good and the bad.

I watch from the outside an alien. I watch the humans with my nose pressed to the tank. Human in moments, robot in others. Carefully choosing which emotion suits me the best because naturally feeling them was abandoned long ago. It sounds so sad when I say it. Don’t saaaaaay it. But it’s so beautiful too.

What a paradox that the more a person suffers the more kind and open hearted and brave they become. Why do these qualities require such suffering?

So here my wife are on this journey. Somehow together, which is my greatest privilege. And living with our whole hearts. Which people can actually see and they respond to it. Two people building their confidence in a world that would keep them small if it could.

My wife has been taking singing lessons and watching her battle through her self-consciousness to that glorious moment that makes it all worthwhile. And I am doing the same thing with my clothing and with my counseling. We are being brave, blazing trails, and enjoying one another in this life.

Even amidst all the sorrow I just described. What I am finding is that life is both, all the time. Your best hope is to fashion a self that can manage the hurdles. To be humbled by the losses, and to carry the people we love, even if only in memory all the days of our lives.

I am stitched together by moments….and to my beautiful wife and to my children… you are my greatest. I’ll climb through hell and back a thousand times just for one more with you. I’ll fight all my demons to show up for you, and live my life with great heart.

I hope you know….

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More than Our Scars

My own little zen garden…. building a fortress for my heart :p

So I’m at the beach

Listening to the sounds of children playing in the water, an older couple who always occupies the same spot, the gentle lapping of the water against the shore, the gulls, the wind, and my own heart.

It’s a roller coaster of emotions lately. Some days it’s anger, some it’s sadness, all days it’s grief. How can it be possible to grieve so much at once ?

Some moments I don’t think I’ll survive this.

“At least if… This would’ve all been worthwhile” What is the point of it all if not for…” How do I have so many words in my head, that are not even my own? How did this happen? So many others grief in my arms too by the particular blessing and curse that is the way that I love.

Were we just a distraction from the real stuff ? Is that what all this is about ? What will be true on the other side of this pain? Will I ever be on the other side of it?

And tears, and rage, and blood, sweat, and teeth biting hard into my soul. They bite down hard. It used to be a pleasant sensation, pleasure and pain mixing perfectly.

Now it’s just teeth sunk into my heart, blood running down its chin, the enemy. Whatever it is. People’s opinions, shame, guilt, fear. “Comfort the enemy of progress”, the progress used to be my comfort.

There is none now. Everything is blank. A blank page used to excite, now it’s empty, what is a blank page without a pen and ink. I am a few tools short right now, of the things that make me sing and dance.

Memories mix with reality and the entire picture becomes a blur. It comes into focus for brief moments, before going under again. Out of view. Everything goes black.

Unconscious. Subconscious. What’s the difference anyway. Is there one?

Acceptance I am finding is a dish served cold. And not the good kind, like tuna tartar or sushi.

Fuck

There just isn’t a better description than that.

What is on the other side of all of this?

If nothing else this has shown me how much of my life I lived in pure naïveté. And I want it back damnit. I was impervious. I thought I could just make my mind up and make it happen. As it turns out that doesn’t work so well in baby making and in love. I was duped into a false sense of security with my first go around with those things. I got them too easily maybe ? I don’t know.

It was all so “easy”, it came so easy to me, but maintaining it, that’s when it gets difficult. Even then though with the right ingredients I thought I could make it work, make something out of it.

Instead what I’m learning is there really are a lot of forces beyond my control. I don’t think I believed in destiny because I had such a will forged I believed I could create anything. Because that belief is all I had.

Now that I’m stripped down to the bare bones, who will I become…. that’s the scariest thing.

Who will I become?

Mary Lambert, Sum of Our Parts….

“I want to know who ever broke you

I want to know how you can grow bigger

And don’t go lookin for some kind of rescue

You are the only one who can save you

We are we are more than our scars

We are we are more than the sum

Of our parts…..

I didn’t know I was a phoenix
Till I learned how to speak
Even with ashes in my mouth
I was still born to breath
I wonder are you like me
Were you left in the fire
Are you raising yourself
Above your father’s empire”

There’s a sun shower right now And it’s the oddest sensation. Droplets of water started to hit me when it’s bright and shiny out and no sign of rain. I thought I was sweating considering I just wrapped up errands at BJ’s.

Is there a cosmic meaning ? Who knows :p

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The Problem is Me

When you realize the problem is you.

I’ve been eating a lot of humble pie lately. Wounded healers they call us.

I’m trying to find a middle ground for the narrative. Not black and white, but just acknowledging the reality of the way I have lived my life and why. What decisions have been made as a result.

My statistics. Maybe I am just a statistic. I don’t know why that keeps playing in my head. Like anyone needs more to shame themselves for. I’m trying to battle it, but the water is up over my nose and I’m drowning.

I’m no different than you.

How to not be or live as a defense mechanism. Is this an appropriate google search?

Is it possible I’m really this insufferable creature that can’t see anyone else very well because she’s invisible to herself? Can that truly be a thing? That can’t make room or honor anyone else’s feelings because of her own particular brand of island.

I’m an asshole. An arrogant insufferable asshole who doesn’t make any room for the feelings of people around her. Am I only heaven or hell? Is there no in between. I am certainly both.

Then my mind goes immediately to how and why could someone love me if that’s true. Yep that’s fun. That’s what’s really in here. Behind this carefully crafted machine of a human being that’s designed to please and accommodate.

It was suggested to me I might have a touch of Co-dependence (ya think). It feels like I’ve run a marathon only to be plucked up right before the finish line, and put right back to the start. Over and over again and the Universe is watching me punch the air and be mad at the world, shaking its head at why I must make everything harder on myself.

I didn’t like that suggestion at all. In light of the circumstances it feels completely invalidating. I’ve worked hard toward healthy relationship. That does not mean I’ve arrived. And worse I sit and point out everyone else’s soft spots when I couldn’t even take what i dished out.

Let it burn Christina ……

Did I even stand a chance to be more than that without all this work?

When can I be done ?

The insufferable is suffering with looking in the mirror right now. It burns.

I don’t have it all figured out. I might not even have anything figured out. Yuck.

If I was such an expert at any of it this wouldn’t keep happening in my life with one justification or another. Always a justification. That’s me, not anyone else.

Will this ever heal?

Will a more gentle human emerge?

Am I really banished to a life of over-functioning or under-functioning with nothing stable in between. Back and forth between extremes in a panicked frenzy. Yuck again.

I think I’ll revisit the book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, a therapist realizing what she needed to do after an immense blow. She realized it was her who didn’t want to pay attention to reality, she made her own in her mind. As we all do.

What am I meant to write anyway?

Perhaps an instruction manual on how to become a human being.

I want to crawl out of my skin with irritation. Everything is angering me.

I’m back at the starting line and incredibly out of shape….

Again….

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Childlike Enthusiasm

You have to live spherically – in many directions. Never lose your childish enthusiasm – and things will come your way.

Federico Fellini

In my lifetime I have tried to crack a lot of codes. Usually this is focused around other people, rarely is it focused on me. I am learning that if I don’t focus on me, I won’t be able to teach others how to love me in the way that I need. Or engage with life in the way that I am meant to.

I am a meaning centered person. I am a person who has always wanted to share meaning with others. I am a person who seeks and finds meaning and lives in the depths of it.

I am learning that when I perceive others to take away my child like enthusiasm it’s a huge trigger for me. I am learning that I need to be enthusiastic about myself and my dreams, whether somebody else is or not. I cannot always bring someone else on that journey. They must arrive willingly.

All the things I was naturally enthusiastic about in childhood were constantly shot down. I was told to be quieter, smaller, less of a burden. And as an adult I’m trying to correct that in a meaningful way that works for my life.

This is no easy task. Not for the faint of heart, spirit, and soul.

Reclaiming one’s child like enthusiasm, it’s not easy when it was removed at such a young age. It is a chaotic process. I am not chaos I am calm, but chaos has been my legacy in life, so much that I will end up creating it over and over.

We re-create our childhood wounds until we are strong and capable enough, give ourselves enough permission to resolve them. To heal.

I am healing. This is a beautiful and perilous journey.

It is an honor to be a warrior for myself. To reclaim what was taken.

The Warrior of the Light



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Rules for Loving a Trauma Survivor

This post needs some editing, but I wanted to get it out into the world for now while it is under construction.

To Really Love a Woman (Person)

It’s hard to admit for someone that they need “special instructions”. Especially when society ingrains in us the idea that there is a right and a wrong way. From the time we are socialized in grade and middle school we are separated into factions of varying degrees of cool (worthiness). So this way of categorizing ourselves and the rules of engagement are laid down early on. It is difficult later in life to deviate from our various functioning and upgrade our systems taking into account what wounds our lives have bestowed upon us.

I often joke about being a gremlin, lol. I have special rules. I am privileged to be able to joke about this now. The work I have been able to do is a privilege that not everyone is able to obtain the means for, whether that be financially, intellectually, or circumstantially.

Trauma survivors are a different breed. As a member of this tribe I will try to speak for us in this regard. We love differently and in turn need to be loved differently. So here are some of the things I have learned about myself through my experiences with others.

A trauma survivor learns to be invisible, especially to ourselves. We have become so accustomed to not having our needs met naturally, that we get really good at meeting them ourselves. This also creates a special kind of tired, a soul tired, that can hardly be put into words. Sometimes it can be seen in the eyes. I have a theory that rarely do two survivors get together and join because perhaps they are both so depleted, or maybe the nurturing that would take place could be easily rejected in favor of something that feels more like home. And that if and when they do sometimes they can fall into over indulgences of such comforts. Who knew there ever was such a thing. I believe now that there is.

You have to emerge from that solace and return to yourself and the gift you’re meant to be to the world. We have a mission. We were chosen to have the childhoods and the paths we did for a reason. This is what I’m thinking lately anyway. The theories are works in progress.

Survivors become carefully attuned instruments in anticipating the needs of others and trying to give to them what we didn’t receive. We will usually know what you need before you do. This can make great partners out of us in the right circumstances, and a really difficult situation in the wrong ones. Because we also have a lot of hurt buried deeply within us that can flare up at the slightest hairpin trigger. The less secure our world is in terms of consistency and love the less emotionally regulated. Then the survivor is shamed for their behaviors, when the rest of the world wonders why or how they could act like that.

What you must understand about a survivor is that there have been times in their life when things have felt like life or death. Particularly in childhood when they had no agency or control over the terror that was occurring. This is different for everyone. What is terrifying for one may not be for another. So it’s not only difficult but also unfair to try and assess the worthiness of the claim on someone’s trauma. If it impacted the person significantly, particularly if it causes them to struggle throughout their lives, and feels more like a reflex than a logical decision it can justifiably be claimed as trauma.

Which brings me to my next important point. Survivors almost always minimize not only their own needs, but their own reality. They spin their wheels trying to make sense of what’s happening and to know whether they can trust or not. If very little to no trust was ever had, how are we expected to just behave that way now. This makes survivors much more likely to accept and adapt to unhealthy relationships. We are used to subsisting off very little if nothing, and very happy to be grateful for very little. Which can give you a positive attitude about life and a nice presence to be around, but lacks in the areas of self-development and ability to advocate for our own needs. We weren’t allowed to have them, or there was no room for them. So making them obsolete ourselves was necessary at one point.

No one will love you like a trauma survivor. If you want to be loved by one you must not take us for granted. The way we have learned to love and the things we have needed to overcome to be able to were not easily gained. It is typically through suffering that such a generous heart is formed.

We will pour our very soul into you. However, resentment can bubble up from all our unmet needs, as well as chronic anxiety and health issues that are stored within our body.

Survivors typically need more rest, reassurance, comfort, and stability than your average bear. This does not make us weak, in fact quite the opposite. Above all we need understanding, and someone to be willing to learn what our lives were like for us, and see past the over-functioning we are so used to.

Never take a survivor for granted, we can see you in ways, and bring things out in you that you were never aware existed.

Understand that when a survivor is choked up or cannot get the words out, we are most likely stuck inside a trauma reaction. The same applies for many other areas of functioning. Maybe it appears that we aren’t paying attention or present, try and ask gently, and you’re more likely to get a response. Study and learn about the Four F Trauma responses. Resource: Pete Walker Complex PTSD Information

Understand that attachment is different for the survivor and take the time to educate yourself on this if you want greater success in your relationship. Neither party should have blatant continued bad behavior excused, rather both should be responsible to educate themselves and know their own wants and needs, and have healthy boundaries. This isn’t easy for anyone. For the trauma wired person it can seem almost impossible, but with understanding, psycho education, therapy, and self-awareness and reflection we too can have healthy relationships. The expectations need adjusting though.

And above all things when you see our child, that little person who is still in here, pure and deserving of love; if we let our guard down enough to show you, never forget the cost to us, and the beauty involved in that. It is sacred for a survivor to allow themselves to be seen, and held. It can be a nearly impossible journey to accept.

When we advocate for what we need please listen to us, it’s likely we spent a long time without.

💪🏼💜

 

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Now seeking: Myself

Now seeking: myself.

I’ve looked high and low, but most of all I’ve looked to find myself in everyone and everything else. Where I could fit, belong, thrive, enjoy life. I’ve looked in characters in books and movies and tried to emulate what they do, but nothing has ever seemed to fit.

That’s because I never looked to myself. I never even knew I could, that this was a thing, or that I had permission.

So many greats have paved the way for the self work I’m doing now. Carl Rogers, Rollo May, Jung, Nietzche, and then there was the women. The “mothers” who adopted me through the words they put out into the universe. A baby blanket. The arms I always needed.

Cheryl Strayed, Anne Lamott, Anne Patchett, Sylvia Plath, Joan Anderson, Martha Beck, Brené Brown, Oprah Winfrey, Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach.

And my spiritual mother Elizabeth Gilbert. The woman whose daughter I could be for our many similarities. And oddly it’s innate and learned, even when our DNA isn’t shared. It makes me believe in the ephemeral in a way my science “can do” mind has never lent to.

If everything you need is always inside you it’s hard to figure out what to do with that when all the research suggests a feral child like me has so much less chance for thriving. It makes me wonder if my mother had even less than I did even with two parents in their traditional slots.

I’ve learned a lot this past few years about not romanticizing things at face value, that just because people have families doesn’t mean they have suffered any less.

I am learning now that suffering is a state of mind more than a state or circumstance regardless what one goes through. Because we all have our stuff. It’s not the hand, but how it’s played. And we will play it from what we know, until we know better. Oh I forgot the beautiful Maya Angelou above.

I have woven together a tapestry of love from fragments for as long as I can remember. And is there anything so wrong with that? Is there some better thing to strive for? Or did I have it right all the time.

“But you don’t know what it feels like to fall in love with you, you don’t know what it feels like when you can’t go back” plays on Ruelle radio that has also been a staple of this time in my life.

I was thinking about the things that mark each time period in our lives. The signature drink, the favorite outfit, the fears, the desires, the songs, the vehicle we drive, and the smiles mouths and body we share during that time, and how they change and once they do that time period is over.

Would life really be better with warning signals?

We don’t know when it will begin or end. Even if we work really hard to know these things, we don’t.

I’m in the mountains with beloved found family. Gifts from the universe. Good people. I find myself and lose myself amongst these experiences. We are all interconnected and yet we all have our own emotional experience, and those are colored by the things that have shaped our lives.

The closest we can get to connecting is bridging the gaps in understanding by sharing our feelings. We each do things our own way, but we still strive for togetherness because we understand that’s where the most meaning is found in living.

I love these guys. I love being here right now. It’s exactly what I need. When my mind threatens to take me somewhere else I bring it back and there is joy to be found.

There is no glory in staring at a door wishing that someone will walk through it. Someone asked me the other day if I ever let anyone surprise me, and it made me think. It called me to look back over my life.

I survived by creating fantasies in my mind of just that, someone surprising me with showing me they were thinking of me and would show up. So I turned myself into someone who could make others feel that way. I became what I was looking for. Because that’s what the mystical they says about how to manifest what you’re looking for. Become it.

I became the guy with the boom box in Say Anything. But the thing is I never counted that. It didn’t count because it was just me being that and unless someone showed up for me in that way, it never counted.

It’s a hard thing nearing 40 to realize you never really felt connected to yourself let alone anyone else. I thought I was, that’s the thing. I was doing the best I can and I did it with my whole heart.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But I missed so much about me. Who I am. What I need. I became an incredible tool to see others in the way I always wanted to be seen. But because I was so good at, and everyone is in such need of that, it never moved past that.

I thought they would recharge and then pick up and do that too. Not exactly like me at all, just the effort. And maybe I just couldn’t see their effort in their way. I need to work on that. I have lots I need to work on.

So here I am on the brink of 40 a blank slate, having my whole life before me rather than behind, and my God I’m grateful.

The tears began streaming as I’m writing this. I’m alive and I’m ok. And I didn’t even know that. I’ve been in survival mode my whole life and I’m grieving that. Everything that came with. Every way someone has seen the product of what I created to get through my life with, but not the whole thing.

Someday someone else will show up for the whole thing, no matter what, just like I do for them….

For now I will show up with more of my pieces in tact, the ones I’m tending to gently every day, reconnecting them to myself is a slow and painful process. It’s surgery. Much like therapy. Yet very few people understand and respect the seriousness of this work, because we all want to see things for the surface and believe you can work that and just manage.

Yet we have tired, ragged, masses, angry, hurting, sad, lost, starving emotionally. We insult the new generation who are trying to teach us to recover ourselves. We call them all manner of things. They are not tough because they acknowledge emotions or what they need.

A society of martyrs who cause horrendous damage insulting those who take responsibility for their own happiness. But that looks shameful in the face of tradition.

What’s shameful is the cruelty than can be afflicted when we are not aware of ourselves. To allow continued suffering because we are too afraid to face ourselves.

I am not a perfect mother, in fact I’ve made more mistakes than most. That’s where wisdom comes from.

I am looking forward to being connected to myself and those I love for the rest of my life. It’s taken me nearly 40 years to travel here. I respect myself for this journey. I’m too tired for anymore shame.

💜

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I am an Instrument

Recently I had a really good talk with a beloved friend. I had said something along the lines of I’m usually that person that will bring something to someone’s attention, but I rarely get that same. And she said… “let me be that for you right now”.

Ask and you shall receive.

I have never felt I fit in anywhere. I’m reading Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown, and it’s exactly the medicine for my heart right now, and it’s perfectly geared towards the pandemic. She’s ahead of her time and I am of mine as well. No wonder we can’t find anywhere to belong.

I spent most of my life afraid of myself, a robot or an alien. My recent realization is that I am not those things.

I am an instrument. And as one let me be the cello, the piano, the violin, and the guitar. I have always wished I could be watched for the concerto of creativity and warmth I can cultivate in a client session.

Lonely oh so lonely without being seen as we all want to be. But lately I am seeing myself.

In my life because of scarcity every time I am meant to be an instrument maybe just in a small dose, I go all in always with my own need and it muddles things. I do have my own needs but I was always meant to fill them with source, my own source not someone else’s. So I’m not left hollow and wanting and internalizing exactly the opposite beliefs about my self.

And yet it’s this very suffering that cultivates the level of compassion needed to change the world. And yet what an overwhelming task. Who am I to and how am I to change the world? Is it one person as a time as I’m doing now, especially beginning with myself?

What is my task?

My life need has created this constant cycle of deep attachment and bonding only to part ways. I think I was never meant to attach my whole life all those times. The person and I were meant to cross paths, healing was meant to happen, but that didn’t mean that everyone you come across you try and create a life with.

Family, making one, being in one, was my unmet human need. So everything became about that. If there is an unmet core need it will continually trump anything else. It will override logic and create a lens that makes everything look one way, but not clear.

Three or four years later the water calms and clears and then restlessness and chaos ensues because I don’t have the answers.

I was trying to fulfill my destiny without any solid ground under my feet. The solid ground became the priority and I missed so much else.

However if we use faith, this says that everything is exactly as it should be and no horrific harm has come, and everything will be ok, especially me, and my tender worn out heart that has been through the shredder as of late.

There are no victims and no perpetrators, no us and no them, no sides. There is only the fulfillment of ones own personal destiny.

And everyone’s is important. And mine is a slippery one to nail down. It comes into view in brief moments, beautiful, and then everything goes dark and I flounder again. Lost and found, lost and found.

I am not an alien, I am an instrument. It’s overwhelming being an instrument with no map or music. What kind am I? What am I supposed to play? Especially when I can’t carry a tune, but perhaps that level of self doubt is outdated, if not entirely human. More human than human. Imposter syndrome at its finest.

I think I’m finally ready to accept I am an instrument and there is more to life than my frantic search for belonging to a person, like that will solve everything.

When I read Brené I am envious of her Steve. Of their dialogue and support of one another, and their journey, and taking the time to understand the other. The discipline and self-awareness love demands.

I want those things, but those are not for me to create. I have other things to create and perhaps that is where and when I will be found/and find someone who wants to do life with me enthusiastically and being willing to show up, the way I am for them. With my mistakes and all because there are plenty.

So much of the reason my path has been as it has is being revealed right now. I have been gifted so much love in so many corners of the world. I was moving too fast to feel it before. But now it’s wrapping me warmly. Coming out of the woodwork and showing up.

Whenever I come into contact with someone they react or connect to me. They feel my presence and I can make a lifelong friendship from one conversation in the car. The feels almost beyond my comprehension. I have had to weed out all the critical thoughts about how wrong this is. Especially in Connecticut lol. Stay in your own lane.

So out of balance with my confidence and my own need, my gift always gets confused and then causes chaos. It hasn’t been properly channeled because it has had to come together, and I’d like to believe it couldn’t come together without the exact path I am on.

So I can forgive myself for my sins.

Everything is a blank canvas right now, but this time I know I am the pen.

On being an instrument

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Misunderstandings: “Just Like Me”

I started out this morning wanting to talk about my little girl. Not either of my daughter’s but my own little girl inside of me, the one I have carefully preserved, and along with her all of the gifts that are meant to reach the world. In many ways she is just waking up now.

However for now I am sidetracked by an important conversation I had this evening. So the theme of this post is misunderstandings.

If you follow my blog you may recall an old post entitled “The angry ex club”. I have spent most of my life feeling judged by and tremendously guilty towards my ex husband, whom I left on account of being not only young and stupid, but also gay. Neither of those things would have led to a life of nuptial bliss with him.

These feelings caused me to project all sorts of unsavory things onto him. In seeking his acceptance I was completely disagreeable, unable to ever hear his valid opinion on things, and a whole variety of things. We lashed out on one another over the years each in our own ways.

So much to my surprise after an almost two hour conversation this evening would you believe once things are laid on the table and revealed, the things in our soft under bellies, we are more alike than we are different.

Spoiler alert. We are all more alike than we are different. 

He is hard on himself too. He wants to belong and be accepted too. He just wants to be a good parent, and is afraid at times he isn’t, just like me. We were both just trying to get through this world as best we could and for so many years we made the other an adversary, when that was never necessary.

Truly you must walk a mile in someone’s shoes before holding them in contempt and having rage inside towards them. What a mind bleep when you realize you never even had to use all that energy all that time like that. I could have been doing so many productive things, if I just knew what I know now. But at least I get to know it now. So many people go their whole lives without this.

I am encouraged that we will attend things for our children the rest of our lives and be able to give one another a real genuine hug, and not an awkward strained thing masking our distaste. That will we now be able to show up for one another. I was able to tell him how much I appreciated him always showing up financially for our children. Rather than criticizing him from my own guilt of why he stayed in a career he is unhappy with (this felt like my fault). He stayed because he believed the benefits and health insurance was the best thing. And truly I have the career and the life I am able to have because he made that commitment. Who’s to say what is right or wrong here, but I am sure him being able to hear how grateful I am for where I’m at in my life, and that is largely due to his support of the kids over the years. I never had room to say those things to him before. I never had the sight.

The truth is it’s incredibly difficult when you “fail” at a relationship, particularly a marriage. There is so much pain involved, it spreads like shrapnel throughout. Failure was not an option. You have failed your children, each other, yourselves, the world at large. Just another statistic. It’s brutal.

You can come out on the other side with more reasons, like any human needs more, to feel unworthy and not love yourself. I am finding we all feel insanely unworthy and wonder why we are not chosen for this or for that. In love, for the position, for so many things. When really as I see it I think life (destiny if you will) has plans for us, and there is divine intervention all along the way. But we are so cynical. The world/society has done a number on our souls. The living breathing spirit inside of us that has enthusiasm about things. And then those of us that are lucky enough to find ours just go around touting it so the rest of the world can feel like they are missing something.

To be able to help someone find theirs. Now that is a life worth living. I hope to always be that for others and to remember how and when to give to myself. I am working on that now.

Which speaking of that leads me to my next point which either will unfold in here (trauma brain) or in an entire other post. It deserves its own post, but it’s the other main thing on my mind today.

How often I become that little girl who is just wanting to be acknowledged. When I love I sit and wait. It reminds me of Secret Life of Pets actually. Max waiting for Katie. In love I am like that. Lately I am re-writing the script and rather than looking at the door all day long loyally (while not a bad concept), I am not waiting. I am enjoying my own light and love and slowly figuring out what that looks like.

So last night was mostly sleepless, my life is going through lots of changes right now. I had so many epiphanies and I can’t imagine that I did not energetically invite the interaction with my children’s father and myself, by doing my work. I did not expect this, it wasn’t the thing I was looking for, but I was able to pay attention to its significance and to sit in the feeling of it all.

So often lately I am able to sit with and actually feel things. Most of my life has been in survival mode, something I am only able to truly acknowledge now, and to fully grasp what impact it has had. I am beginning to not feel like my body is crawling in snakes about it though. This has been replaced with a slow spreading smile across my face when I remember that imaginative little girl and all her dreams, and the fact she never gives up on them, no matter how tough it gets. I am developing an appreciation and a respect for myself, which are great foundations for love.

There are foundations being demolished and foundations being built, the most important one I continue to come back to is the one I always have the power to change at anytime, and my one true constant, my own.

The little girl and I are becoming acquainted. The memories of her are not just huddled in a stairwell seeing things she should not see and hearing things she should not hear. I am remembering the other parts of her as well. Rainbow Brite boots and catching butterflies, journals and note pads, and countless trips to the library with grandma. Who would record herself with a small old fashioned tape recorder. The original audiobook. I remember those stories and stacks of library books, it was one of my safest and my fond childhood memories. It created a love for language and reading that have become a cornerstone of who I am.

The light shines out of the darkness. We are resilient creatures capable of still becoming all we were meant to be, no matter what our circumstances. During this time of immense uncertainty it is very cathartic for me to keep this in mind.

I just did five years worth of therapy in a day, haha. It’s time to plan a vacation soon. It’s time to play.

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Lost Back in 2016

Is there anything better really than clean sheets and a freshly made bed?

I’m still sleeping on an eighth of it, but nothing lasts forever.

I watched Stuck in Love with the girls tonight. It’s a very full circle kind of thing. Very! I was watching this movie on repeat spring into fall of 2016. When I was taking my next steps into finding my writer self. Rescuing her out of the rubble. That was a year of discovery for sure. And of Jeeps and french bulldogs, oh my.

We even had a Stuck in Love themed Thanksgiving. That was actually really fun.

That was the year I got my first office that was all my own. The year I got Sigmund Freud, the fantastic Frenchie. The year I began morning pages. It was my four year pages anniversary this April. The first time I ever dated dated. Oh the perils of that, lol. I have some crazy stories. The first time I took three solo getaways by myself. The year I learned one could romance themselves, and that I didn’t need to be with someone to justify a nice restaurant or lavish evening.

The year I got my Et Lux Entenebris Lucet (the light shines out of the darkness) tattoo. My first real adult job that I ended up hating. This helped me learn to trust myself, being able to walk away, and hang my own shingle.

I was so much more naive and innocent then. I’ve grown backwards in so many ways.

I can’t even remember that girl.

I asked my therapist tonight how come some people seem to have it so much easier. Being wanted, chosen, things coming more easily to them. While others no matter how hard they work or try, things seem not to work out for.

There isn’t an exact answer I can share, other than dynamics and human behavior. I personally think it’s a privilege to be calm and grounded. One not afforded by everyone. You have to have had a certain kind of life, things you could depend on consistently for that wiring. I envy those people. Not enough to not be grateful for my exact path, but I do.

Lily Collins is absolutely gorgeous. Gahhh

Rian has my hands. My daughter has my hands. Right down to the lines on the inside of our palms. I don’t think I’ve ever stood still long enough to notice.

Have I really been running my whole life?

What does slowing down look like ? I don’t know but I liked my moments with her this evening. And teaching the girls how to drive and getting ice cream at the Sundae House.

I felt them. These things.

It’s staggering sometimes to realize how much of my own life I’ve been a guest star in. Never fully Inhabiting my body. My own ghost, and haunting.

I can get everyone to love me, but me.

What a cruel trick.

I’ll find myself between my own pages in my own story.

Or maybe in Tuscany or anywhere else.

I am going to busy myself planning a vacation soon. The idea of being all on my own with nothing to do or be responsible for is entirely appealing. Just quiet and calm.

My eyes are getting heavy….. it’s time to rest.