You call me up again just to break me like a promise.
The “I am” project…. I remember when my therapist gave me this assignment and I could only list like 4 things that described what I do. My roles. I am my roles. I am disconnected. I am starved. Is what I could have said then if I had the words.
Now someday I am going to wrap together I was and I am with a beautiful bow. The pages are going to smell like heaven.
Like her
So for now I submit to you my growing I am list. For any who may be or have been lost in similar ways and are working on their own.
All my love,
C
I am….
A mother Counselor Writer Deep thinker Creative Kind Generous Spontaneous Curious Impulsive Impatient Passionate A piano player Affectionate Warm Playful Intense Loyal Conscientious A people person A leader An advocate Self-aware Strong A music lover A reader A researcher Full of triggers Less ashamed than I used to be Growing A spring and fall person And extroverted introvert Sensitive Movie lover Coffee and coffee shop bookstore lover Frugal Poet Naturalist Feminist Grateful A little things person A believer in magic and happy “endings” Naive Idealist Sensual Someone who prefers small intimate venues where I can hear over clubs and loud. Someone who loves Sunday’s A mermaid Someone who loves French vanilla ice cream and lavender linen spray A person who likes to be cozy A conversationalist / enjoys working on the art of communication A recovering hypochondriac A person who suffers from complex ptsd Wanting to belong A person who believes a life well lived can be defined by loving well and being loved in return Haunted Recovering Battling all or nothing Transforming Dynamic Unbridled Tempestuous seeking serene Woman Child Human Someone who starved for and enjoys touch, it grounds me Lost when it comes to family connection. Admiring it in others and feeling deeply inadequate when I don’t know my family history or seem so different than everyone else. The song Vienna by Billy Joel Someone who has an incredible amount of questions about her family that deep down wishes they could be answered, but cuts off from even the questions themselves because it hurts too much to wonder, to be outside, to be disconnected Someone who numbs the pain by staying passionately engaged in living and learning Someone who makes a lot more mistakes because of that. Hyper vigilant Disorganized Prone to rabbit holes of self loathing for things that were never my fault Struggling with chronic dis ease of body and mind, and trying to calm those storms Someone who can have an amazing memory if present and has developed the skill of erasing them just as easily.◦
It, much like me, is a work in progress …..
Onward
Ps. I got a massage last night and woke up feeling human today. I wasn’t in pain. I get them every two weeks for now, and it’s changed my whole life. I take care of myself the rest of my life, in all of the ways I wasn’t. As protective as the parents I deserved, and I’m not mad about it 😉 xoxo
I love feeling myself getting stronger. Trimming the fat in so many ways. Building self. I feel my muscles strengthening and celebrating the movement. I definitely want to stretch more though as I move forward.
On my walk this morning I am thinking about the kinds of being alone. There’s the kind where all your thoughts echo it’s so empty, and you’re at their mercy. If you want to grow you just sit with them until you understand. There are mean time’s. There’s temporary alone, when a loved on travels and it’s a short time.
There is the alone in your head that you are every single day. With your own thoughts that no one else knows. Unless you’re reading this blog 😉
There’s alone after a spouse has passed away. An empty cavern, with the crushing weight of figuring out how to re-draft every day processes. Lost.
And then there’s another kind. The kind I’m thinking about today. There’s the violent kind of being alone.
This is when you don’t expect to be alone, but you find that’s the case over and over. The kind where the words don’t match the actions. The kind that causes illness, despair, and for some people even tragedy. The kind where the dishonesty makes you feel crazy. Your mind wants to believe in the love you thought you felt. The love you were continuously sold.
The kind where the person doesn’t know how to relate in a healthy way. Lost souls. So they manipulate others to meet their need.
I’ve never been lost like that, but very close to it. I do understand. There’s never been anything wrong with my understanding.
I’m a lucky one, but I worked hard for it. So luck is probably not the right word.
Not swathed in a story, I sat in my stuff.
I sit in my stuff.
And you know what it has made me a better human being. Most importantly a better parent. With much more space and awareness for empathy for the experience of others.
A far stretch from a perfect one, but better each day.
That’s what I chose to do with that. And to only forget as much as is necessary to do my work and live a fulfilling life. But never enough to be naive like that again.
I miss that naïveté. In some ways I wish it was never taken in such a manner, but then I can’t, because I wouldn’t be here now feeling what I am.
Presence. Peace. Love. Connection.
The alone melts away and with it the anger and pain.
Love is not an emotion. It’s sturdy. It is a choice and a promise.
I’ve never been very good at the consistent aspects of love. So built for survival I am. The only moment is now. A men and black reset each day.
So I’m working on my consistency and sturdiness of self, also not an emotion. I work on them by being consistent with my every day small behaviors and choices. Those are building a solid ground inside me.
This way emotions are allowed to do their work to keep the balance between my head and my heart. To protect and serve, rather than turn against me. Karen McLaren The Language of Emotions, a Bible of mine lately. The passage love is a steadfast promise around page 120 or so.
This is literally a manual for healing trauma. I bought many copies to give to those in need this Christmas. Clients and friends alike. That and Letting Go by David Hawkins. Those are my go to sources right now.
I’ve been reading that passage in sessions, when warranted, and I get goosebumps and usually both parties tear up.
For all the pain and suffering in the world there is always the possibility of healing.
Choose
It’s a choice, not a feeling. You can’t feel better without the choice and commitment.
Now excuse me while I sit here and enjoy how my coffee tastes after the walk. It tastes better, more satisfying. And try not to fret about my baby having surgery this morning, far away. I sent her a “fever frog” from 1800 flowers. That thing is so damn cute. It sings and dances and comes with chicken soup. It was the only option that stopped me from buying a plane ticket and being there. That silly singing frog. Sigh.
Trying to care less about being cool these days and hip. Never really was in the cards anyway lol. I want to play. To help people in my presence feel lighter when they are heavy. Rather than going to their place automatically with them and then freaking out about it.
The above I’m working on a lot. As a recovering chameleon. Thinking of The Luckiest Girl Alive in this moment.
Balance
Lighter by Yung Pueblo is another good one.
I don’t want to sell anything to anyone. I want to align myself with those who prioritize their own healing and the ones that understand love is a choice and show up consistently.
My vow is that if I want this I will also be it.
I must
Good morning on this beautiful fall day! Finally a chill in the air. It’s extra delicious this year, with the warmth in my heart maintaining my temperature.
That ice crust on the outside though, the moment your teeth break through. The feeling when you have the whole thing still, and the one when there’s only a bite left. Moments.
“I want to live and not just survive…. That’s why I can’t love you in the dark….Adele this morning.“
It’s finally a cold morning. I woke up needing to walk…. So here I am. The tree that was dazzling fire the other day, is already coal and ash. It changes as quickly as my consciousness does.
I was recently conceptualized as a porcupine. The irony. Rough around the edges huh. Shocking. The guards don’t relent, and they don’t dispatch either. Maybe if I’m still, meditation, contemplation, they will get bored and stray.
Doubtful. They are loyal to a fault.
Porcupines aren’t bad. They have soft underbelly’s. But reaching that space, that’s another matter entirely.
The cold air prickles my skin this morning, quills or not. The sun’s rising is creating a cotton candy pastel glow. It’s a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper out here this morning. I am truly old 😉
As she approaches (the Sun) it’s an Orange Creamsicle now. A childhood memory fragment. On field days and other occasions my odd Seventh Day Adventist k-12 school always offered either that or a fudgesicle. How would you spell that anyway.?!
Anyway I was never a fudge girl or chocolate. But every once in awhile I’d change it up, because I knew the power of variety and learning. I wanted to try. To this day give me a plain French vanilla ice cream from a classic parlor any day. Bliss. It’s hard to come by actually.
It’s rare I remember that playground, the one I had so many nightmares about. Waking and dreaming one’s. Just a gaggle of little ones playing silly pretend games.
In recent years some of those little girls have come forward and shared their secrets and their truths with me. They felt I was safe and a protector. That’s because we knew each other. Could smell the fear on her.
I remember how much I knew and wanted to protect as a kindergartner. And now I know that shouldn’t have been. Now I can be angry and reclaim.
Now I can see the friends with children with two loving parents living their lives around their children and know where each quill originated.
I might as well be from another planet observing. What would that be like?! I consistent world of that. So much less running, and yelling. Having my truth choked out of me. With silent manipulation. With cold hard death stares. With every adult temper tantrum.
The gun in her mouth, the passed out all the time, powder and mirrors. I was a little girl.
I wasn’t.
I was an informant, a spy, a comforter, a therapist, a massage therapist, a toy, a buddy, a friend.
I was terrified and frozen and forced out of my heart and up into my head before I ever knew a thing about me. To try and preserve anything that could be, without even knowing I was doing that.
Viktor Frankl mindset before I knew what or who he and that was.
I had a good attitude about life and I loved people, as fucked up as they were. I loved living.
I have always loved waking up, even when the content of the day sometimes made me wish to sleep forever.
The gift I have is every day is a blank canvas and always has the possibility of being a masterpiece.
For so long I was chasing the ability to consistently create one, in whichever area of my life.
Now I’m walking with the world and listening and looking. No more chasing, and no more running either.
My work deepens, my clients heal before my eyes. And now I do too. So I can keep going with it. We cannot ask people to travel further than we have. Rollo May.
Did you know you can see a person heal.?! It’s observable. Their nervous system calms. Their eyes meet yours. They hunch down less, with each empowering choice they are able to make because they understand and feel supported.
Seeing themselves through new eyes and new understanding.
It IS Magic. And I am privileged.
So what if the solid ground of my identity was forged the way it was, it has created a beautiful life and career. One that just keeps getting better.
I get to watch people come home to their true selves, as I do the same.
Creating positive ripples in a hundred families. Changes that ease the suffering and create possibilities. The starfish and made a difference to that one.
We find our way together. The walking wounded and the gifts that produces. One of the greatest misunderstandings about pain.
When I opened this this morning while walking I had no idea what it would become, but here we are.
Letting go and letting things take on a life of their own. Being in a space with myself that I can allow that.
Magic
Ps mom moment: twin b is having wisdom tooth surgery in Washington where she’s staying with her aunt, to adventure. I won’t be taking care of her for the first time in our lives for a medical procedure and that hurts my heart. I feel it. That’s the beautiful part. She’s well cared for, so that’s good. And she will be home for Christmas. But this is a first that I couldn’t have anticipated the sharpness of. “I just want to protect you the way the skin protects your blood.”
Never wish not to feel something. Trust me on this one. It’s torture.
“Inside my skin there is this space, it twists and turns, it bleeds and aches. Inside my whole heart there’s an empty room, it’s waiting for lightning it’s waiting for you. And I am wanting….and I am needing you here. Inside the absence of fear.My bones call to you from their separate skin, I make myself translucent to let you in…. “ Jewel My favorite set of lyrics from way back and all time, and believe me there are many.
These days I’m most often looking at the nature of my relationship with myself. I am sifting through my history more objectively than I ever have. It’s a good feeling. I know that it means I’ve moved forward in health with my mind.
I’m seeing myself with such compassion and so realistically these days. My light and my dark, and their origins. Blame or spirals or deep dark thinking seem far away. There is a lightness of being.
I am present with and for myself and the simple things become special. Like a haircut and seeing a movie on a Sunday. And moments with my loved ones. There is gentle where savage pain was.
I felt inspired this morning to write some truths I’m thinking about myself.
I spent years living with a myriad of health symptoms that signaled to me I was dying or would at any moment. This made my world very small. I became afraid to do things out in the world. The truth is I was having intrusive thoughts anywhere and everywhere and using all my energy to act as if I wasn’t. To try and stop the thoughts they made me have about myself.
Lately I’ve been noticing my coping so much more clearly. I’m able to know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it and speak my truth. Those words, just words, hold so much power. They rock me to my core. That is a safety I’ve earned and provided and no one can remove it.
I in fact do a schmorgasbord of coping mechanisms daily at the slightest hint of something that could become “unsafe” and it’s tremendously affected by the moods, tones, and behaviors of those around me.
So unsurprisingly parenting teenagers was a special kind of hell for all parties involved for me. I was being triggered constantly and fully reacting from that place. After the trigger comes the shame spiral, and after the shame spiral being a puddle on the ground that must resuscitate herself. After the whole process usually a week of symptoms. Flare, migraine, stomach pain, crippling exhaustion.
I must forgive myself for what I did not yet know…..
All the while showing up for myself and my work. Knowing I must give more than I take there, or I’d lose the one source of positive feedback about myself. Yes as a counselor I was also co dependent and I knew if I didn’t get that under control I wouldn’t be able to have a good relationship with myself or a healthy one at work either.
I reflect on the “one source of positive feedback about myself” and my heart aches with the lonely and scarcity of that statement. Things were out of balance. They were always going to be while I was separated from myself for safety.
I was my very own authoritarian parent abuser.
I could make the marionette dance, but not feel things. There are limits to that power. I sought a more gentle source. How when feeling feels immediately threatening to anything solid, and all you began with was a single plank a thousand feet in the air over a pit of poisonous snakes.
I spent a good forty years pacing anxiously back and forth across that plank until I finally sat still and accepted my circumstances and started being curious about what I could do to make things better. Not only was nothing else working, but I kept repeating cycles that affected more than just myself, so more evidence I was bad.
I was really trapped inside myself.
The only signal of distress was for my body to become sick, because it’s the only model I’ve ever had for getting to a point where I could allow myself to receive. If you know you must be sick to receive you will be sick I can tell you that.
These epiphanies have just clicked for me lately: with the help of many therapies. Julie, Melissa, love from my people, and most of all a connection to myself, rather than being disconnected from her. Always vigilant for her to mess everything up, and become horrible at any second.
So right now I’m grieving a deepest layer. The way I have regarded my tender beautiful self. My mouth gets dry and the tears come.
So lately I’m walking a lot and being with my mind. My poor frazzled scattered brain and how quickly it darts to all the horrible scenarios. I’m just providing lots of comfort and safety like I would have to those foster children, if I didn’t need it more for me at the time, and not even know it.
I needed to love me, not always look to be able to love me by loving someone else. And I have only grace and compassion now for the fact love was so foreign to me. It’s different when you learn it through concept and not experientially. It’s different.
I am still learning. I will always be devoted to learning and to being loving and gentle and steadfast. I crave consistency and I insist on building it. There’s nothing else I will accept at this stage in my life.
Of that I am sure.
In other news I saw Bros yesterday and I was so delighted to see gay men allowed to be seen in a major motion picture. I was also sad at how much we forget how much pain minorities have to endure, and how much is insidious and viewed as if it’s all ok now.
I loved seeing Ptown on the screen and all the gay culture references and it did make my heart swell with pride. Just two people each being who they were in all their stereotypes, boring, too much, all of it, showing their true colors to one another and finding love.
Trying for love to build it. You don’t find it, you must create it. Love is crafted.
Yes, I will always be a sappy idealist when it comes to love. No, I’ll never let it allow harm to come to myself again.
The light and dark of a life well lived. (put it in my tombstone folks, but not too soon ok, I have shit to say first)
Please
I have lived and I’m not even close to done yet. Let’s go as my teens would say. Lol.
It’s time. To be here now. Deep breath. Ocean Eyes by Scvrina is on.
I just attended Cheryl Strayed writing workshop Wild Awakenings. She was live from The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck. It walked me back through my experience there in 2015, on scholarship. Elizabeth Gilbert was promoting Big Magic and spoke.
I was wanting to be a writer then, permission for something already mine. There are too many takeaways from the course that are amazing to shuffle back through.
I remember sitting there feeling so frozen inside myself. I looked to others to try and figure out what I should be doing. They looked like they had it figured out. I felt alien and cold and emotionally stopped up and exploding all at once. All of this carefully contained by a scratchy wool sweater.
Other people smiled and spoke freely with one another. I was sweaty and terrified.
In this particular workshop unbeknownst to me we got put into breakout rooms on zoom cameras and read our pieces and I did not balk. Not one shred of fear or self consciousness on the camera. Because why. This is me. It’s how I look and what I have to offer, and why is that any less or more for that matter than anyone else.
So I’ll talk about my experience. I just chose a prompt and wrote for 10 minutes each writing exercise and was shocked at the results. I was shocked at how much I have repressed about my own experience because of how I’m supposed to think, be, do.
I realized I don’t lose control on the page, the one place I am supposed to (able to). I still don’t, because what will it mean?! That folks is anxiety programming in action. To make our thoughts mean more than they need to before they are even processed yet.
My writing means nothing but someone else’s interpretation when shared, and everything to me. That’s what it means. It’s my flow. My self on the page. My wild mind. Scattered or with blank spots, flooded, however it is it’s mine and there are reasons are minds are as they are: some more mysterious than others.
So don’t process at all?! Well you know my every heart beat is based on the belief in the process and yet I stopped trusting my own. I stopped trusting everything really. That’s such an unpleasant place to be in. My well of passion dried up via suppression. That realization feels like a rock in my stomach.
I guess that is part of the freeze after deep pain, regret, etc.
Balance is a tight rope walk of acknowledgment of the things we can let go of, the destructive thoughts about anything. I didn’t know I could let go. I’ve been holding on tight for so long.
So it’s October and I’m finally going to begin (already have) and finish On Writing by Stephen King. I had read half breathlessly and was afraid of it being over. That’s an example of how scared I am every single day. I’m scared of attachment. And I created so many self fulfilling prophecies with this wound.
I did it by rushing. I did it by being a coping mechanism. Now I’m trying to be a human, and not just any human, my SELF. It’s a little harder than one might think with all this wiring.
I’ve lived with so much fear. I’ve lived so tamed. I thought being highly emotionally reactive at times meant being untamed, but it’s the opposite. That’s the result of constantly taming oneself. I watched The Luckiest Girl Alive last night and I don’t think I’ve ever resonated with a movie more. Hillbilly Elegy is up there.
Please be careful with that movie. But right down to the intrusive thoughts. I was / am so much like her and I didn’t even know it until I saw this movie. In some ways I’m just cracking through another layer of ice. All along my ego defenses need to shout how far along we are. I’m ready to give up that battle.
I too am trying to look like I have a normal life, be normal and safe and whatever else. And that does not work. I need to find who is really in here. All of it.
This writing class was a good beginning it shook a lot loose. For example I realized it’s not nothing to say as the freeze often suggests. A dirty dirty lie. I have “too much” to say that could be disturbing and Cheryl addressed this perfectly when she told the story of taking an amount of her dead mothers ashes into her body for keeping.
A gorgeous testament to her raw pain and her love for her mother. Her fierce love for her mother made me long that my children will ever feel that way about me. I’m not sure it’s ever in the cards. I know they love me, but it just doesn’t feel like our story.
I realized in my energy healing this past weekend that my head compensates for my feeling parts, and I realized that the wires are crossed on that. I thought that kept me safe. It did Christina, a long time ago. But now it just keeps me from the warmth of the fires of my own passion. Careful control. I don’t even believe in that, but it’s a subconscious default in so many ways.
I just wrote anyway, and then erased it 😉
Cheryl talked about how a reviewer of Wild had become disturbed by the ashes scene and said it’s just too much and threw the book in the trash. She said that person’s feeling and reaction was hers and as valid as the good reviews and that alone taught me so much.
She let go of her attachment to people understanding and allowed her own experience. Let go of control. See the work of David R Hawkins on letting go for some practical tools and lovely wisdom in this area. It’s one of my current sources.
I spent so much of my life letting people who didn’t even have my back get under my skin. Their review of me. Trapped in purgatory of what other people think, while not even knowing what I do.
That is my compelling why in exploring the depths of myself.
To do this I’ve been walking a lot lately. Once I’m off, one foot in front of another it’s meditative. My thoughts settle into sentences and become available to me.
My own thoughts available to me?! I take for granted at times the magnitude of my own healing. I could have easily spent my entire life a very different way, where the above does not exist.
I need to develop a healthy relationship with my self and my thoughts. Rather than viciously sort them into categories of good and bad. Be with them, understand them.
My deepest wound for a very long time is feeling misunderstood. It’s what much of my emdr centers around. When I deeply misunderstand myself, it’s much more likely I’ll do that with others as well and blow my life up. Or at the very least turn the possibility of a lot of gorgeous moments into a minefield of reactivity.
I’m quiet a lot more, and I want to be more quiet. To be with nature. I’ve been craving a morning hike lately. It’s been beach for a long time, maybe it’s time for some woods. Solitude doesn’t have to be some grand voyage, it can be a few hours a day.
For anyone reading this who is interested I recommend Julie my Angel. My energy medicine practitioner. She has changed my entire life, primarily by helping me ease my anger by the belief that we choose our paths for specific reasons. I do believe this. When I was particularly lost inside my pain, this thought was outrageous to me. But as the threads to the tapestry begin to reveal my path. That tingle is irreplaceable, I become a believer.
My mind is a skeptic, of course it is. It’s hyper vigilant to a fault. My special skill set to identify even the potential of threat in any given set of circumstances and have an itchy trigger finger.
The gun is down and these days I’m working on my own self.
I am loving and tending to my home, the physical one here and earth and my meat suit lol.
So look forward in the very near future to seeing some practice writing pieces, perhaps with prompts perhaps not. Poetry. Pieces that I feel and felt when I wrote them. Unedited and raw the way I like to live life. The way I aspire to allowing myself to live.
It’ll always be easier to talk the talk. I am a human who is committed to walking the walk.
As captured on the cover of a journal at Barnes and Noble the other day. Love that place.
I’m sitting outside at Nate’s Plate’s, waiting for an egg and cheese sandwich. First time trying it here. Way to ruin your walk Christina. Ok we aren’t doing that. This is about enjoying life. The little things, and the big ones.
It’s a gorgeous pre fall day. I’ve been walking and occasionally jogging 2-3 miles most days. Sometimes only one, sometimes none, but usually some. Currently I’m listening to On My Own by Ross Lynch. It’s the first song of the day. It came on Spotify Taylor Swift radio. There is a fake plant, bright yellow in a wicker pot on the table, my water bottle a consistent comfort, and two bags of peanut butter chocolate energy bites.
From here I can see the playground, tennis courts, baseball field, that are behind the Milford Public Library. I love Milford. I’ve fallen more in love with it through the hard times and good of the last few years. Milford is a constant. And constants make my heart happy, despite my creative’s occasional rebellion against it. I always return if it’s safe to do so, and healthy for me.
I only cut off from sources of poison, and the bad thing was never me. I could cry writing this for all the confusion and suffering it’s caused in my life trying desperately to find “the right answer”, in those choices. Never know there was always a right for me.
I never knew my self. Never knew she was worth knowing. And that might make you sad to read, but don’t be sad for me, because I believe we each have a path that has meaning, even when the view hasn’t all come together. Unsewn threads causing doubts. Painful. It’s ok. Is it, my anxiety says?! Yes it is my higher self says. And I no longer shame myself for how long this conversation must be had.
The past few days I’ve been loving Greenlights on Audible written and narrated by Matthew McConaughey (so hard to spell this name sigh). Insightful, fun, quirky, a journey of sharing of self and thoughts. Of course I do. Bask in it. He just said a line, the pleasure is for rent, and so is the pain.” Meaning everything is temporary so be present essentially and don’t get too caught in being impressed, rather be more involved.
Engaged, present, involved, trying, learning.
Want to have a mad love affair with yourself.? Go someplace, order something, try something on, pick something up and feel it. What do you like, and what don’t you like. Pick up your head, put down your phone.
Think
Try a new food, a new spot to sit, and feel and think about what it feels like. Presence is bliss. Still your mind. Just look, sense, write, dream, feel.
So I had therapy last night. I still go on average two times a week when I can. At one time I felt I’d accomplished something by going down to one, because who wants to need therapy two times a week. I do. I do! I do because it helps the hurts. That’s why.
*I wrote this post Monday I think. It’s Sunday now. Had our first fire in the fire place kind of Sunday. White bean and chicken soup kind of Sunday. Watched a great suspense movie Sunday. Had a nap Sunday. Stayed in sweats Sunday. Set boundaries Sunday. Shared chocolates Sunday. Enjoyed seasonal candles Sunday. Chip grocery and visit Sunday. Took a walk Sunday. Gave a special gift Sunday. Thought about time Sunday. Finished Hillbilly Elegy and Slaughterhouse Five Sunday. Watched Hocus Pocus 2 Sunday. How did so much fit into one day.
I think I’ve seen this film before and I didn’t like the ending….
Happy Sunday from sunny Florida. Tiny lizards are cute, palmetto bugs are nope. Humidity is death, the bath still brings life.
Hot. Cold. Sweaty. Calm. Breathe, just breathe.
Be still.
My whole life I ran. I ran and I didn’t know I was running. I thought I was just living with gusto and a strong will. Where’s there’s a will there’s away would have been my motto. Until I hit a period where will was not all that mattered, a period that brought me to my knees. Kesha Praying.
Will could only take me far, and take me far it did. I’ve been marveling lately at all the life experiences I have, they have grown me. I wouldn’t change it, and that’s new because my ruminating signaled that I lived in a swamp of regret. I’ve visited don’t get me wrong, but it’s not a place I could ever live.
I’ve been so hard on myself for every single thing I didn’t ask for, and judged me for how I coped or didn’t, all the while not even realizing how much coping I was doing, because I didn’t call it that. That signals there’s an issue right ?!
Yesterday we watched Pieces of Her, not the series that was very good by the way, the movie with Shia Labeouf (had to look up how in the hell to spell that). Spoiler alert ahead.
The movie starts with an intimate birth scene, very well done I might add. Raw. Beautiful. I was nauseated during it, for her, but of course I was. The movie took me on a ride of emotions. I was experiencing it. Few movies do that. Recently the Starling also did. The fact these move me the most is no surprise to those close to me.
Anyway this movie! Things I noticed in the beginning. Sean, her partner, stayed calm, was a rock for her, strong. Inside of me twinged with the wanting of that, back then. I didn’t know I didn’t have it, and frankly I know my memory is so fucked up. But the idea of a man who knows himself, is strong in that, for better or for worse, already through recovery at that time. So he had that experience and owned it, and worked at it.
They hold their baby for the first time…. It’s gorgeous. Shortly after the baby turns blue and well I can’t even say it.
The rest of the movie shows the various ways they cope and don’t. How they take it out on each other. How one shuts the other out, and the choices they both make. Suddenly all of the things that happened aren’t such a mystery.
The family dynamics were so interesting, but at least they each said their truth. How they really felt. What is that even like? Not a family who you could cut the tension with a knife, all covered in pretty outward smiles with gnashing teeth.
I’ve been clenching my teeth at night. This is a new phenomenon for me. Of all the ailments. Sigh. Clenching so hard. Despite being more healed than I’ve ever been, and sleeping very well.
Last night there was a little girl in my dream, it was vivid. We had a pleasant interaction, it was warm, and one of her mother’s was accepting, not forgotten, but forgiven. Life moves on and I felt peaceful by it, not tortured. A whisper that everything is as it should be. I felt warm.
In my own life there are fires. One of my girls will be leaving for the other coast and the other family. There was no middle ground to meet on, so it’s not the best of circumstances and that’s creating an unbearable pain.
A difficult labor is quickly forgotten once the child is in your arms and you’re more than occupied with the many new tasks at hand. A fractured relationship of this magnitude that can’t get any oxygen and is turning blue is a different kind of hell.
One at the moment I can’t find my way out of, or see a way to just distract myself. It’s excruciating. And two months ago I didn’t know it would be this way. I didn’t dupe anyone. This is real and it’s mine and I get to be allowed to feel how I do without dismissing or distracting, and while still loving and supporting myself.
This is new. A new relationship with myself, where I don’t pressure myself, and stand up quickly saying, I’m ok. Where I don’t force myself, or get lost in unhealthy coping mechanisms. This is new.
I’m not ok. I’m scared, and locked down, and in this. And it’s going to take a little adjusting, and healing.
Who knew being a mother was so important to me. Everyone else. The problem is I didn’t regard myself in that way. I couldn’t see myself as anything more than her daughter. There was no myself, No herself. A Martha Beck reference from Diana Herself.
Here I am and I’m fiercely showing up, and I’m not ashamed. It’s a new look for me, and it’s going to take awhile for the training wheels to come off, and to rub the cobwebs out of my eyes to get a clear view in the mirror.
It was always going to happen..
My grief and my story are real, and what I’m realizing is that healing from the beginning let alone now is a way of life. For me it is, and that has to be ok. Not heavy or unfun, just real. It will ebb and flow. This creative heart recovery there will be periods I’m under, and periods I’m out, periods I’m dancing and playing, and one’s where I’m stuck to the floor.
Because this is what life is like when you feel it all, and take it all in, and learn to keep some of it out. This is a whole story of becoming whole, from the pieces of her.
This movie rocked me. It made me remember my birth stories and what was going on at that time, and how did you feel when you held your babies the first time….
Probably not just romantic, probably I was scared shitless too. And I get to be that! Because that is what’s real, and I felt that way having no idea what I’d actually have to face to be a good enough mother.
I had no idea the lengths I’d need to go to to not be triggered, to not use my children to comfort my emotions or take them out on. To keep them safe, even from me, when I didn’t know how unhealed I was, but I did at some level.
Intuition trauma blocked.
What’s a gal to do besides study and heal and study and heal and heal and heal and heal. It takes a village and daily practice and lots of support. It is happening though and for that I’m the most grateful.
That I am able to feel things as I am. I could just be numb. And there’s nothing worse. My dear friend is struggling with this just now, and I’ve learned, am learning, to judge less, and love more.
I wanted to say membrane for artistic quality, however it’s way to thin and tame a word for our subject matter.
Word salad, bread crumbs, generalities, banalities, poppy cock, and balderdash. That’s what the defense mechanism speaks. It wreaks of bullshit. Activated, deactivated. My friend calls it morphin time. Spoiler alert he’s a pink ranger fan.
The very fact he can speak about it as if it’s a choice shows the healing work that’s been done. The thing that brings hope and life to life.
I’m walk/run writing which means I’ll probably end up motion sick and nauseated. That’s old hat for me anyway. Are you kidding?! Stringing together beautiful words that never really say anything at all.
The water is low, very low. It smells that way. Peeeee ew. Blech. Death will eventually turn to life though…. And so it goes.
I hate lying and manipulation with a fiery passion these days. I somehow never seem to have less of it in my life. It seeps through. I can do all the work in the world and it still wafts through the air. I pick up on it like a bloodhound, get called crazy for my troubles, and become spun like a top.
Then it’s my reaction to the abuse that becomes criticized. How I save myself. Acts of violence even after all weapons have been put down.
A full surrender…..
Untangling myself from the mess of misperception. The very place I seek help from only becomes another source of misunderstanding. This I’m told is frequently peoples experiences in counseling.
Some counseling misunderstandings cost dearly. Those are the people meant to protect. We trust them more.
Thank God, the windows, the walls, whatever, that I finally learned that lesson. Those legs are still wobbly but they stand firm, shakes and all.
Listening to a counselor try to reason out why it’s difficult to apologize, rather than get a layer deeper to understanding. Don’t try and fix it, that’s ego, try and understand it and find the art to show the inhabitants of that magical safe space, the one space they are committed to listening, that’s safe enough.
Wouldn’t it just be easier to apologize?! What must it be like in a family without being able to do that?! Gee, you think?! Maybe first check what kind of family the person came from 101. Then add their experiences. These are not excuses they are understanding.
To help someone understand themselves by being understanding and compassionate. That borders on the miraculous.
Understanding is salve and balm. Cooling and soothing to the burning hot infected wounds. The disease has metastasized by now. I fall to my knees.
A human walking talking defense mechanism, who struggles inside her own life, and clears up misunderstandings for others, because of the knowledge she’s gathered. This process was not trivial.
A light warrior with a constant stream of dark thoughts about herself. That’s how I’ve kept my humility, it’s kept me. Trapped. Prisoner of war. I’m working on a different kind now. A kind with a wise guide rather than a harsh task master.
The war rages on.
A tear slowly drops down a child’s cheek. They know better. They know war can be replaced with love. But some people will always love war, more than peace. And some have a constant battle within. It’s those that know the value on peace. And there are those that never will.
One priest who couldn’t control himself all those years ago would ensure my abuse continued throughout the span of my life. One depraved religious crazy has had such an impact on my life. That’s what happens when you damage a child. You fucker. There’s a special place in hell for you.
I would never protect the adult over the child’s pain, it’s something I need to stay mindful of in my office because it’s easier to do than you think. We don’t want to be uncomfortable, don’t want to believe in monsters.
Counselors are constantly faced with the truth they are alive and well living right among us. The rest of the population would prefer to cover it’s eyes, and to create routine and distraction. Live your best life. Not everyone has that privilege.
I may serve the literary muse, but even a romantic heart knows, that’s the biggest ruse.
How can you damage a child? How can you break their trust and spirit before they even begin. The nausea turns to sickness. I can’t watch this shit because I’ve lived enough. Their spirit won’t be free again until death. When they can dream again.
Even I know some things break beyond repair and I’m in the healing business. And I’m not God or whomever. I’m just a person with a lot of knowledge that didn’t consent. It feels that way when I feel angry. But according to Julie I did exactly that, and those lost children did too?!
I don’t know.
I don’t care how much meaning can be made from suffering, breaking the spirit and trust in a child, watching the playful go out of them. It tastes metallic. I clench my jaw until my teeth press into my gums with the pain it being locked down inside somewhere and continuously misunderstood.
Because one human couldn’t control his cravings. Because he believed he was living as God intended. Incorrect belief systems in the hands of the wrong people keep the war waging. And hedging your bets is the biggest sin of all. Manipulating both sides. Agememnon.
I need an Achilles. With maybe a few less hair tosses lol. His destiny was his justification to fight mens wars, so perhaps not. He had to be arrogant. Does anyone have to be? One foot on earth, one with his mother. See, even Achilles has mommy issues.
When you’re locked down in a trauma mechanism it sure feels that way. Education, time, commitment, and determination help.
Can you break threads of destiny (would you want to) or are we all just deluded puppets after all.
I’ll leave it to the great philosophers, for I am just a good enough mother down on her knees praying to be forgiven for what she didn’t know, and still doesn’t.
One more circle around the block, then my coffee, my reward. My journal, my oxygen. Then clients. Then a soft safe space to rest before it all begins again.
I remember it all too well and Taylor Swift’s Clean were on repeat this morning.
Despite the repeated migraines, nausea, joint pain, and other afflictions, I had to get out and walk this morning. To move some energy. My thoughts were dark and intrusive. I’ve been clenching my jaw and tossing and turning.
There’s a combination of distressing things happening currently, and all around that is regular every day life. Life that I love. The distress threatens to swallow, but it can’t with this spirit. It’ll never break my spirit. Et Lux Intenebris Lucet.
An ex lover and partner’s mother is actively dying. In one year’s time cancer has ravaged her. I had no idea how something like this would feel. The memories it would walk me through. I’ve never been so close to death before. I never realized how entirely I love, and that no longer being connected to the people never removes it. It just exists there.
It helps me to experience myself as loving and I need that right now with everything else I’m going through. The threat of parental alienation is real. I was programmed to always believe it was me, that’s bad, wrong, causing things. And while I’m by no means perfect my perception of myself has been the biggest battle in my life.
It’s plugged right in. People have plugged right in to my trauma and taken over where the previous left off, and the worst part is it felt like home. Love that wasn’t love at all, but a mask for insecurity, a bizarre attempt at control, a lot of things. But not love.
The impending loss of this woman who was a mother to me, one of very few, surrogate mothers. Who cried as I wore a wedding dress. Who loved my children and I…. sits like a stone in my stomach. I am heavy, foggy, and struggling with focus.
I burst into tears to her and her husband when I asked permission to marry their daughter and I meant it. I meant it. I didn’t mean to be the way I was, to not have room for anyone else’s feelings to exist. To be consumed inside my mind. To not stay. Those I didn’t mean. There was a lot I didn’t understand much less meant.
She is happily married now to a person who is well suited and she’s happy. She still loves my children and her partner holds that connection sacred. So they visited a few weeks back. I was nervous and they handed me their little one. Welcoming. Another baby I wasn’t able to have with a woman.
They are about to have their second, any day, while any day the glue and the matriarch will take her last breath. Vibrant, laughing, alive, kind, loving, Karen. It is unthinkable. I cannot even think it because what comes with this will be all manner of intrusive thoughts of myself or my loved ones going like this.
I stare numbly at the wall.
It’s almost show time. The time I show up for my client’s and give all I’ve got until I run out. My energy, focus, love, wisdom. What meaning would my life have without this exchange. It is not a question, it’s a statement. It’s everything. The sharing of knowledge that could make a moment of passing even a tiny bit lighter. I hope..
I hope for the family who is saying goodbye that the new lives beginning, at times provide temporary anesthesia for the pain.
Mother daughter relationships are complex. I’m struggling immensely in my own right now. This morning my mind is busy sending it’s energy to my former lover and friend because I know what that connection means to her, and what losses she’s already endured.
In some ways this is one of my first. The first up close death of one of my surrogate mother’s, and a loss to people I love deeply.
When love is true it still exists whether near or far. There is so much of that in my heart right now. Love and loss, the full spectrum.
I am learning it’s just still all right there. Ulay Ulay….
I am grateful for my deep connections and all of the love that’s helped me get connected to myself, every thread is honored.
Twin A begins college today…. Twin B prepares to move out West, a one way ticket for now with so many possibilities, my family is changing. It is a beautiful agony. One that I don’t know if I could have ever prepared for.
There will be a funeral soon. Life is just an endless cycle of birth and death I suppose after all, and this clinician is most concerned with the meaning between the lines and what’s beneath the surface. It’s not a bad way to live. It’s not too shabby.
Remembering and forgetting moments all while simultaneously creating new ones, because never give up is something that I live by. For me there is no other way.
Will you hear my heart tearing when the plane takes off, and the last breath is taken? You never know the last time you’ll see someone, hug them, appreciate their laugh. That’s a lot to be with, that reality.
What I do know today however is that real love never dies. It only transforms and is transforming. What a comforting sentiment amidst all of this existential suffering…..
All of these lines across my face…tell you the story of who I am, so many stories of where I’ve been and how I got to where I am. But these stories don’t mean anything when you’ve got no one to tell them to. It’s true I was made for you.
Being loved is overwhelming….
This is my realization this morning.
This is why I have chosen partners that were not capable of healthy love in one way or another, and I wasn’t either.
Would I always have unbalanced love outside, and frozen love inside ?
I’m just beginning to be able to see the light at the end of that tunnel.
And it’s scary to be 41 years old, I almost said 42, I always round up. I guess so I’m already prepared. So much of my life is geared around being prepared, for anything. It’s scary to be 41 years old and feel like an infant at times, that vulnerable, because everything is new. I’ve never been this self before.
“I’m not the explosion guy”, that’s my father.” I think of Silver Lining Playbook. The pain that’s involved in families where a member had an unidentified mental illness or personality disorder. The shame and pain that passes through the generations. No treatment. No relief.
No relief. Let those words land.
Just shouldering those burdens trying to look and be normal. Swallowing it down. I get so angry with the injustice of that. The silenced pleas for help in the form of various “negative” behaviors in children and they just internalize and absorb it into themselves and become sick. Which looks like defiant, odd, impulsive, and a whole range of other things.
Then exiled from others because they don’t fit.
Understanding is the salve that heals. I apply it generously in my office. Often while having so many unknowns on my shoulders. Feeling like a small mistake could cost an entire life. Anxiety often weaves that tale. Sometimes the stakes feel so high, and then I have to readjust to “I can only do my best.” That’s been a game changer.
I don’t have peoples lives in my hands, I have their possibility of healing in them. The choices I make can impact their healing, but my role is not enough to stop the results of a lifetime of suffering if the train is already blurring down the tracks. I can’t stop a bullet, but I can apply a vest.
When you grow up feeling responsible for everything, and utterly by yourself it becomes difficult later in life to know what’s yours and what isn’t. A major task of therapy.
A major task of mine…..
I had a 20 k client day yesterday. Sometimes it goes so deep and so heavy, that one day feels like a week. I’m in a daze and don’t even know what day it is.
I do know I bring my whole heart and I lay my energy on the front line daily; and though I may never have a hero’s celebration. Let’s be honest I would probably squirm with discomfort. I need to learn to celebrate myself and what I do, and pause. I can’t always just keep going, but tell my mind that.
There’s a community that lost a teenager to suicide a couple of weeks back, and it haunts me. The pain of those affected haunts me. The intrusive thoughts when I see a sign in one of mine haunts me. The pain of those parents haunt me, and I’m not even first degree attached. But I am a human and I can’t even fathom that pain, or maybe I can.
The threat was always there in my own life. A not so gentle reminder of my trauma. My trauma. The thing I don’t talk about because to access it extinguishes my breathing almost immediately. I shudder and shake with it in the therapy office. I don’t want it spoken. What if I made it up.? I wish I made it up.
And it’s just easier to press forward and pretend it’s something that can be left behind. It can’t. It infects the next generation and the next until it’s spoken, understood, and loses it’s power.
I think my true self inside wanted a simple life. And resents the enormity of this role. I think my therapist would laugh at this. That’s just my whining about the acceptance of the things I didn’t choose. My energy healer disagrees, she believes our souls contract before they entire the body fully knowing what their destiny will be.
Did I sign on that dotted line? Was it inked in blood?
I have stories locked down inside me. Guarded by dragons. Dragons I shouldn’t have had to face then, let alone now. To access my memories. It doesn’t seem fair to go through what I have to do to do that.
I spent a life trying to create something I didn’t have to forget and if I want to heal I need to remember enough to also get that little girl out alive.
Confusion. Exhaustion.
Nobody wants that. They want fun and to believe in happy endings. But what about happy beginnings. I’ve realized lately those really do and did exist in those other people. The ones who don’t shudder when a voice raises.
Those happy people you’ll never be understood by, is how it felt. Separation, desperately seeking belonging.
Desperate.
Now that I’m no longer desperate how do I do life? It’s all new, and new is overwhelming even when it’s good.
