Tag: #sharingjourneys

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At Home in a Heart that is Warm, and the Heart is Mine

Piece by piece she restores my faith that a person could be kind and stay ….. piece by piece she filled the holes that you burned in me at six years old…..

I woke up grumpy this morning. It’s a long day ahead, many bills to pay, many admin issues that need addressing. Ones that are intimidating. I’m tired. My b12 has been low, and I’m getting weekly injections. All of my therapies while deeply helpful, leave me gutted of energy by the end, and that leaves me fallen behind in other areas.

I’m mortal after all, not a God.

My tone inspired by the finishing of The Song of Achilles this morning.

Then as I’m in the bath attempting to rejuvenate my spirits and soak my sore body, I hear twin B singing of all things. I’m just a small town girl….. living in a lonely world…

It immediately lifts my spirits. I smiled from ear to ear. Then even more she texts requesting some time with me. I know it is backwards to need love from your children, (or is it just human all too human) but they are my only flesh and blood connections, and the only ones that have been my motivation to fight so hard against the dark experiences that marked my beginning.

I was waiting to enjoy them…. Wish I knew I didn’t have to wait. But I did. I had to connect with me first and that was nearly impossible.

We have had a turning point in family therapy. And even if it’s just a glimmer of hope (I think it’s more, that this is real), I am overjoyed with it.

Finally all being clamped down in our own story, corners, and pain…. It is relenting…. The icy grip releasing.

Could this thaw too?

It must Christina. You did. So how could it not? Remember what it took to get here.

The pool is getting fixed in the next couple of weeks. If nothing else to preserve the value of this home as improvements continue. A trip to a hot tub store in Milford last week ended in us getting the motivation to clean the thing out. I’ll have to post some before and after shots as I learn how to make the pictures blog sized and not make the whole post not work.

I can’t believe we cleaned that thing out. It has sat for four years and I thought there was no hope. That sounds familiar. Then you give a little time and attention and look what happens.

Look what a little presence does…..

Magic

Not a story, with intensity and a movie like script that must be followed or it can’t develop but everyday magic. These little moments….

I’m watching my kids become me in certain ways, and also them of course, but seeing my strength in them is exciting, and of course that I have not done every single thing wrong. The tale my mind so often weaved. Painful. Excruciating really.

Sometimes it really is all in your head. And that doesn’t make the difficulty any less or it any less real.

I spent my whole life running from my pain. Willing it away by just good ol’ elbow grease. I’d create a family. It’s just that easy. I was naive and foolish and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I had ideas, ran with them, then those ideas crashed and burned painfully. Being redirected was not my strong suit. I would stand defiantly arms crossed and be stubborn against my own behalf and not even know it.

It’s interesting to think now that all my rushing for self work was exactly what I needed to be doing because I could have missed out on connections with my kids. I think I just barely made the boat. On real live ones, not trying to figure it out cognitively, but feeling them in real time.

I have come back from the dead. I was dead inside. All the feeling parts. Maybe not fully dead, almost dead, almost lost, only a small part of human left in there. I had to fight myself, my mind, all while simultaneously figuring out how to support myself, to have healthy relationships, to choose a family for myself of people who show up for each other well.

I had to do the opposite of what I was… to slow down. To show the pain, so it could be seen, so I could be helped. Masking was suffocating me.

Last family therapy session I feel like I breathed for the first time ever. My first breath of oxygen as a flesh and blood human, not a robot who just works constantly and can’t feel.

It’s the most beautiful thing, but I’m also the most exhausted I’ve ever been and the most emotionally raw. And this of course coincides with a busy client schedule with some major shit (shifts) going on in the world, that people are feeling.

And some are not making it. Children taking their own lives, and how to hold space, but also not get trapped in the enormity of that reality.

To just smile at dinner or focus when earlier you sat in this pain with someone and your mind is beckoned to go there, and to the possibility of that happening to you.

I thought I knew what heart break was until I recognized how the very thing that saved me was keeping me emotionally distant from my children. That is heartbreak.

I just expected myself to exist without my story attached, without even speaking of it. I didn’t want it Or me, or my mother to hurt them, but It was always going to pass down to a degree. I held it back with everything that I have. Carried it really. Until I recognized the heaviness was crushing me, and that wasn’t serving anyone.

Now that I’ve set it down I don’t know that I’ll know what to do, how to be. I’ve been existing this way a long time. In reality I’ve been setting it down piece by piece and I’m getting to the part where I’m starting to feel naked without it. To shiver and shake with the new.

When it comes to new and trauma survivors, good or bad doesn’t matter, new has a high threat quotient.

Settle…. Stay…..ground

You’ve worked so hard to be here

Home in a heart that is warm despite the amount of cold it has felt….

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May You Have the Courage to Face Reality As Is

All of these lines across my face… tell me the story of who I am… so many stories….

I did EMDR last night. The first session I made all the way to an installation apparently. I didn’t know that. That all my talking and planning what I’ll say, and having things to say, could have sometimes been avoidance. I’m getting closer to acceptance within the grief process.

My intellectualizing, while quite functional and productive even, also an elaborate form of denial. Denial and avoidance are being confronted abundantly lately.

Within the many grief processes. It’s like once I began why not just keep piling them on. How did I get here? Well I didn’t get myself here alone. I know that.

Last night I focused on permitting myself to fully estrange myself from “my family”, those people I grew up around. How is it possible to spend time agonizing over what will happen when I get that call someone has died. The reality is to go there, to that place, even the thought of it gives me rapid and horrific physical symptoms.

This is my reality.

How would I feel if they didn’t call me? Abandoned all over again? Not belonging. Without any mindfulness of if I want to belong there, and why or why not.

Radical acceptance …. Any acceptance, perhaps radical sets the bar really high.

Another reality is that so much in life I have used a copy paste technique to make big decisions in my one precious life. Never having learned trusting myself or anyone else, why not just default to a faulty system. It felt sound at the time. This works over here, let’s try it in my life. I don’t know what I feel anyway. Why not. Plus look how great it looks.

I’m paralyzed, where are my feelings, I no longer feel things I know I should.

I’m on an NF and Brandy Carlisle kick right now. I want to read her memoir and Matthew McConaughey Greenlights I started on Audible last night. His voice is something other worldly soothing. In a fantasy he could have been my father. Just like Elizabeth Gilbert could have been my mother.

My reality is so much better than fantasy…. And yet the dissociative patterns of old run deep.

I just keep challenging stories, that are just that. The kind my mind creates. I would rather keep it busy reading others subjective truths about their lives as they recall it. Than ricocheting between certainty and doubt in my own mind as a means to keep myself sharp and honed for any impending disaster.

The ever present dread. The illusion of safety it creates. That soothing bastard.

The reality is my want to be in attendance of a funeral for a connection I never had would be one again to prove some worthiness to some unknown diety. I see others do this or that with their grief and wish to emulate rather than trust what I need.

What I need……

(Selfish) you’re selfish. It’s all about you)

Last night in emdr I scratched the surface on the truth of what I need. It was introduced. Progress. Because normally that wouldn’t have even been in the program. It would have been what I need to do. And the why is always to be accepted or belong. (This is why my parent focus is what the kids need to do, rather than on an emotional connection, that breaks my heart. I’m inside of here (her) trying to get out. I’m right here in the upside down.

The proverbial carrot always being dangled over my face. (belonging)

I don’t have to live that way anymore. I accept and belong to myself, and if you know how hard won those words are to be uttered authentically, then you know.

In Emdr I made parallels between families and not feeling understood or wanted. Mine and my ex husband’s. The two starter families. I combatted the story that I abandoned them, and was able to realistically list the ways I was the abandoned. Not in a victim sense. In the way that one must do to confront reality as it happened and not how we wished it to happen.

I wish when I got that call it would be different. That it’s not something that would make me sick. That’s not the reality. The reality is people will judge and hold their own reality when I cut myself off.

Other people stay. Look their family’s are together. Look they go and attend the funeral. But at what cost to them?! If it’s a scrabble toward worthiness, that battle is already lost.

(May I only stay where I am nurtured and valued consistently. May I nurture and value consistently those I love and have responsibility for and to.

These are my vows

May I recognize and have my eyes open to a relationship being abandoned and not nurtured or engaged in so I may never have to be so cold to myself again.

May I notice if I have grown cold or abandoned. And have the courage I need to breath life back in, if the cause is worthy. )

Maybe it doesn’t have to cost for them, but it does for me. I must permit myself my own truth, rather than dissociate from it for anesthetic value.

Trust and Permission

The only way to feel a sense of wholeness and worthiness, especially if the roots weren’t naturally provided, is to be understanding and accepting of yourself. So others can do the same. Or that’s what I’m finding anyway.

Want to be understood? Take the time to be understanding to yourself, of yourself, for yourself. She, they, her, him, must be included.

Must belong

I was never loyal to myself. I was loyal to even an idea of a healthy family. I kept trying to see what ingredients would create one and kept trying. Like a mad scientist, only to be misunderstood further.

Mirages

Until my vulnerabilities got used so thoroughly against me I became forced to learn how to have a relationship with myself.

I was staring the abuse and neglect in the face until I dis identified and realized it was not my self. The self was preserved on ice.

Heart throbs, heart melts…. Heart beat easily 120 bpm on so many days. I didn’t even know my own post traumatic stress. I didn’t know that’s what it was. It was my fault like everything else.

It was tricky at first…. A clumsy dance. This relationship with me….

This is how scattered and shattered my brain is. It blanks and grasps at a memory or a thought, even as a trap door lies right beneath my feet. Or a panther lies in wait guarding the memory. Can’t get the good without the bad Christina. Evil laughter.

What if it’s not real….

What if it is…

This is what the work looks like for me

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We All Become Our Parents in the End? I Don’t Think So

Christina Aguilera Just a Fool is todays angsty song …..

Random thoughts before I begin my client day. I’m out walking around the green. Looking longingly at benches to read on. Longing….

I’m contemplating words of an ex partner, some of the worst that could ever be said to me. We all become our parents in the end was the gist of it. I vehemently disagree and in my case I’m no where close, but being accused by scorned lovers when the relationship died was very unpleasant.

I went to lunch at Edge of The Woods yesterday. Their wraps have really gone down hill since the pandemic. The experience was lovely though. Exploring and finding new things.

I’m in the midst of discovering and becoming, finding the kind of adventures I want. Without that being daunting and feeling filled with land mines.

The sun beats down on my skin….. sweat drips down the small of my back and my neck and I love it. Primal.

Peaceful and primal is possible? I should think yes.

I bought a gardens something protein powder yesterday and I’m excited to make a smoothie with it this morning, even though it never tastes like smoothie king. Oh well. Drip drip….. sweat.:.. music…. Movement…: dreams!

I’m craving and pursuing health in all matters and as a human that’s hard. Consistency is hard, but I love the fruit of this labor. The flavor melting in my mouth. Descriptives.

So I wrote this the other day and didn’t post it. And now I’m in Asbury New Jersey. Joisy. Sun, sand, walks, reading, kiddos (little ones not mine), and just observing life.

And now this is weeks later again and I’m home on another adventure. I have a date with twin A today. My eighteen year old beauty who loves horses, and has a gigantic heart. We are getting lobstah rolls and then let’s be honest probably icecream. Mmmm.

It’s a Friday, therapy in the mornings, often a client or two peppered in to offset the ending of financial support from the other parent, and then an endless span of hours that’s usually filled faster than they can unfold. Today is pest control (mice ick), and notes, many many notes.

I bought a microphone, the one doctor Ramani has, lol. On Amazon Prime day of course. Will it be another item in my collection to dust, like the video camera and pulse oximeters to do Gottman therapy with. Sigh. Will I have a podcast? How can I choose just one thing?

Where is there room for me in my life. It’s all about you, the critic from past relationships gone bad chirps. Everything is always about you. Nothing was ever about me. Cognitive dissonance. Trapped, in the past, in the future, inside a coping mechanism.

Caged

Free

All or nothing

This is me….

I was talking to my therapist the other day about how I had imagined my life. As it turns out my first divorce still haunts me in the form of how that has effected my children’s lives. The way things were dealt with or not dealt with.

Anyway, I was telling her I had always had a dream of being with that one person your whole life. Knowing them in a way where you know all their selves. Where you grow together. I was devastated by divorce and realizing I was gay, it was a betrayal of everything I had dreamt of and everything I set out to do.

(Everything after became a dissociated blur in so many ways. In such a hurry to correct. To still have that with someone while my kids were little. And all the rushing was always the thing that made life the hardest. I had no discipline or no secure foundation to know that. To know there was another way. I didn’t know. Can you forgive me? Can I forgive me. Please.)

Which was to create a family that stayed through it all.

Now I just try to find where I fit ….into life, into my self, into another person, another family…. It’s often overwhelming, it’s often beautiful.

Mostly lost, a little found, inside a life where insecurity used to abound. There’s a budding security.

She reflected that I had that with my kids, but it doesn’t feel like it, because I was always desperately searching for my lost self.

I was

And desperately seeking to be loved, and more to be understood, when I didn’t understand myself.

And maybe that means they were searching for me…. That’s heartbreaking, but when I go back and look I held, I read, I snuggled, I was right there. I had the privilege of being home with them their most formative years. Do their little bodies remember? Will my painful mind?

What do I do with all of this now?

I get up and try again…. To be more loving, more present, to listen and hold space. To believe it’s not too late to be the mom I dreamed of having and being. It’s much more difficult now as I have to translate this to a template where they have their own lives and need me differently.

I want to go back and also I don’t….

I keep moving forward….

Being the change

At the conclusion of this post, which is now, I’ll be full circle to where the post began. Feet hitting the pavement….. pounding.

Walking my way through recovery.

Dancing my way through life….

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You’re Giving me Nothing but Shattered Dreams

Darkly Dreaming Dexter Drastically Disturbs Dramatically Dulls
Pain

https://open.spotify.com/track/5DHQKZCOZhGNTbYBCekWx0?si=ZcId9_tnTA2BqYgKLU85ag&context=spotify%3Aartist%3A6fOMl44jA4Sp5b9PpYCkzz

Good morning! From the bath, because where else would I be on an easy like Sunday morning…

There’s a new Dr. Teals and I’m enjoying it. The house is cleaning person clean (something I never imagined having), and I’m trying to find ways to keep it that way. They carve a path and make a special reset, and we scuttle around attempting to emulate.

Do you want to emulate or carve a path?

The girls are being celebrated (Graduation) in upstate New York, with beloved friends and family. Just us chickens here. Chickens ha. A phrase my grandparents would say. I remember more these days, about the little things that weren’t as terrifying as the others.

Speaking of terrifying, the other morning I was driving to an early morning appointment in New Haven. Just relaxing and driving on the highway. Right lane around 55 mph, slow for me 😉 and Bang….. my drivers side window explodes. I mean explodes. So dazed. Looking for a bullet hole. Confused. Pull off the highway onto some exit and into a laundromat liquor store combo near West Haven. I think.

Parked across two spots, door open, standing. What does one do when each movement risks a cut, never mind getting home. It’s natural for me not to panic in panicky situations, I save that for nearly all regularly daily situations. Backwards in every sense of the word. The panic tried to mount when I realized I had an ass full of glass literally. And as I tried to wipe it away began to cut myself and my back.

Still looking for a bullet hole that shock prevented me from feeling. Thinking when I’d lift my shirt up there would be glass lodged into my back. A wound matching the emotional distress I was under that made sense of it all.

I’ve been looking, hoping maybe even, for that visible wound my whole life.

I wandered into the liquor store at 8 am…. And they sent me next door to the laundromat where there was a dirty bathroom and a gentleman on a folding chair drinking a Corona. Didn’t have the bandwidth to worry about that. Was not however going to ask for assistance with glass removal. I’ll do that myself. Normal for me.

Got the glass out of my pants, though scratchy parts within the waistband would remain. Went back outside and used glovebox napkins to break out the rest of the glass so it didn’t hit me as I was driving home. It’s all down inside the door and sounds like a box full of broken glass when the car down is open or shut. Tinkle tinkle.

Came home made calls, Google searched and attempted to understand. The most interesting aspect of this for me of course was my response of trying to figure out how I felt about what happened. Not surprisingly I didn’t know.

As I observed myself throughout the day my focus was nil. Just very out of it. Like it hadn’t happened. By the afternoon I began to entertain the idea it was real and did actually happen and imagine getting in the car again and hearing that noise and began to shake.

Finally it registered that one of my favorite and safest places, sacred to me had just been changed probably forever, at least in some small corner of my mind. Forever is a long time. I’ll always wonder now if that will happen or could happen to one of my children. I’ll always wonder what would have happened it trauma hadn’t given me military like training to remain completely calm in a situation like that.

I should have been in an accident. Swerved. All sorts of things. Instead that typically dissociative reaction took over. Silver linings, am I right ?!

By the late afternoon I ached so bad and couldn’t hang on another second and canceled my evening. I broke down in tears as I allowed myself to think about the lack of safety I had just experienced and to entertain it in reality Vs the dreamlike state our brain tries to keep us in when unthinkable things are happening.

Unthinkable things…..

My nervous system is shot, it was already shot, and pardon the metaphor.

So anyway that happened. The window will be fixed, just like new …. Maybe? But will I ever trust a car window again!? One more layer of jumpy, like the cherry on top. Just what I needed, ironic it’s a Cars song I enjoy.

Am I being dramatic? The question we women particularly are trained to ask ourselves. The answer of course is always yes. Programming is powerful stuff.

Dark humor sticks a toe in the water and I’ve thought of why do you keep me walking on broken glass. A fave old Annie Lennox song. I’ve been nostalgic lately.

Once you have become unsafe enough even when something breaks you lose the ability to feel about it. Desensitization. Therapy is at times RE sensitization. It’s hard not to get all what’s the point about it, when one realizes how quickly safety can be shattered, seemingly, again…. And again.

I spent a couple of years in the shards of shattered dreams. Every where I turned, everything I would touch, tiny cuts. Tinkle tinkle. Oh another song …. https://youtu.be/hVNBC1LI8hs. I will never get tired of the 80’s. Johnny Hates Jazz.

Am I being dramatic?

Today it’s a relaxing Sunday. There is no glass. Going for a nice drive and to see James Taylor this evening. Wading in my dreams in the bath this morning. Gentle. Warm. Safe.

Preparing, always preparing to enter the harrows of the world again.

What dangers may lurk in a typical mundane concert filled evening…..

Stay tuned

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The Guards Don’t Relent, They are Their own Machine

“Every soul is like a minnow, every mind is like a shark.” Leonard Cohen

I am preparing for family therapy tonight. It has felt like preparing for battle, and it never should have. That’s inside of me, I tried to never let it out. That wasn’t an option. It leaked and poured out the seems and the more aware I was, the worse I felt.

The worse they felt….

The battle was always inside of me, and it would always create one outside. It began before I was born, and it’s my task, not my burden. Though if you caught me on any difficult day, I would tell you it was.

My battle is my task, trauma as a task to absolve. Is that the right word? I damn sure know it doesn’t dissolve, because that’s such a tame word, and it doesn’t.

Feral, tame, feral, tame….. battle battle battle….

To see things clearly and with safety is the ultimate privilege anyone could ever have.

Don’t cry for me, don’t hold me…. Just see me. Show me you see me. The guard goes down just a little, but he never takes off his armor. It’s stifling inside of here, this suit of metal. Once you’re hit so many times it never goes down.

All of the intensity of not receiving support fired straight at my kids. The truth is unbearable at times. I want to change out my suit of armor for robes. Even choosing an outfit is exhausting. I’d like to simplify everything. Maybe it will help. The Buddhist principles. Maybe they will help.

Can anything help?

Is it better to be a tortured soul than a lost one? Are those my only choices ? Most of my life it’s felt like it.

Is this the hill I’m going to die on? The best they could say is at least she never gave up. I guess that’s something for them, and everything for someone like me.

“All I ever wanted was some support that was unconditional. I tried to find that in partnership and failed every time because that’s not an unconditional relationship.

I had to give up me to have security.

Who would I be without my guard. I never let it down anywhere or with anyone except in the bath maybe is where that began.

I ache that I didn’t give you a better family life. That I “failed” every time and became more ashamed.

I ache at the word selfish. I never had a self to enjoy. Everything I looked like I was enjoying I was just trying at, trying to learn it.

I was trying to protect you and that backfired.

That I couldn’t just create a loving and warm mother out of thin air. That I didn’t keep my focus on you because primarily of resources emotionally and financially.

And then to shame myself for it, and then to be shamed for it.

Is agony…..

When I feel I have no support I run around like a feral animal, lashing and biting. I run scared all the time. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone and I’m sorry for the amounts I gave to you.

So many parts child still…

My trauma is also yours…..

I’m sorry

It takes an act of god to access my feelings, let alone show you. So I try to bridge the gap with writing because I can safely access myself there.

I’m like a human machine for detecting patterns and behavior because I spent my life trying to make sure I could keep you safe from me (my trauma).

You just wanted my time and attention and I did too. Everyone was in scarcity.

Now we could have this thing and I don’t know how to let go.

To find the balance of not being walked all over, but also having respect for myself and being able to love you.

I’d like to love you. To have and to make room to be loving. Please know that I need help with this, it wasn’t naturally given to me.

And I also need to be your mom to teach you and have boundaries etc.

This is often out of balance. I’m desperately seeking balance.”

Desperate causes so much harm. The feeling alone.

Desperate my whole life.

I’m running out of that energy and will I land at the bottom of my own inner well (sacred space) defeated in a puddle of my own shame and self loathing.

Or is it possible to rise out of something like this. ?

Balance

If my guard lets down at this point in my life will I just drop lifeless to the ground? It’s all I have ever known. This is my truth.

It took years to turn a sensitive, loving, creative child into a sentinel.

How can you ask me to undo that?

A major rule of therapy is you cannot strip away someone defense mechanism or reveal them to themselves without first replacing that with something more functional. You have to make a safe landing space first.

I’ve been this for countless people in my office, and often times the opposite for my children.

I will need to live with the balance of this truth, with forgiveness and mercy in my heart, if I am to live without constant suffering.

Atonement

How did I even get here? I’m not even religious :p That all caused me so much damage, repression, shame… it was in the wrong hands of course. Are there wrong hands ? Or just incredibly broken ones.

The questions are endless…..

“Suffering had led me to wherever I am, suffering has made me rebel against my own weakness. – Leonard Cohen

“What Happens to The Heart.”

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An Abundance of Recovery Tools…

Good morning! It’s sacred Sunday and now that I’m old and retired, only two days out, somehow the release of some of the pressure I had felt, is opening up the space to do things out of joy, rather than pressure. Perhaps I’ll have time for grammar and to tackle the previous one large run on sentence above.

While watching Dexter yesterday I was looking up recipes, marry me chicken, chicken Kiev casserole, and contemplating the waffle maker with Ube (purple yam) pancake mix Tyler brought from the latest Trader Joe’s sensation. My goodness that takes me back. The buying of items that were new and exciting all the years I worked there. I was never an amazing cook. Too rushed for that most likely. But there was always variety and abundance.

The exercise is to notice more of what you’ve done right and less of what you’ve screwed up. It’s fairly straight forward, but very difficult for those committed to their own suffering.

While personally I’m trying to navigate my relationship with food into a healthier one. Less all or nothing. Portion control. I’m fairly certain it’s my emotions that guide most of my eating, and I’d like to introduce some logic into the equation.

I’m enjoying my bath and my coffee and going to toggle through a few different books until I settle into a zone. Writing and restless and I still have a finicky dance, but it’s being sorted. My tattoo is itchy, oh so itchy. A reminder of the different stages of the healing process. A metaphor if I delved. I delve less these days. I want normal to a degree. I am basking in normal and mundane.

I can have all the fantasy I want with my writing without having to explode my life each time I have a craving. Wow that’s an old version of me. So hard on myself. She is only there in nostalgia not in practice. There was so much more going on to my beginnings and endings of my relationships and I’m working on navigating the shame at the ways I saved myself. Especially as I didn’t even know what I was doing.

I have come to find most people are just stumbling about. The majority of them. I’m not some big bad wolf. They are also just trying to sort themselves, to ground, to overcome their cravings and short comings.

Don’t other yourself, you’re most likely, more like everyone else, than some anomaly. I take comfort in that rather than offense. Human, all too human.

Anyway it’s a glorious Sunday: there will be home cooked food smell, dogs, teens in and out, my stand in father popping by with groceries, cards maybe, some straightening of the house. Sundays are so full if possibilities. A little admin and notes hopefully. A whole lotta love.

It’s a full life….

The nagging of my mind to find threat and eradicate it or succumb to it in some fashion is no longer present. It has been replaced with bliss and joy and possibilities. Don’t get me wrong some bouts of irritable feelings remain, little waves, reminders of confusion and pain.

But any desire for those things is quickly reminded of the big picture. It’s more automatic than it isn’t, which is wholly opposite of how things used to be. It used to be automatic to be drawn to self sabotage and harm. That is the sad truth.

I have been determined to make way for clarity to create and damnit I will! I have no doubts in my determination. Not nearly so many as my concentration, but that can be worked at. And working at it I am.

I watched a Les Carter video the other day entitled, are Narcissists just mean Co Dependents. Within the video he talked about how both categories have low peace. This is ultimately my compelling why for recovery. I need peace like I need oxygen. You don’t find it, you must be it to have it. That’s the secret.

Want peace? Be peaceful. Sit and do nothing and see what happens. Stop distracting yourself with anything. Be still.

Anyway I referenced a line from the video in my sessions Friday and Saturday because it fit so well. He was describing both as “having a chronic undertow of agitation and irritability and to be driven by insecurity.” Oh my that line, driven by insecurity, most of my life Mr. Carter, most of my life. He describes displacing this pain on others, a transfer I was unwilling to continue.

The work is arduous and I’d try for a long time, not quite reach the root and then give up into comfort and try to concoct a story about it that this was right and real and everything. These conclusive stories ever the protection for my terror ridden mind, only made things worse in the long run. They seduced me with relief in the moment. Never again. Never say never, but I believe in the maintenance of my work.

Anyway on this gorgeous pile of hours that spread out endlessly with no plan I will leave you with this from the video. “I’m sorry you never learned to draw upon your own inner confidence, something went dreadfully wrong in your past.” Oh my heart, and then also, “they think discarding people makes them independent, but they are actually just avoidant.“

I can so easily recognize distancing behaviors in my self and others now, as well as the painful cycles that come with attachment wounds.

I use my life experiences to sharpen my gift. It no longer feels like a curse. I have a much more well trained mind than I used to, and it makes life so much better. This mind has realistic expectations for my self and others, and knows how to find what it needs rather than causing such a stir, out of frustration or boredom. This mind is realistic and grounded rather than a funhouse full of mirrors distorting images.

Rather than rage against what I didn’t or don’t have and feel sorry for myself. Stuck firmly in the Karpman Drama Triangle, right along with my teens I am individuating, in small pieces, and healing in leaps and bounds.

An abundance of recovery…..

Ps I got Wordle on try three this time. Woo! I’m getting the hang of taking my time with things, rather than rushing with very little mindfulness. Of course a lot of it is also luck, but I think that’s true of life as well. More than I ever was able to admit to myself before. That would have felt very unsafe for me.

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A High School Degree and Lots of Mercy for Me

Go easy on me….. I was still a child
Didn’t get the chance to
Feel the world around me
I had no time to choose
What I chose to do
So go easy on me baby

My girls graduate high school today. It’s surreal. Almost an out of body experience, but in a good way this time. I am sifting through so many moments on this journey.

My main regret is that so much of it was stressful for them in ways I may not have even noticed and it has caused them harm. They are in recovery too. Hopefully less than I feel, but I know they are. Acknowledging but not drowning, just doing slowly better, is the sweet spot I’ve found. It’s what I strive for.

This morning I am nauseated (injection), it’s been a few days of it and I’m getting tired of it. But other than that my tattoo is healing well this time, or I’m just less anxious and more used to the process. It’s probably that 😉 it’s amazing to see my growth even there with my anxiety.

I went to https://www.bloodroot.com last night to commemorate the work done with a beloved person as they transition to their next chapter. It was a making sacred ritual of this rite of passage and it couldn’t have been more magical.

The place itself is something out of a fairy tale and I may need to begin sitting outside or in, and writing there. There’s something about it. All of it. It’s across from Captains Cove and I could hear the band (Eagle Eye Cherry always takes me back), from the kind of distance I’d like to be hearing the band from. Across a body of water. Subtle and uninterrupting.

I felt like I was transported in time to the Whistle Stop Cafe…..

The tree. The lighting. The women. The books. The food cooked where you can see with nothing but love. I’ve been thinking about how food filled with love tastes different and how meals have marked me with forever memories. When I have been cooked for and shown that I matter. I’m important.

I saw a younger version of me in my office yesterday and she just wants someone to be enthusiastic about her and to be less lonely. I lived all these years not even knowing I felt that way. Not knowing how I felt at all. This feelings thing is still hard. Too little sometimes, too much others. It’s a battle sometimes, at least what I am able to show.

She is not alone. But now I think of where that leads to. A line from a Les Carter vid this am, “I’m sorry you never learned to draw upon your own inner confidence, something went dreadfully wrong in your past.” Oh my heart about this line.

All in the same evening, I sat with someone newly minted on their journey, so lost to themselves. Their value invisible to them, as I scramble to show them, with everything I’ve got. All the tools, and my passion. And I sat with someone who is nearly, if not seven years into the process.

Someone generous who shared with me that I’ve been their safe space and that I always showed up with everything I have consistently and that they knew. That this is what allowed them to be challenged by me when it’s so hard to see what we are doing to ourselves in the aftermath of what has been done to us.

I don’t think there could have been a better time for me to hear these words. As I’ve spent so much time burning in the fire of my regrets and all I didn’t know. My awareness.

I’m processing through how with my kids what I do and who I am seems invisible, how they feel about me. I was so reactive to that for awhile, and now I have surrendered to acceptance of what we will create now in this more peaceful place.

It’s tempting to become euphoric at the info shared last night and to become indignant with them. But the relationship is different it cannot be compared. It is the boundaries themselves that help the power and for it to be effective. Change those and it’s so easy for there to be hurt, disappointment, misinterpretation.

I live much better inside solid lines of expectations and yet my full real human self yearns to burst forth with creativity.

My darkness that lives inside as a result of my painful beginning has been crafted into a gift. My unfortunate innate ability to control my emotional response, to my detriment, helps me as a clinician, yet hinders me as a human.

I need to ask for understanding and acceptance about this, rather than fall into spirals of shame. This is some of my work. We must teach others how to love us. Without collaboration you can never learn love. It must be learned. It can feel magical in the beginning, but to get it off the ground after the initial ingredients are present, you also need to learn the other person.

And if you don’t know yourself first, you will inevitably resent this new responsibility. Particularly if your plate is already full. In the past I ended up resenting anyone else needing a single additional thing from me. I lived in a state of compassion fatigue, and total and utter burnout for years and didn’t even know it. That’s how invisible I can be to myself. That is a dangerous thing. Operating on pure survival.

I still have triggers and reactions I don’t always love, but when I sit with myself gently until I’m calm, I come out the other side with grace and forgiveness.

Mercy

Today is going to be an emotional day. Such an emotional day, and a long one. It’s injection day, I have a few clients this morning also with my therapy in between, nails with my girls, figure out schedule, graduation, and a large dinner reservation after. All the things. I couldn’t be more proud.

I am humbled by the love that I feel and that is developing inside and out. It is transforming me. Most of the time I’m in too much awe to be able to articulate. But we all know that won’t last too long and I’ll be talking away about it.

I’m obsessed with Olivia Rodrigo. Driver’s License is my new repeat song and anything by her and I must admit Harry Styles new album. I can blame my clients for this one.

Lakes, water, sand, sun, trees, books, words…. Passion…..

What’s next? What’s now?

Presence

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Blissing out in the Great Wide Open….

11:11 at a favorite spot by the water. I smell the sand, the salt, and A & D ointment, ha. I finally got back to the sleeve. My rose under the broken dome. This has been a long awaited piece, the shoulder cap. I took a hiatus after a bad saniderm reaction and some financial RE shuffling that needed to take priority.

I’m now a real adult…. Who is contributing to an SEP fund as the employee and employer. I had long needed to have my own retirement set up and feel secure. My home is worth quite a lot more than I just financed it for. Now it’s just about building security. I want to be in a place where I don’t have to stress if I need time to care for my health or take time to travel. I never want to be in a position again where I feel guilty for taking time off, or afraid depending on my client load.

I have a plan in place to pay off my student loans and to limit my tax liability.

I seem to just be inviting and creating more abundance in all areas.

These are my priorities right now, and just being extremely present! I don’t know how I was living how I was. My resting heart beat is so much lower. I repeat I don’t know how I was living like that. It’s surreal to me now. Lost in my head all the time. Burning alive daily with insecurity.

I take a deep breath….

My mind still desperately wants to cling to what’s next ? I know that I have knowledge that is valuable and I’m trying to figure out how to unlock it in a different arena than 1-1 sessions. I’m not sure if that’s even my path, or if it’s just an idea of a dream.

I spent so much of my life after things I thought I wanted, without ever really knowing myself. So I guess what you’ll be seeing is me writing about being me. That’s the plan anyway. More than thoughts it’s my identity that’s taking shape. I am recovering who I was before all the fear and pain.

Is that a thing? I think it is.

Who knew it could be so simple to discover yourself, to make time for that, to create permission and space for that process. To find out who you were born to be, who you want to be, and the intersection. All the little unique things about a person. All of mine I hid, or hid from, to afraid to risk anything.

Exploring my risk tolerance in a lot of areas.

What do I want most ? To travel? To write? To be near the lake? To create? The questions are beginning to feel exciting, and the burden and crushing weight of possibility and decisions is lessening.

Why is it so hard to answer the question, “what do you want and what do you need?”

It’s so strange to transition with my children from the fear of fucking up being responsible for them, to the privilege of witnessing their personal discoveries and the carving of their paths. What a shift !

Getaway Car…. I’m on a Taylor kick.

I’m taking lots of walks…. I see the world now. I don’t live in my head. I want to shout from the mountain tops. I want to pave the way for others, create the formula, share the knowledge in my heart.

I want to bask in the glow of living. Loving life itself. Blue water, clear skies.

To find out how to explain what it’s like to have a clear head. To not be burning alive. To be emotional nearly every day about these changes.

This is where I am. And I have no idea where I’ll be, but I know the prospects don’t feel like life and death.

This is recovery ….

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You Might as Well Face it You’re Addicted to Love….

A childhood memory. There are very few. My skin sticking to the leather in summer. Before seatbelts were a thing. Listening to Robert Palmer with the woman who gave birth to me. I thought she was so beautiful then. She was everything. Oh so cool. Beautiful. The Sun shown on her regardless of how dangerous she was for me.

This morning I’m thinking about addiction and how it eats everything in it’s path.

I’m thinking about my own propensities towards it, and the differences between those with the actual gene and me. The ones I believe to be true anyway. I’m not sure if I have it too and I’m just committed or if I truly don’t understand the disease.

Well that’s not entirely true as I work myself through. We still have the power of choice and no one said those are easy. Not easy but still a choice to get help and stay a course that leads to feeling better in the bigger picture versus the moment. God it takes a lot of work.

I watched 28 Days last night. They do such a good job portraying the blur and how easy it is to not care about those around you while in the throes. God it’s painful. For the person struggling and their loved ones.

Today in therapy I will be working on some of my own triggers around addiction, and I’ll go see Julie after my traditional therapy to bolster that work. My energy healer. I don’t know what I would do without both, all of my therapies. I’d be lost. I’ve been lost. It isn’t pleasant.

My triggers. The sights, smells, sounds, the tiniest Indication of addiction in so many capacities. Even the attitude an addict has. I have no patience or compassion in this area. I know I’d be told by loved ones that I’m being hard on myself.

Let’s see if I can walk myself gently into my own truth. A favorite form of healing. By being able and courageous enough to write out my truths, even if they could hurt someone else.

Addiction has affected my life so profoundly and from a young age. I’m not alone in this. In fact it probably has most people in one way or another.

I’m honestly not sure how mine compares, but I am sure the comparing doesn’t matter. So let’s find the facts if I give myself permission. My predatory father got my younger mother into cocaine. I know that. I was born a product of that. An unhealthy unbalanced relationship between an older married man (as I have been told) and a teenage woman raised Footloose religious style.

What I remember of this was the powder on the mirrors with the razor blade. A blur of drugs and alcohol and bad men, and my mother being wildly unpredictable emotionally. The scars are immense. The triggers that I don’t even know when they happen. They take me over emotionally. It feels embarrassing and shameful to have things inside that can be activated without your consent and make you react so intensely and then be ashamed about it.

Shame is the ultimate addiction isn’t it? Along with co dependency. The attempt to distract from all of this by focusing on what other people should do to get better, to the exclusion of the self.

Sigh. How does anyone figure this out.

I get easily addicted to comfort, after having gone without so long. And sometimes it blinds me to my own higher truths and I have to force myself outside it so I can balance my reality and get a clear look.

Clarity is something I often focus on in my energy healings. My lens is often dirty with the carnage that the triggers leave. It’s so desperately painful to live like this. It’s also infinitely beautiful, the awareness and gratitude it creates. That alone leaves reasons for living when so many from my background succumb to addiction or take their own lives eventually.

They remain haunted and often don’t find ways to cope that are sustaining or healthy.

God I hope my nearest and dearest find their way through the dark wood. I don’t want to have to do life without their smiles and hearts warming the way. I don’t know what I would do.

I am in many ways finding mine, but I am committed to awareness and not repeating my mistakes. That I will say. When there’s always so many new ones to make it would be boring to run on an infinite loop. But patterns themselves are heavily woven into the dynamic.

Anything can be addicting. Grief. Pancakes. Dogs. Sweaters. Books 😉 I mean I could go on forever. It’s harder to see where we don’t need more of a good thing. Notice I did not list cats 😉 a trauma trigger in and of itself.

The only thing you can do with someone struggling with it is love them, never withdraw love, but have radical boundaries so you don’t explode with anger and resentment daily. That is what I’ve learned most recently about the beast.

To take care of yourself even better, battle your own demons with even more passion, so you can show the way. Showing the way is much more productive than telling it I have found. Practice more, preach less, and just be in your own integrity. And to do that you can’t get caught up in the emotional traps the dynamic sets up. Anger, resentment, rage, futility, draining of energy.

All of that merely feeds the disease.

I am learning…..

The first rule of addiction is don’t lie, to yourself or anyone else. Don’t lie about anything ever. Lying lowers your vibration and takes you out of your integrity. I would say lying is the hallmark of addiction. Withholding, shaping the truth to try and reduce shame.

I can feel a lie immediately. I feel it in my bones, and even when I believe the best in things the truth eventually accumulates and rises to the surface.

I can’t think of anything more painful than a lie. It causes so much destruction in its wake for so many. Lies are felt whether they are discovered or not. I cannot abide a lie. There are some special rules for the people who have been neglected and abused in childhood. You cannot lie to one of them. They had their soul stolen at a young age, they cannot tolerate anything else. They should not have to.

I should not have to. I cannot.

If you break my trust you break my soul. If someone I love breaks my soul, that is the one thing that can lead to giving up on myself, which is addiction. Depression. Giving up.

My heart can handle breaking. It’s not ideal, but I can understand the natural changes of life and human nature. It’s understandable. Someone that says they love you lying to you, that isn’t.

I’m not interested in excuses. Mine or anyone else’s. I’ve been accused of being hard on people, but I do not believe this is too much to ask. To choose to be surrounded by people who show up for themselves and live in integrity.

That is my expectation for my one precious life and I won’t back down from that.

Onward …..

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No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

“And you call me up again just to break me like a promise
So casually cruel in the name of being honest
I’m a crumpled up piece of paper lying here
‘Cause I remember it all, all, all”

Let’s just see what comes. It’s time….I always think. And then I get busy and don’t let the wings of inspiration take me to that special place. Home.

Speaking of home…. I bought one. Mine. A redo of sorts. There will be a house warming, why not, really because it’s already a warm home. This time death or any other death will not cloud my accomplishment or my joy.

I often just marvel and awe at the fact I am able to own a home like this just in my name. I can’t tell you how much work it has taken to get a healthy relationship with money, or anything really. I could just cry thinking about it.

I am finishing books, the most recent of which is Momma and The Meaning of Life by Yalom of course. And I’ll post some excerpts from it that I love! Prior to that was the Honey Bus, I related to that one so much, and found parts of myself that may have never been recovered without it. I’m also working on Hillbilly Elegy, The Tender Bar, and East of Eden.

East of Eden I could take a lifetime to read as one page is so delicious I’m description, metaphor, and insight…. That it’s too good not to savor slowly. It’s the kind of book that you drink in every word, and pray it lasts, because you never want it to be over.

I am blissfully present most of the time these days. My brain no longer on fire. Sure the spirals occasionally threaten, the over thinking my brain is so naturally programmed for, but it’s not natural for me any longer. Peace has taken over.

I lived as a walking talking trauma response for almost 40 years before I became aware of how severe my own was. It’s like working with clients was always walking me towards that truth gently at a pace I could tolerate. Funny as I would often see myself as not gentle with others, because my style is very direct and protective and I’m sometimes too full with knowledge. Who knew there could be such a thing.

Sometimes it isn’t knowledge that does the most healing, those words are hard for me to say without choking on the resistance. I have learned the heart had the most healing power, once you can figure out how to get the guards to stand down.

We are all in this together, my defense mechanisms and me. I thank them for their service daily and also let them enjoy their retirement to a degree. They will likely always carry and always watch carefully, but peace is their main objective.

I have learned peace is just another way to protect oneself. Peace of mind is a powerful ally.

Being so disconnected with myself and keeping away from my children while focusing on providing has taken its toll and given me a fair amount of regrets. Fear is a great thief. So much pain is caused with it being the guiding force. I wade through it daily in my work, and as I process my life and the meaning of it.

My mind is an interesting force some days it can remember everything and some days it can’t even catch a thought. I used to become so disturbed by these inconsistencies and now I attempt to embrace them and it with compassion.

The truth of the matter is I live daily with a lot of psychological pain. It’s a fact. I asked Melissa (my therapist) the other day how sick am I? She worries it was self deprecation I’m sure, and I assure her I need it for understanding and validation of my pain. We explore for curiosity at first because she can’t answer without context. We can’t answer without context, could be disastrous.

Later she concedes that I am very traumatized. It’s a fact at this point. It’s a fact that I lived without the knowledge or language for my entire life. Just stumbling through it in excruciating disconnection from myself, and being able to access stable logic to balance me…. Keep me floating steady.

I use my trauma daily in my practice, to inform my care that I give, and to help others like me connect dots to understanding themselves. And while I’m working the pain eases. It returns white hot in almost all other times, but while I’m using my pain to help it all but disappears. This is the point in Man’s Search for Meaning. The light that shines out of the darkness. To be a light in someone’s dark, lights my way as well. You cannot share light without also being in its glow.

This is how I survive my painful mind, that looks for threat everywhere. That causes so many triggers and flashbacks that I must manage daily. I must manage myself and not turn that into a negative view about myself. That’s a lot of managing. Never mind the raising of children, the keeping of a home, and owning a successful practice.

I have so many triggers. It’s so easy to distort reality and it’s taken a lifetime to admit that which feels like defeat or failure, when it is actually a very real disability.

It is brain damage. All of those times I was teased or insulted for not being able to concentrate, or why I can’t remember how to get somewhere even after twenty times of driving there. The worst of which is that my kids feel like I don’t care when my mind drifts when they wanted so much to talk to me about their day. My mind was thinking about our next meal, money, how I was going to feel any acceptance or belonging, but for them I was just absent during all those times.

It never was a lack of caring. That misunderstanding cuts so deep. The misunderstanding of myself as bad, wrong, deeply flawed has been my dark passenger all of my life.

This is the first time I’ve ever lived without it as much as humanly possible. There will always be a tendency, but I’ve gained control of my own mind using awareness. and tons of trauma work.

Melissa decodes me to myself each session when my mind attempts to twist things into a narrative that makes sense, a battle. She helps my mind make a peace treaty before the troops are even on the field. Their uniforms are getting dusty, they are getting out of shape and playing cards, but they will always be waiting if I need them. Security.

If I don’t get a dose, my mind starts to become cluttered with intrusive thoughts and I start to fall back into triggers. After two years I moved to one time weekly and sometimes I’m barely breathing with the rally of the troops just before Friday mornings. I have held on so tightly until I can understand myself and others in a better light.

I breathe with relief after a session…. Even the heaviest of sighs are with so much lightness Of being. It burns off, the anxiety eventually burns off with enough exposure. It’s walking through the fire that’s tricky.

Anyway I promised some Yalom, we are almost there. Some details before…. Twin B also has Crohns disease and is on Humira. Not the thing I wanted to pass to my kids. It’s heartbreaking. 🙁 it’s interesting watching her navigating this and everyone just says she’s lucky to have me, and that’s still hard to accept as true, though I’m much further on that journey.

My girls are days away from high school graduation. They are strong, kind, insightful, warm, and I could not be more proud, and my son as well. He’s sensitive in the best way, though that also sometimes turns against him. I hope I’ll be able to help with that, just by showing up. I am finally able to enjoy my children without being terrified of fucking them up, since I already have of course.

But finally I can see more good, than the bad. More good in me and from me, and not hold myself in contempt for the ways I learned to survive. For how my mind became programmed. It truly wasn’t my fault, and I truly have always taken responsibility for my own healing. It’s just been a very long road.

I am tired. I am so far beyond tired. Yesterday I walked almost 7 miles working on being healthy and today I woke up sore in all my joints, and aching. Every attempt I make seems to end in punishment, but I don’t choose to keep that narrative. I take deep breaths, pauses, ask for what I need, and keep showing up.

I stretch. I cry when I need. I say how I feel. I am learning and teaching and living. I appreciate life as a gift, even amidst pain. The pain comes and goes and there are moments in life so sweet that all can be forgotten and I’m blessed with so many of those.

I didn’t realize how shaped I am by the theories that resonate. Yalom is in so many ways my guiding force. “Dr. Whitehorn genuinely wanted to be taught. He was a collector and had in this manner accumulated an astounding treasure trove of factual curios over the years. You and your patients both win he would say, if you let them teach you enough about their lives and interests. Learn about their lives; you will not only be edified but you will ultimately learn all you need to know about their Illness.”

“By allowing the patient to teach him Dr. Whitehorn related to the person, rather than the pathology, of that patient. His strategy invariable enhanced both the patient’s self regard and his or her willingness to be self revealing.

Yalom is honest with patients in a way that at times makes me cringe with imagining. We are not supposed to say something that will hurt them, and god forbid it’s not socially appropriate. One of the vignettes is about a client of his who hears his honest thoughts about her accidentally on a recorded tape he gave her. She never reveals this to him, but finds ways to make it as if she’s found out other people have said this and asks him if he feels she’s this or that.

He is never dishonest with her, and so even with that level of a breach the work becomes successful because her anger at his words motivated her to truly look at herself. The truth itself is what motivated her, when nothing else had budged.

An honest look is worth its weight in gold as far as transformation, and it’s one of the hardest things to do.

All this time later I can finally hold space for the ways my trauma has hurt my children and me. I can operate from a softer space, and from this place worlds open up to me.

I can feel in real time, not only think about how I should feel. That is something that I’m still only getting glimmers of, but it’s a beginning and it will grow.

I have a patience I never had before, mostly with myself, and It has given me a new world to explore within myself and how I see others.

I guess I had (have a lot to say) no surprise there. Where do I start, where do I stop, what goes where? Finally that’s not so overwhelming that I don’t move. For now I’ll just speak, the work will organize itself once I trust it enough.

Once I trust myself ……