#sortingthroughemotions – The Emotional Alchemist

October 6, 2024

This is a post about Divine sensitivity

The misunderstandings of it. The trouble. The gift all of it.

I was driving home yesterday from a trip to Salem with my twins, plus friend and boyfriend.

I do not recommend Salem by the way, not in this season anyway. Disneyland is easier to navigate. We ended up eating Indian food of all things because we couldn’t get into any of the adorable shops or eateries, due to massive crowds and lines.

No thank you. Not even for witchy shit.

One of my twins was saying about how she never knows how to rate her pain when going to a medical professional. I can relate. Which is so interesting because you rate your pain by being able to express how you’re feeling.

So what about for those of us with wounds of expression?

It’s in this stage of life I can see how my traumas have passed to my children. I can see mine even through them. It’s jarring to say the least. It requires a healthy ability to be able to handle the truth, to hold space, to heal. Rather than going into a spiral of guilt, fear, despair.

I would say the most influential work helping me to achieve this is understanding consciousness and the energy it vibrates at. How courage moves us into a new level and more able to eventually achieve actualization.

Letting Go by David R. Hawkins and his maps of consciousness.

So during this conversation they were commenting only from what they have been taught about a time their brother as a young child went to the emergency room for acute stomach pain. He was in ultimate distress. So much so that they called a surgical team assuming his appendix had perhaps burst and gave him morphine right away.

It ended up he had some very bad gas. Which by the way can also cause acute pain. And most importantly none of us knew what was happening. It is natural to seek help and support for pain like that.

No labels of dramatic necessary.

We are healing wounds of being critical in our family at this time.

I am finding the words to share to soothe. The salve.

My hyper vigilance and trauma led me constantly to scanning my environment for threat. It also led me into relationships where I was mistreated and I mistreated right back.

Things I am not proud of. There are plenty.

The only thing that helps is to heal. To make amends. And this is the journey I’ve been on for several years now. Figuring out what supports this work, and what doesn’t.

Getting into my own channel. Channeling.

Ultimate healing.

Anyway I wrote my daughter this morning owning and sharing about what healing I want for us. To be less critical of self and other, without losing an ounce of heart discernment which is very important.

The sensitivity is not the problem.

Pain is the problem. The problem is the problem.

Sensitive is strong and beautiful.

Boundaries are a different matter. The more secure those are the easier the healing journey will be. No more all or nothing.

Heart opening is the work I’m continually doing. Telling others what to do less, listening more. Listen this is absolutely a work in progress. I’m in recovery. I’m not perfect.

But my god I love the journey. Even with its tough moments.

At some point you crest a hill and get a glimpse of the water, when you’ve been walking in the desert.

More and more glimpses of what is possible.

You are possible. I am possible.

On an earthly note I need to walk before doing my writing immersion.

This next couple of weeks will be a series of timing vaccines and pills in safety prep for Bali departure.

I can’t believe I’ll be where my spirit mother first journeyed and later again on her healing journey.

❤️🫶🏼 all my love,

September 29, 2024

A Reason a Season or a Lifetime

Fewer things do I love more than the smell of walking into Barnes and Nobles and hot coffee or cocoa….. sigh

This phrase has been on my mind so much lately. As someone who tried to turn everything into a lifetime because the original blueprint left something to be desired for. How to know what plugs into where. Square peg and a round hole is a particular speciality of mine. Cafe name ?! Maybe !

Apparently you’re supposed to use your emotions to figure these things out. Who knew those weren’t secondary or even unnecessary dead weight. Even someone who can feel them at a level that is super sonic.

Today I dreamed of owning an indie book shop with a running title Sips and Sentences. Coffee of course. Maybe sandwiches named after various literary characters. But maybe just coffee. Definitely dessert. My motto lately: keep it simple sweetie. Or kiss. I talk to myself real gentle and sweet for the most at part these days.

I’m listening to music and walking in the dreary twilight under a slight drizzle. That we will call ambience.

Lake Missoula by Richie and the something is what my Spotify Dj has picked for me. I have Linda R Long Long Time stuck in my head.

These days so many good sentences, strong ones, sprout from the dirt of my mind. And yet somehow the will to commit them isn’t quite where I want it.

Some life force piece missing. For a know it all type I’m pretty blank on this one.

Walks feed my soul.

Sunday dinners too.

I finished Book Lovers today by Emily Henry. My third romance novel this year. Whoa! Something’s happening. Towards authenticity or away?! Hmmm.

My 20th book this year, 2 behind my 30 goal. My queue (I can never spell this word), is burgeoning bursting at the seams. Life’s too short for all I want to read. But I will write a great American Novel. Someone will probably just have to organize it for me.

I’m a little over self help (a total lie), or maybe I just know I’m more full and g shit than I’d like to be. Like most of us I suppose. I think that’s really a beginning. When you end up back at start over and over to get a layer deeper into life. I should be at the center of the earth by now.

And enlightened soul would probably laugh at how much of a beginner I still am.

That’s ok…..

I truly enjoyed it (the book) A lot to relate to actually. Color me surprised.

I like when life surprises me. Sometimes anyway. Ok universe don’t get too carried away with that one. I know what you’re capable of.

Caramel conversations and Apple kisses. It’s about to be fall and I’m feeling it all as usual. My colors are changing too. My leaves about to drop. Naked and shaking again. Visceral, literal, liberal love, haunted pages.

Light and dark fights for the stage. Desires in my sights. Old and young all at once.

When I put words to a melody magic happens.

Each song brings something else forth.

Unlock me. Unravel. Time is a lie. Only energy matters.

How can you be frozen and flowing all at once.

Today I was thinking about getting coffee and I knew there was a Dunkin’ at a particular stretch near Oxford. And that the Derby Starbucks has closed. I immediately knew Dunkin was not going to be where it’s at.

And I wondered at what moment I became a full fledged Starbucks girl. Like where I’d never look back.

I realized we never know when these moments will be sometimes until years later.

I chose nostalgia of a different kind and went to Safari Kaffeine. Too sweet. Not how I remembered. Not the taste I was going for.

I’m becoming and unlocking and blooming and blossoming. Particularly as a writer. Yet there are still glaciers inside me.

Which is fine because one just can’t go melting all over the place can they?!

I’m no drip….

Anyway that’s it for my evening musings…. Walks over.

September 21, 2024

Book Lovers. Grand Openings. Melancholy Musings.

*There is a wishing booth in Chester! How adorable is this ?! This town is ridiculously cute!*

So I’m driving to Chester Connecticut to attend the grand opening of Montgomery and Taggert, a romance bookstore, opened by two friends who shared a dream, and a love of romance.

I am listening to Lisa Tadeo’s Three Women, preceding watching the show. My goodness I love Shailene Woodley girl next door, but also bad ass! Florence Pugh is also on my radar of late. Reminds me of my childhood best friend, and probably crush although I didn’t realize it at the time.

I am writing this through voice memo, so I will clearly have to edit before posting something much more apt to do these days, than in the past.

The house was a flutter this morning with daughters and boyfriend. Although I am an “empty nester”, I have a very full life, and the birds are often still flocking home on the weekends.

I enjoy the flutter around me, as long as it’s at a measurable volume of course, and I have the option to enter into a quiet space or state at any time.

Wow, I just saw a whole group of bikers and several of them doing wheelies on the opposite side of the highway in oncoming traffic.

I just heard a line in the three women book that I really loved: The hurt doesn’t disappear it changes, it turns the manageable color of a bruise.

Recently in therapy, me being an introvert is being explored. I never would have fancied myself one, and if you had met me when I was younger or seen me in certain situations, you would not think so. But as a matter of fact, I am completely utterly refueled in my alone time.

According to my therapist, this is because I am unable to shut off my natural level of empathy, which pulls me to be considering the emotions, feelings, actions, behaviors, and what have you’s of anyone else within a 10 mile radius.

I am grateful for drives. They seem to be the place other than the shower, where my thoughts can float most clearly to the surface to be communed with.

I was helping twin A find her birth certificate this morning. Little by little my children’s important paperwork dwindles from my folder, and transfers to them. A very tangible piece of evidence of how quickly life is moving.

She was telling me about how she and her boyfriend are preparing to celebrate their fifth anniversary. I asked her if he is her lobster, and jokingly will have to put up with him forever lol. She is hopeful, of course.

And I have definitely learned that the length of a relationship is not nearly as much of a testament of the health of it, as society would celebrate or have us believe. I have allowed that to gaslight me in multiple ways over the years.

I much appreciate Margaret Mead’s quote about having three marriages, and all of them were successful.

I received Matthew Hussey’s Love Life book in the mail two days ago. I am already halfway through it. Lots of great advice whether you are in or out of a relationship at this time. His central thesis is to have the hard conversations versus avoiding them. Now that is something I can really get behind.

It does however fall into the easier said than done category.

So many times I open my blog to make a post because such a startlingly perfect epiphany came to mind. And by the time I open, it like a rare butterfly, it has already passed. I don’t let this stop me from writing any longer. I figure if I go on long enough, it may come back and alight on my shoulder.

You see now that I just named it (the block/ the blank).It came right back. I was going to talk about the ache.

Write to the block. Lean into the ache. Die to the page.

The Ache

And then the energy of that hits and everything just stands still, and I feel heavy like lead.

This is when you have to decide to keep going into it, speak it, explore it or whether you compartmentalize and move about your day.

I am fairly skilled in these options. But it is less easy to decide which one to choose.

This is all I’m going to write for now. I got pretty much the central theme out and I’m going to listen to my audiobook for 27 more minutes until I land in Chester Connecticut. Somewhere I have never been before, a date with myself on the brink of fall in New England.

How lucky am I?

Edit: this is now nighttime and I am home. One hundred pages deep into Book Lovers by Emily Henry. There is no shame in my love of romance. I am happy that was able to be rekindled recently.

August 17, 2024

Music and Movies and Musings on an Overcast Saturday

*The Guernsey Literary and potato peel pie society….*

And so it goes……

It’s a Saturday. Overcast. The mosquitoes are biting. I just got nailed four times while chatting with my neighbor. Who may be moving soon 🙁 which is a whole other thing. Sigh.

I have many choices for the day, coffee shop…. But now I don’t want to go anywhere because at the moment I have the house to myself.

I put “the blend” on lol and Tears for Fears Shout is kicking things off. I was listening to Tina Turner last night. A random ear worm that needed satisfying.

It’s the Milford Oyster Fest today, the 50th in fact. I have zero interest in that. Typically too hot and the possibility of seeing lots of clients. I’ve been exploring with going towns away for that very reason. And because I like exploring.

I watched a movie, The Guernsey last night. I got emotional right away at the beginning, when she is passionate about being a writer of course. It was the perfect movie for me to watch. That Glen Powell he’s everywhere right now. He kind of reminds me of a much taller and larger version of my first love, sorry Mike 😉 it’s something in the eyes etc. I like him.

I have been thinking a lot about how lucky I got with my first love. How pure and real, and that we still have such deep affection for the other. Can still appreciate all our memories and songs and send one another things about it.

That makes me think about seven hours of music about Love. The longest playlist of the bunch. Having to look for meaning in crumbs is its own answer. It’s its own answer Christina.

I have learned that love shows up, and I have learned it the long hard way. You don’t have to go so seeking, hoping, looking for it everywhere because if it’s yours you won’t have to look far from where you’re sitting or standing.

I looked so much for so long. Years really. Long enough to realize what love isn’t. It isn’t lies and it isn’t manipulation. It isn’t abandonment, confusion, obfuscation. It isn’t fear, stolen, or on borrowed time.

It’s right there. The air touching you, the sun, the trees, the ground under your feet. It’s words and water and poetry and it’s in everything, especially you.

I’m sitting at my breakfast bar looking at a card that a fellow teacher wrote about my daughter, nothing I didn’t know, but it still makes me tear up.

I’ve softened so much it pains me even to kill a bug, even when we are supposed to with those lantern flies. It’s such a strange sensation to have changed so much, and yet still be the same. We all have a core. Core memories (very few). Core traits (very dicey lol). A core self. (empathic/ wounded).

My core self feels things very deeply, feels music throughout my body. Saw Lindsey Stirling recently that was phenomenal. If you have the chance do that, amazing for younger kids as well, anyone.

I feel music and movies and people and energy at such a high frequency. The more I remove my self will and skepticism, the more magic there is.

So that’s where I’m at. This am I listening to Mel Robbins and Matthew Hussey episode on relationships. Lovely.

I’m hoping to write and read and catch up on podcasts and finish Dune book 4 today. Those are my plans. Maybe get in the hot tub since the water is fresh and won’t skeeve me out.

I’ve recently re started another round of morning pages and I’m on day 20, so tomorrow is 3 weeks. I went back through a companion workbook and instead of feeling like I’m not accomplishing what I mean to, which is the usual feeling, I’m noticing how on track I am. Week two is about recovering a sense of identity, and defining boundaries etc, and I’ve been cleaning house lately.

No when it’s no, yes when it’s yes. Getting clear, and as I do that and stay the course with reading and writing more opens up. The path keeps opening up before me, and in turn I keep walking it.

For a little bit there I allowed myself to become critical and judgmental again and to doubt and it’s like all the lights get shut off. The realization is I always have the switch. As soon as I’m back in my intuition and grounded, everything is illuminated again.

It’s truly that simple and complex all at once.

I had a massage last night, and my friend / massage therapist worked on my jaw muscles, who knew that was a thing. They are so sore.

It’s a full time job healing. I will never take that for granted or that it is an honor to be awake and aware. Not some horrible prison as the story can make it, when one is feeling particularly lost.

Writing fall immersion begins soon, Tuesday 6-9 and Sunday 12-3 in a wonderful container of people.

Just like the a song with saxophone (80’s nonetheless) comes on to serenade my sentiments as I unearth my sediments and find the rhythm of my soul.

“Hold me now, touch me now, I don’t want to live without you. Nothings gonna change my love for you….. “ Glen Medeiros

Love is everything and also it isn’t. There’s knowledge and self development and adventure, but what will any of that mean if there isn’t love. If something is out of alignment.

Crossed wires are the burden of the survivor. Having to decode and re-program the mind so it can fit. Square pegs and round holes. That phrase has come up so often lately along with Leaps of faith.

Soon that will all make more sense than it does now, right now they are only fragments.

For now I will bask in the glow of my own growth and cultivate my gratitude and presence.

As I slowly move from every manner of destructive mind hazes, change phases, hear my words not just the phrases. Roll them over and over in your mind. Tumble them like stones until they shine.

These are some of the thoughts pulled from a once turbulent, now peaceful mind.

Happy Saturday and travels folks ….

Ps I need / want to do my artists date and walk but what about the darn bugs ?! Sigh. Nothings gonna stop me :p

August 3, 2024

“Wealth is a tool of freedom, but the Pursuit of it is the Way to Slavery” Dune book 4

I want to play all day amongst the shelves of Barnes and Noble.

Finally I can breathe again (when I write). I’m on Belmont. Home. Starbucks in hand. Grande hot caramel macchiato half sweet and upside down. Swoon. This is a treat now. In the morning before 11:30 it is I’ll take it black please. Most recently I see their green apron blend and want to try it. It’s on my ever expanding list.

Therapy with Melissa yesterday was so so good. One of the best sessions yet. Funny how relationships build in this way, who knew. Melissa gives me back to myself each week. I feel seen. It’s the most healing thing, and it inspires me as a clinician to work in such a way to provide that to my clients.

To not fear emotions or my capability and just keep doing what I do in the way I do it. Being magic brings magic. Like attracts like.

That was one part of the session. Talking about a central theme of how to know what is real. When the mind, especially a traumatized one, can be such a skeptic. And she explained energy to me in a way that makes so much sense, and that I know in my cells I believe. Hmmm.

When you have more than you ever thought you would sometimes it’s so overwhelming, the emotions of that, that it’s like it doesn’t exist at all. Like if I feel it I’ll just explode. Like maybe there’s a wrinkle in time, and if someone finds out I’ll return to the life that seemed destined for me.

Something else she said is that the mystery is why some people have an innate will / spirit / something that makes them make their lives so much different than they “should be” by their metrics.

I want to leave my children a legacy of safety, and freedom. To change our stars. I want to leave them with abundance and security, and I won’t stop until that is accomplished.

But I also wouldn’t drive myself into an early grave to do it. So writing the blue prints is filled with the necessity of balance.

While I’m writing this I’m digging Anywhere Away from here, Rag n Bone man and Pink. It has the right combination of piano and raspy vocals that set my spirit soaring. I could cry right now. I might.

I don’t think I told you that I feel out of place….

Will I come sit out on the beach today?! Probably not, but it will be one of my go to’s.

I was a fragrant chef this morning. Trying this and that. I am soaking in the last weeks of my daughters being at home. Oh yeah there are the tears sigh. Who knew I could have just cleaned all day and not thought. I’m recognizing left unchecked I’d have some serious OCD. The way my other letters ADHD contribute to hyper focus or none at all. Sigh.

I also talked in therapy yesterday about my relationship to food. No one taught me Melissa said. I don’t think about that or like that, I just move forward. Which is why it’s easier for me to cook with no one watching or present so I don’t get overwhelmed.

Then I find my flow and I’m singing and dancing and creating and all is right with the world.

I cook things patched together (like the quilt my life truly is) from past lives with people, friends, lovers, families. A mixture of creole, Spanish, Italian, a blend. I’m still trying to perfect red rice and beans, sweet plátano etc, as a white girl the odds are against me. But I am determined and my life has given me enough spice to persevere.

I got my haircut last night. Took an hour and a half. But my barber was teaching. And the cut is perfection. It’s taken years to realize which cut for which season. Went shorter this time because it’s HOT!

Speaking of hot. I have a black car with leather seats now. A Jetta R line. I can’t believe I don’t have a Honda. I love it though. Just need window tints eventually and I’ll be happy as a clam.

The great car buying crisis year of 2024 is one for the books.

Driving here today I saw a dragon fly that seemed to hang with my car for a long while. Hi team. My ancestors, my loved ones, the universe.

I saw 30 people this past week and have 32 scheduled this next one. I’m jamming. My work deepens. People weave in and out, stretch their wings, and then return. My client family.

I’m on the 4th book in the Dune series, getting out of it a little, and need to get the umph to finish. I hope to finish it this weekend along with Normal People that I’m listening to on audible.

On the day to day there’s been a lot of Groundhog Day lately. Chop wood carry water. And it’s becoming so satisfying, the simple tasks. I was always a simple things girl with a complicated mind.

I do more outside and in the world than I used to and have much less anxiety. I can’t remember the last time I took a Xanax now it just makes me feel icky. I don’t like it.

I over think much less, my mind no longer being a prison. There are less and less spaces and relationships in my life I feel emotionally trapped in.

I only allow full authenticity without discounting a single drop as far as what each has meant to my life. I am fiercely protective of myself, without needing to be fierce at all anymore.

Love is the answer….. the love of life itself.

I love the smell of Barnes and Noble and could literally move in there, and coffee shops nearly equally. Recently I read my poetry in front of a small audience in Fayetteville. Due to the belief of someone very special in me, who ever pushes me to be the best version of myself. I still can’t believe that. I was shaking so much!

I just looked up to see a couple walking in their bathing suits. I notice in the rear view some silver grey hairs catching the sunlight and glinting in it. I have more than I’ve had, and yet I’m younger in so many ways these days.

Able to play

I still carry my grief and my scars. It just isn’t so heavy anymore. I still look for some people and things in everything I do. My attachment system is something to be reckoned with. But I can no longer keep stories of things that never existed but were only dreamt.

It’s not fair to me and to my life and to my work.

I don’t have to say goodbye because it all lives inside of me. Every page of my story I am keeping. I don’t need to burn them. I love the whole thing.

Amor Fati

And this is what’s going on with me…..

Now if this can please open the doorway to more consistent blogging. I need to be writing. I was offered love from the universe and a spot in Victoria Erickson’s autumn immersion.

I had the house to myself for a bit which was so strange. A foreshadowing perhaps. And tried to watch Remember Me with Robert Pattinson. It’s going on four days to finish. Ha. I will also finish that tonight I think.

This day is slipping away from me more and more. Once I go home and read a little, it’ll be time to get Sunday stuffs for twin A’s homemade caramel sauce, and a few groceries for the week. And before I know it bedtime….

Always Remember Us This way will serenade me on my drive home.

Happy Saturday everyone

Ps a line from Dune before parting: “and it’s the survivors who maintain the most light and poignant hold upon the beauties of living.”

Yes it is …..

July 4, 2024

Co-Dependently Recoveringly Yours, Mine …..With Love

Just landed in sunny Florida….. “I’m in a hurry to get things done I try and try … all I really have to do is live and die, I’m in a hurry and don’t know why…..”

As I sit here on a plane, halfway through Ross Rosenberg’s new book The CoDependency Revolution. I was just slammed with a memory of that single counseling session in a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia.

I recall bristling and reeling at the therapists suggestion I maybe consider looking into some resources on co-dependency. That tumbled and rolled me down a whole hill. I wanted to resist, deny, unhear, but I could not. It’s not in my nature.

It’s a testament to the profession that the counselor was as straightforward and honest in a very early on couples session. Would I have been so brave, so bold? So not co-dependent.

Now on this airplane a few tears shed at watching father’s with their baby girls, being part of a team with the mother, being affectionate and cutesy with their daughters. In other words I’m having a moment.

As far as the rest I’m on a plane with no anxiety, did not take a Xanax, and am on my 4th week of intermittent fasting. The eating is greatly helping me iron out more securely my boundaries with food, which is a beginning step towards my fit by 50 goal. As you can see I’ve given myself plenty of time.

I have learned to do this over the past several years. To hold my sensitivity and nervous system needs sacred and holy, and fully allow myself to seek and share my needs.

Getting better each day one step at a time.

Speaking of that I rarely take Xanax anymore. It gives me a slight headache and unclear feeling that I detest. Which makes it very clear to me that it works for a panic attack when it needs to, but in the absence of that acute level of anxiety, no thanks !

I’m 333 days sober today. I’m not sure what’s in store for me with balance around this. I may remain a non-drinker for health reasons, and for solidarity for all of those harmed by its presence. I may not. I may choose to have a drink on an occasion and indulge in wine pairing with a fine meal.

I don’t know yet…..

I finished Stray (also an old running title for my memoir, now it’s Starved) by Stephanie Danler, in two days. It’s raw and gritty and everything I hope to be as a writer. Albeit with my own voice, which is becoming clearer each day.

Ever since 2020 this has been a tough time a year for me. Reminders of events I am not a part of, and many other things. However there’s a reason the rear view mirror is smaller than the windshield and I will not live the rest of my life in a form of sabotage. In one tomb or another from all the lives that weren’t.

I am most interested most of the time in the life that is. Though my old selves, and those they loved, and wanted to be loved by are now wholly part of the package.

On an errand to help out twin B. My solid as a rock not so tiny any more bundle of love, joy, possibility, and so many things. Following a car accident she has been having post concussion issues which include difficulty driving. So we have moved her home to convalesce and are now collecting her vehicle and her things from Florida.

Upon examining my flying anxiety I realize it to be a product of the combination between my writer’s imagination and my cptsi (complex post traumatic stress injury) symptoms, mainly intrusive thoughts. A helpful dose of CBT, steady frequent reminders that a thought is not reality without at the very least a choice, and voila a much better experience.

I choose to believe when it’s my time it will be my time and nothing I could have done differently would have changed that. This of course assumes a relatively healthy and balanced lifestyle. I allow this to comfort me now. When previously I believe that I subconsciously felt relief by being in a nearly constant state of terror of some kind or the other, because then nothing could catch me off guard.

I feel my memoir / whatever book I will write taking shape. It comes to me in the early hours of waking, in the shower, on the road. I hear powerful lines from it, and when I’m lucky enough I capture them, like butterflies in my childhood net.

Nature at least provided some solace that people did not. See there’s one now 😉

So between the reading I’m doing and seeing these men be fathers on this plane a post emerged. I hope the rest of my trip is so fruitful with the writing….

I am excited !

December 30, 2023December 30, 2023

When I surrender to love, love has interesting things to say to me.

Like you’ll never be bored ha. I never am. Sometimes I think I’d like to be until I’m actually there.

Then of course I want to be somewhere else.

I’m doing a lap before taking twin b to the hospital for fluids and stuff to help her tummy. I hate that she got this disease.

I hate how my heart aches when she doesn’t feel well. How my gut wrenches when she wretches. But this is the price of admission and I’d gladly pay double, and it’s taken me a long time to get here.

I’m grateful beyond words lately.

Surrendered, open, loving, letting go. And boy is that difficult for me, to stay consistent with that. It’s daily work.

I can now see fear, control, and so many other things so much better. I can now see myself and others that way, thank God.

I’ve had such artful posts flow through my mind the past couple of days but couldn’t get it down and that’s ok. It’s softer now. There’s faith I will.

I will. Not owned by my will. Will you?!

Where my mind goes in all intimate moments, the all nighters, the special moments. I have as much control over that as I do gravity.

I want to be free. To play, to think, to write, to create. To breathe.

I have needed to and am becoming a better person through letting go. I used to think that it was a process of holding on, to beliefs, to safety, to my opinion. To anything.

God I was insufferable. I suffer just thinking about some of the damage I’ve done, and with that is all I’ve overcome. Conjoined twins.

What is solid and will always be, are my boundaries around choices, they will be made from my most authentic truth bravely, and not recklessly.

I will only be and accept direct straight forward honesty. That makes me breathe easier. That is my commitment to myself. I love her fiercely.

God she’s beautiful.

I am my best friend, and sure we fight sometimes but these days we repair quicker and cleaner.

I am committed to this work. To my beautiful clients who show up and show their scars, pain and hearts to me. It energizes me. If you show up my energy is yours to share in. I’m here.

My life is not only worth living it’s exquisite. A masterpiece. Nothing is allowed to steal my peace anymore, nothing.

I have family, coping mechanisms, love in my open heart, courage, a fierce mind, and I love living, and life with all that I am.

I wouldn’t move one piece of my puzzle.

This year I’m going to work on solid layers of self and continuing to not abandon myself, while also becoming better at love.

I see how much threat alert I lived with daily and what it has caused. I watch the damage daily in my children’s struggles. However I am right here for them. A rock. A River, an ocean. A warrior.

I am fiercely loyal, and that loyal was always going to need to include myself. I learned it didn’t.

Update ER for four hours. An experiment in the observation of humanity for sure. I may never come to one again. Somehow you end up worse off. Gah.

I watched the movie Burnt the other day, with Bradley Cooper. It resonated. Amazing movie about passion and recovery and food and creativity. It really touched me. I’ve watched it since.

I seem to stay attached to those type of things. Movies and music that make me feel something. It stays. I stay.

I’m back to reading schizophrenia and beginning one book after another but not committing, and resisting finishing them. Sigh. Time to slow down. Same with writing. Although there’s some new on that front. I’m beginning a therapeutic memoir writing course in January in addition to the immersion I’m already doing.

Investing.

There are new beautiful things happening. New energy.

The old and new converges into a brew a stew, a crew.

Coming soon, talking about connecting with family members I never imagined I would, and knowing things I never imagined I could. A bond with my father posthumously I didn’t expect via a family member.

And the ongoing process of how in the hell to decide how best to spend the time and talent I’ve been given. The ever elusive balance.

There’s so much ground to cover. But for now let me prevent myself from ending up in jail as a mom on her 5th hour of watching her daughter uncomfortable and not being able to do anything.

November 12, 2023

Purging Demons in the Night, Writing About it in Dawn’s Light

“I’m out of my mind but still I’m holding on like a rolling stone. A thousand miles from anywhere.”

I’m soft and squishy this morning. The aftermath of another wave of grief. My grief is very physical. This episode I didn’t see coming. It’s rare for me to not see something coming. The rarest, and some of the most beautiful, and the darkest things have been of that variety.

Yet what is living if you can’t let go, and let life surprise you, and take the wheel sometimes.

Love is the most powerful force on earth: you simply cannot control it. Though I’ve tried my whole life.

Having so little experience with the stuff, I’ve tried most of my life to bend it to my will.

I’m not God. I wouldn’t want that job. Believe it or not 😉

So now I need faith. How do you believe in something that was never a natural part of your life. Something you’ve tried to learn logically while you still have oxygen in your lungs.

I’ve been in a hurry to learn love, until love had its way with me.

I’ve put all the narratives down. The shields. The sword.

I am naked.

Bare.

My story is all that stands left, unedited. No parts cut out. The whole thing.

Here I am.

It all matters to me.

I’ve put pathologizing down too. Trying to keep others safe from me, just in case, and instead causing harm any way. And I’ve had harm caused to me. It’s all part of living. No one is getting out of here alive.

I’m sober. I may not stay that way forever but right now I can’t afford emotional ups and downs more than I already have as an artist. I feel everything all the way through.

Everything except compassion for myself, for having survived this all or nothing existence, cut off from my own emotions.

My whole life I’ve been a coping mechanism, and now I’m healing into a human, and I’d almost prefer to go back, because the breaking and resetting is excruciating. There is no description that does it Justice. Yet 😉

I finally understand why people give up. I really do.

It’s not in my nature and my work is too vital. Those are my main motivators right now.

Most days I’m in agony and I’ve been ashamed of that. Like it might rub off on someone, like they can catch it. Like I’m supposed to just be ok and move on, because if not I’m sick like my mom. Always this demon lurking over me. Accidentally watched White Oleander the other night before bed. Not a good idea. Give me a good Disney movie. Oops.

I’ve been purging demons lately. That’s what trauma work is, quite literally. It’s what being possessed is…..

In giant waves of illness and stillness and comfort and rest after. The migraine melts immediately as soon as the true root of the pain is expressed. The robbing vice releases, and I can stop throwing up.

I haven’t thrown up since I was young.

Too much control. Too little love.

Now I have it all around it and I am it, and I’m adjusting. Why is love an itchy wool sweater for me?! There’s more than the judgment, there are other things too.

I’ll write them out. I’ll go in. I’m all in. Committed.

I began a new journal today, and ended my hamsa one yesterday. This one is all black with a skull and four gold leaves on the cover. It smells of Italian leather and reminds me of Día De Los Muertos. Makes sense and is a good dead of winter book.

Maybe it will contain more about all my dead selves than I’ve ever captured before.

I’m in writing immersions with Victoria Erickson. Learning to allow my life force and energy to flow, come what may.

Slowly working on home improvements. New office carpet, stairs and a railing going in, in the next few weeks. It’s so cozy in my sacred space. Just want to make sure it’s safe for my clients.

I made a contractor friend who is going to teach me how to do dry wall, and a few new things.

If I’m not learning I’m not happy. That’s a fact.

I want to learn everything all the time.

I’m beginning Barbara Streisand’s new memoir ! I love it already she’s so funny and real.

I am scheming a project to write my barber’s memoir. It’s been a spark for a long time. If you’re a person of the passionate variety, that’s all you need, and pretty soon it will catch fire.

I finally had the courage to pitch it, after last haircut. Today the spark became lit. He’s excited.

I’m hoping the practice will help me unlock mine. Not doing it alone helps.

Go Easy on Me just came on.

Flying twin b home from Florida for Thanksgiving. We will all be together in this home. That’s all I want is family. It’s all I’ve ever wanted really. No fight about where anyone will go, just offering love, and allowing those who want to gather.

To love my work, to be cozy with a good book by the fire, to continue to learn, and to connect with other human stories like myself, and share.

I’m the most myself I’ve ever been, and it’s been so much to get here. I cannot even tell you. There’s still so much work to do, it will never be done, but I’m so happy doing it.

I’m in uncharted waters. Exhausting and exciting. Always keep curiosity just a little bit larger than fear.

I’m burning off layers and layers of shame and pain. With every mile, every word penned, every sunrise and set.

Letting Go

All my love,

October 7, 2023

Saturday Morning Conversations with God and Myself.

Lap one: My head is full and distracted. My body groans and rebels. I am preoccupied, filled also with all that isn’t mine.

Lap two: I begin to feel free. My muscles lubricate and begin to remember their innate abilities, outside of the domestication.

Lap three: the emotions, truth, and calm surface.

Lap four: at this point beyond my threshold so things begin to groan and grind.

I listen better to my body now. I listen better to you.

I’ll never scream my needs again, over and over making my throat raw.

Running ragged in bloody circles.

Out of my own bounds.

I can love you better like this.

When I meet my own needs.

For me being whole is a full time job. That’s not forever. It will settle into a natural rhythm, just as the tides and the seasons.

I’m enjoying my Dj feature on Spotify.

Posting the songs that resonate with my heart at this time.

Bliss

I won’t make promises I can’t know if I can keep. A promise to myself. Not selling some version of myself or seeking some magic panacea.

I have everything I need to live simply the rest of my life. I don’t need all I began to complicate my life, with when I got excited about abundance.

I am paring down to the essentials….

My idea of it now is simplicity, not being able to buy or do anything I want. That’s a perk of a hustle I call a passion, and it’s a natural side effect, not the compelling why.

Alignment

That’s what I’m focused on.

Me focused ?! Did you hear that right. Ha. I laugh at myself.

I used to take myself too seriously and everything felt like life and death. I’m happy to no longer be burning through the years I have like that.

No matter the feeling, if something is incongruent or you have to cross your own boundaries, it won’t work.

Real or unreal is an unnecessary question. The distracting one. The scaffolding. The illusion.

It’s all real and all part of my story. That’s what it is.

Now claim it Christina

Only reality is king, and when we argue with it we suffer tremendously.

I am devoutly interested in reality as it is. Not distracted with grandiose fantasies, thousands running through my brain to distract it from the pain in there.

I hold pain differently now. On my good days. On the bad ones I pray and I walk and I rest.

This is the first time I’ve done the third lap in a long time. Will there be a cost?! Who interested in a but I enjoy defying my own gravity when it’s not too harmful.

Walk the talk.

Working at staying humble.

That’s what works for me.

While still getting a little excited at the strength of my own voice.

I don’t want to be a star. I want to be a servant.

October 7, 2023October 7, 2023

Stephen King October’s and Writer’s Who Keep Getting Back up and Trying…..

I realize it’s been too long since I’ve written in here. Beginning again requires no grand gesture, except to splay my words upon the page.

Life is so different now than it’s ever been for me.

The kitchen window is open. I can hear the cars splashing through the wet pavement on High st. There’s a bathroom window open, and it’s making a door creak slightly every so often.

I’m reading Stephen King’s Needful Things. Marveling at how he takes a concept and a belief of his, sets it to quirky characters. Creates a setting based on a place he loves, and takes his shot. His art. How small town washed up people become prone to obsession over items that bring them nostalgia or comfort. What they are willing to do to anyone, to be able to feel better.

In the movie, a young Ed Harris plays Alan Pangborn, the town sheriff. The book is better of course.

I marvel at how I can read a chilling description of two women killing each other and not be kept up at night. Perhaps my ability to find the art in this fiction stays my traumatized mind from its post. I typical do not like to fill it with horror. I have enough reels of my own, should I want a chill during spooky season.

I’m mostly focused on being present. And realizing how much I wasn’t. How unwell and dissociated I had been a lot of my life, without really being aware of it. That has been a slow burn. Burning off shame. Shedding self-consciousness ,and seeing what lies under all of that.

That’s where I am.

It’s a process that requires time and cultivating, and I’m committed.

I’m still figuring out balance with that regard.

Since I’m forty I moved wrong the other day. I am now on steroids and doing physical therapy two times weekly. Lol. So that’s happening. I used to freak at the smallest setback physically. So now I just allow life to pause me when needed.

I began working with a new client last night. They work in a profession I’m intrigued with. The person was very solid and grounded, and my energy matched suit during the session. The person is in their 60’s so that makes sense. Of course that’s not the only factor. But I really enjoyed holding space for their story, and having the privilege of them entrusting their heart and pain to me upon our first meeting.

People’s beautiful resilience and heart captivate me in such a way. I am starting to be able to believe I could be captivating too.

Without being constantly pushed by any force to get out into the world, I now believe it is beginning to happen naturally. And I believe those that have told me the world needs to hear what I have to say.

So I’m working on gaining security behind my voice. Peeling back layers of shame and trauma that attempt to sabotage my goals and dreams.

I read, I walk, I write, I counsel, I love, and therefore I am.

My relationships with my children are healing nicely. It’s still a lot to be with the ways I’ve caused them pain from my own ignorance and my own traumas. I have to continue to make amends and forgive myself, and that’s no easy feat.

I love my clients past and present. I think about them in my daily life and send them love and light.

I think about my life experiences and those I have loved deeply. With every part of me, and how those experiences have shaped me.

I’m doing a course in miracles.

I’m about to go on a cruise to Bermuda. Only slightly nervous about the possibility of motion sickness, as my body likes to feel firmly planted and in control. Ha, what an illusion. I don’t know if that, or the fact I won’t work for 8 ish days is the more frightening prospect. Both are uncharted territory.

Which is a theme lately in my personal counseling. I am in uncharted territory my counselor said to me the other day. Mostly outside my pattern in most way, maybe some days slipping inside it a little.

What can I say I’m a work in progress.

I’m really happy I wrote this post and I’m hopeful I’m ready to make this a weekly if not a daily practice.

Oh and I’m obsessed with learning Spanish on Duolingo. I marvel at how my brain can recall so much and it’s just there without even trying. I often struggled at age normative times to learn another language. And it’s thrilling to realize that was likely because so much space was taken in my brain by hyper vigilance.

I marvel at the gift of being able to be understanding of myself now, and to be able to communicate in a way I feel understood, which is the real magic.

My heart is continuing to open. I’m more consistent with so many things, and that’s a path I’m very grateful to be walking. No longer beating myself into submission. Less remissions, sparsely placed omissions. Oh there I go rhyming. Can’t help it.

All my love,