The Tank is Full

What makes life worth living for me….

I cry for how long I’ve judged my process and my decisions and choices. I cry for how hard I’ve been on myself when I’ve been surviving my whole life. Just because no one could see it. Judged for the ways I chose to save myself. Because I’m a mother, these choices meant I was selfish. The worst part is I allowed myself to believe those criticisms and as a result pulled away from my children.

I pulled away because I didn’t want to infect them with my particular disease. Survival is a great burden, and it’s hardly understood, except by those who have had to. I didn’t want them to understand, and then to feel close I needed them to. And that too became and unrealistic demand. I judged myself so harshly, and held on tight to that.

Holding on and letting go. Figuring out what to hold on to and what to let go of. The stakes feeling so high. I’ve softened all of that. Mistakes are the portals of discovery. In fact some of my most recent joy had so many in the beginning and that is what has made it feel perfect. The imperfect.

Because it’s real. You know? 😉

This morning on my sacred Sunday I am reflecting and wafting through my life. I’m listening to Exile by Taylor Swift and Bon Iver. I am just overwhelmed by the abundance I’ve created in my life by the self-work I’ve done. I’ve done the impossible, changed my wiring in so many ways. People don’t do this, but I am. And I’m fucking proud.

I’m so emotional lately…. That is when I can stop holding my breath. I still do that. I hold on and wait for the bottom to drop out, but I know when I’m doing that, and when I’m not, and it makes such a difference and when I’m feeling safe, when I can reflect, the tears immediately come. The gratitude. The joy.

I made it out alive and I kept my self on ice, ready for exploration once safe. Now I’m here, and so often I’m overwhelmed that it feels like I won’t get the experience in some way. Even when I’m right here in it.

This is a journey not a destination. This journey is so beautiful it brings me to my knees with emotion. The good, the bad, and everything in between.

I ran so fast and so hard. I ran on empty so long, that it’s hard to know how to operate on a full tank, and not just keep watching the gauge. No matter how many times I check, it’s full, won’t stop me from trying. Some things are hard wired.

I’m operating this new soft self. My mind tries to drag me to every worst case scenario and exhaust me into that familiar irritability, but I’ve hedged my bets with all the support I’ve allowed myself permission to seek, and to accept it.

My authentic self is finally taking the lead…. Slow and steady wins the race. I am steady. I am a rock. I am reliable and trustworthy. I am consistent and nurturing and so loving. I can see myself and it’s overwhelming.

I spent most of my life overwhelmed by fear, and now I get the privilege of being overwhelmed by love.

I just took a deep breath. Whenever I’m overwhelmed now, that’s what I do. The restless settles into security and then the fruits of my labors shine and sparkle all around. I blink my eyes and try to bring them in and out of focus. Yes Christina this is real.

It isn’t any longer all or nothing. My life is piloted by self trust, not story telling. And I will not shame myself for what developed out of survival, for I have always lived the philosophy of Maya Angelou. Once you know better do better. And I always have.

And now after 41 years on this planet I’m in my body. Through hell and back so many times. Fighting myself, fighting every battle that crossed my path, permanently in fight and flight mode. The story protected the mechanism and as long as that was the case the pattern repeated.

Now I am broken free. Out of jail and purgatory. It’s like having to learn everything from the beginning again, so vulnerable and raw.

I’m so exhausted, prone, in a good way. Laying spent across the earth finally without all the thoughts of illness and death.

Everything is a first right now in so many ways. Out of the dark night. Reborn. Now when I don’t want something to be over rather than dissociation, I open wider and connect more. It’s never over, the moments, they become absorbed into my being.

Becoming solid, whole, and present.

I am present, alive, for the first time in this way. Overwhelmed by possibility….. life is beautiful. I know I always believed in that, but I never felt it, not like this.

Recovery is a long road, and it can be beautiful. It doesn’t have to be dark. Turn on the light. Allow the universe to have your back and shine its gifts on your pain. Everything is connected….

Stay tuned

Casi Sielo: I Was Blind but Now I See….

“Oh thinking about the younger years….” a little Bryan Adams this morning. Appropriate…

I’m in a blog writing mood this morning. Now that I feel alive after another death. Which was probably just raging hormones. Isn’t that supposed to stop at some point? Let’s play is it trauma, depression, grief, or hormones. Do all 40 somethings play this or just ones with significant trauma history? I’d like to speak to the person in charge please. Of the Universe ? Yes exactly. Always take it straight to the top.

I guess I’m a little punchy this morning. That makes sense. Last night was the first satisfying night of sleep I’ve had in what feels like forever, but in reality is about a month now. A month can sometimes feel like a year.

Yesterday was one of those days where I felt like a lead block and numb and like it was too much work to breathe. I woke up like that. And just kept thinking this feels like dying to be that low. I’ve been scary low lately. I’m lucky to be aware enough to know this is truly un-becoming. Lol not in the sense of not attractive as my father would have used that phrase, what is and isn’t becoming of a lady. Vomit. But unbecoming in the Paulo Coehlo sense.

Nobody warns you how truly excruciating this process is. Burning off old patterns and coping mechanisms and re wiring. Everyone outside of me keeps saying “I’m doing the work”, for me it just feels like dying of terror over and over and beginning a new day to do it again. Doesn’t that sound like fun guys? Now I know why the “enlightened” are so popular, and also why not many embark on this.

Listen I’m no guru or saint, most days I feel like a lost soul, though everyone tells me I’m not. I was for most of my life. Once was lost and now I’m found, …. Amazing Grace. Holy shit (lol) now I understand that song I heard a million times in childhood. Religion another story to comfort our weary souls.

Funny I should mention comfort. I’ve lived my entire 40 years begging and striving for just that. And my whole life feeling unsafe and scrambling for security in any shelter possible. Anything that could bring my nervous system relief and then I’d try and try to maintain it, having none of the knowledge or tools to do so.

I’m not a victim I’ve hurt people along the way. There’s hurt that’s been burning inside of me that I didn’t ask for. This is trauma folks. People often judge and shame, too much, too sensitive, too intense. What they never did was understand and connect the dots to why someone is being the way they are. That simple inquisitive nature inside of me has saved my soul, and I’d like to think the sharing of this knowledge has and will save others.

Sound dramatic? Yes it is. It doesn’t sound dramatic it is. If you could see it on a screen you might understand a little better. I used to say all the time I wish I could just show movie clips of my life, because I desired to be understood.

The thing about trauma is you have to be responsible for something you never asked for, for the rest of your life. You have to carry it whether you want to or not. And most trauma survivors spend their life running for it, for shelter, punching the air, crawling underneath something and hiding, or frozen and staring into space, imagining fantasies of grandeur and someone doing nice things for them or coming along and offering support and comfort.

I had a client say to me the other day that they know they won’t reach the potential they would have without this “brain damage”. And my heart broke. And as I watch myself as a counselor I scramble to fix it, but what I did on the way home was think how I don’t want to jump so quickly to do this or do that, I want to truly keep holding space and validating. You’re right and you deserve to be as angry and sad as you want about that without anyone giving you directions how to fix it.

They are correct their potential has been changed and it often feels an uphill battle. The only thing I would say is you don’t want to keep a story you don’t want to be shackled by. I can’t buy that my life will be less meaningful or I won’t reach a full anything and rather I choose to believe it is significantly changed by my trauma, but I refuse to let myself be lessened by it. And I acknowledge that it tortures me daily.

A tortured meaningful existence huh? Did I not read the contract? of course I didn’t I was never afforded the privilege to concentrate long enough.

So here I am and I really how much over the last couple of years I’ve censored myself. How much shame has kept me from truly bringing my story to the table. And in the coming time I’m not going to do that. I will get comfortable with my uncomfortable feelings and stay in my truth and my course, and burn off shame and put down the burden of any terrible stories I can tell about me, for how I’ve tried to survive.

I never intended anyone harm by rushing for comfort, and each person is responsible for their own choices. AND I’m sorry more than can be seen from the outside for pain that was caused from the coping mechanisms that came from my trauma. From me having been separated from any sense of self in childhood. I need to own and stand proud in this story and hold my ground.

I’ve been like a wild frantic animal for all the years of my life and keeping all of that tame for everyone else so I can still try at a life and try to love. I didn’t even expect to be loved. I don’t ever expect it. Why would I? I expected myself to work really hard at love, and believed that was the way.

But I couldn’t work really hard at everything all at once, and I couldn’t have this without that and I scrambled and scrambled. I’m egg at this point.

And now I am still and forging a relationship with myself that refuses to be anything but healthy no matter how tiring, boring, etc, that is.

This is me….

So yesterday I moved my therapy appointment to make sure I got to my daughters soccer game. They are on varsity which means they often don’t get to play. Which breaks my heart for them, but hopefully they know they are an equally important part of the team. I hope they get their shot soon. We won 3-1 against North Haven yesterday.

I arrived early to the game. I was numb and lead and could barely keep my eyes open. So despite the late of it all I went into Starbucks. It’s a place I still love. There was a time I couldn’t go in there, but I’ve returned to allowing love, as I have the solid trust I’ll never allow anything to let me betray myself.

I’m allowing all the love I feel for all of the people in my whole story. Anything else is manipulation and I’m not doing that to feel better or stronger or for any other reason.

So in the calm waters of this new phase of grief I bought myself a tall half sweet caramel machiato which I thoroughly enjoyed sipping while talking to a soccer mom from way back, and a LB of 2021 Casi Sielo. Which means “almost heaven”…. I think I’ll take that as a sign of the direction I’m going. I drank a little black, a learned behavior, the student is also sometimes the teacher. And I allowed myself a moment of sadness that I had no one purchase this for me, and also joy that I can enjoy buying it myself and wafting through the memories old and new.

And that in my life there is no need to deny any part of my story, or to manipulate myself or anyone else. That my friends is freedom.

I allowed my Apple Watch to flash me pictures I hadn’t been able to look at in a long time. I took screen shots. I sipped my warm life giving beverage and I burned off some more shame.

Now I am organizing my life, finding my priorities, planning vacations with my children and feeling like I’m safe to do so. I believe I’m capable of these things, things I thought I couldn’t do without another human being. Because I never felt safe. Imagine spending 40 years not feeling safe?! Imagine what that does to a person. So I’m not going to be ashamed for it any longer.

I’m so proud of myself for staying in this pain long enough to find the truth of who I am, what I need, and what I want, and never to settle for anything less than my entire story as is without shame.

This is me…. 💜

Onward… How to do branding without the selling part.

Had to break the drought it was time….

It was a series of unfortunate events that would ultimately lead me to the most secure relationship with myself I have ever embarked on. My story is taking shape. They say you write better from a more resolved place. Cheryl Strayed for example didn’t write Wild until around ten years after her hike through the Pacific Northwest.

So I’m sifting back through the events lately, as I also remain firmly in the present reality. Whirlwind after whirlwind when it came to relationships, and all because I never had one with myself, or my own identity for that matter. And that’s scary. No wonder I didn’t trust the world or myself. The very definition of anxiety. Homework: write fifty I am statements. The first time I attempted this I had around 3 or 4, and they were just titles.

Now I’m on the ground, and while my feet feel a little unsteady sometimes, I’m enjoying having more peace and clarity. I will be fiercely protective of that. My relationships with my children are becoming real and solidifying. They are no longer this touch and go, terrified thing.

I can tolerate being present now, without being swallowed up by fear and anxiety.

So often I look back at the girl who was consumed by intrusive thinking almost constantly. It was incredibly painful. No wonder my first objective was always shelter. And that to obtain that shelter I looked for the fellow vulnerable. I didn’t want to be alone. Except that I never was, I just couldn’t feel any different at that time.

I often tell my clients that our feelings lie to us, particularly if we suffer from ptsd or an anxiety disorder. Then our feelings can be really unreliable. We must get to solid ground and not be flailing about before we assess and certainly before we decide. Feelings are not facts.

So this morning I’m thinking about the ingredients and prescription for change. The thing people come to me for. Some want me to do it for them and have the answers, some want nothing from me, and come because they have been told they should, but aren’t willing or open. And my favorites the ones I work the hardest to show up for, are in earnest desire of change and willing to hear hard things, sit and be in uncomfortable feelings, and stay the course with trust and conviction. No wonder they and this work inspires me so much.

This is what I always aspired to be and do, but a lot of the information I needed was missing.

I didn’t know I was co-dependent and what would subconsciously feel like home time and time again, is someone to heal or fix, so I could also be doing that. That the relationship would be dependent on our mutual need and addictions, and not mutually independent and parallel. If I was alone I was lost to myself and frozen with thoughts of fear and inadequacy. Love become confused with desperate need, and boy does that create blind spots.

I have such hard nights so often. Last night in particular. Nights I just want to be held, feel someone else’s heart near to mine, smell their skin, sync my breath, and my whole nervous system responds. But being safe with a person means so much more than that now.

What it means primarily for me these days is that said person has the courage to hold themselves accountable and a secure relationship with themselves. This is something I’ve asked my therapist a hundred times if it even exists, as I stared blankly off, completely removed from myself. I couldn’t answer what I wanted or needed when I began.

I was in so much pain all the time, my only energy seemed to be to obtain momentary comfort, over anything lasting, secure, and that met my needs.

What I find myself wanting most sincerely (I was tempted to say desperately but that’s old, and I am new), is someone who wants to work as hard as I do on themselves, and stay parallel to me in that process. That we ebb and flow and dance. Secure attachment, which you can only do with another secure. I’ve been spending my life becoming an earned secure. Security is anything but natural for me, but I was always going to crack that code.

An integration of mind, body, and soul: bringing all the separated on ice parts, home. Reconnecting the nerves and the tissue. It’s been a lot of surgery lately. 2014 the year of my graduation from my masters, led to the beginning of the thaw. I found Morning Pages. I finally had some time that was my own, and some hope for financial security. It was my first toe in the water of living rather than purely surviving.

2016 the thawing gave way to whole hearted enthusiasm and I jumped quickly into a marriage. We didn’t even know one another apart from that we both had genuine hearts and were kind, and seemed to both want the same things. I can only speak from my experience of course, but what we really needed was a relationship with ourselves not with another person.

We didn’t legitimize ourselves or our own experience. We hid away in shame and feared that others wouldn’t trust our union. A self-fulfilling prophecy when you don’t know or trust yourself.

I have a personal belief we grow more in relation to others than we ever do by ourselves. But there’s a time and season for each, and that growth doesn’t always have to be found in romantic partnership. That has been a big lesson this past year. My determination sometimes preceded all logic. I can chuckle at that a little now, and appreciate that in myself. It has made for a lively story.

I am now growing in relation to lots of others, and primarily myself as I sit with me and pause and reflect and that feels safe. Holy shit I can’t believe I just said that. When I have ever felt safe all alone in the world. Except I don’t feel alone, and I don’t feel adrift either.

I am in pain, agony really, so many times throughout the day as I sift through the wreckage of all my past attempts at a dream, and now I’m am restructuring as the architect of my own life.

I am learning to live without outsourcing some of the most incredible aspects of my life, because I feared I wasn’t good enough. Often it feels like being in quicksand, that at any moment I’ll be pulled back under to that old existence where I couldn’t breathe. But then I look around and realize I’m in a beautiful field, and not on the edge of a cliff.

My goodness I missed this. I believe there are many good things on my horizon. The most forefront of which is thinking about what I need to say to the world, and how to say it. I’ve been working a beyond validation model for counseling for years, and I think I may breathe some life into that.

I have this magical ingredient as a counselor and it’s difficult to even put into words, and I think I’ll take some time doing just that. If I have a valuable resource I need to, actually scratch that I want to describe it so I can share. The thing about me is I want to share not sell, so I’m nervous about that whole process. I don’t want to brand or market, I just want to be my authentic self.

I’ve made such a transformation this past year and a half and I want to share that journey. Perhaps it’s so fresh I’ll need to share more previous ones first and trust that, my own memory and lived experience.

Why ultimately do I want to share it? I would have said before to feel less alone, which means I needed too much to be able to do so in integrity. I want to share it so I can empower others to have more satisfying lives. It’s so automatic who am I to do so? Until I look around and realize this ability to consistently self reflect and put this into practice with follow through is rare. So rare in fact that’s what led to the lonely feeling.

Where are the others doing this? They are working and sharing. Brene Brown, Nicole Lepera, Anita Morjani, Byron Katie, Martha Beck, Elizabeth Gilbert, Dr. Ramani, Ross Rosenberg, Melody Beattie, Anne Lamott, Stephen King, and so so many others….

I need to stay the course with my work and my relationship with myself no matter what… I said that to the tune of Callum Scott of course. Dancing on my own… I never intended it to be that way, but touching lives and being present has me feeling much less alone than I ever have.

I know in forward motion my task is to only entertain situations that make me feel less alone, not more.

Onward…. (Now I understand why this is the word Liz uses). It’s solid. It carries with all the lessons and the pain, and also still goes forward. It has conviction and strength, and also softness. The things I aspire to.

Courage the Cowardly Dog and Running

So I’m walking / running to my water and thinking of my favorite coward. And mother effing her up one side and down the other. Then I think where are your manners Christina. You’re being positively uncivilized. You’re an animal.

And out of nowhere the show courage the cowardly dog pops into my mind. How I was always drawn to it despite how effing bizarre some of the content is. Then I thought why is it called that and who wrote it. Because well …. Me. That’s what I do.

I’m supposed to be walking. I’ll probably get hit by a car or wander into traffic. Don’t put that out into the universe. As if my self preservation and hyper vigilance would let that happen.

Near the Sundae House. A piece of history. Anyway this show…. Courage was scared all the time, and yet when someone needed help he did the thing anyway. That’s what I recall. And now I’m wondering more about that creepy woman and man he lived with. Did the writer have narcissist parents, probably! And that’s a way I was held in childhood and didn’t even know it.

Perhaps I owe my empathy and fixing tendencies to courage the cowardly dog…..

My skin is loving the sun. Next threat after pancake, sun death (fainting). Isn’t anxiety fun?!

Good thing my knight in shining Buick shall be showing up with Gatorade and Groceries. I have changed the rule of our visit game today. Without any warning. My speciality. He had learned to just go with it, lol. A patient man. I would say a saint but he would give me this incredulous look like I might be crazy!

Guess what I am! Spoiler alert. But you’ve known that a long time. What’s that Alice in Wonderland quote, something about being mad, and the best people are. Veronika Decided to die, the alchemist, City of Girls, Alma Whitaker ….. Brene.

Abby and Glennon….. nobody puts baby in the corner. 80’s movies. Young love between the popular rich and the other side of the tracks girl/guy.

Tale as old as as time…. The battle between good and evil. The truth and the lie ! Rayya and Elizabeth…. That Brazilian guy, Craig.

All the breaking and the bleeding. Back breaking metaphorphisizing change.

All your posts about blame. Shall we call it displacement of responsibility for emotional comfort ? Is that more mannered for you.?

Selling an idea of how things should be while not actually possessing an ounce of the courage I do.

As I’ve been seen the faint of heart need not apply and I’ll shout this from the roof tops. Mary Poppins style with the chimney sweeps, they raised me after all.

As it turns out reclaiming my original soul has not been without its wounds. They burn and ache so good. Like my feet and my heart right now.

But not only am I alive, but I am loving my own life. It may be lonely and full of mistakes, and I’m ok with that. Watch me work. Spin straw into cold. Kiss a princess, and go on an adventure…..

Watch me….. kiss me…… tell me.

Show me I have no use for your empty words…… they won’t activate anything in me anymore.

Show me a warrior. Loyal Brave and True…..(and yes I am those things as it turns out yoy do have to be loyal to yourself first in certain ways that are the opposite of selfish, had to learn the very hard way, as usual) because that’s what fairy tales and made of and magic is made by the bravery of our hearts, not the passive longings of our childhood selves.

It requires follow through….

Now watch me practice what I preach because I was always going to….

New and most real danger, walking into a telephone pole or street sign or mailbox just almost did that. Moving to the side of the street where I can watch the cars because the drivers are often doing what I am, and pancake is still also a threat.

There’s always a threat outside but what I can confidently say is the one from within is being purged daily.

Ok head up and eyes forward and weight back as my knight says ….

The water is on the horizon any second….

Heartbreak that Registers a 9.5 on the Richter Scale!

If You Knew How Lonely My Life Has Been

I’m very emotional this morning, this week really. Something is happening. The winds of change are blowing and truly this time I don’t know what.

I am genuinely a blank canvas right now. Actually that isn’t true at all. I’m more like a beautiful landscape with a cottage by a lake. The door to the cottage is open, and I’m in a chair by the lake…. Reading, writing, and smiling. Calm.

It’s my sacred Sunday and I’m thinking of her. There are several hers for me to think of, loving is easy for me. I enjoy it. And you can find so many things to love about and connect with others. I love each for their own reason and in their own way. For what I’ve learned on my journey with them. This Sunday morning I’m thinking of being by the water, and the last time we had coffee together on. Sunday morning, in that foreign living room. We talked, that was always my favorite part believe it or not.

How does that quote go ? Love is a life long conversation. The empty chair on my beautiful front porch staring me down, Or me staring it down. I’m filled with love in so many ways all the way around. Love of my chosen family, my children, for my work, for writing and reading, for nature.

The other side of my king size bed is cluttered with clean folded laundry, books, journals, a people magazine with Pink on the cover, and probably dust. The other side of my bed depresses me, whether I am happy or not.

So many brief stops and starts. Always stopped before it started. Heartbreak of a 9.5 magnitude on the Richter scale.

Recently my therapist brought up the concept of lost souls, and my response was so naive. As if that is not possible. If you just love hard enough, they can transform. No man left behind. The real result is actually the pain of this naïveté and the journey has been transforming me.

These days I can only fix and rescue myself and life gets better because of it. It gets good when you do. I remember my mom had this shirt when I was growing up. It was hideous, sleeveless and blue, and in typically rocker chick 80’s the bottom was frayed, long dangling strings of fabric. She was a fan of this style. I never was. She also had a mullety haircut at this time. The shirt was blue with white writing. I’ll find a photo and post it.

The shirt said, “good girls go to heaven, (but or and I can’t remember), bad girls go everywhere.” If there ever was a shirt to sum up my mother. My grandmother hated it, that says it all about their relationship. In this moment I wish I had known the little girl her, except in a way that’s all I ever knew of her. She never grew past/up. Interesting how we stumble into things. I had no idea I’d write this when I began.

I hear a plane flying overhead and think of the girl who would always ask me, “where do you think it’s going”, that wound is fresh. Full of unknowns. Not even closed over. No bright pink tender scars yet. Plenty of those in other spots though. The path of the warrior. Warrior of light as Paulo says. The pilgrimage just popped into my mind. One of his best as far as it resonating with me. I took the journey years ago. Half the book was underlined. Look how far you’ve come Christina. That’s what people keep saying to me.

Sometimes I can’t see myself in relation to time: the chronology of me is a fascinating thing.

I am the walking wounded right now. If you could walk inside me you would find a museum of love. So many artifacts of war, dusted, rusted out. Water logged, bullet holes. Trauma. But oh the stories you would find. The courage that resides in these memories.

I am not without. I am within.

I was teetering between worlds. Almost a lost soul. Nearly dead. That assessment is only because of how invisible to myself I had become in wanting to love everyone else back to life, because loving myself seemed and insurmountable task. It still does, however I’ve been working towards this awhile now.

I hear the world waking up from my beautiful upstairs room. I opened the blinds, the French doors so I can experience the outside while I am in. I imagine people preparing breakfasts, or to go to brunch, their Sunday best. Sacred sacred Sundays. A full day of unlimited hours spread before me to do as I wish with. Mmmmm

I can feel the promise of fall in the air this morning. My favorite months are on the tip of my tongue. I can taste them.

There is magic in the air. The magic is me. The way I choose to see the world and live regardless of the pain. The choice of being fully alive and feeling no matter what. Now a stream of songs are coming at me. It will be time to take a walk with my headphones and see what the universe has to say to me through music today.

I am begging for a reprieve of these restless nights. For fall to run its fingers through my hair and cradle me. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends lately and doing this not as a result of a person is new.

Muse ? Is that you ?

Yes.

I am always always here…..

The Courage of the Noticer Attending Weddings and Funerals

I have so much to talk about right now it’s hard to know where this will go. I was going to say to know where to start, but that’s actually not hard anymore, I just do. Progress over perfection.

So let’s start with this morning. I went to a funeral. An all day long funeral. This is something I typically dread. The first reason I dread it is because I’m a special breed. I’m not only highly sensitive as a trait, but I have come to fully embrace that I’m an empath. Anita Morjani describes it best in her new book Sensitive is the New Strong.

The type of alien I am actually has a description. High sensitivity is sensory and perception, and empath actually feels other people’s feelings with them, sometimes before they do, and we have a sixth sense. Deep intuition. Sometimes I talk directly to people’s higher selves. When I describe this it’s hard not to feel grandiose or self important, however it is the truth.

So needless to say being crammed into a hot room with many people feeling big feelings, especially some I care about tremendously, is not easy for me. Since I don’t have much family I’ve been fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to not have many to attend.

Complicated grief. Is there a simple grief? I think so. Complicated grief is not even knowing if, when, or how to grieve because there is no familial or other structure.

As I sat and listened to people describe their loved one, particularly as a mom here were some of my thoughts…. Besides being present of course because I was, but it also creates my own thinking. What will people say about me. Will anyone besides primarily my clients (if that’s even a thing) be there to say anything. Now I used to think these things much more bleak and not have answers: today was actually not so bad. Immediately as I hear the good things said I think my kids wouldn’t be able to say that about me, and I want to fall in despair.

Then I bring myself back to how I arrived as a guest at this celebration of a life and the integral part I have, and I try to look at some different things, primarily myself differently. But what sticks is how alien I feel and truly I know hardly anyone that has my situation.

Even children who are given up for adoption have some kind of structure. I slipped between the cracks, and the only way I was even visible is when I was quiet, accommodating, and useful to others. I was loving and engaged and would go to the ends of the earth, and it’s easy to see why I don’t expect reciprocity in this area now, because there wasn’t any. That expectation was never set. (It shall be from now on)

So then the preacher man laments about how 40 some years ago he had also married that couple, and my despair grows deeper. Here are the good and better people, the ones who got it right and come from good families and Christina you don’t belong here. That’s what it feels like. No need to feel sorry for me, no one wants that, it’s just the truth.

I literally burst apart with their pain of separation by death that is spoken of on that day of vows and how much sooner it came than deserved. I was present for them as well, but I am human, so these events bring forth my story as well.

The persons children spoke, and I wondered what mine would say. We all know mom struggled a lot. Is that what it will be? Is that all I am? Struggle? Why do I have such a distorted view of myself. I know why.

This funeral made me think of weddings, my last one in particular. In my living room w my kids and wife only, a fact hidden from her family. We hid in shame. I hid in shame. I’ve been fucking ashamed my whole life.

Today I recognize why there’s never an event where someone has something to say where they know me well, I want to say I never stay long enough, but my god that’s being hard on myself.

I try with my whole heart to do so many things at once so my kids didn’t miss out on anything, and so I had ground under my feet to love from. I tried hard and I tried fast the best and only ways I knew from my life and I got shamed and faulted for it. Where was someone to ask what happened to me?

Where was that person who saw something seemed not quite right and it wasn’t a fault or flaw in me, it was something fundamental I never even had and I’m still trying to live like and with those who did! Where was the one to say I see you, and the wisdom to help me feel secure.

So I became that.

I think of how I didn’t know I deserved to wait for someone to see me and take that time with me and that it does exist. I think of how you promised me a family and how opposite that was and how now when you post videos of blending families and relationship articles it’s so bizarre to me because those people are transparent, genuine, congruent, honest, considerate, brave, etc that’s how that works and why that works. I think of how you try and make it seem like it’s me, and how that doesn’t work anymore.

I wasn’t the one you needed to talk to about cohabitation and outside the box situations so I could accommodate. That was what you were supposed to be doing in the therapy you said was for co parenting. That was your job to do with your ex partner and family to lay that groundwork and communicate with me, and everything would have been on the table, nothing to hide. You post these things that you aren’t living congruent with. I am not the issue, and you know it. Blame isn’t my thing. Growth and forward movement is and we both know I’m perfectly capable.

And how if you had done that work, any of it, you wouldn’t need to try and manipulate me from a blog, it wouldn’t even be a thing. We would already be living it. I think of the emotional black mail, and how that has nothing to do with me. I’m light years beyond that and open and free to have a loving and fully invested relationship when I find someone willing to show up their whole authentic selves and be all in with me.

I think of how I know it exists now even when I’m in dark and lonely moments, which are often as of late.

So this evening I came home and wanted to write, but first I listened to an episode of a podcast and it also made me feel so many things. The link is below. Hearing Glennon and Craig talk to one another makes me wish that I had the wisdom as well as the support to have had this grace with my ex husband and not taking everything so reactively. I mean he had his part, but my biggest threats were tapes I played on repeat, of my own creation.

Glennon and Craig talk about divorce and co-parenting

Sidebar what I found most wonderful of the many things in here was the idea of everyone having a voice whether things were agreed upon or not. Our family therapist brings this to my attention a lot during sessions, very strategically I might add. And I recognize that by fighting against what their dad thinks of me, I shut those voices down, because of my own ego and my triggers and I regret that deeply. I’m working on healing that now. So they feel heard and deeply respected by me, and we can have the relationships we all deserve.

Attending family events has always been bittersweet for me. It’s so validating to hear many clients with difficult trauma histories like mine, share how difficult events like this are. How many feelings it brings up. Today was no exception. But what was remarkably different is that I didn’t want to crawl out of my skin and leave as soon as possible.

I didn’t feel so awkward I could barely breathe, and I didn’t feel I didn’t belong: I knew I did.

I thought about my last marriage a lot this morning and at the event. The last funeral I went to after all was her fathers. A father who refused to acknowledge who I was to her or hardly at all. I never became part of that family in any real way. The closest I ever felt were with an aunt and uncle, and her cousins.

Don’t get me wrong no one did anything wrong. They did the best they could in general, all of them. But I never knew where I stood, and I’m still trying to sort out what might have made that gap bridged differently. But they weren’t my family to know that about. We showed up around one another, but never knew one another that well.

I think what were we thinking getting married so fast. Why? Why didn’t the one w a family think maybe we should get to know my family first. I mean if didn’t decide and create it all myself right ?!

I think of the line in The Little Prince it’s the time that you spent on/with your rose that is special. And that any amount of investment is never wasted, however I am exhausted of starting over. I don’t want to. I never did. But I was always going to need to be in the equation and what I’ve gotten good at over the years is being invisible and accommodating and ok with that.

I’m not ok with that. I’m as worth getting to know, for a willing partner and family to be enthusiastic about, at a realistic pace when the time comes.

But here is what I’ll never be again, anyone’s dirty secret, anyone’s lie, anyone’s anything that needs to be hidden, and I don’t need to make myself into something for that to happen. It was never supposed to be that way.

I am on a journey of not hiding how I feel, think, my wants, needs, emotions, in an attempt to not lose something or to get something. I will not be modifying, disappearing, shrinking to fit, pleasing, hiding, or any other thing.

This is me…. I exist and I’m not going to try and earn my existence or explain it away by my efforts. That is exhausting.

I don’t know if I’ll ever have a wedding again traditional or otherwise. I don’t know whom will be in attendance or what will be said at my funeral,

But I do know from this time forward I will know I am worthy of belonging somewhere and to someone, or perhaps everywhere and to everyone….

And that makes all the difference as to what you accept and what you don’t…..

Onward as Beautiful Liz says….

Onward

Ps my kids have been gone and will be back tomorrow, it’s so strange being in such a silent house. They have my car so I’ve been rocking the silver civic, Louis ha. I haven’t been sleeping much this week, totally unlike me. Oh also I realized during the funeral I have never really mourned the loss of the babies we lost. I did just like I’ve always done and tried to just keep going. I thought about how we honor our losses, and that for her and I we didn’t even honor our union by having family and friends present. I never felt worthy, and that’s a lot to sit with.

Days Start Strong, Night Brings the Nothing

“There are many kinds of joy, but they all lead to one: the joy to be loved. Every story is a never ending story.”

It’s going to be a two fer today. Who could have guessed. This is the downswing. The loneliness settles in right around now. I’ve surrounded my day in all the ways I wanted it. I’ve indulged, relaxed, and spent my day with the writers I love.

I finished Wild Game, and am now onto Amy Tan’s, Where the Past Begins. She of course is talking about the writer’s process, and the longing sets in.

She dedicated her book to her editor because he took her many frenzied emails and listened to them. It’s me! It’s me! I’ve tried every way around this. I know I can open an email and write to myself, to a friend, to my therapist, but nothing is the same as when it’s fueled by the passion of the excitement of becoming known to one another. It brings me to life. A huge part of who I am. I feel lifeless and listless without it.

She writes, “my emails were not carefully composed. They were dashed off with free-form spontaneity, a mix of rambling thoughts off the top of my head, anecdotes of the day, and updates on my dog and perfect husband. In contrast, Dan’s emails were thoughtful and more focused on my concerns, although they also included notes about Moroccan cuisine. He sometimes responded to my off hand remarks with too much care, thinking I had expressed serious wringing of my soul.” This last line be still my heart. Me too. I feel seen.

Later she goes on to say what had enabled her to write those thousands of emails was spontaneity. I underlined and starred this. If I applied that to writing a book, I would be able to finish quickly. Spontaneity is the answer. This thing I continuously fault myself for as impulsivity. My wires are always crossed towards seeing me in some horrible light. When what comes into view most often is how right I have been and am. Just because something hurts does not make it wrong. Not in the ego sense of right. In the spiritual sense. I am on my path damnit. I am enough, and I will figure out this balance while also being compassionate and loving to myself.

Longing will be the theme of this evening and post I believe. I can do all the self work I want, but it’s not moving this period of time in my life. Amy writes about how her writing in an email is different, and the hairs on my arms stood up. I’ve never heard anyone describe the differences in modalities in a way that made me realize how much I miss writing letters to a lover.

That is my thing. My truest self comes out to play in those correspondences, and I was in love with that consistently exploring myself with another person, and hitting the ball back and forth, as much as anything else. I’m thinking how wanting to be known is a theme of recent.

And entirely different self emerges when I open my laptop (which I haven’t written on in months). I just felt a stabbing pain at the realization I don’t even write my blog posts on there, because touching that keyboard is as much touching the skin of my lover. That is the place I would go. I would open up the screen, describe some of the surrounding details and fire away.

Did I have a lover to facilitate my writing, or my writing facilitated the love? Either way I wanted that consistent space, but I never wanted to stop writing, or working at love. Recently someone suggested to me “does it have to be so hard though, or that they didn’t think it need be so hard all the time.” And I’ve been sitting with that and thinking about it a lot. I think of how I differentiate good hard and bad hard, and good tired and bad tired.

Is consistent engagement in a variety of ways using creativity and feeling alive hard? Does it have to be? For me it’s hard not to be those things. And for some I suppose it feels like work. When work is fulfilling it ceases to be work, for me at least.

I am lonely ….. deeply lonely. Longing to be known and engaged with in a way where someone shows up, is consistent, reliable, interested in building, engaged, and all in. And that isn’t something available to me right now and so it’s stretching my limitations to go day in and day out without. I’m constantly threatened with falling into bad habits or pits of despair. And knowing that if I can’t maintain on my own.

You know what that’s crap! What if I can’t because I don’t want to, because we aren’t made to be alone like this. I don’t buy it. At least I’m not. But there is no default either.

I read a post by Brene Brown today about how she’s ready to go down the writing spiral and how her process is all or nothing and she gets lost. And in another book I read just today as well, about a supportive family tip toeing around the writer knowing that’s who they are and what they need, and I think what must it be like to have that kind of support.

I can’t write with love and I can’t write without it. Although I think not being able to write with it was prior to the crucible that has been this past year and a half. I was desperately disconnected in so many ways. I could have never written anything without the connection to me.

But now I want that playground for my psyche that is the art of e-mail and all the other forms of connecting, that is that secure grounding of that one main place you go when you want to be your full real self. And here come the tears.

Melissa would say just be with that feeling. It won’t swallow me, end me, and truly I finally know that. But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck completely.

I want to be held and touched and considered and from someone who can show up as a whole person to want to be consistently engaged with me creating a life together. The loneliness is like jagged teeth biting into my flesh. There is very little relief. I get moments and glimmers, and I know I’m on path.

I’m frustrated with feeling impatient, or too intense or this or that…. Those are judgments. Just because certain things did not turn out the way I thought doesn’t mean any of that is true. But that’s my constant battle. Which means I still have work to do on my relationship with myself. I will always have work to do and I’d still like to be held, touched, worked for and with, by someone enthusiastic about me, that is able to stay two feet in and fully engaged.

It’s not too much to ask and it is ok that it hurts right now. That the loneliness stings…. I think the biggest area where I hurt myself is still being used to turning something that is not something into something. Straw into gold. I need to be still and do me until I invite a fully present and enthusiastic individual into my orbit.

The lens of scarcity colors everything different than abundance does. Moving slower helps to see what’s really there. I see why I just tried to use my will and determination before because sitting in the disappointment is sometimes unbearable. It’s especially unbearable when I go to that old place of alone in childhood; where there was no reprieve and no relief. At least if I told myself life was what I made it, and boy did I live by that, it gave me something to focus on that kept me alive and sane.

Burning right now. Burning good, versus burning bad. There’s a light at the end of this tunnel. I can’t feel it yet, but I can see it, and that’s something.

Ocean tears

Where is she ?

The second I drive up over the hill the smell of salt and sea climbs inside my veins and breathes life back into me. Like coming home. Today a flag is whipping in the wind, the wind that’s tousling my hair. It’s 80 degrees and sunny and I have Pink radio on Pandora.

This morning the overwhelm roiled up inside me to a frenzy and texting a friend brought the tears. One of those good shower cries. Loud. Inconsolable. Here I am a whole summer later and have to refuse another like the last in any way shape or form. I am a new self and that’s scary and lonely. And if you add health issues on top down right depressing.

I’m being strong in so many ways. New ways and old ways. When I hit my limits I break down and then build back up, rather than acting in a trauma response. Life is much calmer this way. I connect more easily and peacefully with myself and my children. My mind isn’t wild like it was. I am free to focus and enjoy things if I wasn’t so fucking sad right now.

I was looking up things to find out why I’ve been such an emotional wreck since my uterine ablation, two weeks ago today. Is it that ? I feel bloated and just entirely unsexy and that sucks. It feels icky. I feel old. I feel not where I want to be. I feel ashamed. I feel sad. It all just bubbles up to the surface for release.

I don’t have the answers to lean on anymore. I am humbled. The only thing I can do is be grateful I can feel this deep and have packed so much into one life already. I don’t have regrets, just really big feelings.

I want things to look forward to again that feel exciting and give me hope and joy, but I can’t force them to be now. I have to be where I am. To be in this. But haven’t I been here long enough my soul cries. How long ? At this point it’s beyond being impatient. If this is hell, I should have prayed more, because I can’t take it anymore.

The bag from my surgery still sits next to my bed. I haven’t even unpacked it, books are piled all around it, I need to put away laundry. I can’t move. I am frozen and that’s a terrifying feeling. I can’t play the piano. I know it will feel good. I know it makes me happy, but I can’t move. It’s hard to imagine at this point ever feeling better again.

Recently someone was talking about wanting normalcy again after a large and painful life transition. And it made me think of Leslie Charles and her “there is a before and an after” when it comes to grief. A new normal must be created. And not knowing what that looks like is a hard place to be in. Focusing on what I want my life to look like, what I want, versus who. For me it was always going to be about love. All these concepts jumble together.

Be still

There are ways I like where I am right now. Irreplaceable lessons, and ways I most assuredly do not like where I am. And just like magic Unsteady comes on. Of course it does.

My day was cut short today. I am seeing 5 clients and that is a relief when it happens like that. I think I’ll go home and rest until them. I’ve been so tired since surgery. I don’t know what the hell it did to me or if it’s the sheer lack of a loving and warm attachment that I’ve always abided by. Probably that or both.

People are living all around me. I’m watching them right now. I feel like the walking dead and this is just a moment. I know me. That I’ll keep venturing and learning and being me, but right now I just want to sleep. And I don’t want to want to sleep because it’s gorgeous out and there’s life to be lived.

This state I am in right now is in such conflict with who I am. A suck the marrow out of life girl stuck in a black and white world.

One minute at a time…..

Burning down Co-Dependence (the house)

Burning off co-dependency often feels like burning alive. It would appear that it’s sitting with yourself even as you want to crawl out of your skin with the not doing of it all. Sigh.

I got lost…… a little song to accompany the post.

Admitting addiction is probably one of the hardest things anyone will ever have to do. It means you have to take responsibility for your own destructive patterns. Yucky. I’d much rather craft my representative (as Glennon says) and live like that. It’s much more “fun”, but is it?! Or does it just look better on the surface.

Be still and know.

Glennon and Abby are both addicts. I wonder if their love helps them manage their addiction in a well balanced way? If their shared goals of raising a family helps keeps their destructive energies focused. If their love gives them strength to fight it. About all the things you don’t see. I’m sure it’s not easy. The media makes things like that look easy and gives people a false sense of the amount of work it really takes to make things work. If you have read both their memoirs you can see that a tremendous amount of self reflection and growth preceded their love. One could even say invited it. Created space for it. Tik tok would call it manifested it.

Balance ?

Easier said than done. The rationalizing and justifying that life is short and running out and all of that. How does anyone find balance anyway? It’s an elusive concept to me right now. Even more evidence to get still with me.

I have all the tools and books surrounding me…. but the truth is I’m afraid. Really afraid of the weight of taking responsibility for myself. Funny since in most ways I’ve been doing this my whole life. What a funny thing to fear.

What looked like taking responsibility for myself was really survival, nothing was motivated from a secure place. If I didn’t have one I would make one, and hence the birth of my co-dependency.

I am working Melody Beattie Co-Dependent No More. Exciting stuff. It’s not. I want to hide it on the shelf, take off City of Girls, book a trip to Aruba and indulge. Again where is the balance? Like it’s outside of me and not possible or something. Sometimes I am ridiculous.

“We’ve ignored our own needs and wants and then get angry about it.”

“Just feeling urgent and compulsive is enough to hurt us. We keep ourselves in a crisis state.”

Set yourself free. Know the difference between a reaction that needs to be changed and one that despite its swiftness is still leading you in a direction that will correct the above.

What are my own wants and needs?

Excavations continue.

What I have learned is being out of alignment with them causes anxiety and suffering and no peace of mind. So I will get still in that place and not move from it until I am firm in those things. I don’t need to compromise those things to feel self-worth any longer. This new is scary. New is scary. It’s also exciting and lonely and sad and so many things.

I’m going to copy a post from a website. I do not remember the original poster but there’s lots of good stuff in here regarding the difference between love and a trauma bond and how to know.

“How do you know the difference between a trauma-bond and love? As the person with possibly a trauma-bond.”

Great question!!

Trauma bonding is a major part of abusive relationships. While in the trauma bond, it may be impossible to notice the difference between love and codependency. During trauma bonding, you may be bonded to the way the person (abuser) makes you feel —intense, fulfilling in some way, even attractive, indispensable.

If the trauma bond has gone for very long, you may be believing that if there is something wrong in the relationship, you may be the cause of it; that’s a consequence of emotional abuse directly. And you may be trying really hard to be better for this person “to love you back” but by then, love and codependance are the same to you.

Thinking that what you have felt for that person (the emotional manipulator) is not love will invalidate you completely, years of your life, and your sense of self.

Most people in trauma bond relationships are proud of how much they can love. They feel that their love is so sincere and accepting that makes them feel better about themselves because of it. That’s how they compensate for staying in such a relationship.

Since most people in this type of relationship are victims of trauma from before or some sort of emotional vulnerability, they may have low self esteem, low sense of worth, and may be easily manipulated in feeling grateful or in debt to the abuser.

Oftentimes, the abuser will have their own serious mental health issues, which lead the person being abused to feel the need to care for them or protect them. The abused individual will go up against other people who speak out against the partner and often push people away who aren’t supportive of the relationship in the name of the great love they have for them.

I have noticed that the abused in this type of relationship may have directed their emotional needs to feel compassion for those that suffer. That’s be a compensation for what they didn’t receive, probably in childhood. So, by caring a lot about those that suffer, they keep afloat, since compassion is a great source of resilience.

Narcissists love this behavior and will often reinforce this in the person being abused by showing them love and affection following an act of protectiveness.

So, to answer your question, since love is so difficult to define, I’d say that most people in trauma bonding situations have access to their heart, which most probably the abuser doesn’t. So, in a way, the bonding is a combination of a good/open heart and a acute emotional need of being loved, seen, appreciated, and cared for. In a way, vulnerability is the condition of opening the heart, right? The co-dependant is much less guarded than the manipulator. That type of vulnerability is a defense; loving makes them feel strong internally, even when externally they may be prone to abuse.”

Its abusive both ways because no ones needs are met and further the energy that is so vital to purpose and for our families is taken. Impossible without treatment.

Relapse is a part of recovery and admitting addiction is the first step.

Hi I’m Christina and I’m a recovering co-dependent. *waves*

And I’m committed to not doing things that make me feel like shit. No matter how good they may feel at the time. Not giving over my peace of mind for anything.

The Simple Things

My daughter brought me coffee in the bath this morning and I literally burst into tears. Funny because I had made one but it just wasn’t that good, and she shows up with a “special coffee”, and takes the other off my bath tray and says, “we’ll just get this out of here”. And she was happy and light and that is worth everything in the world.

It’s been a year of scarcity, a scarcity I never wanted my kids to feel. And yet their connection with me, the intimate one, has felt scarce much of their life I think. Because in my mind I was lost, and I had a belief system of how to fix that and stuck carefully to that line.

That connection is healing. I’m watching it bloom like the magnificent magnolias out my bedroom window that comfort me daily. It’s giving me a security and push to be more of all I already am. I didn’t know I could have love like that with my children. I only knew the way I was doing things. Compartmentalizations. I got my needs from a partner and provided their needs as best I could, but actual connection… I never realized how terrifying that was for me based on my model.

We use templates and apply them over experiences and it can be so damaging, but it’s the way the human brain works. My template for mother child relationship and parent child relationship in general is absolutely devastating. It’s such an area of anxiousness and I can only see now how it’s been operating in my life, distancing me from my own children.

The truth is I never felt worthy of a connection with my children. I believe in earning our relationships not by titles and I perhaps made it harder than it needed to be. By never owning that I’m their mother for giving birth to them. Mine gave birth to me and never became a mother. It makes sense I made life more complicated than it need be, because life was always complicated for me. I wanted to make myself safe and secure before I involved them in my needs. I knew instinctively I would have taken from them in a way that was unrealistic. So I tried to meet those needs in the adult realm and preserve their childhood. That’s what I chose.

That relationship was never safe, mine with caregivers of any kind. It was so unsafe it would stagger you. I think you would cry. When I talk about it, it’s automatic that it feels I did something wrong. I must have, or that maybe I’m making it up, maybe it was all me. I was a difficult child, it was me, and the story gets twisted and I tremble with anxiety.

To remedy this I just put it all the way out of my mind. It’s too difficult to reconcile, and yet unexplored it was operating constantly in my life.

Sometimes survival looks a lot like selfishness.

These are the crossed wires of my existence. My critics landed on a story about me, and that was their experience. I scrambled for love and belonging and I had full good intentions, and a wholly unexplored self. You would think if you knew me this would be impossible, but I, just like anyone else with experiences like mine, constructed reality to be barely bearable, to even survive.

I’ve been categorized as selfish and putting myself before my children and criticized and judged primarily by the one person who actually bore witness to some of the horrors. He is one of the only people I know who met the empty gaze of my terrifying mother, and saw my grandparents all but offer him a dowry to take me off their hands. Just wow.

Any man that came around was an opportunity to unload one of the evil stepsisters. (Their daughters) and then me. They offered my father money to take my mother off their hands, and tried to push me on him, making me a burden rather than his daughter.

When I was young I was Tom boy and against the grain I liked Ninja Turtles rather than Barbie. I got a ninja turtle camera that imprinted a little insignia of Michael Angelo on the bottom right corner. I took a bunch of pictures while visiting my dads home. Of his art because it was so different than my grandparents. There was a half naked woman wrapped around a snake. I remember it vividly. I thought I was being a photographer. I was using my imagination.

What happened from that is that my grandparents saw how much money he appeared to have based on my photos and I became a spy from them and associated with my mother. No matter what I did as a child I kept doing something wrong or bad. I was wrong with my grandparents by sabotaging their efforts to get my father to take responsibility for me (someone had to), and I was wrong with my dad for guilt by associating and being a spy.

I was being an imaginative child. To be misunderstood in this way was devastating to my self in so many ways. I’ve spent the rest of my life feeling I need to work so hard to be seen.

These things were my fault. I was shamed for my behaviors, all normal for someone not being invested in or merely even wanted. He disappeared shortly after this. He would blame my grandparents and my mother for us never having a relationship. That’s what you did then I guess. Start a new family and not look back rather than be attached to crazy. I was a casualty and when I look back I see that at that time I was the perpetrator somehow.

I was the problem.

So when someone does something nice for me in this half of my life. Doesn’t matter how many years later it’s incredibly emotional, and also unearths tons of unworthiness and I better do something right back, or I will lose them. A normal process becomes intense for me, and I am shamed for being intense. Sometimes it’s so emotional that I freeze and the person is left feeling less than fulfilled by my response. They don’t know me enough to know it’s locked inside and it means more than they know.

Every little thing means more than you can imagine.

This also makes the bad things amplified. I have less room maybe than your average person for harsh. I’m fragile in certain ways and up til this point I’ve made myself wrong for that too.

I am on the brink of owning who I fucking am and excavating my identity out of the ashes of the lives I keep burning down because I didn’t know any other way.

The brink is an exciting place to be and it is also a terrifying one. Pleasure and pain and when those things get out of balance it can threaten an entire soul. Particularly an already tired one.

It’s almost too much responsibility To be whole on ones own. Am I worthy? Someone easily would reply yes, my loyal travelers would. But that is not so easy for me to come to terms with. It is almost too uncomfortable to be comfortable. The story of my life. The restless takes over like a tornado ready to upturn the crops I’ve painstakingly planted.

I am working on it…..

This morning I will enjoy my coffee, my delicious coffee with love in it. I’ll let it lighten my step and give me energy to face the trials and the beauty of the day. Sometimes those things are equally difficult.

It hurts to be human…..