Tag: #theemotionalalchemist

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Grief Will Drag You to The Depths of Who You Really Are…..

I’ve been hiding and it’s time I come out. I’ve been hiding how pain I’ve been in and how hard my life has been for me from everyone, because I thought if I did that I’d have a better chance at being loved.

People don’t want someone who is set so far back with themselves, people want people who are strong and confident and ENOUGH, which was the theme of my EMDR this morning.

I’ve proved every thought or fear I’ve had wrong about myself over and over, and yet I never get to benefit from my own warmth and love. I’m kept out in the cold from me. Always pressing my nose on the glass peering in at the warm family events.

And ironically enough my devastation would begin at one such an event. The complicating elixir of feeling like I could belong and hold my head high without being numb or shaking with anxiety. Dear Evan Hansen. We will get to that later. I was excited to be out in the world belonging, but where and to whom did I belong and why?

This is the level of lost I’ve been at for going on three years now. And I committed to the unthinkable which has been staying with and in my pain to dig myself out. Even writing those words I begin to cry hard. A hard guttural wild animal cry with frantic panicky eyes.

The things Evan Hansen did to try to become visible. Does anybody see me or hear me? And the answer was no. I became so effective at being seen as I needed to be to obtain love and affection. And my God if I never shame myself again for how I’ve needed to save myself.

This is the commitment I need to become fierce about. To repairing this constant demon of not enough (or worse bad and toxic) that is so deeply entrenched in my programming it’s threatening to squeeze the life out of me. I’m stripped to the bare bones of just who I am to lean on, and not what I do. What I do to fix it, what I do to understand.

I’ll get a breath and then get dragged back down to the bottom of the ocean with an anvil on my foot and drowning over and over again. Sputtering fighting for oxygen, every day of my life unless I became part of someone else’s family which always temporarily numbed the pain and made me feel safe and loved. But that could never be sustained because I was empty of myself. There was no self left that I could see. There were too many words inside my head that conflicted and too many emotions flashbacks.

I can’t get any oxygen. Help me.

I’ve been saying help me so often now, and it brings up shame every single time and more waves of unworthiness. Will this battle ever come to an end, or will these memories, thoughts, and genuine body harm and tired take my life along with my soul.

I’ve been battling for my life and the worst part about that is I don’t look like someone who is battling for their life. There are no scars that can be seen, no marks. This is why we teach visibility by example and why we protect.

Dear Evan Hansen…. I am you. That scared lonely child, who still tried to fight to be seen and then felt bad about that too. For shouting or crying because I learned to gaslight myself out of my own reality to try and survive with my mental faculties.

I think of Viktor Frankl here and why I connected so much with that paper on his book in grad school, and why I have my tattoo and why it means so much to me. He kept his by having meaning, and that meaning was the love he derived from his partner, that’s what he held onto, it was love.

The only meaning I could get in my childhood was acts of service, doing. That’s the only way I got attention of any variety and usually that was to obtain more of what I had to offer. It was not to protect, invest, and be interested in me just for the sake of being so, for the joy.

The purgatory I’ve been has been wanting to be the parent I didn’t have and to be able to do that for my children and trying every way known to man to achieve that. I knew I felt the most alive in the things I’d been so deprived of. So I tried for love.

And then I felt selfish and was told as much and became my mother who also wanted love, but she didn’t give it either, and I do. I am not my mother.

I am not her.

Most days I don’t think I’ll come out of this alive, that is my truth right now. Most days it feels like too much work to breathe. This trauma work while having no love needs met or secure family system and feeling horrible I’m not only not offering that to my children, but I’m not able to access it in myself well going through this. I’m all locked down and sick.

This illness of being lost to oneself and not having much in the way of relief is deadly. It’s a deadly game. I can’t digest food and my head feels as if it will explode. For so long the things I did to comfort were also harmful and I’m aware. I’m viciously aware. I can’t get out I’m trapped in here help me.

The more I say help me and the more I allow myself to be loved only in the safe ways I need to be that the universe constantly puts in my path, healing tries to take hold. And my nasty worn out mind tries to swat it away, and I crumble.

I can only hope that this experience leaves me in such a heap that I never forget I don’t know what someone else is going through and I become kind by design even though life has not handled me gently. The warrior of the light.

All of the ways I was responsible and disciplined long before I ever should have been eroded the very thing I would need in adulthood to sustain the love I so badly desired and deserved.

And this latest period watching my children shout at me to figure it out mom, we need you, except they don’t say that as teens, they say I hate you and you’re going to end up cold and alone because you’re so difficult to deal with. What I’ve been dealing with has been unbearably difficult and I’ve been primarily alone in it. Too ashamed to get any help or even visibility because I chose this right ?

Every time its my fault. Wired for abuse return to abuse. Every time its my fault. And the tape begins you’re selfish, you’re your mother, you’re….. and it breaks my spirit, soul, and heart. Never mind that happening from the outside I’m adept at always doing it from the inside. I could really go for a good coma right now. Yes Moira.

And then when the person that you love tells you in so many ways this is your fault, that’s a rock bottom that knows no bounds. And when you identify with their wounds, but miss all the differences, and you are betrayed and betray yourself and internalize more shame, it’s easy to get a full understanding on how people get to the point where they take their lives.

That will never be my path because it just is not. Not because I’m better than anyone who has. I am not. No more or less just different. If I don’t continue to make meaning out of this suffering by learning my story and then sharing it so others can get the words to heal, that being the healing, it will have been for nothing.

It’s not in me to give up, and I hope I passed that along to my children. I just need to figure out right now how to keep myself full of love and safe, and stay away from anything that is not that.

For my beginning today I reached out to my energy healer and my first step is to go see her, and what I will say is I need your love and support. I have no thinking left. I’m not there to think w her or come up with solutions. The solution is love. And I’m going to be it, and ask for it, and work on recovering.

This is what it looks like to grieve a childhood you never had, and both parents, and a broken and confused reality and scattered mind you have to live with. To grieve all the potential of who you could or would have been with the right ingredients.

This is messy, grimy, slippery, dirty, painful grief. I am going through these things, but I am not these things.

I am enough

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Stubbornly Stuck in Love with Everyone Except Me

I am stubborn when I love. This may just be my greatest downfall, and my most grace filled salvation all wrapped into one. I am stubborn in love, for love, about love. I am stuck in love with everyone but myself, the constant agitating wool sweater of my current existence.

The necessity for self love and identity has not only entered the race, but it’s pulling just a millisecond in front ….

Is it winning the race ? Do I even want to be in it!? Sometimes winning is not playing at all. I’m not playing very often these days, but I’m trying to learn how.

Today is a nausea day, a pit in my stomach day. Then the pressure and shame of another beautiful day wasted and struggling in these chains of feeling I’m responsible for this or it’s my fault or I could understand it, or if I could understand it….

That’s what not letting go looks like. Did I mention that I’m stubborn and fierce and relentless, much like my grief right now, they are identical twins fighting for some aspect of separate identity.

Everything is uphill. Breathing is a battle. I’m am survived by the love of my friends and people who see me. That’s the only thing keeping me afloat at the moment. They help piece together the losses and remind me why I’m feeling this way.

I’m starting to scare myself, and them too I know. It feels like it won’t end, and certainly like it won’t end well. An important person in my life had a parent who was loving and good and she had a stroke. That person begged for it to be over, for “the end”, and I would so often tell them they won’t know how they will feel when it actually ends, it may not be what they expect, and to try and be present.

I feel like a fraud thinking about that now. The privileged one who has not endured such a thing sharing well meaning comforts so I can feel meaningful.

Is any of it meaningful? Is any of it “made a difference to that one” starfish stories ? Does any of it really matter at all. The prince, the rose, the fox? Or is everything just whatever story we tell in a moment and nothing more.

Faithless and unfaithful and lost…..

Nothing stops this pain. There is no fantasy to rely on no knight in shining armor. I am tasked with saving myself over and over, and I thought that would be over by now. I had expectations.

I had a dream, lots of them. And now those are dead and I’m petulant about making any new dreams. Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face Christina, that’s not who you are. You know better and you know why.

My knowing is in tact. It might be the only part of me that is.

The rest of me is just a bag of bones right now. (My favorite Stephen King novel)….. I rattle and haunt the halls of my broken home carrying around my bleeding heart. Maybe they will make a museum out of this house, a funhouse of terror, the place of a future tragedy….

It must be nearing October with all this Halloween talk.

My dreams have turned to nightmares. I don’t sleep. It’s fitful and violent. EMDR is brutal.

I am lost and ironically reading All is Not Lost. Leslie Charles, one of the first author speakers that I looked up to. Two of my favorite pieces of art work that are now in my only office, were made my students at West Conn for the survivors of homicide conference. If that isn’t dark ….

What about the survivors whose souls were stolen in childhood, due to repeated terror and an utter lack of capability. Survivors whose were sentenced to a lifetime of extreme struggle without their consent, and then shamed for the bizarre ways they choose to save themselves and self destruct over and over.

Purgatory is a place the living inhabit, not anything to fear in death.

Death would be peaceful compared to this. Don’t worry I’ll always return to the All is Not Lost camp….. for right now however I’m Six Feet Under.

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An Asshole is an Asshole….

“They are like those girls that run with foxes” yes I know this is a wolf, now I also get the movie Foxfire and it’s brilliance in a whole new way! It’s appropriate to our times now.

“A healthy woman is much like a wolf, strong life force, life-giving, territorially aware, intuitive and loyal. Yet separation from her wildish nature causes a woman to become meager, anxious, and fearful. The wild nature carries the medicine for all things. She carries stories, dreams, words and songs. She carries everything a woman needs to be and know. She is the essence of the female Soul. With the wild nature as ally and teacher, we see not through two eyes only, but through the many eyes of intuition. With intuition we are like the starry night, we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes.” ~Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I just had an epiphany as I’m doing my morning pages and watching Dr. Ramani videos and procrastinating the exercise my body is so desperately craving. Dr. Ramani Video here

She said a line “an asshole is an asshole”, and it brought me back to a time and place where someone said to me “you’ve never had an asshole before have you” essentially that is what was said. It makes me shudder that at the time excitement trumped logic. That I remember every single moment of that day. And that after I shouted over and over that I never needed another one, and about justice.

I shouted that to the person harming me. Not only deaf ears but more power to use against me was the result of that. The epiphany is that to empower ourselves we stay in our truth. I had to confront my own incongruence rather than shouting and begging them to confront theirs.

Stay in your own lane baby girl, and on your own path.

I’ve spent years in hell, begging to be listened to, seen, understood and shown up for by every imaginable variety of incapable unavailable person you can think of. The addict, the manipulator, the Pollyanna, and a lifetime of that for the narcissist. The full blown empty eyed pathological husk, that both of my parents were. My beginning…. The song sum of our parts comes to mind by Mary Lambert. This is why I cry the minute she sings.

They gave up. In one way or another. They gave up on themselves so they for sure couldn’t have been anything to or for me.

And damnit if I will not give up. If that becomes my only super power as a mom. Never settling for unhealthy, especially my own, and never giving up trying to do better. THIS IS ME! And the right people have always seen that light, some have wanted to bask in it without doing the work themselves, they use the excuse the gaslight that they don’t move at the pace I do. Bullshit! Not doing something at all, and not doin it fast enough are two very different things.

Bullshit and I am angry. But not so much more at anyone else than the life that set me up to accept below sub zero of what I deserve. So this is me reclaiming my security and my ability to feel capable, loving, worthy, beyond every persons hurt words that have scathed me, when they always had the opportunity to keep showing up just like me.

There are those that judge those doing the work with bitter anger at their own lack of courage and there are those doing the work. Know the fucking difference Christina. Never, ever accept less.

You hide behind your manners, your ideas of right and wrong based on religion, and the opinions of people who have never walked a mile in either set of shoes.

I will never again share my resources, my heart, body, or mind with any variety of ostrich with their head in the sand who relies on shame and moral principles to comfort their days. And I refuse to betray myself with those judgments either. Fuck that!

I’m so mad at the criticisms I have allowed myself to endure at those jealous of my courage. I sound like a narcissist right ?! You either do exploit people continuously and purposely or you don’t. That is a black and white issue.

I will no longer shame myself for my creative attempts at survival that had a lot of blind spots and a lot of casualties including myself. I’m not responsible for anyone else.I intend to be responsible to and for myself. If you weren’t just as lost as me you wouldn’t have accepted a half person and called it whole either.

I have been a ball of great ideas and enthusiastic energy, but with no grounding, and no relationship with myself. A Tasmanian Devil, a whirlwind, but I keep living. I wasn’t living responsibly to myself. Do you know how much pain it has caused me to deeply invest my entire being in another hoping to make home with them, only to find myself empty.

Do you know what dying over and over feels like? Stumbling into pools of reactivity, wild eyed, seeing red, feeling threat everywhere and then shaming yourself on top for reacting to mistreatment, neglect, and abuse.

Do you know what it feels like to try and get back up after each fall through the crust of earth and down through hell. And how a drop of attention however misguided feels like a well in the desert, only to realize it was a mirage?!

Unless you know what that feels like don’t you dare judge me. Anyone too faint of heart to see my whole story when they look at me, beneath, and between the lines, will not ever bathe in the light that rises at dawn. The nights are dark, but the light always rises in the morning.

I used to be so anxious I would shake like a leaf at the smallest social interaction. My face would get red and hot, I would have panic attacks and I’ve been plagued my entire life by painful and stressful physical symptoms that I got shamed for. I didn’t know trauma lives in your body the way it does. And no one was brave enough or curious enough to want to put two and two together and see me.

I was seen generously because I was being generous. Bestowing into others all I ever wished I had received, but I wanted that back as well. The dance. A little give, a little take. Givers have to have limits because takers never have any. We all fall into traps that are the lull of security when our lives have been characterized by scarcity #metoo. But without your own work it will never have any permanence.

And that doesn’t mean it isn’t or wasn’t authentic. It just wasn’t sustainable without your entire participation! I’ve been this self sustaining island entity trying to use creativity and passion to create a life, but what I wasn’t using was the confident security (because how would I have had that) of self knowledge and true awareness.

Grounding without ground.

Awareness and hyper-vigilance are different. Did you know that? Because I’ll tell you I didn’t. Hyper-vigilance seeks constantly specifically for a threat. I called what I had self awareness and then expected unrealistic things from myself and others. What I had and was doing was scanning for disaster and quickly seeking shelter. Again I’ll ask. Can you imagine living that way for nearly 41 years ? Can you ?

Can you imagine not having a home? Even in the form of soothing family traditions that remained the same each year. And if you want to learn you have to try different things, if you want different results. I knew I had to do different, but I didn’t know how to organize that and then more shame as I come to terms with how difficult that has been for my children. And finding understanding for myself, while they aren’t at an age where I can have any from them.

No external validation or security. Truly doing from scratch.

Who am I? I’m a feral child who made her life on her own. Creating a human being so difficult to understand and love, because I never felt safe. My whole self became a self fulfilling prophecy of abandonment and rejection. Round and round and round….

Lost. Found. Invisible to myself. Dependent on the opinion of others whether I could be loving that day or not.

A beautiful complicated simple tragedy.

My story will be told and there will be no more assholes, and no more addicts unwilling to admit their problem to themselves, allowed in my sacred energy as I am nothing if not willing to look at myself and make changes. I have always been solidly that. That I can trust in. I will always do the work.

You can spend your life trying to control how people perceive you, but the consequence is that your life will never be your own. That is a tragedy I’m not willing to risk.

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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…. 💜

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Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow, but the Show Must Go On….

How is it possible saying goodbye to an office is like saying goodbye to a lover? It’s saying good bye to a time, to a place, to a different self, and to a thousand memories. I became a counselor in this space. This is a second home to me. A refuge. I thought I would be ok, but now that I’m actually doing it I am overcome with emotions.

I don’t know if I can…. Perhaps I’ll just keep it forever. Eccentric. Why does it feel like ripping off my limbs? Nothing about this is ok. I had so many dreams for this office. So many big dreams. So many dreams in general. I couldn’t have bargained for all the changes I’ve made, and that have been made for me. For how this all feels, the changes it has made in me.

Writing in this office cuts through my insides like a cold blade. My guts wrench. I spent the first half of my life being able to Men in Black shiny thing myself (erase my memory) and begin over and over. And now my past haunts me daily. I sleep terrible and throughout my life that hasn’t been an issue since I was little.

I just want to run out of this space, leave everything and never come in it again. How does anyone do this grief thing. I was in this office when we found out we lost the second identical twin boy. We were supposed to graduate to the regular doctor that week. What the actual fuck. Searing hot. Scars burning. I found out over a screen with an adolescent in my waiting room: I thought I was doing the right thing as a provider. Only appointment I ever missed. It doesn’t matter now.

What matters is how fresh all of the pain is and the only difference is it doesn’t drag me under anymore, or to versions of myself I don’t like. I’m learning grace.

I have thousands of memories in this office, some burn brighter than others, all of them legitimate and a huge piece of my history. I am aching. My heart is aching.

I had hairapy this morning. It’s beautiful out. I have hope in my heart. But one more goodbye? I don’t know if I can handle one more goodbye. Almost six years this relationship with this space and it’s time to let go.

I am taking a vacation in October, a whole week, just me. I am so happy about that. I have needed this for so long. I’m finally making a home within myself. It does get better. All of the stinging is still there, but I can breathe again in so many ways. Lean into the sharp edges.

I have no idea what the rest of my life will look like and that’s oddly comforting as the terror releases it’s grip on me.

I finished Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids last night. I finish things now. I just keep getting back up after I get knocked down. The second sentence is old, the one before it new.

I stay.

I can’t be here anymore with this legal pad and pen staring at me. I’m going to throw up. Please …..

I remember every second of every moment in this office. Every single one. I can replay them like some fucked up episode of black mirror. The blessing and the curse of high sensitivity and a nearly photographic memory, never mind sensory memory. I can close my eyes and always access all of it.

My eyes are burning hot and wet, the tears trickle and drip. Ok no more for now. I’ll come back to this later. I don’t want to miss Chip’s visit.

I want to do fall things. To watch Hocus Pocus and Beetlejuice and to go to ciderys. It’s later and I’m utterly exhausted. I’m going back in forth between reading The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz, and writing in my journal.

I’m very sleepy and deciding if I have enough time to nap before picking up my curbside order at Bj’s and making dinner with twin A.

This day couldn’t be any more beautiful. The wind is gently teasing the leaves on the trees and they are rustling with joy. Dancing and talking to one another happily. They are good company. This house continues to become a home, not unlike how I continue to become a human. Visible to myself, friend even.

Slow and steady wins the race. I’m glad I’m no longer in the rat race.

My new ink is in the itchy phase on my elbow it’s bending and driving me nuts. I relocated my office lamps to my bedroom, well one for now, I’ll need to make another trip. So hoping that feels a little more homey. I brought some of my artwork home as well. Bittersweet.

My office is a mess currently so maybe I’ll spend some time on straightening that. So many projects. One at a time and just finding joy in them is the goal versus became overwhelmed and being down a rabbit hole of anxiety. No point in that.

Everything is quiet these days, well besides the teenagers. I’ve never been so still. It’s so peaceful and so lonely. But nothing at all feels rushed or chaotic and for that I am grateful in my bones.

I’ve been doing little outings and day trips. Last night I had dinner at Gusto in Milford. I had never been before. Sal my piano teacher played there and the staff was so great. My server was so nice. I was able to be at peace by myself. I didn’t look around much at all I don’t have the gathering of families together. I thought of the opportunity this was to be with my thoughts and that there will be plenty of time for gatherings and I have plenty of warm and loving connections.

My next outing I want to do is to go to Bad Seed Cidery, it’s on Pancake Hollow rd in Highland NY, nearly 2 hours away.

I added a couple more Stephen King books to my collection from used bookstores. I will spend time with me until and then after because, I enjoy my own company. There’s so many things to do and see and I never realized it before. I was completely blacked out.

Lately I’ve been spending time with my neighbor. She has a new puppy and she’s so cuddly and cute and I don’t have to be responsible for her. Just two women; each alone, living in these giant houses next to one another. She’s so strong. I admire her tremendously. We enjoy one another’s company. And isn’t that what it’s all about anyway.

I’m between lives and selves right now and it’s a strange but not unhappy place to be. My mind continues to wander in and out of the many memories and stories of the past few years. I’ll just keep attempting to capture them and my journey and immortalize it via the page.

Onward….

Ps I think I’ll watch Mermaids tonight or Julie and Julia. I’m in a comfort mode, not lost in it fortunately, but it’s a lovely place to visit occasionally.

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A Counselor in Need Without Self Awareness is a Danger Indeed.

I’m watching ATypical with my oldest. We are catching him up on episodes one and two of the newest season. The kids and I watched the first few seasons, what feels like years ago. So it’s nostalgic and warm to be watching this now.

Comfort. This is a lot of my goal right now. As I learn healthier ways to do it, I realize how unhealthy some of my old coping was. This is a lot to sit with. A lot to sit with.

As life starts heating up to a boiling point I’m able now to marvel at how I take hard circumstances, criticism, etc, and use it to push me to keep making myself better at a reasonable pace. Well the whole reasonable pace thing is new 😉 as many of you know, lol. This is making me think of how I resonate with Black Widow, the new movie. Pain only makes you stronger, it can, but it can also make you crazy if you can’t make sense of it. If there is no structure that is safe to heal within. My current safe healing structure is friends who know me when I’m lost to myself and a therapist that models good boundaries and is objective and consistent. Safety. Deep breath.

I would have lost my mind long ago if not foe therapy and my own healing process with writing.

Truly an epic battle of light and dark inside of me, and I won’t give up the fight or outsource my self knowing to anyone else.

So today is my beloved Sunday. I’m too in my head and not enough into a project and moving around so I need to get out some energy in that way shortly or to do some walking. After Chip’s visit I will.

Today is filled with reflecting, writing, and reading.

Today I reflect on an unhealthy counseling relationship and the damage it has caused, and how dark things have been in our world for the last while. How to turn these crisis into opportunities for growth and bonding and using a creative approach.

Today I’m going to share with you how counseling can go wrong. It can go wrong when Clinicians are trying to juggle too much and or as a result not having continuity of sessions and making sure to validate change. If we don’t catch and validate change it doesn’t become reinforced and if it doesn’t then it won’t stay (stick).

I’m going to be working on some counseling models in the up and coming days. Well I already am, but talking about it here.

There must be grace because during Covid it has been tough for us all, however we have an ethical code to do no harm, and a responsibility to own when we have due to blind spots and our own unhealed areas.

Recently during a family counseling experience I am learning a lot more from what didn’t work than what did. I’ll give you a hint if the counselor is talking about themselves in any way that does not pertain to your counseling and enhance it, that’s a red flag. If the counselor seems to not be following and staying focused on your need etc, please share this with them so they may grow.

Counseling should always be focused on the client need and progress should be validated and followed up on. And if something in the relationship isn’t working, if the client tells you, be willing to repair. And also be self-monitoring with integrity at all times. It’s more work, but this is our responsibility to our ethical code.

Lazy counseling is damaging. Someone who is in it for the wrong reasons or past their expiration of energy to expend. It’s as bad as distracted driving. We have people’s mental well being in our hands. They come to us sick and scared. If we are not dedicated to this work for the right reasons we can inflict great harm.

I personally am taking this situation and using it to slow down and pay attention, listen better, talk less, and truly be with the client experience versus wanting to fix it to gratify ego. This is a lifetime process. It’s nice to see my clients faith and sticking with me over the years as I am imperfect and grow, but they know my heart is in the right place and that I’m always growing myself to better meet them where they are.

A client is the expert on their own lives, a clinician who is skilled, competent, and there for the right reasons will only enhance the clients own knowledge about themselves using an empathic mirror and warm guidance. It’s a difficult balance and a very challenging career. The only one for me!

Never give up. That’s my motto. And keep curiosity larger than fear. Keep moving forward. Makes me think of the movie Meet The Robinsons and the song Little Wonders. I think I’ll go have a listen….

Enjoy your Sunday…

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Warrior of the light, prisoner of my own dark.

Relax and Write…

Strengthening the Therapeutic Bond. Yalom

When Things Fall Apart.

That’s where we are now.

Things fell apart my whole life. I became the glue, at the expense of knowing who I was or what I wanted or needed. I became a machine that met the needs of others, while begging to be loved.

So it is not surprising that healthy love was a complete mystery for me and while I’ve spent lots of time trying to solve that with my own experimentation. Simultaneously I’ve been living in a manner of consistently seeking to make the pain stop.

I’d do anything to make the pain stop for a few moments. And then became shamed and shamed myself for it.

This is the cycle I’ve been living in for nearly 41 years of my life.

And the only way to make the pain stop is to acknowledge the experiences that shaped me and how that has affected the children I brought into this world. Which brings another red hot wave of searing pain.

The only time the pain really stops is when I can use it for meaning, which in my life means to serve others with the knowledge I’ve gained. And to also be less alone in those moments. To stay in my humanity, rather than falling into insanity. A tether to belonging that has become consistent, and hopefully modeling that to myself.

It hurts to become.

My work makes me enthusiastic and hopeful and useful enough to make the pain stop. But rarely if ever is anything unconditionally provided to me. I have to look to the Universe for that. Nature, which also usually feels like an enemy as it bites me and makes me burn and itch, and in its vast unknown presence I always feel in danger.

So I return to the ways I know how to make the pain stop.

While this is happening I have tried to raise my children to the very best of my ability. Always doubting in that, my ability. Why wouldn’t you doubt something you’ve never known ? Something that was only dangerous and painful.

The tears slide down my cheeks.

The self doubt is probably the most painful part, and what I have drawn into my life, what I’ve chosen to invest myself in are things that end up harming me further. Then I harm myself with my choices.

I feel an experiment in human suffering and would victimize myself if I wasn’t so damn curious and concerned with meaning. My saving graces. The light shines out of the darkness, but not very much right now.

The message is to rest. But how when you have never known it, and when there is no loving touch to soothe to sleep.

Craving and starving touch, constantly leading to choices that harm some more. Self harm. Way more than cutting. There are far worse wounds to be had.

It gets good when you do. They say. The mystical, mythical they. The generalizations of our time.

I do good and I feel good. I do bad and I feel bad. What goes up must come down. My mind spins round and round.

Suffering. Relieved by service.

Will I always be fragmented or am I becoming whole and I have no vision for this because there is no template programmed into me.?

It’s all meaningless my existence except for moments. Moments of relief is what my life has been characterized by, with a lot of chaos.

I hope one day to see myself differently.

In the wake of all of this grief hope is difficult to find at the moment. It is times like this we just stay the course.

Steady as she goes…. Becoming steady out of chaos, that is the path of the warrior.

It takes one and it makes one.

This warrior is weary ….

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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.

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A Feral Child and Learning How to Hold a Fork…

And Jordan Almonds, and Necco (gross)…. It’s a wonder that man had any teeth. Red Vines were my favorite….

This year’s love…. David Gray radio. A recent wound. A beautiful song. I am sleepy and groggy. It’s day 2 of quitting another unhealthy thing. 90 more and we will be talking. There will be so much more room for my gifts.

I have therapy this evening and then tattoo therapy with Bill. Bill’s nose looks like my dads and I feel some cosmic connection and intimacy with him. I have no idea why. I mean he is placing art on my body that will be there until I die. Now I’m getting emotional. Is that weird? Of course it is I say with a smile.

I am reading toward the end of Anne Lamott’s new book: there’s a chapter called Can You Love Me Now…. Where she talks of having a phd in morbid reflection and describes the panicky feeling of being lost in her head during a show her and her husband attend and what her saving graces of this event were. Lovely.

She is my companion this morning. I ache and I’m tired. Another trip down the rabbit hole Alice. Not exactly more like walking down another street. Let’s be kind to ourselves Christina. But the same reminiscent body aches, headache, and disease are the result. No thank you.

Anyway she talks about the candy Good n Plenty in the book and I’m transported. Good n Plenty always remind me of my late father, John Rexford Wilson. I can say that because he’s dead you know, and because it’s my story to tell. I created a warm memory of him as my rescuer and preserved that for years in the museum of my mind. I would later discover the actual truth was so much different than my own lie. But that lie kept me warm and even more importantly encouraged enough to get to another phase of my life.

So this candy. The pink and white hard shells that contain a hard often stale gummy piece of black licorice, which I detest. And I realized about myself that I would make myself like something I didn’t to feel close (an illusion) to him. I would eat them just to try and remember something warm. Movie theater candy for the one or two movies I ever saw with him. The very first gremlins movie at a drive-in in Ashland Oregon. He didn’t even take me, my babysitter Shannon did. She was beautiful, he was sleeping with her I believe. I was with him five seconds and still had a babysitter, anyway she was kind and beautiful so I didn’t mind. She made me feel like a person and not some unsavory thing, the way they looked at me. Something more than Lisa’s daughter.

Ever since beginning Mary Karr’s the Liars Club, which consequently I haven’t picked up since, I’ve had a memory that is replaying in my mind. At the table at my Dad and step mother Anita’s table. They were clean and hip and way too cool for me. They ate a macrobiotic diet and my dad worked for a company called super blue green algae cel tech.

Anyway I was holding my spoon or fork like a Neanderthal apparently. With my whole fist around it scooping piles of food. Cous cous and orange roughy. I still associate cous cous as a good memory despite what I’m about to share. They looked at me in horror and laughed at me, mocked me. They told me I was eating like an animal and why hadn’t anyone taught me how to properly hold silverware, as if this was my fault of course.

My whole life was my own fault from birth.

This memory just keeps replaying. I don’t remember how old I was. I felt like I was eleven or twelve. Did I actually eat like that all the way until then in front of everyone? How feral was I? Most of my memories are erased as if I was tased by men in black and that silver thingy that looks like a pen.

I love pens. A soothing thought amidst the flames of this memory and so many others buried away for my protection. The tears fill my eyes. Determination fills my heart. To love myself better than all of this first half of my life.

The tears fall on the page, they fall with all the disappointments of then and now. They make room for the joy. The kind that only courageous hearts find.

I didn’t belong anywhere and I’ve been seeking with that fearless determination amidst a fearful soul. They clash and merge and blur into butterfly soup.

I belong to me now and I am able to be present with them, and that’s all that matters. I will show up for me, and write for the world to connect with my words. Whatever weary travelers need to come across them.

For now I am still finding ways to access and get out my story. Who I am….. this journey is not for the faint of heart.

There will be a client on the floor as I call it in thirty minutes I guess I should probably prepare myself for that honor.

Thank you for listening to a piece of my story.

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No Contact and the Romance of Self Discovery

Because lately she was becoming found more quickly than she could be lost….

I had been under another giant wave of grief. Rejection was everywhere, in every Avenue I ventured down. Threatening to make me doubt myself, my inherent worth. The lesson is full circle. My therapists words stuck with me, if the work was actually done, communication wouldn’t look like this. Communication what a joke. We have reached that same page of letting go I think. Only a we in that sadly.

It hurts and I won’t be silent about it. But now in my life the fully embodied lesson that can’t be lost is nothing hurts worse than the abandonment of the self. Nothing. I won’t ever do it again, and you and everyone else knows it. I’ll make mistakes but nothing so catastrophic as that.

Nothing is a catastrophe Christina, only a lesson. This is the ultimate lesson. That way life can unfold without the constant sounding of the alarm.

I went down a rabbit hole. Oh words have power, but I saw it this time, and didn’t fall in. As the poem goes. It goes like this:

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes me a long time to get out.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in. It’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault. I get out immediately.

walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

I walk down another street.

Portia Nelson, There’s a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery

This is truly the journey I am on, and I’m doing the work. That is as solid and real as the ground beneath my weary feet.

And what is happening as a result is the miracle, connections that don’t have any substance fall away, and new layers of myself and my focus are revealed and I am consistently becoming more of who I always was.

Everything I am attracting truly is what I am putting out. Clear sight is the answer and not telling myself a story and not defaulting. Staying the course as a parent and eventually as a partner when the time comes.

That is the fully embodied lesson. Taking so much less personally. That is always a journey, but I am doing it!

Anyway I already called the electrician, one of the girls friends dads. So that’s good! Monday morning and already did that. I need to shower for one of many hair removal appointments lol. Ridiculousness. But I’ll feel good, so perhaps not so after all….

Yesterday the kids and I watched Black Widow…. Such an amazing message wrapped in Marvel. We are expanding consciousness with our art. It’s rising to the occasion. I could definitely RE watch this one and will for some time.

My creaky bones today tell me that a 5 k without training might have been a tad much. Our bodies always tell us if we listen. This is an area I need to work at with my diet and exercise. I’m so excited to do it from a place of love versus harsh drive. If that doesn’t sum up everything right now. All my relationships. It was a fun spontaneous adventure though and was not without its beauty.

The girls cooked a hello fresh together and played and listened to music and then had some friend time. A balanced day filled with play. The work is happening. It gets good when you do. Everyone is taking things less personally and we are all blossoming under that tutelage. Yes yes !

I’m falling in love with my new arm. I was very unsure about it all at first. Is this who I am? I was being so judgmental of myself and so scared. Was it my own?! Or was I doing it for some other reason because it was all mixed up in the many changes of my life.

Who the fuck cares. I like it. The images are authentically me. I like the man who did them. And the process has been beyond valuable. I will continue to enjoy pacing with regard to this. Choosing the right artist for each piece as I decide what I want and learn more about who I am and my value. About valuing myself properly.

Getting rid of some of that icky criticism residue from the year and a half long emotional cold and drought I was experiencing. Stop lowering the bucket into a dry well and expecting water.

I am patching holes, floating, righting the ship, and pretty soon it will be a yacht sailing. I often try to bring others on this journey, no man left behind. But I now recognize the value of people sailing their own ships and if they line up with mine naturally then it just works. You don’t have to fight so hard or try so hard.

Black widow resonated so much when they were trying to figure out if their memories were real or not. My god that made my heart ache with memory. That is how I feel. I watch and marvel at how they always survive everything like that isn’t already me.

Marvel is right. This warrior loving with never even having been given any to begin with. Heart. The themes about losing your heart, lost souls and such. I never lost my heart. It’s been calling me home.

Feels like home is about me, my relationship with myself. My first song on the piano. I am grateful to have and to be firsts, however forever always held more investment and I never knew that before.

I am comforted in the fact that while I may roam I will never be lost now I was after this first half of my life.

I am whole…. And nothing is going to interfere with that.