Tag: #theemotionalalchemist

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Grief is the great separator

After I vent my many giant fears to my trusted few my words are free to roam…. if anyone knew how much work even a post takes…. but oh so worth it. Oxygen

I’ve been in contemplation. Another pupa stage. Each time I wonder how there is another. Haven’t I arrived yet? What the fuck self-actualization, isn’t there an end point? Resoundingly no, there is not.

There also isn’t a limit to the amount of love our hearts can hold, or pain. I thought I knew that before this year, and now I know….

respectfully, I didn’t know shit.

Why do we cuss a lot when feeling strong emotions ? Emphasis I suppose. Ever the analytical mind. What of it. This is me bitches ?! Wow I am unknown even to myself so much of the time. That truth creates insecurity and uncertainty. The two things we are always trying to lock down most.

I want to hurt and to bleed so I can physically feel what just happened to us. A tattoo might not cut it this time. We need a third bird on our wrists. Go deep this time. We have earned it. You’d have to cover my entire body. It’s eviscerating every single time. Doesn’t matter if you’re new or old to the process.

Today we walked into the clinic. The fertility clinic. It’s like going into battle Lord of the Rings style, nothing prepares you for it. We have walked the walk in so many different states. And each time I see a couple I wonder if theirs is joy and victory or hurt and loss? I want to know their story too. What would it mean to know their story too? Why is it that my energy is always shared experience?

It would mean we could be less alone. We all want to be less alone all the time. Prisoners in self created purgatories born out of our own templates of how the world works. Some innate. Some inherited. All, our own personal Mount Everests to scale.

How can a heart even hold this much feeling?

To feel like this all the time and to be so much of me, it’s a delicious torture. To be this alive, this awake. You wonder if you can burn at this frequency and not disintegrate, into only a memory in the lives of our loved ones. Which is all we are anyway.

I don’t die. I just get stronger and wiser. I thought it would kill me. But instead I just go under and come back out someone else, every single time.

I can’t even create a story that backs my suffering any longer. That’s a boring small life. I’m not meant for that. We only think our limitations, we are truly not any of them.

Speaking of that… all the ways “they” (the mystical they), tells you how to handle this. Don’t spread your pain to others, don’t do this, don’t do that. You know what when someone is suffering just be fucking kind. That’s all you need to do. It isn’t as hard as we make it. Be kind damnit. Let their tears fall. Let them take up space. See how I slip out of personalization, because this much pain is unthinkable.

Is it a thing you think that losing a possibility is as hard as losing what’s concretely there ? Why do we measure the validity of our suffering and stack them up next to others to see if our experience is ok? Why do we do that?!

Why can’t everyone’s own pain just be their own pain and we can hold it? It’s not complicated but the rules of society make it so. Grief and love are natural states, in allowance they are gorgeous pieces of humanity. In resistance we become tortured and can torture.

Is a 5 week miscarriage “worse” than never being able to conceive? Is losing a baby at the end harder than watching a child suffer through cancer? A true game of would you rather that no one wants to sit and play. Is it better to have loved and lost ? A beloved client of mine and I play this game all the time. Along with “I win” and a deliciously necessary level of dark humor and sarcasm that are sometimes the only way a human can cope. And have a seat at the table too.

Do you want to know the truth?! We don’t ever know. We don’t ever know. Let that rattle your cage. Let that wake you up to your own desires you have been putting on the back burner for the if and when of it all.

If there was an answer, versus many, it would be compassion. Be compassionate and open and warm and kind. Create space rather than closing it off with your own judgment, critic, and self-righteousness. Hold someone else’s experience as tenderly as you wish you could your own.

Level up! We need to be together when we grieve and to be allowed to share our experiences. Not silenced or shamed!!

You don’t need the answer…. only an open heart. An open heart can grieve and love as much as it needs to. I’ll always write my way to my most profound truths. And always hold myself accountable to my own integrity.

Always …..

Ps. If you pray, chant, walk, meditate, or whatever it is you do keep us in your thoughts. We keep getting knocked to the ground, and our people always help us get back up. That’s why we are meant to connect in this life. Thank you for loving us so well.

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Music, lyrics, water, ice

I said to my friend this morning that I have a big family. It just fell out of my mouth, and then all of my insides smiled at the realization. How can that be?! How can all of this change have occurred and right under my nose.

I’m always vigilant for threat. But for happiness…. I can’t even see it when it was always available to me. Just some fine tuning of perspective.

This hunting, constant hunting for belonging or acceptance has left my soul tired. What I actually had to do was to let go, not hold on tight. Then everything just opened right up to me.

I’ve traversed lifetimes of growth just this morning. A time traveling warrior of light. Transcending typical chronologies and customs, and all barriers of logic and reason. A traversiamo; I’ve crossed over.

I had a beautiful line right here, and I didn’t save the draft properly, and it’s gone. It was exquisite, and I’m feeling rather heartbroken. But isn’t this just how life works? If I sit here not writing, let the whole thing ruin my mood, when all the lines come from inside me anyway, and if it’s important it will come back again.

I’m in a freeze again. I’m waiting for something, the next something, and there will be a something after that. So why wait I suppose? Write what I can right now?!

I can write that life is happening around me so fast I feel like I can barely keep up. This creation has taken on a life of its own, and some of my parts (sum of my parts by Mary Lambert, a favorite), still feel like they are in that other life. I am constantly checking the evidence and pinching myself. That must indicate some pretty radical transformation right ?!

I can’t stop thinking about that line, and I can’t stop thinking about other things… my mind just rolls it over and over in the palm of my hand like glistening agates bathed in ocean water and sunlight. Mesmerized. They could turn to dust at any moment these dreams, and I know that like I never have before. I now know what it means to have the courage to go after your dreams. I used to think what’s the big deal? That’s because I was separated from myself.

People thought I was brave. And I was but I couldn’t feel it, and they never knew that.

What direction is my life about to go?! What many directions ? What do I have to offer the world ? I am excavating, contemplating, exfoliating. Laughing. Playing.

Mary Lambert sets my soul on fire. I want to do what she does for the world. With my words. Before my child got lost she wrote. She wrote a lot. Always had a pen and paper. She wrote poetry and song lyrics and tried so sing, not well. And then people made fun of her and she tucked all that away on a mission for acceptance. She watched and became anything she could to be chosen, wanted, to belong.

It’s not all tragedy though that lost child created the very thing that helped her become found. It was effortless to have those three gems, or at least it feels that way this many years out, and within this new journey. They are effortless to love, and yet I was blind for so long. Now I see everything. I spent a small amount of time fearing it was too late, but there’s no such thing really.

It’s never too late. I want to play the piano. I want to dance with joy. I want to weave words together into a brightly colored tapestry and then sit back and see me from the outside in a way I never have before. I have dreams and a heart, that are thawed.

It’s so hard to explain this life in words. I burst with gratitude to the point only unintelligible sobs can escape. I’m nervous to show the world so much feeling, they don’t know what to do with it, and I hate anyone around me being uncomfortable.

I make people uncomfortable, just before they find themselves.

I needed enough insight to realize how to hold on through the storm so I could witness the sunlight. Most of the storms of my childhood were unbearable. So it’s taken several trips through hell to learn how to sit in discomfort.

“Don’t go looking for some kind of rescue, you are the only one who can save you. We are we are more than our scars, we are more than the sum of our parts.” -Mary Lambert

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Fox Tattoos and Trauma Hues

I picked up my son from college last night. How is this even a thing ?! What happened to all those years? I was just surviving but I wasn’t alive in my heart. I’m grappling with this realization right now.

I provided my children with what appeared at face value to be safe people. Everyone was safer than me because I could become some dark thing at anytime.

That’s so sad when I say it now and feel it. No dissociation only raw realizations here.

My son has been talking about getting a tattoo. And my mom side says wait til you know who you are and what you like. She protects and guides and also thinks no don’t be so grown I can’t handle it. It’s scary. So my response was always no. Closed off from him. What he was asking for what he wants in exploring the world. So he went to another source. That’s what we do with unmet needs right ?

Anyway he was talking with my ex partner (now friend). She had said she was going to take him to do that. And something about this felt off to me. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Was it jealousy?! If it was I would manage that. But it was more. I’ve not been controlling with my children in fact I’ve let them be given to the world: however I think I did not even have a template for how important I am to them, and vice Versa.

I did not know how. I didn’t know how to mom or how to child. Chaotic confusion.

They have seen this mother. Always seeking, but most likely always at more of an arms length than is comfortable for me to sit with. But the truth sets you free, and opens up new possibilities, especially the hard ones. Most people aren’t ever willing to admit… it’s too uncomfortable.

That arms length was not believing in who I was as a mother. It was never them, and hopefully showing them now, and this connection blossoming now. I provided others for play, while I worked. While I worked at school, worked at my trauma, worked at Trader Joe’s.

What breaks my heart is that it was all so intense for me. I always could have been connected to them as much as I wanted. Children are open and loving always. I kept myself from their love because I didn’t want to use it inappropriately, like what was done to me. I was frozen. Trauma freezes our beautiful soft selves.

Now I’m thawed and they are older and the only way they will ever know how much of my love has always been theirs is if I write so they can read my story. My heart is opening. I can see them now and connect. What if I hurt them all that time? Were they lonely? It’s more than most parents will ever look at in themselves.

I think children might rather have consistency even than any other thing. And my c-ptsd has left me bouncing around the world like a brightly colored super ball. Were they lonely ?! They must have been because I was. I did the supposed to’s properly, but connection I knew nothing about that. I just tried to learn about life from the damn movies; not from any real connections. So that left a lot of room for error!

So this whole tattoo thing. I realized I want to be there with him for that and asked him. I asked him for this connection and to accept my place as his mother and his friend. I asked for my need and also let him know he is important to me. I could have just stayed in the backseat out of fear of myself.

I’m ready to accept my place in their lives. To love myself enough to accept my role and to fulfill it properly. I am sorry it’s taken me so long. But I promise no one has ever loved their children so much. I’ve done my own surgery and my own stitches and I’ve been living wounded without anesthesia for so long.

If I had something visible I would have had people gasp and run to my aid. Because it’s not visible I’ve been shamed and judged. And that created more bondage.

I am a trauma survivor. I live with PTSD every single day. I can’t even ride in a car without jumping 60 times. Most days I spend monitoring my heart rate and flushing from cortisol. So many times without my consent. My body and my heart are so tired.

I’ve called it Crohns. I’ve been in denial. Anything else. Because a trauma survivor story is filled with such shame. It will be no matter what work you do around it. How to not be seen as attention seeking or pity seeking. How to not have shame around this. When you’re responsible for everything.

Coming out as gay was only the tip of the iceberg on my coming out. I had been strong for so long I forgot I was soft. It’s my soft parts that connect with the world and my children.

I don’t talk about it. I really don’t. I live with it but I don’t talk about it, because I’m always afraid of taking up too much space.

It’s time for another healing journey, one with my body, my heart rate, my mind. I stopped looking, because I was looking to the wrong sources.

The medical community has failed me, the family system has failed me. And I get so angry…. not getting answers but I’m focusing on the wrong thing. If I had a medical issue it could be easily fixed and seen and there’s a pill for that.

I deserved to be seen so long ago….

Everyone deserves to be seen….

I’ve spent my life becoming the mother I want to be. It’s a lot of work. I hope this new little one is ready for me. I am ready for her…..

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Soul and mind stuff

Life can still surprise me. My awe this morning says “there’s more”. How is that a thing?!

There’s more magic. I have so much already. It’s not fair. What if I’m taking up someone else’s. My natural state of being says these things.

This magic is meant to help me fully grasp my own power as a human being.

To use my voice without it shaking with old wounds and loss. They are ready to let go of me. These insecurities are ready to let go of me. They have taught me all I need. And I don’t need them anymore.

And who will I be after I shed this skin. I’m going to be someone else again and that’s terrifying. We humans do not like to change it makes us severely uncomfortable I am finding.

An energy shift entered my life unexpectedly and I had a migraine over a week, intense anxiety, old insecurities and suddenly all of my old shit staring me directly in the face. The ego hates this. It says no no no we have already done this work, make it stop.

But our work is never done, which also means the magic is never over either. Life just keeps surprising you. It can be beyond your wildest imagination, but first I can say confidently from experience it will bring you to your fucking knees with terror and grief.

It will rack your whole body. Rock your whole world. You’ll be standing like Dante in the dark wood completely lost, and think you’ll never find your way out. But first it will burn. And you’ll think all the darkest thoughts about yourself.

“It’s always darkest before the light”.

My self has always tried to resist the woo woo stuff. Actually my ego is the resister, my self is soft and kind and receptive. Ego is a nasty master. It says stay safe and still. Don’t take any risks. They are all going to laugh at you.

After each new gift that’s placed in my path my vision, voice, and soul grow stronger. I see it as it’s happening. I feel it. It’s the exact opposite of anxiety. It’s a confidence unlike any other thing. One that hardly ever seemed possible.

Layers and layers and layers of healing can happen, but it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s tearing open wounds each time. It’s painful literally. It’s illness in the body, fear in the mind. That’s how hard our soul hangs on for dear life. There’s a lot that can happen to a human being.

But there is more than this lifetime and this body. Did that really just come out of my “mouth”. What the ?! Who even am I right now. Ack ! There’s just too much evidence that has to be true.

And Josh Radin “Here, Right Now” comes on, because of course it does. I’m coming home to me. The me before the trauma. The true me. The me that looked in the empty eyes of her “mother”, and the mother said, “I knew you knew more than me and were wiser and stronger the day you were born.” “You were the mom and I was the baby”, she said. Perhaps she was an infant soul. https://lonerwolf.com/soul-age/ perhaps it’s mental illness. Hell maybe it’s Maybelline I don’t know.

Not very many things my mother has ever said have meant too much or resonated. But she had that down. She said I was a tiny adult. If she told me no once I never did it again. The perfect child. Well I didn’t have much of a choice.

But in the words of the amazing Lady Gaga, “I was born this way”. And this all leaves me with a lot to think about.

What I will say is I woke up this morning very happy. I’m in my element being my weird ass self. Writing in my bathtub (sanctuary). And I feel one with everything, this sense of peace and love. The very opposite of my beginning and it’s heaven.

It truly is Nirvana.

Pure love, without demands, it’s a thing that radiates to all beings. It’s not held back or contained and there doesn’t need to be a 2D story about it. Is that way they say.?!

“Before I get into this topic, I would like to remind ourselves though of the phenomenon, that our ego needs to label everything. In 5D terms, we would not ask ourselves the question, whether we met our twin aspect or a soul mate, or if we are experiencing a catalyst situation. Because, no matter what experience we go through, we know that we agreed on having it before we incarnated.

There is no better or worse. It does not matter if it is a twin connection or some other type of soul connection we are going through. Our soul chose it for a specific reason. They are all necessary to contribute to our awakening and growth. So please, honour and value the experiences you go through without putting any label on it. As Caroline Myss says: “The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.” Source: Waking up

Yes I have really gone down the rabbit hole now lol. But if I keep going in my right direction , my true north, it won’t really matter and I won’t need to be nervous.

Now I must return to my earthy dwellings and rush a teenager to practice and be a counselor.

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Love is an open door

Hurt people hurt people.

I see the very realness of this every single day in my office, in my own life, in the life of my friends.

It’s what we decide to do with that pain that makes the difference. Yes you can decide to do something with your pain. You don’t choose that it’s yours, but you do get to decide what you will do with it.

Yesterday a dear friend reached out to me about a wound that she was experiencing as a result of her mother not being able to fully understand how to love her, or what she needed. She shared that pain with me.

Last night another dear friend wrote me a string of texts about how her mother did not see her progress she has made with her sobriety and with going to school to change her life around.

In my office so many people sit with me, and show me their wounds. It’s intimate and scary. They reveal themselves to me. I am in awe that they trust me so much with their heart.

It doesn’t matter the why’s of it all. It’s just so beautiful all the time. If their wounds can be beautiful and I can learn and be privileged by them, then so can mine. This is what heals me into a whole person. The courage of others to let me hold their pain with them, and they hold my pain too.

I know they can see it and feel it because they chose me to share their open hearts with.

The courageous are not the ones who have all the answers figured out. The courageous are those who go looking for it, knowing all the while they could experience disappointment again and again. They look anyway. These are my tribe.

Yesterday my wife took her progesterone and oil injection, no thanks to me. I chickened out. My anxious mind wonders what vital organ that giant needle could hit, and feels threat at the possibility of her imminent loss. This is what a combination of PTSD and anxiety can do to you. If you believe anything is possible then you aren’t limited by the mere medical knowledge that there is not a vital organ in your hip. Every part of her is vital to my existence. What if I did something wrong? What if she wasn’t ok? Oh anxiety. Sigh.

I wasn’t anxious before. What is this? I wasn’t human before either. I was a feral terrified wisp who fashioned herself as best she could. I was devoid of real human emotion that would have been poured into me by the wanting of my sheer existence. My existence was not wanted, so I didn’t know what to do with myself either. A person with this sort of beginning will always wonder why the wanted people are interested in her. It feels like a different breed.

But what I realized this evening is it is only our own story that keeps us from being loved as well as we could. The universe provides us with multiple sources to help our gifts come forth from us.

Spoiler alert. It isn’t always our parents and family.

Did you hear that? Sometimes it’s a teacher, a friend, a neighbor, a pet even.

It’s 3 am. I woke up like a shot at 3 am with all of this beauty and realization in my heart. 3 am actually seems to be my prime writing time, when without pretenses or agonizing self-criticism I can just pour my heart onto the page. Adult me knows that this 3 am bullshit will bite me in the ass later, in the form of nausea, dizziness, crushing wall of tired at exactly the wrong time.

But right now childlike me can allow herself to get up and participate in magic making. It’s never as good on the page as I experience it inside of me. That’s a real challenge I want everyone to see what I do, as I do, and right now. I want to be seen like we all do. But then I remember again all of you who share your heart with me. All those who seek my warmth and my counsel, and I know I am seen.

Lately I am seen so well it is staggering. I am regularly in disbelief about this. I was having a few moments like this about it over the past few weeks, and was sharing with a new friend these thoughts vulnerably. They asked me if it was perhaps my sense of worthiness preventing the reception of this. I said that it wasn’t. But as I sit here with all of these people’s shared hearts laid on in front of me I think I must change my answer. It all comes down to worthiness.

I am in shock that someone could come along and see me as safe, beautiful, someone they want to get to know more, someone to look to to learn from. I realize I don’t have a template for that inside myself. And that helps me realize that is what good love does for us. It gives us a template to go off of in learning to love ourselves. Which just makes life so much easier.

When I just said that I got really worried about my son. He is at that very delicate period of finding himself. His first year of college. I’m so afraid that perhaps from not yet having this template he doesn’t have it either and will suffer unnecessarily. I hope the love of others while I was chaotic and frantically searching, and as much love as I had was enough so that he knows he is special, and worthy, and he has permission to find out who he really is without torturing himself with the pressures of society, student loans, and all the negative possible outcomes of an existence.

Bumpy roads still can lead to fantastic destinations. Don’t worry my little love. Worry never did a damn thing, but limit my imagination and possibilities. Yes

While I was responding at 3 am to my friend who is hurting I found a message in my inbox that another friend of mine is getting ready to make her next step towards a dream of hers. She shared her beauty with me too.

Life is a giant canvas mixed with brush strokes of beautiful agonies. It is art in motion. It never ceases to challenge and amaze me. The pain of some of my friends right now, their loss, it sits heavily in my arms. So many people that I love are feeling so many big things right now.

And I am too. I am right in between the possibility of a dream and crushing disappointment right now. I’m standing here and all I can do is love as hard as I possibly can. And I can accept the gifts the universe offers me.

Dear new friend, I accept you seeing me and being interested in investing. You are here at exactly the right time. Thank you for seeing me.

And to all of the people who trust me with their valuable feelings, thank you. You are a gift, and your faith in me renews my faith in myself. It has opened up my heart.

My heart is an open door…

This is a big time for all of us. There is a crib in our room. There are baby things waiting. They have been waiting a long time. Fuzzy sloth blankets, cute little onesies, books on cooking for baby. They are in boxes in bags, packed away. There’s a photo of our embryo we transferred on November 8, 2018. Little pieces of our hearts also are packed away with those things. We begin foster classes tonight at 6 pm. The first step in a lifelong dream.

This love is bursting and flowing over. We must do something, many things, worthwhile with that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Heart on display

Today is for homemade chicken soup, snuggly bulldogs, and heavy contemplation. It’s for music, blankets, kisses, and decorating. For acquainting ourselves to a novel corner of our new domain. Creating a new feel to the already existing landscape.

Today is the brink of another brave journey down the IVF road. We are embarking upon try number five, and I’m scared like hell. And you aren’t allowed to say that. Because you’re supposed to say how positive and excited you are. I am those things too, but if you haven’t experienced the searing pain of disappointment in this arena you don’t get to tell me how to conduct myself. All you need to do is listen and be kind to me, that’s all.

I’m not afraid I won’t be ok. Or that I am not loved and have a great support system. My heart isn’t thin glass. It’s incredibly resilient. This isn’t fear or a lack, its raw. It’s naked in Times Square. It’s holding nothing back.

It’s as if I’ve pulled my heart out of my chest, holding it carefully, and have placed it on the counter. It’s just sitting there outside my body. Anything can happen to it at any moment. It’s sitting next to the ten thousand syringes and needles of various sizes and alcohol wipes. It’s out in the open and I have no idea what will happen. I’m just standing here marveling at it. How beautiful and strong. It never was the dangerous thing I always feared.

We are becoming friends, my heart and I.

I have woken up out of a nightmare and into a fairytale. Knowing that in real life fairytales there is still pain. I’m still here regardless of outcome. It will only add another layer of depth to my soul. But these layers aren’t cheap.

The Halloween decorations are down, the Thanksgiving / Christmas ones will go up. Our first Christmas tree in this home. The first of so many, if we are blessed. This home will house laughter, and a thousand possibilities for a secure space full of traditions and love. What life is this? How can it possibly be mine? I just keep pinching myself.

This is nothing I have ever known.

Hyper vigilance gives way to peacefulness. Anxiety is replaced with security. The neural pathways laid down attempt to derail progress, the progress is too consistent and too great. I’ll lay down an entire new railroad if it means I can love and be loved.

A life once only dreamed of comes clearer into view. I’m no longer naive enough to think I’ll be happy if or when…. something always comes along. Life changes on a dime. Be happy now, exactly as is. Your perspective and circumstances can change in an instant, then life will change you.

When I no longer live inside my head anymore, what will my writing be like then? I’m changing more quickly than I can keep up with. Am I ready to pour this molten heart into children who desperately need love, and to be seen, as I did? Am I ready? What is ready? They weren’t ready for their circumstances.

So if they have to be brave, so will I. If they can be brave and open, amidst crushing disappointment then I will too.

It’s just the unknown, which has as good of chance of turning out beyond our wildest dreams as it does bad. Our biological wiring is made to detect threat rather than possibility.

I’ve spent a lifetime surviving. Now I’m ready to live.

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Disconnectedly Yours….

Fun activity. Put on August’s Rhapsody from the movie August Rush. It’s eight minutes of various instrumental. Then write. I find myself writing to the rhythm and I get all different types of handwriting.

What do you think that means ?!

I’m very emotional today. I saw five clients back to back this morning and each session just filled me with humble gratitude for the human spirit. For the ability of people to keep going amidst terribly difficult circumstances.

The human spirit amazes me.

I have a blog post that’s been brewing all day, but I just haven’t had the words. Can you have words while you are also actively in reverence and awe!? Maybe the two don’t co-exist. Anyway I just keep opening up. More of the feeling parts of me that have been on ice coming to life. And with each one another blast of gratitude.

So today I am thinking of what you can boil almost anything down to. What do we all want? What is beneath all of the hurt feelings, the anger, the sadness, the numbing, the sarcasm, the protective mechanisms.

We all want to feel like we are attractive, safe, important, special, worthy. We want to belong and to be included. To feel necessary. And not knowing how to feel those things except externally keeps us oh so low and away from our true gifts. If you fear any of those things are not naturally meant for you or have a story or belief system that says otherwise, you will find proof everywhere of the opposite.

There are many ways we judge ourselves. It’s so hard to be a human being. There are many pressures, so many ways we can suffer, but the thing I keep seeing is how much of it we unwittingly cause ourselves. In an attempt to validate our experience as real and important, suffering seems to be the most logical. It’s the only thing that gives emergence perhaps to feel allowed to get our needs out.

I wonder how it could be made more natural? To talk vulnerably. If it’s possible as a human being to bypass that process. To accept ourselves, our anxieties, our flaws, quirks. To envelope the tenderness of our hearts.

We were never meant to be as hard as the world demands of us.

We are not meant for this. This much disconnect. This much overwhelm. This much busy. This much fear. Technology was supposed to be an advancement. I don’t think so. Some maybe. But this experience that’s happening, we are not meant for this.

The demands of the financial climate we are in. True human connected presence is declining and therefore so is joy, peace, kindness, warmth.

Nothing about America feels great right now. There’s more violence than there ever was when I was young. More intolerance of what we don’t understand. And at the personal level more people torturing those they love in the name of being worried about them. Without really knowing the real enemy. We are getting too much information from unreliable sources, and too little genuine education.

Kids are being tortured in terms of pressure about their futures. And social media has made an even larger romanticization of what is attractive. If you think advertising was bad, for a few minutes during a tv commercial. Imagine what endless scrolling will do.

I watch what it does to me. It’s a depressive behavior. I see the difference when I get up with only my notepad or take a walk, compared to being on my phone the first hour. Looking at other people’s lives and ideas and the sense there isn’t anything new to be done. It’s ironic because we do it to feel connected, but it does the opposite. It’s as numbing as any substance.

Anyway this kind of began to trail all over (as usual) and I have a hot date to get ready for…. so stay tuned….

My heart is raw, but it’s also ready. I am ready to find and be and speak some changes. I am ready to be brave, again, and again. Because that’s what living a full life requires.

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Childlike Enthusiasm

Despite my conflict about this medication how I am feeling on the regular is this crazy optimism for life. I wake up every single morning literally bounding with energy for what could happen throughout the day. What special thing? What human connection. What could happen today?

I have woken up (thawed out) to a childlike enthusiasm for living. And I’ll never go back to sleep from that. Now I just want to give from a place of abundance and fulfillment to anyone and everyone who feels as if they don’t belong in some way, are too much, are not enough, not worthy. I want to warm them up and thaw them out.

I realized yesterday it isn’t because I don’t have symptoms and lots of various health things anymore, it’s because I’m so well cared for.

Yesterday we watched my daughters soccer game. They beat their town rival for the first time in the history of JV soccer, both of them played wonderfully. It was cold out, and once the cold gets into me it’s very difficult to get out. My lips get purple, my hands and feet and nose are freezing and no amount of bundling typically helps. I used to become so afraid of this. It’s very unpleasant and it can’t be good right. My joints ache after. I’ve tried all sorts of things and had all sorts of testing.

Do you know what heals me the most?

Love.

Once I got into bed with my person she lovingly warms my hands and her touch brings me right back to life. I believe 100 percent if you allow yourself to receive from source (for me love and the earth) that you can heal. When I’m cold like that I also ache and all my muscles tighten up, and it can cause a migraine etc. Normally I go to such a fear space in my body and I’m in my head, and can’t get out.

She brings me right back to earth and safety.

My secret is you have to reach a place where you reduce down to the truly important things. Not getting caught up in whether your house looks nice, your body, various appearances. Whether you’re good enough (you’re good enough), make enough money, have enough time. There will never be “enough” of those things, but think of how much can be wasted with a skewed perspective.

As my fear melts away, there is just more and more beauty to bask in.

If you had seen my life you would absolutely wonder how. I truly believe like a stray that has found its forever home I live in constant gratitude for the tiniest things and it’s a constant ecstasy.

I never imagined you could have a relationship where you truly fall more in love every day. I dreamed of this, but then romanticized and become crushingly disappointed by continually picking the wrong fit because I couldn’t move slow enough to pay attention to the details.

Prior to this I chose partners who were no where near ready nor did they want to be responsible to a family unit. They fell in love the same way I did, with the idea of something and someone. Not truly knowing what they wanted out of their one precious life. It created love to be the battlefield from whence I came, and that pushed me toward illness, depression, fear, and longing even further.

When I met my wife I had already seen that she loved in partnership the way my value system works which is that love is prioritized above all things. The love itself is what continues to expand the dreams. Not resentment or playing out with each other the legacy of our family systems.

This love is bliss.

It’s interesting to watch others reactions to my shouting from the rooftops. Responses are often critical and judgmental such as “if you have to share it all the time on Facebook then…. and maybe you should be more private about it.” Or with skepticism or with behaving as if it’s corny to love this hard and talk about it. If this is your response you probably want to check in on your own unmet needs.

Well meaning advice from those who see their world quite differently. Also it means those people don’t understand me at all. How I work. That I delight in having permission to share my truths as often and as loudly as I like. That I was shushed often as a child and told that little girls are supposed to play quietly in the corner with their paper dolls, and that children are meant to be seen and not heard.

If they aren’t for you move along. I used to accept shame and judgment so easily. It used to make me crumble. I wanted so badly to belong and fit in, I did anything, sold my soul, again to people who weren’t ready to create a big life with me.

Keep your dreams at the forefront and your enthusiasm for living. I wonder how much I was born like this, and how much is my chosen perspective. I wake up wide awake at 6 am every morning with thousands of thoughts. I used to wake up with those being terror filled, and the day being a gauntlet of symptoms to survive and my own dark thinking of how badly everything could go. My mind can do dark things. I’ve lived in dark places.

The saving grace is my determination towards the light. I am fiercely protective of this life I am creating. I know that loss does not discriminate, and that I am not immune. And that I will feel the effects intensely. Which will only make the beautiful things that much more special.

I continue to keep warming my inner child and bringing her into myself and feeling whole.

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To Humira or not to Humira

So I’m trying to make a very big decision. Whether to come off of Humira or not. I’ve gone back and forth and back and forth for months, and here’s why. If you come off of a biologic it may never work for you again, and can throw you into a terrible flare. The burning question is however, did I even need it in the first place.

I’ve been taking Humira since around 2013. I was diagnosed with Crohns based on a scan suspecting appendicitis and a follow up colonoscopy. I still remember to this day my GI went back and forth with her diagnosis. The tissue sample came back acute not chronic, but she made the conclusion based on the films that I have Crohns.

I so willingly wanted an answer for my problems at that time. A variety of odd sensations in my body and a large level of discomfort and fatigue constantly. Heart palpitations, heavy periods, chest pains. I’ve had more heart tests than you can imagine. However, I was severely anxious and stressed, in the wrong relationship, and working way more than any human being should. I also wasn’t aware at this time or connected to the whole picture of my life. My traumas.

Now that I’m learning a much more holistic way to view pain in the body, especially through the lens of trauma I’m unconvinced that I should be on this sometimes deadly medication.

So one of the real questions is, did I forget ?! Did I forget how sick I was etc? I never had bleeding, or fistulas or major symptoms though mine was nearly all extra intestinal manifestations and completely anxiety which I didn’t want to be true or admit at that time. I wasn’t ready. I needed it to be “something real”, and now I know anxiety and trauma in the body are very real. It’s just when you seek medical help for anything they often only look through one lens.

So now that so many things in my life are more secure I have way less symptoms and when I do I take measures to heal my body naturally. I know I need to address how I eat for my body, and not just lean on Humira so I can eat what doesn’t serve me anyway.

I’ve been reading about many other approaches to medicine and my friend is also an acupuncturist and going to school for Chinese medicine, herbs and all that. And recently I came across this concept of “earthing”. www.earthing.com which came about from people looking at inflammation in the body and how it’s the primary source of this decades physical malady.

And then my skeptic and science brain, actually probably my Western medical natural background, says what if that’s all a bunch of crap. Which leads me to the big problem here.

Not knowing what to believe. I’m really challenged to fear I’m crazy by believing holistic versus the Dr in the shiny white coat who got her degree from Harvard. But then again is she truly just in it for the money? Have I been a victim of this drug? Or will I be?

I used to frequently wonder as a child how if there are so many religions which majorly different beliefs that you pick the right one. Since my perspective has become somewhat richer and more varied since then I know you can choose what you believe in. And I know as an existentialist I believe in the power that provides to each individual regardless of what belief they use.

But when it comes to East versus West in medicine, and philosophy versus skepticism, and faith versus facts; I’m a little lost. Do I get to just choose ? What if I choose wrong?

I’ve read and studied. I like this guy particularly https://drpompa.com/cellular-health/a-healthy-mindset-overcoming-crohns-and-colitis/ Dane Johnson. My amazing wife has bought the elemental shakes for me. And just like him my lifestyle is so busy that I eat worse and don’t stick to any of these things. He was on death’s doorstep and about to have his colon removed and then went to a naturopath.

Now I went to a naturopath once and she did the blood type diet, and the plan included lots of veggies that would have torn apart my gut. I was so lost. And no one in any of this took account the the trauma I have experienced in my life. The years it endured for, how I escaped from it, and the way all of that has significantly impacted the direction of my life in so many ways.

No one is looking at the whole picture here. But now I am. I’m just having trouble knowing what I have faith in. I do know that I have faith that you can heal your body with your mind, but for most in the throes of it this is so invalidating. Though it doesn’t have to be.

Enter, You Can Heal Your Life. www.healyourlife.com the brilliant work of Louise Hay, which I have had on my shelf from many a counseling conference and didn’t pay much mind (because it seemed to invalidate my disease) until recently. Recently I attended a workshop on energetic body types. https://blueheronhealing.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html?m=1

And one of her sources was Louise Hay as well as Earthing.

Now back to this idea of not knowing what to believe. Of course I don’t. I had a mother and an aunt and a set of grandparents that all bounced me around like a ping pong ball using me in tactical warfare, information finding, and often for their own devices. And being overly mature for my age, willing and energetic I delighted in any form of attention.

I developed a strong outer shell geared to receive praise, with an inner self that was a molten center of wholly unmet needs. I subconsciously froze that part away for safe keeping.

My body and outside persona was carefully crafted armor.

So it makes sense now when I’m frantically uncertain and can’t figure out what to do, especially when these stakes are so high.

I know I never want to stick that pen of poison into my abdomen again. I feel it with every part of my soul. But my constitution is built up of so much obedience from one of the only systems that I ever grew up around truly paying kind and attentive notice to me. The Western medical system.

I had severe asthma growing up, and was often in and out of the hospital. Louise Hay says this corresponds to not wanting to be alive, fear of being here, which absolutely makes sense given my mothers pregnancy with an older man and out of wedlock. And the chaos I was born into.

So later in my life when feeling utterly alone and crippled with (what I didn’t know was anxiety) I would seek so much medical attention. I have so many pictures of my ex partner in ER waiting rooms. And each test and visit eventually only led me to less validation and even to be considered a drug seeker when I’m terribly anxious to even take a Tylenol.

I now realize I was subconsciously doing that to feel special, important, loved, safe, etc. and that I still did not. Not being a mother, or a graduate, or any of the accomplishments I had attempted to busy my mind had resulted in this. That unmet need core of me still radiated out into my whole body.

What else could make an energetic curious outgoing child later turn into an adult who couldn’t raise her hand in class without her heart thumping so wildly against her chest she thought she might die. Also notice when it gets very vulnerable I’ll slip into language that suggests someone else and not me? That’s a thing too.

I’m piecing it all together as I’m gently healing all of my parts back together rather than being rough with them and demanding we have it together. I have to invite and ask and nurture myself.

This is healing and this is my journey.

I imagine myself on a vision quest and meditating and the answer coming, and then my logical brain scoffs at that. My spiritual brain and my logical brain are at war.

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Musings from my 20k Client Day

It’s 9 pm and my client day just ended. I needed to pick up my daughter right after and on the way I found myself sifting through moments from my day.

What I experienced was a sense of reverence for what people share with me. For how brave they are. For the work itself.

I was thinking about that fine balance line between feeling self-important, essential to them, and being responsible for an outcome etc…. and what I landed on is that;

I don’t feel responsible for my clients, I feel responsible to them.

I feel so grateful for what this works gives to me, and such a respect for it and them, that I want to be constantly raising the bar on self-love, support, acceptance, and my own accountability.

This work makes me want to be a better person. Their strength and courage fuels me. I know what it takes to come to that first appointment. The sweating, the indecisiveness, the anxiety, and the cold hard fear. It’s the same as if we were looking in the mirror under fluorescent lighting.

I never see the way I do Client work as me being the gas station and them being the car. The way I do work I don’t burn out because it’s a beautiful reciprocity. Where I have true respect to my core for the experiences of each and every individual.

Listen I am by no means perfect. My mind can wander. Some people’s demons rattle the cages of mine easier than others. I make plenty of mistakes. I am a human. But I’m always interested passionately in their experience as a human being, down to the most mundane interaction they are describing. Because there are always clues to be had about their worldview or value systems.

I can do something with anything. And being given a challenge to push through my discomforts and self-defeating barriers, makes me feel alive!

Client work makes me feel alive.

It is important. To be allowed to process our thoughts and feelings in an arena that provides acceptance and safety is important.

I get energized by holding this special place in the world.

It is an honor.

I wish I could get out more complete ideas, or do an update like I have been wanting to. But this honor also leaves me spent at the end of the day. In the best of ways my brain is scrambled eggs. I think of my youth and that silly commercial this is your brain on drugs. Except in this case it’s this is your brain on Clients.

Except I could never keep a story that I am drained by it. I don’t need that to feel validated about how much I give or how important I am. It’s ok for me to be energized by my work, without the story.

When I’m exhausted these days it’s such a satisfied exhausted. After a days long hard work.

Which speaking of I did have a thought I want to look further into…. I wonder how many calories I burn being a therapist. So much emotional energy my heart is often high during sessions, but I’m animated and engaged. Tonight when I ate, I ate as if I had worked out for hours. I wonder how much using our mental energy burns in terms of calories etc. I wonder what other therapists out there are the same.

I often joke that some of my therapy days are so deep it’s as if I ran a 20k.

I’m curious exhausted. I’m happy exhausted. I’m fulfilled exhausted. I can feel great and tired and that’s such a cool thing to wrap my brain around. The only template I had about exhaustion before was to make a problem or make myself wrong.

I’ve thought things such as what if Client work is killing me physically. When in actuality my not loving and accepting myself fully is the root of all of my ailments. Never someone’s energy being harmful to mine. That’s such a dangerous belief system, and it makes the problem outside of us rather than inside.

Anyway my last shreds of bandwidth are rapidly deteriorating. Perhaps I’ll be able to follow up tomorrow morning.

Warmly, Universally, Cosmically,

your companion on this journey we call living…