#thehighlysensitiveperson – The Emotional Alchemist

October 6, 2024

This is a post about Divine sensitivity

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

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

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

No thank you. Not even for witchy shit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No labels of dramatic necessary.

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

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

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

Things I am not proud of. There are plenty.

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

Getting into my own channel. Channeling.

Ultimate healing.

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

The sensitivity is not the problem.

Pain is the problem. The problem is the problem.

Sensitive is strong and beautiful.

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

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

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

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

More and more glimpses of what is possible.

You are possible. I am possible.

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

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

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

❤️🫶🏼 all my love,

August 3, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Able to play

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

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

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

Amor Fati

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Saturday everyone

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

Yes it is …..

January 15, 2024

Reading A Little Life, While Living A Big One

I am reading A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. As I continuously recognize the magnitude of trauma through the story of others, I close the distance gaps between mine and me.

There’s a line in the book about how a human being could be so thoroughly bifurcated, and that has haunted me ever since.

Is that what I was (am), bifurcated?

And much more specifically not just from my other half, an other half, but from my personality, my soul’s essence. It’s heartbreaking to even write. As the truth seeps inside my skin and takes root.

I recognize, that I recognize the magnitude and then it disappears before my very eyes like the proverbial bird in the magicians cage once the cloth has been drawn back.

Each day a blank canvas in the way that only a survivor can understand, as if nothing has ever existed before. The only thing holding a human life together at times is the glue of the people around them, who they hold shared experiences with. I’ve taken for granted that hallowed glue, and yet I haven’t.

I have known how important and this knowing led me to rush desperately, or maybe it was the trauma and not the knowing that caused that, and to create these unions out of a place of desperation.

See what I do there? How I take responsibility for things I couldn’t possibly be responsible for. But then how does one figure it all out anyway. What is theirs and what is not theirs and what is fair has no place in the realm of humanity. Because things are simply not fair.

Fair is a striving if anything, it is not granted by some mystical or even judicial force, and it’s certainly not a perfect system.

Rather these days I think what is the lesson, and the lesson is always love. Not in simply a romantic sense but an all encompassing one.

Is material like this this so relatable because of my many life experiences and similarity or some divine force that has me connect with exactly what is needed at the time?! Both.

Do I bore you going on and on and answering my own questions in your presence? I cannot attach to that it isn’t my business anyway if you’re bored or not. And besides what do I always say?! You’ll never be bored. I’m not boring and my life is certainly not, though it can be quiet and peaceful now.

I’m learning to allow that.

Anyway this book and watching This is Us for the first time, has me breaking open daily.

There’s something about watching two people sharing life together that want their children that work hard at loving them well, that well just flays me open.

No surprise there.

Watching a father love his children and do his best, and the same for a mother. And how they balance their dreams and their own desires with that.

And how fucked up my path looks in comparison, which is why we don’t do that.

If I look at my life individually the whole story it’s so much easier to see the beauty in it. Watching families who love each other and have traditions and traditional anything just sets my skin aflame like the emotional burn victim I am.

Do you see my scars?

This book though. This show though.

Piece by piece I’m collecting me and I’m putting together a self that has all her original essence, from all the shards.

It’s slow.

There is no longer a rush. It’s slow and beautiful. Everything is art. Every meal cooked and eaten. Every dark thought banished by compassion.

This book opens me. My clients open me. Life opens me. It’s exquisite and excruciating and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

A continual surrender. A cease fire on myself. And finally burying my armor and replacing it with something realistic, something lighter…..

July 22, 2023

Darken The City, Night is a Wire…. Do do do do do do dooooo do.

I’m at the New York Athletic Club, in the city that never sleeps. It doesn’t but believe me I do, or there is hell to pay. I’m old now 😉 I was old from the start, even when I was new.

I found out recently I was premature. 5 lbs 2 oz. I believe. I wonder what I was exposed to inside of her. From what I knew outside the odds aren’t in my favor.

I have these new connections with family that feel very grounding and positive and this morning I’m in awe and contemplation.

Is this what most of the other people I know have always had, just naturally. This feeling that they won’t just fly out into space at any moment.

A dear friend once said to me to keep defying gravity. Gravity I think. The invisible force that tethers one to earth. I was untethered and often unbridled and my defense system would shout that I wouldn’t change a thing. But now that I know what I know. You can’t unknow and all of that. I can’t even say that.

What is this feeling?

A feeling of solidness, inhabiting my body. Being at a dinner party with famous Broadway actors and actresses and not feeling less something, less anything.

Famous didn’t matter. It was an intimate gathering, natural. All people passionate about their arts. Some happy and fulfilled, some not as much. There were also wounds at that table. We all have them, some are just more apparent than others.

Yesterday we went to Westsider Rare and Used bookstore. I want to ravage every single one in this city. To touch every spine, cover, and page. To know which one I like best. To feel the knowledge pressing in around me, to hear all the voices of all of those brave writers that made it to the point where they were bound, gathered, and artfully decorated.

I’m ready for a cover and a title and a brand. Brand new. Look at you Christina. You can be and do anything. So what will it be? The crushing weight of possibility. No more crushing weight, only an unbearable lightness of being, he just died recently by the way.

One of the great loves of my life, very early on, came upon me reading Milan Kundera, the book of the very name of above, in a break room in a Trader Joe’s. I had a wedding ring on. I had more naïve enthusiasm than most would know what to do with at that time

All balls and no brain. Which is exactly what I needed to propel me out of a life I was not meant for.

I’ve been shot out of a cannon many times since so to speak. Jet propulsion. My swift expulsion from everything comforting. Including my self concept. Which is more than jarring, it’s actually quite alarming: disarming.

Apparently I’m a wrapper. Who knew. How much is channeled by my early days of resonance with Eminem’s music. Curtain Call. Relatable. It’s not debatable. My mind likes to rhyme.

One of my book store picks this time at random is Junot Diaz This is How You Lose Her. The cover looks interesting, actually not really so much. His name was in a compilation of writers on writing and this made me curious who he is as a writer.

I watched Ammonite the other day. I am haunted by it lately. Still sorting out what that is about. Can’t stop rhyming. Everything in divine timing….

A walk in the park and a stationary store before heading home on the train today. Muji…. I’m told the pages are creamy, buttery, gold.

I just sent out for my passport yesterday. And got two sheets of stamps. I love them. I got Toni Morrison ones and Love ones with puppy’s and hearts.

Here at the NYAC there’s an old fashioned looking letter drop. Between that and the stamps I want to write letters. The art of the letter is long lost.

I write letters that will never go to their recipients, ones only I will ever see. So many of the connections in my life are like that. Extinguished and never without good reason.

I spent so much time second guessing myself. Only to end up here where validation is around every corner and I am safely held.

I just put three new clients on the books yesterday morning. These are a little out of my comfort zone, something I haven’t done in awhile. Hopefully the freshness will be good for all involved.

Fresh eyes, no lies.

The truth will set you free. It always does. There are times I haven’t wanted to be free. I wanted to be held.

You can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need.

Ok for now back to writing and exploring this iron jungle melting pot, before it gets too hot.

Stay Tuned ….

June 4, 2023

Transmuting Pain into Power through Personal Narrative

*There are things that need to be written from the origination point.*

Im listening to I Will Find You by Audiomachine and it is transcendent. It’s making my experience of staring out at the water with my toes in the sand somehow more magical.

In this state I can feel everything I need to feel to have daily presence with myself.

Feeling is safe. Feeling will not kill you.

Writing is safe….

I’ve somehow managed to make my favorite day even better by permitting myself the experience of Victoria Erickson’s writing immersion: Ashes and Rain.

This is where we come alive out of the shadows and into the light….. next song! I can feel it rising, golden waves of sound. Ruelle Radio. The smell here is divine.

So many things are coming full circle for me at this time in my life. Breaking out of the story, any of them and into pure presence. Less perfection. Who knew how much of that I actually had hanging around. Not me that’s for sure.

My third immersion class today, and yesterday was my third Saturday that was my own. But who’s counting? Me. I am!

I’m reading the exact book I need right now. It describes this path I’ve been on. Stephen Cope Soul Friends. I can’t believe how similar so many of the experiences described are and that someone else was able to articulate it in this way.

So of course I’m on a reading journey that book spurned. Exploring Thoreau, Dickinson, Forster (Maurice), a separate peace. And many more. And also being introduced to many new poets via Victoria. Ada Limon, David whyte and more.

I will carry you came on. As I’m getting ready to depart and back in my car in its usual spot.

I have an immense feeling that I will live in Milford the rest of my life. When I die I’d like my ashes spread at Woodmont, at all my spots along this stretch. It has called to me long as I can remember. I first found it by wandering on some of my first run/ walks with self as a young mother trying to create a space for her thoughts.

I still remember the day I first walked down Belmont St. And as the road rose up there’s a moment when you can first see the water. That moment is my favorite part. I still feel that when I drive here. The moment water and I meet, magic.

I’m more embodied now which means that I’ve expanded from hours in the bath to bodies of water out in the world and to nature as well. I’m learning to keep my attention when out in the world, and to still be able to write.

We write alongside life…. Not separated from it. I am learning.

I think a new Sunday routine may emerge of contemplation by the water along with my exercise prior to my writing class 12-3.

I go to therapy one time weekly now. Friday mornings. It was a long time I did two days a week. Doing only one isn’t some accomplishment, as in I’m more healed. It’s just a natural progression to using that time in other ways. So maybe it is ha 😉

I’m getting ready to embark on a new level of healing with that therapy that is focused on the trauma held within my bodies. The things my mind cannot access. Denali sized blocks.

I’m scared. Raw and shaking. Heart racing. Sweaty scared. And I’m grateful to be able to fly that close to the truth and to survive it.

Transmuting pain into personal power. Becoming a healer also to myself.

I’m writing poetry. I’m thinking of the connections that drew that side out just based on the emotions encompassed within. Those who recognized the poet and the passion within me. Who saw. Who felt me.

I am with them all the time. They are with me all the time. There is no need for separation.

I’m learning to no longer censor myself. I am de compartmentalizing all that has been and this is a painful process.

Becoming fully embodied and present. It’s excruciating and also the most beautiful suffering I’ve ever experienced. That look you saw wasn’t darkness it was the depth of my ability to connect. Interpret as you will. But I see it now.

I see it now.

The transformation is exquisite…

I’m on the rise is the song on now….. pay attention…..

Writing time…..

May 22, 2023

We all need someone who helps bring our walls down.

There are times in our life where we need that so badly that we accept it in the form of someone who doesn’t keep us safe.

Then what?

Only to be shown what’s possible but then put them back up even thicker.

Needs are an interesting thing.

I’d venture many if not most broken relationships are the result of not being able to communicate our needs and be responsive enough in the demands of the culture and society we live in.

I used to think America was the greatest.

Because I was told that right. Now I’m leaning much more towards it emphasizes all the wrong things.

What fundamentals are we built on? Stepping on the backs of others to achieve our own status while not considering others. A beautiful Instagram feed?!

When mostly behind the pictures are struggling lost souls.

There is no pleasure allowed, only the pursuit of the American dream.

I’m finding at this point in my life other cultures have it so much more figured out. That life is also about family and connection and pleasure and the TIME to have those things.

Time!

How is one to have time if they have not achieved society’s idea of the American Dream.

But what are my dreams ?! Where are my dreams?

Completing the stress response cycle ? Perhaps. Hint Emily Nagowski probably spelled wrong.

I dream of not having my trauma and coping mechanisms dictate my life.

I know I’m far from isolated in that dream. Many people share it and are seeking exactly that in my office.

Spoiler: I don’t have it figured out either, but I desire that.

There’s desire! Hi my old friend how have you been?

I need to understand you better.

You’ve caused such grief in my life, but also had my back and opened so many doors.

You raging compass.

You really fuck me up sometimes …..

But you also led me to my true self and north.

Why’s it gotta be so complicated. You get it Avril, and Taylor, and Pink…..

Music you get me. I’m writing this to the tune of the piano guys radio.

Music pulls down my walls and gives me back to myself.

It’s why I want to play it, listen to it, more fully experience it and myself. Don’t forget yourself champ. But how ?!

And the song ended.

Now maybe there will be a different rhythm to my writing.

I’m sweaty and lost and sad on a Monday morning. And I’m also hopeful and excited about the possibilities of the day. These are my defaults as much as anything else. Thank god.

Music stimulates my brain in the right way to bring the walls down. It’s steady. I am in control. If I don’t like a song I change it. But I rarely do actually. I like to take in everything music has to teach me because it’s safe.

Writing is too I am learning and I’m finally letting go and doing it.

Having no idea the outcome.

The guy in 22 is trying to navigate his grass. He stands over it puzzled begging it to look as nice as the other lawns. But he’s just beginning. Someday it will because of his patient attendance and devotion.

So it’s one day at a time for now with music, walking, reading and writing.

Finding balance between thinking and feeling. Head and heart.

They are navigating too…..creating their connection.

No negotiations needed!

December 23, 2022

Beauty is a curse, I’ve long known this

I’ve got approximately two and a half hours left of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and I’ve been savoring it. I’ll feel incomplete for a short while in its absence. I’ve been all or nothing so long, it’s nice to read it bit bit and then process and listen to music. I have a nice groove going on.

I walked to Natural Kitchen and got a bowl today. I think the tuna from there makes me a little allergic, probably some preservative they use. A major goal in the new year is to begin working with a nutritionist and allergist and really attend to my health.

Another goal is to spend very little and see if I can pay off my student loans. I’m coming up with a strategy with my financial advisor. I want to leave my children with a good financial situation and also make sure in case anything happens to me with my Crohns that I have wiggle room. So they and we are safe and don’t have additional stress.

*don’t worry I’m not leaving anytime soon, I just think that far ahead. It’s a part of me.

When did I suddenly become such an adult ?! Who knows!?

I was able to do quite a bit for those I love this year for Christmas and it’s all done. I’m usually panicking the night before. It’s pinch me unreal the things I’m able to do.

I’ve been that way most of my life though, pinching myself at things I just never could even have seen for myself. How rich my experiences have been. No corner of my life unturned and I shall continue living this way.

I wore my only human sweats today and grey under armor sweater with beanie and just felt cool ha. Feels silly to say but I did. I felt cool despite having my winter weight on, some breaking out on my face. I just don’t torture myself anymore and that feels very nice.

To not nitpick myself apart about perfection. Now if I could just continue to do that with writing.

Go easy on me baby….. appropriate.

Henri is asleep at my feet. The cat dog that she is. The little prince is cleaning up after his ugly Christmas / cookie extravaganza last night. Thankful those are few and far between, and also grateful to be able to be that house and have such a good group of kids.

I feel like Diane Lane in the end of Under the Tuscan Sun, something I want to read by the way. I’ve only seen the movie. She had felt so low at one point, like she was never going to have what she wanted and then realizes she did even though it’s completely different than she thought.

Yep my face is definitely flushing from this food. I get much less anxious about these things anymore. I go with I’ll be fine, and if I’m not I’ll know and be able to get the care I need. Not going to eat this bowl again. But I will for sure walk to places to get my food and even shopping. I love walking when I can instead of driving.

Maybe next I’ll bike everywhere and keep costs down. Anything can be an adventure. I could be happy the rest of my life walking back and forth to the library and eating a picnic lunch out in the sun with a book.

The simple things…

I just want to make sure my loved ones are safe and cared for and myself and we have experiences. That’s what I’m focused on lately, and that I make choices that are congruent with that. Yes a therapist word for sure. Shocking 😉

Writing a book lately feels like more of a when, than an if. That feels so nice. I could cry just to say it, but most important that I feel it. A sense of security and that it’s solid. If my circumstances change I still am solid. That’s taking root.

It’s my birthday tomorrow. It feels different this year somehow. I’m acknowledging it and not saying it doesn’t matter and I don’t need anything. It feels calm and safe.

In fact I need to see a show, A Strange Loop on Broadway and the tree and have a nice dinner in the city with my loved ones. I’m not anxious. Well maybe a little. About not finding a bathroom or anything that can happen, but the excitement outweighs. Mmmm.

I have more than I need. I can begin thinking about what I can do to give to my community and to my field and all of it.

I have so much more to write maybe today will be a twofer or tomorrow morning I’ll take some time for me to contemplate the brink of my forty second trip around the Sun.

I was going to talk about Evelyn’s sixth husband because that’s where I am. And how I feel for people so beautiful they get trapped in the upkeep of it all, it’s one thing to enjoy taking care of yourself, pressure however is quite another.

Ok so I wrote this a couple of days ago and didn’t post. It’s more an update than passion ridden prose. A theme I suppose. I have therapy now on Christmas Eve eve. Then walking and family time. I anticipate a lot of writing as I am present and coming to the end of Evelyn’s story.

And still well at the beginning of mine 💜

Ps and in true Christina fashion I didn’t talk about the title subject much at all. Stay tuned it will come along somewhere…. Soon. I think. Maybe

November 17, 2022

Fearless Love…. Fierce Recovery. Finding Faith.

I’m having a rainy morning walk. I love it. I feel alive.

Found The Little Prince’s Rose this morning

I had a scary episode last night. I’ve had very little focus on any health anxiety and very few symptoms. But last night in a therapy session I was talking about my mom, and my trauma. My heart started to feel like it was stopping and flipping over, but for much longer than just one beat.

So I looked at my heart rate, it was 114 bpm. I took a few deep breaths and it immediately went to 70. My usual is a fib or palpitations but this was different. I consulted “the google” I like to call it this because it makes me feel my actual age and not my chronological one, which is around 90 years or so.

The Google says it was an SVT, maybe of course as neither of us have a PhD. I’m so grateful for no longer going down rabbit holes, but I also want to find the line of not ignoring something serious either. Sigh.

What’s indisputable is how trauma has ravaged my body. I’m angry. I’m angry!

Anger can be restorative. It restores our boundaries. It’s not to be dismissed as merely a negative emotion. A good lesson from The Language of Emotions and this past couple of years.

So I’m thinking about that girl that was plagued with terror and health symptoms. About how I understand now that’s what my body thought it had to do to get any needs met. Until it didn’t make any sense and I became discredited in my health anxiety, and had to figure out how to internalize less and ground more. Find new ways to meet my need, that didn’t require me to be sick.

This morning I was talking about how once upon a time I loved a little girl with my whole heart. That happening so naturally changed something in me. It was the beginning of some important lessons in love.

Children really are our greatest teachers.

Listening to my guy Teddy, sing about find something you can hold on to, find someone who will be there for you, because that’s all that really matters in the end. It’s hard to tell the truth when you lie to yourself, always give too much of yourself to someone else…..

Yes Teddy! That’s all that really matters in the end….

I feel alive and awake. Something that used to be a rare moment that often led me to dark places when I didn’t understand the full picture.

Now I take the time to do that. You take and make time, you don’t find it.

In my head my memoir is taking shape, as I read more, I hear more hints and glimmers of what my story will look like on the page. And why it’s important that I tell it. Made a difference to that one.

And mostly for my children because my story is also their story. A Life Itself reference.

Should I do another lap? I want to it feels so good, but it’s wet and cold, which isn’t bothering me, but I don’t need to increase my odds of getting sick. They are already high.

I need breakfast. I don’t want to interrupt this flow. Story of my life, except now I don’t drown in fear it won’t all be there when I need it.

My shattered and scattered mind. I see it more and more clearly every day. S. King would have suggested one less more there. Oh I also need to finish his book too.

I’m standing on my porch remembering. Remembering the pain all the times I tried to yell to be seen. All the days I sat here and cried and felt deeply. All the friends who were here to soothe. All the visits with my stand in father bringing groceries and unconditional consistency. I doubt he will ever know the depths of what he has meant to my story.

The difference between life and soul death is a fine line. I’ve walked it many years.

Love never goes anywhere…. It always exists as do all the moments. That’s what I’ve learned. You keep them, download them. It can be bitter sweet you aren’t able to make more, but we are all responsible for our choices.

I’m listening to the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and I am captured. My full attention. And let’s be honest we all know how rare that is. I’m laughing heartily on my front porch. We are friends now.

I remember an old post about can you fall in love with a house. And the answer is yes, but that girl at that time knew very little about real love. Only an idea of love. Trapped in a coping mechanism that required creating fantasies and then attempting to occupy them.

Over and over I rode that haunted roller coaster.

Now I just sit here and observe, and I DECIDE what I absorb and what I don’t let it.

I was looking in an old journal of mine, I had written those letters large DECIDE. I learned about the power of our choices and Senja Foster taught my to have crystal clear boundaries and only participate as a whole person, with another person who had done that work themselves.

I show up and I always will, and I promise myself to never believe those rotten stories about her again. It makes me sad and sick to think of my relationship with me, it was the most abusive.

I made amends to myself when I walk and it’s changing me.

And I am fucking grateful! For every single moment, even the hard and bad ones, because I can walk back through them in my mind, and because I can now see where my boundaries are.

I was borderless. My phone tried to change that to borderline how funny. That’s how that type of crazy feels. It’s not a good feeling.

I choose peace now, and I live in it, and no one can take that, and I made it out of nothing.

Fierce and loving ….

I won’t settle for anything less…. Melissa Etheridge sings. That’s the energy I was writing the last few minutes in, her song Fearless Love.

Thanks Universe 💜✒️💪🏼

November 10, 2022

Walking my Way Through my Own Truth

Nothing else matters

I love feeling myself getting stronger. Trimming the fat in so many ways. Building self. I feel my muscles strengthening and celebrating the movement. I definitely want to stretch more though as I move forward.

On my walk this morning I am thinking about the kinds of being alone. There’s the kind where all your thoughts echo it’s so empty, and you’re at their mercy. If you want to grow you just sit with them until you understand. There are mean time’s. There’s temporary alone, when a loved on travels and it’s a short time.

There is the alone in your head that you are every single day. With your own thoughts that no one else knows. Unless you’re reading this blog 😉

There’s alone after a spouse has passed away. An empty cavern, with the crushing weight of figuring out how to re-draft every day processes. Lost.

And then there’s another kind. The kind I’m thinking about today. There’s the violent kind of being alone.

This is when you don’t expect to be alone, but you find that’s the case over and over. The kind where the words don’t match the actions. The kind that causes illness, despair, and for some people even tragedy. The kind where the dishonesty makes you feel crazy. Your mind wants to believe in the love you thought you felt. The love you were continuously sold.

The kind where the person doesn’t know how to relate in a healthy way. Lost souls. So they manipulate others to meet their need.

I’ve never been lost like that, but very close to it. I do understand. There’s never been anything wrong with my understanding.

I’m a lucky one, but I worked hard for it. So luck is probably not the right word.

Not swathed in a story, I sat in my stuff.

I sit in my stuff.

And you know what it has made me a better human being. Most importantly a better parent. With much more space and awareness for empathy for the experience of others.

A far stretch from a perfect one, but better each day.

That’s what I chose to do with that. And to only forget as much as is necessary to do my work and live a fulfilling life. But never enough to be naive like that again.

I miss that naïveté. In some ways I wish it was never taken in such a manner, but then I can’t, because I wouldn’t be here now feeling what I am.

Presence. Peace. Love. Connection.

The alone melts away and with it the anger and pain.

Love is not an emotion. It’s sturdy. It is a choice and a promise.

I’ve never been very good at the consistent aspects of love. So built for survival I am. The only moment is now. A men and black reset each day.

So I’m working on my consistency and sturdiness of self, also not an emotion. I work on them by being consistent with my every day small behaviors and choices. Those are building a solid ground inside me.

This way emotions are allowed to do their work to keep the balance between my head and my heart. To protect and serve, rather than turn against me. Karen McLaren The Language of Emotions, a Bible of mine lately. The passage love is a steadfast promise around page 120 or so.

This is literally a manual for healing trauma. I bought many copies to give to those in need this Christmas. Clients and friends alike. That and Letting Go by David Hawkins. Those are my go to sources right now.

I’ve been reading that passage in sessions, when warranted, and I get goosebumps and usually both parties tear up.

For all the pain and suffering in the world there is always the possibility of healing.

Choose

It’s a choice, not a feeling. You can’t feel better without the choice and commitment.

Now excuse me while I sit here and enjoy how my coffee tastes after the walk. It tastes better, more satisfying. And try not to fret about my baby having surgery this morning, far away. I sent her a “fever frog” from 1800 flowers. That thing is so damn cute. It sings and dances and comes with chicken soup. It was the only option that stopped me from buying a plane ticket and being there. That silly singing frog. Sigh.

Trying to care less about being cool these days and hip. Never really was in the cards anyway lol. I want to play. To help people in my presence feel lighter when they are heavy. Rather than going to their place automatically with them and then freaking out about it.

The above I’m working on a lot. As a recovering chameleon. Thinking of The Luckiest Girl Alive in this moment.

Balance

Lighter by Yung Pueblo is another good one.

I don’t want to sell anything to anyone. I want to align myself with those who prioritize their own healing and the ones that understand love is a choice and show up consistently.

My vow is that if I want this I will also be it.

I must

Good morning on this beautiful fall day! Finally a chill in the air. It’s extra delicious this year, with the warmth in my heart maintaining my temperature.

Peace

July 22, 2022July 22, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peaceful and primal is possible? I should think yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Caged

Free

All or nothing

This is me….

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was

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

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

What do I do with all of this now?

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

I want to go back and also I don’t….

I keep moving forward….

Being the change

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

Walking my way through recovery.

Dancing my way through life….