Tag: #thehighlysensitiveperson

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Turning Points

Listening to Pink and Teddy Swims this am.

Good morning ! Saturday is the new Sunday for me I guess since now having weekends off. Sunday is like a bonus day.

This morning I’m thinking about turning points. Those places in your life where a new self emerged. Was it subtle or did it strike like lightning?

Then a line: I want to be your favorite writer, but first I need to be mine.

I’m still figuring out what this blog is going to look like. Following a dark night of the soul and a re-birth. I find myself quiet a lot more, until I’m not. On those occasions where I feel safe and seen and my chatter box child self comes out to play. She does much more these days.

I know too much and yet integrating it into a practice of peacefulness rather than a vicious hypervigilant intellectualization process, has been necessary.

I have a bulldog sleeping on my lap. Bodhi. I never thought I’d have one again. I was too afraid to love again. Which is not like me. But sometimes something is so scathing it’s hard to come back from. In the end I’m glad I took the time I needed to heal and grieve because the fruit of this love is oh so sweet now.

And yet I still emerge having regrets about words I said and ways I managed my emotions at the time. Now however I can also have compassion for myself and recognize being put in impossible situations and still expecting myself to act well. Unfair, unrealistic.

I have cleaned my life out of anyone who doesn’t consider my emotional security in addition to seeing me. Not as a parent, but as a human being. No constant coddling, but in a reasonable manner.

My reactivity is much less and that helps me continue to see my path clearly and have many less blurred lines between me and any other, which affords me a freedom I never had before.

Freedom from the constant hunger for love….

Instead I am love, and love is reflected back to me in everything. A loaf of sourdough, a hug from my kids, a gentle breeze, the first sip of coffee, a cozy hoodie, a fresh haircut, a bite of an in season fruit…..

Life gets more and more delicious and I also have heartbreaks that never seem to mend. The scars still burning and pink. Having this humbles me and makes me grateful for every kind smile from a stranger. It makes me live differently.

With unimaginable loss comes incredible wisdom.

And with that I choose to walk with wounded others and apply what salve I can.

This is the way I choose to live my life.

Seeking more knowledge but not desperately, peacefully.

The kids and I will walk to the farmers market today…. Maybe bring the bulldog, maybe not ha. A break might be nice.

I was gifted Melissa Etheridge tickets, I’m going to see Elizabeth Gilbert soon, it’s been awhile, and My Fair Lady….

I’m out in the world, and also happily alone a lot of the time. I never knew how much of that I needed until I did. It’s ok to miss me. I miss me too a lot of times.

It’s an interesting place to be able to see every regret you’ve ever had, without going into a spiral about it. Just a witness. And all of mine are ways I spoke to people I loved, and choices I made that hurt others more than they had to because of the way I wasn’t connected to myself.

I deal with freeze and fawn responses especially much more than I would like. And I’m also emerging out of that into self expression. Right on track with my healing path.

I am a living apology which is very different than purgatory, and I write love letters that will never be read to those who in their absence I can remember the good.

But never again will I live in a fantasy over reality.

Life is all that exists only in the present moment, that’s it. What you can see touch and feel. No bargaining, no crying out for what doesn’t show up. If it’s there it’s there. If it’s not it’s not. Keep it simple sweetie.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m too isolated career wise, but then I think of how normal it is for me to seek something wrong when there isn’t.

“You can see when you’re wrong, but you can’t always see when you’re right.”

I have a tendency to romanticize rather than fully allow myself to experience what’s right in front of me. I think that’s the writer in me. So as long as I’m allowing myself creative freedom, I’m fine just fine….

This morning I’m basking in my office. In the comfort and warmth of all I’ve created with my own unique story of returning home to love, mine….

Stay tuned 💜🫶🏼

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Sourdough and Life Lessons

*so I wrote this this morning, after a lovely walk to the local farmer’s market with daughter and dog. The perfect amount of vitamin D and then back indoors so I am not ravaged.

I cannot wait to see what Esther Perel has to say about the Coldplay thing. That’s what I’m looking forward to an educated and empathic response. 

I hurt for the people hurting. 🙁 

I am trying to learn to be a person who is concerned with all kinds of hurts not just who is right and wrong. Though I’m very far from perfect at that. It’s a striving not a Destination. 

I want to be someone who has something intelligent and helpful to say about things, rather than divisive, judgmental or unkind. 

To slow down and better understand my own needs and honor them so I am present…. 

What I have learned very hard over the last five years is life does not unfold in binaries, black and white, right and wrong. It’s a Series of choices with outcomes both of which is complex and filled with light and dark aspects. 

I’m learning how to be more of a humanist than I have been in the past. Which means to me holding space for the complexities of a human journey. 

I have learned a lot of times it’s pain that teaches you the most. About how to be kind and less judgmental in general. Pain has taught me a great deal. 

And to not be the cause of someone else’s to the best of my ability I need to know myself. My light and my dark, my story and my history, all of it. I spend a great deal of time doing that now.

The poet Andrea Gibson with a heart larger than the ocean, and a beautiful mind, died this past week. That is on my mind often and heavy in my heart. 

When one is a poet / writer, we mourn our allies who are no longer with us. Our kindreds. My heart is sad that I won’t get to read anything new by her. I was only barely getting to know her. But I can through the legacy she left in the lives of others. I hope to do the same 🫶🏼

That’s what I wrote:

I’m reading The Dry Season by Melissa Febos and Grief is for the people, and mating in captivity, and how we live is how we die by Pema Chodron. See unedited this is how I write. Sometimes I capitalize sometimes I don’t…

Sourdough requires consistency, to slow down and feel what you’re doing and make tiny adjustments.

I came home with starter from the Jenkins. Learned how to bake it, quite accidentally. I didn’t overthink or under think. I just slowly did, one thing at a time.

I think I’ll prefer life like that as much as I can muster, from now on.

From now on immediately made me think of the greatest showman…. Sigh

Anyhow it’s a beautiful Saturday. I’ll spend some time alone and some with both of my daughters, and some with my partner later when she gets home from helping a friend.

Slow. I am doing everything slow. With mindfulness. With Intention. With play. With rest. With a calm mind.

This is all I have ever wanted really. Oh and like a million other things, that may all feel better now because I am no longer a walking talking coping mechanism with self long ago frozen on ice somewhere deep inside.

All my love,

C

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Spanaway Washington and Sequim. Who could have dreamt it….

Mount Rainier

So here I am from the bath…. At the Jenkins. I smell lemon and of it, lightly scented.

My crystals surrounding me in the bath tub. my only gripe is the whiter than white lights and a supreme lack of veggies and healthy food in my life, which I will remedy today. As well as movement. Travel can really mess that up, as well as quality sleep. But it doesn’t have to. I must learn to pack individual smoothie portions.

I started reading In Love with The World by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. A man born into meditation royalty sets out to make himself uncomfortable so he can better get to know his mind and essence.

I’m about half way through The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong. It’s wonderful so far. I also brought Old Souls for reading as well.

Yesterday was loud to say the least. It was also beautiful in so many ways. I began the day with tears of gratitude for the love the Jenkins family has always bestowed upon me oh so naturally. I never had to do anything for it. The way love is meant to be. I am truly blessed to have them.

Not ironic at all I should think that I am celebrating my independence with them 😉

I need to get out of this bath because I’m having some nausea. Some fresh air and fresh fruit etc will do me good. No sugar today ick! Gotta get off the stuff and not do the “it’s vacation thing” bah. When will I learn.

The comfort is just so comforting which makes you want to eat and do as the others do, when my body says don’t !

It’s a work in progress still, the getting a clear transmission about what my body needs.

Anyway here I am where the air is cleaner, the trees bushier and greener, the sky is bluer and all the colors are more vivid. The people are kinder and simpler perhaps I would say. Which has its light and dark aspects.

I don’t want to other them or me. I seek to challenge my judgements and assumptions and just continue to become an overall more attuned soul. To the needs of myself, others, but still healthfully boundaried.

That’s not too much to ask right ?! 💜🫶🏼

From the bubblegum pink skylines to how water tastes here I am enamored and grateful.

I will write more soon I’m just stretching the muscle, testing the trust, shaking the cobwebs out of my head as I embark on this trip in this lifetime.

In a couple of days I will meet my Aunt D, my father’s sister. I could have never imagined that… so many emotions.

Making friends with them, allowing the natural ebb and flow. Ok I gotta get moving.

All my love,

C

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Time is My Current Currency…

And I’m not afraid of redundancy because we learn better in familiarity, unless we don’t which is another story.

Empty hours are my desire

Pressure off

Turns my pleasure up

Who knew it could be

This easy

Spoiler alert

Not me

😉

Pleasure is

Leisurely mornings

Hot coffee

Mental meanderings

That no longer

Involve

Elaborate scaffoldings

Of

Force and control

Like a toddler

I allow my mind to

Go where it wants to go

My kids right here would

Be like uh mom

You didn’t let us

And I’d say that’s true

I needed a new me

I’d say

The problem was

Never you

You’re the gift

And I had curses to overcome

And it’s still awhile

Before I’m done

Probably forever

And that’s ok

Because it’s a beautiful

Life right now

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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,

C

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“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 …..

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Reading A Little Life, While Living A Big One

Willem and Jude

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…..

C

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

Do you believe in signs ?! …..

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 ….

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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…..

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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!