Something has changed within me Something is not the same
Hello dear readers, I wish to be intimate with you today ….. I miss this (writing), this you, so much in its absence.
Sometimes the silent spaces in between are the most important, and you don’t see until much later.
Life is a great mystery and if you’re brave, a great story of your own making unfolds.
As it turns out when you’re not reacting to life all the time there’s a lot less to say.
That’s the quiet that’s been deeply reverberating right now.
These lines have been sitting here awhile. I keep missing the boat on waves of inspiration that hit. But this is ok because I no longer feel a sense of panicky desperation.
I’ve been learning a lot about what love is and about what it isn’t. A researcher of love above all things.
What makes it safe and trustworthy?
I do. By being responsible for cultivating that in myself.
I’ve been navigating the letting go process of deep bottom of the heart, grief, for the last four years. For my whole life really, but this new awareness has the last four years more standing out.
You don’t get high on it, but you don’t crash either. A new kind of magic unfolds.
There’s a trust in the unfolding now. A deep breath and a sigh. A meandering walk among the halls of my heart, lined with many many shelves, and many stories.
I walk among them.
Deep wisdom settles under my skin, and I can draw from it as needed. Not running from myself, chasing someone else.
In this stillness the universe whispers and we become fast friends.
I am watching myself step into my gifts and twirl around in the mirror admiring them without self recrimination or admonishment.
The way my body reacts I had understood as anxiety, and it sent me into a panic. What that really was, is the depth in which I’m able to feel things.
It’s what empathy feels like in the body. The most powerful force on earth. Misunderstood I thought my body was trying to sabotage me. Not have a simple conversation and guide me.
Who knew ?!
So much opens up now.
Everything becomes a possibility. Everything always was, but now it’s known and felt.
I have long loved Wicked. We saw the movie the other day and I thought I might crack right open with feelings that movie evoked. As someone who saw herself as wicked for being the truth teller, and reacting to the many mistreatments.
As someone who has worried she was bad in some way.
During the dance scene at the oz dust ball I about cracked in half with emotion. Shaking with it. It was the first time I recognized my anxiety as “powers”. It clicked.
Suddenly I can see all the love around me I’ve created.
As the patriarchy falls and a new revolution takes place.
How love is the furthest thing from control. How control suffocates love out of the equation.
Years and years of attempting to control myself through manipulation and will, as a means of surviving those who would have tried to control me.
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.
Fewer things do I love more than the smell of walking into Barnes and Nobles and hot coffee or cocoa….. sigh
This phrase has been on my mind so much lately. As someone who tried to turn everything into a lifetime because the original blueprint left something to be desired for. How to know what plugs into where. Square peg and a round hole is a particular speciality of mine. Cafe name ?! Maybe !
Apparently you’re supposed to use your emotions to figure these things out. Who knew those weren’t secondary or even unnecessary dead weight. Even someone who can feel them at a level that is super sonic.
Today I dreamed of owning an indie book shop with a running title Sips and Sentences. Coffee of course. Maybe sandwiches named after various literary characters. But maybe just coffee. Definitely dessert. My motto lately: keep it simple sweetie. Or kiss. I talk to myself real gentle and sweet for the most at part these days.
I’m listening to music and walking in the dreary twilight under a slight drizzle. That we will call ambience.
Lake Missoula by Richie and the something is what my Spotify Dj has picked for me. I have Linda R Long Long Time stuck in my head.
These days so many good sentences, strong ones, sprout from the dirt of my mind. And yet somehow the will to commit them isn’t quite where I want it.
Some life force piece missing. For a know it all type I’m pretty blank on this one.
Walks feed my soul.
Sunday dinners too.
I finished Book Lovers today by Emily Henry. My third romance novel this year. Whoa! Something’s happening. Towards authenticity or away?! Hmmm.
My 20th book this year, 2 behind my 30 goal. My queue (I can never spell this word), is burgeoning bursting at the seams. Life’s too short for all I want to read. But I will write a great American Novel. Someone will probably just have to organize it for me.
I’m a little over self help (a total lie), or maybe I just know I’m more full and g shit than I’d like to be. Like most of us I suppose. I think that’s really a beginning. When you end up back at start over and over to get a layer deeper into life. I should be at the center of the earth by now.
And enlightened soul would probably laugh at how much of a beginner I still am.
That’s ok…..
I truly enjoyed it (the book) A lot to relate to actually. Color me surprised.
I like when life surprises me. Sometimes anyway. Ok universe don’t get too carried away with that one. I know what you’re capable of.
Caramel conversations and Apple kisses. It’s about to be fall and I’m feeling it all as usual. My colors are changing too. My leaves about to drop. Naked and shaking again. Visceral, literal, liberal love, haunted pages.
Light and dark fights for the stage. Desires in my sights. Old and young all at once.
When I put words to a melody magic happens.
Each song brings something else forth.
Unlock me. Unravel. Time is a lie. Only energy matters.
How can you be frozen and flowing all at once.
Today I was thinking about getting coffee and I knew there was a Dunkin’ at a particular stretch near Oxford. And that the Derby Starbucks has closed. I immediately knew Dunkin was not going to be where it’s at.
And I wondered at what moment I became a full fledged Starbucks girl. Like where I’d never look back.
I realized we never know when these moments will be sometimes until years later.
I chose nostalgia of a different kind and went to Safari Kaffeine. Too sweet. Not how I remembered. Not the taste I was going for.
I’m becoming and unlocking and blooming and blossoming. Particularly as a writer. Yet there are still glaciers inside me.
Which is fine because one just can’t go melting all over the place can they?!
I’m no drip….
Anyway that’s it for my evening musings…. Walks over.
There is a wishing booth in Chester! How adorable is this ?! This town is ridiculously cute!
So I’m driving to Chester Connecticut to attend the grand opening of Montgomery and Taggert, a romance bookstore, opened by two friends who shared a dream, and a love of romance.
I am listening to Lisa Tadeo’s Three Women, preceding watching the show. My goodness I love Shailene Woodley girl next door, but also bad ass! Florence Pugh is also on my radar of late. Reminds me of my childhood best friend, and probably crush although I didn’t realize it at the time.
I am writing this through voice memo, so I will clearly have to edit before posting something much more apt to do these days, than in the past.
The house was a flutter this morning with daughters and boyfriend. Although I am an “empty nester”, I have a very full life, and the birds are often still flocking home on the weekends.
I enjoy the flutter around me, as long as it’s at a measurable volume of course, and I have the option to enter into a quiet space or state at any time.
Wow, I just saw a whole group of bikers and several of them doing wheelies on the opposite side of the highway in oncoming traffic.
I just heard a line in the three women book that I really loved: The hurt doesn’t disappear it changes, it turns the manageable color of a bruise.
Recently in therapy, me being an introvert is being explored. I never would have fancied myself one, and if you had met me when I was younger or seen me in certain situations, you would not think so. But as a matter of fact, I am completely utterly refueled in my alone time.
According to my therapist, this is because I am unable to shut off my natural level of empathy, which pulls me to be considering the emotions, feelings, actions, behaviors, and what have you’s of anyone else within a 10 mile radius.
I am grateful for drives. They seem to be the place other than the shower, where my thoughts can float most clearly to the surface to be communed with.
I was helping twin A find her birth certificate this morning. Little by little my children’s important paperwork dwindles from my folder, and transfers to them. A very tangible piece of evidence of how quickly life is moving.
She was telling me about how she and her boyfriend are preparing to celebrate their fifth anniversary. I asked her if he is her lobster, and jokingly will have to put up with him forever lol. She is hopeful, of course.
And I have definitely learned that the length of a relationship is not nearly as much of a testament of the health of it, as society would celebrate or have us believe. I have allowed that to gaslight me in multiple ways over the years.
I much appreciate Margaret Mead’s quote about having three marriages, and all of them were successful.
I received Matthew Hussey’s Love Life book in the mail two days ago. I am already halfway through it. Lots of great advice whether you are in or out of a relationship at this time. His central thesis is to have the hard conversations versus avoiding them. Now that is something I can really get behind.
It does however fall into the easier said than done category.
So many times I open my blog to make a post because such a startlingly perfect epiphany came to mind. And by the time I open, it like a rare butterfly, it has already passed. I don’t let this stop me from writing any longer. I figure if I go on long enough, it may come back and alight on my shoulder.
You see now that I just named it (the block/ the blank).It came right back. I was going to talk about the ache.
Write to the block. Lean into the ache. Die to the page.
The Ache
And then the energy of that hits and everything just stands still, and I feel heavy like lead.
This is when you have to decide to keep going into it, speak it, explore it or whether you compartmentalize and move about your day.
I am fairly skilled in these options. But it is less easy to decide which one to choose.
This is all I’m going to write for now. I got pretty much the central theme out and I’m going to listen to my audiobook for 27 more minutes until I land in Chester Connecticut. Somewhere I have never been before, a date with myself on the brink of fall in New England.
How lucky am I?
Edit: this is now nighttime and I am home. One hundred pages deep into Book Lovers by Emily Henry. There is no shame in my love of romance. I am happy that was able to be rekindled recently.
Here I am alone between the heaven and the embers ….
Just walking and writing this morning. A new favorite is Matthew Hussey. A video by him Matthew Hussey
Also reading Marcela Lobos about awakening our true purpose and her story.
After one client and my own therapy tomorrow morning I am going to Kripalu. I love it there. And to see my dear Elizabeth Gilbert.
The drive is probably my most favorite part of the trip. I can just waft through any thought that has the tenacity to arise. There’s just something about the open road.
Last time I saw Marcela Lobos and Alberto Villodo, shamans. 💜
Last night I saw and early showing of Beetlejuice. I had fun! That’s fun for me. This couple was there and they were dressed up and I think that’s so fun. Camaraderie. The movie was a little dumb at first but did not disappoint in its wild depictions of the afterlife and with original cast members. Catherine O’Hara also never disappoints ha.
It’s a new era. My kids sort of out of the house, sort of in. Always home base but each exploring their edges and identities.
I am reflective of a time when I was so stressed all the time something would go terribly wrong. And at times it does, but no more than in a “normal” human life.
I’ve made significant changes over the past year again. Again and again. I imagine I often will. But this time at the same time I’m putting down deep roots of confidence and steadiness. I’m so damn proud of me.
So much less all or nothing. And what’s left is maybe there for a reason I’m not yet clear on or privy to. Who am I to argue with a force like destiny or soul contracts.
That didn’t stop me before ha. My spice derived from the pain of not being heard or seen. Argued everything. So happy to not live like that anymore.
What’s next if there is a next : I don’t know. I don’t need to. Is this faith? That has taken shape when I didn’t even realize what I was building with all my thoughtfully placed yes’s and no’s.
Not too precious to make edits.
All my love,
C
Ps a short one for now, a shower and admin calls. Hope to write more this weekend. The little prince turns 23 on the 17th. Love that kid! Heart for days on that one. The world needs his heart and yours. Don’t forget it! 💜
The Guernsey Literary and potato peel pie society….
And so it goes……
It’s a Saturday. Overcast. The mosquitoes are biting. I just got nailed four times while chatting with my neighbor. Who may be moving soon 🙁 which is a whole other thing. Sigh.
I have many choices for the day, coffee shop…. But now I don’t want to go anywhere because at the moment I have the house to myself.
I put “the blend” on lol and Tears for Fears Shout is kicking things off. I was listening to Tina Turner last night. A random ear worm that needed satisfying.
It’s the Milford Oyster Fest today, the 50th in fact. I have zero interest in that. Typically too hot and the possibility of seeing lots of clients. I’ve been exploring with going towns away for that very reason. And because I like exploring.
I watched a movie, The Guernsey last night. I got emotional right away at the beginning, when she is passionate about being a writer of course. It was the perfect movie for me to watch. That Glen Powell he’s everywhere right now. He kind of reminds me of a much taller and larger version of my first love, sorry Mike 😉 it’s something in the eyes etc. I like him.
I have been thinking a lot about how lucky I got with my first love. How pure and real, and that we still have such deep affection for the other. Can still appreciate all our memories and songs and send one another things about it.
That makes me think about seven hours of music about Love. The longest playlist of the bunch. Having to look for meaning in crumbs is its own answer. It’s its own answer Christina.
I have learned that love shows up, and I have learned it the long hard way. You don’t have to go so seeking, hoping, looking for it everywhere because if it’s yours you won’t have to look far from where you’re sitting or standing.
I looked so much for so long. Years really. Long enough to realize what love isn’t. It isn’t lies and it isn’t manipulation. It isn’t abandonment, confusion, obfuscation. It isn’t fear, stolen, or on borrowed time.
It’s right there. The air touching you, the sun, the trees, the ground under your feet. It’s words and water and poetry and it’s in everything, especially you.
I’m sitting at my breakfast bar looking at a card that a fellow teacher wrote about my daughter, nothing I didn’t know, but it still makes me tear up.
I’ve softened so much it pains me even to kill a bug, even when we are supposed to with those lantern flies. It’s such a strange sensation to have changed so much, and yet still be the same. We all have a core. Core memories (very few). Core traits (very dicey lol). A core self. (empathic/ wounded).
My core self feels things very deeply, feels music throughout my body. Saw Lindsey Stirling recently that was phenomenal. If you have the chance do that, amazing for younger kids as well, anyone.
I feel music and movies and people and energy at such a high frequency. The more I remove my self will and skepticism, the more magic there is.
So that’s where I’m at. This am I listening to Mel Robbins and Matthew Hussey episode on relationships. Lovely.
I’m hoping to write and read and catch up on podcasts and finish Dune book 4 today. Those are my plans. Maybe get in the hot tub since the water is fresh and won’t skeeve me out.
I’ve recently re started another round of morning pages and I’m on day 20, so tomorrow is 3 weeks. I went back through a companion workbook and instead of feeling like I’m not accomplishing what I mean to, which is the usual feeling, I’m noticing how on track I am. Week two is about recovering a sense of identity, and defining boundaries etc, and I’ve been cleaning house lately.
No when it’s no, yes when it’s yes. Getting clear, and as I do that and stay the course with reading and writing more opens up. The path keeps opening up before me, and in turn I keep walking it.
For a little bit there I allowed myself to become critical and judgmental again and to doubt and it’s like all the lights get shut off. The realization is I always have the switch. As soon as I’m back in my intuition and grounded, everything is illuminated again.
It’s truly that simple and complex all at once.
I had a massage last night, and my friend / massage therapist worked on my jaw muscles, who knew that was a thing. They are so sore.
It’s a full time job healing. I will never take that for granted or that it is an honor to be awake and aware. Not some horrible prison as the story can make it, when one is feeling particularly lost.
Writing fall immersion begins soon, Tuesday 6-9 and Sunday 12-3 in a wonderful container of people.
Just like the a song with saxophone (80’s nonetheless) comes on to serenade my sentiments as I unearth my sediments and find the rhythm of my soul.
“Hold me now, touch me now, I don’t want to live without you. Nothings gonna change my love for you….. “ Glen Medeiros
Love is everything and also it isn’t. There’s knowledge and self development and adventure, but what will any of that mean if there isn’t love. If something is out of alignment.
Crossed wires are the burden of the survivor. Having to decode and re-program the mind so it can fit. Square pegs and round holes. That phrase has come up so often lately along with Leaps of faith.
Soon that will all make more sense than it does now, right now they are only fragments.
For now I will bask in the glow of my own growth and cultivate my gratitude and presence.
As I slowly move from every manner of destructive mind hazes, change phases, hear my words not just the phrases. Roll them over and over in your mind. Tumble them like stones until they shine.
These are some of the thoughts pulled from a once turbulent, now peaceful mind.
Happy Saturday and travels folks ….
Ps I need / want to do my artists date and walk but what about the darn bugs ?! Sigh. Nothings gonna stop me :p
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.”
Just landed in sunny Florida….. “I’m in a hurry to get things done I try and try … all I really have to do is live and die, I’m in a hurry and don’t know why…..”
As I sit here on a plane, halfway through Ross Rosenberg’s new book The CoDependency Revolution. I was just slammed with a memory of that single counseling session in a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia.
I recall bristling and reeling at the therapists suggestion I maybe consider looking into some resources on co-dependency. That tumbled and rolled me down a whole hill. I wanted to resist, deny, unhear, but I could not. It’s not in my nature.
It’s a testament to the profession that the counselor was as straightforward and honest in a very early on couples session. Would I have been so brave, so bold? So not co-dependent.
Now on this airplane a few tears shed at watching father’s with their baby girls, being part of a team with the mother, being affectionate and cutesy with their daughters. In other words I’m having a moment.
As far as the rest I’m on a plane with no anxiety, did not take a Xanax, and am on my 4th week of intermittent fasting. The eating is greatly helping me iron out more securely my boundaries with food, which is a beginning step towards my fit by 50 goal. As you can see I’ve given myself plenty of time.
I have learned to do this over the past several years. To hold my sensitivity and nervous system needs sacred and holy, and fully allow myself to seek and share my needs.
Getting better each day one step at a time.
Speaking of that I rarely take Xanax anymore. It gives me a slight headache and unclear feeling that I detest. Which makes it very clear to me that it works for a panic attack when it needs to, but in the absence of that acute level of anxiety, no thanks !
I’m 333 days sober today. I’m not sure what’s in store for me with balance around this. I may remain a non-drinker for health reasons, and for solidarity for all of those harmed by its presence. I may not. I may choose to have a drink on an occasion and indulge in wine pairing with a fine meal.
I don’t know yet…..
I finished Stray (also an old running title for my memoir, now it’s Starved) by Stephanie Danler, in two days. It’s raw and gritty and everything I hope to be as a writer. Albeit with my own voice, which is becoming clearer each day.
Ever since 2020 this has been a tough time a year for me. Reminders of events I am not a part of, and many other things. However there’s a reason the rear view mirror is smaller than the windshield and I will not live the rest of my life in a form of sabotage. In one tomb or another from all the lives that weren’t.
I am most interested most of the time in the life that is. Though my old selves, and those they loved, and wanted to be loved by are now wholly part of the package.
On an errand to help out twin B. My solid as a rock not so tiny any more bundle of love, joy, possibility, and so many things. Following a car accident she has been having post concussion issues which include difficulty driving. So we have moved her home to convalesce and are now collecting her vehicle and her things from Florida.
Upon examining my flying anxiety I realize it to be a product of the combination between my writer’s imagination and my cptsi (complex post traumatic stress injury) symptoms, mainly intrusive thoughts. A helpful dose of CBT, steady frequent reminders that a thought is not reality without at the very least a choice, and voila a much better experience.
I choose to believe when it’s my time it will be my time and nothing I could have done differently would have changed that. This of course assumes a relatively healthy and balanced lifestyle. I allow this to comfort me now. When previously I believe that I subconsciously felt relief by being in a nearly constant state of terror of some kind or the other, because then nothing could catch me off guard.
I feel my memoir / whatever book I will write taking shape. It comes to me in the early hours of waking, in the shower, on the road. I hear powerful lines from it, and when I’m lucky enough I capture them, like butterflies in my childhood net.
Nature at least provided some solace that people did not. See there’s one now 😉
So between the reading I’m doing and seeing these men be fathers on this plane a post emerged. I hope the rest of my trip is so fruitful with the writing….
I’ve been sitting with a lot of new awareness recently. About things missing inside of me. My true hearts desire has long been to break the curses inside of me that hold me back from expression.
I’m not rough around the edges. I am a locked vault, with a well trained expert veneer. I am good at my job. I’m great at my job, but even that will hit its limits, because knowledge without enough heart falls flat.
The right combination of both is magic!
Just as I’ve made a tiny bit of progress I catapult ahead and then crash wildly on my own walls. I have to then slow down again. Look again. It’s exhausting and frustrating. I am reminded of somebody that I used to know.
Full circle. Everything does always come. Again and again. Round and round she goes, and where she’ll stop nobody knows.
Scarcity runs through my veins and colors every interaction I have. Not just in one area, in so many. And I am tasked to alchemize these emotions into something palatable?
I’m angry
Sad
Lonely
Lost
Most of the time.
Even surrounded by love and happiness. It can only penetrate if I let it.
There is no external fix or factor that can change this. No new car, fancy dinner, or trip. You’ll always return to your inner most thoughts.
This is an inside job. And I feel at times already past retirement in life years trod by my efforts.
But that’s all just a crappy story.
I can do better. Not perfect. Not everything. But better.
Heart opening is the name of the game.
Did you know when you do that you love everything and everyone, and cry at every damn thing. And it feels so unsafe with no extra skin to protect. Feel raw and naked all the time, in an exchange for keeping everyone else safe from the irritability and rage that built all the years the needs went unmet.
That’s a lot of debt. Will it ever be paid? Is it really so simple as “letting go”.
All or nothing. A totally wide open heart or a castle with impenetrable walls.
Doesn’t there need to be a middle? Or is that just another not enough….
I am safety driven, and the things that register safe for me are often not. A hall of mirrors a haunted fun house. Never knowing the thing I’m supposed to say, instead saying something scathingly critical. Yep it’s true.
Hyper vigilant to a fault. Trapped inside myself.
A one trick pony with a broken saddle. Caution cuidado.
Am I going round and round or am I moving forward. Always the question.
I’m on Dune book four and don’t want to lose momentum with supercommunicators, how to know somebody, and the many other books I’m reading.
I think I’ll take a break soon and read so many I’ve wanted to for pleasure. Julie and Julia, Under the Tuscan Sun, PS I love you, A Winter’s Tale, memoirs. All of these classic faves I’ve always wanted to, but have been too busy working.
I suppose the secret is loving someone exactly as they are until the love transforms the original into a masterpiece.
Love transforms
Fear freezes
Can stillness
Be filled with warm
Breezes
And will this block
Of ice I have become
Ever thaw
Never enough food, money, affection, the list goes on.
Somebody bring me some water, can’t you see I’m burning alive……
When safety is the primary concern, growth can hardly exist. And yet it springs at the gate begging to be set free.
It was me I didn’t trust.
I’ve been yearning to write a blog post. But my thoughts have been so many that it’s hard to capture what I want to say, and what my audience is. That is always the question isn’t it? And an answer: if I write what’s in my soul, what does that matter. If there are readers or no readers. It’s the traumatized child inside who concerns herself with this, in her perpetual state of loneliness and fear. I embrace her often now.
So here I sit in a rare occasion of writing in my office chair rather than quickly capturing shower or walking thoughts.
So I’d imagine this will read as an update and not a wave of inspiration. But in chicken or egg fashion perhaps one will open out of the other.
Here I sit on a throne surrounded by the method by which I tame the sheer madness that is my brain, which is books. They are all around me. My friends. In this way, it’s a strange return to childhood. For all its trials, books were introduced and subsisted upon.
My grandmother made audiobooks before they were a thing. On an old school tape recorder with a silver and black microphone.
This morning I began Jung’s Red Book. Red leather bound. I’m so jealous of his relationship with his dreams, when I can barely remember mine. I set this useless emotion aside and continue to work to recovering and repairing mine. If that’s possible.
Down a rabbit hole of taking supplements like 5htp, l tryptophan, sulphorophane (broccoli sprouts I’m growing) ps they smell bad guess they are getting thrown in a smoothie. Quercitin and fiesetin. Brain food, plant food. Based on the shamanic work of Alberto Villodo Grow a New Body. And listening to living and dying the shaman way on audiobook.
Traditional psychotherapist meets shaman, Akashic records Amazing ! , and whatever else will be next. Check out Wendy Casey in the link.
How the hell did I even get here ? If you had asked me a year ago if I’d be doing a fire ceremony and blessing the four directions etc, I’d have looked at you like you were nuts. Or I’m nuts. Definitely. And I don’t even care.
Life is strange and surrender is beautiful. And this is where I’m at.
I’m also reading the I Ching, the gene keys what?! The Dune series. And I still want to read the whole Wrinkle in time series. Somehow this is a summer craving. Some memories are just programmed in. Ahhhh so many things to read so little time.
My practice continues to flourish and it feels almost magical. I am nearly working entirely with my ideal population, and it doesn’t even feel like work. My screening process is worlds away from what it used to be. I stand back in awe at all I learned from working with anything and anyone. But also at my ignorance and naïveté in so many areas, which some times facilitated beautiful happenings, and sometimes regrettable moments.
I don’t agonize over documentation or any cancellation, or administrative. Nothing is any longer this awful monster breathing down my neck. And I think how was I living like that?
How was I living like that. Not well that’s what I can say.
I now have a fully embodied understanding of the mind being unwell. The way it races to terrible conclusions and feels as if it’s constantly outrunning some terrible thing. I could cry for how I lived for so long. The way the mind and the body are not integrated, and one fears the other. No sense of peace, just constant persistent terror.
At times I’m able to get really still with everything. All the love that never fully became, the lives I could have lived, and the ones I did. I sift through and contemplate no longer with a great sickness of the mind. Terrible thoughts about myself. Those core wounds are brutal.
Let there be no mistake I am always healing and learning. I have not arrived anywhere, except perhaps face to face with my humility. In this space there’s so much love. It flows freely, it does not need control. Control cannot exist it extinguishes love immediately. Like the absence of air and fire.
If I saw anyone I’ve ever loved on the street I wouldn’t turn away, heart racing, sweaty. I would simply emit love, and own my mistakes. My ignorance, my impulsivity, my wounds.
I atone with myself and would offer healing communications with all who seek them.
And I don’t know what’s next. Tabula rasa. Bookends of it. I begin and end that way.
How may I be of service and lead me there. I’ve had it all. Love and loss. 10,000 lives within a life.
My work is to heal my brain and body so that I may help others with my journey. I no longer agonize over my memoir, what I will write, and what I won’t.
I know there’s important work for me to do. I don’t need to know what it is or how I will accomplish it.
I simply surrender.
Now to process and alchemize these emotions and thoughts and experiences. To continue to go through them and learn from them.
On a more earthly note, both my twins have been in major car accidents. Something I have not had a first hand experience with. One of them still has back and neck issues and daily headaches. Not entirely sure if the accident is responsible. So we are going to my energy healer Julie today. I’m excited that my children are open to this and also learning to benefit from this and massage and other healing modalities.
We will be moving twin A into UConn in August as a junior, and twin B will be nannying for a time for her baby cousin in Long Island, as she completes her core requirements for school. The little prince is beginning a relationship journey with his partner. Learning about the responsibilities of life, and himself respectively.
There is love at the table of my life.
Surrounded by friends and family, and so much less pain from the absence of loving parents and blood relatives.
I sometimes take walks through my graveyard. The relationships that did not show up and stay, and marvel at the beauty and tragedy in love. And also the resilience of it. How it never really leaves, energy can neither be created or destroyed. It just is.
But more often I am looking through the windshield, that’s why it’s bigger I am told. And learning about the true actions of love. How it behaves, what it commands and demands respectively.
The art of story telling and myth and legend in teaching great lessons. Things I would discount as frivolous or unreal become rich playgrounds to explore for healing metaphors and methods.
Women Who Run with Wolves….
Recovery
Recovering my dreams and authentic childhood self from the ashes of traumatic experience.
I hope that I have something to share that will help others heal….
Book. Thought. Book thought. Toggle. Rinse. Repeat. Show up consistently. During each workshop more of my childhood emerges more clearly. The understanding and integration becomes mine to harvest.
I am finding my way after a year of writing immersion to how to write on my own. How to build it into my schedule and not do stops and starts, but a consistent relationship.
