Tag: #traumasurvivor

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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 💜✒️💪🏼

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The Movies, Music, Morning Walks and Making Amends

Always, C

I’ve been thinking the most about amends lately….

This mornings walk started with Dear Depression by NF and second song is Unsteady by X Ambassadors. If you love me don’t let go. Hold on….

Which makes me think of Me Before You, which makes me think of Love Rosie, which I watched last night. Which makes me think of which movies I enjoy so much and why.

Probably if I were to guess they were friends when I had none, and they at times inspire hope. I like movies that make me feel the way I want to around the people I have close. I could disappear into the feeling of that story. T

hat’s likely the most important thing here. I could have a family, a best friend, a lover, for that 90 minutes I didn’t feel the kind of alone that was unforgiving and unforgivable during childhood. I will have no amends there. Not a death bed whisper. Only an endless chill.

Deep emotion. Human stories. Inspiration.

I like these things.

How I like the piano and string instruments and vocalists that have been through the ringer emotionally. Mary Lambert, Teddy Swims, Pink, Taylor Swift, k Clarkson, so many more…

Like I like my authors…. Brene, Liz, Martha, S King. So many more.

Our vibe attracts our tribe they say. I have to believe it’s true when I pay attention to what I like.

I don’t like horror. I don’t need to experience anymore terror. All set thanks. I feel the things the character is experiencing in my body and heart and will think about still shots of the movies days and even years after.

I have an interesting encoding system in my brain. It’s kind of magical really. Genuinely.

NF Perception, Remember This. This guy has had some trauma too huh! So find people that challenge what you think….. gorgeous.

So back to my brain and amends.

What I’m realizing lately is that most of my life I’ve misunderstood myself so painfully.

Each time I shut down and moved overly quickly that was a reflex, that had nothing to do with my true self. She was so far buried in those moments.

This last time I tried to say that, but I was already in the action of my choice. It’s impossible to regret it because of where I am now. If you asked me last year though.

Not very dependable someone who changes that easily right?! The story, the T, the gossip. Hate it. Because it never understands. It’s fast and realization is slow.

The kind we need to breathe life back into a world gone cold and hard.

Empathy

I had it for others, but none for myself.

Anytime she did something that wasn’t in compliance I’d leave her out in the cold. Punishment. No understanding.

Here comes the amends. This is how I was with my kids. And a lot of it was because I was fighting to feel supported by their father, someone still lost in bitter hurt. This is my version of course and that’s all I can write.

If I told the bad story it would look something like this, of course he would want to be away because of the flip outs I did, just like my mother.

Just like my father wanted to be away from my mother. I understood why. BUT there’s so much I didn’t understand. Everything that came before me. What he did to her. A little girl with a grown man.

No perpetrator and no victim. We all have a part in our choices and I’m more interested in who I will become because of them, than to cast judgment.

Judgment is boring and nearsighted and hollow.

Nothing comes full circle there. You just chase your tail and go on a haunted carnival ride of your own emotions.

My ego fought an invisible battle with him to feel supported, because I felt I had none.

And the punishment fell to my kids. They didn’t have my warm wise presence at some of the times they needed it the most.

And now I sit in the pain of knowing this and let it soften the borders of my heart so I can course correct.

Twin b tried to scream at me your punishments don’t work and I doubled down. I wasn’t fighting her. She just wanted to be heard, and I shut down.

My shut down switch is so frustrating in my life. How do I forgive it, because it saved me before, and left me for dead later. The thing meant to protect me also kept me shut off from the love.

They were out in the cold with me. That’s a bitter pill to swallow. I want to explain to cry for understanding. But that forgoes the accountability I need to make amends.

They need to feel I can respond to their emotions.

How can you ask that of me my trauma cries. Don’t you understand how terrifying someone else’s emotions became for me. If you knew.

But they don’t and they didn’t ask …. They were at our mercy as parents. Now that I can connect with.

I only hope they will someday come to their own conclusion that I did my best in all the ways I could.

I didn’t do it all wrong, but I have the strength now to know that one of the most important ingredients was missing. That soft love. I hope that their fathers family supplied it enough. Holidays and unconditional love. Things I didn’t have.

I hope they don’t suffer in the ways I have. Those words are true. It would only be judged as dramatic or anything else for someone who doesn’t know, connect with these losses of self they never consented to.

No one told me about trauma.

When the first person (therapist) suggested it’s shocking I’m alive, it was like a scene in a movie. He couldn’t be talking about me. I wasn’t even in my body.

I had kids with a grand idea of creating a family I didn’t have and I was going to do it perfect of course in my idea.

Then life takes hold and tells you ha you thought that was going to work. Silly goose.

Being gay and not realizing became another school yard bully, and I almost lost that battle.

I would have done anything to protect my kids from divorce and him. I wanted to. I agonized.

I just kept hitting wall after wall with it. It was not possible and even the voice now says I could have done it and waited if it meant…. NO.

I’d do anything for love but I won’t do that. Not be myself how I was made. Not an option.

Divorce. The first area that requires amends. Creating a life for everyone (all my responsibility of course), when I wasn’t aware of myself.

My enthusiasm for living often preceded my better senses.

Can you ever forgive me?!

My mind is mostly fragments and so scattered and living steadily requires the gathering of all these things each morning just to function.

Please forgive me….

*I’m still trying to figure out this writing thing. This excavation. The where, when, how of it all. So bear with me as I find these fossils and thoughts. My psyche is so often a steel trap. It goes into lockdown with a hairline trigger. When I listen to music the rhythm style and emotion of my writing is immediately influenced. So if you’re here on my journey. Thank you for helping me be less alone in the world. It’s special to me beyond words…..

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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

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Cotton Candy Sunrises Paint this Wounded Warrior’s Mind

That ice crust on the outside though, the moment your teeth break through. The feeling when you have the whole thing still, and the one when there’s only a bite left. Moments.

“I want to live and not just survive…. That’s why I can’t love you in the dark….Adele this morning.“

It’s finally a cold morning. I woke up needing to walk…. So here I am. The tree that was dazzling fire the other day, is already coal and ash. It changes as quickly as my consciousness does.

I was recently conceptualized as a porcupine. The irony. Rough around the edges huh. Shocking. The guards don’t relent, and they don’t dispatch either. Maybe if I’m still, meditation, contemplation, they will get bored and stray.

Doubtful. They are loyal to a fault.

Porcupines aren’t bad. They have soft underbelly’s. But reaching that space, that’s another matter entirely.

The cold air prickles my skin this morning, quills or not. The sun’s rising is creating a cotton candy pastel glow. It’s a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper out here this morning. I am truly old 😉

As she approaches (the Sun) it’s an Orange Creamsicle now. A childhood memory fragment. On field days and other occasions my odd Seventh Day Adventist k-12 school always offered either that or a fudgesicle. How would you spell that anyway.?!

Anyway I was never a fudge girl or chocolate. But every once in awhile I’d change it up, because I knew the power of variety and learning. I wanted to try. To this day give me a plain French vanilla ice cream from a classic parlor any day. Bliss. It’s hard to come by actually.

It’s rare I remember that playground, the one I had so many nightmares about. Waking and dreaming one’s. Just a gaggle of little ones playing silly pretend games.

In recent years some of those little girls have come forward and shared their secrets and their truths with me. They felt I was safe and a protector. That’s because we knew each other. Could smell the fear on her.

I remember how much I knew and wanted to protect as a kindergartner. And now I know that shouldn’t have been. Now I can be angry and reclaim.

Now I can see the friends with children with two loving parents living their lives around their children and know where each quill originated.

I might as well be from another planet observing. What would that be like?! I consistent world of that. So much less running, and yelling. Having my truth choked out of me. With silent manipulation. With cold hard death stares. With every adult temper tantrum.

The gun in her mouth, the passed out all the time, powder and mirrors. I was a little girl.

I wasn’t.

I was an informant, a spy, a comforter, a therapist, a massage therapist, a toy, a buddy, a friend.

I was terrified and frozen and forced out of my heart and up into my head before I ever knew a thing about me. To try and preserve anything that could be, without even knowing I was doing that.

Viktor Frankl mindset before I knew what or who he and that was.

I had a good attitude about life and I loved people, as fucked up as they were. I loved living.

I have always loved waking up, even when the content of the day sometimes made me wish to sleep forever.

The gift I have is every day is a blank canvas and always has the possibility of being a masterpiece.

For so long I was chasing the ability to consistently create one, in whichever area of my life.

Now I’m walking with the world and listening and looking. No more chasing, and no more running either.

My work deepens, my clients heal before my eyes. And now I do too. So I can keep going with it. We cannot ask people to travel further than we have. Rollo May.

Did you know you can see a person heal.?! It’s observable. Their nervous system calms. Their eyes meet yours. They hunch down less, with each empowering choice they are able to make because they understand and feel supported.

Seeing themselves through new eyes and new understanding.

It IS Magic. And I am privileged.

So what if the solid ground of my identity was forged the way it was, it has created a beautiful life and career. One that just keeps getting better.

I get to watch people come home to their true selves, as I do the same.

Creating positive ripples in a hundred families. Changes that ease the suffering and create possibilities. The starfish and made a difference to that one.

We find our way together. The walking wounded and the gifts that produces. One of the greatest misunderstandings about pain.

When I opened this this morning while walking I had no idea what it would become, but here we are.

Letting go and letting things take on a life of their own. Being in a space with myself that I can allow that.

Magic

Ps mom moment: twin b is having wisdom tooth surgery in Washington where she’s staying with her aunt, to adventure. I won’t be taking care of her for the first time in our lives for a medical procedure and that hurts my heart. I feel it. That’s the beautiful part. She’s well cared for, so that’s good. And she will be home for Christmas. But this is a first that I couldn’t have anticipated the sharpness of. “I just want to protect you the way the skin protects your blood.”

Never wish not to feel something. Trust me on this one. It’s torture.

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It’s Time to Lay Down the Sword….

In clearing your name you have ruined our lives.

A lesson of late, there are many, is that brute force and iron will are not the best way.

I won’t say they don’t work, they have served me well in certain ways, and we will honor the necessity that forged them in me.

I’m wanting something softer and wiser these days. The written word. Reading the words. Humility. Learning.

The pen really is mightier than the sword. I’d take everything I felt I could get and figure out the rest later. A main strategy.

Gather. Hunt. Grind. Grit. Sweat. Choke back the tears. She turns her head away in that office, so you won’t see her cry. Willing the tears not to come. They never helped her before.

Yes I remember. I remember every single moment, and I don’t will myself to forget. I don’t work that way anymore.

Would you even recognize me? Or does the completion of a soul contract change everything? I don’t know.

“Be careful with that one love, he will do whatever he needs to do to survive. You built me palaces out of paragraphs.”

Scraps for my memoir written in the bath this am as I read Stephen King On Writing, which I’ll finally finish after five years of trying. It’s time she whispers. It’s time she roars.

“I used to just carry a book around, with very little hope that I’d ever fully read it. Let alone write one of my own.

I lived on crumbs you see.

And I gave everything I had to everyone else every day, in the hopes of someday giving and receiving love the way it always seems other people do.

I gave to anyone else with very little discernment.

My trauma reduced me to focusing only on what was in front of my face if at all.

I could barely keep a train of thought, hell a car of thought.

I barely had any ability to focus at all.

Scraps.

Starved

Becoming”

Let it burn. Anything that isn’t yours naturally. Anything that betrays your personal values in the process. Things will be offered. They will cross your path.

Twin B has wisdom tooth surgery in a few days, far away, never someone else’s baby, but won’t be her caretaker right now. Letting go of our babies is hard. I think of her getting to learn more than I could teach at that time, and experiencing herself in a positive light, something I wasn’t offering at that time. These things bring me joy and peace. The former not the latter of course.

I can’t go down rabbit holes anymore. It doesn’t work. I just good my head up and keep going. Get up and try again.

So anyway back to my story. Did I say I had one? I already can’t remember. That thought is ten years ago within two seconds. Time is irrelevant when we are doing soul work. A minute can last hours and hours can be over in a second.

My fortieth birthday. I was going through what some call a dark night of the soul. Hell. Purgatory. When we are face to face with our shadow Lisa Romano might say, probably has said many times.

I was in scarcity in so many areas. I ordered my own birthday cake. I did this as an act of self love at that time. I was learning how to not wait and hope for the things I wanted to arrive. So I was thinking I was self loving. But really I had zero faith that anyone would show up. It’s not surprising given my choices at that time.

I made my bed.

But my mistakes could not have been so bad I wouldn’t be thought of on my birthday. I have all those memories. Not all bad. Not even.

Anyway my twin B asked me or more commented that “you bought yourself your own cake.” It hadn’t even occurred to me this was a “bad” thing Or however she meant it. Maybe an unusual thing. Those things usually don’t occur to me I’ve lived a backwards sort of life. Hey Heyoka.

What do I make of this now? With the lessons I’m laying down. Was I really self loving or did I not trust anyone would show up for me?

Spoiler alert: It’s usually both, not either or.

Maybe I was trying to model for myself, because I’ve often felt that alone, whether I was or wasn’t.

The clear lesson now however is trust, and a firm balance of it to self and others.

Let go Christina ….. let go.

Taylor Swift Sober comes on….. the tears fall. When I was drowning, that’s when I could finally breathe.

Getting clean from all the painful ideas I’ve held about myself. The what ifs that should have happened because of what happened to me. But I discounted my effort. It’s invisible and therefore so will be that of others.

I poked my own eyes out and cut off my own legs in search for a savior. When all I needed in the first place were my senses and my emotions.

Luckily (divinely) we are permitted multiple do overs and re-takes. The universe is a generous teacher. And don’t we all deserve one of those.

I hope to continue to be one…..

As long as I live.

And a safe place to land.

These tall orders require radical boundaries if this is to be maintained.

It’s a good thing I am energized by both.

All my love,

C

Ps I started a new journal today. It was time. The last was to not waste my piano book and had some ju ju. This is a fresh page. We get one each day. Hell a fresh book. New eyes. New legs to walk around with.

A relevant example from mr Kings book. They bought their son a saxophone because he showed interest. Very soon the King couple discussed if their young charge should continue. They said no. Why!$ because Stephen said he only practiced during the set times. It never took flight or set fire…..

If it does you’ll know. You’ll want to do that thing and move heaven and earth.

May I vow to myself I’ll accept nothing else for the rest of my life.

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Open Hearts and Doors of a Traumatized Mind

“When my depression works the graveyard shift all of the people I’ve ghosted stand there in the room. I should not be left to my own devices they come with vices and prices……”

The mental gymnastics I have to do to keep my heart open would shock you. It takes many forces and lots of therapy and energy healing hours to pry the iron door on that sucker open. I need to be with that, that needs to be ok.

Several weeks of events have culminated into another glacier melting that is after the world is thrown into chaos.

Once it breaks it breaks though. Pain is released and it’s also scary because you know you’ll go forward without that level of being guarded and for a survivor that’s a big ask.

It’s me I’m the problem it’s me….

Except it’s not.

It’s everything passed down to me, inherited, that I had to grapple with.

What I’m beginning to see is what a privilege it is. I mean that now. I’m not preaching it, disconnected from it. It’s a privilege. Because what I’m afforded is post traumatic growth and wisdom to the degree that I’ve been able to build a successful vocation from it.

I am privileged because of my trauma. And I have to hold tight to that reality for all of the times that feels very different. When I’m being sucked under the intense waves of emotions of my grief and pain.

This is the life raft.

I love differently because of my trauma. It’s more, not less. That would be a lie of the mind’s programming.

We don’t love like the humans do, with us it’s forever. From the movie I am number four. And this resonated out of this silly movie because in that moment I recognized something in me, which is what movies and music does right ?! I recognized how loving I am and how deeply I love…

When I am safe, more importantly, when I feel safe.

And what did I say at the beginning of this post about what it takes for me to feel safe ?! Yeah.

I’ve been working on opening my heart, despite all of the events in my life, some out of my control, and some in it, that have left deep chasms of suffering that make me want to close it.

I will cut my self off from any source that is unhealed to the point that, I cannot be safe in their presence, because they cannot.

It’s no one’s fault.

And the worst thing that could be done is to blame because the kind of suffering that leads to a person closing themselves off from love, is soul murder. And unfortunately soul murder likes to persist. The cycle is stubborn.

Guess what!!? I am more stubborn. My stubborn may have been born out of necessity, but I’ll be damned if I don’t honor it for the valiant warrior it is.

My stubborn was hard earned. I don’t think it would have been my natural disposition. I believe it was forged from suffering. It was forced.

Being forced leads to resentment, forcing ourselves leads to resentment. Will is a part of it, but heart has to have a seat at that table and cannot be closed, if you want to understand so you can be understood, and vice versa.

Trauma survivors so often feel misunderstood. That’s my primary trigger. Not being understood.

I work my way through this daily. It’s a daily job, one that I’m determined to view as a privilege and not a burden.

If we get the privilege to feel life altering connections that lead us further into ourselves, know that many don’t. They literally fumble and stumble and many don’t make it out alive.

Their disconnection turns against themselves. Purgatory of their own making, but not their fault. It breaks my heart.

Which is good because as long as it can continue to break without losing it, it can heal.

I am here trying to heal my heart, and my soul. And enjoying being with others who are as committed to that as I am, and yet each in their own way, at their own pace.I

I am here and I am letting go of controlling myself, and gaining control of myself.

I am fierce about protecting my peace, and also open to learning where battles at times become created by my traumatized mind.

I want to be mindful of the power of my choices, and to speak gently with my higher self in making them.

No more abusive relationship with me. That was the ultimate enemy. My trauma and my own mind, but it was never a reason to not trust myself. It happened to me, not because of me.

And I am empowered these days in healing it, and that is also a privilege.

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Old Pieces of Me Stitched Together

Taylor Swift’s new album on repeat of course.

This morning as I’m in my bath, finishing Melody Beatty beyond co-dependency, and waiting for a cord of wood to be delivered, for sensational winter fires of course, I have inadvertently wafted into a past self.

I am choosing to share her. I sound so different. So Oregon lol. This is a letter to my surrogate mother, about my avoidance of talking to her when I was afraid, so very afraid.

My heart squeezes for the girl writing this. She and I are after all old friends.

I’m thinking about so much lately. So much is on my mind. About who I am and what I want and need and how I want to be living my one precious life.

It has been way too long. I apologize for the lack of communication. I haven’t really talked to anyone and there is a reason. I don’t like to lie or be fake and I was very embarrassed that I was getting a divorce. I guess when I get anywhere near looking dysfunctional I feel like I am going to be viewed like my mother. That little issue has never left my side so it makes what is happening in my life now even more difficult to deal with. I was never happily married to “him”, and I can look back and see that I was just afraid with the type of men mom dated that they were not many good ones out there. I kept getting bored of all the guys I dated and figured it was because there was something “wrong” with me. So after I had broken up with “him” I was afraid to lose such a “good guy” (and he is a great guy) that I just had this very narrow scope of the possibilities in life. Anyway so I just got right back together with him and jumped headfirst into a life. I jumped headfirst into a life having no idea who I was or what I wanted and it never even occurring to me to look because I was so preoccupied with proving that I wasn’t like my mother and I guess had one track vision when it came to that. I was so determined with that goal that I failed to formulate my own thinking on things, explore the world and my feelings in it, and develop many other areas of myself as a person. So what began to happen scared “the living daylights out of me” (as my grandma would say). I have felt so far away from the few people I have always felt close to (like yourself and my aunt and grandpa) because I have been afraid who I actually am you would not accept or feel that I am dysfunctional like mom. I am gay. I have always been gay just had no idea. With how I was raised and not even knowing anyone gay really the thought never would have occurred to me. Nothing ever clicked with men for me and I thought it was just because I was afraid of them in general because of the ones I was subjected to with mom. I made all sorts of excuses in my head. I can look back even to my friendship with, a childhood friend, and see that her and I always had a stronger connection and I was always much more interested in our interactions than I was with any boyfriend. I can easily look back and see so many things, but saw none of them then. I have been really afraid to tell you because of how you talked about “another gay person” and just other comments. I don’t think I will ever tell grandpa. I think that he would not ever understand and probably worry I will end up in hell or something. I don’t feel like I hardly have any family (besides you) in this world and didn’t want to lose the people I view as my family.

I woke up one day so depressed I had no idea and then upset with myself for having such a wonderful family and feeling so trapped and unhappy inside. I have gone through quite the process to “come out” and deal with guilt and shame and all of that, years really. I am a whole new person since actually thinking for myself and breaking out of living just to not be like mom and being afraid of myself. I am always; always afraid I am going to be like her. It really has consumed most of my self my whole life and now I am finally living differently. I came out to his family which was one of the hardest things because they are right here and I had to face the disappointment and hurt of people who care very much about me and vice versa. They actually have come around quite well though. The kids don’t know yet. I feel they are too young to be burdening them with adult complications and I have been so busy with school and everything to even think about seriously dating someone (like bringing anyone around them). I think they had enough to deal with learning to understand their father, and I moving apart and us moving in general it was a big change for them. I moved out in October. I live with a roommate and actually have quite the sweet situation (for now). I pay 650.00 a month for EVERYTHING (which is unheard of in CT). This woman works most of the time and we barely cross paths. The only downside is that the girls and I share a bedroom and that is obviously tough, but other than that it is keeping me able to go to school. Also the school is not as nice at all as the one The Little Prince, is going to now in Milford so I am trying to find a way to afford a place there before school starts up again this next year. That is my goal anyway. I have applied for some income based housing and things but the waiting lists are outrageous. I go to school full time. I almost have my liberal arts from gateway and will transfer to Southern Ct University as a junior. 2 years til a bachelor’s. I was going to do ultrasound and was all set and everything. I have done all the anatomy’s labs and all. In the end though, that program was chosen under the conditions when he and I were cohabitating and kind of rotating in and out of the house. Now that we are out on our own much more responsibility obviously falls my way and there is no way I could do that intense of a program and keep up with working enough to support myself and have plenty to give at the end of the day to the kids. So I am transferring to Southern and doing psychology and then a master’s degree so I can be a therapist (it is what I really want). Now, however it has just gotten a lot more complicated. He got orders to go to Cleveland Ohio

, and he leaves in July. He has never been away from the kids and I am so worried. I grew up without a dad and it is VERY important to me to keep them together, but at the same time I can’t just pick up everything I have built and move every time he does either. If I left it would take the independence I have built here away, and the work I have done at school (this program is special it won’t transfer the same way anywhere else). Not to mention I have quite the support net here, many friends, and people that are here for me. Now all of these aside I would still do what I had to do to keep the kids near him, but at the same time it is just not even practical considering we are not even together. He kept saying he was going to get out of the Coast Guard which is only in about a year, so I figured for the year we could manage. But now he sounds like he is going to stay in which changes the way the whole kid’s lives are, and mine obviously. What a mess huh?

So that is what is going on in my life. That is a whole lot right there so I will leave it at that for now. On a side note since figuring this out I kind of wonder if one of my aunts might be gay. I say this because she always seemed to have such problems and even dislike for sex with men (at least things she shared with me as a young child) and then she always seemed so unhappy. I just wonder if she was and with grandma and grandpa and how she was raised never knew, or was always too afraid. I meet SO many people that are too afraid to come out. I am kind of an inspiration in my crowd. And also I don’t know how many gay people you have been around (you did after all live in California

, haha) but I am actually more feminine than I was when I was younger.  I am not overweight, do not have short spiked hair, and under no circumstances wear flannel 😉  I thought you might get a kick out of that I don’t know.  I had all of these stereotypes because I didn’t know. If you asked me about a lesbian when I was younger I would have told you gross.  

Anyway I am actually going to try to e-mail you this.  Let me know you received it okay and I have a birthday card with pictures I am putting in the mail right now!!  

I love you guys and obviously we have much more to catch up on but I guess before we got any further in communicating this is something I had to do.  I have tons to tell you about the kids.  They are adorable! I want to try to make it out to Oregon

with them for Christmas.  We will have to see how things are going though! 

Christina 

I cringe a little of course at my ignorance of what a gay woman is. I love my flannel and my short hair. I just didn’t know anyone would love me like that, let alone myself. I had an idea what was attractive and I’m pretty sure it was Julia Roberts in any movie and Sandra Bullock. And I was a far cry from them.

Oh sweet young scared girl….. I love you so much you darling brave thing.

I also looked through some old emails between his sister and myself. I didn’t realize we were so close. I tried to make myself wrong for not realizing until, I recognized why I had cut off from that connection. Respect of his space and boundaries and maybe it wasn’t the right thing.

But it’s about time I trust myself because I’ve been moving myself forward in necessary ways for a long time, often at the cost of attachments that make my heart sing. Connections that could be and aren’t, and it’s cost me as much, been as much pain for me as anyone else.

I have taken that for granted often. My feelings and emotions as if I have none, and that has been far from true.

Introducing me to me as I walk back through my history to prepare for writing my story. I’ve been writing my story, on the back of receipt tape at Trader Joe’s, in voice memos, in letters to others, in journals.

It’s approaching time to piece it together.

Onward…..

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Coming Home to Myself…..

“Inside my skin there is this space, it twists and turns, it bleeds and aches. Inside my whole heart there’s an empty room, it’s waiting for lightning it’s waiting for you. And I am wanting….and I am needing you here. Inside the absence of fear. My bones call to you from their separate skin, I make myself translucent to let you in…. “ Jewel My favorite set of lyrics from way back and all time, and believe me there are many.

These days I’m most often looking at the nature of my relationship with myself. I am sifting through my history more objectively than I ever have. It’s a good feeling. I know that it means I’ve moved forward in health with my mind.

I’m seeing myself with such compassion and so realistically these days. My light and my dark, and their origins. Blame or spirals or deep dark thinking seem far away. There is a lightness of being.

I am present with and for myself and the simple things become special. Like a haircut and seeing a movie on a Sunday. And moments with my loved ones. There is gentle where savage pain was.

I felt inspired this morning to write some truths I’m thinking about myself.

I spent years living with a myriad of health symptoms that signaled to me I was dying or would at any moment. This made my world very small. I became afraid to do things out in the world. The truth is I was having intrusive thoughts anywhere and everywhere and using all my energy to act as if I wasn’t. To try and stop the thoughts they made me have about myself.

Lately I’ve been noticing my coping so much more clearly. I’m able to know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it and speak my truth. Those words, just words, hold so much power. They rock me to my core. That is a safety I’ve earned and provided and no one can remove it.

I in fact do a schmorgasbord of coping mechanisms daily at the slightest hint of something that could become “unsafe” and it’s tremendously affected by the moods, tones, and behaviors of those around me.

So unsurprisingly parenting teenagers was a special kind of hell for all parties involved for me. I was being triggered constantly and fully reacting from that place. After the trigger comes the shame spiral, and after the shame spiral being a puddle on the ground that must resuscitate herself. After the whole process usually a week of symptoms. Flare, migraine, stomach pain, crippling exhaustion.

I must forgive myself for what I did not yet know…..

All the while showing up for myself and my work. Knowing I must give more than I take there, or I’d lose the one source of positive feedback about myself. Yes as a counselor I was also co dependent and I knew if I didn’t get that under control I wouldn’t be able to have a good relationship with myself or a healthy one at work either.

I reflect on the “one source of positive feedback about myself” and my heart aches with the lonely and scarcity of that statement. Things were out of balance. They were always going to be while I was separated from myself for safety.

I was my very own authoritarian parent abuser.

I could make the marionette dance, but not feel things. There are limits to that power. I sought a more gentle source. How when feeling feels immediately threatening to anything solid, and all you began with was a single plank a thousand feet in the air over a pit of poisonous snakes.

I spent a good forty years pacing anxiously back and forth across that plank until I finally sat still and accepted my circumstances and started being curious about what I could do to make things better. Not only was nothing else working, but I kept repeating cycles that affected more than just myself, so more evidence I was bad.

I was really trapped inside myself.

The only signal of distress was for my body to become sick, because it’s the only model I’ve ever had for getting to a point where I could allow myself to receive. If you know you must be sick to receive you will be sick I can tell you that.

These epiphanies have just clicked for me lately: with the help of many therapies. Julie, Melissa, love from my people, and most of all a connection to myself, rather than being disconnected from her. Always vigilant for her to mess everything up, and become horrible at any second.

So right now I’m grieving a deepest layer. The way I have regarded my tender beautiful self. My mouth gets dry and the tears come.

So lately I’m walking a lot and being with my mind. My poor frazzled scattered brain and how quickly it darts to all the horrible scenarios. I’m just providing lots of comfort and safety like I would have to those foster children, if I didn’t need it more for me at the time, and not even know it.

I needed to love me, not always look to be able to love me by loving someone else. And I have only grace and compassion now for the fact love was so foreign to me. It’s different when you learn it through concept and not experientially. It’s different.

I am still learning. I will always be devoted to learning and to being loving and gentle and steadfast. I crave consistency and I insist on building it. There’s nothing else I will accept at this stage in my life.

Of that I am sure.

In other news I saw Bros yesterday and I was so delighted to see gay men allowed to be seen in a major motion picture. I was also sad at how much we forget how much pain minorities have to endure, and how much is insidious and viewed as if it’s all ok now.

I loved seeing Ptown on the screen and all the gay culture references and it did make my heart swell with pride. Just two people each being who they were in all their stereotypes, boring, too much, all of it, showing their true colors to one another and finding love.

Trying for love to build it. You don’t find it, you must create it. Love is crafted.

Yes, I will always be a sappy idealist when it comes to love. No, I’ll never let it allow harm to come to myself again.

The light and dark of a life well lived. (put it in my tombstone folks, but not too soon ok, I have shit to say first)

Please

I have lived and I’m not even close to done yet. Let’s go as my teens would say. Lol.

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Writing Down the Bones while Exploring this Wild Mind

Pilgrimage

It’s time. To be here now. Deep breath. Ocean Eyes by Scvrina is on.

I just attended Cheryl Strayed writing workshop Wild Awakenings. She was live from The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck. It walked me back through my experience there in 2015, on scholarship. Elizabeth Gilbert was promoting Big Magic and spoke.

I was wanting to be a writer then, permission for something already mine. There are too many takeaways from the course that are amazing to shuffle back through.

I remember sitting there feeling so frozen inside myself. I looked to others to try and figure out what I should be doing. They looked like they had it figured out. I felt alien and cold and emotionally stopped up and exploding all at once. All of this carefully contained by a scratchy wool sweater.

Other people smiled and spoke freely with one another. I was sweaty and terrified.

In this particular workshop unbeknownst to me we got put into breakout rooms on zoom cameras and read our pieces and I did not balk. Not one shred of fear or self consciousness on the camera. Because why. This is me. It’s how I look and what I have to offer, and why is that any less or more for that matter than anyone else.

So I’ll talk about my experience. I just chose a prompt and wrote for 10 minutes each writing exercise and was shocked at the results. I was shocked at how much I have repressed about my own experience because of how I’m supposed to think, be, do.

I realized I don’t lose control on the page, the one place I am supposed to (able to). I still don’t, because what will it mean?! That folks is anxiety programming in action. To make our thoughts mean more than they need to before they are even processed yet.

My writing means nothing but someone else’s interpretation when shared, and everything to me. That’s what it means. It’s my flow. My self on the page. My wild mind. Scattered or with blank spots, flooded, however it is it’s mine and there are reasons are minds are as they are: some more mysterious than others.

So don’t process at all?! Well you know my every heart beat is based on the belief in the process and yet I stopped trusting my own. I stopped trusting everything really. That’s such an unpleasant place to be in. My well of passion dried up via suppression. That realization feels like a rock in my stomach.

I guess that is part of the freeze after deep pain, regret, etc.

Balance is a tight rope walk of acknowledgment of the things we can let go of, the destructive thoughts about anything. I didn’t know I could let go. I’ve been holding on tight for so long.

So it’s October and I’m finally going to begin (already have) and finish On Writing by Stephen King. I had read half breathlessly and was afraid of it being over. That’s an example of how scared I am every single day. I’m scared of attachment. And I created so many self fulfilling prophecies with this wound.

I did it by rushing. I did it by being a coping mechanism. Now I’m trying to be a human, and not just any human, my SELF. It’s a little harder than one might think with all this wiring.

I’ve lived with so much fear. I’ve lived so tamed. I thought being highly emotionally reactive at times meant being untamed, but it’s the opposite. That’s the result of constantly taming oneself. I watched The Luckiest Girl Alive last night and I don’t think I’ve ever resonated with a movie more. Hillbilly Elegy is up there.

Please be careful with that movie. But right down to the intrusive thoughts. I was / am so much like her and I didn’t even know it until I saw this movie. In some ways I’m just cracking through another layer of ice. All along my ego defenses need to shout how far along we are. I’m ready to give up that battle.

I too am trying to look like I have a normal life, be normal and safe and whatever else. And that does not work. I need to find who is really in here. All of it.

This writing class was a good beginning it shook a lot loose. For example I realized it’s not nothing to say as the freeze often suggests. A dirty dirty lie. I have “too much” to say that could be disturbing and Cheryl addressed this perfectly when she told the story of taking an amount of her dead mothers ashes into her body for keeping.

A gorgeous testament to her raw pain and her love for her mother. Her fierce love for her mother made me long that my children will ever feel that way about me. I’m not sure it’s ever in the cards. I know they love me, but it just doesn’t feel like our story.

I realized in my energy healing this past weekend that my head compensates for my feeling parts, and I realized that the wires are crossed on that. I thought that kept me safe. It did Christina, a long time ago. But now it just keeps me from the warmth of the fires of my own passion. Careful control. I don’t even believe in that, but it’s a subconscious default in so many ways.

I just wrote anyway, and then erased it 😉

Cheryl talked about how a reviewer of Wild had become disturbed by the ashes scene and said it’s just too much and threw the book in the trash. She said that person’s feeling and reaction was hers and as valid as the good reviews and that alone taught me so much.

She let go of her attachment to people understanding and allowed her own experience. Let go of control. See the work of David R Hawkins on letting go for some practical tools and lovely wisdom in this area. It’s one of my current sources.

I spent so much of my life letting people who didn’t even have my back get under my skin. Their review of me. Trapped in purgatory of what other people think, while not even knowing what I do.

That is my compelling why in exploring the depths of myself.

To do this I’ve been walking a lot lately. Once I’m off, one foot in front of another it’s meditative. My thoughts settle into sentences and become available to me.

My own thoughts available to me?! I take for granted at times the magnitude of my own healing. I could have easily spent my entire life a very different way, where the above does not exist.

I need to develop a healthy relationship with my self and my thoughts. Rather than viciously sort them into categories of good and bad. Be with them, understand them.

My deepest wound for a very long time is feeling misunderstood. It’s what much of my emdr centers around. When I deeply misunderstand myself, it’s much more likely I’ll do that with others as well and blow my life up. Or at the very least turn the possibility of a lot of gorgeous moments into a minefield of reactivity.

I’m quiet a lot more, and I want to be more quiet. To be with nature. I’ve been craving a morning hike lately. It’s been beach for a long time, maybe it’s time for some woods. Solitude doesn’t have to be some grand voyage, it can be a few hours a day.

For anyone reading this who is interested I recommend Julie my Angel. My energy medicine practitioner. She has changed my entire life, primarily by helping me ease my anger by the belief that we choose our paths for specific reasons. I do believe this. When I was particularly lost inside my pain, this thought was outrageous to me. But as the threads to the tapestry begin to reveal my path. That tingle is irreplaceable, I become a believer.

My mind is a skeptic, of course it is. It’s hyper vigilant to a fault. My special skill set to identify even the potential of threat in any given set of circumstances and have an itchy trigger finger.

The gun is down and these days I’m working on my own self.

I am loving and tending to my home, the physical one here and earth and my meat suit lol.

So look forward in the very near future to seeing some practice writing pieces, perhaps with prompts perhaps not. Poetry. Pieces that I feel and felt when I wrote them. Unedited and raw the way I like to live life. The way I aspire to allowing myself to live.

It’ll always be easier to talk the talk. I am a human who is committed to walking the walk.

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“The Pleasure is for Rent and So is The Pain.”

As captured on the cover of a journal at Barnes and Noble the other day. Love that place.

I’m sitting outside at Nate’s Plate’s, waiting for an egg and cheese sandwich. First time trying it here. Way to ruin your walk Christina. Ok we aren’t doing that. This is about enjoying life. The little things, and the big ones.

It’s a gorgeous pre fall day. I’ve been walking and occasionally jogging 2-3 miles most days. Sometimes only one, sometimes none, but usually some. Currently I’m listening to On My Own by Ross Lynch. It’s the first song of the day. It came on Spotify Taylor Swift radio. There is a fake plant, bright yellow in a wicker pot on the table, my water bottle a consistent comfort, and two bags of peanut butter chocolate energy bites.

From here I can see the playground, tennis courts, baseball field, that are behind the Milford Public Library. I love Milford. I’ve fallen more in love with it through the hard times and good of the last few years. Milford is a constant. And constants make my heart happy, despite my creative’s occasional rebellion against it. I always return if it’s safe to do so, and healthy for me.

I only cut off from sources of poison, and the bad thing was never me. I could cry writing this for all the confusion and suffering it’s caused in my life trying desperately to find “the right answer”, in those choices. Never know there was always a right for me.

I never knew my self. Never knew she was worth knowing. And that might make you sad to read, but don’t be sad for me, because I believe we each have a path that has meaning, even when the view hasn’t all come together. Unsewn threads causing doubts. Painful. It’s ok. Is it, my anxiety says?! Yes it is my higher self says. And I no longer shame myself for how long this conversation must be had.

The past few days I’ve been loving Greenlights on Audible written and narrated by Matthew McConaughey (so hard to spell this name sigh). Insightful, fun, quirky, a journey of sharing of self and thoughts. Of course I do. Bask in it. He just said a line, the pleasure is for rent, and so is the pain.” Meaning everything is temporary so be present essentially and don’t get too caught in being impressed, rather be more involved.

Engaged, present, involved, trying, learning.

Want to have a mad love affair with yourself.? Go someplace, order something, try something on, pick something up and feel it. What do you like, and what don’t you like. Pick up your head, put down your phone.

Think

Try a new food, a new spot to sit, and feel and think about what it feels like. Presence is bliss. Still your mind. Just look, sense, write, dream, feel.

So I had therapy last night. I still go on average two times a week when I can. At one time I felt I’d accomplished something by going down to one, because who wants to need therapy two times a week. I do. I do! I do because it helps the hurts. That’s why.

*I wrote this post Monday I think. It’s Sunday now. Had our first fire in the fire place kind of Sunday. White bean and chicken soup kind of Sunday. Watched a great suspense movie Sunday. Had a nap Sunday. Stayed in sweats Sunday. Set boundaries Sunday. Shared chocolates Sunday. Enjoyed seasonal candles Sunday. Chip grocery and visit Sunday. Took a walk Sunday. Gave a special gift Sunday. Thought about time Sunday. Finished Hillbilly Elegy and Slaughterhouse Five Sunday. Watched Hocus Pocus 2 Sunday. How did so much fit into one day.

Soon maybe it’ll be started my book on a Sunday.

Soon…..