Tag: #traumawork

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Does Anyone Value Relationships Anymore, or Has that all Been Replaced…?

I’m in a mood this morning. First, I wrote a blog post last night and for the love of God it won’t post. Is something in retrograde? I’ve tried everything and when this has happened before I’ve copied and pasted into a new one, but now with this faqing block editor that would take forever. Have I mentioned that technology and I are not friends?

Can’t anything be easy? No guess not.

I don’t know how the unfairness manages to continue without even contact. Oh yes I do. The Hoover is strong with this one. Something that appears to be so invested, going to therapy consistently, writing, reading. All while not having an iota of consideration for me at any bend in the road, and still clearly not acknowledging the half of that. Fuck that. Talk about something real not bullshit generalizations or mental masturbations to ease yourself. Still an island.

I am reading Dusk Night Dawn by Anne Lamott and this woman is so unapologetically herself I want to stand up and clap at so many of the lines. The self awareness and awareness of her marriage and just all of it. Where do I find these people?!

Where do I find the people who also aren’t addicted to the fucking television, and anything and everything else that has nothing to do with knowing themselves and me. Where ? Do any old souls that could sit and talk for hours about anything and everything actually exist anywhere and why don’t I attract that into my life.

I called off a wedding in 2012 ish because of many things on my end as well, but primarily a lack of engagement from my partner. She had a relationship with her dvr, and ours was secondary. Now she appears to have gone on and have many of the things I wanted. She has a beautiful baby girl, and her family is still loving and supportive and they do fun things together. I miss that family, the embraced the kids and I. It was something that will never be replaced in terms of experiencing security and family, but the partnership by itself did not meet my needs and I am not asking for too much.

For the love of God I’m not asking for too much. The ultimate gaslight. To have consistent safe reliable passionate engagement with another human being that prioritizes our relationship and believes in soul and purpose.

I’ve had enough !

Im cranky this morning, and sad. I’m just happy it’s Sunday because I’m tired for now, and I can read. Oh and appreciate gifts my little fairy elf friend left on my porch. Oh and the lights hanging there.

I get discouraged so easily,, but do I? Do I really ? Or is this more gaslighting. I have hung in through things many could not even imagine enduring during my life. I have endured things people never should for long stretches of time. I am disciplined in not meeting my own needs and not having a voice, and these are taking a lot to undo.

Hopefully before this posts I’ll get last nights blog to post! Grrrr ! Yesterday I had a date with my daughter and it was delightful and one of the best times I’ve had in so long. I speak about it in the post that won’t post.

Where are the other passionate people? The ones willing to be scared but do it anyway….

And the one that will see me and stay and work on themselves.

It’s not too much to ask….

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Unapologetically Myself is Always the Answer…

  • Solo at bars equals less lonely these days…… when you just need to be around people….

I’m anxious this evening and I don’t know why. It’s been a long time since I’ve been anxious. Haven’t been taking anything for it or had any migraines. Most bad habits have stopped. Still definitely indulging in some “binge of the bad food” days, but not out of balance.

I’m listening to this RIOPY piano that I found an add for while reading a Gottman article. I’m reading and eating everything in sight and suddenly will listen to Fall on Me.

I had a date with Twin A today and it was delightful. We got lobster rolls and went to Rj Julia, and got a bunch of things that stuck out to us in these cute little shops. She got the cutest sun hat I’ve ever seen in my life, and a matching necklace and earrings that are simple and delicately beautiful. It was so nice to see her enjoy herself. We missed twin B who was working, and my little big guy who is working on his life.

And then there is the books…. Always….

I love the honesty with which Anne Lamott writes. I love her! Purely and truly. Bird by Bird is phenomenal, but today it’s her newest Dusk Night Dawn, and currently she’s describing what it’s like to get married in your late sixties, when you’re in “the third third of your life.

The day was mostly good. Despite not taking any new clients one slipped through the cracks and I had an intake (first session). These days I only get clients who literally appear as if they are sent specifically from the Universe. Literally nothing else. It’s a beautiful place to be in. I’m the abusive relationship slayer these days, a protector of young and adult children who have no language for what they are going through.

They come in for one thing and end up finding another, as often happens in therapy. My wisdom on interpersonal dynamics is unparalleled in a variety of areas, it’s just true, and my intuition gets sharper by the second. Someone commented the other day that I should have Brene Browns money or something along those lines and said when I get big to take them with me/ don’t leave. I’m told this regularly.

How? I just don’t see it. I know it but don’t know it. But regardless my response was I don’t think I want to be big. What if I couldn’t do this? And their response was along the lines of me needing a wider audience because the world needs it.

But I don’t know how to bring it forth without it being activated by 1-1. I don’t know, and anyway again I’m not sure what direction I want to go with my life right now. But I am sure I want to serve and that I have a certain sight.

What if I’m exhausted and just want to play with words all day and write fun and light fiction. I’m almost laughing as these words fall onto the page, at how I’d be laughed at by anyone who knows me well, if I was sharing this info right at this moment.

Anyway twin A wanted to go to her boyfriends, and passed on dinner. She’s crazy. So I sat at Founders house alone. I aimed for a seat w a view of the goings on on the green, outdoors. But all they had was at the bar. And low and behold while I had planned to write on the inside covers of my haul from Rj Julia, especially on twin A’s book, I am seated near a woman who keeps holding back tears. She had a bright teal top on.

She wasn’t very successful because they would slowly come down when she was quiet. Then she would wipe them away and go on talking cheerily. At one point my heart literally squeezed because I have been there so many times! I knew there was no getting out of her force field once I was settled despite my intentions and bounds these days. And sure enough….

So I sit here marinating in new disappointments and old, my heart aching, and then trying to comfort by reminiscing about my day.

I just heard a bang and am perhaps more jumpy than usual as there was just a shooting a street over today 🙁 Chip dropped off fresh bagels this morning and shared there was a civil unrest he could tell, and then reports of more info have slowly arrived throughout the day. We drove past it on the way home while they were filming live so who knows maybe you’ll see us in a news clip.

I have a new skin care routine to try tonight. I’ve never believed in such things. Usually they squeeze money out of you counting on preying upon your insecurities. For the most part I believe the body is an amazing design that takes care of all those things naturally. I don’t begrudge anyone something that makes them feel better, but personally I cannot get behind plumping, injection, cutting, carving etc.

But I tried some products the other day and I woke up with my skin feeling like I had just been born. So I digress. I’m still not sure I believe in it, but anything that makes me feel some comfort these days. Why not?!

The manager of the restaurant (I believe that’s who she is) is married to a woman who was at the bar with a friend of hers. They were chatting me up and commenting on my tattoo. I got w bunch of compliments today. They asked if I was an author because they saw me writing in covers of multiple books, ha. I said I hope someday and they said I looked like one. Loved that. also they told of how they met 15 years ago and they are so cute, so that made me happy for them, but sad for me.

Kids are doing well. I’m seeing more and more what I’ve done right, and not just all the threats and hard stuff.

So many things in my life are complete, but I am desperately lonely. A soul aching lonely. I am lonely for front porch sits consistently with my person, and consistency in general. I want what Joan Didion and her husband had, the type of relationship that makes you write gorgeous things, because you can’t not ….

There are so many moments I’m not missing anything and present and happy and self-loving, and forgiving, and moving in my life, but tonight I have hit a sad anxious period.

At least tomorrow is a sacred Sunday… my children will be around me… and I can wake up feeling the after affects of my soft skin, and smelling comforting smells, and appreciating every little thing.

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The Unknown

The unknown is not outside…. For that is scary enough…. If the unknown is inside it is the impossible. Existence of the unknown is excruciating….

One healthy decision in front of another. I was tired and depleted last night and I wanted some usual less than healthy comforts. Instead I commanded my body to take me on a walk. It starts out creaking and groaning. Protesting why after a long day of work we must do more, it feels like having to do more. However once a rhythm sets in, the walk gives more than it takes. Isn’t that always the answer? Making choices that give more to us than they take. If it takes our self-esteem, confidence, and worthiness. Is it worth it?

The walk felt amazing and I got so many good pictures of things I appreciate about my life living in Milford. Downtown Milford is beautiful. Lavender sky painted backdrops over harbors of boats. The smells of many local restaurants making me glad I didn’t have my credit card on me. I wanted to disappear into one and indulge. I always want to indulge. The walk gave more than it took, and after the craving passes, I feel alive and attractive. Buzzing with vitality.

So last night a line in my book Wild Game stopped me in my tracks… I’m a little over half way in the book and Adrienne (the memoirist, has a new friend, and is now in college. Her new friend says to her that her mom is lonely. And Adrienne scoffs and says she has dinner parties every night, and has been juggling two men for years. That her mother is not lonely. And the friend says “you’re wrong, loneliness is not about how many people you have around, it’s about whether or not you feel connected. Whether or not you’re able to be yourself.” Adrienne: “I was at a loss for words.”

“The lonely feeling comes from not feeling known.”

This is the thing we all want, to be known. To show our true selves, our soft underbellies.

Feeling lonely and unknown can lead to a series of not so good things. Depression, anxiety, loneliness, and actions that cannot be undone. Only healed and moved forward from.

The promise of being known in a way that seems unique in all the world can lead to breeches of sanity that are almost unimaginable. A promise without a follow through is potentially one of the cruelest things to live through. Karma is real. It’s not in fact a bitch, contrary to popular slogan. It’s the thing that it used correctly, that keeps us on path to integrity.

The biggest route to change is fully feeling, an embodiment of experience to the point that discipline outweighs desire, and compassion and understanding lead, rather than impulsivity and greed.

I am learning you can’t simply know the lessons cognitively. To become real, it must be the journey that brings them to life inside of you….

It is painful to have realized how disconnected from myself and others I was. How my desperate mind was buzzing from threat to attachment, threat to attachment. how unsafe I felt in my own body and home, because in my mind it was still a haunted house.

I cannot speak enough about how presence is a gift and a privilege and how many people are not able to be in it, for a variety of reasons. I think of how it must have felt for my children to see my eyes so blank. Wild with terror….beyond any loneliness. Shattered, scattered, and lost. In ways that no one understood or put together. The logical conclusion was selfishness. When one doesn’t have any presence with themselves they cannot access executive function and the higher ordered thinking, regardless if they have empathy or not.

They were never blank like my mothers, my eyes were never those of the uncaring, the permanently disconnected….

I was however lost inside myself….

And now I’m coming home….

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Short Cuts….

Loving the sounds of the water this morning. Also loving on this article Glennon or Abby 🙂

Sal said I’m consistent this morning and I about swallowed my tongue with surprise. Who me? Consistent ? You mean consistently shitty at practicing because I become consumed by so many different things. And terrified before every lesson because I didn’t do and am not enough? But now I go anyway. I keep showing up. Ok, I guess I am consistent. I used to say consistently inconsistent, hard on myself to a fault. That’s not my fault, it’s what I used to survive and the wiring was buried deep.

Today Sal said “you are going to make mistakes, the more you practice they become less.” Could it really be that simple!? A mistake always felt like life or death for me. And I almost said have I really made everything that hard. Again, everything is hard because it hurts to be human not because I’m bad or wrong. The major wire crossing of my whole life. What will I do once I’m free in the way I am now.

Peace should not be terrifying, but it kind of is.

There’s someone filming a guy talking at the water, and I’m curious. Also don’t they know this is my beach. My haywire attention pulled in so many directions. My heart and soul are grounded. I feel solid and in my body, which is a new sensation. One that I like.

The next interruption is going to be my bladder. Always something. It’s muggy, oooh pink shorts I like, tattoo I like, a nice….., and the water calls me home. Just presence.

I’m reading this book (maybe I’ll actually finish this one) called Wild Game. It’s about a woman whose mother began an affair when she was 13 or so I believe and how becoming her mothers secret keeper guaranteed her the importance in her mother’s attention, but at what cost to her. I imagine I’ll find out as the book unfolds. I’m learning you only need one or two really solid lines that make you understand a character. And that the things we remember most about someone are things that make them unique to us in all the world. Like the Little Prince’s Rose.

People are who they are. Life may be what you make it, but when it comes to people, we are pretty solidly who we are. You can change behavior and functioning, but core things are core things and change is dependent on that persons dedication to it and more importantly their why (motivation).

My motivation has always been to create a life I didn’t have, and in so many ways I’ve already achieved that. Back and forth between create it inside, or see it from the outside. I’m seeing lately how many people in other ways have a hard time picturing who they are or their path lining up with their idea of who they are or someone else’s expectations.

Go with the flow or upset the apple cart. And how much? How little? It’s all so overwhelming. That’s why I suppose Glennon’s suggestion, of finding your knowing is so wildly relatable, and very helpful.

The article I posted above they talk about their joy and dedication to processing and I feel seen and heard. As someone who has oft felt too intense, too serious, it was very validating. So where are those people, my people? How do I find them?

Do I call them in by writing? Do I need to be seen first? Can I get there without first being seen and encouraged.

Scary, everything is so fucking scary. Isn’t it so good though. If you aren’t afraid or a little uncomfortable you aren’t living. What is the threshold? That varies greatly. Old me wouldn’t have felt she had one. Dangerous lol. Because then I couldn’t see others either.

I’m here trying to find the rhythm of my life, pacing, timing. When you play piano you have to be able to think about all of these things simultaneously. My threshold there began at less than one thing at once. Now I’m slowly learning to let those different processes dance together harmoniously, even if it doesn’t feel the most natural.

My brain tries to make all these short cuts to be more efficient and it also begs me to rush through as if I will barely make it out alive. Where’s the fire says Sal, metaphorically of course. Slow down Christina. Confidence. My hands stop shaking, I drop my shoulders, let out my stomach, release my shoulder blades and sit bones from their clenched position, and take a deep breathe. Something clicks into place and I joyfully move through timing, note reading, and glide across the keys.

A big smile spreads across my face when by the end of the song I’m still alive. because for me so much of life still feels like life or death. All or nothing. Black or white. I am trying to learn how to write that as the beautiful story that it is. To account for the courage and creativity that has led to more than getting out alive…. That has led to becoming whole.

The traumatized mind makes shortcuts, so many shortcuts. If you don’t know if you’re going to live or die, you’re thinking in the fastest terms possible to accomplish a task. Peace of mind is a privilege not afforded to everyone. Those who have it should be dedicated to making sure those who don’t and never did have space to find it.

We have to care about each other. When we lose the ability, time, motivation to do that; we lose our humanity too:

Anyway back to my bladder..: it’s time to drive home and ground for sessions… time to learn, to breathe, to share, to grow, to ground, to play, to create, to hold space….

Sacred …..

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All I Ever Dreamed of Hearing

Walk me home in the dead of night …..

It’s a lot more difficult to unpack what happened to me then, and a lot easier to unpack what happened to me now.

This morning I am reading What Happened to You, by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey, and never have I felt more seen or able to see myself.

Something in the book jogged my memory to think of how I got here. And it caused me to think of love languages and words of affirmation. Things I rarely received in childhood. When I did, you got the feeling it was the thing they thought one should say, but when it came to anything hard or emotional it was the opposite.

I have identified my love language as physical touch and acts of service I would guess based on what I do lol, or quality time for sure. And then I thought really my love language is a response to the profound lack of love that was consistent or safe. So I was in need of all of those so much how did I even know which one.

All of the love languages please ! An abundance of love….moving from scarcity towards abundance has been one of my greatest adventures.

This latest bought of change in my life has been brought to you by SCARCITY, the need for words of affirmation or words at all. For the last year and a half what began as someone offering me a family, a family that was not theirs to offer, and then repeating constantly how intelligent I was and how in love with my mind. And I wonder why something could have that big of a hold when all other evidence pointed to the offerings being empty.

This situation brought me to my knees and places inside and outside myself I never knew existed. I have never connected the dots before the way this book is helping me do.

I had once again put all the responsibility on me, without understanding the underlying vulnerabilities or dynamics at play. Without understanding a lot of things. Things about grief, trauma, attachment, scarcity, and scarcity, self abandonment, and so much more.

Knowledge IS Power. There is nothing lacking in my knowing. What has always been lacking inside me is a sense of safety and comfort that some of us get and some of us don’t. a regulation that is a privilege of the safe, the children who were wanted and loved and kept safe by being loved in healthy ways.

Lately I’ve been acknowledging what came before my conscious awareness years, my infancy and what that probably looked like. We love you Chris my grandparents would try and say to me, and to their ability they did. But it was never with enthusiasm or joy. A child is never meant to be a burden, but in this already taxes system full of religious beliefs it was. I was.

I will never be something that is tolerated rather than someone who is enjoyed simply for existing. Not for doing, for existing. The rest of my life I get to live with these realizations and the profound sense of peace that I’ve set my compass towards since the inception of this blog.

Since I began I tried to find it in other people, in things, in work, in so many places…. And throughout that process what has opened up are new places in myself where that now exists…..

I tried to find my concentration and focus. Will and motivation and desire and passion, those were never the problem. My nervous system however has been subconsciously hijacking my ability to craft a self for me entire life.

I am pondering the cruelty of this brain washing of the last year. The excuse that it’s real because the person feels this way, but without anything tangible or follow through. The pain and devastation that was caused. Not taking responsibility for anything except my choices and actions. I’m not responsible for and gaining clarity and connection with those who are responsive and reciprocal in relation with me.

Healing. My only responsibility is to heal myself with the help of qualified professionals and steadfast found family of friends.

I’m thinking of how my imagination must have saved me, and learning to hold it with high regard and honor. I’m thinking of how so many of my dreams were someone showing up for me and realizing how that builds with slow consistency rather than grandiose promises with opposite actions.

The greatest of all realizations is that I can’t hang on to any miserable thoughts on this because the process itself led me home…. Led me whole.

Stay Tuned…. What’s next is going to be really beautiful ….

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The Infinite Sadness

Today was a beautiful really good day in so many ways. Today was a beautiful really hard day in so many ways. My heart is broken and I’m beginning to wonder if things will ever feel better again. If there will ever be that naïveté and zest for living encapsulated in the trapped childhood parts I was left with. Now that they have integrated my life feels so bland sometimes.

I’m always aware of how grateful I am. This is the longest I’ve really ever gone without feeling secured by being a part of something bigger, a family, someone else’s family. As well as having a relationship I am working on with a partner. Nothing eases the ache of loneliness. No amount of me saying how ok I am. I’m not ok. And any end to this pain never seems in sight because I’ve outgrown coping mechanisms that would allow me to accept anything less than two feet in and someone willing to do the work.

It feels like I’m going to be alone forever. There’s a thousand things in a day I want to be sharing. And then I give up and just go numb and try to busy myself, which doesn’t work either because I’m always acutely aware I’m numb.

I have everything anyone could want. I’m fulfilled. I love my found family, my friends, my family that is the kids and I. Our home, our pets, my little habits and routines. I’m doing so many good things right now, but at the end of the day there isn’t that consistent routine with someone that makes living worthwhile.

“For me it was always going to be about love” from About Time. I think in many ways people are who they are. You can analyze all day long, but those who are about love are about love. For the last year I’ve imagined what it would be like to have love where it’s just myself and that other person and it’s ours. I watch these movies and I get angry. I get angry about the fault lines in me that I didn’t know were there.

Sad and angry, sad and angry, get back up and keep going… and the cycle repeats. I always wanted the kind of love that stays, to have it, to be it. I’m so angry about what the trauma did to my brain. The broken speed and trajectory at which I have lived. I know I can’t be mad at my story and embrace it, but right now it aches and I am raw.

I go all day, fairly positive and it’s easy to be engaged because I love my work and my life. At night it’s the worst. I beg to be tired enough to fall asleep so I can have some rest, and look forward to my coffee and morning writing routine.

Then I resent having to ever get out of that warm safe bubble to do hard things like figure out taxes and pay bills and decide what to spend money on and what not to. It’s monotonous and altogether not worth anything without love. I’m pretty sure this is who I am and not just being co-dependent.

I have all these Gottman couple things, cards etc books things and no relationship to practice them inside. How did it ever become a fantasy for it to be just me and another person fully devoted with no bullshit. And how is that fair when I had it and…. that’s pointless at this point because being hard on oneself never helped anyone. Something I am learning.

I did appreciate that relationship for every second it existed until things in my life changed so swiftly. I can go back and say I wish I did differently but that just helps nothing. I’ve learned so much I can’t unlearn and that was necessary either way. Does it have to come with so much suffering? Apparently yes.

I have new relationships with my kids I never had before. Every day is pretty much a new kind of hard. But little by little we are figuring it out. I’m engaged and present and managing my overwhelm most of the time and connected in new ways.

But when I’m alone at night it just burns. It feels like burning alive every single night. Sometimes I’m in so much pain I wonder if I’ll even wake up. Sometimes it swallows me. It just never takes my enthusiasm for living: Thank God. Though some days it’s easier to find than others.

Right now my eyes are burning with tears and I just want sleep to gather me in her arms and tell me we are going to be ok. The tears stream gently down. Don’t they ever run out?!

I’m so much more irritable and sensitive and reactive and just a lot of things without some of my most vital needs met. I can meet them if I want, but it doesn’t replace the art of relationship. Navigating parenting is difficult under the best of circumstances and I’ve been under the worst for a long time.

I just want a glimmer is that too much to ask. I can’t even be miserable my life is blessed and fulfilling and I’m happy in so many new ways. But all this love and energy with no place to go eats me alive sometimes. It sits like a stone in my stomach. All these memories of so many things play on loop.

Oh good it’s almost 9; that means I can finally fall asleep and I won’t wake up at 3, 4 and 5 respectively. Tomorrow is a very long day. I have a series of doctors appointments, my first mammogram, errands for a procedure on Tuesday and 7 clients I believe.

Please take this pain … I’m shocked that pain like this doesn’t kill you…… mr sandman bring me a dream.

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If you can’t trust your mind…..

This line stops me in my tracks. Trust my heart?! Have you taken a look at my life lately? But somehow I know it’s true.

I am reading Words on Bathroom Walls. It’s simple style makes me want to think and write that way as well. It just seems so straightforward, so easy, nothing like my mind.

Adam (the main character) and I have that in common about our minds. You never know when your mind will be your enemy or your best friend. One moment you can be so sure of the truth and everything, and the next shattered.

One moment I can have the galaxies of the universe on the tip of my awareness and the second I attempt to capture it, everything goes blank.

Like when I opened this blog post I had a wave of inspiration and in the time it took me to open the app on my phone, poof. Into the abyss. I sit very still hoping it will alight gently on my shoulder any minute now.

Thursday nights are dinner at my favorite restaurant. It’s nice having a favorite restaurant and being a regular. Another aspect of belonging of course. It’s comforting. Last night I felt comfortable in my own skin and confident and not socially anxious and not overly preoccupied with anything, even though I always manage to create something to be overly preoccupied about.

A regular I hadn’t seen in a long time, a tall dark and handsome man (rare for me to interact with LOL) told me that I looked great and asked what I was doing. You know to look so fresh and perky. I’m forty I’m not sure perky applies but we will go with it. It felt nice to be noticed (seen?) those are different I suppose. See over thinking again. Can you really over-think or is that just a way society shames us for using more of our gifts than we should?

Anyway later in the evening my friend who I dine with on Thursdays (friend is such an understatement fellow traveler and family more appropriate, and many others), went to go speak to someone and said tall dark and handsome enters seat next to me. He commented on my posts on Facebook and said he needs help. To clarify I believe he needs light like the rest of us, not exactly help. Light helps you create your own help as an inside job.

Once again the fact he would share that with me, and I’m that person, it never ceases to amaze me, humble me, excite me, and make me feel special in all the ways I never did in childhood. The universe has a funny way of making up for what your earthly coils lacked. It’s one of my favorite things.

I have a doctors appointment this morning. Sometimes it feels like my whole life is filled with them and then I think don’t feel sorry for yourself it’s not like you have cancer or something. And I toggle back and forth between validating and invalidating my experience. I just summed up how I spend most of my mental energy. Funny and not funny at all.

I’m dreaming about vacation lately and trying to get a vision for what that looks like. The toggling happens here too, a lot. Can I use those resources when there are so many loose ends in the air. Should I use it for this or for that. Time and resources apparently feel always running out despite the abundance I’m surrounded with.

Maybe I have more in common with Adam than I thought. I mean it’s not an accident I’m reading the book and love the movie so much. My perception can be completely skewed, and also it can be so completely perceptive to the ends of the earth. If I stayed solidly in that place I wouldn’t wander in my mind, in the ways one needs to wander to be a healer. Hmmm. See during the act of writing this that arose and felt damn true and good too. That’s why I do this.

Deciding how and when and to whom I process to, these days that’s a whole other matter. It’s more of a sacred decision than I ever valued it as, but also there’s so many less ways to go wrong (such an intense word) than I originally thought.

Highly sensitive people spend a great deal of time trying to find how they are wrong so they can fix it, presumably because their major intent is the betterment of humanity. Betterment of humanity detriment to themselves. Is it always that way for healers or just when you’re out of balance!?

What kind of healer am I? Was psychotherapist just the beginning? I mean it felt like the total destination and I already have a purpose. So what now? I’m always on the brink of something. I suppose that makes me an adventurer.

That felt nice to write. Not crazy and bad? No Adam we are not crazy or bad. We that invaluable shared experience with another that can also be found in books and movies and just so happens to be there when you need it.

I had a client share with me yesterday that the yucky depression voice is barely hanging around these days and maybe it’s just coincidence (see we all want to minimize our accomplishments), but that they noticed.

Something in the book that struck me is how Adam gets to know Maya, and the things he notices about how she operates and who she is. He knows her very well, the light and the dark and this happens slowly over time. Have I ever allowed that? Leaps and bounds subsisting off crumbs, existing primarily alone. I see myself so different now.

But I have no idea what that will mean going forward. That sort of groundlessness used to plunge me into pathological loneliness so easily and it would take days to recover and it would always be a patch job.

I’m sailing a yacht now and the compass and all the equipment is working and that in and of itself is terrifying. It’s a lot of responsibility, our own happiness. Much easier to play out templates and patterns from our upbringing and be in a part that is rehearsed rather than breaking through to our own.

I’m scared of my own abundance and my gifts and power. I’m actually scared I can’t complain or default ? Wow.

Who will I be outside the story I make up for myself daily to create relief. Outside the story what is real and what isn’t? Could it be possible that real is whatever I perceive and create and that’s ok?! That feels too simple and too complicated all at once.

I only have a few more pages left on my journey into Adam’s journey. Who’s will be next and what will I learn ?

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Getting the Story Straight

This past year for me could be best described as transformative. The passage has been filled with discomfort, anxiety, severing, breaking, death and rebirth, and a whole host of other things.

It is in helping others that my own wounds became visible to myself. Having constant companions on this journey has been invaluable. Having made this my life’s work is something bordering on the miraculous. I now believe in miracles and magic.

So I wanted to run through and summarize some of my process with this. Re-claiming an identity, while simultaneously forging a new one that is integrated. Becoming whole.

How does one become whole ? In my case I broke over and over and was unable to default to self betrayal coping mechanisms, and boy did I try. I worked hard, desperately even, but without a few very important ingredients. One being vitamin L as Ross Rosenberg calls it. You can listen about this here Self love recovery.

My first tool in this recovery was the morning pages. This is a tool by Julia Cameron that consists of writing three pages of longhand upon waking each morning. I created a sacred ritual of connecting with myself. Know thyself. That is the mission here.

The closest I could get to a relationship with myself was anything someone else mirrored about me, but I was then dependent on that, without it I would fall apart. I was arrested in this childhood phase of development. Having never had a parent figure to successfully mirror kept me locked in this developmental phase. I developed coping mechanisms, but never reached the root.

Maintaining Morning Pages even with ebbs and flows as a discipline was a great beginning, but I had a lot more to go. I was able to create a secure relationship with this activity for over five years now.

The next step was healthy relationship boundaries, and the way I found the need was by realizing a very hard lesson about having none. So creating healthy boundaries is essential. People not raised in a healthy family system struggle immensely with their own right to exist without having to do something to earn it or feeling guilty for everything when there was no wrong doing.

I couldn’t sit with myself without wanting to crawl out of my skin if I wasn’t being loved or touched in some way nearly every second. So most of my energy was spent trying to obtain that source but not being able to maintain a healthy relationship and healthy relationship behaviors. Since it’s expected at my age you be able to do that much shame ensued.

The reason I love being a counselor so much and an advocate is sitting with people as they turn shame into understanding of their own experience so they can grow into who they always were and who they deserve to be. I created a career that has kept me not alone on that journey. And my gift of being able to easily connect, while probably born out of need, has served me to be able to create real and genuine relationships around me as a mooring.

Becoming an earned secure out of frightened attachment and terror has been a daunting journey. It has been one I’ve needed to manage while also needing to prioritize the care of others and achieving enough financial security to even be able to.

Battling all or nothing, battling the desperate need that comes from operating from the wound. I lived my life operating from wounds and coping mechanisms and the struggle with myself was draining me constantly.

It has been my life’s art to develop the tools to get my story straight and to excavate myself from the ruins of my childhood.

I spent the last year investing in myself, it wasn’t an option, it was necessary.

I was often called selfish by the people that I chose to invest in the most. It is in fact all about you when you’re trapped in childhood. This created more wounds and I don’t know how I ever got out. It’s still a work in progress but I’ve come so much further this year.

It is the people that see me through all of it that have saved my life. The new ones and the old. Some old have arrived on the scene anew, some new have departed in shattering ways.

This is the portrait of a life lived courageously. Not right or wrong, good or bad. Just a human story being lived.

My education was another secure relationship. Something no one could take from me, though it did not come without being criticized that I put that before my children. When we needed me to have an education for many reasons.

It’s interesting to see people who live out a more normative timeline. They have babies once they are secure to do so and that process looks so different. I was a baby who had babies, but I was determined to become a mother I did not have. It has taken me most of their lives. So I hope I get enough years left to enjoy the fruits of my labors. To be able to play and create family traditions with the ability to do so, while now not flying or freezing with terror.

Shame is an enemy I battle daily, and I am healing every day.

It’s hard to be steadfast when you are creating a self and reclaiming one. I tried to do everything all at once, because it always felt like I was running out of time. It always feels like I’m running out of time because I am awake.

Learning, determined, and awake….

My next tools have been understanding the effects of being raised by a family that has a narcissistic/co-dependence dynamic and how that lends itself to not being able to trust myself or my own reality. I would try and moor and then stumble chaotically out of port the second there was a disruption in the fabric. It’s hard not to shame myself, particularly when you can see the effects this has had on my own children. My God it is hard.

But shame never heals anything, it only wounds. Love and understanding and mercy and grace and compassion are the antidote.

I stand humbly before the world asking what service I may be of to my fellow humans, because it is there that my most profound healing exists.

I commit to living bravely and vulnerably so I may be of service to others, and so I never betray myself again.

Moving from being the storm to becoming the lighthouse has required getting my story fully in alignment with my being.

Et Lux Intenbris Lucet

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The Dynamic of Transcendence

Heaven and hell is what exists on earth depending on the choices we make.

I remember as a child listening to the song that says ooh heaven is a place on earth, Belinda Carlisle. I liked that song.

I am thinking this morning in my 40th year, how many decisions of my life I’ve made based on trying to ascertain what was good or bad.

What was good or bad inside of me, who is good or bad. I have a lot of awareness about where this came from, but I focus more on that than how it affects my decision making now.

I was raised very religious and it has taken me a long time to decide what of those lessons I believe, what I don’t.

It’s all very overwhelming.

Here are some of the things I am realizing. All of the constructs in the Bible are all lessons or rules to be applied to humanity.

All portrayal of evil in horror movies or in the Bible respectively, the battles of good and evil, are battles of human beings in an attempt to transcend their own humanity (for whatever reason lies within their belief system), their own wounds, patterns of behavior and conditioning, and the fault lines laid down before they ever had a choice in the matter.

Later in life I attempted to ascribe to an integrative approach, light and dark, parts work. This is certainly more effective, but harder to stay consistent in because it is less rigid and defined.

Angels and demons, Good and evil, are all just stories about various human experiences in the ways we choose interpret and respond to them.

Heaven and hell are both places on earth, they are state of existence depending on our choices. To trust oneself is heaven, to perpetually doubt oneself is hell.

To be in a trusting loving relationship with mutual respect and good communication is heaven. To be in a relationship filled with manipulation and deceit, circular argument of which the goal is to be in control or get one’s way, is hell.

To have an exorcism, is to remove from oneself The patterns of thinking and behavior that cause a person to exploit another for their own benefit.

All the horror movies you have ever seen are literally just graphic representations of lost battles between a human being and them self. They lost the battle for discipline and to work hard at changing the things in themselves that could make them have a better existence, and they settle on low vibrational behaviors that harm others.

There are three sides to every story is an interesting phrase. Yours, mine, and the truth. Supposing there is one objective truth that could be figured out. Reality is that each person’s lived experience is their own story, and life itself is truly the unreliable narrator.

I have spent so much of my life trying to figure out what is right and wrong, what is my own reality, and having such a struggle in doing that, so much resulting anxiety. I state out loud firmly a desire or intention and then try desperately to live it. All good intentions, but I had poor attention to the details that mattered most before I made these statements.

If we boil it down to qualities of character, a strong character interested in the greater good of those involved with them, and seeking the truth at all costs of comfort, not exploiting anybody else in the process, is something I can be satisfied with.

To move forward I had to find a level of satisfaction where there was none. There could be no satisfaction amidst heinous acts and betrayal.

I have betrayed myself so many times to try and be accepted, Found to be lovable and loving, and to belong.

The unmet needs bubbling underneath the surface from my childhood threatened to always undermine my dreams. This is the battle I have always fought.

In the process of this fight I have emerged an advocate for myself and others. While I still do not know the breadth and depth of this work, it is emerging as a result of the process.

Today I close this book of the first half of my life, and I open a new one with a fresh pen and paper, and thankfully perspective.

I set forth with a realistic set of expectations for myself and others, and strive for people to have safety and warmth when they are near me, and that I am able to find those things in the assessment of my self.

I haven’t been able to capture my story on the page yet, anymore than here, as if that is not enough. Because I am the living story, and well life may be the unreliable narrator, however I choose not to be an unreliable character in it.

This is taken the most work for me. To say what I mean, and mean what I say, and organize myself so I can be satisfied with my existence while I have breath in my lungs.

I am currently reading the book the language of emotions. 

The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591797691/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_6HX4BF6V14NAZGYQ2JE7

It is like listening to my self talk. I have just begun and I am reading it slowly and digesting each part before moving onto the next thing. Something I was never capable of doing before. I am treating my body with the respect and love it has always deserved, listening to what it needs, and slowly and carefully making those changes. This alone has increased my comfort and confidence inside myself, in the world.

All or nothing never was sustainable or accomplished any of the things I was so determined toward. Determination is important, but it needs to be balanced by consistency and discipline. 

I am learning those one step at a time…

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No Matter What

No Matter What by Calum Scott

This song was in my head this morning. Seemingly out of no where I kept singing it. So I decided to watch the video. So many tears. This kid was me on the playground. But instead of a parent guiding me I grew up amidst psychological warfare that I tried to fix for everyone. I tried to hold all their pain and mine. I was comforting until I could no longer take that burden anymore and cut the cords and attached to something else.

A husband. I needed a father not a husband. But I didn’t know that and perhaps he didn’t either. Young and naive we embarked on a journey. Seven Saint Bernard puppies and two adults in the back of a Ryder truck with all our belongings for Moses Lake Washington.

I was so dissociated I hardly remember myself in that time. Impulsive, brazen, curious, warm without any good reason to be. I remember that I just acted, I didn’t feel in the moment. I felt later when I could think about things. I created a sense of busy that had me never think about all the pain I was in.

I set to making a life. I looked at others and tried to piece together what mine should look like. I wanted the family pictures on the wall and that feeling of security that never existed inside or outside of me. That’s what I was searching for and love seemed the only way to create that.

So I kept trying for love, which kept leading me to shame. How can you be proud when you’re getting a divorce and hurting your children? I never got to be proud. I got more shame.

I put on a strong front to try and protect myself, but inside was an ocean of shame.

Unlike Calum I never got the I love you no matter what moments. By the time I came out it was another situation to internalize negativity about myself. Divorce the one thing I set out not to do. And hurting someone I loved, everything I stood against. And hurting my kids unthinkable. From that moment on I became cast in my own story as a bad mother, and something awful.

Therapists, friends, loved ones would try to ease this burden at times, but I shackled myself under my own burdens. Punishment.

I’ll never forget when I finally told him. I had tried so many indirect ways to try and keep my security, but finally I couldn’t keep it under wraps anymore. I told his family too. I wanted them to still love me no matter what. And I think they tried really hard which would be against the typical family system laws of protection. I didn’t love me, so I pushed them away in shame.

No matter what is never a condition I had or created for myself. I am working on that now for myself and my kids. Unconditional love from the inside not seeking from the outside.

I didn’t realize until now how much shame I have harbored underneath this tough exuberant exterior for being gay. Because mine was intermingled with hurting people when I was supposed to be a responsible married adult.

I was a scared child. I am more often than I would care to be a scared child. It feels embarrassing and terrifying to be aware of that, and yet that’s the only thing that can help me create something different.

All my relationships after were always going to fail, because I had no relationship to and with myself. None. I rejected her.

And this latest period of my life forced me to learn to have a relationship with myself so I could determine my boundaries from a place of love and protection, not merely a state of emergent need.

Dear Christina,

I vow to love you from this moment forward no matter what. Only to allow good actions into our lives. To have your back and always pick you first for my team, even when you make mistakes. I will love you fiercely. The no matter what parent you didn’t have.

Always,

C