Tag: #whenitsscarykeepgoing

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Now seeking: Myself

Now seeking: myself.

I’ve looked high and low, but most of all I’ve looked to find myself in everyone and everything else. Where I could fit, belong, thrive, enjoy life. I’ve looked in characters in books and movies and tried to emulate what they do, but nothing has ever seemed to fit.

That’s because I never looked to myself. I never even knew I could, that this was a thing, or that I had permission.

So many greats have paved the way for the self work I’m doing now. Carl Rogers, Rollo May, Jung, Nietzche, and then there was the women. The “mothers” who adopted me through the words they put out into the universe. A baby blanket. The arms I always needed.

Cheryl Strayed, Anne Lamott, Anne Patchett, Sylvia Plath, Joan Anderson, Martha Beck, Brené Brown, Oprah Winfrey, Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach.

And my spiritual mother Elizabeth Gilbert. The woman whose daughter I could be for our many similarities. And oddly it’s innate and learned, even when our DNA isn’t shared. It makes me believe in the ephemeral in a way my science “can do” mind has never lent to.

If everything you need is always inside you it’s hard to figure out what to do with that when all the research suggests a feral child like me has so much less chance for thriving. It makes me wonder if my mother had even less than I did even with two parents in their traditional slots.

I’ve learned a lot this past few years about not romanticizing things at face value, that just because people have families doesn’t mean they have suffered any less.

I am learning now that suffering is a state of mind more than a state or circumstance regardless what one goes through. Because we all have our stuff. It’s not the hand, but how it’s played. And we will play it from what we know, until we know better. Oh I forgot the beautiful Maya Angelou above.

I have woven together a tapestry of love from fragments for as long as I can remember. And is there anything so wrong with that? Is there some better thing to strive for? Or did I have it right all the time.

“But you don’t know what it feels like to fall in love with you, you don’t know what it feels like when you can’t go back” plays on Ruelle radio that has also been a staple of this time in my life.

I was thinking about the things that mark each time period in our lives. The signature drink, the favorite outfit, the fears, the desires, the songs, the vehicle we drive, and the smiles mouths and body we share during that time, and how they change and once they do that time period is over.

Would life really be better with warning signals?

We don’t know when it will begin or end. Even if we work really hard to know these things, we don’t.

I’m in the mountains with beloved found family. Gifts from the universe. Good people. I find myself and lose myself amongst these experiences. We are all interconnected and yet we all have our own emotional experience, and those are colored by the things that have shaped our lives.

The closest we can get to connecting is bridging the gaps in understanding by sharing our feelings. We each do things our own way, but we still strive for togetherness because we understand that’s where the most meaning is found in living.

I love these guys. I love being here right now. It’s exactly what I need. When my mind threatens to take me somewhere else I bring it back and there is joy to be found.

There is no glory in staring at a door wishing that someone will walk through it. Someone asked me the other day if I ever let anyone surprise me, and it made me think. It called me to look back over my life.

I survived by creating fantasies in my mind of just that, someone surprising me with showing me they were thinking of me and would show up. So I turned myself into someone who could make others feel that way. I became what I was looking for. Because that’s what the mystical they says about how to manifest what you’re looking for. Become it.

I became the guy with the boom box in Say Anything. But the thing is I never counted that. It didn’t count because it was just me being that and unless someone showed up for me in that way, it never counted.

It’s a hard thing nearing 40 to realize you never really felt connected to yourself let alone anyone else. I thought I was, that’s the thing. I was doing the best I can and I did it with my whole heart.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But I missed so much about me. Who I am. What I need. I became an incredible tool to see others in the way I always wanted to be seen. But because I was so good at, and everyone is in such need of that, it never moved past that.

I thought they would recharge and then pick up and do that too. Not exactly like me at all, just the effort. And maybe I just couldn’t see their effort in their way. I need to work on that. I have lots I need to work on.

So here I am on the brink of 40 a blank slate, having my whole life before me rather than behind, and my God I’m grateful.

The tears began streaming as I’m writing this. I’m alive and I’m ok. And I didn’t even know that. I’ve been in survival mode my whole life and I’m grieving that. Everything that came with. Every way someone has seen the product of what I created to get through my life with, but not the whole thing.

Someday someone else will show up for the whole thing, no matter what, just like I do for them….

For now I will show up with more of my pieces in tact, the ones I’m tending to gently every day, reconnecting them to myself is a slow and painful process. It’s surgery. Much like therapy. Yet very few people understand and respect the seriousness of this work, because we all want to see things for the surface and believe you can work that and just manage.

Yet we have tired, ragged, masses, angry, hurting, sad, lost, starving emotionally. We insult the new generation who are trying to teach us to recover ourselves. We call them all manner of things. They are not tough because they acknowledge emotions or what they need.

A society of martyrs who cause horrendous damage insulting those who take responsibility for their own happiness. But that looks shameful in the face of tradition.

What’s shameful is the cruelty than can be afflicted when we are not aware of ourselves. To allow continued suffering because we are too afraid to face ourselves.

I am not a perfect mother, in fact I’ve made more mistakes than most. That’s where wisdom comes from.

I am looking forward to being connected to myself and those I love for the rest of my life. It’s taken me nearly 40 years to travel here. I respect myself for this journey. I’m too tired for anymore shame.

đź’ś

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I am an Instrument

Recently I had a really good talk with a beloved friend. I had said something along the lines of I’m usually that person that will bring something to someone’s attention, but I rarely get that same. And she said… “let me be that for you right now”.

Ask and you shall receive.

I have never felt I fit in anywhere. I’m reading Braving the Wilderness by BrenĂ© Brown, and it’s exactly the medicine for my heart right now, and it’s perfectly geared towards the pandemic. She’s ahead of her time and I am of mine as well. No wonder we can’t find anywhere to belong.

I spent most of my life afraid of myself, a robot or an alien. My recent realization is that I am not those things.

I am an instrument. And as one let me be the cello, the piano, the violin, and the guitar. I have always wished I could be watched for the concerto of creativity and warmth I can cultivate in a client session.

Lonely oh so lonely without being seen as we all want to be. But lately I am seeing myself.

In my life because of scarcity every time I am meant to be an instrument maybe just in a small dose, I go all in always with my own need and it muddles things. I do have my own needs but I was always meant to fill them with source, my own source not someone else’s. So I’m not left hollow and wanting and internalizing exactly the opposite beliefs about my self.

And yet it’s this very suffering that cultivates the level of compassion needed to change the world. And yet what an overwhelming task. Who am I to and how am I to change the world? Is it one person as a time as I’m doing now, especially beginning with myself?

What is my task?

My life need has created this constant cycle of deep attachment and bonding only to part ways. I think I was never meant to attach my whole life all those times. The person and I were meant to cross paths, healing was meant to happen, but that didn’t mean that everyone you come across you try and create a life with.

Family, making one, being in one, was my unmet human need. So everything became about that. If there is an unmet core need it will continually trump anything else. It will override logic and create a lens that makes everything look one way, but not clear.

Three or four years later the water calms and clears and then restlessness and chaos ensues because I don’t have the answers.

I was trying to fulfill my destiny without any solid ground under my feet. The solid ground became the priority and I missed so much else.

However if we use faith, this says that everything is exactly as it should be and no horrific harm has come, and everything will be ok, especially me, and my tender worn out heart that has been through the shredder as of late.

There are no victims and no perpetrators, no us and no them, no sides. There is only the fulfillment of ones own personal destiny.

And everyone’s is important. And mine is a slippery one to nail down. It comes into view in brief moments, beautiful, and then everything goes dark and I flounder again. Lost and found, lost and found.

I am not an alien, I am an instrument. It’s overwhelming being an instrument with no map or music. What kind am I? What am I supposed to play? Especially when I can’t carry a tune, but perhaps that level of self doubt is outdated, if not entirely human. More human than human. Imposter syndrome at its finest.

I think I’m finally ready to accept I am an instrument and there is more to life than my frantic search for belonging to a person, like that will solve everything.

When I read Brené I am envious of her Steve. Of their dialogue and support of one another, and their journey, and taking the time to understand the other. The discipline and self-awareness love demands.

I want those things, but those are not for me to create. I have other things to create and perhaps that is where and when I will be found/and find someone who wants to do life with me enthusiastically and being willing to show up, the way I am for them. With my mistakes and all because there are plenty.

So much of the reason my path has been as it has is being revealed right now. I have been gifted so much love in so many corners of the world. I was moving too fast to feel it before. But now it’s wrapping me warmly. Coming out of the woodwork and showing up.

Whenever I come into contact with someone they react or connect to me. They feel my presence and I can make a lifelong friendship from one conversation in the car. The feels almost beyond my comprehension. I have had to weed out all the critical thoughts about how wrong this is. Especially in Connecticut lol. Stay in your own lane.

So out of balance with my confidence and my own need, my gift always gets confused and then causes chaos. It hasn’t been properly channeled because it has had to come together, and I’d like to believe it couldn’t come together without the exact path I am on.

So I can forgive myself for my sins.

Everything is a blank canvas right now, but this time I know I am the pen.

On being an instrument

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We Bounce Forward

So today I’m at the Honda dealership waiting for a new AC condenser to be installed. I am reflecting on my very first blog post ever, written in Ansonia at a small coffee shop waiting for my Jeep to be serviced. I’m at another full circle beginning of a new life so it’s appropriate and poetic.

I need to find my way back to me, my writing self, my heart. Also though you can’t go back to something you never started with. So perhaps I don’t have quite the right calibration on the wording.

Because we don’t bounce back we bounce forward (after a hard hit) according to the great Martha Beck. So this is completely uncharted territory and that brings with it absolute terror. I’m trying to find enough excitement to balance it out to become unfrozen so I can budge.

A whole new world and a whole new me. I didn’t want either of those things my toddler whines. I wanted the comfort of the known, to be held softly at night while I sleep, to have the routines I am used to, to see the smiling faces of my children feeling secure and loved in as far as I’ve gotten towards those things.

Which was not as far as I believed. That’s a stunning realization.

I’ve been traveling the dark wood of my own soul for around seven months now. My life and my self is unrecognizable now. I have soared to the highest heights and crashed through the earths crust and straight to the center of hell. I’ve been bathing in flames lately, not the soothing water I had found.

Another death and rebirth. I am finding there are hundreds of those across a lifetime, not just one or two.

I am breaking another generational curse right now. This work is not for the faint of heart. I do it so I can be a beacon of light for others. For my family, my friends, my clients. I lose myself so I can find myself again so I can know.

So I can I know what’s on the other side, the inside, the depths. So I can be the tour guide on inner journeys.

But lately I’ve become stuck when the work involves needing to play and rest. I don’t know how to do those things by myself apparently. I know how to show other people. I can do this work when my nervous system is calmed by the steady heartbeat of a lover. I become my full self.

But left to my own devices I freeze. It’s a shame filled thing these traumas. You don’t end up working like you’re “supposed to”, and finding compassion when compassion isn’t what saved you, is nearly impossible: truly.

Could I really have been running all this time in one way or another …. is that really possible? Half dissociated and half frenzied running. Love is the only force powerful enough to slow me down or wake me up, but sustaining it like this became another matter. Add another layer of shame.

I have been running and when my feelings catch me, it is a storm. The degree to which I feel things is unreal. A product of the battle to keep my feeling parts, when it was unbearable so long. I was fierce to keep them, even though they end up burning me alive.

I long to put this way of living down. It’s too heavy. I am in this process. Putting down an entire way of living is like not have any skin to protect the nerves, the air hits them and the pain is excruciating. Every day for me is like this right now.

Eventually the battle breaks you open into your heart, and the space where it’s soft. Where you’re your full light in the world and love doesn’t feel so hard anymore. It’s something that flows naturally.

I cannot run anymore. I cannot default. None of my tools or tricks work anymore.

Naked and still….

Ps. Today is a very special day in a place of my heart that isn’t allowed to exist right now. So keep me in your warmth please. My heart is raw there.

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Misunderstandings: “Just Like Me”

I started out this morning wanting to talk about my little girl. Not either of my daughter’s but my own little girl inside of me, the one I have carefully preserved, and along with her all of the gifts that are meant to reach the world. In many ways she is just waking up now.

However for now I am sidetracked by an important conversation I had this evening. So the theme of this post is misunderstandings.

If you follow my blog you may recall an old post entitled “The angry ex club”. I have spent most of my life feeling judged by and tremendously guilty towards my ex husband, whom I left on account of being not only young and stupid, but also gay. Neither of those things would have led to a life of nuptial bliss with him.

These feelings caused me to project all sorts of unsavory things onto him. In seeking his acceptance I was completely disagreeable, unable to ever hear his valid opinion on things, and a whole variety of things. We lashed out on one another over the years each in our own ways.

So much to my surprise after an almost two hour conversation this evening would you believe once things are laid on the table and revealed, the things in our soft under bellies, we are more alike than we are different.

Spoiler alert. We are all more alike than we are different. 

He is hard on himself too. He wants to belong and be accepted too. He just wants to be a good parent, and is afraid at times he isn’t, just like me. We were both just trying to get through this world as best we could and for so many years we made the other an adversary, when that was never necessary.

Truly you must walk a mile in someone’s shoes before holding them in contempt and having rage inside towards them. What a mind bleep when you realize you never even had to use all that energy all that time like that. I could have been doing so many productive things, if I just knew what I know now. But at least I get to know it now. So many people go their whole lives without this.

I am encouraged that we will attend things for our children the rest of our lives and be able to give one another a real genuine hug, and not an awkward strained thing masking our distaste. That will we now be able to show up for one another. I was able to tell him how much I appreciated him always showing up financially for our children. Rather than criticizing him from my own guilt of why he stayed in a career he is unhappy with (this felt like my fault). He stayed because he believed the benefits and health insurance was the best thing. And truly I have the career and the life I am able to have because he made that commitment. Who’s to say what is right or wrong here, but I am sure him being able to hear how grateful I am for where I’m at in my life, and that is largely due to his support of the kids over the years. I never had room to say those things to him before. I never had the sight.

The truth is it’s incredibly difficult when you “fail” at a relationship, particularly a marriage. There is so much pain involved, it spreads like shrapnel throughout. Failure was not an option. You have failed your children, each other, yourselves, the world at large. Just another statistic. It’s brutal.

You can come out on the other side with more reasons, like any human needs more, to feel unworthy and not love yourself. I am finding we all feel insanely unworthy and wonder why we are not chosen for this or for that. In love, for the position, for so many things. When really as I see it I think life (destiny if you will) has plans for us, and there is divine intervention all along the way. But we are so cynical. The world/society has done a number on our souls. The living breathing spirit inside of us that has enthusiasm about things. And then those of us that are lucky enough to find ours just go around touting it so the rest of the world can feel like they are missing something.

To be able to help someone find theirs. Now that is a life worth living. I hope to always be that for others and to remember how and when to give to myself. I am working on that now.

Which speaking of that leads me to my next point which either will unfold in here (trauma brain) or in an entire other post. It deserves its own post, but it’s the other main thing on my mind today.

How often I become that little girl who is just wanting to be acknowledged. When I love I sit and wait. It reminds me of Secret Life of Pets actually. Max waiting for Katie. In love I am like that. Lately I am re-writing the script and rather than looking at the door all day long loyally (while not a bad concept), I am not waiting. I am enjoying my own light and love and slowly figuring out what that looks like.

So last night was mostly sleepless, my life is going through lots of changes right now. I had so many epiphanies and I can’t imagine that I did not energetically invite the interaction with my children’s father and myself, by doing my work. I did not expect this, it wasn’t the thing I was looking for, but I was able to pay attention to its significance and to sit in the feeling of it all.

So often lately I am able to sit with and actually feel things. Most of my life has been in survival mode, something I am only able to truly acknowledge now, and to fully grasp what impact it has had. I am beginning to not feel like my body is crawling in snakes about it though. This has been replaced with a slow spreading smile across my face when I remember that imaginative little girl and all her dreams, and the fact she never gives up on them, no matter how tough it gets. I am developing an appreciation and a respect for myself, which are great foundations for love.

There are foundations being demolished and foundations being built, the most important one I continue to come back to is the one I always have the power to change at anytime, and my one true constant, my own.

The little girl and I are becoming acquainted. The memories of her are not just huddled in a stairwell seeing things she should not see and hearing things she should not hear. I am remembering the other parts of her as well. Rainbow Brite boots and catching butterflies, journals and note pads, and countless trips to the library with grandma. Who would record herself with a small old fashioned tape recorder. The original audiobook. I remember those stories and stacks of library books, it was one of my safest and my fond childhood memories. It created a love for language and reading that have become a cornerstone of who I am.

The light shines out of the darkness. We are resilient creatures capable of still becoming all we were meant to be, no matter what our circumstances. During this time of immense uncertainty it is very cathartic for me to keep this in mind.

I just did five years worth of therapy in a day, haha. It’s time to plan a vacation soon. It’s time to play.

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Lost Back in 2016

Is there anything better really than clean sheets and a freshly made bed?

I’m still sleeping on an eighth of it, but nothing lasts forever.

I watched Stuck in Love with the girls tonight. It’s a very full circle kind of thing. Very! I was watching this movie on repeat spring into fall of 2016. When I was taking my next steps into finding my writer self. Rescuing her out of the rubble. That was a year of discovery for sure. And of Jeeps and french bulldogs, oh my.

We even had a Stuck in Love themed Thanksgiving. That was actually really fun.

That was the year I got my first office that was all my own. The year I got Sigmund Freud, the fantastic Frenchie. The year I began morning pages. It was my four year pages anniversary this April. The first time I ever dated dated. Oh the perils of that, lol. I have some crazy stories. The first time I took three solo getaways by myself. The year I learned one could romance themselves, and that I didn’t need to be with someone to justify a nice restaurant or lavish evening.

The year I got my Et Lux Entenebris Lucet (the light shines out of the darkness) tattoo. My first real adult job that I ended up hating. This helped me learn to trust myself, being able to walk away, and hang my own shingle.

I was so much more naive and innocent then. I’ve grown backwards in so many ways.

I can’t even remember that girl.

I asked my therapist tonight how come some people seem to have it so much easier. Being wanted, chosen, things coming more easily to them. While others no matter how hard they work or try, things seem not to work out for.

There isn’t an exact answer I can share, other than dynamics and human behavior. I personally think it’s a privilege to be calm and grounded. One not afforded by everyone. You have to have had a certain kind of life, things you could depend on consistently for that wiring. I envy those people. Not enough to not be grateful for my exact path, but I do.

Lily Collins is absolutely gorgeous. Gahhh

Rian has my hands. My daughter has my hands. Right down to the lines on the inside of our palms. I don’t think I’ve ever stood still long enough to notice.

Have I really been running my whole life?

What does slowing down look like ? I don’t know but I liked my moments with her this evening. And teaching the girls how to drive and getting ice cream at the Sundae House.

I felt them. These things.

It’s staggering sometimes to realize how much of my own life I’ve been a guest star in. Never fully Inhabiting my body. My own ghost, and haunting.

I can get everyone to love me, but me.

What a cruel trick.

I’ll find myself between my own pages in my own story.

Or maybe in Tuscany or anywhere else.

I am going to busy myself planning a vacation soon. The idea of being all on my own with nothing to do or be responsible for is entirely appealing. Just quiet and calm.

My eyes are getting heavy….. it’s time to rest.

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Where is Virgil When you Need Him…

I can say with great confidence that becoming a mother has been my greatest privilege…..

“I make no apologies for how I try to fix what you broke” – with regard to my path all these years with love.

I barely stood a chance with this hand and I have played the hell out of it. Hurt people do hurt people and I am no exception.

Holidays are tough for me. No secret there. Those closest to me know my battle intimately and I’m so grateful for the ones who do. I’m invited and wrapped warmly in a variety of ways with other family’s and have had the privilege to know and learn so much from so many.

This Mother’s Day is particularly difficult for me. I have a broken heart and as a result of being consumed am being hard on myself on who I’ve been lately as a Mom. Guilt about disappointing them again.

Feeling lost does not really go very well with owning the place you deserve in the world. I know there is a discrepancy here, but right now I don’t have the energy to sort it.

This morning I have waded through the options on what to write about. As thoughts of my own experience with a mother bring a fresh bout of tears I think of writing that, perhaps it will come later.

My beautiful friend is visiting. She’s sharing some of her wounds with me. It eases my own. Her particular survival has involved her accepting love way less than worthy of her efforts, her self and needs not even in the equation, as she shares with me about how she hasn’t been held in twelve years, and that she needs that.

Twelve years. My God twelve days is excruciating for me. I know how healing the power of touch and connection can be, and how devastating as well.

People who do the best they can are a thing of beauty. Be careful with people you never know when someone is doing the best they can. That often looks like things that could easily be judged. When wounds are invisible healing is so much more challenging. When there is no story for what’s happening that makes sense.

People need their story to make sense and to be tailored and fair to the wounds they carry. Unfortunately that’s uncommon. It’s one of the things I have the privilege to do for others, and am finding I need to include myself. It’s no longer enough to heal others, I need to feel worthy of healing too.

My mind goes to not having anyone to help the kids do something special for me for Mother’s Day, and I get sad before I think about people I know whose Mothers still demand unreasonable things of them or punish them for their own wounds. I am grateful I’ve healed enough to not do that.

Those feelings pass and I return to gratitude hanging onto all the nice things people do for me, or even a text of those I’ve helped on their journey through life. Appreciation for me, and I warm back up. It’s not really grand gestures on a single day that makes the difference it’s the showing up. And this past few weeks so many people have shown up for me, random flowers, help with my lawn, texts, encouraging that I am seen. And that always has to be bigger than the pain and loss. But since love is very different for me this isn’t always the case.

Lately I haven’t shown up very well for my kids, and I’ll be careful to be kind to myself about this. I’ve had a lot of loss recently, and so have they. I have an idea of the mother I want to be, but lately I feel as if all the air has been taken right out of me. And it’s all I can take it to get out of bed.

My priories are all out of whack and originally that was in the name of love, but now as I watch everyone else make sure their priorities are in tact, I simply will learn from them. I need to do that too. And I’m all my kids have their everything. And this my own doing. It’s unfortunate all too often I feel too guilty and unworthy of that space so I stay isolated. I want closeness with them but I don’t know how with that other safe adult buffer to make sure nothing happens.

In my life something bad could happen at any moment. And another safe adult around makes that feeling less. It’s just always been my truth. I wish I could be one of those moms that isn’t like that. It’s how I learned to survive, finding a space that felt safe, which was never inside of me, because outside of me was never safe. My whole childhood.

Not only was it physically dangerous but it was a mental game of manipulation and terror.

Like I’ll hurt or damage them somehow just by breathing. If you knew what it had been like with my mother, if you knew is all I can say here.

But excuses are unacceptable when it comes to finding the worthiness to accept their love enough to show up near them. It is non-negotiable.

I have always kept another adult present as much as possible just in case I somehow morphed into my mother, in case too many bad things still lingered on me. To breathe enough life back into me by holding me at night, so I could face the next day. And this last time I chose one of the best humans I’ve ever met.

And then my own emptiness inside led me to destroy that. Trying to fill empty holes when there is no end to the holes, so nothing can collect. Nuclear sized craters all around. I am amidst the sheer devastation of myself and I don’t want them down with me.

So I hide at the bottom of the hole curled up hoping for some light. And then I dig and I build and a rush for relief and it’s momentary, never stable. Leave the healthy people alone my dark thoughts scathe. Leave well enough alone.

Momentary fixes to long standing issues only create craters. This post apocalyptic hell is inside and all around me right now.

When you’re in survival mode you don’t see anything clearly until later. I’m permanently wired in survival mode, doing the best I can. That will always be the truth of the matter.

I’m an adult in survival mode that can be so incredibly healing to others, but for herself, she is lost.

I am lost, and I need to find myself….

I don’t need to be seen or found or loved anymore. I’ve been loved well and I rush right around life looking for a chaos that feels like home. If I wanted to be loved well I would have stayed right where I was.

I’ve had plenty of brave batters step up to that plate. I’ve never felt worthy enough to be still enough to see what happens outside of the scary, or boring period that inevitably comes. I bail one way or another before I can lose anything. You can’t lose anything you never let sink in.

I need to be able to see the person in the mirror that other people see. My long standing people who stay in my life, seek my wisdom, provide warmth and love…. they see me. So I am not unseen.

Most of my life I spend afraid everything I love will be taken, or worse damaged by me….. and then I create exactly that.

So when you’ve found yourself in a self fulfilling prophecy that’s come full circle, and you’re all alone with yourself, the only thing to do is slowly form a relationship with her. And hope that you’ve traveled far enough that this time it’s a healthy one.

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Courage Under Fire

Every person in a relationship experiences a different version of the person they are with. Two people together are an alchemy.

They create an energy.

I remember being around twenty four years old, in a house provided by the military, in Connecticut. I had three young children and a husband. I remember feeling very dissatisfied with my life and I couldn’t figure out why.

Later I would find there were so many facets to this untangling it is unimaginable. I am still doing that work to this day.

The first facet was being gay, and having not even realized it or having any indication and then finding myself with a husband and three young children. I did that to survive. Created that family to have one. Having no idea how to be a mother or a wife. Just that I needed a family.

I needed a family. Expansion: I needed a safe family.

As I well know now this is not why you create a family. I wouldn’t have known any better then, and I’m aware that many people begin in this way. And that who they become from the experience is the most important part.

I remember looking for my answers on the Internet. It ran much slower back then. Not quite the days of dial-up and you’ve got mail, but not very far out of that time either.

My seeking made me feel selfish at the time. I was supposed to be a mom and a wife forsaking all others. But I wasn’t even anyone to myself yet. I was an outer design with a burning inner emptiness and suffering.

I was absorbed inside myself. While I watched my husband play with our young children with complete envy. I envied the children for being played with. And I envied the husband for being able and knowing how to play.

I envied anyone who looked like they knew how to live, I merely knew how to survive. But I didn’t know that then.

I sat there lost inside myself having no idea what was wrong with me, because that was always the question of the first… Well actually it’s still the question, only with a little bit further along on the self-love journey.

So I focused more on my selfishness that I could notice, then the things that had happened to me to make me so lost. So I ordered about seven different books on narcissism. I became a narcissist scholar if you will. Malignant Self Love. The Narcissistic Family…. and so on…

Here’s the rub. I had to become so self-focused to figure out how to even be, that it was a self fulfilling prophecy. And I’m startled to find myself back at square one with myself again in this place. That is the most humbling recognition I could ever have.

I thought it was just figuring out my sexuality, the reality is this pattern would continue over and over until my untended self and my created self could reunite.

I’m about to be forty years old folks. A well respected clinician, a like-able gal, a mostly good mom most of the time. And my wounds, they still haunt me. And they still effect anyone who dares love me.

Back to my story.

Narcissism (24 years old)

The first recognition of this tumbled me into complete and utter acceptance of my fatal diagnosis. I was a monster. There was no hope for me.

And I became very depressed.

This depression led me into the office of my very first therapist. Who said a few words to me that have changed my life forever. He was the first person to ever recognize or say something to me like “I’m surprised that you’re alive.” I looked around for who he might be talking to, because it couldn’t possibly be me. I was fine just look at me. Strong friendly outgoing energetic attractive.

Sidenote; this therapist having only seen me about one year in total, upon me calling him and telling him I was graduating with my masters degree, attended my graduation ceremony. He was the only parent type figure that was there. My therapist. He had asked me at one point during a session what I thought I might like to do for a career. At this time I hadn’t finished through the 10th grade of high school and I had my GED. I had looked right at him and said I think I’d like to do what you do. And here I am.

So now I know where to begin my memoir and what I am going to write about. I will continue to figure out how to keep my thinking not frenzied and chaotic, and how to stay grounded within myself.

What I will say for now is that even with all of that work studying and knowing these dynamics, when you are wired with intense terror Over a significant period of your life and abuse and manipulation, your life will look entirely different in One way or another because of it.

People deal with this in a variety of ways. Each of their ways is never a thing that should be judged. For nobody, not even them sometimes, is able to see or realize what they had to do to survive emotionally.

Where do the emotions go when they are unwelcome by our safest sources?

They become internalized in one way or the other. Either a frighteningly low self-esteem, being incredibly hard on oneself, A variety of addictions, assorted masks, I could go on for a very long time.

The person is left to deal with their emotions by themselves, and when we are little we have absolutely no idea how to do that. So we develop coping mechanisms subconsciously that will play out our entire lives. In who we are attracted to, how we handle that. Our ability to delay gratification for being responsible. Etc.

Is it any wonder that these survivors on top of already living through hell in their childhood, end up having very short fuses, lots of irritability, a sense of dissatisfaction that can’t even put their finger on, and they need to go in wild cycles of hating themselves, and then doing impulsive things just to try to make themselves feel better in an immediate moment.

This is the land I live in. No matter how far I’ve traveled it takes constant awareness and effort just to exist in the world in a loving way.

Being able to connect to someone else’s emotions and to be kind to them, and to listen, and to take accountability for my actions. Instead of being so fragile that I become an entirely different person. One who doesn’t fight fair. Unrecognizable to myself and no one that I would want to be around.

I read this vampire series by Linda Leal Miller when I was a tween, in the final of the series the vampire and a human who had fell in love make a baby. I wonder if twilight stole from this. Haha

She’s a half breed. And so am I.. ….half narcissist by absorption, half empath by effort. Finding knowledge and cultivating awareness to sew up my wounds so I don’t cut others with my sharp tongue, with every ounce of pain I’ve been carrying.

A brilliant tortured sad lonely beautiful mind.

Capable of warm connection when all the right conditions are present, and also capable of cutting off from emotion like a switch. And then terribly aware of what that feels like for the other person and the damage that has been caused, but unable to correct it until later.

Frozen. Seemingly unfeeling, but very much the opposite.

The child the adult the child the adult the child the adult. Is it any wonder how confusing it all is?

Until she can connect to herself with the written word. A survival tactic. At least this one is a favorable one to balance out the others.

Until she can fully reconnect with herself ….

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Trauma and my Heroes

What no one tells you is that trauma is a lifelong sentence, you didn’t commit the crime for. An invisible dark passenger that makes living and loving an entirely different thing. No matter how hard you try love will never feel like it does for those wired with it.

They just seem to be able to manage better. They don’t need to live going over and over every detail of something looking for threat for a crumb of safety. To add insult to injury the sufferer worries they are crazy, less than, and can be hijacked at any time.

And with trauma comes the many addictions and vulnerabilities the person will blame themselves for: unhealthy love, food, sex, substance, work, busy, isolation, television, scrolling, and on and on.

More evidence to prove their fatal flaw.

Jail is peaceful compared to the bars and cell of your own mind. Your own worst enemy is your constant companion. And everyone expects that you’re a free man.

To all my survivors right now during the Covoid-19 Pandemic. We will be ok. You are not alone. I am right here with you. Never has there been a more triggered time for us my loves. In the words of Glennon Doyle, “We can do hard things”, and we don’t have to do them alone.

So in this 39th year of my life I’ve found myself with something in common with my heroes. The survivors. I’ve found myself at rock bottom. They tell me this is what happens before the ascent. If I could feel anything right now I might believe that. I can’t even feel the water on my skin.

I’m on the bathroom floor with Liz (praying….. like to God), on the Trail with Cheryl, Expecting Adam with Martha, in the Arena with BrenĂ©, underneath with Glennon, lost with Abby, and in my late father’s house lonely and facing myself each day.

Last March I attended the International Women’s Summit, a life changing experience. Elizabeth Gilbert spoke, and sometimes I wonder if our exchange, the hug she gave me, changed the talk she gave that night. If my bravery and tears inspired her. She had made a comment she decided to talk about something else.

She told the story of her late love Rayya. One of the themes of the conference was Mercy. And she described Rayya, since she had been an addict, as having mercy, but also radical boundaries.

Liz spoke of how during her cancer she vowed to take the best care of her, and then how when her stomach lining ripped and she was given pain patches that Liz was putting them on her and she wasn’t getting any relief. She sat and watched her love writhing for several days not understanding and aching herself. She was failing caring for her.

Then she realized days later she hadn’t taken off the thin film of the pain patch to adhere it. So her love had suffered because her own incompetence after vowing to do the best by her. When they realized what had happened Rayya looked at her like she wanted to rescue Liz from her own self hatred that she had done that. She gave her compassion even in all her suffering. The way she describes the look in Rayya’s eyes…. there wasn’t a dry eye in the venue. You could hear a pin drop. Everyone’s breath and their tears.

She was trying to protect Liz from her own pain and herself. Mercy. This is how Liz describes her love with Rayya.

She said she went into the bathroom and got on the floor and she cried like a baby, wracked with sobs. Then she said she thought of her friend who had not been attentive to her toddler and the child ended up injuring themselves and dying. And she thought if her friend could live through that she could forgive herself.

So she said, “I kissed my tiny hand and forgave myself.”

Mercy

She then described the rest of Rayya’s journey which included relapse after all that time clean and how Liz tried to give her what she needed and the money spent, and the drug dealers and how her beloved became lost to her to addiction again in those final days.

And how could she set boundaries, how could she abandon the monster she had created, but her life was a dumpster fire.

So she had to ask for help from Rayya’s drug dealer ex. She had to concede she couldn’t be her angel and hero. So she turned the stash and the monster over to people who had loved her previously.

Left with a crater in her home and her life. She had to move and she was decimated.

Rayya got clean again. One last time. During pancreatic cancer.

She returned to Liz and she said, love if we had time I know this would take years to heal, the pain I’ve caused you. I know who I am as an addict. I will listen to every hurt I’ve caused you. But then could you forgive me?

And they returned to love for her final days…..

And Liz had another bathroom floor moment in her life after Eat Pray Love.

She said that Rayya’s return to and from drugs again during their time together and the pain patch and lessons in mercy was how she downloaded Rayya into her forever.

This is how we keep people, by the most valuable lessons they teach us.

So Mercy on Me right now…..

I am on the bathroom floor and I need to kiss my tiny hand.

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Love In the Time of Corona

Did the love become the virus, or was the virus a manifestation of the love? Can anything truly be that powerful?

Is love helped or hindered by extreme passion?

One of the first loves I ever left was because I watched the movie Serendipity, and I realized then and there I didn’t feel like that and I wanted to. This book was a feature part of that movie. So I downloaded it on audiobook and listened while stocking produce on the shelves at Trader Joe’s all those years ago.

And here I am taking a deeper look at the meaning of this book. Everything truly does come full circle.

I’ve been thinking a lot about adapting lately. Historically when we think of this I would say we also think of evolution. They can go hand in hand. However, adapting can actually go in either direction.

You can adapt to things you would never want to.

I am adaptable nearly to the point of shape shifting. This is a sharp realization as of late. Something I used to be praised for, something I’m being praised for now. It’s labeled patience. But the changes that are happening to me. I’m not so sure.

As always some are good, and some are not so good.

The people of the world are so incredibly anxious right now. We are in the middle of being history. Not making it, but being it. Forced to adapt in ways we never asked for, and feeling rather helpless and scared.

The changes in my life that preceded this I thought I chose. Do we choose our destiny without even realizing it? Or is there truly certain components that go beyond logic and awareness?

I’m reading Untamed by Glennon Doyle Wambach. She says, “What I thought would kill me didn’t. Every time I said to myself I can’t take this anymore- I was wrong.” That she can use pain to become. “I am here to keep becoming truer, more beautiful versions of myself again and again forever. To be alive is to be in a perpetual state of revolution. And pain is the fuel of revolution.”

“Everything I need to become the woman I’m meant to be next is inside my feelings of now. Life is alchemy (uncanny given the entire premise of this blog), and emotions are the fire that turns me to gold. I will continue to become only if I resist extinguishing myself a million times a day. If I can sit in the fire of my own feelings, I will keep becoming.”

Glennon’s words, her warm and funny videos, her audiobook and the paperback, are a life raft for me right now. I found her because my spirit animal Elizabeth Gilbert shouted the praises of Love Warrior. I pre-ordered it purely on recommendation and I was not disappointed.

Some day I hope to join the ranks of these women. Actually I’m already in their ranks, my words just haven’t hit the shelves yet. Thus far mine have the most impact in 1-1 connection. I never met a dream I didn’t tackle. I can know it’s in process/progress now because I wake up with words swimming and begging. They beckon me from my slumber and demand of me.

As you can see my ability to try and intellectualize my feelings rather than boldly state them in the first person, is Olympic in its quality.

My entire life has been lived adapting. Surviving. I thought my word was survivor but truly it’s adapter. Because what I used to survive was to get the hell away from what was happening at home and try and find what felt/ looked healthier than what was happening. I did this by being like-able.

Even more importantly I did this by being useful. I received love in childhood only when I could be useful, never for free. No one ever just delighted in me because I was born. In fact my being born was a sin done by a sinner, and something even my grandparents couldn’t face.

I’m not sure where they went “wrong” or if that can even be put on them. That an older man (a married one I think), got their beautiful young daughter pregnant.

My mom would proudly tout a shirt that said, “good girls go to Heaven, bad girls fo everywhere.” My grandmother hated it. Mom you would be proud the jury is still out on heaven, but I have for sure been everywhere.

Funny about that I spent my entire life wondering what was the good thing, how not to be bad. I have a conscience like you’ve never seen before. Perhaps this is to do with being highly sensitive and having more mirror neurons than the average human. See article on this here: The highly sensitive brain

My good began in earnest but it required the repression of everything I was. I had to be rigid and I sensed way back then I couldn’t grow like that. So I did what Glennon says above except not having any of my resources met, add adaptability and you get a recipe for living to survive, quickly like you’re outrunning a monster (your thoughts about yourself).

Add ADHD and a component of impulsivity and you my friend have the recipe for one hell of a story. And I have 10,000 stories of all the love I have embarked on within one very sad story about a very lonely girl, who never was naturally given the ability to discover her gifts.

I have a lot of stories.

Well if Glennon’s right perhaps I haven’t had it wrong this whole time by feeling things the way that I do. I don’t feel like the humans do. I feel every second of my life in full array. If you knew what it felt like to have all your nerve endings exposed all the time.

Would life be any gentler with me? Would I want it to?

Like Glennon I will feel and I will become. I just wish I had ever been able to undertake these things without needing to keep people along the way for my safety. That I didn’t grow oddly as a product of scarce resources like those trees that grow all bent and sideways because they are reaching for the sunlight.

Nothing is safe right now, not my health, not my heart.

So for now I’m going to have to burn, and find out who I will be on the other side.

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Capital T trauma

I am going to be talking more about my trauma in the coming weeks. How very much it has impacted every corner of my life. My decision making. The way that I live and love. The choices and the way that I make them.

People my whole life have told me how strong I am. They admire what I do and how I do it. But the thing so often missed in all of that is who I am at my core and what I carry around each day.

How can someone be nearing 40 and only doing this work now? How can they not? Most people never do it. It’s almost impossible. I’m still determined to crack the code.

Right now I am researching the freeze aspect of trauma. How when I am overwhelmed I literally can’t move. I have to have a smelling salts wake up, and then I can mechanically make that call or open that piece of mail, but when I’m consumed it’s almost impossible.

I freeze all the time. I freeze when emotions are too overwhelming. And then I berate myself when I don’t reach out warmly and hug my children.

And adult is not supposed to be so scared. But when you carry a hurting child with you….. you can be either at any given time depending on the circumstances.

I present well.

On the inside I’m a tangle of coping mechanisms.

Please love me anyway. When I can’t love myself.

My way of handling my trauma was to give to everyone I’ve ever loved all the love I never was. I thought I had done journey after journey with self love. But truly I’ve done journey after journey of loving someone else so I can even feel the reflection.

Because that’s as close as I’ve ever gotten to love.

And I want to love my kids will all I didn’t have, and I have in so many ways, but connection. I still struggle with that. Because I get overwhelmed so easily.

Because I’m still a scared little girl.

I’m still a scared little girl…..