Community

Self-help Has Been Great But I’m Ready For Community

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I have self-helped myself to the highest levels and I feel incomplete. I have been in therapy on and off for 21 years. I have read an amazing amount of self-help and healing books. I have attended workshops and I have self-reflected and found all of my inner parts. I know my defects. I know my strengths. I know my trauma. I know my mental health needs. I know my relationship quirks. I know my worth. I know my rabbit holes and I know my triggers. I know my cup fillers. I know my cup takers. I’ve learned my no and I’ve learned my yes. I know my favorite color. I know how I like my eggs. I know what I want in a partner and who I want to be in this world.

And…I’m lonely as hell.

I’ve self-helped myself into a corner. In my healing, I needed to cut relationships, set boundaries, create safe spaces, and decide on my participation in relation to other people. I did it! And it was all so necessary for me. I could not have learned what I know now about myself in those old spaces and places, with those old behaviors and roles I had within relationships and organizations. I’m so beyond grateful for the time I have spent with myself, on myself, and for myself. It healed me.

I learned to be the person that I had always needed myself to be. I learned to take care of myself first before I took care of other people. I found all of the parts of me that make up the fantastic person that I am. I would not trade all of that for anything. It was the greatest gift I ever allowed myself.

And…I’m ready for the next level.

What is the next level? The voice of the universe is telling me community. I long to commune with people like myself who have found their healing, their true self, and their purpose. I long to have deep conversations and thoughtful gatherings. I want to laugh in safe spaces and cry in them too. I want to be challenged by people who see my greatness and I want to be held by people who can handle me with care. I want to learn new things and also teach what I know. I want to surround myself with people who have the utmost respect for themselves and who know how to live-not exist-LIVE!

I want to dance and feel safe to do that without anyone invading my space or thinking my body is theirs to touch and fantasize about. I want to eat and experience joy in sharing a meal and not hear about calories and body fat and sugar content. I want to trust that everyone I’m with is able to care for themselves and the day or night will not end with me feeling depleted because they needed my money or protection or emotional life support or wisdom. It’s not that I do not enjoy helping people sometimes with money or protection or emotional support or wisdom but that cannot be my community. Where would I get fed? Where would I get filled up? At this point in my life there are few places that I belong where I don’t leave completely drained. My resources are gobbled up by others who are not doing what they need to be doing for themselves. They want what I have but aren’t willing to do the work I have done to arrive here.

I want a community of compassionate people who adventure, who wonder, who wander and who also have intention. There must be people with love, joy, compassion, self-awareness, hope, fierce sense of right and wrong, and with space for me in their life. There must be safe spaces of healed and healing people who are celebrating and crying and communing together bringing their darkness into the light. I want to go there. I’m asking the universe to bring me to my people. I know that community will take me to my next level.

I am open. I am ready. I am willing. Community or bust!

Willing To Go To Any Length?

“If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it-then you are ready to take certain steps.” -The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous pg 58

I am on a journey. I’m not sure where I am going but I know the direction is forward. My journey started 16 years ago when I entered the rooms of Al-Anon. Al-Anon is group for families and friends of alcoholics. At the time I was living with someone who was drinking too much and it was having a detrimental effect on me and my mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health. Joining Al-Anon gave me support, knowledge, compassion, and strength. It gave me a relationship with a Higher Power that I had long lost and it gave me a place in a community with no other agenda other than supporting one another through life. All of our lives had been affected by someone else’s drinking or addiction. We knew what it was like. There was safety in it, there was comfort in it, there was anonymity in it and I needed all of those things.

Through my years in Al-Anon I have realized that what brought me there was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to the affects of alcoholism on my life as a whole. It was a thread of my life since I was born and long before as I suspect that it has run in my family lines for generations. I don’t have proof of this and am not pointing fingers at anyone down the line, but there are behaviors present in families affected by addiction and boy do we have them.

My suspicion is that I marinated in a good stew of drama in my mama’s belly. Not to blame my mother, she had no more control over her life circumstances than I did when I was growing my own child in me surrounded by dysfunction and not even knowing life could be different. I don’t have blame in my heart, but compassion for all of us affected by generations of living with the affects of addiction, alcoholism, or patterns of behavior shaped by them.

So I’ve been chipping away slowly at this mountain of pain, some mine, some left over from previous generations, and some dumped on me by a society that promotes drinking and vice and shames those living out the effects of it all. When I arrived at Al-Anon I was just willing to show up. I wanted to feel better, but honestly, just tell me how to get someone to quit drinking so I could get on with my happily ever after dream. I was exhausted and not really in the mood for working on me. I didn’t know at the time that me was the only person I was allowed to work on. My plan was to work on everyone who was upsetting me.

So controlling, manipulating, stonewalling, withholding, punishing, and/or being a complete pushover were the only skills I had. I thought they would deliver results if I just kept at them with great gusto. As it turns out, none of these work (if you already knew this then thanks for not letting me in on this info 16 years ago). What they will do for you is destroy relationships, chop away at dignity and respect, and leave you exhausted and mentally, emotionally, and spiritually bankrupt.

Al-anon led me to a community that did not scold me for using these old trick in my bag, for as long as I needed to. They used them too and when we got together, we talked about how much it hurt and how could we learn to do it differently. There was no judgement because we all knew how hard it was to learn a new way of life in the midst of great chaos and generations of learned behaviors. It was my safe haven.

I used to go to AA meetings to learn more about the disease of alcoholism. AA meetings start with a reading of How It Works from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is where the quote above came from “willing to go to any lengths…” and when I first heard it, it struck me hard. I knew hearing it that we were all in the fight for our lives and that we were going to have to battle for it. I’m so glad I learned this early on and that I heard it with the severity that I believe the founders meant for it to have. This was life or death.

I have chosen life. At all cost, and believe me the costs have been great. I am willing, at all times, to do whatever it takes. I’m fighting for me. ME! ME! I’m worth losing everything else for. I will go to any length for myself.

Do I sound selfish? I don’t care. The most loving thing I can do for myself and anyone I love is to take the best care of myself as humanly possible. When I am my best self, I can show up for you as a big giant ball of love and goodness ready to scoop you up and spill my goodness over onto you. When I am practicing self care and healthy boundaries, and self-love I am unstoppable. Who wouldn’t want that for me? I’ll tell you who, those who do not wish to be awakened from their sleep that keeps them in the unconscious behavior patterns they survive on. That’s okay. Just know that I won’t be stopping for you and your comfort, I cannot. I have seen what others in recovery and in healing have and I want it for myself. I am willing to go to any length.

I attended a retreat this weekend that took great bravery to get to. I showed up not knowing what to expect, who would be there, or how it would impact me. I trusted the facilitator. I knew what this person had awareness, love, peace, connection with God, healing and the ability to feel and connect in a deep way with others, and I was willing to go to any length to have those things for myself. I know that great change takes big brave acts of faith. I went and I participated to the full extent of my abilities. I pushed through fear, pain, tears, anxiety, upset, trauma wounds, and on the other side was love, community, connection, acceptance, healing and self-awareness. I’m so glad I went. My life will not be the same.

The picture above is me on the deck the first night before dinner. I’m a mess on the inside wondering if I made the right decision, if I had what it takes to do the work, and doubting my faith in myself and the people I was there with. But I could also hear the words in my head that I heard 16 years ago that struck me right in the heart…willing to do whatever it takes…and I stayed. In return, I reached a new level of healing in my life and found a new layer of myself that had been hidden away and pushed aside by the affects of addiction and trauma on me. Every bit of it was worth it and I look forward to more, hopefully this fall, on this lake, in this house, where I found more of me and people to support me in my search.

Yes, I Marched On the Anniversary of the Women's March

No, I don't need to explain to you why. 

On the anniversary of the Women's March, I was not in my home town. I was not able to march with my people and I was a little bummed about it. I happened to be in another state, and a relative reached out and asked me if I wanted to march at their state capitol. I wasn't sure if I would make it because I was unsure of my schedule, but it worked out that I was free. I packed up the kids and went. 

I haven't had a chance to post about it but I have been reading the online comments left by people responding to news articles in my hometown about our local march. Here is what I noticed...people are demanding to know why we are marching. They are demanding that we explain ourselves. They are attacking women for their language choices, their outfit choices, and for bringing their husbands or children along. And I also notice that people seem to think that their opinions and judgments matter to the women who marched. 

Here's the thing...we aren't asking for permission to march. We aren't asking for your approval, your opinion or your thoughts. I personally don't care what you think of my marching. I could care less if you like the words I choose or the sign I hold. I don't need your permission to have an opinion and I don't need your agreement with my views. 

Last year, I felt differently. It was my first march, my first protest or demonstration as an adult woman and I was nervous. I wan't so sure of myself. I wanted everyone to know why and I wanted their approval. I had just started letting some of my opinions be known. I had just started writing online. I had just started to wonder what it was I did and didn't agree with instead of just going with the flow to keep the peace all the time. 

A lot has happened in a year. I've come to realize that I don't have to please anyone but me. I don't have to explain my thoughts, feelings, or actions to anyone. The only person that I had to please and explain myself to was myself. So no, dude on twitter, I don't need your opinion on my views. You can give them, it is public, but I'm not going to take them to heart. You see, what I've learned this year is that I'm pretty good at judging what is good for me, what I need to do, when I need to fight, what I will allow, and what I will speak out against. And the kicker, I don't have to ask ANYONE else what they think of that. 

Now, some of you, especially the men reading this, will probably say "DUH!" of course you don't need permission from anyone. This is not the experience I have had growing up as a woman in my world. Everyone thought they could exert control over me, my thoughts, my decisions, my time, my beliefs, etc. That has been my experience. I was taught by experience to sacrifice what I wanted and needed to please others. I was taught to be small and quiet and agreeable to be liked and loved and accepted. Was it right? No. But it was my experience. 

So doing it differently is an act of courage and bravery for me. I am breaking an old pattern, I am forging a new path, and it feels amazing and freeing to say, "I don't care one bit what you think of my decisions, beliefs, and choices." and to mean it. I didn't ask and I don't need to know. As always, you can share, after all, this is public. Just know that I am a whole, strong, confident woman who decides for herself what is right for her. 

Driving myself, and my children downtown to a capitol of an unfamiliar city and joining a march for something I believe in was an act of bravery. I did share my beliefs and thoughts with my children in the most truthful way that they could understand. And truth be told, I didn't even have to do that. Because I know that what my children and I experienced that day was an act of love. It was an act of community and an act of bravery that one can feel without explanation. Walking peacefully among so many different types of people, singing, yelling words of love, compassion, acceptance, and empathy was an experience of relationship with others, strangers in fact. But it was intimate. It was powerful. It was truthful. My children saw so many different people, dressed differently or hardly dressed at all, different colors, religions, ethnic groups, sexual orientations, native American women in traditional dress, burning sage, singing, and banging a drum, and not once were they scared. Not once did they feel unsafe or uncomfortable. Bored, maybe (they wanted ice cream-they are six) but never uncomfortable. Accepted. Strangers in a strange town, marching among strangers and we felt loved. 

I am beyond grateful for the experience and for the woman who reached out to welcome me into this experience. I am beyond grateful that I don't need to justify my reasons or my beliefs or my opinions so that people will find me acceptable to them. I'm beyond grateful for my children to have experienced such an uplifting, brave, community event. I feel empowered and I feel powerful. If you have had a similar experience of community, or bravery, or self-empowerment, tell me about it in the comments, I'd love to know about it.