Let's Talk About Healing

I am a member of the twelve step community. I am not an addict or alcoholic but I love addicts and my program of recovery follows the twelve steps just like AA does. We replace the word alcohol with alcoholics because we are recovering from an addiction to thinking that the alcoholic or addict that we love is our responsibility. They are not. They are the responsibility of themselves and their program of recovery.

The Al-Anon program has been my home for over 20 years. Never did I think when I walked in the doors twenty years ago, that I would still be there and that the healing would still be so actively happening in my life. Part of this was that I was young and doing anything for the long term was foreign to me. Part of this was that I had no idea how deeply affected I was by the behavior of alcoholics/addicts and the learned and taught behaviors I inherited.

When I first joined the twelve step community, I heard the steps and when we would talk about the fourth step, people would talk about healing. The fourth step is admitting our shortcomings, our character defects to God, ourselves, and another human being. I was always a good student (well I tried to be) so I went hard. I got a book to guide me and I went deep into what I thought was wrong with me. I wanted to get it all out there and to heal it quick. No mercy. I wrote out all of the terrible things that made me an awful, wrong, and defective person. I talked to a sponsor, I told anyone who would listen, and made sure God knew just who He/She was dealing with. I waited to be fixed, healed, have my shortcomings removed.

I’m not going to lie, things did change and get better for me in certain ways right away. I gained knowledge and skills about alcoholism and how to let go of people and things that weren’t my responsibility. I became more peaceful, more reliable, less frantic and less co-dependent. I didn’t always allow someone else’s choices or words or actions affect me greatly. It was a great relief and I felt so much better when I attended my meetings and practiced my program. I do think it saved my life in that I learned to take myself out of danger. I learned boundaries and I learned about safety.

In meetings I would hear people say that healing or recovery was like peeling back the layers of an onion. I understood that to mean that each time you took a look at yourself in a fourth step, you would heal on a deeper level. It made sense to me that you would start with small things and move on to bigger and bigger things until you got to the core. I kept going in the program not ever really wondering what the core would be like but knowing that it was the goal or the true healing. I wanted to get there.

I’m beginning to realize that the core is a moving target. It is not a place you ever arrive at because you are never the same person. Day after day you grow and change. Day after day you heal, you hurt, you grow, you learn and you never stop. Day after day you have experiences in this world that affect you and others around you and you will have to process it at some point. I was never meant to get to the core, as I thought I would. It isn’t a destination or an ending. It is an idea like a mountain summit where you rest before continuing the climb because the mountain never stops growing.

I am gifted with a sponsor who is a wayfarer. She never stops traveling the mountain of healing and recovery. There is no dust on her hiking shoes, she does her work, and she works her program. The most important lessons that I have learned from her are that life never stops coming at you, no matter how healed you are, no matter how much work you have done, there is always more to do, because life happens. And that life is messy, unfair, wonderful, scary, marvelous, and that it just is. If we want to have a life, we have to accept whatever comes our way.

No one I know is more healed and no one I know deserves a life of ease and joy as much as her. And yet she is still healing. The lessons come, the memories continue, the path gets blocked, the legacy of the affects of alcoholism and loving alcoholics continues. I feel so honored that she trusts me enough to tell me the truth about recovery. That she doesn’t pretend that if you only follow a program, work your steps, and attend your meetings, life will be easy and that you can rest in the notion of finally being healed once and for all. She tells me often that it is like riding a bike, if you want to keep going places on your bike, you have to keep pedaling, you cannot coast forever or your bike won’t go.

I’m at another mountain summit. This last leg of the journey has been tough. I’ll be honest in that this was one of the more challenging climbs that I’ve had in a while. I feel like there were energy sucking lessons all along this path. I feel like I had these views that I would catch a glimpse of but couldn’t make out until I got to the summit. The lessons hurt, in my heart, my soul, my mind, and especially my body on this leg of my journey. I have been physically ill for many months with many different things, letting me know that all is not well in me.

This leg of my journey has been filled with grief. I feel like I’ve reached a part in my healing and recovery journey where I can see more clearly the places I have visited in the past and can only now see and feel how hard it was to be in those spaces having those experiences. I am remembering the people who I loved so much that aren’t traveling with me anymore and I miss them. Many of them didn’t want to travel any higher on the mountain. Some of them weren’t capable and I had to decide whether to stay on that summit or keep traveling. Some of them aren’t alive anymore.

The most grief I feel is when I look back and I can see the version of me that I was when I had reached each summit, and especially the me that wandered around in the valley below not even knowing that there was a mountain to climb. She has my whole heart, that girl down there with no hope, no direction, no idea what a great hiker she would be if only she knew about mountains. I look back now and see my first summit, where I found my voice and my courage and I love that me so much. She was so brave to seek out recovery. She was so brave to leave. She was so brave to ask for help. She was so brave to stay in those recovery rooms. She was so brave to ask for a sponsor. She was so brave to challenge all of her training and forge a new path.

The grief comes as I admire her and acknowledge that she had no idea that none of it was her fault. She was climbing that mountain with a giant bag of inherited generational trauma. Hiking alone is hard, hiking with a big bag of shit that isn’t yours is almost impossible. At every summit, I have chucked rocks that I realize weren’t mine out of that bag. Even in that lightening of my load, there is grief and confusion. How did that get in my bag? And sometimes when I get the answer, it just shows me that many other people that I loved had carried that weight around their entire life too. You grieve when you know that the ones you love have hurt also. Generations of pain and hurt create deeper and deeper valleys that many never get out of. Many didn’t know there were healing mountains to climb, they never had a chance.

I feel like the lesson I have just learned is that it is okay to travel alone. That if someone is slowing down my journey or asking me to wait up, it is okay to say no and leave them. One of the weights in my big bag I inherited or learned is codependence. People pleasing. Not being okay if the people around me aren’t okay. I learned to give my energy, time, attention, focus, love, and self away to others. I learned to shrink to please smaller thinking people. I learned to dim my light for people not used to the sunshine. I learned to comply, to appease, and to invest in others before investing in myself.

This makes traveling up a healing mountain very tiring. It slows me down. The thing I never realized until now is that I did not trust myself to travel alone. I didn’t want to be alone. I thought it was my job to drag everyone I love or who loves me up that mountain with me. I didn’t trust that I would meet new people at the next summit or further up the mountain if I let go of the ones that were slowing me down. I will admit that there is an abundance of people down in the valley of dysfunction. I couldn’t walk a step without running into potential friends or lovers and family down there. The further up the healing mountain I go, the less people I see traveling. It scares me. It makes me wonder if there will come a point where I stop seeing people on the path or at the summits. I yearn for connection so badly but do not want to travel down the mountain to get it.

My decision has been to trust. To look around, really look around for people who are on the mountain with me. They aren’t all gone. Some are just people I am used to traveling with and I forget to be grateful for their love and presence. My children are here and they love me. My recovery friends are here and they love me. My family is here, we may not be at the same summit but they see me and they are proud of me. My pets are happy to travel wherever I go. My co-workers are good people and they challenge and inspire me in my professional journey. There is love and support available to me and I won’t close myself off to it because it didn’t show up in the form I thought it would or in the person I had hoped it would be in. I will be grateful for anyone I encounter on this healing journey.

I am willing to leave this rock called codependency and all the other rocks I have found in my pack this year that weren’t mine to carry here at this summit. They will be left in 2023. I’m going to go forward up the mountain. I feel lost without the weight of these things I am leaving, I got used to their weight and I thought they would always be with me. There is guilt leaving them behind because some people rely on me to have these rocks to be in my life. I will leave them too. The grief will come, maybe now and maybe far from now as I look back, but it will come.

I’ve decided that I do trust myself to travel alone. I have decided that I’m good company and that I enjoy being alone with myself. The mountain is my mountain. The healing is my healing and I’ve decided that I want it no matter what. The never ending onion peel doesn’t scare me like it used to because I am letting go of the fantasy that I’ll reach a point in life where life stops happening and it is just an easy coast everyday. The only place that coasting happens is in the valley or down the mountain and I do not live in the valley anymore. I am not going down the mountain. I have chosen to climb and to heal and so I will keep looking forward, up, toward healing deeper and deeper.

Pieces of Me

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my energy and who and what I give it to. This pandemic has been awful for many reasons but it has given me a chance to challenge what and who I have deemed important in my life. I have had a chance to evaluate where my energy goes and to make some decisions about that.

Last March, when I was told to go home and not come to work, not to send my children to school, and to stay home, I sighed a huge sigh of relief. I had been burning the candle at all ends and I was exhausted. Being told to stay home and do nothing was a permission slip I didn’t know how badly I needed until I got it.

I had been working full time, taking two online graduate degree classes, parenting two children at home and one away at college, and really working hard at creating the kind of relationship I wanted with my husband. I said yes to every meeting, opportunity and extra thing with work because I had been out of the workforce for a long time and didn’t think I could say no because the new person has to say yes to be liked. My kids were in sports and our time was spent doing that most weekends and many week nights. My plate was full and everytime I took a bite, another mound of food was plopped down on my plate. I just kept eating because I was afraid to say that I wasn’t hungry. How do you take a sledgehammer to the life you actively worked to create but is killing you?

Well I didn’t have to. The global pandemic did it for me. Sports, work, school, socializing, and even leaving my house were no longer on the table. I couldn’t do any of it. All of the things that were keeping me busy and demanding my time and attention were gone. Aside from the absolute fear of getting corona virus, I was so relieved. I was excited to be able to think straight enough to finish my two projects for my grad school classes. I could cook a meal for my family and have time to sit down and enjoy it instead of grabbing food before or after practices. I could clean my house, read a book, and finally be free of all the distractions that kept me from having the relationships I wanted with the people in my house.

I realized how many pieces of me I had given away to things outside of me. So much energy going out and not a lot coming back in. I know that was the case because I was so tired and so relieved when it all stopped. I realized that I had a chance to think about it all and gather up my pieces.

I started with the easy stuff, like gathering up the time I had spent driving to and from work and to and from practices and I used it to do things like read or knit or paint or write. I gathered up my energy that was being consumed by a full time teaching job and while I wasn’t doing it, I thought about how I could do it better and smarter. I gave myself permission to imagine teaching in entirely different ways. I imagined teaching my students in a wide open space under a tent or in park or forest. What would I teach them? What content could be thrown away and replaced with real life experience? What have to’s and must do’s are just a waste of time and how could I teach if I didn’t have those restrictions on my time and energy. I remembered that I teach because I love knowing that I am inspiring young people to think for themselves, to solve problems, and how to be a person in a world of other people. To be kind, compassionate, passionate, and regulated. I began to get excited about the things we could do differently if all of our expectations were removed.

For so long, I had allowed the excuse of being busy and distracted to accept less than I wanted in relationships. We were all too busy to put in the effort required. We were too busy to connect, too busy to make the time and effort, too busy to change. When the world stopped, instead of taking advantage of all of this time to connect, to make time, to put in effort and to change, we didn’t. It made me beyond sad to know that the external excuses were a mask for internal unhappiness and inability to grow and change together. I was unable to fully process this truth for a few months but was glad to have the clarity. So much of my energy and so many of my pieces were wrapped up in that aspect of my life that I almost didn’t know who I was without it. When I started gathering them up one at a time, it all felt awful. It felt like taking apart something I thought was going to be so beautiful but just didn’t work. There would be no perfect puzzle, no complete picture. Just my pieces that were no longer needed and I didn’t know what to do with them. In fact I felt like many of those pieces were going to be left there on the floor because they were not who I wanted to be, not who I was going to be.

While I continue to be grateful for the pause and the chance to reevaluate my life, I would like for this pandemic to be over. It is beyond my comprehension that over 500,000 people have died so far and we are not finished. I am also beyond grateful that I did not lose anyone close to me as of now. The grief I feel for those I didn’t even know is heavy enough.

As I continue on in this new year I am learning so much about my pieces. There are happy, loving pieces like in the picture above. And there are sad, lonely, grief-stricken and exhausted pieces of me as pictured below. I can feel both at the same time and it is hard. One of the biggest lessons I have learned is that it serves me well to be very protective of my pieces. They are me. They are who I am. If I give them all away, I am not whole. I’m beginning to see that I don’t need to give anything away at all, in fact I shouldn’t give my pieces away. I should keep them and keep building my picture of what Carie looks like whole. I can show my pieces to others and let them experience me whole (or as whole as I am at this point) but not give anything away. What does that mean?? I’m struggling to understand it myself but I have some ideas.

Me feeling sad, sad, lonely, grief-stricken and exhausted .

What if I got the wrong message in life and that no one is meant to give themselves away at all? I have been trying to come to grips with the idea that I only need to allow people to see my pieces, not have them. That they can get a glimpse and decide what they think of me in pieces, but also as a whole whose pieces fit together. For example, I might want you to think that I am a hard worker, so in the past, I would have given you my hard worker piece, and hid away the piece of me that gets tired, needs a break, needs help, and just isn’t going to do certain things because I am lazy. Well if I only show you that one piece of me and hide the other, you will think I’m a great employee or great worker, but my part that I’m hiding is going to get sick of being forced to hide. I will burn out because I’m not allowed to be all pieces of me, just the one I show you or give you that shows you I’m a hard worker. I will spend my time out of your sight unable to get dressed, letting my house be a mess, light bulbs will go unchanged, and mundane tasks go undone because I only have the energy to put into the piece you can see. My hidden part rages when you aren’t looking or can’t see.

This year I have tried to be real and whole. I have said no at work. I have asked for help. I have allowed more of my whole picture to be seen so that I don’t have to hide that part of me that cannot attend not one more meeting at the end of a hard week. I don’t have to hide that I love to work hard but I also need to rest and recharge and sometimes only put in half effort. I feel better, like I can be all of me and not be ashamed of the part of me that just doesn’t have it in me to give 100% to my job every single day. I feel like I can imagine somethings that are new and different and not put so much energy in things that I don’t believe are worth my energy and effort.

Another example is with people that I love. I am learning that I do not have to give to them only the pieces that they like and hide the other parts. For example, my kids love fun and responsible mom who does everything for them, keeps their lunches packed, does all the cleaning, and still has time and energy to plan fun trips or adventures. I would hide the part of me that could hardly keep up, didn’t care if they ate snack cakes for lunch as long as I didn’t have to pack it, and the one that was too tired to adventure and plan. This led to unrealistic expectations from my kids about me. I could not live up to it forever and I am now not living that way. I took back the perfect mom piece and transformed it with a real mom piece. She works full time and needs them to pack their own lunches. She sometimes spends hours in front of a television on a beautiful Saturday morning because it has been a long, draining week and she needs to rest instead of plan an adventure. She also dances in the kitchen when she does the dishes and cooks because that fills up her cup and she doesn’t want to hide her joy from her kids. I’m no longer giving away a shiny piece of me for my kids to consume without ever seeing my rusty pieces too. Now they are seeing two pieces of my large puzzle that all have their place. Everyone likes shiny pieces, but they aren’t real. Trying to be a perfect mom is not sustainable and in reality, it isn’t the truth. Why would I hide my imperfect parts from my own children? They need to see all of me so that they know it is okay to be shiny and rusty and that it gives the whole picture depth and dimension.

I feel like I’ve went down a deep existential rabbit hole with this one, but it is where my mind and thoughts have been. It feels bad to give away your shiny pieces and hide your rusty or imperfect pieces. It will destroy you. It is also lying to others when you only show your best pieces and and not let them know the entire you. I am getting very particular about who gets to see my puzzle. I have started showing pieces that are shiny but attached to rusty and imperfect pieces to people and in all honesty, many don’t like it. They prefered my offering of shiny attached to nothing pieces that weren’t really me. So my audience is shrinking but my puzzle is growing. I put a lot of time into learning my pieces and what I want them to look like and how I want them to fit together so that I can love and appreciate the beautiful creation of me. It won’t be for everyone, but I don’t want to be for everyone if I can’t be all of me.

Random Ramblings of a Woman

Freedom

I want and crave it so much. I am learning to give it to myself. Freedom from expectations. Freedom from should have’s and could have’s. I want freedom from the ties that bind me to unhealthy relationships. I want freedom from the ties of traditional thinking. I want freedom from the way it has always been. I want freedom to dream new ways of being and for new ways for everything to be. The freedom to be imperfect and the freedom to learn as I go. I want and need the freedom to be any size, shape, and condition I need to be at the moment in my body and my mind. I need to be able to be all of me. Even the parts that people don’t like, I won’t hide them anymore. I want to say my favorite color is black and not purple and that doesn’t make me a vampire or emo or dark. I just love black. It is the most beautiful. I taught my youngest daughter that it was okay to declare that but didn’t allow myself to declare it-until now. I want to be an imperfect parent and be allowed grace for that. I want the freedom to not be perfect sometimes. I want to skip a meeting, be late on a deadline, and not kill myself trying to look like I always have it together. FREEDOM. I want to change my mind. I want to not wear makeup. I want to learn from my mistakes. I want to be out adventuring and exploring even though it can get scary. I want to throw my heart into the arena even though so many will step on it and not see its goodness. And then I want to cry about that and still know that I am strong. I want to be a weirdo. I am a weirdo. I like most weirdos as long as they are not hurtful.

Fat

I just want to let myself be fat for now. I want to be completely unbothered by it. I want to acknowledge that the only part of me that cares is the part of me that wants you to think I look good or attractive or healthy. I do not feel unhealthy. I could maybe be a little bit more active as in strength training and endurance but as far as being active, I am. I go hiking. I go swimming. I go bike riding. I play sports with my kids. I cook, clean, work, dance, and am able to do anything I want to do. My body is thriving. I do not have high blood pressure, diabetes, pain, or anything that tells me I need to change my body, except a number on a scale and a chart called a BMI. I don’t smoke, drink, or overconsume caffeine. I eat balanced meals and I don’t restrict my choices. I like chocolate but I don’t eat it for lunch. I like fast food but only for those days when we need food fast. I am a good cook and I eat my vegetables (most of them). I love fruit and I love salad. I am relatively strong and I move a lot. Can we just stop telling people that skinny is healthy? I know some skinny people that are living on a fifth of vodka, oreos, and cheetos. They have high blood pressure, no endurance and rotting teeth. If you put the two of us side by side and asked the public who was healthier, most would pick the skinny person. Skinny equals healthy right? Enough about that. I love myself and I feel pretty good. I’ll loose weight if I want to but this weight has come for a reason. Stress, hormone and bodily changes, trauma response, and actually listening to and feeding my body. I used to eat a snickers and drink a mountain dew for lunch after I smoked a cigarette or two. Now I eat a salad and drink water. I weigh more now because I actually feed myself three meals a day.

Mouthy and Bossy

I’m tired of being quiet and suffering in silence. I’m getting mouthy and bossy in my old age and I love it. I have a long way to go because I have been trained so well to be nice and quiet. I am starting to speak up, to question, and to let people just deal with it. I don’t want to hide my real feelings just to spare yours. I am done with that. Glennon Doyle writes in “Untamed” that she will disappoint everyone one else before she ever disappoints herself again. I have taken it as my goal. Me over you. Not that I don’t love you and care what you have to say, but if I need to disappoint myself and dishonor myself for you to be happy or accepting of me, I don’t need you. If you would have me do that to myself, you do not honor and love me either. So we might get into it once in a while. I might stand up for myself and say things that you don’t want to hear. I won’t tolerate people that prefer me to be small and quiet and not have an opinion. I want to be the boss of my life and I want to say what I want to say, how I want to say it. I’m not mean, but I will say what I mean. I think that eventually, people will feel safe around me because I will be direct and they won’t need to wonder where they stand.

Energy

I have really been trying to pay attention to who and what I give my energy to. I find that some people and some things are really worth the energy expelled because they give it right back. Most of the time I feel this way about my children, my pets, and my close friends. I am always looking for people who can match my energy. Not that we always need to match energy, but that we balance out in the energy exchange. There is give and take but I never feel like you are sucking the life out of me. I am so tired of energy drainers. Those people and things that attach themselves to your energy flow and take it for themselves. For these people and things, there is never enough. They will take and take, living off of you like a parasite and they will not notice or care that you are getting weaker. They are here for themselves. You feel good to them and they are not worried about how you feel. I took so long to learn this about people and things. I thought all interactions were give and take, and that if you gave enough, it would soon be your turn to take. It has been a hard lesson to have given and given and then when it was time for me to withdraw, the account was empty and there was nothing there for me to have. Work can be this way if I am not careful with my giving. Friendships can be this way if I am not careful with my choices of who I spend my time with. Family can be this way if you do not have boundaries and agreements. I get so confused sometimes when I’m bursting with energy and there seems to be so many around that want to be with me and around me but when I need a refuel or a kind word, or a bit of attention the rooms are empty, the texts are unread or not responded to or the plans are canceled. I used to blame myself for being needy. Now I know that I just mistook energy attachers for real connection and relationship. I mistook fair weather friends for ride or die friends. I mistook attention and excitement for care and concern. It’s okay. Some lessons can only be learned through repeated experience. The lesson I’ve taken from all of this is to protect my energy. I need to watch and wait for people to show how they will show up for me in life. Will they be in that room when it is darkness instead of sunshine? Will they think of me when I can’t be who they were hoping I would be? Will they provide the energy sometimes when I need a rest or do they just show up when I have it to give?

Thanks for letting me ramble. I had a lot going on upstairs this morning and I’m glad to have a space to think it out through writing. Life is so wild. I never could have planned for any of this but I love it so. Love to all of you, especially me ;)

I Made A Trip To The Hardware Store For Bread

In my defense, I thought I was going to the bakery. I was wrong.

I recently wrote about capacity. Capacity is someone’s ability to do anything really, but the focus of my writing was someone’s capacity to give and receive love. There are people in this world that have a 10 gallon hats worth of capacity for love, empathy, understanding, and comfort. There are people in this world with a 1 gallon hat capacity for love, empathy, understanding, and comfort. Neither is wrong or bad but it is good to know your own capacity and that of others. This can help you set your expectations of the other person correctly. You cannot know that a person is a one gallon person and expect 10 gallon love from them, it isn’t fair to either of you..

Tonight I got a lesson, a hard lesson, in capacity. It hurt. Ouch. Because even if you understand capacity and what your capacity is, you can be mistaken about someone else’s capacity and it can hurt. I’m an optimistic person and I think positively about most people unless I have a good reason not to. Many times I just assume someone is a ten gallon person unless they have shown me they are not. I trust people until I have reason not to. It really hurts me sometimes but I cannot imagine going through life the opposite way. Especially as a teacher, mother, friend, it serves me well to believe that anyone could be anything they want to be. I may have been born a one gallon capacity person but life has worn me by experiences that have carved me ten gallons deep. I believe that anyone can be worn deeper and deeper by life or by willingness. Sometimes I confuse comfort with capacity. Just because I’m comfortable with you doesn’t mean you have the capacity I might expect.

When I turned to a friend tonight, I was very specific about what I needed. I explained it clearly and asked if they could meet me in the space I needed to be met in. I needed to let my guard down, be irrational, be vulnerable and have them feed me certain words I knew I needed to hear. It was a weird but simple request. They accepted. I picked up the phone and let myself go to a place I only show to a very select few people in my life. They are my bakeries that I know will always have fresh bread for me. They can meet me in the ten gallon depths. I wasn’t positive that this person was a ten gallon friend and I didn’t know if they were a bakery, but I had basically written a script for them to follow so that they could bake the bread even if they weren’t sure how. I literally gave them the words that I needed to hear back and told them when to say them to me.

Painfully, there was no bread. No bakery. No ten gallon depths. Instead of a warm bakery I suddenly found myself in a cold hardware store full of hammers, saws, and sharp, hard objects. Opinions I didn’t ask for were given. Harsh words about getting over it and moving on and being happy were said. Judgement of my state of vulnerability, grief, and emotional state followed. The listening I had asked for was cut short with questioning and the words of comfort I had requested were never said. Ouch.

My first reaction was to sit in shock, but then for some strange reason, I started to try to explain myself. I would not recommend taking this path if you should ever find yourself in the hardware store when you thought you were entering a bakery. Hardware store people do not understand bread, they just don’t. Next time, I hope that I will simply say “Oopsie, I suddenly find myself in a hardware store and I was looking for bread, I have to leave now.” Learn from my pain. Sitting on the phone trying to explain your heart to someone who can’t hear you is abusive to yourself. I forgive myself for participating longer than I should have, I was just very surprised. I don’t open myself to many people and my very small group has some ten gallon people in it. I guess I didn’t realize that this person was not capable. I’m sure I hurt both of us with the assumption that they were.

I can see how difficult it would be to find yourself in a situation where someone you know and care about is crying and hurting and needing something from you and you don’t know how to fix it. I had not asked to be fixed, to be clear, I had asked to be listened to and to be given words that I provided, but that isn’t what was interpreted by this person. They felt like they needed to fix it, to make it better, and to offer advice and opinion that wasn’t needed. Wires were crossed and it was very uncomfortable, yucky, and it hurt. We won’t continue to be friends after this. Not out of anger or revenge or anything other than self-preservation. I cannot be in relationship with people who cannot see me, hear me, or meet me in the ten gallon depths. We can say hello at the grocery store, we can like each other’s dog pics on Facebook, and we can wish each other well in the future, but we cannot be friends.

It is a privilege and an honor to be invited into someone’s inner world, into their depths. It is a sacred space where people are allowed to be vulnerable, irrational, deeply hurt, contradictory, and to be given space to be perfectly imperfect and human. It is a space where grief lives alongside love, where reality gets mixed up with the ghosts of the past and you need someone on the outside to just pull you back with a kind word. Shame is not allowed in this sacred space. Judgement is not allowed in this sacred space. Advise is not needed in this sacred space. What is needed is love, understanding, and presence. Sometimes you just have to let someone fall apart and lay next to them and say nothing except “I’m here. I don’t understand it, it scares me, I don’t have any answers, but I’m not going anywhere.”

I must confess that I got the hardware store/bread example from Al-Anon recovery groups. There is a reading or a saying that says going to an alcoholic and expecting them to meet your needs is like going to the hardware store for bread. You aren’t going to get what you need, they aren’t capable. So we can punish the alcoholic for not being able to meet our needs and shame them for their lack of capacity, or we can move on and find the people out there that can meet our needs. It is mean to stay in a relationship with someone and expect them to give you things that they cannot.

The journey to find out who is capable is hard. Sometimes you are pleasantly surprised by someone’s capacity and depth and sometimes you find yourself in the hardware store with no bread to be found. There is grief in going home empty handed and there is hurt if you found yourself on the receiving end of opinion, judgment, and harshness when you bear your soul to someone. Walk away, have a good cry, say ouch, call a ten gallon person and have a good laugh about your surprise hardware store visit. The one thing my ten gallon friend reminded me of tonight is that just because someone is incapable of giving us what we want, it doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with us. I shouldn’t feel bad for baring my soul and allowing someone in, I should not feel bad that I needed something or that I needed to fall apart.

Some people want you to be different because you make them uncomfortable. They would prefer you to suck it up, get over it, be happy so that they can be more comfortable around you. Do not listen to that bullshit. That is what people who don’t ever go below the surface say to people who frequently swim in the depths. I used to be scared of deep water too, of life and it’s pain and depths, contradictions and unfathomable complications. I’ve done my work. I’ve put on my oxygen tanks and I’ve trusted myself enough to dive deep into all of my pain and hurt and trauma and heartbreak. I’ve watched things coming in the distance that looked like sharks and I wanted to swim as fast as I could to the surface and never look back, but I didn’t. I stayed and sometimes it was a shark, with big fucking teeth that scared the hell out of me, but I stood there and faced it. I stayed down there long enough to learn what is a shark and what is just a parrotfish that looks like a shark in the distance but up close is just a big beautiful fish. It is frighteningly beautiful in the depths and there is nothing down there that is going to make you comfortable, you just get used to the uncertainty and realize that that is what makes life beautiful.

So if you find yourself in a hardware store when you really needed bread, leave. You do not have to spend long time comforting the hardware store person for not having what you need or shame them or convince them that they should look into stocking bread. Just leave that store, it is not your store. Get your butt back in your car and drive to the bakery. The place that you know will have bread. Go there.

If you think you might be a hardware store and you think you would rather be in the bread business, do your work. You can start with these little gems of advice:

When someone is crying in your presence, shut up. Do not talk. If you cannot bring yourself to comfort them with a hug or if you cannot just say that you don’t know what to do but that you are there for them, then at least just shut up and don’t try to stop the crying just so you can feel comfortable.

When someone warns you that they are going to show you something difficult, personal, and painful take a deep breath or two, shut your mouth, and practice saying these words in your head “I am here. This sounds painful and difficult and personal, thank you for sharing that with me. I don’t know what to do or say but I’m here.” If you can’t say those things, let them know that you don’t have the capacity right now and that maybe they should not share.

When someone is grieving, you do not get to tell them how to do that. Yes, I can post a montage of pictures of myself with my ex-husband on social media and say that I miss him on the day that he died. I can choose to remember the part of him that loved me deeply, just like I loved him deeply. That does not mean that I forgot all of the pain, the hurt, the traumatic experiences that I had with him. It means that grief, divorce, addiction, abuse, love and loss are fucking messy and complicated. You do not have to understand my journey to honor that I’m on it. You can be confused by it but understand that I am not. I’ve done my work.

Never tell someone to get over it, move on, and just be happy. Not when it comes to their life experiences. You tell someone to get over it, move on, and just be happy when they ordered no onions on their burger and the cook gets it wrong and they have to pick the onions off the burger. If you have not experienced the deeply personal, tragic, painful life experience that this person who is confiding in you has, do not ask them to kindly get over it so that you can feel better around them. If you cannot handle them, they kindly exit their life and do both of you a favor. Insisting that a person get over something and assuming that there is something wrong with them if they cannot is mean. Expecting someone to be happy all the time is denying that person their full humanity.

When someone isn’t handling something the way that you would, again, close your mouth. You need to sit back and let that person have the dignity to make their own mistakes, their own choices, and go through their own pain. Do you really think you know what is best for someone else? Do you really understand the complexity of their life? Do you really not trust them to do what is best for themselves? If you have not been asked specifically for advice do not give it. If you have been asked specifically for advise you can practice saying “I’m not you and I don’t know what I would do in that situation, but I know you will figure it out.” The only exception I have for this is if someone’s life is in danger. Feel free to tell them to get out and offer to help.

Last, if you find yourself face to face with someone who came to you thinking you were a bakery and you realize that you are a hardware store with no bread, do not be personally offended when that person has to leave because you don’t have what they need. There are plenty of people in the world that need hammers and saws and the things you have to offer. It doesn’t mean that you should change what you have to offer (though my local hardware store does have bread and donuts) but don’t chase after someone trying to sell them a hammer, trying to convince them to stay in your store and get what they don’t need and didn’t ask for. Point them in the direction of a bakery and let them go.

I’m physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted. I’m a person with a large capacity to hold others and their truth, pain, and sorrow. I was looking for someone to show my own depths to, only wanting a few comforting words to tell me that the shadows I was seeing in the depths weren’t sharks, just parrotfish that wouldn’t hurt me. I picked the wrong person tonight. It hurt. I won’t do that again with that person but I won’t let it change me and desire to be met in the depths. I will let them go in love and I will remember that all is not lost. Just a couple of humans being human and hurting each other, it’s what we do. My reminder to myself is that I can meet myself in the depths. I can go there with my Higher Power and my wise self and tell myself those words I had so wanted to hear. So I’m off to have my own back, to comfort myself, and to tell myself that I was brave for trying.

Take good care out there.

Sunday Prayer

A Personal Prayer Offered To My Higher Power

Sharing my heart during these dark times seems like the right thing to do. Be gentle dear ones.

Dear Goddess,

Please be with me today. Help me to just be, to live in each breath and to feel each moment.

Help me to focus with gratitude on what shows up for me today and keep me from wanting what is not available. Help me to embrace the truth and to rid myself of wishful or deceitful thinking.

Be with me as I keep my heart open, even when it wants to close. Help me to receive all of the goodness and love that is available to me today.

Help me to accept any hurts or violations of boundary and let my hurt tell me what needs to be done.

Help me to know my truth and not to allow anyone to talk me out of it with slick words or masked intentions.

Help me to inhabit my body as a fully awake woman who is able to handle and process any sensations that arise because I am the decider of my actions. My feelings and my body do not control me, they just inform me.

Be with me when old habits call like an old, comfy sweater to lure me away from new habits and adventures. There will be other sources of comfort on this journey and the old ones won’t fit anymore. Help me to have patience and calm while the way is made clear and new comforts are prepared.

Help me to never feel shame for the love I have in my heart that bubbles up and bursts out of me and onto others. It is not too much, it is not meant to be kept inside. It is a gift, not a weakness to love and to share it is brave. Holding it in is what scared people do. I don’t have to be scared and sharing my heart with safe people is the most important thing I can do right now.

Be with me as I tackle responsibilities that make me doubt my strength and abilities. Never, ever have I failed to survived anything that has tested me. Please have my back and remind me when I forget, that I am a badass.

Lastly, please look after the hearts of those I love. My people keep me sane, strong, and humble. I need them and I want them safe and loved. Let us all be an example of living with in open heart, a humble heart, full of love even when the world tells us to close it, to protect it and to fear.

Help me to embody a fully alive, brave, strong, empathetic, and love filled woman today. Help me to play, rest, work, create, and to love my people and myself well.

Amen

A Letter to Myself During This Time of Change

Above all else guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. -Proverbs 4:23

Dear Self,

Life has changed rapidly in just a few months and it is okay to feel unsettled. Feeling unsettled doesn’t mean you are doing anything wrong or that things are not exactly how they need to be. It just means that you are feeling the reality of life, the growing pains of change.

Your oldest child left for college, you went back to teaching full time, your twins are in different classes at school for the first time, you rescued a cat and lost a dog traumatically. You went from seeing a counselor twice a week to asking that same counselor to leave your life in a pretty traumatic turn of events. You went from spending almost every day outside in nature to spending days at a time not being outdoors more that just walking to and from your car.

I know that you do not understand the purpose of all of this change yet. The water is still settling and you cannot see the bottom. I know that it drives you crazy to feel so unsettled and so uncomfortable but you are making your way through. I also know that you have been too busy with work to process some of this stuff. Maybe that is also as it should be? I do not know.

It is really hard in uncertain times to trust your heart and to trust that you will make it through all of the changes and be okay. That your heart won’t always be broken, that you won’t always feel so lost and sad, and that it wont always be this hard. It is hard to believe that these growing pains are leading you to a better place, or maybe just a different place where you will have a new normal. It is hard to feel uncertain and uncomfortable and to struggle with your confidence in yourself, but it is a normal feeling when experiencing dramatic changes in your life.

So trust your heart to the voice that told you to follow that path. It never said that it would be an easy path. Trust your heart to heal after loss and trauma as it has done so many times before. Trust that though your child is out of your home and on her own path, that you will continue to roll with the evolution of her life and remain a touchstone for her. Trust that you had the counselor you needed when you needed him and that others will come when they are needed also. Trust that what other people are going through in their own lives doesn’t have to involve you and that you can be as involved as you choose to be, for your own health and sanity.

Most of all trust your heart to lead you through the murky water until it settles and things become more clear. Be grateful for the chance to grow again and to embrace change (even if it is soooooo beyond uncomfortable). But also trust yourself to protect your heart from negativity, from abuse and pain, and from those who don’t see your worth and your value. Trust that you will know what to do and when to do it and that you can face great pain without shutting down your heart of compassion for others.

Go outside everyday. Pet every dog you see. Show up every day, be present, and do your best. Be grateful for phone calls and Snapchats when they come. Love on your family. Let people help you. Allow yourself to feel your feelings and to process the changes and the losses. They are real and they are affecting you. Lean into your HIgher Power for strength when you don’t have any, love when you feel alone, guidance when you feel lost, and for comfort when none of it makes sense.

Love,

Me

The Gift of Beans

How one little dog changed my life forever.

March 3, 2018 we were supposed to go skiing. The weather turned warm and our trip was cancelled. I suggested we take a trip to Grand Rapids to PetSmart where a cute dog I had seen online was supposed to be ready to be adopted. My husband and kids agreed to my surprise and off we went.

The whole way there we talked about how we might not get the dog. He might not be right for us, they might not pick us for his owners, etc. We were all cautious. We had not had a dog in three years. Our last dog had passed away from illness and we were in no hurry to own another with our busy lives.

Well we got to PetSmart and they told us that Beans wouldn’t be coming to the event. I was heartbroken. I told them how far we drove and wondered if we could meet up with the owner while we were there? They told us the owner was way back up in Newaygo Michigan but would meet us at the rescue if we were willing to drive. For some reason, I was willing to do whatever it took to meet Beans.

When Beans arrived he bolted out of the truck and took off to smell all the smells with vigor. He was a brownish orange fluffy fox of a dog. His owner was blunt about his quirks and his needs. We loved him immediately but wanted to be sure. We took him home with the stipulation that we could bring him back if it didn’t work out at home.

The minute we brought Beans into our home, life changed forever. He was a force of energy. He was high strung, always wanted to play, destroyed balls, gutted stuffed animals, ate squeakers, and barked his fool head off at anything and everything.

We had to hide our shoes, toys, food, anything that he could chew and eat he would. We had to put up a gate to keep him downstairs so we could watch him at all times. We would attack your feet if they were under a blanket and you moved them while he was sleeping on them. He could and would jump from the ground up to your face out of excitement and use your belly as a spring board on the way up. He had nervous stomach days where he would just barf all day. We hated these days for the clean up but loved these days because it slowed him down a little and he wanted to cuddle because he didn’t feel well.

Beans could eat a raw hide bone in an hour. He would get the zoomies and run around the house growling and sliding. This would almost always end in some turds on the carpet before you could catch him, his excitement stirring up everything. We hung a bell from our sliding door for him to ring when he needed to go outside. He soon figured out that this was a way to get all needs met and rang it incessantly. So much so that the kids started tying it up so he couldn’t ring it-but he showed us by then peeing on our blankets.

We could not take Beans to crowded places because he would bark and lunge at everyone and everything. On walks he pulled and pulled the entire time, never letting up. He would lunge and bark at any passing car, kid on a bike, or squirrel. He would lose his mind barking if we encountered another dog and did not really ever get the hang of sniffing butts and greeting like a normal dog. He was the boss, but he was also terrified.

He was the best snuggle buddy. He insisted on being on me if I sat or laid down. He would push his way in between me and a good book, a computer, or even sometimes my dinner. Beans was pushy. Demanding.

So if this little brownish orange fluffy fox of dog sounds like a royal pain in the butt to you, you would be correct. And he was the best thing that ever happened to me. When I went to tell our oldest, who is away at college, that Beans had died, she said these words…”Mom, Beans breathed life into our family. He made our life fun and interesting. We were in a rut as a family and didn’t even know it until we got Beans.” Truer words could not have been spoken.

After his passing, I started thinking about what he meant to me. Here is what I’ve learned. When you love someone (dog or human or whatever) you love all of them. You love and accept the amazing parts that make you feel good like good snuggles and belly laughs and you love the pain in the butt parts of them like zoomie poops and torn up shoes. Seems like an obvious thing but it was something I needed to relearn.

Beans came from a not so great environment. The woman we got him from had rescued him for a less than ideal situation. He had trauma and therefore had quirks and needs that a normal dog might not have. He needed to be contained and leashed at all times. He was nervous, he was needy, he had stomach issues, he was not trusting and he was scared a lot. He was aggressive with his love and attention. He was too much for some people. We got a letter from the city that he was too loud and couldn’t be left in the backyard unattended because he was bothering the neighbors with his loud barking. He had a hard time relaxing.

Turns out I’m a lot like Beans. My traumas make me quirky. I can’t be in just any old home. I require things like an alcohol free home, quiet time to myself to feel and process, reminders that my needs are important and that it is okay to say no. I am not for everyone and I require patience and safety to relax and love.

I used to try to hide who I was and deny what my trauma had inflicted upon me. I didn’t want to be weird or have weird needs. I just did without, tried to fit into any situation that would have me so that I could just appear normal and hope that I wasn’t too much trouble for anyone. It was exhausting and inauthentic. No one really knew me and love was surface level because I was hiding my unique, weird needs caused by trauma.

Beans helped me to have the experience of loving a wildly quirky traumatized dog with my whole heart. To do whatever it takes to adapt and adjust to their needs not out of obligation but out of pure love. And it was hard work. He took a lot of energy, attention, and care. In return he loved us wildly. He kissed faces, presented toys, begged for treats, became uncontrollably excited at the prospect of a walk, and let me know he felt safe with my by relaxing, snuggling, and sleeping on me without a care in the world. The reward outweighed the cost all day long. Was it easy? No.

When you agree to love someone with trauma, your life will not be easy. You commit to doing whatever it takes to keep them safe and to care for them and their unique needs. You agree to sometimes be in the foxhole of their pain with them and to alter your life to accommodate their sensitivities. And they are 100% worth it. Family means that you have each other’s back no matter what. That you will take care of each other even when it is a pain in the butt. You know each other intimately and will do things for each other that no one else would do, because of love and commitment. You are willing to be inconvenienced, to accommodate, and to adjust. Yesterday I had to take the cat in to the ER vet and sit in the same room that I had to say goodbye to Beans in. It was hard, but she is my family and I can do hard things for her. She is okay, just an eye infection. I’ll pay the emergency bill, I let her scratch and bite me while I try to put drops in her eyes. She is a little wild rescued barn cat that also has my whole heart. It is as it should be.

I am 100% worth it whatever it takes. Now I know that to love me is a privilege even with my quirks. The pay off is my love. If you aren’t getting the pay off, you aren’t loving me. Thanks Beans. Now I know.

Rest in peace you beautiful boy!

Darkness and Confusion

Embracing the darkness and confusion in my life is hard but I’m doing it.

The hard truth is that life can be dark and very confusing. I always thought I had to stay positive, keep my chin up, and make it better. Well that is exhausting and it doesn’t work. So I’m learning to embrace the darkness, the uncertainty, and the confusion. The road to this space has been long and it is still a work in progress but it is good.

We are taught early on that the dark is scary. I remember being so afraid of our basement, closets, and attic space as a child because they were dark. I would avoid them, especially at night and was afraid to go in them alone. I really thought something in there was going to get me.

I spend so much of my adult life avoiding the dark as well. I didn’t want to face my problems, look at my own faults, investigate or sit with the ugly and uncomfortable parts of my life. Nope, I was just going to fix it all and make it positive and light. I was willing to do anything necessary to force myself and others to be bright, cheerful, light, and positive. If it was dark, it was my enemy. I was always fighting.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the reason I was so afraid of the dark was because I didn’t trust. I didn’t trust that other people could be good even in the dark. I didn’t trust that I would be as protected in the dark as I thought I was in the light. And most of all, I didn’t trust my own strength to protect and guide myself through the darkness and confusion. I lived in white knuckle fear of anything that didn’t feel good and safe.

I can honestly say that I have been dragged kicking and screaming through intense darkness and confusion, and darn it all if I didn’t live. It is really hard to keep a belief going when you have mounting evidence to the contrary. I had not in fact died when I traveled through the darkest times in my life. I even discovered a strength and a beauty in that darkness that I never would have found had my life been all light and clear.

An example of this is living through a marriage to an addict. It was so dark, so confusing, and so character building. I made so many mistakes just trying to keep the darkness at bay. I enabled, I was mean, I slammed doors, I had zero compassion, and I betrayed myself. I accepted unacceptable behavior because I thought it would keep away the darkness, I didn’t know it was the darkness. Betraying myself was my darkest experience.

In that experience I learned that the only way out of the darkness and confusion is through it. As I traveled, I gathered a support system in the Al-Anon program. I gathered a strength I didn’t know I had. You know what, that isn’t true. I knew I was strong but I didn’t know I had the right to act out my strength to protect myself. I learned from strong women how to set up boundaries and to enforce them in service of myself. I learned I was worth protecting.

The darkness was where I found a Higher Power . I always believed in God, but I thought God lived in the light and that if I was in the dark, it was my own fault, like I had betrayed God or something. When I was in the dark, I reached out, not even knowing what God meant to me, but knowing that I could’t do it by myself. In those early dark days, I could not relate to the God I grew up with in the church. God couldn’t be a male for me then, I couldn’t trust men at that point in my life. So God to me in those early days was the sunset, the birds singing, the seasons changing. I went to nature to find God because it was the only thing I trusted.

That God was so good to me. Slowly leading me out of dark spaces, letting some light into my life. Lifting the confusion and giving me moments of clarity and direction. I imagined wrapping up my baby girl in a blanket of love and protection every time she wasn’t physically with me and praying that she be returned to me safely, and she always was. The evidence was mounting that this protection could be trusted.

In those dark and confusing times, we also had so much beauty. There was a rawness and a realness to our days that brought strength and love forward. I knew I was being led and protected. I knew I was also leading and protecting. When you are struggling and people reach out to help you, you see the best in people. You see community and you see compassion. And in suffering you realize that we are all in the darkness at different times and sometimes you help and sometimes you ask for help. It is our humanity.

I have been feeling a darkness and a confusion lately. There is darkness visiting me and people that I love. I have confusion and I have fear. There are times that I think it is too much for us all to handle and I want to just be transported to the light. But then I remember that nature has dark and light and they are about equal. It cannot be light all of the time. Darkness has to have its time and it doesn’t have to be bad.

I now know that I can trust myself in the darkness. That I will protect myself there and that I am guided and loved by a God that has my back even in the darkness, maybe even more so there. I no longer feel alone in the darkness, in fact I know that some of you are there too and that we will find the light again. And when we get to the light we will be changed because we have been in the dark. We will see the light differently. We will be stronger because we have traveled through darkness and confusion.

I know from experience that lessons are learned in the darkness. Boundaries set, strength found and often more will be revealed that will take us toward clarity and light. I have to go through a lot of anger, rage, sadness, upset, and sometimes depression in the dark. I’m not wrong or bad for feeling any of those things. I might feel differently as the journey goes on and more is revealed but I will not shame myself for how I feel in the dark.

Today I’m releasing some of my darkness onto this page, along with some of my light. I can be both. So can you. I used to hope I could out run the darkness and enter a phase of life that was only light. That was a fantasy and there is no out running darkness. Today I can embrace the dark knowing that it comes to mold me, shape me, teach me. I can enter it protected by a Higher Power who has a view of the bigger picture and never leaves me alone in the dark. Some times I’m in the dark because I need to rest. I can trust that darkness is visiting me and that the light will come too. And that there will be this dance of dark and light for the rest of my life, and it will be good.

Release

On the 8th anniversary of your death, I want to honor us both by doing it differently.

Our first vacation together to Busch Gardens Florida

January 30 is not my favorite day. For the last 8 years it has been a day of loss, mourning, grieving, and memories. It is usually preceded by a week or more of nightmares, lack of sleep and deep depression. My ex-husband died on this day and I had to tell my daughter her father was gone. It was horrible. It has continued to be horrible but I have learned so much, grown so much, and healed so much in the past few years. This year I am doing it differently.

I have a friend who has suffered a deep loss as well and she refers to the anniversary day of her loss as a “spirit release day”. I always thought that was a beautiful way to say it but I couldn’t bring myself to say that about Ryan. There was nothing beautiful about that day. I couldn’t see it if there was. Every year on this date I would spend my day broken down by memories and conflicting emotions. I felt anger, hurt, deep sadness and victim-hood, for myself and for my daughter. We were victims of our life with him and victims in his death. That was what I felt, saw, experienced, and I didn’t feel a release of his spirit or of ours.

This year, and for the last few years, I have been working with a guide to change. I wanted to get through and process the traumas of my life and to find myself again. I wanted to be free, to find release. Sometimes you need to be careful what you ask for because there is no easy way to do this. The body needs to process the feelings that were too difficult to feel at the time of the trauma. The body needs to experience it and then experience something new in the face of that old wound. I feel extremely lucky to have a guide who can be a safe person for me to relive, re-feel, and who provides me with a safe, loving space to experience it differently. So instead of feeling like I am drowning in grief and pain, I can feel the comfort of being completely broken before another human being and not having to be different, or just being witnessed in my brokenness and it not making them uncomfortable or making them feel like they have to make it better. The truth is that there is no making things better. Just sitting with someone in their deepest pain without judging it is enough, it is powerful. I learned that I wouldn’t die if I felt the pain to its depths. I had always thought it was too much so I wouldn’t let myself go that deep.

Over the last 8 years I have built a village. The village knows my story; they know the pain, the trauma, and the details. This has been a great comfort to me and has helped me get this far. This year, however, I longed for something more. I wanted release, I wanted freedom. So I asked for help in that. I asked to be shown a way and I have received it. It is a work in progress but I have started and I will continue.

About four nights ago I had a dream about Ryan and his family. It was familiar. The details aren’t important but what I was left with when I woke up was hurt, pain, upset, sadness, fear, and anger. There was one little thing that was different though, I also had a feeling like I could say no, I could do it differently. So I reached out for some support and made this the intention of my next session with my guide. I wanted to say no, I wanted to do it differently.

What I learned is that in order to do it differently I had to let a part of me die. I had to say good bye to the part of me that is the victim, not just in this circumstance but in all the circumstances of my life. REALLY???? But I was a victim. This was so loudly shouting in my soul that I couldn’t ignore it. And it was true. Terrible things had happened in my relationship with Ryan, in the divorce, in the years after, and in his death, to me. Those things made me build up an armor that I had so badly needed at the time. It was a shield of hurt and anger that protected me and my heart for years. It gave me the strength to go through with a divorce I didn’t want, court dates I didn’t want to have, confrontations I would have been too scared to have and to see truths that were being swept under the rug by so many. The strength to get through those dark days with my daughter and the pain that would continue. I loved that shield. I honestly feel that that shield saved my life and gave me superhuman strength sometimes. I knew that it saved my life and I felt stronger with it in my hands. I had needed that shield to protect me and my child and I don’t for one second regret picking up that shield.

Except now the shield has to go. It has to die. The anger, the upset, the hurt and pain that caused me to pick it up-it has been 8 years that I’ve kept it alive-even in the truth that Ryan was gone and the hurt (well his part in it) was done. How could I continue to be a victim of someone from the grave? Turns out quite successfully if I continued to raise my shield and carry around my victim story and the anger, fear, and upset that came with it. This year I realized that I don’t need the story or the shield anymore and I’m here to lay it down.

Ryan, I release your soul.

I release with it my victim story (as much as I can right now, but I will continue releasing).

What happened hurt so much because I loved you so.

I release my anger, my hurt, my rage toward you and those who hurt me in protection of you.

I release the chains that tied me to your disease (addiction) and that kept me from remembering us both as beautiful people before it grabbed us.

I release the fear that has kept a shield around my heart and prevented me from being loving, powerful, and free.

I release my story of being of victim even though it makes me feel naked and vulnerable and scared. I have relied on it for so long to protect me and I’m terrified to be without it. Yet I am also filled with a hope that I cannot express at the thought of a life free of that heavy, angry shield.

I know in my heart that you always loved me and our daughter and that putting down this shield, letting this part of me die will free your spirit as well as mine. It will make things possible for our daughter that wouldn’t happen if I kept it alive forever. I know you would want me to be free, to put that shield down so that love can enter, so that I can be more open to real connection with those that I love without them having to try to pierce my shield just to get to my heart. I know you would want my heart to be open and free. My husband and my children deserve my whole heart.  

Victim me, I release you.

I thank you for saving my life and for protecting me during a traumatic time in my life.

Thank you for the strength you gave me and the power you afforded me in times of fear.

Your services are no longer needed.

I release you in love and gratitude.

Powerful me, I embrace you.

I see you, I feel you, and I love you.

I believe in your strength and I look forward to living a life of vulnerability, free of being a victim.

I look forward to taking responsibility for myself and embodying the powerful woman that I have learned to be. I choose my life. I write this story. I stand in truth and power.

If you are on this journey, if you suspect that your victim shield is becoming too heavy to carry around anymore and you need someone to sit with you in your terrible truth and not judge you, I am here. I have no qualification except that I have had it done for me and want you to experience the same. I can sit in love, as it was done for me, and let you find the truth, that your are powerful enough on your own to change your life. To let that shit go, and to choose another way of being. I know the fear of letting a part of you that has protected you for so long die. I just know. And I know that you will live without it, and that you will thrive.

Happy spirit release day Ryan. I release you in love.

Today I will honor myself with rest, comfort, love, and naps because this is exhausting!

Planting My Flag

Sometimes you have to declare something, put your faith in it and just go with it. That is what happened with 2017 for me. I had declared "The Year Of Carie" at some point when my picture was published in a city calendar. I decided that this was the year that I was going to do things differently. I was going to say yes to writing, I was going to say yes to photo contests, new opportunities at work, and anything that felt right for me. 

2017 was filled with major ups and downs for me. I started the year in January with a major depression that left me unable to function properly. I had to get help for that. I had started with a new therapist, trying to heal my traumas, and learn somatic experiencing. It has changed my life. I learned to feel, to heal, to experience all feelings and sensations and emotions and to not shut down, but stay open. I have come further in one year of that therapy than in ten plus years of talk therapy. I am thankful, so grateful.  

I opened myself up to new opportunities at work. It has been rewarding. I get to do work with young children and their parents, school aged children learning new things in nature, and now I have the opportunity to bring nature into a classroom setting. For the first time in my life I feel like I have a job that takes a lot, but also gives me a lot. I get to learn new things, be around people excited to be working there, and see nature's beauty while I'm working. I feel very supported in trying new things and I know I'm never alone, I always have support. 

I've learned to say no to things that don't feel good in my life and that don't serve me. It has been a tough muscle to flex. I was a yes person. I hate to disappoint others or not meet their expectations. To say no to something that I know is going to upset someone else is so hard for me to do. But this year I decided that I could no longer sacrifice my own self, my own time, my own feelings, my own needs in order to meet someone else's. I'm learning that the best thing I can do for myself is to meet my needs fully before taking on any other demands on me. Otherwise I resent the expectations and stress on me. I don't want to be that person anymore. 

With the election of our president in 2017, I discovered that I am an activist at heart. He awoke in me a fighter. I could no longer sit by and say that I didn't want to discuss politics. From the minute he became a serious candidate, I could not even watch him on television. I would have a physical reaction. He as all too familiar to me. A bully. A liar. A master manipulator. I felt it down to my toes and do to this day. I could not hold in my feelings, my comments, my opinions, my knowledge of interaction with similar men in my own life. It wasn't even a choice for me to "give him a chance", it felt too dangerous to me and for once I decided to listen. His policies don't generally stand to hurt me as a white woman who is not poor (aside from the fact that he attacks women and likes to tell them what they can do with their bodies). His tax policy will probably benefit me. I don't use Obamacare. I'm not an immigrant or black. I don't care one damn bit about tax breaks, more choices for healthcare, or borders if it means that my gain will come from pushing down others. I don't want a single thing from him except for him to leave so I don't have to look at him or listen to him and be exposed to his disturbing energy anymore. I cannot imagine how it feels to be an immigrant in this country, or a black man, a poor man, a disabled person, a parent with a sick child, or a woman of color in this country. I'm trying to learn as much as I can about all of their experiences because they are the ones being dismissed, disregarded, or discriminated against. Until they are free, none of us is free. If there is anything for me to be grateful for this year it is that Donald Trump's behavior and words stirred up my trauma and I've been able to channel it to be more compassionate, more understanding, more accepting, and more willing to fight for what I know is right in my heart. 

2017 will be a touchstone year for me, I can tell. I know I am different and will never be the same. So what on Earth could 2018 hold for me? I have no idea. No one ever knows what the future holds, but here is what I do know:

I'm planting my flag. The flag on the mountain of me. Big, giant, full me. All of me. The year of Carie was about figuring out who the heck I even was. This year I know a little bit and I intend to know a lot more as I go on in life. I intend to continue to open myself, to feel my feelings, to meet my needs, to say yes to what feels good and right for me and no to what doesn't. I intend to heal, to feel, and to grow. I no longer want to hide parts of me that you might not like, that isn't how it works. I am complex, I am large, I am full of passion and creativity, needs and wants. I have big, fat, hard won opinions and feelings on things that have come with my own experiences and from listening to the experiences of others. I am beautiful and precious, and full of joy and love. I share myself with people who can see me, hear me, know me, accept me and be safe for me. In the words of a friend, only good will come from this. 

I don't have a title for this coming year. I don't feel the need to call it anything except my life. My life from here on out. Flag planted on top of the complex woman I now claim as myself. Not hiding. Not shape shifting. Just doing her best every dang day to show up fully herself, for herself and no one else. I'm beyond grateful for the Year Of Carie, I had no idea when I declared it how it would come to pass. I had no idea the people and opportunities and challenges that would come to help reveal her to me. I could NOT have done this year without help and support and challenges to help test me. I'll end with a quote I found for a friend when her first born son arrived almost 13 years ago and she gave him the middle name "Whitman" when I had no idea how much I would need these words in my own life ...

"I am larger, better than I thought. I did not know I held so much goodness." Walt Whitman

I Am Not In Charge

But maybe something bigger than me is. 

As much as I hate to admit it, I'm just not in charge. If I was we would probably be in trouble. I really, really like to imagine that I do have some control over my life and the life of those I love. Like if I do the right things, good things will happen, if I take the right path, it will lead me to where I want to be, etc. I have hopes, dreams, wishes for myself and other people and I start to think that I can make them all come true, because sometimes I get lucky and things go the way I want.

The truth is that I'm just not that powerful. This has been a hard truth for me to accept. I was in major denial. I think the reason it has taken me so long to accept this is because it has taken me a long time to realize that I wasn't as humble as I thought. It took me a long time to realize that I didn't trust anyone but me. This included my idea of God.

I was raised as a Catholic. I went to a Catholic school for thirteen years of my life. We went to church all the time as part of our school, we went on Sundays, we learned about our faith in our school classes. I wanted to believe in what I was told about God and Jesus but it just didn't ever sink to a level of trust for me. I liked the idea of someone or something being good and loving and in charge of my life, but I didn't really believe that. I used to see the little old ladies in the front row of our church praying their rosaries before Sunday service and think, maybe it happens when you are their age. Until then, I was on my own.

In my mid-twenties I was faced with a situation that tested my limits as a person. I did not know how to handle the situation and no one around me knew what to do either. I was introduced to a program of recovery where I was offered a spiritual solution to my problems. Oh boy, here we go again I thought, the God stuff. I entered the skeptic I had always been and I got a lot of what I had always gotten, drama, pain, frustration, fear, exhaustion.

One day I was at my absolute end. I knew I was either going to wind up in jail or a mental institution if I didn't find a new way to deal with an old problem. Someone I loved wasn't doing what I wanted them to do, what I knew was best for them. I sat there thinking of my options. I couldn't do what I had been doing. I couldn't do what I wanted to do. I was stuck. It was then that I remembered what everyone had been talking about all that time in my childhood and in my program, God could do things for me that I couldn't do for myself.

I got out some paper, I write, it is who I am. I wrote a letter to God (I didn't even really know what that meant to me on that day). In the letter I let God know all of the things that I had been trying to control and fix and force and be in charge of. I let God know that I was just letting it all go. I was giving up. Not in an I Quit way, but in an I'm going to trust that You have a better answer way. I cried, I felt guilty for letting go, but I let it go.

Things worked out that day and in the coming days in ways I would not have thought. Change was brought about by people I would not have trusted to help. It did not go the way I wanted for the other person, but I had peace of mind for the first time maybe ever. That was about 15 years ago. I take a long time to really learn things.

In the last 15 years, my ideas of God have changed often. I am on a spiritual path to find a personal relationship with something bigger than me. At the present moment I call her Goddess. I still struggle to believe and trust that I don't have to be in full control every minute of my life and that I can trust that I will be led to good things and so will the people I love. I've learned that life is so big and wonderous that I cannot even imagine certain things that come to be in my life. My mind was limited but if I could let go and trust, limits disappeared and amazing paths were revealed to me.

Recently my trust has been tested. I have been reminded that I've only scratched the surface of the goodness that is available to me with a trust in something bigger than me. I was ill, very ill, and unable to be in charge or control of much of anything. I made a decision on the first day of illness to give in to it. To trust that I could handle it. To trust that my body was made for this and let it work, without over burdening it. This meant that I had to rest. I had to let others care for me and care for themselves. During this time, I was reminded that people that I love face challenges too. I received news that people that I loved were struggling and having challenges, some exciting, some scary. I was reminded that if I could relax and rest and trust a Higher Power to lead me to health and wellness, that I could also relax and let go of my worry about others. They had something in charge of them too. All would work out without my intervention. I can still hope and dream, but most important is to trust.

It is not easy. I struggle, I forget, I fear, I fail. This week I shared my fear and struggle with someone I trust and they helped me to imagine myself sitting with my fears in one hand and my love and trust in another hand and just letting them be. Then imagining the most beautiful rain falling on me filled with unconditional love from something that was bigger, more powerful, and more loving than I could imagine. At first I was just going through the motions, doing what I was told, but then I felt this warmth wash over me. I cannot describe it, because I have never felt it before. It was a feeling I have no words for but hope to feel again often. I imagine it is the feeling that we had as newborns when all of our needs were met and we were being held in the most loving arms of our mothers. All is well. We can relax and be taken care of. Someone else is in charge and all is well.

So I don't have any answers. I'm not miraculously cured of my illness. The people I love are still struggling. What is gone is my frantic need to figure it all out, fix it all, and have the solutions. It is replaced by a trust, a knowing. Knowing that if I take good loving care of me, I'm doing all I can. That if I love my people well, there are no regrets ever. That if I don't see the answer now, it doesn't me there isn't one, and when it is time, it will be revealed to me. It's actually a huge relief to let go, not in the I give up way, but in the I trust You way. I always thought faith was something I had to work on, not an experience I could have anytime I allow it. The relationship with Goddess, I'm discovering, is perfect and there waiting for me, I just have to trust, let go, and experience it.

Cover Image Credit: Carie Terrill Photos