Big Promises To A Little Girl

For many years I have been in therapy. Some of the most beneficial work I have done is with internal family systems. This work entails getting to know the different parts of yourself that show up when you are going about your life. I’ve learned that I have some very fierce protector parts, some angry parts, silly parts, and some very vulnerable parts. The vulnerable parts of me are the youngest parts of me. They are the little girl inside.

In getting to know her I have realized that she is very scared. She thinks and behaves as a child would, except without the protection and supervision of an adult. She makes decisions but hates it and is terrified all the time because no one is showing her how to do it. She is sad and lonely and moody.

What child wouldn’t be? No child should have to be faced with important and grown up situations and decisions. What I learned from my therapists is that this part of me, this inner child who is so vulnerable, is in need of acknowledgment, of protection, guidance, and most of all in need of the truth.

I needed to tell her, and still do, that we are not a child anymore. I needed to let her know that we have grown up. The first time I did this with a therapist, it felt so silly. I was saying out loud, to myself, that I was a grown woman. I recounted all of the things I had done, accomplished, survived, and thrived through. I had to let her know my education, my occupation, my adult decision making, and the fact that I was a mother to children. I know that I was thinking duh…she already knows that…we are one person, right? But I felt something that I had never felt before after saying it all out loud. I felt that part of me relax a little bit.

She had never relaxed a day in her life. I felt it in my body, my mind, and my soul. I could feel for the first time, what my own children must feel from me, safety, comfort, love, trust. It is a very weird sensation and it brought up so much emotion. I was kind of upset (I, as in my grown up, wise self) that I had not known that I needed to do this earlier. I was very sad that this part of me was so stressed, so worried, so fearful all the time. I had let her down so many times in life and I didn’t even know it. I paid no attention to her except to be upset when her fear caused my protector parts to show up and screw up my life somehow. When you aren’t aware who is taking action and where your feelings are coming from, it can be easy to make decisions out of fear that do not actually benefit you.

I sat down with this part of me the other day, and we had a good long talk. I had to let her know that I was aware of things she was thinking and feeling and that I was willing to listen to her but not willing to let her call out our protector parts, or to make decisions based on fear anymore. I am not someone who can look in a mirror and talk to myself. I am a quiet person by nature and I’m easily distracted if I am talking instead of writing or typing. So I wrote her a letter.

In the letter, I let her know that we are about to turn 47 years old. She needed to be reminded that I am a teacher with a master’s degree, a mother of three (awesome) kids, a professional, a homeowner, a friend and someone who is loved and respected by others. I could tell she was a little skeptical so I wrote down things that had happened in our life that we made it through as our wise adult self. I had to show her and prove to her that I was trustworthy.

There were things going on in my life that were out of alignment with what felt right and I needed to address them. I can usually tell who is calling the shots in my life (my wise self or other parts like my inner child or my protector parts) by how those decisions feel over time. I have not been feeling good for a few years in certain aspects of my life. I was putting out little fires all the time around my relationships, work, energy level, physical and mental health. I could not see the thread tying them all together until I really took some time to sit, examine and accept what the state of my life was.

My children were gone for several weeks this summer on various vacations. I had thought months ago when I saw this big open spot on my calendar that I would take advantage of the time and go away myself. I thought I might take a trip or get projects done at home, or take time to catch up with friends. I was excited to have grand thoughts and plans and excited to be able to do whatever I wanted. I was a single woman and my responsibilities were leaving town.

Except that must have scared me in some way because I went and found a man. I took my single self and but her back on the market, where she had vowed she did not want to be. As soon as I started talking to men again, something felt off, but I ignored it. There was a part of me (guess who??) that did not want to be alone. I think I knew that my wise self was not running the show but the part of me that needed something other than being alone was pushing me into the arms of a man, again.

I started spending time with a man who was very nice. He was kind, gentle, thoughtful, sweet, and handsome. Part of me was so soothed by not being alone and by being in a space of getting to know another person and the possibilities of a future with a partner. There was another part of me that was yelling…”I thought we were going to be alone? I thought we were going to go on an adventure or tackle projects or enjoy our freedom?”. It was a very confusing time.

One thing I am is honest. The problem is that I don’t always know the truth fully when I’m trying to be honest. I kept telling this person that I liked spending time with them, because I did, at least part of me did. I also kept telling this person that I was not ready to be in a committed relationship and join lives, because I wasn’t. The entire time with this person felt like tug of war within myself. I was soothed and comforted by being with someone else but then I was upset with myself for allowing myself to spend time with someone knowing that I wanted to be alone. The part of me that was soothed by not being alone was my inner child. She did not trust me to be alone. She always thinks that happiness and protection and comfort and fulfillment have to come from someone else. I don’t blame her, I’ve let her down a lot in life. I didn’t even know she existed and had ignored her for the majority of my life. She had called forth the protectors and they had gotten her what she wanted, a man. Some might say this is the yearning of a child who never had access to her father or his heart, and they are probably right.

The problem was that my wise self knew that this was not our truth. She knows that her dad did the best he could and her broken little girl heart can never be fixed by a man. My wise self knew that my values I had decided on did not involve a man right now. My values were to explore this thread in my life that had made me feel so down, so sick, so tired, so drained, and so lost. My job was to fix my own broken little girl heart not expect someone else to.

So I took a break. I asked for space and I took a retreat. The retreat happened in my own home over the course of three days. I had a book, a candle, a journal and pen, some sage, a smudge stick and a weighted blanket. I told the people in my life that I talked to frequently that I would not be in touch and I gave myself the gift of time and space. It rained a lot for those three days and I was so grateful. I felt like it was symbolic of washing things away. I would discover that I had a lot of washing to do.

The thread that I uncovered that connected everything together was the thread that I did not have self-care. The bond that I had to myself was weak and I allowed others to sever me from my parts at every turn. I could not hear my wise self when she tried to tell me that I was choosing things and people and situations that were out of alignment with my values. I could not hear my inner child when she was afraid and needed to be reminded that I was her person, she didn’t need to go find someone else. My protector parts were scrambling to figure out what fires to put out, which voice to listen to, and I was burning them out.

So here is what I know now that I have taken some space and time to be still and sit with it all:

I learned very early on in life that the world was not safe. I was hurt and I felt alone. I was a child so I did the best I could by creating defenses to protect myself. I always hoped that someone would come save and protect me but in the meantime, I could do things to not hurt so much.

One of my defenses was to be cute, quiet, and agreeable. This worked so well for me in school, in making friends, in my family, and in relationships. I know that it kept me from getting hurt for a long time. It protected me. Until it didn’t. Now this part of me can get me into trouble. It hurts to quiet yourself, to hide yourself, to silence yourself to be loved and accepted. In adulthood, it is dishonest and it causes discord and disease within you. It will start to choke the life out of you. The light of your true self cannot shine if you have to lock it away to please, appease, and agree with others.

Another defense was to always be on offense. I had to be responsible, many would say overly-responsible. I had to anticipate needs, soften blows, keep the waves from the boat, and to never rest or abandon my post. My job was to outthink, outwit, out perform, and outsmart anyone who might sneak a peek at the real me (child me) because I was made to believe that she was a mistake, bad, naughty, and unacceptable as herself. Just by being myself early on, I had earned the reputation of being trouble, and trouble made you a target. For a long time, my protector parts helped me hide the parts of me that others found unacceptable. If my protector parts relaxed, and my true self emerged, those in power over me made sure the punishment was swift and harsh. I learned to anticipate what and who they wanted me to be and to do and be it before there could be any doubt that I was good. No one should live like this. My adrenal glands are shot from the stress of it all. It is unsustainable.

The defense that was related to this but also different was that of doing for others what they should do for themselves. This is part of the overly-responsible role I played. I believed that if a job wasn’t getting done, it was mine to pick up and do. It protected me in that it stopped those I loved from failing, and if they didn’t fail, I wasn’t a failure for loving beneath my worth. This one was the hardest to unpack for me. It required me to challenge everything I had been taught to believe about myself and what I was worth and what I deserved. I had to go back to the beginning and acknowledge that I had deserved everything that I would and do give to my own children as a child. Even though it wasn’t provided for me, I had deserved love, protection, safety, emotional availability, affection, all of the best things children deserve. Nothing in my life had provided me with the knowledge that I was as worthy as anyone else and that it wasn’t my fault that I had not received it. I did not have to work harder, accept less, do for others, and hustle for my worth. Despite my mountain of evidence to the contrary, I had to sit with this truth until I knew it.

You may be thinking that I did this in three days, during a little retreat in my home. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have been working hard every single day of my life for twenty years to come to this truth. I have used therapy, Al-Anon, praying, meditating, journaling, body work, energy work, hypnosis, retreats, workshops, podcasts, books, other people, and God for twenty years to come to this space. I am enough. I always was. I never needed something or someone outside of me to complete me, I just needed to bring myself together, to gather up all the parts of me that were severed and cut off from communication each other. I needed to reintroduce my grown up self to the little girl inside me that had been slaying dragons alone for all these years. I had to take out all of the people and things that kept me from knowing myself fully. I had to drop all of the ties that kept me distracted and disturbed so that I could not hear myself calling out to me. I had to sit, alone, so many times, to know me.

The last month has been so challenging. I have finally gathered up all the little fires into a pit. They are all there where I can see them and now I know that they are all started by me not knowing me. They were all started by me calling forth protectors that no longer work for me when I was scared or around people that could not be for me what I needed them to be. They came forth when I forgot that I was worthy of every good thing and when I thought I had to work extra hard, and hustle for my worth.

This past weekend I spent some time at a friend’s house alone. I spent my mornings on the porch with coffee and my notebooks writing to my little girl inside. I had some things to let her know. I made her promises that I intend to keep so that she and I are never cut off from each other again. I feel for her the fierce love and protection that I feel for my own children and it is time she knew that it is not her job to protect me, to be responsible for me, or to hide out of fear that I won’t love and accept her.

I promised her that she could run along and play because I was now in charge and that there were some things that she didn’t have to do anymore. I promised her that she never had to hide again, not ever. I promised her that I would never ask her to do that again because no one that would ask me to hide parts of me is fit to be in my life. I would tell them goodbye. I promised her that she and I were a complete package and that we did not have to have anyone else with us to be whole and worthy. I promised her that I would not take this special time for the two of us and distract myself with a possible relationship to a man. We didn’t need a man, we needed each other. I had to say goodbye.

I promised her that we would never again give up our heath, safety, time, energy, values or dreams to please and appease someone else. We please ourself first or else we get sick again. This is not selfish, it is self care. When you do not know you are worthy, you spend your time trying to get worth outside of you, and it never feels good because you cannot feel full from the outside. It is like sitting in the middle of a buffet of food and feeding everyone else, except yourself. You will die if all you ever do is feed everyone else and hope they realize that you are hungry too and feed you. Sure, they might throw you a crumb once in a while, but only enough so that you’ll have the energy to keep feeding them.

I promised that I would show up and tell the truth. Even when it hurts others, causes them to have to do work they don’t want to do, or even if it means that people are disappointed in us. I can live with that (this is a new development) because I would rather disappoint everyone around me than ever see the little girl inside of me hurt again. She has been hurt too much for too long. Until I could see that, acknowledge that, and sit with that very uncomfortable truth, I could not bring myself to see that it was my job to protect her. I blamed others for not protecting her, but I’ve been a grown up for twenty eight years now. And I’ve been dodging my responsibility to protect her for that long. That was a harsh truth to face. The only thing harder was asking that little girl part of me to try to trust me again after I had let her down for so long.

There are a million tiny promises that I am making to her but one of the biggest promises is that I am going to let go and cut the strings to all that has kept me stuck in the cycles of my past. I am going to give us the time to be alone, to figure out our new life together as a team. I am going to sit in this as long as I need to until all of those fires that have been hurting us for so long are put out. I am cutting out people who do not see my worth. I am cutting off my part in unhealthy systems. I am cutting out my need to be protected and fulfilled by other people outside of me. I am telling the truth. I am expressing myself. I am protecting me and standing my ground around those who think they can treat me like I don’t know who I am and what I am worth. I am building myself from the inside out. I am letting others feel discomfort instead of taking it on because I think I think that if they are unhappy, they get to target me. I am prioritizing my health, safety, and most of all self care. I finally feel like I have gotten to the root of the fires. I know that my life will be different going into my forty-seventh year. I will finally be living life as a whole person who is unwilling for any reason to doubt her worth.

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!

Entering the Darkness

Winter Of The Heart

These pages have been frozen and this site unopened since June. I was hiding, hibernating, wintering, healing, surviving. Call it what you want but I am out of sync with the world. It was a strange feeling to be wintering in the summer, to be wintering for longer than the season, but no matter the season, this is where I have been residing.

It has taken all of my energy to just live. I know that most people feel that way because our society has created an unsustainable grind culture, and I feel that as well. My experience is deeper, though, and if you have ever done personal healing work, you will know the exhaustion of wintering as few others do.

Some, including me, have wondered if I’m just depressed. The answer is yes, I am depressed, and I am in treatment for that, but this is different. This is surgery. This is cutting down deep to the hidden things while you are awake and living and breathing. It is opening your chest cavity up and leaving it open for an extended period of time to extract the black cancer of trauma and pain that has lived and entangled itself in you for all of your life.

You show up at work with a heavy coat of armor covering your big open wound. You arrive to soccer practice and cheer even though every breath hurts. You cook the dinners, buy the things, smile, laugh, and love with your chest wide open. No one knows that just living and breathing takes great effort. It is a hidden wound.

The truth is, you don’t want people to know. What a tender, tender wound. How could you risk anyone knowing and taking advantage of your wide openness? Those who know have to be trusted with your very life. There are a few and what a relief to take off your armor and have someone gently embrace you knowing how to tenderly hold you, wounds and all.

I’m caring for myself, loving myself, learning myself. I’m navigating my way through this extraction of darkness as best I can. I’ve not been shy or quiet about my troubles and pain and my healing on here. Writing is a therapy for me and sharing is a hope for me. I hope that sharing brings light into the dark places that we are afraid to talk about. I certainly do not like when near or total strangers know my deep, dark, personal thoughts but I heard in recovery that secrets and sickness grow in dark places and that they heal in the light. My hope is that someone reading this will see light where before there was only darkness. My hope is also that you never feel sorry for me and this struggle or treat me with fragility because I shared. If you are not the one that sees me in person without my armor on, then we carry on as usual because I have a life to live.

I struggle so much with that paradox of sharing my heart and then protecting it at all costs. It is a strange place to be, but I also learned in recovery that it is possible to let down your walls and share your story in a safe place, then put on your armor to go out into the wild, terrible world. So while I sit in this chair, in front of this screen, I imagine a sacred space between me and you, were it is safe to share and believe that my sharing my experience may help you in this intimate energy I’m creating. I’m happy to talk about what I write in a planned intimate setting with someone, but it is hard when I am spilling my coffee carrying 7 bags into work and someone says they read my post. I feel exposed. I feel vulnerable. I feel like I did something wrong. I don’t know how to do both, share and then accept feedback in person, but I’ll continue because discomfort is part of vulnerability.

So I’m in eternal winter, and I’m resisting the urge to label it as wrong or unhealthy or something that needs to be fixed. I’m in the middle of transitioning therapists and it has been such a positive experience. I am reaching so far into the darkness and exposing it to the light. It is the deepest work I have done to date and I’m incredibly emotional about it. I am healing my heart. I am healing my inner child. I am healing my past. I am changing who I get to be. I know that my healing will send ripples out into the universe. It will change my children. It will change my family. It will change my friends and my sweet love. It will change my co-workers and students. It will change everything.

I’m eternally grateful for the fire keepers who have kept me warm in this harsh winter. I’m grateful for my Al-Anon program that feeds my soul and feeds my bravery, and is always a safe place to land. I am grateful for grace, forgiveness, grocery pick up and robot vacuums. I am beyond grateful for professional therapists who do no harm and guide me through this. And I’m grateful for an understanding partner who listens with an open heart full of love for me.

If this post has touched your heart and you want to talk to me about it, send me a message or a comment, and we can set up a time to connect. You can leave a heart in the comment section to let me know that the light is being shone in the the darkness. If you see me with 7 bags and spilling coffee or pulling in hot at the soccer game, keep it to yourself. I’m not bearing my soul in the wild world-no way-it’s not safe out there.

Anxious?...Me?

You can run but you cannot hide from yourself. I have been reading about relationships and attachment styles for years. I never could describe my attachment style, maybe because I didn’t want to admit it. I wanted to be a securely attached person, meaning that I had a healthy attachment to others. I wanted to believe that I could rise above what I used to be and be something else. Hmmmm where have I done this before? Oh yes, I remember, when I refused to believe that alcohol and drugs and loving alcoholics and drug addicts had had a profound impact on my life. That also worked out well for me.

So yesterday I was planning my day out and trying to connect with someone that I hadn’t seen in a bit. There was a misunderstanding about what that meet up would look like and when it would happen. I reacted badly. I took it very personal and felt rejected, unimportant and confused. I went down a rabbit hole of feeling like a fool, rejected, angry, not good enough, and like there was no hope for my relationships and I was doomed to be alone, partnerless, friendless, and familyless. It was a pretty extreme reaction and I was surprised by it.

I see a therapist and we recently talked through some of the losses I have endured in my life. Losses of relationship, friendship, mentorship are very upsetting. I have had my share and I haven’t always had time, energy or the safe space to process my feelings about it. Two years ago I had gone to a retreat with a counselor I had been seeing remotely for a few years. He lived in California but was coming here to do a retreat with clients that he saw remotely. It was a wonderful retreat and I had learned so much from it about feeling my feelings, letting my body process the energy inside and use or release it. I had learned to own my power to create my own life and I had felt a great sense of empowerment and also being held in safety while I explored painful truths and memories.

Two weeks later during my remote session with this counselor, he started talking about some pretty weird things and just didn’t seem right to me. He was talking about feeling like he was one with Jesus and that he could make things happen because he was directly connected to God. I felt very weird about it because we never talked about religion in sessions and he seemed to have a strange energy about it and strange look in his eyes. That week would prove to me that my perceptions were correct and he became mentally unwell. He started leaving me voicemails calling me names from the bible and telling me to join him in his kingdom. I didn’t know what to do. I could tell he was not okay, his clothing was dirty and his hair wild. He was sending me videos of him speaking in tongues and wandering the streets of California.

The person that I had trusted with my mental health and healing for the last three years was having a mental breakdown. It was almost beyond my comprehension. I felt care and concern for him because he had helped me so much over the last few years, but I could not help him because of distance and also because I had learned from him that I needed to protect myself from his unacceptable behavior. It was an extremely triggering event for me. I had trusted this person with my innermost sensitivities and traumas and he had used them against me when he became ill.

That felt like my marriage to Ryan. He knew my innermost weaknesses and sensitive spots and would use them to manipulate me so he could continue in his addiction. The person that I had attached my life to could no longer be trusted.

That felt like my relationship to my father. He was the one that was supposed to be my rock, my support, my most secure relationship, but he was unable to be that for me. As a child I did not trust that relationship and it continues to this day.

There are others, many other examples of this pattern in my life. I have a difficult time trusting and having healthy relationships with people, especially but not limited to men. The picture above names many of the things that can send me down a rabbit hole of all too familiar feelings of betrayal, loss, fear, ANXIETY, and doubt. My instinct is to then practice behaviors that feel like protection. I might lash out or yell. I might use guilt to manipulate you into doing what I want so the feeling of anxiety will go away. I may cut you off or close my heart to you. I may turn all of that inward and start to doubt my worth, to try to talk myself into accepting unacceptable behavior, try to attach to another person to prove that I am worthy of love.

I’m not going to lie, it was ugly yesterday. I was in a dark space. I practiced unhealthy behaviors in that relationship, I did silly things to distract myself, I ate too much, I spoke to myself very unkindly in my own head, and I was probably manipulative in my communication and judgemental. I did not feel good. And…I also did some things right. I did something physical that would benefit me, I cleaned my laundry room with fury. I made a list of things I needed to do to take care of me and the family and I did the ones I could. I let myself cry. I realized that my reaction was over the top and I let the person know that I knew that and was going to work through it. I talked with a trusted friend. I journaled. I gave myself space to process that this is all connected. That my perception that someone didn’t want to see me was connected to this character trait in me of anxious attachment. That any one of the scenarios in the picture above has the ability to knock me down the rabbit hole. It is my job to know that I do this and to let people in relationship with me know that I do this. Not in a shameful way because I cannot help the relationships I have had that created this in me. It was a learned behavior since birth. It isn’t anyone’s fault but it is my responsibility.

I always hope that my lived experiences and awarenesses can help others. My anxiousness tells me that no one cares and that it is ridiculous to share these things out in the world, but my deep knowing tells me that we are only as sick as our secrets. I don’t want to be sick and I don’t want others to suffer because they think they are alone. So I’m putting this out into the universe with the hope that one person reads it and feels less alone, anxious, crazy or hopeless. Be well.