@mumstheword it just amazes me when you talk about your story. How did you come through all of that and still be the loving and caring person you are now? I have no words to describe how incredible you are
And yep - sounds like you are stuck with him! You finally found someone who sees the true you and loves you for all of it.
:-) I survived, I guess, coz angels were watching over me, or something. I had a deep sense of other realms and beings, from very young, Benevolent beings who cared about me as well as terrifying energies that frightened me out of my wits.
On our travels, I met kindness sometimes. My first encounter with a caring human presence was in a buddhist retreat centre, in the north east of Tasmania. I was doubled up in pain, from an intestinal affliction, lying on the ground and they cared! I was about 6 or 7. I was astounded.
We stayed in a lot of different religious settings of diverse kinds. It captured my imagination, that people could be so different and passionate about their beliefs.
When I learnt to read, I could escape my chaotic, frightening life and try to get my head around things. I became an avid bookworm, that's how I survived my childhood with a kernel of sanity and enlightenment.
I was a read-y seeker. A quester for knowledge. An intellectual, a passionate researcher. Religious people had given me a seed of light and set me on a path of discovering how to transcend and grow out of adversity and hopelessness and pain and I wanted to know more.
I wanted to understand the difference between healthy minds and beliefs and those that weren't . What was liberating? What soothed the soul? What was the Soul? Do we, in fact, have a soul?
Because of the living in diverse settings, like a buddist community, hippy communes, festivals, a hindu ashram, a fringe catholic community, and such, I knew that they wasn't just one way to view reality and make meaning. I knew people had vastly different ways of seeing things and values and practises, so I was free to explore and discover what resonated with me.
I experimented with drugs that hippies use, instead of settling for the drugs that doctors prescribe, and I got answers. I had experiences that informed my journey, my direction. Positive, heart-opening experiences and I formed my own beliefs and faith based on that.
Reading opened my mind to so many exciting possibilies and points of view.
Ethnobotanicals communicated from a soulful perspective and transformed my brain, so that, knowledge gained became wisdom, and not just theory.
I gravitated to the arts - performing arts, dance, theatre, music production, as another way to rewire my brain and break out of my frightened box. I learnt to "fake it til you make it". That got me through a lot of horror years.
I practised yoga, also immensely helpful.
I had baby after baby and devoted myself to them. They forced me to come to ground, to be open to other humans, to selflessly serve, to be responsive and responsible, to learn to become a positive example, to give up perfectionism and embrace messy-but-beautiful life, works-in-progress.
They taught me patience, to be real, to come from my heart, to develop myself, to be in the here and now. Still a work in process and progress but one who is past the constant living nightmare of actively symptomatic C-ptsd or developmental and adult trauma ptsd.
Now it's management time, time to recover, as I finally don't have, to, struggle so hard, to hang on so tight, to climb up the mountain in a dark, cold blizzard. The sun is out and the air is warm. It's springtime of the Soul, for me.:-)
