Strange Star

[Hope4Now]

I am going to try to paint this weekend. Going to try to just let go of all the crap that keeps me back from this. Going to see what happens. Maybe I'll cry. That would be ok. There will be nobody around to see or hear. I am really scared of
This weekend.

 

[Bedbug]

Safe journey, @Hope4Now. I hope your weekend goes well. I'll be thinking of you on the beach.

 

[Echo]

Hope all goes well.

 

[Hope4Now]

I am sitting in a coffee shop. Finally found something that stays open during the winter! Oh, yeah, it's spring. You'd never know with another blizzard on the way mid-week. Sigh. I am ready for flowers and the smell of turned soil and the warmth of the sun. It has been a long cold winter in so many ways.

I've only been here on this solo retreat for less than 48 hours, but it has been a very important 48 hours. Until I ordered my coffee just now, I have spoken to nobody since Friday evening. This was important. It helps my brain quiet down when I can stop talking. It's funny, talking is different from writing. I like talking with people; I like the connection with a real live human being, but it also takes a lot out of me. When I write, everything feels clear, and I can do it at my own pace, and there is no need to keep up. I think I am wired to do things very, very slowly. The pace of the world I live in is just too fast and overwhelming for me.

I don't think I fully realized before this weekend how exhausted I really am. How much rest I need. I don't mean sleep, (although that is very nice when it comes), but just rest and quiet and release from any expectation to meet anyone else's needs. I have spent a shocking amount of time this weekend just resting. Lying down, covered with my very cozy sleeping bag, and letting my mind wander at will. In between, I have been working on some poetry--some decent of its own merit, some bad but important to my processing. And writing in my journal...my pen and paper one...endlessly. I did some mindfulness meditation using a great CD I have, and spent a lot of time listening to nature sounds and chakra clearing sounds (this really cool app for the phone that is sort of magical in the way it works for me). Mostly, though, I just allowed myself to rest. And I still need more. I am just starting to feel a little more "in myself." And now it is almost time to go home. I know I will lose most of this feeling once I return, but at least I know I can "get here" again if I can finagle another opportunity like this. I long to have a place of retreat from the world.

I was laughing last night when I listened to a song by this young singer-songwriter whose CD I bought a few months ago at a coffeehouse (sort of out of sympathy...he was opening for a bigger name guy--Slaid Cleaves--and his stuff was pretty raw, and I wanted to support him. His name is Putnam Smith. The song that made me laugh last night is called, "Oh, To Be Emily Dickinson." He sings about wishing to be her in her solitude...first just for a day, then for a week and a day, then for a year. God, it so resonated with me. And, of course my fears that if I go off into solitude I will not want to return to my life that I've built. And, of course, this is the case--sort of. If I could manage to find a balance, it would be good. But regular, real-person life doesn't provide much time for solitude. One must have great courage and fight and trust in the self's longings to create time for it. To be the weirdo who wants to retreat when the rest of the world seems to seek ever more stimulation.

My balance is just way off kilter. I am a profound introvert. I used to think I wanted to be completely alone forever, but as I've learned more about myself, I know that's not the case. I crave deep emotional connection with people. I have real social needs in this way, as well as profound needs for physical contact with people I feel close to. I would never be happy as a hermit. However, I need tremendous amounts of time in silence and alone and just resting to reconnect with myself. Way more than even most introverts. Probably pathological. Maybe, though, it's just that I've been without it for such a long time and my self is so empty, my soil so parched. Maybe if I can find a way to build more of it into my life as I have just begun to do, maybe I won't feel such extreme need. I need to access or generate the courage and fight to make this resting alone time part of my daily routine. I don't know how to do it yet, but I know it means life or death for me. My system is running on empty. This weekend provided the gallon or two of self-gas that will limp me along to the next stop, I think, but the next stop needs to be pretty soon.

On Friday, I spent way too much money on art supplies. Very typical of my extreme thinking. I was laughing (with a little iota of compassion) at myself yesterday when I looked at the mess I had made of all of it. On Friday night, I had set up the canvas and mixed the paint. I sketched a mess in pencil on the glaring white space, just to take the pressure off. I could see what I wanted to paint. I can always see what I want to paint. I see it everywhere, all the time. I just can't do it. Sketching was hard, but I did it. I made myself do it. I remember one time a mentor told me he makes a muck of his new canvasses to take the pressure off. I couldn't do it with paint, but I did it with pencil. I knew I could paint over it. I knew it didn't have to match what I saw inside.

But then, it was time to paint. I know I wasn't ready to do it. As I am wont to do in my life, I forced myself. That "you must" and "you should" wasn't coming from my true, deep self, it was yet another part. I could see this by yesterday afternoon. But force myself I did, and started with brushes and thin paint in blacks and grays. That wasn't right so I made a really thick version with gel medium and used knives. But it still wasn't right and then the nasty toxic part of me started in. I kept up the fight for several hours. Then I realized it wasn't going to happen. I stopped. I poured myself a drink. I went and lay down for a while. I couldn't even look at the table where I was set up.

I worked really hard to quiet the toxic "voice" (the one I call the Tornado) and the "pressure" voice (the one I call the Mean Coach). I tried to be compassionate and tune into some of the young parts of myself when my creativity got so tangled up. I tried to just accept where I was, at that moment. It sort of worked. I returned to the table and replaced the big canvas with a much smaller one. There was another painting in my mind. I knew I couldn't do the detail part, but thought maybe I could lay in the background. I used the thick black paint and put it in. I gave myself gentle permission to leave it at that for now. All it was was a canvas with a textured black all over it. I liked it okay. It was the effect I wanted. That was good, so I left it to dry. On Saturday, I realized that I should have used the gloss medium instead of the matte, so it was disappointing to see it in the light. But I forgave myself and acknowledged that just doing what I did was a big step toward healing for me. That's why I was able to laugh at myself with a little compassion yesterday when I looked at all the canvasses and sketch books arrayed on the table. As if I was going to have this wildly creative manic weekend in which I would produce not one but many paintings. As if. This was a very real example...it was right there in front of me for me to see...of my extreme thinking, of the extreme pressure I put on myself...of the way I set myself up for failure every single time. I hope I can remember this and learn from it as I move forward.

 

[Hope4Now]

Next installment.

What I did do, which seems less like being creative or artistic to me, and more like something else, was draw pictures of some of my inner parts that have "revealed" themselves to me in certain forms. More on that in a minute. These are not parts in the sense of my inner children, etc. They are not people parts of myself. They are energies at work in me. With the help of my therapist I have begun to get to know some of them. When I first started doing this in the late fall, I felt like it was completely crazy...and I'm an extremely open-minded person. I am very in tune with what a lot of people call the "woo woo" stuff. Yet this identifying "parts" and visualizing them as entities in and of themselves, and naming them seemed pretty far-fetched. I think I went along with it because I was so desperate to get rid of my physical pain I would do pretty much anything at all (like the weird stuff the yoga-aryuvedic-pranic healer-lady had me doing...which turned out to be really helpful and I only realized it once I stopped doing it!). And, I liked my therapist. I didn't trust him, but I wanted to. So I went along with it. It really felt like I was playing a game. But I am very good and practised at playing games of this sort (I am a trained actor after all and actors do a lot of crazy stuff for the sake of developing character and ensemble). Then, gradually, the game became not so much of a game. It became deadly serious. It became a very real and essential, compelling quest to get to know myself.

The young child parts of me didn't show up until a few weeks ago (? maybe longer I don't know), but these energies started first. There was the Caretaker first (who was exhausted), then a bunch of others, some of which I've mentioned earlier. I am still finding new parts in this process of disentangling the mess I have become and trying to find clear access to my core self without dissociating (I learned I have been doing this latter my whole life without even knowing it).

So, I decided yesterday to draw some of these parts as they have revealed themselves to me. I had purchased these little card-like things 3x5 and some markers with the idea that I would do this. I have been seeing them in my mind's eye for so long now, I thought maybe it would be a good thing to draw them so that they are out there in real-tangible life. So I did. They are basic drawings...more like cartoony line drawings than fully developed drawings (which felt like just too much to take on artistically anyway). I've learned/realized two things from this activity.

First, I don't equate this drawing activity with any sort of creativity. From some other person's perspective, it might be seen that way. They are decent marker drawings, and the ones that are animals are decent likenesses that anyone would recognize. So I started wondering why I don't think of these as artistic or creative. I made them up. I had an internal vision of them. I drew them on paper. Isn't that creative? (Even if the image in my minds eye is far more complex and developed...more real and alive than these drawings.) I realized I do the same thing in how I perceive my writing. I have written four books that people buy and for which I receive royalties and about which I am invited to speak to largish groups of people on a regular basis (I can't do this much these days because of my emotional state...the one I did a few weeks ago I was totally dissociated and I am terrified to look at the online video of it that I felt forced to consent to...I can't remember if I wrote about that here or in my other journal but it was horrible). I have another book due out this spring, a second edition of one of the four due out this summer, and work on another new one to commence this fall. I have articles published in print and online that are based on the books. I write and edit others' online content for our website and a free e-resource. Anyone other than me would consider me a writer.

Yet, I don't. This kind of writing is like the cartoon drawings. It doesn't count to me. It is not fiction. And I am just as tangled up and blocked with fiction as I am with painting. Even the poetry I have been writing doesn't count (though it counts more than the work-related writing). I don't understand this disconnect I have about myself. It is something I need to reflect on more.

The second thing I learned from the drawing of some of my parts--the animal ones that is--I just learned today. I'm on wifi here at this coffee shop and I actually looked up some of the animals I drew from my mind's eye to see how they matched up with the real ones. They weren't bad. But when I looked up the first one, a raven, I came across a shamanic site that talks about the symbolism of spirit animals. I read about the raven. Then I read about the husky/wolf, the weasel/ferret, the macaw, and the seal. What the sites said about spirit animals stunned me. All these parts of myself "revealed" themselves to me as those animals over the past few months. They are not all animals I like, and yet it was very clear to me what these energies/parts of me were when I visualized them. I do not like ferrets at all, for example. Nor do birds particularly appeal to me, and I am afraid of wolves. The only animal that revealed itself to me that I have always felt connected to and fond of is the seal. So...I've had a few insights as a result of this. One, I need to "make friends" with my parts. Maybe connecting with and learning to appreciate these animals that I don't like will help me be more compassionate with myself. That's the easy insight.

The harder insight is challenging for me to write about because it seems so far out there as to be completely unbelievable to my rational self. (But, then again, if someone had told me a year ago that my pain was a dissociation of emotional pain, or that someone could completely block out memories of the past, I wouldn't have believed that either). I think...I know on a spiritual level I guess...okay here's the woo woo stuff...these animals revealed themselves to me because they actually are spirit guides, guides I need to get to know and listen to and recognize the role they are playing in protecting me and helping me to live my life. I know this, intuitively, because the energies that are preventing me from being a healthy integrated person do not have animal forms--two are people-like, and the others are abstractions like the Tornado. Okay, there. I said it. Not so bad, really. I think the only people I could share this with in-person are the yoga-pranic healer lady and her former student who is/was my massage/yoga therapist. I can't afford to see either of them on any regular basis, but I know they would understand this and it wouldn't seem weird to them.

When I first got to know the yoga-pranic healer lady, I was pretty freaked out. First of all, she was/is a very feminine woman. Sort of earth mother type. I wanted to run away fast, but again I was desperate for healing. (More on running away from femininity in a different post later). I was also freaked out because I actually saw her aura. I have never seen anyone's aura before despite wishing I could. (I looked it up later and found it was the aura of a psychic and healer). After our third session, she told me I was profoundly spiritually evolved. I didn't believe her even though I wanted to. Even though maybe I have always known I am, deep down, but it was repressed because of so much of my upbringing. She told me that it is essential that I hook into some kind of yogic community, and that I would find myself not feeling so alienated from the rest of the world. That I would find people like me. I have not been able to do this yet--partly because of lack of money and time, and partly because I am just not ready for groups of people at that level. The four days I spent on retreat for self-compassion in January showed me that in a very, very scary and lonely way). I am holding on to this hope for connection for sometime in the future, when I have done some more healing. I long deeply for this kind of spiritual connection in addition to the emotional and the physical.

 

[Hope4Now]

Last installment.
Ah, time is running short. Things shut down early here, and I need to rest before making the drive back to my home. I wanted to write the last bit though about this weekend.

Some of the time spent resting and reflecting, I also spent doing some gentle movement and trying to get the feel of being in my body, of connecting my body with my mind, and of exploring some of the things that came up when I was reflecting. Several intense experiences and insights happened. Probably way too much to write here now, but maybe I will return to some of them in later posts.

Yesterday, I had some "memory" fragments return (I still do not really trust or believe in them, but they're there nonetheless). Then, I was trying to "hang out" with my 3-year old self as my therapist has instructed me to do as much as I can--to just let things roll and go with whatever she "wants" This is still weird and unbelievable to me, but I'm trying to go with it. She was there and present, and I was working hard to be present with her. Instead of drawing and trying to show me her drawings this time, or just trying to rest against me, she wanted me to follow her. She had wanted this a few days ago, but I had to stop because I was too afraid. Yesterday I followed. She led me to a dirty basement room and showed me another little girl there, older than herself. I won't go into detail; I know for certain that this little girl and the state in which she was revealed to me is metaphorical, not real in the sense of it being a real memory of something I saw or had happen to me. So I witnessed her without doing anything else, and thanked the 3 yo for showing her to me. And the 3 yo finally relaxed a little bit. Some of this I understand, some of it I don't. When I'm ready to share it with my therapist, I'm sure I'll end up spending time with that little girl in the basement too. Whether she is the "invisible girl" I felt last week, or another girl, I don't know yet.

(trigger alert next few paragraphs if anyone else is actually reading this)

Not long after that, I found myself saying some things out loud..."No, no, no" and "Hurting me." and "Stop it." and "Leave me alone." And I was "feeling" some things...energies...different from the pain and other physical sensations and body twisting and recoiling and jolting...in a different layer somehow. These confirm for me, without a doubt, that something vile and violent and violating happened to me that I do not remember. Whether it happened at the physical level, the emotional level, or the spiritual level, I don't know. Whether it was one isolated event, or a series, or the cumulative effects of childhood and adolescence I don't know. The woo woo yoga ladies I work with told me, basically, it doesn't matter. A violation in one layer of being, if it is severe enough, spills over to other layers and has the same effect (they even say it can cross "lives"...now that's even further out there!). I heard this from both the yoga ladies several months ago. I heard it in my thinker brain. I didn't reject it, per se, but I just held it there. I didn't understand it at a full and deep level...just at the thinker/intellectual level.

The result of yesterday and those experiences was the feeling of letting go of trying to hunt down what happened to me. If something comes to memory, fine. If I never remember, fine. I "awakened" from these reflections yesterday feeling more relaxed, more able to just take my time through this healing process. Realizing that what "happened" to me actually in "real life" matters much less than how I felt and processed or dissociated from what happened. My work is to get to know my child selves and let them show me what they want to, and let them know they are safe now and can heal with me, that I will be there for them. Realizing that there are a LOT of these child selves yet to come. That I have a LOT of work to do. That maybe, just maybe, it will be transformative.

Then, there was this morning. Last week my husband sent me some stuff that really disturbed me...nothing new really, nothing I haven't encountered before. But this morning I decided to write about it. I had been thinking about the fact that I am triggered so deeply by things about my husband, and how much this bothers me and makes me feel such deep guilt and shame, even though other parts of me are both celebratory and accepting of these parts of him. It is a catch-22 that makes for a major barrier in our relationship, and it is something I can barely talk about at all--certainly not to anyone in person. It had been on my mind and I must have been processing it on a subconscious level because I had a pretty clear insight about it this morning. I realized that the disconnect has to do with my unresolved issues with my mother and father, and that somehow I am transferring these onto my husband, and he triggers me because of these issues--not because of who he is or what he does. This is about my reactions to him, not him. It's like the classic example of how the car backfiring can send a combat-vet into full flashback. Except my husband, the person I am closest to in the world and who I love and appreciate so much, is the car backfiring, and I am the combat vet. It makes for a very emotionally charged relationship.

So I wrote about it in my journal this morning. A lot. For pages and pages. I could barely move my hand it was so cramped from holding the pen. I got so much clarity, not only on my relationship issues with my husband and their sources in my past, why I have run away from almost every relationship with men I have ever had (I listed them today...that was an eye-opener), why I have such difficulty trusting women, why I have such an aversion to femininity and being feminine, why my needs for physical and emotional and spiritual connection are so rarely met. It was incredible. Then, suddenly I felt this compulsion to take a shower. (I'm not sure why I am attracted to water--water of all kinds from the ocean to the shower--it is very very powerful for me and has deep physical, emotional and spiritual resonances for me).

I dropped the pen onto my journal, left it there, and went to shower. I was in a really weird place...Overwhelmed by a lot of parts I don't know or recognize I think, but still sort of vaguely present as my current self...just really really fuzzy. This happened to me last week in the shower too when I pretty much boiled myself because I didn't feel the heat soon enough. I was in some sort of flashback, moaning, saying things out loud, curled in a fetal position, then up into a sort of yoga position, then back on my feet again. No emotion, just physical movement. I was sort of watching all this, watching myself--there but not there. Maybe there was a little emotion, like, "What the hell is going on here?" and "Should I be scared?" and "Am I going crazy, finally, for real?" and some fear, but not enough to stop the process. I guess they call this depersonalization. I was filling the tub with the shower because I wanted to take a bath too.

I was lying in the half-full tub, with the shower also powering down on me, and feeling like I was really losing myself as my watching presence was going further and further away, when the hot water gave out fast, and the cold shower shocked me back into the present. It was like I snapped back into my body almost completely but not quite. I turned off the cold shower part, and lay back down in the tub. I was doing some stretching and realizing how much muscle tone I have lost between almost 2 years of no exercise and pain and now a fast 20 pound weight loss, and that scared me and made me sad. I thought about how much I have always hated my body, even when I had a great athlete's body until I was almost 30 and I still felt fat and gross and ugly even though from others' perspective I wasn't. I felt so sad that I had cheated myself out of enjoying my young body, a body I can never get back. I was thinking about my beautiful twelve-year old daughter who looks just like me and is built like I was then almost exactly to the height and weight. She even has a scar on her face like I do (but hers is much worse than mine and in a different place. She calls it her "badge of honor" and refused the offer to go to Shriners to have it repaired).

I think she is physically perfect and very beautiful. There is nothing I want to fix about her. And I want her to feel about herself the way I feel about her. I tell her this a lot. I share with her some of how I always felt badly about myself. And she knows my mother so sort of gets it. So I was thinking all this and about what had just happened, and suddenly I had this physical feeling of crying, but there weren't tears. Then I was shouting, "It's my body." "Give it back." "It's mine." "Mine, mine, mine." And I actually FELT EMOTION. It was dull, but I felt it. It wasn't my present self. It was some child self that blended with me. But I felt angry and frustrated and helpless and sad almost all at the same time. And some tears actually came. And then it was over. And I felt more in my real core self than ever. I felt empowered. I felt like all my inner children were there witnessing this even if I don't know them yet or can't see them. So I talked to them all. Called them all together and told them even though I couldn't see them I knew maybe they were watching.

I promised them I would take care of them and keep them safe. That my body is mine, my mind is mine, my feelings are mine, my spirit is mine. They are here with me NOW and never ever have to go back to where they came from. I felt some sense of energetic relief on some unknown plane--as if they heard me and believed me. I also felt a physical relief, a release. And with no thought consciously at all, my face erupted into a HUGE smile.

When I stood up, finally, my pain had released a lot. I was standing differently. The pain was still there, the weakness, the shakiness, but it was muted some. I knew it would return once the thinker part of me got active again, and the tornado, and the fear and all those other energies. But I had the release. Something in me loosened up. It was very healing.

There. The end. For now. Or perhaps just the beginning. That's where the screen name comes from, Hope for Now. Just the now, one moment at a time.

Now I must leave the coffee shop. I must rest, then go home. I'm feeling a little more ready for that after spending the past few hours writing this.

 

[Hope4Now]

Finis. Wrote this at 7:44 PM before I left to return home.

I returned to the house from the coffee shop feeling like something had shifted in me. It was deeply good. Parked by the beach with the bigger waves and listened to my anthem, Dougie MacLean’s “Ready for the Storm” I listened to it and sang it through twice, watching the waves, reflecting how the inner arc of them and the outer curve of them echo some of the involuntary movements I do with my back. Remembering how I used to like to swim under water like that, like a dolphin. Moving my core forward smoothly and with great power and strength. How it carried me away, even at that young age, into another place, a deep place of safety in my imagination.

Then I thought about the dead baby seal I came across on the beach yesterday. I found it after I had drawn the seal on my parts cards. The seal I drew is the only one that didn’t have a label of what part it was. Unlike the others whose presence and identity were clear before they had an animal being connected to them, the seal just sort of appeared to me without thinking. It came when I was messing around with drawing the ferret. I recognized it, so I went ahead and drew it without labeling it as a part. Earlier today, it came to me that the seal is my creative part--a real core part, maybe even my deep self. That knowledge came out of the blue to me as well, but it felt true and right. Later, when I was reading about spirit animals, it seemed even more fitting and true.

I returned to the house with the plan in mind to rest some and then to go out to the beach and watch the sun set if I felt rested enough and the time was right. Then, I sat in a rocking chair in the bedroom because I wanted to think a bit before I lay down on the floor. I began rocking and was suddenly and powerfully overcome by this tremendous feeling of gratitude for all that has happened to me in my life and for many of the people who have had and are having a powerful influence on my life. And I actually began to “pray” aloud to God, the Great Spirit, the Universal energy that unites all things. To the something that is powerful and beyond my comprehension but that I know is there. And words of prayer came to me, and I spoke them quietly but aloud. I don’t think I have prayed aloud since I was a very little child. Something just felt right and good about it.

I went on for a long time, and it transformed very naturally into a lovingkindness meditation for the people in my life. I felt this amazing sense of well-being as I went through the people who are foremost in my mind right now. And as I gave thanks for the gifts each of them has offered to me, and asked for each of them to be open and to receive what I wished for them in my lovingkindness meditation, other bits from the weekend came together.

On one of my resting times, I had a vision that I didn’t understand. It was of a triangle—a wooden triangle constructed from more than three pieces of wood. Each of the sides of it was made of beautifully crafted and connected strips of wood. And each side fit together seamlessly at the corners, except for one which had a black, hand-wrought tack nail stuck into it. I don’t yet understand the meaning of the tack-nail, but while I was praying, the significance of the triangle became very clear to me. Each of the three corners represents people in my life who are, I think, very powerful healers. F, and K, and P. These people are the ones that surround the space they enclose. In the space are S and me. Perhaps because F’s and K’s and P’s roles in my life are pretty clear to me, while what will happen in the healing space that S is teaching me how to make is less clear to me.

I gave thanks for each of them, and wished lovingkindess for each of them, for what I sense they need in as much as I know them, which is not deeply in a regular sense, but more intuitive. I wonder if any of them felt the energy, because it was powerful on my end. It was like I was tuned into some truly amazing life presence. After that I went on to include other people who are vibrant in my mind…My father and mother (had to keep that one short…felt the fear and negative energy), D who has, serendipitously reappeared in my life recently, M, and C and my children. These last two were hard as well and I felt the blocked energy. There’s work to be done there too.

Then, I lay on the floor and put on the chakra app, set to wave sounds and the third eye frequency. I’ve been working my way through each of the chakras for 20 minutes each as I’ve been up here this weekend. I began to have the involuntary body movements (which have been very quiet this weekend), but I accepted them, breathed with them, and they quieted. The neck pain returned too, but not as intensely as a month or so ago. I had a moment of dread when that happened because it made it very hard to do any relaxing because it hurt so much for a month. But this time, it calmed on its own.

I focused on my breathing and had the sense of the waves and the rolling hills, the gently undulating movements of my chest and abdomen. The swings of my childhood summers up here where I am (and a sense of sadness that, this year they took down the old swings that I had grown up on, and replaced them with lovely new blue ones—far less dangerous I suppose because the chains are so short. One cannot swing to the literal heights of the old set which must have been at least 25 feet high). So last year was, I guess, my last time on those wonderful old swings.

Then, the oddest thing happened. I found myself smiling, then laughing. Really, genuinely laughing. It went on an on. The image of the laughing Buddha came to me and that made me laugh more because I call my belly a Buddha belly. It was such a wonderful feeling to really laugh. At first, I wasn’t tuned into what I was laughing about…I was just going with the physical act of laughing that kept erupting from someplace deep within me. Then, the emotion attached and the understanding. I was laughing at the cosmic ridiculousness of being human with all the mixed up joy and grief and pain and longing. With all the physical energy and limitations. With all the spiritual myopia. I laughed, and it felt so very life giving.

And just as my laughter was tapering off into a quiet sense of rightness and connection with the world, the 20 minute timer ended, and the chimes sounded. I rolled over onto my knees, expecting pain and stiffness, but there was none. I practically leapt to my feet. No pain, not even shaking or fatigued muscles. Nothing.

I looked out the window, and the sun was just going down. I put on my hat and scarf and coat, and walked to the beach. No pain. Almost normal gait. Too good to be true. A blessing and a respite for however long it would last. I didn’t expect it to last. I sat on an old piling that had washed up on shore and watched the colors of the sky until I realized how cold I was. Not the kind of cold I get when I am emotionally overwhelmed. This was just there normal cold from freezing temperatures and an ocean bluster. My hands and face were getting numb. But I needed to see the dead baby seal again. To reassure myself it was actually real and that I didn’t imagine it. Because what was so strange about it when I saw it yesterday was that for a moment I thought it might be alive. It was very recently dead. Probably washed ashore on the morning’s incoming tide.

I needed to find it again because I think it was a spiritual sign made real to me. I sense that the dead baby seal represents a major part of me, my creativity, that began to die when I was very young, and is/was really almost completely extinguished until the past couple of weeks when a little glimmer of possibility…a lone spark in the dying ember flared up a bit (oh, I am so conscious, writing this, of that hackneyed metaphor). I have been blowing on it gently with hope. I think the seal that appeared in my consciousness yesterday, the one I drew on the card, is a sign to me that the creative part of myself is not dead. That I need to mourn the past with the same bittersweet grief with which I mourned the dead seal pup, but to rest in my awareness of the eternalness and simultaneity and interconnectedness of life energy and my belief that there is always more to come in life. More joy, more grief, more fear and sadness, more comfort and love. More of all of it if I can just let go and laugh and cry with the universe and let myself trust that I am enough, and loveable and worthy of receiving all of it as I am right now in this moment, and that I have something, a lot maybe, that others will find worthy of receiving from me. I don’t know what it is. I have so much love to give, so much caring and comfort and compassion to share, and maybe some creativity that can bridge some existential gap somewhere—the gaping hole of loneliness that keeps us separate from one another, and that for me, only art and music and loving connection with others can heal.

I found the seal. It was real. Last night’s tide had rolled it to a different place on the beach, a different position. It was in worse shape than yesterday. I took a picture of it to remind myself of all this.

As I walked back to the house, I realized what happened today. A deep and gaping gash in my spiritual self knit together. The healing process has truly begun for me this weekend.

I’m all packed now and writing this still. I’m leaving much later than I planned. I have missed my mother-in-law’s 81st birthday party. (I swear my family celebrates so many occasions with dinner we are like the Bravermans on the TV show Parenthood…well, we’re actually not like them at all, really, but we have as many family dinners as they do). Tonight I will miss saying goodnight to my daughter and she will be disappointed. I will be tired when I get home and probably ready to sleep so my husband and son will be disappointed. My dog will be disappointed that it is time to put her to bed when she is at the peak of her excitement at my return. I have, however, brought this powerfully transformative weekend to an end in my own time, and I now feel ready to return to what awaits me in the next moment, and the next.

 

[Echo]

@Hope4Now - well done for making time for yourself. Amazing what comes together healing-wise when we do. It was time to release some of that pent-up energy and some of those realisations. I am so glad for you that you've had such a positive outcome in so many ways.

 

[Hope4Now]

@Echo, LOL, I went to my therapist's appointment today and, UGH. Ended up in a difficult place again. I jokingly said to him at the end of the appointment, "Thanks a lot for making my happies disappear!" I'm okay, though. I know I have a lot of work yet to do, especially on the emotional processing level. It's not going to be easy, as today's appointment made abundantly clear. But at least I still feel more whole spiritually. It gives me some ground to stand on as I'm being buffeted about by all these memories and emerging feelings.

 

[Echo]

@Hope4Now - I understand. I always feel better when I can process things on a spriritual level; it is my natural terrain. But I find there is a need also to do things on a physical level, too. The emotional level belongs to both. I had an amazing session with my therapist today that brought the two together. I had not realised I could speak to her on that level, and whilst I doubt I'll be unpacking quite as much weirdness as I might in her hearing, at least it was possible to be understood and have her help me make some realisations.

Keep pulling yourself up to your highest frequency and reconnecting to your creativity; for me, too, it is the only way to go, though I know I must not escape the physical in order to do so, as I must have done for the first 50-odd years of my life (with the emphasis on odd).

 

[Hope4Now]

@Echo glad you had an amazing session today! I never quite know what weirdness I'm going to lay on my therapist. I actually handed to him today what I wrote about my weekend, and a poem I finished. I'm not sure why I did. Way too weirded out to say a lot of things out loud to him. Funny--when I write, it is a way for me to process things. But when I share my writing--especially journal-type writing, or things that are personal, it is a way for me to remain at a safe distance from the person with whom I'm sharing it. I guess I gave the stuff to him because I want him to understand where I am, but I am far too fearful of judgment to actually say most of it out loud to him, or to anyone for that matter. I'm working on it though. I did say a few things today that sort of surprised me!

 

[Hope4Now]

Is there such a thing as ongoing emotional rape? Like for many years?

Can one ever forgive oneself for not fighting back enough? For not having the courage to really run away? For not having the right words to say to find help?

I've had a terrible experience this morning. I can't even write about it yet. The physical and emotional and intellectual parts of my current self and a whole bunch of who knows what other parts of myself almost completely overwhelmed me. Not completely because part of me was watching it happen (but powerless to do anything).

This is the worst it has ever been. I think something shifted just enough in me over the weekend that a gate to horror squeaked open, just a little bit.

Am I/was I so desperate to be loved that I erased everything that was me and became someone else? And have lived that way for all these years?

I feel sick to my stomach. I don't know how to deal with this stuff. I don't have any words to explain it. It's like a dark and dreadful fog is suffocating me. It's frightening, but I feel resigned to it.

I feel like I need to just let it come and see what happens...there's enough of my core self in there to know that this is what has to happen. I just wish there were somebody I could call who could hold me and understand without me having to explain it all.