Light Enough

It's been about six weeks since my plans for the future hit a major snag (which I talked about a couple of posts ago) and I realized that I needed some help to deal with it all. With my doctor's assistance, I've taken steps toward getting a therapist to help me deal with my childhood issues, and I have also started to take a medication that gives me more energy during the day. 

During that time, I've moved back to my home province, back into my own home with my husband and daughter, and have arranged an updated work-from-home routine that has me going into the office one day a week. I must say that it felt good to go to a work environment where people smiled when they saw me coming, where I felt (and feel) welcome, and where there was a sense of recognition and respect for my talents. 

Photo "Blooming Snowdrops In The Spring" by radnatt at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

I'm also looking forward to my upcoming volunteer activities, which I have scheduled to start this coming Wednesday, at a local non-profit organization aimed at helping pregnant and new mothers who are facing challenges (financial mostly, and mostly single moms). Hopefully I will be able to get outside of myself and gain some much-needed face-to-face experience with people in need at the same time. The director of the organization is someone I feel that I can "click" with - she has never been anything less than kind and approachable - an ideal mentor for me. Although it seems a crazy time of year to start such a venture, as the Christmas season seems to highlight the great need of people at risk, I believe that it will give me a sense of doing something that will make a difference to people's lives. And I need that tangible sense of purpose and accomplishment in my life, especially in the beginning of a season that for me is so depressing because it's so cold and dead outside and will remain so for many months. Who knows? maybe I'll even find some Christmas spirit laying around somewhere. ;)

As I think about my future goals, all I feel is confusion. Six months ago, I had it all planned out. I knew what I was going to do, when it was going to happen, and how I was going to get there. Now, I am questioning everything. So finding one thing that I can do gives me a light in a dark place in my life. It's like lighting a candle when the electricity goes off at night. It gives you just enough light to see the next step or two, nothing more. And you need to go slowly or you'll put out the light. But there is light enough for that one or two steps. 

I still have a lot of things to sort out. Having the time to do that without the extra burden of assignments and other school-work has been helpful. I have been doing a LOT of thinking, reflecting, meditating, and just resting. There is much that I just don't know yet. I don't know how long this process will take, or what I will end up doing with my life. All I know is that I need to use these next few months wisely. There have been opportunities for me to consider, and I am weighing these as well. But no major decisions set in stone. 

After all, I still only have light enough for the next step. Once I take it, I might be able to see where the next one will be.

Oblivious

On January 9, 2017, I underwent a complete hysterectomy after a biopsy (which occurred during a dilation and curretage or D&C) revealed pre-cancerous cells in my uterus. I talked about my hospital experience in this post. Since that time, I have been seeing a gynecologist every six months for checkups. 

Not long ago, my gynecologist decided to leave, and my care passed to a different doctor. Today, I saw him for the first time. As is his practice, he wanted to see me in a consultation first, then he would leave the room and give me time to get ready for the exam. 

During the consultation, he went over my medical history. All was pretty much as I expected until he mentioned off-hand that I had been diagnosed with stage one uterine cancer.

What? I asked for clarification.

He backed up, explained some more, and let me see the report that came back when they sent my uterus to a major hospital in another city for analysis. I saw the words, "stage one endometrial carcinoma," where "endometrial" has to do with the inner lining of the uterus, and "carcinoma" ... is cancer. The guy who had been seeing me for a year and a half after this operation made no mention of this information. As far as I knew, all I had was pre-cancerous cells. 

Image from Pixabay

Of course, all of that makes no difference now, because the uterus and all the other reproductive equipment is gone: ovaries, Fallopian tubes, and cervix. But the 17-month-old news somehow set me back on my heels and made my knees feel weak, like you feel when you have almost gotten into a car crash and narrowly escaped it. Or that you petted a dog that only later you found out had rabies.

I had been that close to one of the most dreaded diseases of our era, and I had been completely oblivious to it.  And unknown to me - it had touched me on the way by.

I have not been able to get those words - endometrial carcinoma - out of my head ever since. Because of that diagnosis, he said, my chance of getting cancer again is 5% - which I know means that I have a 95% chance of NOT getting it. So I have to keep going back for re-checks until five years after the surgery date, which would be 2022. Fortunately, this man is an oncological gynecologist - specializing in cancer followups like these. 

The feelings are a jumble of left-over fear, gratitude that I no longer have it, anger that I was not told this sooner, and incredible vulnerability.  I guess I just need to sit with this knowledge, make peace with it, and move on. After all, nothing has changed ... except my perception.

But it might take a while.

 

Taking Shape

I think that using some of my saved-up vacation this month has been a godsend as I make the transition into my final year of my Masters degree in counselling. This is the "practicum year" and for me, launching out on this exciting but intense and potentially draining endeavour (because it IS so new) has meant that I have needed to devote more time to self-care in all things. 

Something as little as not opting to sign up for cable has had far-reaching results in my life. As most of you know, I had to move to a different province and leave my family behind while I do my practicum, and so, with a lower salary

Photo "Woman Relaxing With Her
Eyes Closed" is photostock, courtesy
of
www.freedigitalphotos.net

and increased expenses (rent AND mortgage, plus all the other expenses involved in living alone), I have had to make certain sacrifices and cable was one of them.  Yet, I can see that I now have more time to devote to feeding my spirit with positive, encouraging music in the mornings, and I have found that I have been dividing the extra time from being on vacation (AND not watching television) between spending a little extra time at my practicum site, and putting on the finishing touches to my apartment, while slowly ridding myself of the piles and piles of boxes, bags and Styrofoam inserts that have been cluttering my apartment's office all summer long (from the move). 

Today, I finally got my Internet up and running, since I will need that for school, for my practicum homework, and for my work (when I eventually start back at it again near the end of September). I had had a call into tech support and they had asked for a service call - but by the time the guy got here, I had figured out that the phone jack I was plugging the modem into was defective somehow, and relocated the modem to a room with a working jack in it.  When the guy got here, he told me that the first jack not a real phone jack at all, but a connector for sharing screens on two different televisions, which the previous tenants had set up. It was a small victory for me to solve my own problem rather than waiting for some white knight to come charging in.

And between running errands at the stores, rearranging my kitchen supplies, putting up wall decorations, and taking the extra trash out the last couple of days, I noticed today that I am not taking the stairs so slowly ... unless I have a super heavy load to carry. Baby steps, but steps nonetheless. (No pun intended).

I am also eating more sensibly. All I had to do when I was living with my family was just mention some whim I had for this or that sweet or salty treat, and it magically appeared within a day or so. Now, I have to buy everything myself, and not only that, actually make the trip to do that. In a strange city, I find I hesitate before going out, especially in the early evening. This evening, I took off to go to the Wal-Mart - but I got lost and ended up about six exits away from where I needed to be. Out came Siri (my i-Phone's GPS), and after I convinced her I wasn't going to the town of New Brunswick in New Jersey (haha) she got me to the Wal-Mart. And she got me back home again - in the dark - so if I am learning anything, it is to recognize when I am out of my league and ask for help. This too is a positive thing.  Of course the main reason I went was for a certain item - and I completely forgot it - but at least I got there and back! 

All in all, everything is taking shape - from the apartment, to my practicum, to my activity level, to my eating, to my self-care. I am tired at the end of a day, but it is a good kind of tired. I find myself looking forward to my practicum days - even though they are intense and action-packed - wondering what I will get to do that day. It is hard, and wonderful, and nerve-wracking, and exciting, and stressful, and I am reaching the end of each day knowing that, as my supervisor puts it, (1) nobody got hurt today, (2) nobody wanted to hurt themselves today, and (3) nobody wanted to hurt anyone else today. 

Yes, things are taking shape. And so am I, from the inside out.

More than meets the eye

For the past couple of months, we've not been able to use the left side of our double kitchen sink due to a leak in the drain. Hubby put a container under the sink to catch the drips from when someone "forgot" and used that side of the sink, but he finally got fed up ... and called a plumber. He happened to mention that the remaining drain seemed sluggish, so the guy agreed to take a look at that too, while he was here.

He arrived early this morning. A few minutes later, the offending pipe crumbled in his hands from being rusted through. A replacement pipe, wow. Things could be worse.

The problem with the other side of the sink, though - the side of the sink we were still able to use - was more involved than just using an auger to clean out the sink trap, or replacing a piece of pipe. No - it went way deeper. All of the drain pipes were up to 50% coated on the inside with the sludge of decades of use, people washing dishes, draining off the fat from meat, etc. Down the drain all that stuff would go, and .. out of sight, out of mind. 

Until now. 

Photo "Rusty Water Tap" by
franky242 at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

Since I was home today, I got to see (and hear) them at work. It was a rather long and involved process ... and I couldn't help but think of the parallels between our plumbing problem and the situation many of us face when we've been trying to look after everyone else's crud for so many years. We pride ourselves on our ability to deal, even tell ourselves that we're doing what's right ... and then we wonder why we're sluggish, why we're sometimes barely able to function. 

So we ask for help and we think, yeah, this is an easy fix. Until it isn't. 

We end up having to replace some stuff in our lives with other, more functional stuff. That part is fine. But it's when we start digging a little deeper that we find that there's ever so much sludge we've allowed to accumulate. Things like making allowances for other people's mistakes, covering for them, not letting them experience the consequences of their own actions, and so forth. Learning to accept that these tendencies are there is hard - but it's a necessary step in being able to be willing to open ourselves to change. And, the malady goes so deep - it's so much a part of how we define ourselves - that the only way to handle it is to ream all that goo out of our psyches where it's had a chance to congeal and harden ... which takes time. 

It's inconvenient. It's painful, even. We have to put considerable investment into it. But getting help from someone who knows how to navigate those things means that it will take less time with fewer mistakes than if we tried doing it by ourselves. That's worth the inconvenience. 

And having that stuff removed from our lives makes the pain worth while as well. It's just the process that is the hard part. So we knuckle down, pay the price, and let it happen. 

The frustrating thing about inner healing, or growth, or recovery - whatever you want to call it - is that those looking on from the sidelines can't see any of the things we go through to get from A to B. All they see (if they are perceptive enough) are the results - the new attitudes we develop, the relationships that we begin (and end), and the things we say yes (and no) to, for example. This is a journey that is more than what it appears. There is more to it than what meets the eye. There are deeper issues. There is much that is unseen and that may never be seen. 

However, when we enter the process (and truth be told, many times we might not have undertaken the process if we'd known how much was involved), and when we are open and honest with ourselves, it's almost as though the changes happen without us even being aware of most of them. We just suddenly find ourselves doing something that we never would have dreamed of doing before ... and ask ourselves where that came from!  

Yes, there's more to it than meets the eye, but on the whole, it's worth the trouble. And someday, maybe even today, we'll even be grateful that the old pipe sprang a leak in the first place.

Direction ... Not Destination

“It becomes easier for me to accept myself as a decidedly imperfect person, who by no means functions at all times in the way in which I would like to function. This must seem to some like a very strange direction in which to move. It seems to me to have value because the curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I change.”
- - Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

About a month ago, I sat across from someone who really listened to me and heard my concerns. He wasn't a therapist, and quite frankly, to listen to his career accomplishments, I would have considered him to be unapproachable under normal circumstances (at least, what normal was for most of my life). However, I had heard him open his heart and share his passion with people... and I knew instinctively that he could be trusted.  So I poured out my heart to him. And he listened. And he cared. 

In doing what I did, I admitted to myself that I was not happy with the current state of affairs and that I wanted something to change. I also admitted to myself that I didn't have the power to change anything about my circumstances, but I could talk to someone who did. 

And you know, it happened. When I heard what had been done to fix things, it was like someone removed a 70-pound pack from my back, one that I'd been carrying around for a year. The relief was so great and so tangible that I welled up and spilled over in tears for a few minutes. And then I contacted the man who had listened - and I thanked him. It was all I could think to do. And it was as natural to do that as to take my next breath. 

I write all that because ... because seven years ago, I never would have been able to reach out like that and ask for help. I would have suffered - perhaps not in silence, but in helplessness and misery - and today I realize that the person I was then was me, and the person I am now is still me ... only better, healthier. And the catalyst for change was nothing other than accepting the me that I was then the WAY I was then - and learning to like that person. (By the way,  I had help.)

Photo "Woman Relaxing With Her Eyes Closed"
courtesy of photostock at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

Without realizing it, my behavior and my attitudes about things (not necessarily in that order) began to change. The change was automatic. I didn't have to work at it, except to realize and be aware of my behavior patterns. There were a lot of uncompleted sentences and one-eighties in the beginning as I learned a new way to be. I was becoming a better me. And I still am.

As you can tell from the above quote, I love to read things that Carl Rogers (father of modern psychotherapy) said or wrote. (I even listened to part of one of his taped sessions once. It was amazing.) He also said something else about personal growth. He said that it wasn't a destination ... that it was a direction. A process, not a product. That is my experience. Some of that experience was pretty intense - it involved doing things that were hard - but I tackled them when and as I was ready for them, and not before ... and I still do. 

But the weird thing about it all is that without that core of acceptance of who and what I am at the moment, none of the changes I've experienced (and am experiencing) would have been possible or would be possible. It is, as Rogers said, a "curious paradox." 

I can't explain how it works. It just does. Slow but sure, millimeter by millimeter.
And I'm okay with that.

Letter to Arielle

Your sister and you (in 2008)
knowing that I was going to take a picture.

Good morning sweetheart.

It dawned on me last night before bed that I didn't write on your wall yesterday - for the first time since we learned of your accident ... on October 22, 2013. 

But ... I know you don't mind, because it means that I'm starting to heal. Just a little tiny bit. A friend shared with me yesterday in a way I could understand inside my heart ... that you want me and your dad and your sister(s) and everyone - ALL who love you - to comprehend that you are supremely happy and safe and at Home where you now are. Deliriously happy... beyond human understanding. And that you still want us to be happy, to look after ourselves, to look after each other, to enjoy every day of our lives. Every. Single. Day. Like you did. 

Even when things were tough.

I remember how just a few weeks ago,I texted you as you were living in your car, like I did several times a day. That week, I was SO not looking forward to Thanksgiving. It had always been a family meal, with you sitting across from me at the table and stuffing you mouth as full as you could get it, as full of as many parts of the meal as you could get in there, until your cheeks were puffed out ... that I just couldn't get into the holiday now that you were homeless, running on empty all the time, waking up freezing every morning. :(  

I told you I was seriously considering cancelling Thanksgiving. 

You wouldn't hear of it.

"Oh Mom. Don't give up your Thanksgiving spirit. I'm here and I don't have much. But I'm still thankful for what I have. You and my family and friends. So don't give up on Thanksgiving. Please." Your attitude gave me the strength to at least do a chicken up and have someone over for a meal.

And now you are gone from us.

You KNOW that I ... we ALL ... miss you. You KNOW that. You have watched us as we've been broken, shattered because of losing you from this earth. But as we are learning even more how incredibly amazing you were while you were here, we're starting to see life, and people, the way you do. That's your legacy. What a tremendous gift! I wanna thank you, princess. So. Much.

Here's what we're learning.... SO far. 

It doesn't matter whether a person is "red or yellow, purple, green, black or white or in between" as we used to parody "Jesus loves the little children of the world". (And you'd roll your eyes, teasing us.) It didn't matter to you if someone was gay or straight, male or female or something else, overweight or rake-thin or anything in between, Christian or atheist or Buddhist, wore a 3-piece suit or a thong.  You accepted people. ALL people. You loved them - you loved us all - just the way we were: warts and all. 

You hated it when people took themselves too seriously, more concerned with appearances and protocol than they were about compassion and mercy, about celebrating who somebody was. You hated hypocrisy and condemnation; you'd gotten too much of it in your short life and you knew how that felt. Thank God there is no condemnation at all where you are. 

You gave of yourself until it hurt; you seriously went without ... to the point of giving up food, clothing, toys, money ... so that others could have. Over and over I am hearing the stories now. The lives you touched. The hearts you mended. Your deeds - done in secret - are now being proclaimed loud and long.

And now it's YOUR turn to be given to. For all eternity. Although ... I am pretty sure you'd find a way to give it all back. ;)

I saw a new post on your Facebook wall this morning from one of your old crew here - Anthony - his first time on your wall since the accident. He told you that he remembered how you were there for him after he had a bad motorbike accident last year ... an accident that made him unable to walk for quite a while. How you went to see him in the hospital ... and worked so hard to get him outside of himself (and his house) after he went back home and got into physiotherapy. 

That's so typical of you. 

You inspire everybody who knew you. You inspire me.
I only hope that someday I am worthy of the lessons you are teaching me.

Love,
Mom

More

For a long time now, I've likened my own recovery to a journey. I still believe that it is a journey ... only not in the way one might think.

A journey metaphor implies a beginning, a middle and an end. It's a place of departure and a destination at which one arrives triumphant. But recovery, I'm discovering, is not like that. 

It's a journey all right. But it doesn't go in a straight line. And you NEVER arrive. NEVER. 

The journey I mean is not one toward a goal that can be measured, some sort of award you can place on your wall and point to and say, "There. I did that."  Rather, it's an excursion into the self, drilling and chipping past layer upon layer of sediment: hard-packed rock built up over years and years of pain, trying to find that elusive commodity that got buried all those years ago - the true self that dares not show itself lest it be trampled. Again. 

Photo "Whole And Halved Onion" courtesy of
bplanet at the site
www.freedigitalphotos.net

Sometimes, after getting through one layer and seeing some progress, the tendency is to think that I've arrived ... to want to share that knowledge with the rest of the world ... and all that succeeds in doing is that it alienates those who care about me. And it isolates me. 

Getting past those layers (which have to be handled one at a time) is like peeling an onion. Each layer involves ripping ... pain ... and tears. Lots of tears shed.

The missing ingredient to all this - is the other entity that tries to escape detection: the person I had to become very early in my life in order to survive, the person in me that I hate. That is the monster that disguises itself as the victim, the martyr, the watchdog, the warrior, and any number of other things that SEEM to be justified. It's there just beneath the surface, seething in anger, trembling in fear, waiting for an opportunity to rise up and take over my life and regain control over others. It's the old me, the one who wraps herself in graveclothes and then puts on a mantle of respectability. 

Until it's exposed. Until someone pins it down and calls it what it is. 

Someone I care about a lot, someone who was very hurt by that monster as recently as yesterday (and for many years prior), finally decided to stand up to it. And that person exposed it for what it was, in all of the stench of decomposition that clung to it. That old me didn't like being exposed. It fought. It lashed out. It squirmed. But the new me - the one who is just barely beginning to be made known - along with the help of this loved one, realized that this whole thing was another manifestation, another mask, for that monster. And that it was something that needed to be addressed ... and NOW.  

So I had to do a few things that were very uncomfortable. 

1. I had to admit that I was wrong, that the monster existed and had hurt my loved ones. 
2. I had to root out the source of the underlying attitudes that were wrong.
3. I had to reject those attitudes and agree not to adopt them anymore.
4. I had to admit them to myself, to God and to the person I had wronged, as well as to those who were witnesses to that behavior and who were affected by it.
5. I had to ask those people to keep me honest with myself.

Before I go any further, let me first say that it is totally impossible for me to do all of that on my own. I need to be empowered to do those things; I usually find such empowerment from my reliance on and relationship with God. 

I am grateful to that loved one for pushing past the fear and confronting the monster in me. At the time, it was (shall we say) NOT pleasant. AT ALL. But it needed to be confronted.

I'm not as cock-sure as I was before; my arrogance about "recovery" was pretty off-putting to a lot of people, I'm sure. I know that this angry, fearful Thing is likely to resurface in another area; that is the major take-away from this experience. There is always going to be more. More layers, more hiding, more excavation to do. It's very humbling ... and that's likely a good sign. 

And as I go through more layers - painful as that process is - there is one more side-effect. A positive one. I get closer and closer to the real me - that one who's trapped beneath the surface. At least now I can hear her voice ... even through the bedrock.

The Acid Test

The term, "the acid test" has been around since the days of the early gold prospectors. They needed a way to determine if the metal they found was real gold or some other metal. So, they would mark the metal with nitric acid, which would melt other metals; gold, not so much. That term came to mean the way by which someone would know if something was genuine or not - from merchandise to someone's promises or beliefs. 

I got to thinking about this expression this morning as the face of this one person came into my mind, someone to whom some people react one way while others react the opposite way.

I first met Joseph in the late 1990s. He's an itinerant - a man who chooses to be homeless. He has a "home base" - the home of a relative in a different province - but he only goes there once in a while to catch up on his mail. Most of the time, no matter what the season, he walks and sometimes hitch-hikes from place to place.  He has a full beard, wears layer upon layer of clothing (because there's no other place to put it) and smells of spruce, wood smoke, and sweat. He makes no apologies for his appearance or his lifestyle. He sleeps in the woods, sometimes in a sleeping bag and sometimes not. 

It's intriguing to see the reactions of different people to this man. The first time I saw him, I was a receptionist at a church office. He walked into the office one day in 1998. My immediate impression was that he was a homeless man in his mid-fifties, in need of a bath, a good meal and a change of clothes.  There was something about him, though - something in his eyes, which contradicted what my sense of smell was telling me. My boss at the time, a wonderful pastor, caught sight of him and came out to greet him warmly. I decided to watch him, talk to him, and get to know him a bit better. 

Taken at Picadilly Circus, London.
Thanks to photographer Mantas Ruzveltas
for this photo, "Homeless Man" - obtained at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

Over the course of the next week, as he used the woods behind the church to sleep in (with the pastor's permission of course!) I learned that he loved his life, that he enjoyed country and western music (well, nobody's perfect), that he was a diabetic, and that he had the most gentle, humble character you would ever want to meet. I instinctively knew that if I ever needed anyone to look after my preschool children, I could trust him implicitly to guard them with his life. 

I began to look forward to his visits; he was always so full of joy, so content with his chosen lifestyle, so grateful for every bit of help offered to him, and so accepting of others. About once or twice a year he would show up, stay a few days and then move on. Whenever he did, he'd stop for a church service on a Sunday morning. He'd usually sit at the back, close to the door, so that he could slip to and from the washroom unnoticed. It was there that I noticed the varied reactions to his presence. They were much like my original impression had been - except that they were a bit more (how shall I put this nicely? oh never mind) "in your face."  Some reactions were downright visceral; they were clearly repulsed by this man and got as far away from him as possible. 

Many of these people are the first to attend prayer vigils and go to spiritual retreats, talk about the glory days, and tell others exactly what they believe. 

But Joseph is the acid test  -  his very existence challenges people and he isn't even aware of it; he just is who he is. Yet the challenge hangs in the air, "Do you really believe what you say you believe?"

A few months ago, as winter melted into spring, I found myself wondering where Joseph was, if he was still out there tramping the roads and touching lives with his uniqueness. 

And then one Sunday morning recently, I saw him - sitting by himself in the back near the door. His hair and beard were more gray; his face was more gaunt, but it was him. He was beaming, basking in the simple but profound pleasure of good music and shelter from the rain. When the service was over, I rushed over to where he'd been sitting, but he was gone. Disappointment settled on me like a wet blanket. I made my way back to my seat and began to pick up my purse and other items.

Then I turned and saw him, not ten feet away! He'd been in the washroom (most likely) and was coming up to the front to talk to the pastor and ask for a drive. My eyes misted over; what a beautiful soul. I shook hands with him and was delighted that he remembered me - his grip was a little weaker, but still firm. He was wobbling a bit with age and the ravages of life on the road - but it was the Joseph I remembered. His eyes were still as bright, and his smile as ready as it always was. 

Given the rainy day, the pastor asked a young man (a student interning at the church) to drive Joseph to where he needed to go next - across town - and I wondered if yet another generation would come to appreciate the inner beauty of this simple man ... and pass the acid test. 

I sure hope so.

It's me

It happens occasionally. 

I hear something that touches my heart, and I weep. Or I get to sing something that means a lot to me and my emotions take over my voice box and I choke up and can't make the notes come out the way I wanted. 

Once in a while that happens in public. And every so often, I can tell when someone is puzzled by it, because that individual questions me on it and makes assumptions that I must have experienced some great loss recently. It's as if the person believes that the singing is the performing part of Judy (first wrong assumption: I don't perform. Music is a part of me; I can't "not sing"), and the emotions have only to do with something that people are "supposed" to get emotional about. Like, say, grieving a death or something like that. And only a recent death. If I behave otherwise, it's instant judgment (or at the very least, bewilderment) because the attitude is that one should maintain a "stiff upper lip." I'm regarded as weird if I am affected by something beyond the accepted time frame, or if I am moved by something that means a lot to me. Like music. Or the beauty of nature. Or yes, even the death of someone who's important to me - and it doesn't have to be recent, or even someone I know personally. 

Thanks to David Castillo Dominici
who took this photo,
"Little Boy Covering His Face"
and posted it at www.freedigitalphotos.net

This happens to a lot of people; it's not just me. I remember a young girl of my acquaintance going to school a year after her older sister's sudden death (which happened under mysterious circumstances and to which there was never any closure), appearing "down" one day, and being told by a teacher that it had been long enough for her to "get over" her sister's death. 

As if you ever get over something like that. Really. 

I have a great deal of trouble with the mentality that denies and subjugates emotion as something "bad" or at least embarrassing and to be avoided. 

Here's the thing. I'm me. I'm a sensitive soul and I know it. I don't make apologies for it. In fact, I find it odd that people aren't more affected by beautiful sights or sounds, or by the misfortunes of others, because I am. I've wished in the past sometimes that I wasn't affected by things so much. However, even though sometimes I still want to not be quite as affected by the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," I've come to understand that it's my sensitivity and my empathy that make me who I am, and I don't need to apologize for it. It's my ability to have compassion and to 'weep with those who weep' - or to access the emotions attached to memories from my past - that will eventually (one day) make me a good counselor ... even if it is hard on my head sometimes. 

Emotions are part of the human experience. They were designed as a built-in early-warning system and pressure relief valve for the human spirit. They're normal and healthy. I would rather feel the things I feel, even if they are unpleasant, than to shut off those emotions, and then eventually, never be able to feel ANYTHING ... even the nice things. That is what happens when one makes a habit of clamping down on emotions too consistently. I've seen the results of that, and they are not pleasant. 

So - this is me. Bumbling with emotion sometimes, tongue-tied and thinking of a million things I could have said after the fact. Emotional and glad to be so, given the alternative. 

As the song goes, "I just want to live while I'm alive."

Why Self-Care Gets Such a Bad Rep

Recently, I had the opportunity to go hear someone speak on the topic of managing change. What it turned out to be was a sermon on self-care. It started off fine: "Let go of the things over which you have no control."

And then, it got ugly. 

If the presenter hadn't been so patronizing, and so obviously skewed to promoting her own agenda, I might have enjoyed the content of the presentation. However, having learned through experience and therapy to do the very things I heard this person talking about, I found the way it was put forth to be an insult to my intelligence. It cheapened all the valuable lessons I had learned in my healing process and reduced them to pithy little platitudes that implied that the reason why people were having a difficult time with change was that they had a bad attitude. She was, in essence, blaming the victim.

See the glass half-full." I couldn't believe my ears. "Choose to be happy. Smile. Be an optimist. Embrace change."

Excuse me? Even if change is ushered in at the hands of brutal people who care nothing about my situation but more about their career advancement, their political futures or their fat pensions? 

If I've learned anything in the last four years in recovery, it's that it is okay, and yes, even appropriate, to respond to injustice ... with anger. Anger motivates; anger - if harnessed properly - can produce positive change.  Need proof? The suffragettes, the Boston Tea Party, the American Revolutionary War, the Human Rights Declaration ... the list goes on.

The kind of change management proposed by this individual was the "lay down and accept change to the point of letting the machinery chew you up and spit you out." 

This is partly what gives self-care proponents a bad reputation. (The other side, equally extreme, is the "I'm going to take care of my self and the rest of you people don't matter, so just go jump in the lake" attitude - just as damaging.) 

The photo "Mirror" courtesy of Arvind Balaraman
at www.freedigitalphotos.net

The extreme that these folks go to, though, is passivity - something that the ancient Greeks called stoicism. It's a "Hakuna Matata" mentality - bad things happen and there's nothing you can do about it, so just throw up your hands and give up; tell yourself that it's not so terrible, and spout positive confessions that fly in the face of the truth. Never mind that it's wrong. Never mind that people are getting hurt. No, it's not your responsibility. Just sit down by the river, take deep breaths, and strum Kum Ba Yah. And don't forget to smile.

Even if your heart is breaking. 

The allure of this kind of thinking is that it perpetuates the illusion that all is well, and that you have some control over what is happening by denying its existence. Stick your head in the sand. Pretend there's no problem. 

Poppycock.

The problem is that there IS a problem. Denying it - whatever it is - is not going to make it go away. 

As a matter of fact, it's lying - to the self. And the body takes a really dim view of that kind of deception. It will exact payment: stress-related illnesses, for example. Cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, ulcers, chronic fatigue syndrome, migraines, high blood pressure, heart disease ... the list goes on.

Self-care involves letting go, yes. However, it also involves setting boundaries ... and enforcing them. It is about choosing to be happy, but it doesn't ignore or suppress emotions as they occur, and it is not ashamed to show them. There is a balance between the two extremes; that balance is self-care, and the extremes ... aren't. Self-care requires honesty with oneself, openness to explore new things, and willingness to do whatever it takes (even if it's hard) to be free. 

Why self-care gets such a bad reputation is that self-care is portrayed - and pursued - in a one-sided manner. When it's balanced, healing can take place. 

Taking Time

I've been spending some time lately looking after myself, and one important fact has dawned on me about self-care. To others it might seem to be a no-brainer but to me, it explains (in part) why I never did much of it before, and why I always felt guilty when I did do it.

It takes time. 

I would make time for my husband, for my family, for my friends, for church obligations, for my boss ... and after all that was done, there just wasn't any time for me. I'd drop exhausted into bed at night and the whole thing would start all over again the next day. The only time I seemed to take for me (and even then under protest) was when I'd get so run down that I'd get sick. Even my body was telling me to take some time for me. I wasn't listening. 

When I started therapy in early 2009, one of the first questions asked of me was this: "When was the last time you did anything for yourself, that you wanted to do just because you liked it?" 

I couldn't remember when it was or what I did. Wracking my brain, I did come up with something in 1991: I had taken equitation lessons - English riding, you know, with the helmet and the jumping over fences, that kind of thing. Wait a sec - did I say 1991? That had been 18 years previous! Yikes!

I was a lot skinnier then. A LOT. Almost a hundred pounds skinnier.

Yes, this is a photo from that day in 2003.

I remembered going on a trail ride when my kids were 14 and 11, that would have been 2003. I was much heavier than in 1991. I remembered the poor male attendant and then his assistant joining him in shoving at my hind end to help me mount up; nothing worked, and the saddle started to slip toward my side of the animal. (Shudder.) But I was there for my kids to have the fun of riding, dang-it-all!!. So I looked around and saw a platform with steps up to it. "Take the horse over there, and let me get on from that platform," I told them. It worked, and I did enjoy being on a horse again, but the experience was marred by the lead-up and the snickers of the extremely tall and skinny trail ride staff. It was NOT a happy time for me. To soothe my bruised ego and to finish on a positive note, I took the kids for a milkshake at a nearby diner afterward. They loved it. They wanted to go riding again sometime. I don't remember ever going back, at least not to that particular spot.

I have photos of that day ... somewhere. Fortunately for me, I was the one with the camera, so there are no blackmail photos. (Thank God.)

Back in 2009, in therapy, I recall reliving these experiences and realizing that Judy had taken a back seat ever since, and not out of love but out of shame, out of a feeling of not being worthy, not being adequate. Voices from my past had been all too quick to confirm my opinion of myself. I remember feeling trapped by my physical limitations, and I wanted so badly for things to be different: for me (for one thing) to not be nearly a hundred pounds heavier than in 1991. Every time I'd tried to lose weight, I had gained it back and more beside. My therapist stopped me when I said that. "Someday Judy, when you are healed on the inside, the outside will take care of itself without you even realizing it." And I cried at his faith in me. I didn't even have that much faith in me; how could a stranger know what I was?

I did a lot of crying over the next few weeks and months as I realized how I'd put myself in a corner and let others take the center stage in my life while I wore the "fat, stupid and lazy" dunce cap, self-imposed at that. I began to understand how deep that shame was, how horribly I'd treated myself, how that had spilled out into my relationships with others.

Jack Canfield, the author of the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series, said once that in order to change something in your life, in order to keep going and press forward instead of giving up, you need to flood your mind with statements and images that remind you of your goal. 

I learned that repetition is so very important. The self-destructive messages I picked up as a child were huge in my life. I had to lovingly parent that damaged inner child and tell her things she should have been told so many years ago: that she was important, that she was worthy, that she was smart, that she was loveable. One of the reasons I said those things to her was because part of me knew that it was true - the logical part of me. Yet the emotional part of me, where she resided, hid from this truth and pooh-poohed it - even sabotaged it. Repetition was the key. It had taken many years of others repeating the wrong message for it to get so entrenched into my psyche. It was not going to change overnight, especially because those same people were shouting those lies to me every day of my adult life as well. So, I set my sights on filling my mind with those statements, to remind myself daily, sometimes several times a day, of what I knew I should have been told and reminded of daily ... decades ago. 

From "A Letter to my Shy Girl"

It took months for that little girl to stop hiding her face behind her hands. It took even longer for her to venture a weak smile, and longer still for her to reach out to my extended hand. I got help - all the help I could use or ever want - from people who believed in me, from inspirational readings like "The Language of Letting Go" by Melody Beatty, and from Psalm 139.  Many, many readings of Psalm 139. I learned to trust my emotions to let me know what was going on inside of me, and not to deny them expression in safe ways. And, as hard as it was for me to go through - I did my homework, every day. I learned what I had to learn, examined what God placed in front of me to look at, even when I didn't want to look. I took responsibility for looking after myself and for restoring relationships I had ruined by behaving selfishly. I learned to forgive - to let go. I learned ... how to live life. 

The lessons I learned then hold me in good stead now. I still have to remind myself of what's important. I still have to talk gently to that little girl, because even though she isn't cringing anymore, she still needs to be parented, reminded that she is precious, valuable, cherished. She has gone from about 5 or 6 years old to being about 10 or 11, but she is still too young to be on her own ... yet. ;)  

However, there is progress. 

The one thing all of this has taught me is that it does take time to heal; that it does take time to do the things I need to do for my own benefit. And it's taught me that it doesn't happen in a moment. I need to TAKE the time that it takes to invest in my own growth. I can't let life happen to me anymore. I need to live intentionally, to immerse myself in gratitude-builders, to work on accepting myself so that I can accept others around me and have enough emotional energy to be able to overflow into others' lives ... in a good way.

Be there

I must check my email and each of my blogs at least three times a day. It sounds like a lot - and perhaps it is a bit excessive - but I don't want to miss anything that might be important to my readers ... or to me. 

For most of my life, I spent the majority of my time (until I got into recovery in January 2009) trying to escape. I tried to hide from my past, my feelings, my circumstances, even my children. I did that by burying myself in eating, reading, watching TV, playing games, doing crossword puzzles, even going to as many church functions as possible ... to escape the realities that made up my life. It wasn't even that my life was that horrible. It was that I wanted to get away from ... me. 

Once I started learning to make peace with my past and even to like myself, I found that I was better able to be there for the people in my life, including me. It surprised me how pervasive that tendency was - and still is to a certain extent. Now and again, I do have to remind myself what is important. And, in order of importance, here's what it means for me to "be there":

Be there for me - Self-care has become huge for me over the last 40 months (wow, has it been that long?). If I'm not looking after myself, I will have absolutely nothing in reserve to give to anyone else. I've written about this so much in the last two years or so that it's become a familiar song. Yet, I learn through repetition, and the reminder to practice self-care is something that I've needed to repeat many times to myself. Doormat-itis is deeply entrenched and it got that way through repetition. Recovery from that takes just as much repetition, if not more.

A very large part of that is making time for intimacy with God. I must admit that of all the things that are crucial to my self-care, this priority tends to get crowded out very easily. That's why I need to remind myself that this one relationship is central to every other and that if it suffers, they all suffer. 

Photo from a post called "How to be a Good Listener"

Be there for my husband and kids - This sometimes means laying aside what I would prefer to do and choosing to do what one (or more) of them like(s) to do, even in the little things. Watching Tangled instead of Star Trek. Listening to the radio (or to - gag me - Country and Western) in the vehicle rather than to my preferred kind of music. Or just listening to them ... which is (of course) far bigger a deal than what kind of movie or music we each like.

Be there for my friends - Lately, this has meant working harder at not talking so much about me, and letting them tell me what is going on with them: caring for them and not worrying so much about them not meeting my needs. I have a tendency to put on my martyr hat and try to get people to feel sorry for me. I'm learning that the less I say about me, and the more I keep the focus on them, the less trouble I get into. ;)

Be there for my clients - I was going to say "...for my employer." But you know, the reason I go to work is not for my boss, although I do try to keep her happy whenever I can. The thing that keeps me going back is the knowledge that my efforts make a difference in people's lives. I take a great deal of pleasure in that. Of course, there are things about every job that are less than ideal; that's to be expected. But overall, I feel blessed to do two things that I love doing - helping people, and writing to do that - for a living. Not everyone gets to do that.

Be there for my church - I have made a commitment to my church to be there in ministry whenever I can be. When I make a promise, I do my level best to keep it, and this is no different. It doesn't hurt that I love doing what I do, and I get to do it with people I care about. What a gift.

You may have noticed that I separated my spiritual commitment to intimacy with God and my commitment to church ministry; I have done so for a very important reason. Many people equate their service to the church with their obligation to God. I don't. The latter, for me, is about the vertical relationship; the former, about the horizontal ones.  Priority One is the relationship between God and me; I think of it as my "plumb line" - the one on which everything else hangs. Without it, there is no third dimension to my life: it's all flat, like a soft drink without the bubbles. Duty-driven. With that third dimension, it all makes sense to me. Life has context and contour, sparkle and sizzle. 

The core relationship permeates and infuses all the others; it's part of who I am, how I define myself, and enriches each of those other facets. 

One thing is sure. Living like this might be many things - not all of them pleasant - but it's never dull.

Outside Looking In

I can't remember a time when I have felt like I was in the "in" crowd. I always felt like I was on the outside looking in, from the time I was a small child and someone asked my name and reacted in disgust when they heard it. Apparently it wasn't cool to have that surname, and others before me had only acted "weird" - so nobody got to know me. 

Found this great photo HERE

Even in my family, though there were some happy times, I never truly felt a part of that world. I dreamed of something more. I wanted there to be a safe place, somewhere I could be accepted for who I was without having to pretend anything. But the specter of "What will the neighbors think?" loomed ominously over every aspect of our lives. We weren't allowed to talk about what happened inside the house or on the property; we weren't allowed to talk about each other; we weren't allowed to talk about conversations we'd overheard about anything from money problems to the guy down at the corner. Nothing. It was a black hole. Secrecy and lies - yes, lies - reigned. Family honor was far more important than someone's safety or happiness. Deny, deny, deny. And peck at each other like hens after blood. Nitpicking, criticism, judgment and condemnation were daily occurrences, and I participated in them as much as the next person. But I never felt right about it deep down. I just cloaked myself in righteousness (and hypocrisy) and carried on.

It carried through into my other relationships even after I left my childhood home. Relationships with people I cared about. My husband, even my kids. God help me, I nearly ruined all of their lives with my narrow-minded religious prattle. (I called it being a committed Christian. It had nothing to do with Christianity and I probably SHOULD have been committed.)

Finally, after life had beaten me down, I reached out for help and found it. And I discovered a whole new lifestyle called "rigorous honesty." It was raw. It was scary. And it was exactly what that outside-looking-in kid was always missing. 

Through that lifestyle and the choices with which I was confronted to embrace the new and walk away from the old, I discovered something which seemed miraculous to me. I could be myself (and thanks to therapy I actually was beginning to know who that person was, and like her) and people of like mind and heart would be naturally attracted to me on almost a spiritual level. 

And just recently I've started to redefine what "family" really is. "Family" isn't that genetic code you were born with, the people you're stuck with just because you happen to share some DNA markers. Many times - as was the case with me - the people who gave you life are sometimes the ones who seem hell-bent on sucking the life out of you. So I found a whole new family.

They're called friends. People with whom I feel safe. My husband, my kids, a few true-blue stick-like-glue no-matter-what-you-do friends. And a community of people I never knew existed until I started to blog: fellow-bloggers. 

I live in gratitude now for these folks, and prefer to spend my time with them instead of with the ones who, whether they mean to do it or not, are more about following the rules than about following their hearts. I had plenty of following the rules and it nearly killed me. 

I'd rather pursue relationship. Those are the ties that bind - ties of the heart. These people, these new family members (some of whom I've never even met in person!) have not even entertained the idea of me being outside the door looking in; they've opened their doors without any expectation that I would meet their needs or fix them up, or that they would even dare to do the same to me. They've accepted, listened, shared, and cared. 

And if that's what the Inside looks like in this world, I'm glad I'm here and not back there trying to fit into a world that was never made for me, though even now I am confronted with those who are trying to force me into their mold of what a "Christian" should be. No, I think I'll just stretch my legs out by this nice roaring fire in the hearth of this new family, this place where I feel so welcomed and protected, and breathe a deep, heartfelt sigh of gratitude.

Miracle Grow

Recently a friend paid me a compliment - that I'd been growing so fast lately that she wondered if I was using Miracle Grow.  

It made me laugh - and it made me think. 

The product Miracle-Gro® is plant food - pure and simple - and if you use it in the soil your plants grow in, it will make them grow faster and better than without plant food. It's remarkable the difference it makes.  

I remember a part of a conversation that I had with my counselor along about the end of the one-year process that changed my life so radically.  He also remarked about how much progress I'd made since I first sat in his office, a broken person whose life was falling down around her ears.  He rejoiced that it had taken as little time as it had.

I asked him why he thought that was, why it had taken such a short time according to him.

Found this picture at this site

His answer sort of surprised me - not because I didn't think it was true, but more because I didn't expect it to come from someone who made his living from working with people in crisis. I guess I had thought he might be jaded, I'm not sure.  

I can't remember his exact words, so I'll paraphrase:  "I've been doing this for a long time.  And I'll tell you that in the vast majority of cases, people who have God in their lives and form a real, daily relationship with Him, tend to heal more quickly because they realize that He's the one doing the healing, changing them as they get to know Him.  They just get to come along for the ride."  He went on to say that yes, it does take hard work, but the rate of change is so much faster in people who recognize and submit to the role that God plays in transforming them.  "Some of the most difficult cases I have, are people who refuse to allow God into the picture.  It's sad, really.  As hard as it is to go through this process even with God in one's life, it's many times harder without Him."

It's like a relationship with God that's daily, alive, and honest is the Miracle-Gro® of the soul.

And it IS a miracle.  Everything ABOUT it is miraculous.  Just the ability to smile when all I knew before were tears and frowns - that's simply amazing.  The reactions I have now that I never dreamed possible, reactions to things that would have driven me around the bend in my "before" life - are completely the opposite.  

Letting go when I once hung on for dear life shows that trust has replaced fear.  Huge.  

Speaking out and setting boundaries, when I once would clam up and shove things down inside of me - this is confidence replacing dread.  Wow.

Trying new things and admitting when I make mistakes (and I really DO!!) then moving on with lessons learned - instead of wilting into the background out of perfectionism and fear of failure - displays freedom rather than bondage. 

These Miraculous Transformations are sponsored by the all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present One. And HE is my Miracle Grow.

The right diagnosis

I've been going to physiotherapy sessions for the last few weeks after I "put my back out" one weekend.  

When I first got to physiotherapy, my therapist started treating my most problematic symptoms - in my lumbar area.  She gave me exercises to do. The pain started to become more manageable.  She got me to sleep with a pillow between my knees.  Sometimes the pain would be better, sometimes worse, depending on how I turned in bed or moved at work, getting in and out of the car, going up or down stairs.  The pain - when it came back - settled in one hip or the other and there were days it would radiate down the outside of my thigh.

This diagram I found HERE

About two weeks into treatment, my physiotherapist started talking about my sacro-iliac (SI) joint when I described the pain. 

I thought she was way off base, because for years my chiropractor had been telling me that the problem was in my spine.  Perhaps part of it was.  But this felt a bit different ... and I did the exercises she suggested, and things started to improve, as long as I did them correctly.  But I didn't quite understand what I was supposed to feel, where that "pull" she talked about was supposed to happen. 

I just knew that I hurt, and I wanted it to stop.

Out of curiosity (or was it desperation?) I looked up the SI joint online and found that it is the joint between the sacrum (just below the vertebrae, above the tailbone) and the ilium.  A dysfunction there will pinch the sciatic nerve.  And voilà - pain! A little more searching and I discovered a specialist's site which talked about a way to correct SI dysfunction through targeting that specific joint in a series of similar exercises which one could do one way lying down, another sitting, and another standing. I spent about ten or twenty minutes studying the mechanics of the exercises so I could be sure I knew how to do them.

And then I tried them.  What a difference!  I suddenly knew exactly what I was supposed to feel because I felt it!  Deep inside - I felt the stretch exactly where the pain originated.  It was difficult to get into that position.  But SO needed. SO worth it.  

It's amazing.  But if I had operated on the assumption that this was a lumbar spine problem rather than an SI problem - I might have wasted a lot of time and been in a lot more pain for a lot longer.  It's so important to know what the REAL problem is.  Going on a wrong diagnosis might fix something (more by accident than anything) but knowing what the issue is, goes a long way toward dealing with it. 

True in physical pain... true in emotional pain.  

I've been in emotional pain, a lot, and thought it was because the people in my life wouldn't listen to me, or because I needed to have this or that one need me or thank me or ... whatever.  And I imagine (because I am human and as such, selfish) that I'll experience that kind of pain again.  Hopefully not as often. :)  

I found the information I needed to be able to heal inside.  And it was hard.  But I started to heal.  And that was far better than just doing the same old thing and getting the same old results.

Being able to be honest with myself, and targeting the source of the pain, rather than dealing with just the symptoms and what I THOUGHT it was ... even though it might have been harder ... resulted in healing.  It still does. 

It appalls me sometimes that it took me this long to find what I needed to heal from the inside out, to be able to have the right emotional diagnosis so that I could do what I needed to do to stop the pain.  That's a big part of why I wrote my book: I don't believe that a person should have to wait until he or she is 48 years old (like I did) before starting to get better.  

But regardless of how long it took to start .... I'm so glad I did.  So glad.

Open Season

Since September 2011, when I e-published my book, (see my "About Me" page), I've been exposed to a lot of unexpected criticism.  I happened to mention in my book a couple of times some of the history that led me to the place of living life all bound up in grave-clothes: raised from the dead like Lazarus, and thinking I was free but unable to enjoy anything, unable to make any progress, wondering if this was all there was to life.  Part of that history is the fact that I was abused as a child: physically, sexually, verbally, emotionally and (worst of all) spiritually. 

The book isn't about the abuse, though.  It's about the hopeless state of mind I was in as an adult and how I found a way out, a way which I had never been shown or told about, and into a place of real relationship with God, with myself, and eventually with others, including coming to a place of forgiving my abusers!

Anyway, with only ONE exception, the reaction from the people I mentioned (never once did I give a name or an address; I'm not after revenge) and the response from people who think they know them, has been nothing short of vitriolic.  I'm reminded of the Pharisees who were present at the stoning of Stephen, who, when they heard the truth that they were responsible for the greatest atrocity in history, were so incensed that they plugged their ears, ground their teeth and started throwing stones at him to shut him up.  It was "Open Season" on Christians -- and Stephen was the first to be targeted. Nothing mattered to the Pharisees except their own image. The truth did not set them free... they didn't want to have anything to do with the truth.

Of course, I'm not equating myself with Stephen.  Or my birth family with the Pharisees.  But their reaction has been far over the top of anything that I would have expected, especially since I had given them the opportunity of reading the book before I published, and they said nothing to me about it at the time.  Only after I was published did I hear the rumblings of second-hand stories regarding the reaction of "the family." As it was when I was growing up, they seem to be more concerned with how they appear to others, than they are about how many people (possibly even themselves) could be helped out of the same hopeless state of mind through reading about my experience of inner healing, and applying the principles for "living life" that I learned along the way.  

Their reaction has helped me redefine some boundaries.  I spent my whole life, almost into my 50s, feeling ashamed if I told the truth about myself: hiding so much behind respectability and "what people might think" that I avoided becoming vulnerable and open.  As a result, I not only wasn't able to come to a place of healing from the hurts of my past, I wasn't able to help anyone else either.  When God finally brought me to the place where I was forced to ask for help, I discovered that what was required to begin to heal inside was absolute, rigorous honesty and openness at all times - first and foremost with myself.  

Since that time, it's been "open season" on Judy - all bets are off.  I have given (and continue to give) my will and my life over to the care of God, and nothing in my life is off-limits to Him.  And the road has been quite bumpy; at times it's been nearly overwhelming.  He's brought some pretty difficult things to the surface over the last while, things that I couldn't possibly face by myself - and has stood with me, strengthening me to face those things with honesty and trust in Him. 

The reaction of those people has only served to refine the lessons I have learned (and which I continue to learn!) while healing.  Forgiveness is a process that starts with a decision to want to forgive - and continues as you learn to let go.  Forgiveness doesn't mean you let people walk all over you again and again.  Some relationships can be salvaged and restored.  And some ... can't.  It takes willingness on both sides.  If the other side isn't willing, and wants to go back to the way things were (dysfunctional, manipulative, controlling, etc.) then it's time to walk away.  It's sad, but sometimes it has to be that way.  I can't expect them to be in the same place to which God has brought me by His grace, much as I might want that.  They need to come to that place themselves, and NOTHING I can do will make that happen. 

What I CAN do is continue to be open and honest with myself, with God, and with others - especially with those who might be getting to the place of desperation, the same place I was at 48 years old when I looked at my life and knew I needed help, knew enough to ask for it.  

And I got help, and hope, and healing.  And so can you.