Blah, blah, blahh?

So far it has been a very late, very wet summer. And there is even more rain  ... and showers ... and drizzle ... in the forecast. It's soo hard to get motivated with this kind of weather. Everything feels so BLAH.

So-o, it looks like I need to hold a private gratitude meeting with myself. Maybe by doing that, I can light a candle and dispel the darkness.

Okay-y, hmm. 

I'm grateful that my daughter was able to get the huge drywall compound stain off the brand new floor in the family room last night (where it had dropped from someone "mudding" the new ceiling); I'd been stressing out about whether the stain would ever come out. [Whew!!] I'm thankful that I have my husband and daughter to talk to and that we have good relationships and can talk about pretty much anything. 

I'm relieved that my daughter finally has an appointment to go see the orthopedic doctor in Halifax next month, and that she is continuing to learn to drive a car. Her progress in other areas is slow but positive and steady. I'm thankful for that too. Her totally accepting attitude about her lot in life just amazes me.

I'm pleased about my courses at my online grad school and that I will have the same classmates going into my upcoming fall course as I now have in the orientation. (From the winter semester onward, I won't have the same people in my classes, but that's then and this is now). The course for this fall will explore all different kinds and styles of therapy and the different underlying theories behind each - so it's kind of like a review for me ... but I'm sure I'll learn a lot too (it covers areas my previous program didn't have the time to cover) and continue to develop relationships I've started.  I've been assigned a faculty advisor that will be the same one throughout the program, so that's neat. Plus, I don't have to pay extra for my textbooks - a real bonus!

I am glad to have a pretty rewarding job ... and that my job is far less stressful now than it was six months ago due to some positive changes near the top. 

Photo "Candle" courtesy of phanlop88 at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

I'm grateful that hubby had a chance to make a few extra dollars in the last few months (thus being able to replace the ceilings in the basement with drywall and the lighting with something a bit brighter for the most part). It's not completely done, but the majority of it is, so our lives can resume their normal rhythms. I'm also grateful that hubby can now return to his normal schedule at home the rest of this year - it gives him more time with our daughter and allows him to be able to take her to her various (multiple) medical appointments. I am happy that my back (sacro-iliac) is doing well enough that I'm no longer using a cane, even though I need to be careful not to aggravate it by standing or sitting or walking for too long (hence my staying home today from church because those pews kill my back and standing up for any length of time is even worse). Nevertheless, it's doing better today (and I want to keep it that way) so for the moment, I'm okay. Okay is good. It's honest. An honest "okay" is better than a faked "great" any day.

I'm even grateful to be able to be there for a friend who just lost her 41-year-old daughter after a long fight against a congenital heart condition which left her susceptible to strokes. It's a rough road ahead for my friend, but I know she will make it - and I feel privileged to be there to help in any way I can. Mostly it's just by being there, and letting her know that her feelings are valid and normal for what she's going through. 

And although I am currently going through what I'd call an existential crisis at the moment (pertaining to the whole idea of fear-based obligation and ritual vs love-based freedom and service), I am grateful that I have a strong faith to ground me while I'm finding my way through what can be a mine-field of second-hand emotions that some people could attempt to put onto me. I have talked about my faith on this blog before, so most of you know that I'm a Christian, but most of my discussions on this topic are reserved for a different audience (different blog), so I won't repeat them here. Enough to know that there are some pretty fundamental changes going on within me, and even if the end result is a different way of living and spending time, it won't be because of a loss of faith. Rather, it will be as a result of returning to a more simple, less complicated (less guilt-based, less fear-based) faith. I see that as a positive thing, and I'm thankful for that.

There, that's much better. The rainy day has not succeeded in keeping me in a downward spiral. In fact, I can even feel the warmth of that candle now.

Through the cracks

I was sitting next to this lady with a styrofoam plate balanced in my hand at one of those pot luck dinners that folks throw together at a moment's notice. She was asking me about my class work as I have been studying to become a counselor, and I was telling her some things about my program and how it's designed to operate for people with full-time jobs. 

And then she asked me (as so many do) what area I wanted to specialize in when I graduated. I told her ... and then the next inevitable thing happened. She knew someone who ... and then she described someone who might benefit from therapy, dealing with issues from the past, and so forth.

I was explaining what usually happens in such cases, and she was nodding and so forth, when it hit me. "Everyone knows someone who's broken." A little more thought and it was, "With the hard knocks of life, it's pretty natural for there to be a few cracks here and there."
 

Photo "Fresh Green Tree Growing Through Dry Cracked Soil"
courtesy of Just2shutter at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

 
This kind of conversation gets me to thinking about the cracks in my life, the little (or big) imperfections that I have that might cause me to feel ashamed to take up space in the world. 

And then I remember how a miracle happened in my own life - a miracle that took almost a year, and one which showed me that the cracks are the places where life can spring forth. They are the places where I'm not quite so hardened and rigid and still inflexible. They are the soft places that allow the real me to come through instead of the masks I put on me to protect myself. Sure, some people might stumble over that, but it also might give them pause too. Maybe life isn't about looking good or appearing to have it all together. Maybe it's more about letting the cracks show. Maybe it's about letting the life inside grow. 

Maybe it's about being real, about being true to who I am and not to what everyone else expects of me. Maybe, just maybe, in letting there be cracks, light and moisture can get in and what is inside can burst forth. It will be messy; that much is sure. But there is life there. 

And I really do believe that is worth sharing.

Even when they don't "get it"

When I was a few decades younger, my parents would never allow my brothers and me to fight. Not once.

When we disagreed or got angry at each other (which invariably happened) we were told that we didn't hate each other, that we loved each other, and what would we feel like if something horrible happened to that other person and we never got a chance to make things right? Guilt and shame were the weapons used to coerce us into "making up" ... we were never allowed to work it out between ourselves.  We weren't allowed to feel what we felt.

All that really succeeded in doing was to make us doubt ourselves, to doubt our own feelings, and to not know how to resolve issues we had whenever they arose. We were forced into forgiveness before we'd even gotten a chance to fully define the problem. We learned to be insincere and to get away with it. This had far-reaching repercussions on our own emotions. Depending on our personalities, we either withdrew into ourselves, exploded in angry outbursts, or poured on the guilt and manipulation to make the other person capitulate. 

 Nobody said that he or she was sorry. We instead tried to make it up to the other person by doing something nice for him or her. We also never learned what true forgiveness was. 

Thanks to Tina Phillips at
www.freedigitalphotos.net 
for this photo, "Young Love"
Notice how what appears to be love ... isn't.

It wasn't until much later (many years after I left the family homestead) that I learned that an apology is actually being sorry and saying so, not for being caught but for hurting the other person. And in the same way, I learned that forgiveness isn't saying that nothing is wrong, that I was wrong to feel what I felt, or that what the other person did wasn't really all that bad. 

That kind of mentality kept me in a type of emotional slavery to my own sense of self-justification. I held onto things that people did to me out of a sense of not only being wronged, but of wanting someone else - anyone else (but especially the ones that wronged me) - to admit that I was the victim.

I learned, through therapy and some intensive working on my inner self, that forgiveness is recognizing that there is a moral debt that someone owes you, but choosing to write that debt off and not expect repayment. 

Ever. 

And that it is a process. It takes time. Sometimes a LOT of time.

And over time, I also learned that forgiving someone doesn't require the other person to apologize or to change in any way. In fact, very often the other person doesn't know that he or she has committed an offense and - if confronted - would never admit to any wrongdoing. Or, if they admitted it, they'd go right back to doing whatever it was all over again.

Instead, I learned that forgiveness is not really about the other person at all. It's about the person who forgives. It's about letting go of the need for justice. And what happens when you forgive is that it frees you. There is a lot of energy expended in maintaining a grudge. Forgiveness makes that burden disappear. 

And it does more. It actually liberates the other person to experience the consequences of his or her own actions without my help or influence. Don't ask me HOW this works; I just know that I've seen it over and over again. And every time I struggle with forgiving someone and finally come to that place of letting go, I learn it all over again. 

Even when they don't get it, even when they continue on in the same behavior, forgiving them allows me to acknowledge the wrongness of their behavior, and then to choose to release myself from the obligation to extract my pound of flesh from them. 

That's energy I get back. That's strength I need to live my life every day, unencumbered by the torture of "what they did" or "what they said." 

Forgiveness, even when the other person doesn't know or does not care one bit, does what very few things can do in the inner life of the one who forgives. It does what Abraham Lincoln did for the slaves after the American Civil War.

It emancipates. 

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."

Beginning the beginning

It was a week before Christmas 2008. Fast-forward through the impatient waiting for my drive, the frantic phone calls, the worry, the fear of finding him slumped over the wheel ... the tight-lipped drive to the emergency room in mixed relief, anger, and panic - and the waiting for the blood tests to show what I already knew.

Never mind that I'd been trying to hold it together, lurching from crisis to crisis and keeping the wolf at bay through several half-truths and self-delusions that "it isn't that bad" - the growing uneasiness that maybe this was too big for me to handle, the denial that I needed help from outside myself. 

Amazing how our perceptions of the season change
from the time we are children and snow just means
fun making snowmen.

Those who know me well, know that winter is my least favorite season of the whole year. I hate the cold, the snow, the wind, the slippery roads, the cleaning off of the vehicle, the shoveling, the heavy clothing, the scraping, the extra time traveling more slowly, the scarcity of parking, and so forth and so on. Whenever possible, I would let him drive, preferring not to face winter slushy, dirty, yucky traffic. 

Which is why, when the doctor told me that he would have to report the incident (me finding him slumped over the wheel with the motor running, plus his blood alcohol level) and that the standard penalty for this offense was losing one's license for 6 months, I felt cold, icy fingers of fear rising up from my gut and closing around my throat. I instantly envisioned months of driving in winter, braving the horrible winter elements, stretching out in front of me.

I also saw the inevitable questions, the anticipated judgment of those from whom I'd been able to hide his secret, and the cold shoulders that I just knew would result, and I started to tremble.

I was SCARED. Irrationally, unreasonably afraid.

I felt the weight of being the only driver in the family at the worst possible time of year, the isolation that came with that, the inconvenience of assuming the responsibility of carting people where they wanted to go (he'd always done that) whenever they wanted to go. It would be at least two more months, probably three, before he could get into Rehab; he'd already been "bumped" from the waiting list once. I didn't know how much longer I could DO this.

I truly didn't know where to turn. The driving was only the tip of the iceberg. It unveiled a whole host of other things I had been afraid to face, shed a spotlight on how dangerous it was for him to even be on the road, how I had been hiding from just how unacceptable it all was. I felt like I couldn't talk to a whole lot of people, that nobody would understand how I felt, bearing the consequences of his drinking and feeling like I couldn't afford to fall apart - yet wanting so very much to bury my head under the covers and never come out! Nobody I knew would understand that "overwhelmed" feeling, the shame, the fear, the anger, the constant pressure. 

Nobody except - perhaps - someone who dealt with this kind of stuff all the time.

The idea began, just like that. Just a seed of thought at first. Someone had to understand me. I needed someone to comprehend. A stranger perhaps. Someone who didn't know me, who had nothing to do with the circles in which I was involved. 

It percolated through Christmas and into New Year's Day. By that time, the idea had rooted and was starting to take shape. I'd call the treatment center. They had family counselors. I'd talk to someone there. Nobody had to know.

I didn't know what would become of this. I didn't know that this would be the very first step I would take toward healing in my own life, the first chink toward crumbling the facade I'd built up and beginning a life of honesty and vulnerability, of openness and commitment to being real, of freedom from so many things that had shackled my soul for so many years. I had no way of knowing that it would open the door to so much good that has happened since that time, only the least of which was learning that I actually COULD drive and survive in the winter. :) I couldn't have possibly predicted the friendships that would strengthen, the new friendships that would form and the amazing journey I was about to start.

I just knew I needed help. 

It was early January. My head in my hands and my elbows propped up on the kitchen table, I glanced beside my elbow to the 7-digit number I'd written down on a slip of paper. The numbers slowly lost their blurriness as I blinked and wiped the tears from my cheeks. 

With trembling fingers I reached for the phone.

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.

The soft underbelly

I just finished reading a post by my friend and fellow-blogger Ellie at One Crafty Mother, a post which has spurred me to talk about something that I don't often discuss. Especially not in a public forum.

Here is her challenge:

I want to issue you a challenge.  I want you to think of a moment, or period in your life (maybe it's still happening - even better) where you were feeling shame and vulnerability.  There is a difference between shame and guilt - just to clarify - shame is feeling badly about who you are, guilt is feeling badly for something you've done.   Vulnerability is that feeling we have when we've placed too much power in the opinions of others (oh, if they only knew how _______ I am) and shame and vulnerability feed off each other in very toxic ways.

Once you've identified a time when you have (or are) experiencing shame and vulnerability (almost always accompanied by their evil cousin fear) - I want you to write about it.  If you don't have a blog, crack out pen and paper, or a word document, and just let it pour out.  Try, if you, can, to write about it in narrative form.  Close your eyes, picture yourself in that moment, or in that period of your life, and write it like a story.  Tell the truth, every part of it, especially the little nuggets of shame, fear or guilt you've mentally edited out because thinking about them makes you feel small.

Talk about your inner shame dialogue; what did it tell you? How did it make you feel?  Writing about it - seeing your words out there - will take a lot of the power out of what is, essentially, holding you hostage.  I promise.

I must admit I'm a little daunted.  Especially because the first thing that popped into my head was something that I'm still going through and which I don't see any way out of except through it.  (Wow. That sounds familiar.)  But ... there's something that resonates in me with this concept - that truth makes people free, even if it's not pretty. That ugly things like shame and evil lose their power when brought into the light, when their soft underbelly is exposed.  

So ... here goes.

Many of you know that last fall, I e-published a book about my journey from the bondage of control-freaking and door-mat-itis into a lifestyle of freedom, passion, and purpose. It was a huge deal for me to have made the journey, and I wanted to write about it! 

The response I've received has been rather sporadic, actually - definitely not what I had hoped.  To be sure, I didn't expect to make much money from it; it was something that I wanted to do so that if even one person is helped by it, then it would be worth it. But I had thought I would receive just a smidgen more recognition than the large round of indifference I've gotten.  

Except from one quarter: my birth family and extended family, and anyone who is friends with them.  

For, you see, I did mention a couple of members of my family-of-origin in the book a couple of times.  I did so to highlight the "before" picture and some of the things I went through to be free of the things certain people did and said to me: things which scarred me my whole life long.  I took great care not to make that the focus, though.  I wanted to talk about the "unwrapping" that happened as a result of a day-by-day relationship with God, with myself, and finally with others.  (For more information on the book, see my "About Me" page.)

But by talking about their part in it even once, I broke the cardinal rule that was hammered into my psyche as a child: "What happens here STAYS here - we don't talk about it outside these four walls." 

I found this photo at THIS SITE

The truth about my childhood has always been a source of great shame for me.  I always thought - until I was well into my forties - that if anyone knew that I was abused as a child, they'd not want to have anything to do with me.  I'd lose everything.  Fear had me by the throat.  I thought people would blame me.  I thought that my family would disown me.  I thought that I would never be able to look anyone in the eye again.

But for the most part, people outside of my birth family have been kind, if not just tolerant. And I've experienced a great deal of healing from those traumatic experiences.

Yet, I am still ashamed.  Not for the horrors of what happened to me - God has healed me from that shame - but for telling the truth.  Ashamed for (even though it is the last thing I intended) appearing to be disloyal, ungrateful, vindictive.  For exposing the deception and no longer keeping "our little secret." For being honest ... and being called a liar. For having my motives judged and for not being able to explain to their satisfaction why I would cast such a shadow on the reputation of someone who - to friends and family - is the closest thing to a saint that they've ever seen.  

I wish I could say that it's been resolved. That would be nice, nice and pretty, all tied up in a bow and a "wonderful testimony."  But it hasn't.  This is a process.  I struggle with these feelings of shame, of feeling exposed and vulnerable to what others think, nearly all the time.  There have been many nights - even in the last six months - that I have cried myself to sleep because of the fallout, the pointed fingers, the broken relationships, the constant criticism and the lack of any kind of attempt to understand what I'm trying to accomplish. Grief over lost contact, lost favour, lost relationship, is something I deal with daily. All too often, the weight of shame and the crushing, smothering feelings of loneliness, fear and anxiety overwhelm me. 

I fight to keep in the moment; it is the only way I can survive.
 
I don't know how to get past this wall of misery.  I don't know if I SHOULD get past it.  I don't know if I'm doing any good to anyone - or if secretly I WANT them to suffer.  (Am I really that horrible? How can I ever look at my reflection in the mirror? When will this end? HOW will it end if it does?) 

I don't know.  I really don't.  I have wrestled with saying goodbye for good, with writing them off, with closing the door on that part of my life and never looking back.  

More shame. More vulnerability.  More feeling like I want to crawl into a hole and disappear.  

I am exposing my soft underbelly here - in the hope that shame has a soft underbelly too.  My friend Ellie says that shame and vulnerability hate the truth; they hate compassion.  

I hope so.  I really DO hope so.