Happy birthday Nanna

The opportunity arose today to grieve again, in safety,  the loss of my beloved Nanna who was born 87 years ago today.  When she died, I was unable to cope with the enormity of my grief.  I felt like my very soul had broken, in fact, there was not one atom of my being that didn't break.  Even my thoughts broke.  Each time I tried to 'ground', focus, think, I saw slivers and fragments in my minds eye as I literally and figuratively shattered.  I had come out of psyche the day before and had no resources, no comprehension of how to get well and then... desolation, despair, horror, a gnawing, gaping, black chasm opened up inside me and I chose to dive in.  I was unable and unwilling to be part of life for the next 7 months and the blackness felt so comforting and understanding right then.  In that blackness I saw the tiniest spark of light and I nestled against it.  That spark became my new pseudo attachment figure  as I struggled to comprehend the depth of the loss, the shock, the pain, the nothingness.  I eventually found God in that blackness.

Today, my body felt the physical pressure I had been unable to feel in 1998.  Today it was safe to grieve -openly and unashamedly, to let the tears fall, to feel gratitude for the gift of unconditional love my Nanna gave me, to be joyful at having her in my life for 29 whole years and to acknowledge her presence in the air around me now.  How proud she would be if she saw me today.  She always believed in me and she was the first person to look past my behaviours and see my heart, my real self.  What she saw in me took me 38 years to find.  It took 36 years for another person to see it and recognise it in me too but my Nanna? She saw it at my birth and every time she looked at me, thought about me, spoke about me.

My Nanna was not perfect and she knew it.  What I always knew is that she loved me without any strings, limits or expectations and that she always will and I give thanks today for the gift of her and for the gift today of being able to feel the pain wrap around my heart again and be able to really feel it, release it and let it go, safely and surrounded by love.

xxjxx

Goodbye year

As another year draws to an end, I find myself wanting to let go of anything not serving me.  Where once I hung onto every experience, every memory, every slight, every pain like I had nothing more precious to 'collect', I have now 'grown up' enough to realise that holding onto that old baggage holds me back and keeps me a victim, chaining me to it as securely as if I were padlocked into it.

I am mindfully sifting through the 'baggage' of yesterday and offering it up to release myself from its control so that I may be free to experience the wonder of today, now, and look excitedly towards what bliss the future may have in store for me, if I am unencumbered by the misery of what has already passed and has served me in whatever way it has, in my 'past' (aka: a moment ago).

I once felt safest bound in the shackles of the misery, blame and if-only's that I clung to in desperation but now I have new beginnings to anchor myself to which offer to weave me into a rich tapestry of love, hope, faith and strength and I have vowed to myself that I do not want to be still wallowing in today's pain in another 20 years time just because I chose not to heal today's pain today.

I was once a mindless automaton who modelled self-doubt, martyrdom, powerlessness, unforgiveness and a lack of personal control and, having worked really hard for 10 years solid and giving up everything I held dear at the time, I am not going to make it all count for nothing and role-model the same things to another generation of people that I love dearly.

I remind myself often of what freedom once cost me and cost those I cherish and of the incredible journey I have travelled since then.  Where once I could only see my hatred, bitterness and despair, I now open myself up to the miracle I have learned to call life.  I drink thirstily from it.

As this year closes, so too do my wistful imaginings of how things should have been, could have been, might have been, once were.  I trust and believe that 2014 will bring a whole kaleidoscope of rainbow colours to my already miraculous universe and I want me more of that!  Goodbye this year, hello new year!

I hope you're able to let go of the old and make room for the new in your life too because you are so worth it!!

xxjxx

Memories

I used to despair of ever stopping the 'tapes' that played on instant replay in my mnd.  Back then, I wished my entire memory could be erased and the living nightmare would end.  Traumatic visuals assaulted me 24/7 and I had no idea how to shut them off or if anybody else experienced the same thing.  I hated how, with each new experience, more old stuff would play over in my mind.  The details were so raw and clear all the time and I longed to forget but it wouldn't happen.  Those tapes kept right on showing and I had a box seat to every re-run.

I first asked to see a shrink when I was 14 because I thought I was mad, crazy mad.  I cried a lot by then, which was not well received and if anyone asked my why I was crying, I never knew the answer, my mind would go completely blank.  I had to have a reason to cry or I would get more to cry about but whenever I tried to form an answer to what I was crying about - nothing - nada - zero - zilch.  My mind would completely empty and be still.  There was no answer I could access.  I remember that my mother thought the idea of me seeing a shrink was a huge joke, the funniest one she'd heard in years as I recall.  She did not think it as funny when our family doctor agreed with me.  She believed I was 'a normal ten anger with normal teenage hormones' and I would eventually 'grow out of it' without her 'forking out good money for some quack' to tell her what she, in her omnipotent wisdom, already knew.  I persisted and the doctor won that argument, thank you Dr Wilson.

Unfortunately, when I saw this learned professional, a psychologist, he proceeded to tell me what I "should" think instead of listening.  As it was 1983, Australia was about to recognise child abuse in a court of law and, had he listened he could have helped not only me but my entire family.  He didn't listen though and all I came away with was more confusion, frustration and questions.  It would take me another 32 years to find my answers - for myself.  My mother claimed afterwards that the psychologist agreed with her completely, that I was a normal teenager with normal teenage problems and that I would grow out of it.  She told everyone she met how she knew as much as a shrink.

I battled on alone and it was another 3 years before I would willingly seek out professional help of that type again.  In 1984, I was in a motor vehicle fatality and lost my best, lifelong friend.  I was almost 16 and it impacted me horrifically.  I was a blithering mess for months and it was about 18 months later that someone recognised I needed help and support and only then because I dissolved into hysterics after hearing someone close to me had crashed their car.  Even though they were okay, I collapsed screaming, blaming myself, almost dribbling down my chin.  I remember being slapped and told to snap out if it but inside my mind I laughed at what I considered then to be a feeble and moronic attempt at futility.  I hid inside my head where all the horrors played out. 

I was taken to a counsellor who was really nice and she listened.  She told me I had Post Traumatic Stress and I told her it was crap - a new fad for shrinks that meant absolutely nothing.  I wailed at her that I must be some kind of freak to lose my best friend and not remember the couple of moments leading up to it but be constantly remembering things that were said to me and done to me at age 3, 4, 5, 6, 7..........what was wrong with me? What sort of person could I be?  I hated myself for that.

I was grateful to her for seeing me and listening.  I did feel slightly better after and I did see her again a few times but she put me off with this PTSD talk.  It was another 20 years of constant remembering before I read about the symptoms and realised she had been right.  For over 2 decades I lived with PTSD and didn't even know it, in fact, I had C-PTSD and it was compounded from birth to 35 years of age.

I saw about 1/2 a dozen other counsellors and psychologists over the years as well as 3 psychiatrists but none of them ever picked up what she did.  None of them wanted to know about my flashbacks, tapes, horror and hopelessness.  None of them understood why I felt so hopeless and behaved so powerlessly.  None of them listened, they believed they had the answers for me and I believed they had them too.  We were all wrong.  Medication helped to push it all down and treat the symptoms but it did not address the underlying cause.  These professionals kept telling me I had to live in the now but they did not hear that 'now' for me was reliving all the horror, over and over again.  I was mentally, psychologically and emotionally trapped in trauma and the memories never stopped their assault on my mind.  I was manacled to my childhood with chains of despair that bound me so tightly I could not be in the now.  When anyone spoke to me, I was reacting to some old memory of something else.  

I battled on believing I was certifiably crazy for all those years till I finally snapped and took 7 months 'off' life in 1998 after I lost my father-in-law and my Nanna a month apart.  I trapped myself in my mind with my memories and refused to come out, it seemed pointless to try anymore.  Eventually I came back from the void and fought again but it was only another 5 years before I was gone again.  This time I was determined that I should be locked up and observed.  I figured that if some shrink would see what I was like day-to-day, I may never even be released and at the edge of my sanity, that was okay by me.

I couldn't even get assessed!  I got taken to hospital a couple of times by police and ambulance but I couldn't get a mental health assessment for months.  When I finally did get assessed, I got the same spiel about how I needed to let go of the past but my horror was, the past wouldn't let go of me!!  Without any plan or prospects, I fled interstate and still got nowhere with the mental health system.  They were now referring me to a women's centre.  Why could no one hear me?  I was suicidal and completely alone, with no money, living in a car!  But I was not in need of mental health services?

Thank God!!  That is what I've been saying for the past 8 years.  Thank God!!

I finally found a counsellor (and other health professionals) who listened and understood.  People who supported me in finding my own answers and in stopping the constant playback of those memories.  I still remember in vivid detail, countless words, images, behaviours, sounds, smells, tastes and sensations.  I still remember too much but, now I have peace and the tapes have stopped. I can recall memories if I want to rather than the memories being in control as they were for all those years - 3 and a half decades in total.  I have never 'recovered' any memories because I was never able to forget any.  Now though, I understand my mind and I am at peace with the memories, they've done me a favour and helped me to be who I am today.  They're my memories, a part of who I am and I'm not mad or crazy.  My brain was simply having a very normal, neuroscientific reaction to very abnormal stimuli.

Onwards and upwards

Xxjxx

Growing Up Again

Throughout my life I have shouldered too much responsibility for too many things that did not belong to me.  For about 5 years, I tried in vain to find a word that would replace 'responsibility' in my vocabulary as I struggled to let go of that which was not mine to carry.  I still struggle with it although not nearly as much as before.

Annette Noontil (Your Body is the Barometer to Your Soul so be Your Own Doctor II) wrote that "my only responsibility is to be happy".  That quote has helped me immensely in my quest to let go.  I rejected her notion at first because it challenged the beliefs I had at the time. As I've opened my mind and heart more and realised how limiting and disabling many of my old beliefs were, I find her quote very helpful. Making my happiness my only responsibility has liberated me. Not only does it serve to remind me that my happiness is vital to my healing, it also has taught me not to try to expect others to shoulder more than what is theirs either.

I was reminded this week (more patterns I observed in life) that once not so very long ago, I believed that I had no choices.  I was so trapped by fear (my own and that of others) that I was conditioned to believe that I had no options other than what I was experiencing.  I believed back then that life was some kind of horror film to be endured in agony and despair and that the only thing possible to hope for was death and so I longed for life to be over and never learned what living was.  

I feel sad about that and I feel so overwhelmingly grateful that I am no longer chained to those thoughts and beliefs because it is not even close to true.  I do have choices.  Everything I experience as an adult, arises through a choice that I have made and I am responsible not only for the choices I make, I am also responsible to own the consequences of the choices.  I am learning to accept that every action and thought of mine has a consequence and can help me to learn more about myself and others.  Blaming is not conducive to my pursuit of happiness.  Blaming is merely a synaptic map in my brain born of fear.  I choose love and I strive to change those brain maps and look at circumstances without needing to blame, and it's hard, sometimes very hard to catch my mind slipping into that old pattern of needing to assign blame, needing someone or something to take responsibility for what I have created with my own mindlessness.  I believe mindfulness is the highway to my healing and although my brain still welcomes the safety and comfort of unawareness, it it getting easier to practice mindfulness much more often than was once possible.  

Through mindfulness I have learned who I am and who I want to be.  I have learned what makes me happy and I've learned that I don't have to or need to control everything.  I've learned that if I am not in control of me, I am out of control and so will everything around me be.  I have recognised that life gives me cues, tips, answers and signposts to support me on my journey towards mindfulness and that I have often ignored those patterns.  I try to recognise them now and not beat up on myself when I miss them because I trust there will be more to come and there always is.  I am learning that when chaos and crises beset me, I have a choice as to what I take out of it and whether or not to allow the storm to batter and beat me, to ride it out with love or to take shelter from it and wait till it passes over. I have learned that after every storm, I can trust there will be a rainbow.  I have learned that after confusion (storm) comes clarity (rainbow).

Mindfulness has helped me to find myself and the many, many, different aspects of me.  I have explored so many facets of myself and I intend to continue exploring.  I have found parts of myself I had once despised, loathed, feared and misunderstood.  I have also found parts of myself that provide me with great joy and peace and I am determined that whatever it takes, I am committed to finding a way to love every atom of my being unconditionally and extend that same love toward others and all things.  Nothing in this life will bring me greater joy and the learning has already made my life more incredible than I once had the capacity to imagine.  I have learned that every part of who I am is what makes me who I am.  Every part of me has something very worthwhile to contribute and to offer to me.  Every part of me is a miracle.

I may have been raised with not-good-enough-parenting but now I have the opportunity to reverse what I have 'learned' and re-parent myself.  I aim to love each part of my being unconditionally, without strings attached, without fear as if each part of me were a real child or person and to have no 'favourites', loving each part equally, generously and without judgment.  I'm slowly getting there and I do not delude myself that it will be easy.  I do believe that it is simple though -through mindfulness.  

Recreating my awareness is a foundation stone for me.  How can I love every part of me if I allow myself or others to reject it, refuse to acknowledge it, malign it, abuse it, criticise it, rescue it, abandon or neglect it, if I dissociate from it?  I do not believe I can and so I welcome and greet each new aspect of my being with open arms and I lovingly walk alongside others with patience as they do the same for themselves.  I have no expectation of others than for them to be exactly who they are in that precise moment and love them regardless of their behaviour.  Any time I find myself unable to do that, I reflect inward and look for what I am unable to see in myself because I believe that every person I meet and hear about has a gift of learning for me and that belief feels much better than the old toxic beliefs I once set such store in.

In the past 10 years I have met and heard about people who have taught me so much and helped me to find hope, courage, strength and love and I am grateful now for every person I have ever encountered.  Some of those people I once hated or rejected but not now.  Now that I am committed to being unconditional love, I thank them too for being exactly who they are - perceived friend or foe and I love them unconditionally too.  Sometimes I lapse and sometimes I wonder if I can do it but it's who I want to be so I am doing it anyway and I feel so much better for it that I don't want to go back to believing anymore what I once judged them in my mind to be.  It was not them I hated, it was there behaviours.   Many people challenge me on that from their own fear and pain but I once would have challenged it too so who am I to judge?  My only responsibility is to be happy and I am, I would not be if I was unable or unwilling to grant others the same grace.

I am the parent of my spiritual self and I want to care for and cherish myself as much as I care about and cherish my own wonderful children and grandchildren, who I am captivated by.  They are miracles to me, teachers of divinity and light that guide me towards love and they have no responsibility to me, they owe me nothing.  They have taught me so very much about love and I am eternally grateful for the gifts of their being and for the opportunity to have shared so many wonderous moments of my existence with them.  They have been so instrumental in my journey towards myself and towards love and I aim to feel the same way about myself and others as I do about them.  They have taught me how to parent and I still have much to learn so I am learning; gratefully, wholeheartedly, mindfully and joyously.  

I have now re-experienced many of the healthy childhood developmental stages a child with 'good-enough' parenting moves through as they 'grow up'.  That has taken a lot of hard work, tears, fears, love, endurance and courage.  I did not find it easy as a 36 year old, feeling as vulnerable as a newborn for 2 years while I moved through the symbiotic stage of my development so I could learn to trust!  As exhilarating as it sometimes was, I did not find it easy to be a teenager for the first time at 35 or to face my own mortality many times over and question my very existence as those who are nearing the end of a long life usually do.  I did not find it easy to re-enter education feeling once again like a 6 year old in a classroom and navigating all of the questions and feelings that arose in me just as they had tried to arise in me decades ago.  I have been blessed in this re-creation.  I have recognised that, just as it takes a community to raise a child, so too have I needed others to help me re-parent myself.  People I have learned to trust, lean on, give back to.  Every single person has had something valuable to share, the angels by my side, and this journey to awakening has been painful but oh so worth it.

I have learned that pain is not my enemy, it is my guide and I believe that through mindfulness, I can release pain and let it go with love to come to a place where fear and pain are no longer responsible for my awakening and that I and only I am responsible for me and for what I think, feel, do and say, for my happiness.

Onwards and upwards 

xxjxx