I have identified as ‘pagan’ for a very, very long time. So long, that it became something I didn’t think much about. I just assumed that whatever direction I grew in, it would have a pagan flavour. I am currently enrolled in an apprenticeship with Christopher Penczak (level 1) that is challenging and fun. I’m a member of the Sisterhood of Avalon, and the work involved in that is very intense and frankly, awesome, and I am finishing up my bardic grade in OBOD. Witchcraft, Avalonian mysteries, druidry. Yup. All pagan. All right up my alley.

Sort of.

The sort of is where my present identity crisis comes from. The truth I’m noticing lately is that while I love studying this stuff, and while I enjoy having beautiful altars, and marking the passage of the seasons, I have a problem with matters of belief. I don’t really believe in magick, and aside from devotional work that involves acknowledging my part in the flow and co-creation of my life, I don’t do any – unless my studies require me to. I don’t really believe in the Gods, perse, except as psychological constructs that are handy when trying to assign credit (or blame) in ways I find kind of self-abandoning (which is something I say with great trepidation, not because I’m worried about how the ‘gods’ will react, but because I’m not in the mood to be flamed for what I’m thinking and feeling, and some pagans are no less guilty of damning the nonbeliever as any other religious believer is.) I don’t have a matron or patron deity. I don’t feel I really need one. I actively dislike a lot of the pagan community these days for a variety of reasons I won’t go into here. The best pagans, I’ve found, are the solitary or quiet ones. Or the shaky ones who aren’t sure of anything, but like dancing to drums and lighting candles. Them, I grok. The zealous lot who absolutely know for certain that their way is the right way? I don’t grok them. I don’t get how they are any better than zealots of any religious stripe. In fact, considering that every damned thing pagan under the sun is a haphazard reconstruction of something that *might* have been practiced by ancient ancestors, but that has been, for the most part, *invented*, I find way too much dogma in paganism these days, and it has left an extremely bad taste in my mouth.

I am sick of paganism.

There. I said it.

I am sick of the promise of inclusivity that gets broken time after time when someone claims that you have to be of this lineage or that you have to be doing it this way, or believe in this particular article of faith, or you are not *really pagan*. I am sick of the dysfunction that gets swept under the rug because we are all supposed to be better than *insert religion we’re sneering at today here*. I’m sick of those who use paganism as a crutch or an escape route. I’m sick of people who swear up and down that they can levitate or otherwise break the laws of physics. I’m sick of people who claim to have been initiated by their great grandmother, who then go on to share something out of Scott Cunningham’s books and claim it’s from the Real Olde Bok Magical of Yore. I’m sick of women who say that they are being beaten because of some past life karma they need to work out with their partners. I’m sick of people who play the victim because they are being persecuted for their Wiccian (sic) beliefs. I’m sick to death of the whole fucking thing.

I want out.

I want to forget I ever identified as pagan. I want to go back to the late eighties when I discovered paganism and snort derisively and opt for atheism or Sufism or hell, Catholicism! instead.

But there’s a problem. I have the God gene. I believe there’s something to all of it. ALL of it. Every damned thing humans believe in has some thread of golden truth running through it, and I can’t abandon that belief. It insists. It lives and breathes in me as certainly as I live and breathe. I am a believer.

I’m just not sure what, exactly, I believe in beyond “Something benevolent and true and loving and wonderful that really couldn’t give a rats ass what I call it or how often I call upon it or in what season or at what time of the month or with what colour candle or what incense.”

Yeah, that.

So, I think this makes me a generic and boring mystic of some ineffable description, I guess. And that’s going to have to be good enough for now. I don’t personally feel that my apprenticeship or my membership in the Sisterhood or even my bardic grade need to be abandoned over this. I’m, in fact, absolutely certain that I should absolutely *not* abandon anything I’m doing right now. I should continue. I should continue seeking. I should continue loving witchcraft and druidry and Avalonian mysteries and all the things that turn my crank and make me happy. Because when I relax and have fun with these things, I am happy. When, however, I am all serious and studious and invested in community and trying hard to be a Good Pagan, I am miserable. Because I’m not really convinced that any of these paths are right for me, and until I know for sure, I am not going to let them go. Why should I?

It’s a crisis of sorts, but it’s exciting, isn’t it? I don’t know jack shit about anything, and I’m willing to find out what really works for me in a fundamental way without thinking for a second that I already know. I don’t know. I don’t know!!! I love not knowing because there is so much room to find out.

*Nods Emphatically*

In the process of excavating my core self out from under heaps of conditioning, I find myself with a lot of questions. Lately, I’ve been thinking along these lines:

Okay, so I know who I’m not. I’m not what my parents told me I was. I’m not the face I present when I’m fragmented and scared and repressing my own natural ability for joy and enthusiasm. So who am I?

There was a time (and not too long ago) that I’d look outside of myself for the answers to that question. I really believed I was who was being mirrored to me.

It’s true that how people see us and what people see in us can hold clues to the core beneath the conditioning, but sometimes what’s being mirrored is inaccurate. It’s inflated or it’s deflated. It’s a tiny bit of a whole that can’t possibly known in its entirety. Looking ‘out there’ has been integral to my healing process, because I have a lot of fantastic mirrors who took the time to get to know me – and some know me even better than I know myself sometimes and are brave enough to be honest about what they see. Valuable, for sure, and appreciated, but the deepest answers don’t come from out there at all.

The body holds the answers.

Specifically, my body holds my answers. Your body holds yours.

Part of excavating who I really am out of the rubble that’s left of who I thought I was is figuring out how that essential self wants to be in the world. When I first started thinking about that, I got intimidated, fast. How the hell am I supposed to know the answer to that? I’ve been so busy trying to either become or rebel against what everyone else thought I should be that I feel like the truth of who I am is impossible to know! But! Through therapy and spiritual work I’ve been discovering some modalities that (gasp!) actually work.

Here’s what I’m doing lately. I ask myself questions about what brings me joy. What exhilarates me? What do I love? What fills me up? Whose presence feels good to me? What activities leave me feeling a sense of confidence, accomplishment, excitement, happiness, or balance? The things I bring into my life, be they values, experiences, people, perspectives, activities, that make me feel *good* are those experiences that are truest to who I am and how I want to express myself in the world. Focusing on that stuff fills my life with a sense of optimism and hope. A part of the questioning has to include figuring out what *doesn’t* feel good, and that’s an important step for me, too, but right now I have a tendency to bash myself about the head and face with abuse when I focus on where I’m failing myself, so that’s not a great place to put my attention at the moment. Eventually, I’ll be strong enough in my sense of who I am to look at Shadow stuff. Right now, it’s imperative that I build on feeling good as best I can.

Besides, when I look at a list of things that make me feel good, and I feel that feeling of ‘good’ in my body, it helps me discern without too much effort what isn’t working.

Have you ever heard of using body resistance to test what foods are good for you and what foods aren’t? It sounds a little woo woo, but the fact is that our bodies are wiser than our intelligence could ever be. Our intelligence knows stuff we pack into it. Our bodies have a deeper knowing, and our bodies can answer questions our minds can’t even begin to grasp.I’ve found this to be especially true for me after years of living up in my head somewhere. My body knows better, and when I ask it, I’m asking a more whole self than when I’m letting my intelligence answer.

My body knows, for example, that when I throw myself headlong into a new knitting project, that I will wind up frustrated. It knows that and it communicates that fact by feeling that feeling when I think about knitting. “Do I want to keep knitting in my life?” I ask myself. My body answers with a sense of frustration, or a memory of how frustrated I got the last time I attempted a difficult pattern. Once I’ve got that answer, it’s hard to ignore. I find knitting frustrating. Is knitting important enough to me to negotiate some kind of compromise with my body (who would prefer not to knit, thank you very much, because the body wants to feel *good*, not frustrated!). No, not really. It’s pretty low on my list of things I think I enjoy…

Next up, beading. Do I love beading? The body answers with a sensation or a memory. My mind says Oh yes! You LOVE beading. My body, however, reminds me that I bead very infrequently and it’s never very high on my list of things to do. It’s fussy work, and my vision is getting worse and worse as time goes on. Again, it’s frustrating. And I don’t feel a lot of resistance around letting it go.

Reading – love it. The body says so by going limp with relaxation and I remember books I’ve had relationships with. Gardening – oh, big resistance. I’m supposed to love gardening because I’m a pagan and I’m a treehugger, but the truth my body tells me is that I love planting seeds, not gardening as a whole. I come to a compromise. I’ll plant things I love to plant and care for. I’ll eliminate things that feel too much like bludgeoning myself over the head with fear of failure and too much work. The compromise feels good in my body. It feels right.

And so on.

When my therapist first suggested that I should do what feels good, it came as a sort of shock to my system. I’m not supposed to *feel good*. I’m supposed to work hard, do what’s expected of me, knuckle under, pull up my boot straps. Right? Wrong. It’s my life and I’m in charge of it. I should be doing what feels good.

And we’re not talking about addictions that we *think* feel good – smoking, drinking, shopping, sex, escapism…

Those are false ‘feel goods’. We’re talking about what makes the body sing arias to us for the pleasure our perspectives, relationships, food choices, activities, dreams, goals, desires, and lives from sunup to sundown bring.

I want to feel good in my body as much as humanly possible. That requires me to be engaged in a life that brings me pleasure in all its varied, gorgeous forms.

So I’ll be over here asking my body, and I trust it to give me the answers.

Just wanted to quickly post that I’ve figured a few things out already.

KEEPING:

University degree
Temple of Witchcraft studies
Sisterhood of Avalon membership
The Daily Fey
Drawing/Painting/Doodling
Reading for pleasure
Limited gardening (flowers, herbs)
Cycling, Walking
Drives with S (but limited to a few times a week instead of every night.)
Writing
Camera Jaunting

DITCHING:

All social networking with the exception of that which relates to above & Facebook

Over 400 people on my FB friend list, pruned because either I’d never heard of them or from them. Also got rid of lots of ‘friends’ that were actually groups (Wine, Mead, Snuggling, etc.). I made lists of the remaining people so they were organized by people I actually keep in touch with, people I’m a fan of, and miscellaneous people who don’t belong in either of those categories. That should make it easier to filter status updates. This one was easy.

Beading, soaping, digital scrap-booking, herbal studies except those that relate to online apprenticeship & SOA, vegetable gardening. (These are major time killers and dollar eaters. I enjoy doing them very much, but I they rank lower than a 4 on my scale of 1 – 10 in comparison with my other crafty enjoyments)

REASSESSING:

Kintting (I’m going to finish two WIPs and then put knitting away for a long while, possibly forever. Knitting is mostly frustrating.)

OBOD (I will continue through ’till the end of the Bardic Grade, and then stop there for an indeterminate period of time, perhaps forever. There’s a lot of overlap between OBOD and SOA, and I find SOA’s focus on women’s mysteries to be more personally fulfilling…and far, far less expensive)

SpiritsCast (do I want to do it monthly? quarterly? at all? WHY do I want to do it? Validation?  Do I really love it? So why is it so bloody hard to sit down and record?)

Mary Kay (…is so not working out for me, but I have wholesale stuff, and I’d really like to sell that before I quit altogether)

Attending pagan festivals. (I’ve got too many slated for this coming summer. I know my energy levels, and I can probably only handle two or three. I need to decide which ones I’ll come home rejuvenated by, and which ones I can let go of without terrible regret. This is not going to be easy, but between University and everything else I’m doing, I really can’t afford to be gallavanting all over Hel’s acres all summer long.)

ADDING:

More frequent face-to-face time with friends and loved ones.

Yoga or Nia now that my foot is fully healed.

Possibly poetry functions (slams, readings, etc.)

This is what I’ve got so far.…

I think it’s safe to say that we all receive messages about what we’re capable of achieving in our one lifetime. These messages come from media, school, and other childhood influences, and then later, from the dream of the perfect life that we’re set up to chase after, thanks to advertising and other insidious message-makers in our lives. As women, we’re supposed to be able to pursue a career, parent perfectly, sustain excellent relationships with our parents, friends, and partners, and feel fulfilled all the damned time.

Yeah, okay. Whatever.

I’m here to tell you that I don’t buy it. I don’t think having it all is either possible or healthy. Something’s gotta give. Just how tired do I really want to be at the end of a day? How do I balance all the things I’m supposed to want to achieve in this one lifetime? Who’s going to give me the five sets of arms, two brains, and bazillion dollars I’m going to need to ‘do it all/have it all/be it all’?

*Looks for the lineup of limb/brain/dollar providers and sees none.*

I’ve been struggling with this for a long time because I’m a bit of a Renaissance woman. There are many things I want to achieve in this lifetime. There are dozens of crafty things I want to master, books I want to write, meals I want to learn to cook, languages I want to learn, spiritual modalities I want to delve into, subjects I want to study, gardens I want to plant, countries I want to visit, things I want to own, goals I want to check off my ridiculously long list of 1001 things to do before I die.

You know?

The most important trick I haven’t mastered is how to specialize. I have no idea how to pare all my skills, abilities, talents, and desires down into a manageable list of what is actually achievable. I don’t know how to decide. I don’t know how to just shut up and pick one.

Frustration ensues.

I love podcasting. I love writing. I love being a student, both spiritual and academic. I love nurturing my family and my friendships, and I love doing the therapy I’m doing. I love going for bike rides. I love knitting. I love doodling and digital collage and beading and making soap and preparing herbal infusions and reading, reading, reading on topics that vary from vampire fiction to history to spirituality to psychology. I love going for long drives in the country. I love spinning yarn. I love taking long hot bubble baths in candlelight.

There is no way to fit all the things i love into one life in any meaningful way. I *could* do all these things, and for the last six years or so since my life allowed for this abundant diversity of opportunities, I have been trying to do all these things, but I do them all in a very shallow, lick-and-a-promise way. Nothing gets my full attention for very long, or I obsess on a subject for a brief period and then move on to the next before I’ve really gotten anywhere with it. I have little raggedy bits of things, but nothing of whole cloth.

I find this intensely unsatisfying. Something has got to give.

In considering the sacred nature of creating and living from a place of intention, I realized that this is leading naturally to a desire to specialize. When I do plan my days carefully to include those things that I know are necessary in creating a sacred life – things that increase my confidence, feed my soul, inspire my creativity, nurture my family, sustain my partnership, and things that feel like honest work (even if I’m not paid for that work) – I very quickly run out of hours. I can’t pack it all in. Either I really suck at time management (unlikely) or I want too much.

I’m pretty sure I want too much.

Where does this come from, this wanting too much? I have this feeling that if I don’t pack every second of every day with a bazillion meaningful things, I’m wasting my life. But while I’m busily packing as much in as I can, I’m left feeling like a stone skipping over the surface of a hundred ponds. I’m coming to understand that what I really want, with all my heart, is to explore one pond at a time, as deeply as I can.

I need to set limits on what I’m involved in at any given time. I need to think deeply about quality vs. quantity. I need to distinguish between those things that really feed me and those things that kill time or demand more of me than I have to give. I have to Choose.

Damn.

I really suck at choosing.

I’m not sure what’s going to make the cut and what isn’t, but I’m seriously considering a deep decluttering of my *life*. I’ve done the rooms of my house. I’ve done a bit of pruning in social networks. But the desire to simplify goes deeper. Much deeper. I do not want to be divided all the time. I don’t want to continue collecting rags of bits of things.

I want to go deep. I want to go deeper.

My first step here is in listing all the things I do on a regular basis and figure out why I do it (people pleasing? attention? validation? because I genuinely love it? Because it’s important to me? Because my heart and soul compel me?) and what value it brings into my life. Then I need to figure out what can stay and what can go. Then I need to be brutally honest with myself about how much time and energy I actually have (as opposed to how much time and energy I wish I had) and make cuts accordingly.

It isn’t going to be easy, but this feels so important.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this, too. Is this something you’ve struggled with? Can you relate or am I beyond whacked?

Love to all,

Fey

Wendy Rule is gently lulling me into a state of drooling, happy goo. The coffee is fresh and smells delicious. The sun is streaming in through the back door to my right and a gentle, sunny glow is emanating from the front window to my left. The puppy is napping. The cat is off hunting faeries.I’m ignoring the dust motes that dance in beams of light, though “dust the main floor” is on my list of things to do.

For now we’re pretending they’re flying diamonds, okay? *giggle*

This hush is precious.

Yesterday was a very LOUD day with input coming at me from all directions – both wanted and unwanted – until I turned it all off, sat in a bath with a make-shift bath tray (a wooden board straddling each side of the claw foot tub), my journal, a lit candle, and my iPod. I did what I’m supposed to do when I begin to feel fragmented. I wrote out all my negative thoughts and feelings, identified their present source and asked myself what this scenario, what these feelings, reminded me of.  I got down to the business of figuring out what, in my history, was being triggered by the present moment.

Easy, that. I hate not being ‘gotten’. I hate being misunderstood. I hate being misrepresented. I hate being painted with someone’s defensive or envious brush (and those brushes we paint with? They’re usually defensive or envious, okay? Mine are, too.). I hate it when people, in their desperate need to cover for their own faults, point fingers at mine. I don’t mind having my faults pointed out when they are actual faults and I actually have them, mind you. I just don’t like it when I’m being used as a scapegoat for someone’s issues. I hate being the target of someone elses ‘pain body’, in the parlance of Ekhart Tolle. And didn’t I just grow up being that very thing? The squeaky wheel, the black sheep, the convenient scapegoat.

Hates it, we does, my preciouses.

So, something in me attracts this pattern. Some of my faults, some of my virtues combine to pin a target on my forehead that’s labeled with something like “Pick Me To Pick On! I love being the center of your negative attention! I LOVE being your excuse for not dealing with your own shit! I ADORE being the dog you kick!”

Which is very victimhoody, I know. I dislike that I have that sign on my forehead about as much as I dislike that there are people who will read that sign, and instead of gently peeling it off my forehead, will take aim and fire.

One of my allies tells me: “Stop wearing your heart on your sleeve. It just makes you vulnerable.”

And I agree that the consequence of wearing my heart on my sleeve, saying what I see, writing very vulnerable shit on the Interwebs, telling my truth, etc. etc. does make me very, very vulnerable. But does that mean I should go into hiding with what I feel?

No. It doesn’t.

It means I should get a thicker skin, for sure, and put my energy and emphasis on Goodness and Kindness and Support and Love instead of … well. Instead of that other stuff we’re not going to mention here because this space is sacred and even saying it is like shitting in my own den, you know?

Thicker skin. *Nods* That’s a far better solution, I think, than ducking, covering, running, pretending, putting on that lovely Mask of Socially Acceptable Niceness.

I’m not here to make friends. I’m not here for adoration or glory. I’m here to excavate my essential self from underneath a lifetime of conditioning. I’m not here to make you like me. I’m not here to give you what you want. I’m here for all the various selves I lost along the way – the little ones and the scared ones and the wounded ones – and I’m here to remember them, reclaim them, and renew my contract to take care of them.

This doesn’t preclude the possibility that I’m going to be human, and therefore imperfect in the the process. Far from it. I’m sort of flailing around right now trying to figure out who the hell I really am beneath the mask of Reactionary Conditioned Feral Wolf Thing that I’d become.  I’m learning who to trust, who not to trust and why that matters. I’m occasionally petty and mean. I’m occasionally completely whacked out crazy with old pain. I’m occasionally a big whiny baby.

Mostly, though, I’m amazing. My therapist says so, and I believe her. Because being human and flawed doesn’t cancel out amazing, see? It adds to it. Despite my flaws, despite my history, despite my bad choices, I am Here, Now, Alive, Breathing, and working incredibly hard at getting more life in my life. That’s amazing, all things considered.

So. The trigger for me yesterday was ‘not being gotten’. I hate not being gotten. So I sat myself down, and I told myself – “Listen up, Fey. *I* get you. I get you, and I think you’re pretty darned amazing.”

My husband gets me to, and many of my friends, and that’s important and lovely, but it’s not nearly as healing as looking myself in the eye and saying “I know you. You are not what they think you are. If you were, you would not be so well loved by people that ACTUALLY know you and get you. Fuck them that don’t.”

***

I’ve been watching a whole lot of Caesar Millan lately. I have a burning hot crush on this man the likes of which I have rarely experienced. Calm and assertive, he says, in dealing with dogs. I think the same can be applied to our various aspects of self. Show them who’s pack leader. Give them exercise, discipline and affection. The same can be applied to parenting, and to dealing with people who behave more like a rabid pack of wolves than civilized human beings. Calm, assertive energy.

I’m becoming my own pack leader, and I get to decide who’s in this pack and who isn’t.

Them that get me, or make the effort to try? They’re happily bounding around the big Backyard of Life with me, tongues lolling out and tails wagging. Those that don’t, or have been badly ‘trained’ or don’t know how to be balanced and civilized within the pack structure?

Punt!

Yeah, like that.

It also occurs to me that all the angst I’ve had over the last year with regards to not being gotten/liked and being gossiped about originates with the same group of people. What I want to know is why have I not completely disengaged from these people already? I know…they hold functions that are important to people that I love, and I get how that could make me reluctant to cut them out entirely, but they’re toxic, for chrissakes. PUNT!

Yeah. :)

Just like that.

***

It’s a beautiful day here in my Backyard of Life. There’s plenty to chew on and good smells and tastes. The air is crisp and clean and full of Spring coming.

Who wants to play with me?

:)

Love to all,

Fey

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• How do I offend you? Let me count the ways! (themoderatevoice.com)

It’s therapy day, so I’m sitting here trying to overcome the resistance I feel to going. I’m sipping coffee, listening to podcasts, and eyeing the clock as it tick tocks down to 12:30 – therapy time! Oh noes!

This is the first time I haven’t looked forward to a session.  I had an experience with my dad this past week that I’m going to have to talk about, and I dun wanna. I had an experience with my son last night that I’m going to have to talk about, and, yes, you guessed it, I dun wanna. Good stuff happened too, but the heavy stuff feels really heavy, and I want to enjoy this beautiful sunny day without mascara running down my face. Know what I mean?

But, as much as I dun wanna, I’mma hafta.

Booerns.

I think I’ll skip the eye makeup today.

Some Of The Deets

Last weekend my dad drunk dialed me. What else is new? I really don’t hear from him anymore unless he’s out of his mind blitzed on his beloved Molson’s.  I seized the opportunity to ask him some questions about my childhood, since the history taking portion of my therapy is still not complete. He answered. I got way more information than I wanted, to be honest, and in the process of gathering this information, I had an epiphany.

The man is still not over my mom.

Know how I know?

I know because when he talks about her, he does so with such rage, such bitterness, such vile language, that the only explanation possible is that a part of him is still living back in the late sixties, early seventies.

He slags my mom off so bad every time she comes up in conversation that it makes my head and heart hurt.

And I am still not over my mom. Know how I know? See above sentence, only apply it to yours truly.

Before therapy, before acknowledging that my mom’s relationship with me was never an actual relationship in which she was relating to me as a human being that was separate from her, these slag sessions didn’t really bother me. This time, though, it really did. It really hurt my heart to hear him talking about another human being that way. It hurt even more that he was essentially tossing off every responsibility he had to me as a father and to my mother as a husband and throwing it right into her lap. Everything was her fault? Really? You had no responsibility for anything? Really?

I called him on it. Told him what I remembered, what I knew about his marriage to my mother. Got some tearful confessions – yes, he cheated on her ALL the time. Didn’t come home some nights. Drank the hyrdo bill, the rent. Yes, he was ill-equipped to parent or to partner her in parenting…but he was traumatized as a child, and his father beat him, and he never felt loved and yadda yadda fucking boo hoo.

I felt something for my mother that I’ve never, ever felt before.

Fierce compassion.

Not the kind that makes me want to invite her over for tea and scones, mind you, but the kind that just broke my heart with understanding for how difficult it must have been for her, and how much pain this man brought into her life. Her experiences do not excuse her from accountability for the choices she made that hurt her children, no. But knowing what I know now has cut through my anger like lemon through grease. I still feel a lot of bitterness, but at least this fierce compassion I feel allows me to put it all into perspective.

I’ve always aligned with my father against my mother. It was easy for me, before therapy, to agree when he blamed everything on her…

Not anymore.

This fierce compassion also gives me the gift of relating to my mother in a new way – as a woman whose heart breaks for another woman. She’ll never be my ‘mommy’. Never was, really, when it comes right down to it, but she is a woman who experienced horrible things in her life – things that might have broken her…

The longing I’ve always had to have my mom in my life is dissipating.  The desire to align myself with my dad because he doesn’t reject me is dissipating, too. This is a huge step in excavating the person I was beneath all the sludgy layers of who they think I am/thought I was/told me I should be.

I’m the only one I will never leave or lose, and I intend to take fierce, compassionate care of myself.

And on that note, I’m off to get ready for therapy.

Thanks for listening. :)

This will have to be quick because I’ve got a lot on the go today, and since I’m already on quite the impressive roll, I want to keep the momentum going!

I just had to share this with y’all because I think it’s a major big deal, and maybe some of you will nod and smile and pat me on the head, and maybe some of you will say something like “Well, d’uh!” That’s okay…there’s going to be at least one person out there who hears this and gets it and finds themselves changed as a result.

Ready?

Here it is:

When we give ourselves the things we need and want without reservation, without guilt, and without the bullshit negative self-talk that tells us we should be self-sacrificing, we find ourselves doing the things we have to do without resentment. We are full to the brim with what we need to fulfill our responsibilities with efficiency and even (gasp!) enjoyment.

The experiment lately has been to say yes to myself whenever possible. The results? My house has never been cleaner. My heart has never been more open. I have never been so capable of giving time, attention and nurturing. I have never enjoyed sex more. I have never had such booming, raucous orgasms. I have never felt so tenderhearted toward those who need me. I have never been clearer. Never.

Now, maybe I’m in a manic phase. No, I’m not bi-polar, but I do tend to cycle rapidly in and out of depression, so it’s possible that what I’m experiencing is the up swing out and into normal, balanced brain chemistry. It’s definitely possible, since Imbolc just passed, and that has historically been the time when the seasonal depression I experience every year begins to lift – but. There are some major differences that I’m finding striking. The lack of resentment is huge. The sense that I’m in my body, in the present moment instead of somewhere off in the past or future is *very* new.

So…

Maybe I’m on to something?

I’ll keep you posted.

Feithline

Yesterday was one long storm. I woke up aware that I had to do history taking. I braced myself all day for the history taking. I lived, breathed and ate history taking. I dressed and got ready – skipping eye makeup because I figured I’d just cry it off.  I arrived on time at 2:45 p.m., and almost immediately, started crying.

We haven’t even touched on the ancient history yet. We’ve only covered some of the collateral damage related to childbearing and rearing, and my relationship (or rather, lack thereof) with my parental units. Still, certain words and phrases triggered the living shit out of me and I found myself unable to talk or breathe without the therapists determined assistance in keeping me present.

“You’re very hard on yourself.”

Feith nods emphatically through the tears.

“You don’t deserve that.”

Blubber, sob, blow snot bubbles, hold breath, fight to stay present.

“Are you feeling like I might be judging you?”

Affirmative, dear lady. Affirma-fucking-tive.

“All I’m feeling is empathy. I’m a mother, too.”

Blubber, sob, blow snot bubbles, hold breath, fight to stay present.

“We should maybe talk a little about your mother.”

Oh, hell no, said my body. I could feel my throat close over as though there were an iron gate in there somewhere between my mouth and my lungs. I couldn’t catch my breath. I couldn’t breathe without some twisted sounding howl issuing forth. Not today, thank you.

“I’m fine with sound. You’re not going to freak me out.”

Maybe not, but I’m freaking myself out.

And we ended the session.

***

Afterward, I felt like I’d been beaten. I was dazed and wrung out and completely exhausted.  Beloved came to get me and drive me home so I didn’t have to face riding home in a cab.  He grabbed pizza for the boys, and made sure I had the time and space to recover.

It took hours to ground. Hours. But when I finally did, these are the insights I gained by letting myself go deeply into what just happened in therapy:

I’m really very, very hard on myself. And I don’t deserve that.

The only human response to what I’ve been through is empathy and compassion. Anything else is inhumane.

I have become very adept at creating crisis around me so I don’t have to deal with the ongoing storm within me.

I’m tired of being a walking storm.

I seem fine from the outside in, and that has served me very well, but it’s safe now to be not-so-fine.

Crying feels unsafe. Talking feels unsafe. Looking someone in the eye when I’m telling my story is fucking *terrifying*.

Just because I feel unsafe doesn’t mean I am unsafe.

A pot, watched with kindness and empathy, is likely to boil over all over the place.

I am ready for this. I can do this.

I started a new paper journal last night. It’s a scrapbook and I intend to use it however I please. I wanted a way to express what’s going on inside without the need for writing (which is all wrapped up with the need to be perfectly eloquent and skillful). I bought some magazines, treated myself to new glue and coloured pencils…

It felt good to give myself that kind of sacred space.

Last night I made a cover for it and did some collage for my first entry. I know where I want to get to, but I don’t know how. That was the jist of it. The end result of my first session. I want to get THERE from HERE. What are the steps I need to take? First steps – go to therapy, be gentle with self, let self cry.

I can get there from here, but not alone, and why should ‘alone’ even be in the equation?

The fact that the lid came flying off my simmering pot so easily with a virtual stranger tells me I’m ready for this. I’m scared shitless, and I’m all kinds of raw and hurting, but I’m ready…

Next session in two weeks.

Deep Peace,

Feithline

I have my first therapy session today. History taking. I expect to be a puddle of emo goo by the time it’s over.

Therefore, I am going to plan nothing for after therapy. A hot bath or a nap or whatever I feel will best help me come back into my present.

I’ve spent the morning trying to distract myself from the anxiety I feel over this…Beloved is picking me up to take me to lunch before the session, which is just so incredibly sweet of him.

I could use your gentle vibes today. :)

Thank you!

Feithline

As I was sitting here this morning contemplating my day, I realized that there is a reason this stuff I’ve been struggling with – dance, the abuse, a desire to recover, the intuitive draw toward body-centered psychotherapy – is coming up now, and it’s so obvious that I actually slapped my forehead when it came to me. I had a V8 moment to beat all V8 moments.

The foot is broken. The x-ray revealed a spiral fracture. As I was having the foot x-rayed, I had a wicked flashback, but managed to keep my shit together all the same. The flashback was triggered by glancing down at the bottom of the broken foot as the nurse positioned it on the x-ray plate. There is a scar about half an inch long right in the middle of the sole of my foot that resulted from surgery I had when I was six or seven.

While jumping on a bed in my babysitter’s house, I fell and landed on a Bic pen. The pen entered my foot, and my sister, thinking she was helping, pulled it out. The nib and a bunch of ink got left behind, and emergency surgery was necessary to remove it. My recovery included days home from school, a big dressing wrapped around my foot, and time on crutches.

The pain was searing.

MAY BE TRIGGERING

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the perpetrator took advantage of my being home from school while my mother was at work. By ‘take advantage’ I mean that he successfully raped me for the first time. Prior to the foot injury, the abuse was limited to other forms of violation. While I was home recovering, I guess he had more time to indulge in his depravity and I was the lucky winner of his undivided attention. He also had a built in reason for my screaming & sobbing, which my sister and step-sister could hear from every other room in the house.

I will never forget the look on my sister’s face as she quietly opened the door to my mother’s bedroom. Tears were streaming down her face. She wanted to know what was wrong.

“She wants her stitches out. That’s all. Her foot hurts. Go back to your room.”

Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.

Body work with the therapist is going to be interesting. This experience proves to me what I suspected. I have memories stored in various parts of my physical body. Pain in those parts brings flashbacks and flashbacks bring depression and despair…

Despair because there is a voice in my head that tells me I should be over this by now. Depression because I am *not* over it.

In Case You’re Wondering, It’s A Good Day

Despite this epiphany, I’m better than okay. I get what’s happening, which eases the sense of being a madwoman. I understand that there is work yet to be done, and I’ve launched myself at this work. The epiphany doesn’t make me feel bad. It makes me feel angry, though. Enraged, even. He walked away and suffered zero consequences and here I am, thirty four years later, still finding myself faced with vivid memories of his face, his voice, his odour, his actions…

My father tells me he’s dead. I don’t know if I believe him, because it would be just like my father to tell a well-intentioned lie. Dead or alive, though, he’s beyond my reach. The statute of limitations is long up, as far as I know, and I have no physical proof to offer even if I could report him and have him charged.

Ironic. I’m finally ready to seek justice, and it’s too late.

But, fuck it. Onward. Upward. I will seek justice by getting better. I will seek wholeness by focusing on my own healing.

Times like these I wish I believed in some kind of hell, because I’d sure like to damn him to it.

I’m off to get an air cast today for my cranky, broken foot. The doc says I’ll need five weeks off of it, so NIA, fitness walking and anything else requiring me to be on it is out for now.

There’s an enormous amount of power in simply stating out loud that something is wrong, and then figuring out what to do about it. While I’m still struggling with things, I feel like I’m moving forward instead of sitting around feeling stuck and sorry for myself. I’m doing things that make me feel better (like wearing dangly earrings and breaking out of my isolation) and I’m thinking of ways to keep my head above water.

The flashbacks are furious. And it’s not that I’m remembering things I’ve never remembered before. It’s that they are coming at me with overwhelming emotion – mostly rage – and they leave me completely stricken. I’m letting them. What else am I supposed to do? Feeling it through is the only thing I know how to do right now, so that’s what I’m letting myself do. The alternatives are destructive, and I’m not going down that route again.

One of the things that feels really important right now is to get back into my body. This might sound really strange to the average person, but survivors of abuse in childhood (or, frankly, at all) become adept at checking out. I know I’ve done this all my life. It resulted in incredibly high pain tolerance and a penchant for remaining calm in a crisis. I had to develop these coping mechanisms, and as my therapist put it during our first meeting, doing this was a sign of brilliance. But that coping mechanism is now obsolete, and I want to learn different ways of being. I want to come back into my body through exercise, nutrition and mindfulness – something therapy will help with, I believe. I would also like to try new forms of movement, and this has been very much inspired by the Radiant Goddess E-Course. I got a lovely introduction to NIA yesterday, and I find myself all excited about it. It looks like a form of movement that will help me reclaim something I lost when I was very young.

MAY BE TRIGGERY

When I was a girl, I begged my mother to enroll me in ballet. I loved it, and though my particular body type (amazonian) would never have allowed me to go very far in dance, it was my very favourite form of personal expression. I was a star pupil, and my teacher adored me. I succeeded in ballet in a way I’d rarely succeeded at anything in my life.

But there was a problem. At that time in my life, the sexual abuse was severe. So much so that the perpetrator was worried about what might be discovered at my annual check up. He instructed me to tell the doctor that I ‘hurt myself stretching in ballet’ should there be any questions about my swollen and bruised nether regions. Ballet – the one thing I loved more than anything – became a cover for the perpetrator’s abuse. Though I couldn’t have articulated it back then, now I understand that in my mind, the two became connected and I could no longer enjoy dance. I couldn’t be touched by the instructor without shaking violently or bursting into tears. Once, my bladder let go altogether and I urinated all over my instructors hand as he tried to correct my leg positioning. I remember feeling terrified and begging him not to tell my mother…

After the perpetrator left and the abuse stopped, my fears and triggers remained. I remember obsessing during recitals that he would show up. I used to get migraines so powerfully bad that I had to be pulled out of class.

Eventually, I just shut down. I quit ballet. Even when the instructor came to my house to beg me to return, even though I was threatened with punishment and called some pretty nasty names for wanting to quit, I refused.

I tried again later with a jazz ballet class,  but the triggers were still there. It didn’t help that the class I was put in was taught in French and I had no grasp of the language. Feeling like an outsider, triggered every time I was touched, and prone to inexplicable bouts of crying, I didn’t last long…

Dance slipped out of my life. Just one of the many things I lost to the abuse.

I want it back.

Nia is a form of dance that might just give me a piece of my childhood back. It looks gentle and beautiful and might just give me some measure of grace back. And though I expect to be triggered, I also expect to overcome that and grow into enjoying it.

There’s a class in a beautiful studio in Guelph. I might attend at some point in the near future, depending on what happens with my foot.

So, yesterday I came up with a couple of things to take me out of my head (which is a dark and scary place right now), and set me firmly in my life. The most valuable thing I did was make three lists. One is an ongoing list of things I did right – simple things like taking my vitamins or opting for fresh fruit over something less nutritious, putting on a pretty blouse instead of tossing on whatever I could find without thinking about it, reaching out, calling a therapist.By the end of the day, the list was about twenty items long and gave me an incredible sense of accomplishment. I had a gang of social workers do this to me once – I was in a group home and they told me I had something called ‘confirmed negativity’ thanks to being raised by people who could not seem to notice anything I did right. So they said “No more attention for bad behaviour.” and started making lists of my good behaviour. Every day, we had a meeting during which I would be subjected to a reading of the list. At first, it was really difficult to hear all that praise, but in time, I started to thrive. Then I got yanked out of the group home and sent back to hell…

I remembered how good it felt to have the focus be on what I accomplished rather than on what I failed to do, so I wondered how to incorporate this into my life now, when I need it most. The e-course I’m taking with Goddess Leonie includes some list-making elements, so voila! I started the list, and so far, it’s working just as I expected it to. It works even better than a ‘to do’ list because instead of feeling pressured to do things I might not feel like doing and failing to do them (which feels like the end of the world because I’m neurotic, hello?!?), I get to have this little thrill whenever I add something to the growing list.

It’s a good thing.

The second list is a list of allies. I needed to know who I could count on to be there *for me*. I was surprised at the results of this exercise. People I felt for sure would be on the list were stricken off – not because they’re bad people but because I didn’t feel safe sharing my pain with them, or because I felt they weren’t in a place where they could handle being supportive. Some people were stricken off the list for being the type to tell me to get over it and minimizing just how serious this process is. Then there were the surprise additions. People I had no idea I felt safe with. People I didn’t know were allies until I went gallivanting out here in Cyberspace with all my traumatic dangly bits hanging out. People who responded with love and warmth and wisdom.  I’ll be reaching out to those people that I feel pretty sure are safe bets in the ally department over the next few days – slowly, with a lot of trepidation and forethought – and I hope if you’re one of them you will feel absolutely free to say “I can’t be there for you” or “Here are my boundaries.” I can take it. Honest. :)

The third was a list of things that make me feel really good. Having this list felt like a good idea because I have several default positions that don’t make me feel good at all, but because I don’t give these things much thought, I collapse into a heap in front of the television, or opt to stuff my face with comfort food, or I open a bottle of wine. It’s not that these things are bad in and of themselves. They’re not good for me because I use them to distance myself from what’s really going on, and I never fail to feel like crap over that. The list included things like doodling and canoodling (which I did a little of yesterday) and working on the poetry course I’m taking. I included low pressure creativity like beading and knitting socks. Walks (when my foot heals) and hot soaks in scented baths. Fruit. Nettle tea. Good books. A back massage. Simpler things like wearing something that makes me feel feminine and pretty, or putting on perfume and a little mascara.

Then I did some research on therapists, and called one. I left a voice mail and asked that she call me back so we could talk about a meet and greet. I made pork a l’orange for the family (and it was delicious) and wrote an e-mail I was dreading writing. I didn’t let myself obsess over the e-mail and when I started twisting, I told Beloved what was going on and listened to his sage advice – trust that they have their own support system. Trust that they’ll be okay. Take care of yourself.

So I did. I took a long hot bath and shaved my legs. I tidied and puttered and let my spirit lead me through the day.

Beloved got home to find me dressed in something other than yoga wear. I could have knocked him over with a feather. :)

We ran some errands, and when we got back the phone rang – it was the therapist. As soon as I started telling her why I felt I needed to see someone, I fell apart. I got through the conversation with the desired results – we’re meeting on Friday – but the embarrassment and shame just poured out of me as I was telling her just a tiny portion of my story. It was baffling to me to discover that there was that much raw emotion behind the mask of the daily day. Beloved asked what was wrong, and I couldn’t even speak. I had to write it down.

Nope. I am not well. :) And really, why the hell should I be, all things considered?

The rest of the evening was spent being snuggled half to death by both the Beloved and Sookie the Puppy (who is a little dose of All’s Well if I ever did see one). A few times during the evening I erupted in babble about this or that thing that had occurred to me in the days since my depression began in earnest. Memories that ambush me out of the blue. Feelings I didn’t even know I had.

He was infinitely patient and loving.

I expressed a lot of concern over sharing my ‘dirty laundry’ out here for all to see, and he tried to impress upon me that what I was doing was incredibly brave and therapeutic. He reminded me that there will always be trainwreck seekers, and there will always be those who wish I’d shut the hell up, but that there will also be those who will benefit enormously from knowing that someone else is out here struggling with similar issues and is courageous enough to be honest about it. That helped me feel a little better. The compulsion to share all this is mighty powerful, so I’m going with it. If you’re not interested, or if it pisses you off or triggers you, don’t read it. Simple enough, right? Right…

So, today will be more of the same. Instead of setting myself up with an impossibly long to do list, I’m just going to jot down the things I did right. Instead of focusing energy and attention on those relationships that drain me, I’m going to lean hard on those that buoy me up. Instead of pressuring myself to do things I really don’t want to be doing, I’m going to do what I’m moved to do, even if that means I do nothing.

And tomorrow, I’m going to interview the therapist and see if she might be a good fit.

Voila. Proactive, much? Yes. Yes, I am.

Deep Peace,

Feithline