So many things landing right now.
I decided to stop questioning myself and start liking myself. This has haunted me forever. Being in a constant state of change and questioning and trying to change has brought me to a point of feeling exhausted. I have stopped appreciating my accomplishments and only focus on what I need to change and the cost if I don’t (no one likes me, wants to be around me, etc.)
This is shitty. I spent the weekend w/ our kids and even w/ PTSD, crazy parents, a husband with an attachment disorder, I raised amazing kids, started a business, help run multiple types of organizations and groups… The biggest thing that hasn’t gotten any attention is me.
As I reflected on that, I realized that my bar has indeed been perfection. It’s been like if I do more and try to change more and on and on, things will be perfect and there won’t be any tension or confusion w/ the kids, etc. Everything will fall into place and I’ll be finally happy and more at peace and find my passion.
The truth is, there is passion where I am. There are good choices where I am. There are good relationships where I am. I’m an amazing person. I’ve accomplished an absolutely stunning amount with what I was given.
It’s time to rest, focus on myself or keep that process going and to just do what I have to do that isn’t necessarily exactly what I want and move on.
I spent time this morning just trying this on w/ the kids around. I realized that my neediness contributes to situations and relationships in negative ways. What would it be like to just be myself and not apologize or be needy? it turns out, it makes everything better.
I think part of this has been to also accept the reality of what it’s been like to live w/ pain for decades. I’ve had to take medicines and supplements on and off for a very long time. I’ve developed habits and needs around that. All that is hopefully changing to something more positive and no pain, but that’s been my life.
I’ve really needed providers to give me care, direction, hope and support. I’ve leaned on them when I couldn’t lean on anyone else, when I’ve burned people out on my pain and the never-ending stream of issues I’ve dealt with.
I can see that now, and I’ve also decided to own that and see it and be proud of it. I’ve survived in awful circumstances from pain and illness. I’ve tackled each issue w/ intensity and a determination to get better.
However, it’s affected my entire life. It’s affected my marriage. It affected how I parented.
I am proud of how I’ve managed it and feel some kind of need to embrace myself and my use of medicines to survive and make it through the rough spots and the years and decades.
I talked to El about Charlotte Bronte and how she probably actually died of hyeremesis which I had w/ both pregnancies. Part of the healing now I’m doing w/ injections is resolving the scar tissue issues with my episiotomies. Pregnancy is hard on the body and more so for some people.
So yeah, it’s been ongoing and I’ve managed it extremely well. I want to just comfort my body, myself, and just love what I’ve done and what I’m going through still.
I’m tired of the chronic doubting that has accompanied my journey out of PTSD. I’m tired of the self-doubt and lack of self-love.
This morning as I was getting up, I did my meditation and also felt a sense of being overwhelmed by all the ways you can grow and change, all the sayings I have in my little book in my purse, all the disjointed facts runnnig through my head. Which to focus on today?
The one that really stuck was to have an intention for the day. What do I want out of today? What attitudes and values will I follow? I get tossed around sometimes when the kids are home. I feel their absence when they’re gone. i feel insecure in how we are functioning as a family with them being adults now. It’s hard.
I just realized I need to relax. I can get neurotic about all this stuff. I need to chill out and enjoy the time, do what I can to keep changing and growing, listen to my soul and spirit and instincts and then live. Just live.
It felt good to have a plan that I kept charting back to throughout the day.
So after all this time and therapy, I’m at setting an intention, knowing what to do when I’m triggered, finding a center, doing my meditation, loving myself, letting the spirit flow in me and guide me like it has for decades.
I think I’m close to being ready to be done w/ therapy. I need to just live for a while with what I’ve learned and just love myself. I need to keep growing, but I feel right now, it’d be easy for me to be in this constant state of analysis that feels neurotic.
We have things to learn and ways to grow. If I need anything right now, it’s confidence in myself and my relationships and abilities. Right now, it’s starting to feel like therapy is reinforcing the sense that I’m broken. I’m not.
Jay and I aren’t normal. I go back to that scene from Doc Martin at the end of an episode when Louisa had decided to divorce him. They’re too different, too strange, too many problems.
They end up sitting on the hillside at the end of the episode and she says, “We’re not normal, are we…” and he says no. I have that saved in my photo library.
Jay and I aren’t normal and sometimes, I think I want none of this to have happened. I want to not have had PTSD and have Jay be a different person w/ different traits, strengths and weaknesses.
I want to just rest in what we have and stop fighting it all. Stop fighting our company and the stage it’s in. Just dig in and do what needs to be done. Stop fighting the issues in our family still and embrace the good. Stop fighting that the kids are living in Seattle, and I wish we were closer to them physically and emotionally.
I want to accept my beauty and also my oddities and my dysfunctions. I think the more focused on “changing”, the more neurotic I’m getting. I’m not accepting what is good in me and all I can see is the bad. I assume then, how can anyone love me? How can my issues not overshadow everything?
I follow one group on IG that is called Decolonizing Therapy I believe. They talk about how it would make sense that we would think it’s up to us to just individually fix ourselves when in fact, alot of our dysfunction that we can feel is societal. That’s never addressed though. We feel angst so it must be something wrong with us individually.
That has really resonated as I feel often my stress is related in fact to how groups and families and societies function. We are so freaking disconnected. We are so individualized. I’m struggling w/ how little our kids interact now w/ their grandparents. It just seems wrong. I don’t know how to address that. We’ve built our family on mutual respect and having boundaries. It feels though like I don’t have a way to talk about these things w/o feeling like I’ll jeopardize our relationship which I want and I guess need. It seems okay to say that, that I need to still be in our kid’s lives.
So these are the things I wonder about and yeah, I’m ready to put some kind of end to this therapy and start accepting myself for who I am right now I guess.
Jay is home from a long weekend. He went to visit his bio mom for a big birthday party she planned. It wasn’t ideal w/ the kids home. He was really bummed to not be here and the situation in general is not as easy as his relationship w/ bio dad.
I need to keep working on my behaviors and attitudes in our marriage. I need to level up. I tend to talk to much and too long. I don’t organize my thoughts. I can be suspicious and very insecure. It makes me feel more insecure, and I guess part of it is how our marriage has been over the years.
The situation with bio mom feels difficult and will be hard over time probably for me to manage. I feel like I will be competing with her for time, and I don’t need to feel that way. I don’t think the kids are excited about her hovering around and have zero interest in getting to know her.
So we’ll see. I need a plan for how I’m going to handle the emotions around this going forward. Right now, it feels like I could easily be buffeted by this randomly as things come up, especially as she moves back to the PNW which I’m honestly bummed about.
I feel excited about the changes I’m feeling in my soul though. Much of this post is around that. I want to feel a lot more confident and a lot more secure in my future. I’ve decided to end my regular collecting of cards and items when I go someplace and put it in my daily diary. I’ve found the last year especially, I just don’t have any interest in doing it. I find I’ll be several days behind, sometimes a week. I’m like, why am I not doing this?
It kind of hit me that I can decide to not do it anymore. It’s something I decided on years ago, and I’ve enjoyed it on some level.
It hit me though that for some reason, there’s been fear in it too. It kind of came out when I was describing it all to a friend. She knows I’ve done it and when I explained that it’s like been a way to somehow save the good memories and not forget, that I want more to live in the present, she was like, wow, yeah that makes sense. She was excited for me.
I feel like I’m starting to unfurl and feel creative and free about the future, less trying to hold onto the past.
I still love making photo albums though. I wonder if I’ll lose interest in that someday too.
These all feel like things I’m just accepting as the way my life has gone instead of being sad or angry about it.
Some of it has to do with allowing myself to have more awareness and compassion for other people’s suffering. The exercises in Headspace that stretch you to that feel important and necessary for growth. That’s been good for me and helpful.
As I become more aware, I feel more okay with accepting my life and not feeling so weird or broken. I am realizing I’m like a lot of people trying to survive. I am not a freak. I’m amazing and a survivor.
It feels significant, all of it.
I guess another way this played out, I didn’t have the house spotless. I’m starting to realize the strain that’s been as well and all the time it’s stolen from me. It felt good to not have everything perfect when they arrived. The sheets were clean but just on the bed downstairs, unmade. KT shooed me out the door and insisted on doing it herself.
I want to be balanced and human. They don’t live perfect, tidy lives; I’m not even setting a balanced example.
So that was just one more way it worked out to be more myself and have less anxiety, therefore, more chance for relaxed connection and being real.