the next step

[sanmagic7]

thank you so, chart, for the love and care you send me.  it helps so much.

on another note, i read in one of your posts about feeling/not feeling pain and how it may be connected to healing.  it brought up the memory of not too long ago when i finally felt the pain of having my doll disappeared from me by my mother, and how, 70 yrs. later i finally felt the pain of it.  and awful it was, too,  several days of it.   it may just be, tho, as you suggested, that w/o feeling that pain, it simply stayed inside, causing a ruckus w/ my innards in some way, maybe down to a cellular level.  now i've felt it, it's come out of me, even tho the feeling of it caused major stress responses, i do think there may be a healing element to it.  thank you for bringing that up.

finally had a good night's sleep. i think i'll be able to continue writing on my third myth and magic book - i've got 2 done, and this whole writing thing is feeling like the third iteration of my life.  hairdresser, therapist, now author.  besides, of course, wives and mother along the way, college, trade school, work, while the rest were happening.  i guess i've had a pretty busy life.  a great life, actually.

and coping, struggling, confused - all that went along w/ the c-ptsd, learning about that, about myself in relations to it, the other issues that have caused me pain, anxiety, floatiness, following others in order to know where to go and how to be.  bucking the 'norm', battling to be me w/o even knowing who i am.  weird by wonderful in some ways.  lots of adventures, lots of stories, a life fully lived.  a belief system no one else can quite follow, even i can't follow it sometimes.  people afraid of me cuz i'm spontaneous and unpredictable.  can't be controlled, i guess, as someone once told me.

just some reflecting.  sometimes it's good for me to look back, see where i've come from, what i've come thru.  i think it's a grounding thing.

still thinking about parts.  some responses to one of my posts mentioned my parts, how they're feeling.  i truly don't know if i have parts, except the gray lady, who is the one who endures whatever situation i'm in that i want to run from but know i have to stay, see it through.  i'm definitely not aware of any part like i've heard so many people talk about here.  i feel rather nebulous most of the time, do things w/o much thought or planning, couldn't ever answer that job application question - where do you see yourself in 5 yrs.?  never had a clue how that could even apply to me. 

i can relate to having inner children, can see them when i look inside.  at least, can connect them to certain incidences throughout my life.  but parts?  nope, can't pinpoint anything like that.  i just don't see them.

[Papa Coco]

San,

I happen to enjoy people who don't put too much thought or planning into doing things. It's funny to call it rebellious, because I think it's more like you're connecting more with the present moment.  And that question, "where do you see yourself in five years?" was the worst question I could be asked during performance reviews. I wanted to just say, "I don't know what I'm going to have for dinner tonight." 

I used to get frustrated with the questions interviewers would ask because most people were just asking the buzzword questions they thought they were supposed to ask. And by golly, most interviewees were just giving the buzzword answers they hoped would get them the job. Corporate America rewards buzzword parrots, liars and narcissists. I was often on the interviewer side of interviews. I helped to hire a few people during my career, and I found that most people just made stuff up anyway. I finally started saying "I wish more people would aspire to be who they said they were in their interview, because if they did, then everyone would be a strong communicator and a team player."  To me, that's just people playing with words. Ask the empty words, and answer with more empty words. Most of it means nothing.

There's a deep spiritual connection in connecting with the present and being okay letting the future be a mystery. I've known too many people who passed up opportunities because they had a rigid plan that the opportunity didn't fit into. When the stars line up, strike. Or like what my father-in-law, a former Iowa farmer used to say, "We make hay when the sun shines." Life offers so many opportunities that we aren't even expecting, and the wisest of us are willing to reach out and take them. They say, "luck is when opportunity meets readiness." And it makes life feel vibrant and alive.

That story of your missing doll really gels with me. It may have only been a doll, but it was a deep boundary betrayal to take it when you weren't looking. I've experienced a lot of that from my family and it's just simply not okay to do that. A part of us is stolen when something we value is taken. And the value may not even be in the item, but in the betrayal. I've had a lifelong trauma drama over my mother cleaning my desk out when I was about 12, (a very important age for boundaries) and I wasn't looking. She'd thrown away a small box of envelopes I'd collected. I had NO use for them. They had NO value, but they were MINE. And when I challenged her on it, she just laughed at me. When I challenged her laughing at me she told me to "dry up and go away." I've never been okay with her doing that.  It's like when people tell me what it felt like to have their house burgled. They always say "I felt so violated". That's what taking my envelopes was about. I was violated just one more time.

Inner children: Sometimes, when I'm in therapy and I'm expressing my irrational emotions to adult things, (Like having some worthless envelopes thrown out), my therapist frames it differently. He says, "That sounds like a very young part of yourself that's feeling this stress." When it's a rough enough flashback, he asks if I can sense how old I feel right now. I usually am able to pinpoint it. Sometimes I feel like I'm 5. Other times 12. Last week something came up and when he asked, I could tell I felt like I was about 18.  We didn't go down to the point of identifying a particular part because I got what I needed by just going to the age and working with it from there.

I love that you're writing Myth and Magic books. M&M breaks the mind out of the box of physical boundaries. Open the cage and let the imagination fly!

[Desert Flower]

Hi dear San, I just wanted to let you know that I am thinking of you and I hope you are okay, but it is not within my capacity to read or respond on the Forum atm.