Third Time is My Charm

 Mind on overload looks like a week in bed with debilitating anxiety. What is it that loads my mind and body to a state of empty thoughts but a heavy mind? Overload of what? Some "friends" would consider me as spontaneous. I'm not. I was reckless with the amount of times I coped with alcohol avoiding what was tugging at the strings of my soul. That is not spontaneous. That was hurtful and damaging to not just the people I love, but to my soul, my mind, my heart. It numbed my ability to feel close to God. It dumbed my mind to forget irrational behavior. It severed the aorta to my heart that is meant to provide real love.  It was a phase of success. It was but a phase in my life of grief. Unexplainable and tormenting grief that I wasn't prepared to handle nor even know what to do when it engulfed my entire being. It felt like it was never going to end. It ended, but the ripple effect will continue to wash upon the shores of my vulnerable existence.  That ripple effect i...

  Dear Dissociation,  Hollow. Separated. Afraid. Untrusting.    Head tilted back and breathing again. *inhale*    hold.    *exhale*    free.    Hello my friend, I wish we would never have met again. I've been running from you, and yet... I still find you. I am trying to remember when I first met you.    Blank.   I am searching for you now. I hope to find you. You are haunting and exhausting and keep me awake all night.    My dear Dissociation,  Your cunning, persuasive, and enticing inhale breathes me in.  I accept the peace of your inhale. I am sucked. Hold me. Please hold me.  I wake up. You are as cunning as I've been told. I want to hold you now. I see you in all the world around me and in the people I love.    Dear Dissociation, You are the heal of false perception, and not the healer.   

 There are places I've been that are hard to revisit. My brother's grave, for example. I struggle to visit where he's buried. I have places I go where I leave my pain behind. Where I heal as I visit. Where the warmth of freedom fills my entire soul with flames of wholeness. It engulfs me completely. I would go visit regularly to feel the burning sensation of the refiner's fire changing, molding, and healing me. I took a long hard break from this healing place of mine. Somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that there were too many people taking up space. My little personal healing space.  I went through some old notes that I found of the times I'd visit it. I wrote "My faith lacks hope. My knowledge lacks belief. My doubt overrides truth. My brain lacks the memory of that time I once had hope in my faith, belief in my knowledge, and truth once trumped my doubts. I want to live like the river... It has no doubts, it is sure to get where it's going and d...

 I was sitting on my couch just thinking. That's what I do now. I think and I think and I think. Just as Winnie the Pooh would do while squinting his eyes and tapping the side of his head as if searching for an answer while saying "think, think, think". The concept of the pendulum popped into my mind. I have heard people say that "the pendulum swings to the other side", as if to describe what once was positive now became a negative or vice versa. I thought about that and it just didn't sit right with me. I googled "what makes the pendulum swing?" There are 6 forms of energy, but I want to write about the 2 forms that are used in a pendulum. There is an energy that is called "potential energy" and there is another energy called "kinetic energy". These two forms of energy make the pendulum swing. Now, if you think about potential and what we define that as... it is the idea of becoming better than what is. So, we all have this ...

 I have been working with our family dog, V. I've had a lot of free time at night to do this. I have had some interesting and life changing perspectives as I have worked with her. I had a lot of frustration with her in the beginning. She wasn't a breed that I had done any research on and I thought that I would like a velcro dog that just wants to be with me all of the time. Like, a little shadow buddy. It was too much too fast. I wanted to figure out why I thought this dog would be good for me and our home.  "UGH- V! You're so damn needy for attention and it bothers me that you get mega offended when you don't get what you want!"  When I said that out loud to her she just looked me straight in the eyes. I quickly apologized to her and that was the beginning of our relationship. Yes, her eyes told me that she is just a reflection of my worst behavior. I started to study her and stopped trying to get her to bend to me. What a life changing experiment and it'...

Two days ago I sat in my bedroom on a perfectly flat yoga mat with 4 small candles lit in the distance and behind me. I listened to a stranger talk to me while describing a white light above my head and choosing to let it in to fill my entire body. Down and through every limb and joint. With every inhale it sank deeper and eventually penetrated every vein in my body until it was a light that was traveling and circulating with my blood. To the tips of my fingers to the tips of my toes. I was in a place of breathing in oxygen that was colorful and labeled with purpose. I labeled the complete opposite of light to what I was breathing out. The amount of inhaled oxygen is 21% compared to 16% on the exhale. I held on to that 5% that I labeled and allowed it to find rest in my body. This all sounds a little coo coo. Just typing it out makes me feel like I need to check myself into a mental hospital. I laughed at it all before too. This breathing is to show me that although my subconscious min...

 Last night we had a family meeting. I have struggled since my divorce with my children's dad and defining what my family looked like. He remarried 3 months after our divorce. I have a lot of frustrated and bitter feelings when I go back to that time in my thoughts. At some point, I will need to address that within me. Perhaps, it still has control over me because I haven't let it go. I was pretty hurt by how my family handled things during that time and defining loyalty within family bounds was undefined. Broken. That's not what this post is about though.  My family is defined as "V". Our family mascot is a Doberman with the name "V". She wasn't initially named V for the number 5, but that doesn't matter. It is beginning to feel right to feel like I have a family of 5. I never questioned the type of mother I was pre divorce. I don't have one regret of being that mom. I regret the mom I became with alcohol and dysfunctional relationships. It...

 You know what hurts my feelings? When someone says "that's not you." As if people want to wear goggles that will morph my reality to appease their perception. It is me. All of it. Who would I be if I didn't have the ugly? How would I know?  Spencer W. Kimball said in his talk "God will Forgive" that he gave in March 1982- "Another error into which some transgressors fall, because of the availability of God's forgiveness, is the illusion that they are somehow stronger for having committed sin and then lived through the period of repentance.... How satisfying it is to be cleansed from filthiness, but how much better it is never to have committed the sin!" I don't remember when I first heard that, but I haven't forgotten it. It defies what the atonement is for. The only one that never committed sin is Jesus so I guess if we can't be perfect then we should measure up next to each other. To those who have worse sins than the other. ...

 After reading John 4, I came across a Baptist Pastor who talked of this same event. My tears fell as his conviction of Jesus penetrated my soul. His sermon and John 4 is about the woman at the well. That one woman. The one that had to have been completely dry inside, unlike the well she was fetching water from.  Jesus was weary. Tired. Exhausted. It was around noon when he sat at the well. The Samaritan woman arrived with her pale to draw up the water. After the Savior asked for water and while she was working through her shock of this Jew talking to her, a Samaritan "Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither."  It struck my heart to read "I have no husband." This woman had five past husbands and a current man in her life who she was not married to. Whew! I don't know the details of what happened there or how she managed to go through five husbands. This woman was thirsty. Perhaps, in my way of relating to her- absolutely exhausted. Tired. Alo...

I love the practice of Buddhism. Their definition of attachment is "the inability to practice or embrace detachment, and is viewed as the main obstacle towards a serene and fulfilled life." Buddha said "The root of suffering is attachment." Ali ibn abi Talib, who was an Islamic leader said "Detachment is not that you should own nothing. But that nothing should own you."  I believe this is what many therapists relate to as the baggage of emotional garbage people are carrying around. We all carry these "attachments". Unless we have figured out how to get rid of them. What is the secret to getting rid of these attachments? I don't know. I'm asking you. That's why I'm here asking that question.  I do know that when I went back in my thoughts and memories as I'm venting on this blog that it was almost as if the feeling of those events reattached to me. I felt as if I was there again. I had to think about them. Read them. Cry over t...