The Longest Journey

PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder. War veteran mental health issue. Word cloud sign.

Healing from trauma is a long journey. Lifelong, for some. In my late 40s, my own journey is just getting started. There is a lot to work through and I’m not exactly sure where to begin however I know it has to happen if I’m ever going to start thriving. Since I was 17, it’s just been surviving (and sometimes barely, at that).

Usually the advice is just to start at the beginning, square one, but we’re talking about going back to before I was born, with my mother’s toxic relationship with my father, her dysfunction in the way she treated my grandmother, and my grandmother’s own dysfunctional upbringing. This realization that it goes way back prompted me to purchase a book entitled It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn. My daughter, who is going through her own healing process, bought it about 4 years ago and strongly recommended it to me. It addresses generational trauma and PTSD with studies backed by leading experts in neuroscience and post-traumatic stress.

At its most basic, it affirms that in histories like mine (and by proxy, my daughter’s), some of the behaviors I exhibit may not come from abuse handed to me throughout my life, but may be pre-programmed types of reactions to things that happened before me and have been passed down genetically. It would seem the genes we carry are programmed for far more than blue eyes or big thighs. Mental states, even reactive memory, too can run in the family.

This honestly takes a lot of pressure off. Instead of asking what’s wrong with “me,” now I can go back and see that it wasn’t me. It does not become a matter of shifting blame for a rotten situation – I am not looking to blame – it instead becomes a matter of, “where did this come from – this trauma response to every little thing, this fear, this anxiety and regression, depression, these trust issues, this inability to relate to others or hold a relationship, this inability to care for myself, this inability to thrive?” Once that is sorted, the next question becomes, “how do I heal?”

I know forgiveness is going to be a major hurdle in healing as I am nowhere near ready for that yet. My dad (who I met finally when I was 24) taught me that forgiveness does not mean saying what a person did was acceptable. It means that you – the forgiver – are willing to acknowledge it happened and essentially erase that debt, let it go. It does not mean necessarily forgetting. It simply means moving on. As of today though, even hearing the name “Brenda” automatically makes my jaw clench, my body tense, and triggers me to either fight or ball up and cower. That is the power she had over me and still does even though she’s finally deceased (and I do not regret feeling relief and even joy over that fact).

And this is why it is finally the right time for me to begin this journey through facing the pain and abuse, facing the fallout, and clearing my path to healing. I don’t want to carry all this trauma the rest of my life. It’s too much. The burden has kept me from so much happiness, health, and success that I can no longer accept having the baggage.

Solitary Solidarity (Coping with Covid-19 Lockdown)

We Are Okay! That is first and foremost the most important thing going through my mind each day. Despite not being able to go out much, despite having to get creative for some meals at home, and despite being cooped up in a house with three other people, things are actually okay. The not going out part, heck I was made for this. I’m a painfully un-social introvert and having been raised an only child, it’s easy to entertain myself. I’m rarely bored. If I am, it’s usually only because I’m too hot and antsy (we have no AC).

I read a lot of blogs and other social media posts where people battling cabin fever try to find ways, some of them pretty outlandish, to stay sane during our nationwide lockdown. I wonder if I’m the odd one out for actually enjoying this quiet time, this alone time. It’s as if I’m sitting back watching the world burn and I will emerge from my mental cave when it all blows over. Certainly there are some things I miss. Kava Kat, a tea bar I started to enjoy going to with friends, of course had to shutter its doors during the crisis. Being a relatively new business to the area, I’m happy they survived the worst of it (so far) and were able to reopen. Some places I loved, like Uncle Carlo’s, sadly have not reopened. This city is a new landscape, sort of a bare bones one, but it will survive as a community. It’s beautiful how people have pulled together to support each other in every way possible.

From Silence Came Wisdom

In Response To: Weekly Writing Challenge: The Sound Of Silence

In life, I am a very sound-sensitive individual. Certain pitches and volumes that would normally just annoy most people physically hurt at times. Too many differing sounds make me want to cover my ears and scream (perfect example: heavy metal music or a loud television with unpredictable shifts in volume).

Several years ago, when I was actively involved in meeting with my spiritual guide on the astral plane through meditation, I was sitting in my apartment one night about to crawl out of my skin. I ran to the back of the building to escape the noises of the air conditioner, the TV and the cars outside…

I closed my eyes and immediately sought my Guide who was waiting for me and he tells me, “Let me be your peace.” He takes me into his arms piece by piece, frequency by frequency, we shut out all the noise. In silence, he has me spiritually enter a tall, strong oak tree in my neighbor’s back yard and I become one with it. He tells me to hear the heartbeat of the tree.

I say: I know this tree.

He says: “You know because you feel . You feel because you are. Now, what do you feel?”

I say: I feel the heartbeat, which pulses once in a year. Once in a season. The roots swell with the rains and with the force of life which will push up into new leaves and blooms. I feel its slow strength. I feel its serenity. I feel every memory. I feel the cold earth surrounding my feet. I feel my arms reaching high in its branches toward the sun. I feel the energies it draws in and those it puts out. I feel the force of life ever flowing. I feel the dark stillness inside the heartwood. I feel the rush of the wind. I feel the complexity of its internal patterns. I feel its age. I feel it holding strong to its will to survive. I feel its faith. I feel its health and its dis-ease. I feel its healed scars. I feel its perseverance. I feel its slow pulse and the reason for its longevity. I feel its patience.

My Guide tells me: “In the end, what you feel is the secret of life. You truly are awakened. You know. This is your wisdom – the way to peace, to knowledge, to those things that you cannot learn from man. You are one with nature, and it is one with you. This tree has allowed you inside its very core. It knows you are of good will, and it knows you possess the Gift. The others will all feel the mark of its energies within you, now that you have joined it as one. You are indeed a very special, precious child. I told you in the beginning you were gifted. Now you understand… this is what I meant. This is why you are here, because all your senses are in tune with the nature that surrounds you. In silence, you can communicate with nearly everything. Many of us cannot. Many of us only possess a special connection with certain entities but you, my dear, you have the ability to hear the trees, the spirits of nature, the spirits of men, the spirits of all that surrounds you.”

My Guide continues: “I know that you have lost faith in men (people), but do not lose faith in nature, for that is what you are here to protect. Mankind has destroyed itself and now settles into its death. Nature… it will survive, but it will need to be healed and to be able to heal it, we must be able to understand its needs above what we can already see with our eyes. We must also apply our minds to the energies it gives us and decode its secrets with an understanding that very few have managed to achieve.”

From silence came wisdom and with wisdom, the ability to understand the world around me with closed eyes and an open mind. Sometimes after all, we must close our eyes to truly see.

Challenges never cease

Yesterday, I was looking forward to making the trip 2 1/2 hours south to go pick up my daughter who I haven’t seen in far too long. We miss each other terribly but its been nearly impossible to get up the money to get there as far behind as everything had fallen. Well, the thrill of having my daughter back has been taken away from me yet again as I have been in the hospital since Wednesday with a very sudden onset of right lower lobe pneumonia. I have been unresponsive to most of the breathing treatments, antibiotics and steroids that they have been pumping me with. I was in such respiratory distress yesterday that the doctor strongly suggested intubating me for 48 hours and waking me up after 2 days of ICU treatment. Of course I fought it tooth and nail. He diagnosed me with COPD. My blood pressure upon arrival was stroke level 236/120. My blood sugar is running in the 200’s so I’m shooting insulin three times a day. I’m an unholy trifecta of health problems right now. I had been praying for healing but certainly did not have to go through all this to achieve it. I think I was hoping for more of a miracle than missed child, missed work, missed home. I just hope to God my daughter understands that my being away is not by choice, that I want us together but that I am still financially destitute and severely ill. I still, after all the treatment, cannot get out of bed without taking ten minutes to catch my breath. I don’t know how long I will be in hospital, but I need to start responding NOW to treatment.