The Tiny Tree Moves Towards The Sun

(Content warning: childhood abuse, infidelity and trauma.)

Life always tries….even a tiny tree pushing through a crack in the concrete, growing where it can’t possibly grow tries to move towards the sun.

I’ve spent a life time pushing myself incredibly hard and even after I learned that what was happening was a trauma response I kept doing it. I told myself I was getting better at treating myself well, that I was learning to look after myself – and this was after promising myself 5 years ago that I’d never ever blow smoke up my own ass again. During the hardest time of my life I made the promise to myself to never ever lie to myself again, that I would always be there for myself in ways that no one ever had been before. I lied, and I lied some more. I didn’t realize that I was doing it of course, but now I know the truth and once you know the truth it’s impossible to not know it.

If you read my first post you’ll know that September 2016 was the beginning of some very hard times for me. I was knocked on my ass and it’s taken me a very long time to get back up again.

I did what I needed to do. I had my brain tumour evaluated and my spleen removed. I did this while walking through fog. I would spend the next 22 months in a deep and dense fog. That’s what disassociation feels like to me.

No one noticed – not the many doctors I had to see, not my friends, not even my family. That’s how good I am at pretending. That’s how good I am at suppressing and repressing. I told my kids about my spleen and my brain tumour, but I told almost no one about what I’d learned about my husband.

How could I admit to anyone – even myself that I’d been betrayed again? Betrayal has been an ongoing theme in my life. There are basically three themes that run through my life. One: abuse; two: betrayal and three: trauma.

My childhood was rife with abuse of all kinds; physical, emotional, verbal and sexual. I grew up traumatized, but I didn’t know it until I found out about my husband’s infidelity. Actually that’s not quite true. I had a foggy (pun intended) idea that that’s what I was experiencing as I slowly descended into that deep dark fog. It was once I started to emerge from the fog that I came to realize how much I had to face and how traumatized I truly was.

Summer 2018 I slowly came out of the fog and the pain was immense, almost unbearable.  I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I was already in therapy, but somehow my therapist hadn’t even noticed how disassociated I was. I did all the right things – continued therapy, started trauma therapy, read all the books, listened to all the podcasts, talked to as many different therapists/doctors/health practitioners that I could about how to heal.

The answer was almost exclusively the same (all but one therapist) said some version of “you have too much trauma – your trauma history is too extensive. I am unwilling or unable to help you open that box.”

I have been playing the ‘now what’ game since.

Fortunately I have one other minor theme that has run through my life and that’s health and wellness and a strong medical bent. If it wasn’t for the vast amount of knowledge I’d already accumulated on how to be healthy I wouldn’t have made it this far.

And…..

Still, I find myself where I am now.  I am a much more knowledgeable about trauma person and a much more unwell person. Years of repressing and suppressing and ignoring all the things has brought me to here; it has brought me to being a  middle aged woman who’s been diagnosed with: (In no particular order)

PTSD and C-PTSD, general anxiety, social anxiety, post partum depression, ADD/ADHD, Lyme, chronic Lyme, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, dysautomomia, asthma, chronic migraines, celiac disease, GERD, IBS, hypertension and tachycardia, a vitreous detachment and a macular pucker in one eye and last, but not least, complete and utter burnout.

And all of that is what has brought me here.

I might have promised myself several years ago that I wouldn’t lie to myself any longer, and I honestly believed that I was doing a good job there, but now I know that I can no longer continue to ignore the pain and what I’ve been through. I can’t pretend to be looking after myself and beat the shit out of myself inside or continue to push myself in the name of healing. I mean seriously – WTF is that about?!

I’m here to hold myself accountable to change. I’m here to show myself that healing is possible. I’m here to help myself put all the many pieces of my life back together in a way that’s healthy and sustainable and makes the rest of my life better than what is behind me.

All I can do is keep moving forward – but now I can do it with kindness and compassion and understanding.

It's Time to Begin Again.....An Introduction of Sorts

It’s been a long time since I wrote a blog post. If I’m honest I’ve really missed it. I stopped way back in 2014 when I went to coaching school and my instructor was adamant that we not blog about anything besides our specific niche and since I didn’t know who my “target market” was I dutifully stopped. Which looking back was weird because I’m not usually one to do what I’m told.

OK – so that’s probably not the only reason as to why I stopped. I’d also had several photos stolen and then my entire blog was cloned and I was feeling very discouraged.

The years passed and I’ve often thought of starting anew, but I’ve hesitated until now. I guess you could say this is my coming out. Brene Brown says that to heal shame we must speak it out loud and stop hiding. In the recovery world there’s a saying that we’re only as sick as our secrets. I’m done hiding and keeping secrets. I’m kicking shame to the curb by telling my truth. It won’t be pretty at first, but I hope to keep going until it is.

I feel like I’ve been on a healing journey most of my life. I don’t always like that saying “a healing journey”, but it is what it is and we all know what it means. I’ve been on mine truly since September 2016 where over the course of about 10 days I learned that I had a brain tumour, that I had to have my spleen removed ASAP and that my husband had been unfaithful. Those events topped off a lifetime of chronic stress and trauma. Those events knocked me on my ass and I’ve spent the last 7.5 years trying my damndest to get back up. It hasn’t been easy and along the way there have been more very difficult times, but I’m still trying.

In fact I’ve tried so many different things I can’t even recall them all. But I’ll give it a try here….

Talk therapy, trauma therapy, brain spotting, doctors, specialists, naturopaths, homeopaths, energy workers, vitamins/supplements, movement, somatic practitioners, classes, courses, too many books to count, podcasts, meditation, medical cannabis, CBD oil, massage, yoga and just about anything that might have helped.

I’m tired….so fucking tired.

A few things have helped a little, trauma therapy has helped quite a bit and continues to be helpful, giving up wine more than 2 years ago helped a lot, but nothing has really made a huge difference in my life. I’m up off my ass, but it doesn’t take much to knock me down again. I’m so tired of only just surviving, of only just keeping my head above water.

I want to get a full refreshing night sleep after years of chronic insomnia. I want to laugh until the tears run down my cheeks. I want to stop worrying about whether or not I’m enough – but not too much in all of my interactions. I want to jump out of bed in the morning looking forward to what lies ahead in my day.

I want to remember what happiness feels like in my body.

There’s one thing I haven’t tried. Not in my quest to heal trauma – or any other time in my life.

I’m going to try just being me. I’m going to do that here without censoring myself or pretending or masking or anything else.

I’m 55 years old and I’ve never just let myself be me. That’s what this is about. I’m going to write about my experiences. I’m going to stop hiding, stop pretending that the entirety of my life hasn’t been one long trauma response. I’m going to stop keeping secrets so I can get healthy and well for the first time in my life. Shame can go fuck itself. It’s not welcome here.

In my life there have been a few themes – trauma and shame being what I’ve been hiding from and trying to heal from at the same time, all the while keeping it secret. There are others; namely creativity and meditation/contemplation, and these are what are going to heal me.

I’ve come to believe through the last year or so of trauma therapy that what I most need is to talk about all the shame and trauma that I’ve been hiding, and to allow myself to just be me and do what I love to do – meditate and create.

So welcome to The Contemplative Creative. I hope you’ll join me and I also hope you’ll share you own stories with me. We can’t heal in isolation – we’re in this together and since I know how alone I’ve felt for a very long time I invite you to join me on my healing journey. Together we’ll heal and create better lives and maybe even help heal the world a little bit.