How Important is it? VERY #powerless2powerful

Today was a rage day.

It's a nice change from sadness/grief. Those emotions can be very lethargy inducing.

When I first hit the doors of recovery, I was stone cold angry.

That dissipated in a couple of months, and I was able to take a more measured approach. Now I realize that what happened to me was a gift, because it separated me from the abusive people.

Now, as I journey through therapy and work on myself, I see that there are very justifiable times for my anger. In the past, there were times when I needed to speak up, but didn't. That was wrong.

How important is it? It is VERY important.

Abusive behavior is not acceptable. Those who stand by and watch are culpable as well. They are accessories to the abuse, especially if they enable the abuse.

I am angry these people didn't listen to me. I am angry more people than me were abused. I am angry that cowards wouldn't fight for me and left me to figure out how to protect myself. I did a great job for being so young. I did what I had to do to survive the war zone that was my youth.

I didn't turn out abusive. I became a protector, a nurturer and an alligator. I built up resentments to protect myself. Sarcasm became a way to fight back.

I don't need the resentments to protect myself any more. Sarcasm hurts me more than it does others. I put down the poison, and picked up the truth.

And the truth hurts before it heals. It hurts so bad, but I'm going to get through this one day at a time.

I've got healthy tools now, and a good support network.

I stopped going to church, for now. I even stopped praying the rosary, but thank God that came back today.

Going to church is something that will come back. Right now I need to stay away, I need to give myself time and I need to heal. I need to be gentle with myself.

I channeled my rage into usefulness by emailing an editor about a victim shaming/blaming headline. I studied for grad school. I meditated, ate, and walked more than my usual mile. I stayed in the present. I enjoyed the beautiful day and I thanked God that I no longer have to be around those abusive people.

Today I will choose to be grateful in the midst of anger.

Today I will choose to see that I have been loved all my life by my Higher Power.

Today I will be gentle with myself, and let myself heal.

Today I will fight for the rights of the innocent.

Today I will feel to heal.

Today I AM IMPORTANT.

Extreme Self Care - Powerless 2 Powerful

Once I realized that I was grieving, after a long session of meditation, I immediately moved into extreme self-care mode.

I realized I was feeling the same way I felt when those close to me had died.

It's a blank feeling for me. Like there is nothing there. The mind does.not.work. There is constant tension behind the eyes, and lack of appetite. This contains an element of depression, because the people aren't really dead. The relationship is dead.

Some days its only been as much as I can do to just say my Higher Power's name over and over again. When I speak HP's name in my mind, I'm invoking HP's presence and help, according to my tradition. HP lives the name, to speak it is to be with.

Extreme self care is increasing meditation. I did 40 minutes this morning and again when I came back from work. Because of that I was actually able to work on  my term paper.

I decided that I would only be able to do 5 hours at work (gratitude: P/T flexible job).  I stopped for conscious breaks every hour. I got up, I minute meditated, I watched the rain a bit. Instead of stewing about something I needed to do, but wasn't sure about, I made those jobs a priority and asked right away so I wouldn't waste any more time. I need people. I need help.

Fortunately I've got a great supervisor. Unfortunately the way that person treats me is better than I was treated growing up - so being with them brings the sting of what wasn't there and makes me aware of what I missed. Today I was able to turn from that sting and be grateful they are in my life.

I read in a book about emotionally absent parents that looking for what wasn't there was just as important as what was there. I found a lot of what wasn't there for me. Neglect is an accurate word.

I remember being so hungry at night I couldn't sleep. I remember gorging myself at holidays because the food actually tasted good, then feeling guilty at eating so much. Then feeling guilty because I liked it better than my family's "healthy" food. I still feel guilty eating until I am full. What about all those other children who don't have any?

Extreme self-are is doing what I can, and surrendering what I can't. I can't pray the rosary. I can meditate. I can't read long passages in the sacred text. I can repeat short verses to myself. "I AM with you always." I can't go to church, I can read the daily mass. I can't be happy. I can be sad.

I set myself in meditation to feel the grief. To feel the sadness, the anger, the betrayal. I will do it as often as it takes, for as long as it takes. When I choose how and where to let it flow over me, when I let myself know that there is a safe space for expressing my pain, it doesn't come out sideways at work or home.

Just for today I will remember that this is just part of the journey, a really hard part, and tomorrow will be different.

Just for today I will practice extreme self-care, and let go of everything else.

Just for today I will do the feeling so I can have the healing.

Just for today I will surrender what I can't, and do what I can.

Just for today I will let the love be the pain.

Grief Journey - Powerless 2 Powerful

I have felt absolutely bereft the past couple of days.

I have been and am grieving the loss of birth family.

With acceptance that a birth parent is a narcissist, comes the decision to distance, and the realization that everyone in that family now appears lost to me due to the poisonous toxic waste put out by the abuser.

I have been put in the role of the golden child, the mascot, the lost child and now the scapegoat.

It's funny how all these roles are run through in a toxic family.

That is their dysfunction. Now that I do not fit in or accept a role - the shunning aka scapegoat.

I went to a meeting tonight, filled with longing for answers and full of problems.

I received insight into what I needed to be doing instead. Reminders. We read from the ODAAT book, and the topic was problem solving. By the end of the meeting I had what I needed. My problems are still there, but they can wait.

Right now I need extreme self care and a strong connection to my Higher Power. I'm not even able to pray in the traditional sense that I am usually able to. There are no words, there is only pain. Pain is all I have to connect with to my Higher Power.

So I gave my Higher Power my pain. My grief. My longing. For 40 minutes.

I need something to show me my progress, so I'm doing my meditation with an app now. I can see what I have done, and also see that others are meditating as well. I don't feel alone.

I need people, but I need to feel that security as well that comes with no people. Social media's "with but not with" has become a huge source of self care right now.

I am completely powerless. Now I can become powerful.

Just for today.....just for today...I will be here, in my pain.

Just for today I will be powerless and become powerful.

The loss of Sacred Text and the finding of spirituality

One of the saddest things that happened to me as a result of abuse was losing the ability to find comfort in the sacred text of my faith.

This was a direct result of the 'accusing voices' or 'critical parent' script, that told me what to believe about what I was reading once I physically got away from the abusive family and church I was a part of.

I was always able to find joy in the Psalms, however.

I have only just recently been able to return to other portions of the Word. The Gospel of John has always been a deep comfort, along with his other books. They are so mystical, so only-easily grasped by the heart and spirit, that I don't know if I ever heard a sermon on them. 

The Song of Songs was another - oh, to be loved that way, and to love! I have returned to this book over and over through the years, re-reading it over and over before key moments in my spiritual journey.

Before I became Catholic, it was all I read. Before I entered Mt. Carmel and before my first and second promise. I imagine if I am called to continue in Carmel the rest of my life, I shall return again to this masterwork of the Spirit.

With the freedom of the Spirit, I have been able to read and appreciate other spiritual traditions without fear of being hexed by the bogeyman.

I'm currently reading The Four Agreements, and I've found that its common sense take on life not only echoes but reinforces my own tradition, and give me muscular practice in spiritual change.

I find the sayings / teachings of Rumi inspiring as well.

Right now for formation I'm reading the Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross. I feel like I am looking into his soul. It is his personal Song of Songs. Sometimes I almost feel carried away, out of myself. I can't read it through without entering a spiritual state.

Poetry has always spoken to me, has been there for me, and has given me a voice to express the inexpressible in my own life.

My day has been tiring. My sleep was broken multiple times, by outside forces, but I was able to surrender my sleep to my Higher Power, even surrender the inability to return to sleep, and took it as an opportunity for communion.

I'm getting better at moment by moment communion.

I subscribe to the emails of Richard Rohr, and his meditation today (by someone else) about the God particle was profoundly moving.

St. John preaches the "NADA" or the way of nothing. My ego, my will, my control, my addiction as they slowly drop off me or reveal to me my weakness, expose my nakedness, my personal expression of image and likeness, to the divine impulse.

I slowly become, I slowly return to the garden of delight, of intimate universal communion.

But I run from God, he frightens me, a creature, by his realness, and so he comes to me in the darkness, hidden living inside a body, my body and I give love to him by loving the self and together we walk hand in hand, moment by moment.

The way of nothing is the way to everything. Because without God everything is nothing, but with him, nothing is everything.

Just for today I will try to improve my conscious contact with God.

Just for today I will seek love with love.

Pure program, St. Teresa

I already told you elsewhere that sometimes the devil gives us great desires so that we will avoid setting ourselves to the task at hand, serving our Lord in possible things, and instead be content with having desired the impossible. Apart from the fact that by prayer you will be helping greatly, you need not be desiring to benefit the whole world but must concentrate on those who are in your company, and thus your deed will be greater since you are more obliged toward them.

- St. Teresa of Avila

Anger and Acceptance

I determined yesterday, after walking around all day in a fog of anger and not being able to name the feeling until later, that the next time I felt like that, I would make a phone call.

I also determined to make a phone call every day I don't go to a meeting.

I can think of a few reasons why phone calls are torturous.

1. Phone as means of control - we didn't have access, so they could control us.
2. Parents yelling at each other over long distance phone bills.
3. No phone calls as a money issue.
4. Getting 'glares' when the phone was used.
5. Strange clicking noises while talking on the phone (someone listening? grrr.)
6. Constant negative feedback about using the phone.
7. Paranoia instilled about who was listening to phone calls.

But I did pick up that hundred pound phone tonight. I made one call, and didn't pick up.

So I sent my cat out to steal things (I discovered KleptoCats two days ago while searching for Pusheen stickers for my phone). I started to count backyard with the timer, and that was really soothing. Who knew? Video games for healing.

By the time I had counted all the way back, and my digital cat had brought me something cool - a unicorn - I was ready to make the second phone call.

I told them that I was angry and that I thought it was about acceptance. I just don't want to accept what happened to me, what is. I got the best advice: ask God what his will was for me right now. That way the focus is not on what I don't have, but on what I do have. Which take some supernatural power, let me tell you.

So I did it, and was able to get up from the digital vortex and just do the next thing. Which led me back to the digital vortex to write about it

It felt good. And I love that silly game.

Just for today I will ask what God's will is for me, then do the next thing that is his will for me.

Just for today I will make a phone call.

Just for today I will remind myself I am grown up and I can make phone calls whenever I want to.

Just for today I will remember I have a phone list, know lots of people on it, and can make that call.

Just for today I will remember that what I did in my own self will wasn't working, and I will give the next step in the program for me a try and keeping trying.

Just for today I will remember that behavior changes thinking. If I want to change inside, I need to move outside as well.

Just for today I will remember my Higher Power loves me, and he has all the power I need, I just have to ask!

Self Care while in Anger

1. Watching the Great British Baking Show.
2. Followed then nudge from my Higher Power about which church to go to.
3. Went to church late, and left early.
4. Happy to have found a church whose physical environment I feel comfortable in.
5. Held my inner child's hand in the church's foyer, instead of making myself go in and sit down.
6. Enjoyed a peaceful drive home beside a waterway.
7. 30 + minutes of silent meditation.
8. Sunbathing. :-)
9. Went to a meeting.
10. Learned how my energy can invite bullying.
11. Learned which tone of my voice can't be heard, sounds weak and invites bullying.
12. Moved one step closer to recording my own voice so I can hear what I sound like.
13. Read Courage to Change & Hope for Today.
14. Told my family I was angry so they wouldn't think it was them.
15. Made myself good, healthy food.
16. Had desserts after every meal.
17. Proofed my letters of recommendation for school.
18. Check my online class for additional assignments.
19. Cleaned most of my refrigerator.
20. Filled up my car tank with gas.
21. Went walking three times.
22. Watched a Pilates video and practiced the breathing.

Self care, self care, self care
Just for today I will remember that self-care reflects acceptance of god's love for me.

Angry. Angry. Angry...

It's a low grade, what I used to call sick.

Because anger wasn't allowed, but sad was allowed. But then sad wasn't allowed, so all that was left was sick.

And so I feel sick, then sad and then finally after a meeting I realized it is anger, my old friend.

Yes.

Something is wrong.

I was abused. And I am angry.

I am angry at the people who abused me. They are jerks and worse.

I am angry at the people who were silent. I was the innocent sacrifice which allowed them to remain in denial.

I am angry, right now, at people in my life who remind me of those people.

I hope they rot in hell. And I will pray for you, so I won't be poisoned with resentment and live a hell on earth. So I can move from hoping they rot in hell, to hoping they find recovery.

I am angry I can't go to church without feeling anxious, terrified and wanting to leave. All those feelings I couldn't feel as a child, having to survive in an abusive religious environment, I am angry.

I am angry that there are bullies, jerks and evil in the world that delight and enjoy destroying beauty and innocence, simply because they can.

No, you don't get a pass if you were abused. So was I, and I didn't abuse others. I became a protector. What did you become? A monster.

I hate all of you and I no longer have to be around you. But I will still pray for you, so my hatred will not consume me and make me a monster as well.

Unfortunately, there will always be people like you. People who delight in destruction. People who take it out on those who are enjoying themselves and life. People who decide to destroy what is beautiful, just because they get a kick out of it.

Would you prefer security to love? Would you sacrifice your own child to save yourself? To protect your viewpoint of the world? What does it say about you if you do that?

What the fuck is wrong with us?

Just for today I will feel all my feelings, and allow them to pass.

Just for today I will observe myself with compassion, and let myself grow at my own pace.

Just for today I will be angry, and I will let it pass.

Let Time Take Time

I am shaking with anger right now. Just shaking with it. Feeling the years that have been stolen, STOLEN, by the abuse.

What really makes me mad is that it comes out in tears, which makes me even angrier.

Tears, at least, were acceptable responses growing up. Not feeling well was also another response.

In ACA I learned the phrase, "Let time take time."

It just takes time, I will feel the feelings and heal, but right now it is really hard!

Self-care triumphs today:

1. Put on make up
2. Picked up around my back yard
3. Logged some additional time at work
4. Put up my curtains early
5. Edited my application
6. Got my boss' approval for a recommendation I wrote (for me)
7. Checked my college inbox (no updates)
8. Read today's Courage to Change
9. Read today's Strengthening my Recovery
10. Made a meal without internal drama
11. Positive positive internal dialogue
12. Watched the clouds go by and listed to Ella Fitzgerald for 15 minutes
13. Morning Prayer

Today I will let time take time, and just do the next thing.
Today I will remember that self care reflects acceptance of God's love for me.