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.

Happy, Joyous and Free

Today I was able to help a friend.

I was tired out, emotionally spent and happy afterward, so I went to a meeting, and for the first time passed when it was time for me to comment.

I felt like I had just given her a spiritual transfusion of blood, and I needed a meeting for support while I recovered.

I was able to go to two meetings today despite being given work to do over the weekend, and having an application left to fill out for school.

I was able to do it by resting each moment as it came with my Higher Power.

The second meeting was ACA, and I had a spiritual experience there while listening to someone share a perspective about looking at the past. I'll share this because it's also in the Al-Anon literature. Looking in the past should be like looking in the rear view mirror, just occasional glances, while living in the now is like looking through the windshield.

I don't know what it was about his story, or how he shared it, but right there I just felt very strongly the presence of eternity, and how I would always be held by love. I let myself be loved right there, and I brought all my ACA friends with me.

After doing a couple hours of work from home, I wanted to keep the excitement going by attending the Al-Anon speaker at our AA anniversary meeting, but I decided not to. I recognized that I was 'going off' into drama and excitement, and that adding another meeting to the day would be overwhelming and exhausting.

So I chose to put on a silly movie, Get Smart, and washed the dishes and made a little something to eat while waiting for my husband to wake up and get dinner for us.

I watched through half of Get Smart, then I was done, and I was ready to do more work. I was able to accomplish much more than I would have ordinarily been able to do. It is such a gift to have so much head space freed up from anxiety and trauma.

It is such a gift to work hard, and see the fruit of meditation crop up during an entire day. To know the presence of God, and to just walk always seeing God. I don't feel him, but he is there. He is just a sure presence.

I mentioned my husband, well I had several choices during the day. I could have gotten upset when he was not up at the "proper time" to get us dinner when I thought he should. I didn't wake him up and I didn't say a thing.

I was able to stay away from anger and bitterness. I was able to not set myself up as god, and I was able to not set him up as god either. I just got a little snack and trusted he would be up whenever was good for him, then I say down and did more work.

I'm really quite amazed at the changes in me. I've been treating myself more gently, and have been able to treat others gently as well. I'm not faking it anymore to survive, it's a gentleness that flows out of me.

Today I will acknowledge that I am receiving the gifts of "doing the healing work."

Today I will be grateful for the ability to do that work.

Today I will enjoy being happy, joyous and free.

Step 1 - Admitted I am powerless over blog content

Step 1 - Admitted I am powerless over blog content, that my blogging had become unmanageable.

After typing Step 1, I realized that, actually, I do know what this blog will be about.

Granted, I don't know what form or story it will take each day, but I do know this is about my journey through the 12 steps and how this interacts within my life as a child of God in the 3rd order or lay Carmelite vocation of the Catholic church.

Step 1 is very powerful. The second I say, "I don't know," I admit to the possibility that someone else does, or that the answer exists outside myself. I don't have to know, right now. 

When I am okay with not knowing, then I am ready to know.

My blogging is unmanageable, because of control. I I I need to control control control everything.

I don't know which direction this blog will take, other than the above mentioned. I don't know if anyone will read it. I have no control over the fact that my mind starts to obsess about all the things I need to know if I am going to start blogging again. I have to plan for all the bad things that could happen. I have to plan for all the good things that could happen. What if. What if. What if.

No. I do not have to know. I only have to trust that, right now, I need to make this blog. IF someday I need to move it, I can. IF someday, I need to delete it, I can.

When I am okay with not knowing, then I no longer have to control. I can rest in the fact that I only have to do, right now, what I need to do next. That is all that is expected, to do the next right thing.

The unmanageable shrinks down into its right size until I am able to see only the next thing, because I never really saw the big picture anyway. The mirror of my mind had distorted everything, like one of those curved mirrors at the funhouse.

When I am okay with not knowing, then I am ready to know.

Step 1 - We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our life had become unmanageable.

I pray that we will find the serenity we seek, and that we will see that what we seek has always been inside us, waiting for us to return to ourselves to find rest.

We are loved with an everlasting love, and surrounding us are the everlasting arms.

No-people, No-place, No-thing, can separate us from the love of God.

Let yourself be loved.