If happened this morning!

All of the writing, reading, talking, meditating, ruminating, examining and yoga all came together this morning and I GOT IT!

It has taken a long time to get here, and I know I am still a work in progress, but I finally feel like it’s a journey worth taking.  I want to share how the final pieces to the puzzle of my brain fell into place today.

EMDR.  I believe that EMDR opened pathways in brain that literally changed how I see events, people, issues, myself.  I was on the brink of everything I’ve done today a year ago, but it never quite sunk in.  I think it is sinking in now because EMDR has abolished my intense sense of shame, opening up a new way for me to view myself.

 Fund raising/Community Cause.  I’ve been working with my son on raising awareness and research money for ovarian cancer.  Two things happened this week that hit me full force.  There have been many other instances like this over the years, but I think I  was too full of shame to see them for the remarkable testament they are.

 

The 1st was the event.  We’ve been working on putting together a team for a 5/10K that happened this past Saturday.  The event was held between 8 – 11AM.  My family and some of my son’s friends went down to set up our tent early.  When we left the house we were hearing “scattered showers” between 9 – 11, but there was no rain at that point.  By 8AM we were being pummeled with rain.  The people who signed up to walk or run would have been leaving their homes around the time the rain started, and they had every reason to go back to bed.  At the time they got into their cars, pulled out of their driveways and drove all the way into the city they KNEW it was going to rain the whole time they were there – and they did it anyway!  Not only did they show up, they walked the whole course!

The next day one of my yoga teachers asked me how the event had gone, and I told her that story.  She said “you know they did that for you.    And in that moment I knew it was true!  I felt it in the core of my being that I

 

The second thing happened before the event.  One of my yoga studio owners is doing a free donation yoga class to help us raise money.  It is extremely generous of her to do this; she is under no obligation.  It just so happens that she is neighbors and friends with my ex’s New Gilr, and her husband plays basketball with my ex, so our relationship could be strained and awkward, but it is not.  A day or two before the event she asked me to stay after class to talk for a minute.  It was a beautiful day so we sat outside.  I had been operating publicly (and shamelessly!) on Facebook, personally thanking each person who donated  and/or joined our team.  She said she wanted to tell me she was not able to donate cash and she hoped I understood and was ok with it.  She, the woman who is dragging yoga mats, black lights and a sound system to the local high school to do a free class so that my team can raise money was concerned that she had not made a cash donation.  What???   It blew me away, and I left in tears or joy at the generosity she was directing at ME.  And, I sort of felt like I deserved it!

I had a Reiki session.  I’m not sure I believe in Reiki; I’m not sure I believe in spirits, or angels, or universal energy that has bealing properties.  I did the Reiki because it is 45 minutes of meditation with touch.  As much as I’ve been uncomfortable with touch, I’ve come to see it’s healing power, so I went to Reiki.  It was supposed to be 45 minutes; it was actually 75 minutes.  When it was over the practitioner apologized for going so long and said “I couldn’t leave your head.  There was such a powerful vibration of good Karma I didn’t want to stop touching you”.   It’s been pretty obvious to me that good karma is not one of my strong points.  If you’ve read many of my blogs you know that not only do I not beleive in Karma, I have been very cdertain that if there is such a thing. mine is bad.  Here was this woman talking about how strong my positive karma is.  What a great seed that was.  She planted the idea that perhaps there was more good than bad in this head of mine.

The final thing was a pop-up Prince yoga class.  My last blog was about the class, so I won’t repeat that.   However, there was magic in that class.  To begin with, it was a free class offered by a popular teacher to anyone who wanted to come.  Yoga isn’t free; this was.  Secondly, it was a room full of people of all ages, from all walks of life.  I would venture to say that if you took a picture of that room and analyzed everyone’s background, you’d find little in the way of similarities.  After processing the personal impact the class had on me I started thinking about the group as a whole.  I have always felt a deep connection to those I practice yoga with, even if I don’t know them.  There is a spiritual aspect to yoga that I don’t quite get but I know is powerful.  The only way I can think to describe it is that in those classes our newborn self shows up.  When we are born, we are all unique, but essentially we are also all the same.  We have the same wants and needs, we have the same love and despair, we have the same joy and fear.  In the centger of us all is this common demoniator that, if we can look past the surface, we can see and connect to.  It is so powerful, and it makes you feel, even on your darketst of days, that you belong, you are okay.

The next peice is a book I”m reading.  It’s called Health Rage: Women Making Inner Peace Possible, written by Ruth King.  Ms. King references our inner “rage child” and suggests that we must honor her.  The 1st step in this process is a list of 25 questions, ranging from how we felt as a child to how we feel today.  The most significant question to me was “what is your sweetest childhood memory”.  The only one I could come up with had to do with a time away from my family.  I expected that; I’ve known for my entire life that my childhood wasn’t good, that I didn’t fit.  The significant part is when my sister came for the event.  We were cooking dinner and I was telling her about the book.  I adore my sister, and I can’t imagine life without her, but we disagree about the relevance and impact of our childhoods on our adult lives.  Perhpas this is because she was close to our dad, or it could be becacuse she has a relatively happy adulthood, or it could be that was held in higher esteem in our birth family.  In an attempt to share with her the jumble of my thought processes I asked her the question: “What is your sweetest childhood memory”.  She made a funny noise, a noise that said arghhh….there is no  such thing.  After a minute or two she said “running behind the mosquito trucks down at the shore”.  In that moment I understood that while she might not feel things on the same level as I, while she might not examine her life as I do, while she might puch me to make peace, in her inner core she is the same as I.  She, if she needed to, or allowed herself to, would feel the rage our childhood instilled in us.

The final piece came in a blog sent to me by my therapist.  The concept of our internal “scripts”, or “stories” or “ingrained thought patterns” has always been someting I’ve acknowledged, but I could never quite wrap myself around it.  I could never look at a childrhood script, or message and feel, deep in the core of my soul, that it was a lie.  I could recite each damaging message, each daming statement, each event that had turned me into a fearful, ineffective, unhappy, anxious adult, but I had no idea what to do with that information.  Then I read   http://hubpages.com/health/How-to-Get-the-Narcissists-Worms-Out-of-Your-Head.  Suddenly I could visualize not only the statement, the lie, the falsity, but I could understand why it was still there.  I could see each piece of the script I’d been given burrowing into the inner recesses of my brain, shutting out all the potential that surrounded me.

With all of those pieces in place, I sat this morning and wrote on many pieces of paper this:

 

Lie

I’m a  Drama Queen

 

On the other side of the paper I wrote

Truth.  

And it poured out of me.  Each worm implanted revealed itself, and with each worm I could easily state the Truth.  It was so easy, it was crazy; which, by the way, is one of my worms, that I am  Crazy!  My mind is actually reeling right now with the power of this exercise.  I’ve written down each message I was given as a child, the messages that were reinforced in my marriage, and the new messages I’ve received in my marriage and I’ve dissected them.  When I write the Truth I am writing what parts of that message are real and what are false and, Most Importably, I’m feeling all of it!  For the 1st time ever I’m feeling the rage at being called a Drama Queen when what was really happening was that I was protesting being treated unfairly   I’m also accepting what is really me.  In addition to being overly sensitive I can be difficult to please, and demanding, and a perfectionist.  I’m taking each of thse messages and looking underneath it.  For the 1st time I can actually see into my soul and it is pretty freaking good!  Sure, there are bad things about me; things I can and should work on, things I should change, things that are challenging to those around me.  Most of these messages though, most of these worms that took over my brain and slithered around keeping all other thoughts out, are wrong.  Some of the worms will stay, others will go.

All of these events have led me to the following conclusion:  I’m A Good Person.  I deserve to take up space on this earth, I deserve to breath air, and use resources, and be thanked and express gratitude.  I am not a mistake.  I don’t have to cook a gourmet dinner and clean my house to be worthy.  I don’t have to earn great money or pay for the car to be worthy.  I don’t have to be the perfect mother or please those around me to be worthy.  I can actually piss people off And Still Be Worthy!!!   I am the same innocent soul that all of you are; that everyone is on the day we are born, in that moment before others

I’ll start writing about my worms.  For know though, believe me that this can be done!  You can find peace and strength and happiness.  You can live in the world with the people who have hurt and abused you and feel good about yourself.

Right now I feel like a helium balloon.  If  not tethered down I could fly away, my soul souring in freedom.  It’s amazing.