Five Minute Friday: Bloom

Once more linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker for Five Minute Friday. The day each week that we allow our inner editors to be silent for just five minutes as we write and publish on the given prompt.

Come join us?


I find myself draw back into the lesson of nature all around me as I work through the impatience of this season. I want to see all my dreams and hopes come to pass now, thank you very much. Yet nature teaches me, time and again that there is a rhythm to life. A pacing and a tempo that is all her own and it will not be rushed. There is growth happening, even when it's below the soil. There is beauty even when the blossom is only a bud.

It's easy to look at someone's life that's in full bloom and forget the dedication, the choices, the patience, the nurture that went into all the phases that brought forth that blossom. Embrace this place, this stage of your blooming because it too is beautiful.

Bloom

Before the blooming there was blossoming, a coming into her own. 

Before the blossoming there was budding, hope for colour and beauty to come.

Before the budding there was leafing, nourishment for the growing life. 

Before the leafing, there was sprouting, tenacity breaking through.

Before the sprouting, there was rooting, choosing to stay in this place.

Before the rooting, there was dying, hard protection splitting apart and letting go.

Before the dying, there was a seed, potential and promise of a blooming. 

Real Talk Tuesday: I Give Myself Permission

Growing up we often told each other that it was easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. It was true and not true. In my world, half the time I got in trouble for asking for permission in the first place. Permission has always been something external, this mystic power that authority figures held over me. There is fear here as I consider what it would mean to take that power back, to allow myself to be the one who grants permission in my own life.

What if though permission wasn't about power and control? Just because I've always known it as that, doesn't mean that it has to continue to mean that in my life now. What if permission could be a gift, a mercy, a treasure that I welcomed into my life? I'm learning to see permission as a doorway, one which leads me further into hope and healing.

It is in that spirit that I wrote this letter to myself:

Dearest Me,

You have fought against the rules and restrictions of others, battled to find the right way, the way that brings acceptance and belonging. I give you permission to stop. You're allowed to go your own way because you already belong. There is already acceptance of you here.

Acceptance of your humanity - in all of it's glory and mess. You have permission to get it wrong. To react badly. To not always map everything out with multiple contingency plans, just in case. You have permission to get it right. To respond with brilliance. To point others towards wholeness. To feel settled and comfortable in your own skin.

You have permission to stop apologizing. Your existence is no longer something that needs to be forgiven.
You have permission to struggle, to have bad days that stretch into bad weeks, which stack up into awful months. You're allowed to ask for help on those bad days, to admit that you cannot do this all on your own. That doing the laundry or the dishes or cooking one more meal is more than you can handle. You have permission to have good days. Glorious days. Days when you skip and dance and twirl and laugh. Days when you accomplish it all with energy and joy to spare.

Your performing for others, for God - those days can be over now dear one. You can let those chains fall off your shoulders. Who you are is beautiful, right here, right now and you have permission to celebrate that, to struggle with it, to wrestle with it until it is a truth worn deep in your bones.

You don't need my permission, but you have it. It's a gift. There are no strings here waiting to trip you up, to tangle you in impossible expectations. There is no fine print, no gotcha.

I am here, cheering you on, as you live out your story. A story that doesn't get wrapped up in 30 minutes with a neat bow covering up the messy bits. You have permission to own your story, to shout it from the rooftops, to whisper it in trembling bravery. Your cage is unlocked and you have the only key. That key is your permission to leave this cage of fear and lies. You no longer have to live here.

You have permission to be loved, cherished, accepted.

Love,
Me

Linking up with Marvia Davidson for Real Talk Tuesday. Come join us. :) 

When I'm My Best Self

The idea for this came out of my having a bad day. The judgements in my head have been spinning out of control and the tapes of the past are trying to drown out my own voice. This is why I wrote it all out, all the ugly truths of who I can be.

In writing about my worst self, the words at first came fast and furious. All these horrible things about myself. Yet as I kept writing I started to hear my voice again. My voice telling me who I am when I am my best self.

When I'm My Best Self

My best self is kind

gentle, compassionate

She values herself

beauty and scars, growth and tantrums, 

She sees good in others

extending kindness, mercy, grace, and love,

She is light

shining in darkness, holding out hope, standing, dancing, a beacon

She is brave

unashamed, whispering truths and roaring at injustice, 

She is creative

outside the box, breathing in colour, living in words

She is tenacious

relentless in pursuit of wholeness

She is organized

Thriving on routine and structure, carefully planning, balanced

She has empathy

seeing, feeling, believing the pain of others, holding their hearts and stories in hers

She is humanity at it's best

Loving herself and others well, being true to herself

A Plural Life in a Singular World

You don’t end up as a poly-fragmented multiple without severe, prolonged, horrifying trauma before the age of 7. I know this. All the literature agrees, well all the literature that acknowledges multiplicity as real, as possible. I laugh at the idea that something that I live can be debated still as to whether it even exists.

It’s always existed for me. I split before conscious memory, long before narrative memory. I will never get to know why. There is no story that I can tell, no threads to weave together into a tapestry that explains why when I was a preschooler I already had 5 distinct separate personalities. My abusers refuse to acknowledge the harm they did to me and I do not yet have the strength to force a confrontation. It’s around the age of 4 that I have conscious narrative memories. That is where my stories start - the first time that he thought I was demon-possessed and decided to cast it out of me. The first time that a friend wanted to play a game with me - a game that I've learned to label for what it was - sexual molestation and object rape.

There’s the story of the bullying, the name calling, the being pushed down on the playground. Of being excluded, always, forever left out. These are stories that I could tell, that I need to tell - and every story, every incident shattered me further. My words feel too small, too insignificant to do justice to the harm done to my very being in the name of God, love and family. I don’t have a before. All that I have is the abuse and the aftermath.

I can’t tell you the story, the first story where I learned that because I was a girl I was less than, I was evil. I can’t tell you the story because it was in every interaction with my father. I saw it every time he belittled my mother. I was taught it every time that the story of Adam and Eve was told. It was Eve’s fault, she destroyed the perfect world God had made. I have a three year old part inside who’s name is Eve. We only found her a year ago - locked in an internal hell, perpetually being punished for being a girl, for being sin, for being totally depraved to the very core of her being. Christianity taught me that. My good private Baptist school taught me that. My current church teaches me that. It’s taught every time a man gets up to speak and a woman doesn't. It’s taught every time a man is put into a leadership position over a woman. It’s taught in ways that are driven into the depths of women’s souls.

To stay in my church right now is telling Eve, this precious piece of us, two separate messages. Because we rescued her from that hell - both her and the young boy that was created to torment her for all eternity. We rescued them and have been teaching them both that they are more than that story from so long ago. We are teaching them that they each are beautiful and worthy and loved. But when I stay, I'm telling Eve that there’s a piece of that old story that tormented her for so long that is true. She is different, less than, over-looked and unseen because she is a girl. I can’t stay in a place that tells this beautiful piece of my heart that she is evil.

I must leave, and I don’t know where to go. It’s only been in the last 4 weeks that the internal structure that has kept us trapped in a cycle of torment and obligation about our faith has stopped. It’s shifting, changing once again as we take this next step to healing. This is my hard thing - my internal world, that is more real to me, more a part of me than anything else on this earth and this next step in my healing, finding a church that doesn't add garbage into my still open wounds. I want to live open and honest as me, as us. I don’t want to be the poster child for healthy multiplicity. Most multiples who heal choose integration into one whole self. That’s not an option for us. We've never known a life without each other’s company, opinions, voices, and our internal landscape. It’s not easy to live as a plural person in a singular world. We are always checking our tenses, terrified we said too much, that we spoke as a harmonious collective instead of a solo voice. It’s the secret that doesn't get talked about - not with the family, not with most of my friends, not in the places that I minister. There just doesn't seem to be room for all of me.

Yet all of me is here, we exist - and the more that we write, the more the struggle to stay singular seems worthless. And we’re scared. Scared people will run away like they have in the past. Scared people won’t engage with us as we are. Scared that we will turn into this sideshow freak. Scared to write this, even more scared to post it. We've been kicked out of things before for being plural and owning it. Our biggest fear though is that we’ll be ignored. The one thing I cannot bear is silence.

There’s no tidy neat bow to wrap this up with. I hate that this is an on-going writing, something that continues to surface. This healing from abuse is painful. Living in the aftermath is even worse. Maybe that’s why my eye keeps being drawn to trees growing out of rock faces. Trees that are thriving, and growing in the most difficult and beautiful of places. Maybe my eye sees what my heart doesn't dare hope for yet - that there is beauty here, growing out of these hard places.

Resurrection

It rarely looks like I expect it to look. It never comes in the timing I anticipate. It usually shows up still wrapped in grave cloths. It always sends ripples through my life that I didn't foresee.

This unearthing of my voice has brought some unexpected, unanticipated friends with it. Lies that kept it buried have been fighting furiously this week to reclaim their stolen prize. Because I'm seeing, no matter what those lies say that yes, my voice, my words, they are a prize.  They have value. {oh that's a scary sentence to write.} It's true though. If I have value, then so does my deepest expression of myself.

I've learned over the past several years to accept that I have value and worth. Others that I trust serve as my mirror showing me a person that is otherwise hidden from my view. Three years ago this looked like an impossible journey. Yet this past year for the first time I celebrated my birthday because I wanted to be celebrated.  I didn't apologize for being born or make plans to end my life. I didn't tell people who wished me a happy birthday to go thank my Mother because I had nothing to do with my birth and if anyone had asked me, I wouldn't have wanted to be born.

I fought. For three years I fought. Every excavation of myself brought pain and lies with it. Every time I didn't run, didn't medicate, I felt like my world had collapsed on me. I built muscle. I learned how to fight back effectively, I learned to not let my fear or my doubt make my choices for me. I learned how to hush, to allow myself to be comforted and supported. And now, now I'm learning to become. I'm coming alive in ways that I never dreamed possible.

So this battle, the battle that I've fought all week to write, to push past the resistance, the lies, the messages that come from my pain and from the pit of hell - this battle has been utterly worth it. It's a battle that I knew how to fight. I have those tools. I have people to walk with me, to encourage me on the days when I felt ready to give up and give in. I have a knowing deep inside that this is me becoming who I am called to be.

This upcoming week, Holy Week, I'm looking to see what lies about my voice and my value need to be put to death. I'm looking for the shame, the judgements, the self-loathing, the anxiety that need to go. This culminating week of Lent, my heart is more ready than it has ever been for those things that hold me back, that tie me down to die so that the woman I am called to be, created to be, destined {eep} to be can be resurrected.

Beauty From Hard Places

There's a theme showing up over and over as I wander through nature.  My eye is drawn to several things time and again. Pine cones, new buds, water, the interplay of light and shadows. These are all important.  There are things here for me to hear and see. My mind wanders over the thoughts and images, seeing new life - it's fragile beauty. It's tenacity. The trusting brave that winter is over. It reminds me that growth takes time. First grow the new shoots and then come the buds. It will be months before the full beauty of the blossoms is seen.

There's another thing that my eye is drawn to - trees growing out of rocks. Life from harsh environment. Life and beauty in these hard spaces. The roots have to dig deep to anchor the tree, to dig under the rock, to dig even into the rock. It's a message my heart needs, and one that I don't always want to see.

I know too well the struggle of growing in those hard places. Fighting all the time for the basic essentials that I need to survive. I've spent so long begging for a transplant - and in some ways I got one when I moved to be with my husband. But that transplant wasn't to a beautiful garden where all my needs are magically taken care of.  It was to a different type of hard place, new rocks mixed in with the old ones.

It's easy for my soul to scream to the heavens that this is not abundant life. My screams are answered with these trees growing out of cliff faces and on rocky river shores. They are answered with new life mixed in with the left over dead growth from winter. They are answered with bare branches that are teeming with tiny new buds.

There is life here in this hard place.  There can be growth here, now.  It will take time. It will take tenacity. It will take trust. And one day there will be the stirrings of beauty, not somewhere else, but here in the middle of the rocks.

Fasting from Self-loathing

When I walked into therapy almost three years ago, I was nervous, defiant, ready to run.  I was there because I knew that I was drowning in my attempts to heal myself.  I needed help, badly but help had not actually helped in the past.  That "help" had heaped more shame, judgement and damage on my shattered self.  The Spirit in me though wouldn't let it go.  I committed to doing one intake, one sit down to see if one therapist was competent and trustworthy.  That was all I had in me.  I couldn't risk bigger than that and I fully expected to be disappointed.  That was the beginning of a beautiful therapeutic relationship, one that started with the question what do you want to get out of this?

This week in looking at self-loathing, I'm reminded of that question and my answer.  Three years ago I knew that I couldn't continue to survive my own self-hatred.  Even though I was no longer cutting and planning my own death, the thoughts were there and the feelings that had driven those behaviours in the past continued to build in intensity, only now, they had no outlet. I thought I was going to explode.

I hated my body.  It was too fat, too pale. too freckled, too scarred, too weak, too female. I hated myself.  I was too needy, too broken, too controlling, too angry, too desperate. I had a lifetime of pain that told me that how I saw myself was true. All these messages about my worth were carved into my heart by the abuses that others had heaped on me.

That question though, that question opened the door for hope to peek in. My goal then is the same as it is now...to learn to see myself as God sees me.  One day I will write the posts that declare that to the very depth of my being, I know that I am His and He sees me as I am - Beautiful and Beloved.

That day may not be today, yet this week has been a week of looking back to see how far I've already journeyed.  There has been a sweet sense of being able to breathe a little easier, of finding my second wind. I find myself laughing.  March has always been the culmination of what I had nicknamed my "suicide season". Historically this has been the month where there was no logical thought left and the screaming, howling pain had erased everything from my hearing but the relentless drumbeat of despair.  This March I've seen glimmers of hope.  The drums have been quiet.  The pain is there still.  There's no magic cure for that.

This year though, I've seen the beginning of "become" turn what I thought would always be true on it's head. As I sit with this week's fast, I feel rest instead of struggle. There is more work to be done, and I am already taking the steps laid out in front of me. The steps that bring me out of hatred and despair. Today I will own myself, my body and agree with my Creator that I am very, very beautiful, trusting that He sees beyond the limits of my own vision.

Reclaiming my Beauty

Once upon a time I executed a perfect pirouette and felt myself beautiful...until my body type was shamed as "not right" for a ballerina. Those shaming moments that came time and again beat down my sense of my own beauty. A sense that already came far too infrequently and already carried baggage with it.

The first sexual assault on my child body was when my body's beauty became used for someone else's exaltation of power and control. I was four years old and no longer innocent.  The pattern continued, one perpetrator after the next, using my beauty for their pleasure.  Beauty became something that needed to be hidden.  Every time I started to reclaim my own beauty there was another perpetrator stealing what belonged to me.

In my pain I harmed my body.  Cutting it hundreds of times in a vain attempt to purge the evil in me. I hid my body and my beauty.  I buried it with clothes and when that didn't work, I buried it with fat.  Now I could shame my body, to tell it how disappointed I was, how it had failed me in this too, that I now could never be beautiful again.  There will always be scars and stretch marks - my life story written on my skin.
I believed that I had destroyed any beauty that was left in my body.  I desecrated it and now what's left served only as a mockery of what could have been, of what was intended to be.

Over the last three years, I have journeyed with my body.  For a long time I've referred to it as "my ugly".  It wasn't mine.  It doesn't look like me.  As I've learned to let go of some of my self-hate and the false blame, my relationship with my body has come front and centre. I could see that who I was might be beautiful, but the skin it was housed in was deemed ugly and not suitable. My awakening heart wanted to feel beautiful, to be beautiful and I resigned myself that it would never happen.

I began belly dancing about a month ago.  After that first lesson I walked out sore, alive, and more connected to myself than I had ever felt.  I felt like a woman.  Each lesson connects me more and more to my body.  Every time I practice I see glimpses of how right now, in this moment there is beauty in my body.  Beauty in the movement.  Movement that comes from MY body.

As I learn to dance again, I'm learning that my beauty matters.  Deeply.  In times past when I felt my own beauty I was authentically and unashamedly myself. Feeling my own beauty, embracing it grounds me in my body and in the moment.  Time seems to hold it's breath as my essence twirls in celebration.  I owe my body an apology for the abuse I heaped on her and compassion for the abuse that was inflicted on her by others.

I cannot change what has come before.  However, I can learn how to see myself right now as beautiful.