The Price of Mother's Day

Trigger warning for self-harm, estranged mother-daughter relationships

I want to carve my pain into my arms, to watch the blood drip down onto this pristine white floor, mixing anger and grief, loss and love as if somehow it will cleanse my heart of the secrets it carries.

I played good daughter today. I called my mother, told her the truth, told her that I love her. I buried everything else inside through that stilted, brief phone call, voices of my siblings in the background. Siblings who were there, with her today.

I hid out in my apartment all day. Actually I hid in my bed, curled up with the man who loves me watching movies on a laptop. Periodically I checked Facebook, comforted and stifled by the words of others. Words of acceptance for grief like mine. Words I wanted to like, to share to shout from the virtual rooftops.

Instead, I sat silent, withdrawn, pulled away. Immobilized by fear. Fear  of it getting back to my mother, of causing more pain for her than I’ve already caused. Fear of further estrangement from those who believe my family to be supportive and loving. Fear of fucking it all one more time.

Today I choked on my own truth. The truth that my Mother is a complicated woman who I have a complicated relationship with. The truth that I am not a mother, may very well never be a mother because I don’t want a child who will bear the scars of my mistakes. A child who may very well thirty years from now fight tooth and nail to call me, to reach a hand across a divide that cannot be bridged. A phone call that costs her everything, that leaves her wrung out. Too many emotions, not enough words.

I don’t want to pass down this legacy to my daughter. Each year I’m reminded on Mother’s Day of the cost my heart pays for that choice. Each year I question if the cost is too high. Each year I work to remember that even though she never protected me, never bonded with me, my Mother loved me as best as she could. Each year I hide my truth from myself and everyone else in the name of love that tastes of guilt and obligation.

Loving My Fears

Over the past month and a half I've allowed my carved out writing time to get whittled away. Some of it was necessary, my restless anxiety drove me as I worried and sweated my way through my parents coming to visit. I needed exercise and activity, art journalling and photography.

All those doing things kept me out of trouble. I didn't eat my feelings, or go back to self-injury. I didn't have that one glass of wine to take the edge off that spirals into a daily practice.

Now it's time to bring life back into a place of balance. For words to be spilled not only in texts and journals, but in book outlines, blog posts, and chapters. I'm reminded that I have the choice here. I can choose to make myself sit here and write, giving my editor permission to take a coffee break.

Even when I do carve time out for me to write, I choose all the distractions. Resistance doesn't get to win this war though. So I'm showing up, to sit down and to write damn it. To write until my words flow again. To write one word and then the next. And if all my words are about how damned impossible it feels to write words, then so be it.

The deeper my writing goes, the quieter I get. In part because deep things tend to need whispers, not roars. But the bigger part is that I'm scared. I keep seeing over and over this year how fear runs my life. It's not rational. It's understandable. And I'm learning to love myself because I believe that love is the antidote for my fear. Love that keeps showing up, that affirms, instead of passing judgement. Love that chooses to stay, to sit with the fear, allowing it to be heard yet again. Love that returns time and again to the empty page, the blinking cursor. Love that holds fear's hand for as long as is necessary.

It means that even in this place of fighting for my words, I am choosing to not fight against my fear. My fear is a part of who I am. I don't like it, I wish that it wasn't there, but fighting it hasn't worked. I'm choosing acceptance of what I cannot change. I cannot change that I was raised in a world where I was taught to fear everyone and every thing. I cannot change that I have C-PTSD and along with that comes anxiety, hyper-vigilance, and worry about my safety.

What I can change here is my response to fear.  I can breathe love and acceptance into my bones - love from others, love from myself. And one day I know that all that love will have absorbed some of those fears.

Notes Along the Journey: On Hiding, Fear, and Vulnerability

I'm trying something new. Attempting to allow my brokenness to be seen and honoured, without devolving into living out of that space where I can only see myself as "broken girl".  My heart is filled with emotions that I can't quite connect to. I see them as a swarm of bees. They might give me honey; it's more likely I'll get stung half to death.

The aftermath of my parent's visit is daunting. Between the grief and the hard realizations I don't want to get out of bed ever again. I'm a little kid who is hiding under the table, hoping someone will come find me because I don't know that I'm allowed to stop hiding. I don't know yet that I can take my own hand and leave my hiding places behind. This is so damn scary. I don't acknowledge that for myself nearly enough. Sharing myself, getting vulnerable, it's a BIG deal.

In sharing myself, in being vulnerable, I'm breaking every rule, spoken and unspoken from my growing up years. Every fear comes back to being seen, to someone finding out. Keep silent, keep still, don't draw attention to yourself because then someone might question what's going on and investigate the family.

I forget to give myself grace in this process. I forget the fear that I was born into. The many ways that fear has shaped and moulded who I am. It's been a constant drumming in my blood. Even after I left and was handed freedom. I'm still learning to live out that freedom.

And living out that freedom, it starts with connecting to that swarm of bees. Because those are MY feelings and my feelings, they matter. It matters that I'm grieving the lack of warmth and connection with my Mom. It matters that I'm angry at being required to show love to someone who has shattered me with years of abuse. It matters that I'm triggered and scared still that I will turn around and find them here still. Those feelings, they matter. They aren't pesky flies that need to be shooed away.

I want to throw myself back into day to day life, to pick up where I left off before their visit. I can't seem to do that. It's all I can do to crawl out of bed and survive through another day. It's all I can do to choose the next right thing, to take one step forward and not focus on the bathrooms that still haven't been cleaned, the piles of art journalling things all over the floor, the stacks of books that I want to read, but just haven't had the focus to settle in with, the dishes stacked and piled competing with the plants for counter-space. Because my next right thing for this moment is to give myself all the permission to sit here and write. It is enough. The other things, those will get done, but in this moment, I don't need to hide my feelings behind cleaning.

Ugly Truths: Fear Runs Through My Veins

All the words are chasing each other through my brain. I'm discovering that I'm still good, too good, at hiding myself. I'm overly selective about what I will allow people to see in my life. Yes I get to choose what I share, where, when, how and there is wisdom in learning those things. Too often I justify not sharing in the name of wisdom and "Keeping myself safe". Because yes, safety and control as the Holy Grail in my world. Growing up without either, it's easy to turn them into my idol, my god, this dream I continue to chase, that leaves me exhausted and lonely. 

In the spirit of making a different choice here are some things I haven't been sharing in the way that I need to share:

1) My parents fly in late this Friday. They will be staying in town at a motel for 10 days. I haven't seen them in person for three years. I have not spent this much time with them since I moved out of their home, against their wishes 8 years ago. I am terrified to see them. I am more terrified to kick them out of my life for good. I am secretly hoping that he will be denied at the border or that he will decide to disown me for the third time (and this time I'm going to take him up on it!) 

2) I've been hitting every meeting in town for the last week and a half because I've never dealt with my parents when I was sober from all of my addictions/compulsive behaviours. I'm afraid that my sobriety won't hold up to having to deal with them. The last time they visited, I was still drinking. I have 18 months and 1 day today without alcohol in my life. All I want to do is drink. (or smoke or take pills). What I really want is to go back to self-injury. It's my primary addiction and the one that I'm still in love with even though it's been 4 years, 3 months, and 24 days since I last cut. 

3) I can't write at the moment. Not even for myself. It brings up all the lies and feelings about how writing is just one more flight of fancy that I'm too lazy to actually finish or do something with. 

4) My husband's abandonment of what was once our shared faith has caused me to shut down in my own exploration of what healthy spirituality is for me. I seem to be frozen in my own search for what this looks like for me. 

I hear the fear in my words, the fear that is driving my panic and it makes me sick. For those of you who are praying people, I would appreciate prayers on my behalf. 

Ugly Truths: The Aftermath of an Abusive Parent

What would another layer of forgiveness look like? It's 2 am and the world is quiet enough, the dark a welcomed comfort for deep thoughts. I finished reading L'Engle's A House Like A Lotus. It was one of the books that we weren't allowed to read growing up. Mom deemed it as having too many adult themes.

I'm struck though by Poly's journey towards forgiveness - not only of Max but of herself. I wonder what it would look like to forgive my father. To stop carrying the hot and cold rage towards him. To no longer cower in fear at the thought of what he could do, might do even now.

I have this illusion that it would be easier to forgive him, easier to let go of all the injustices, if he was no longer part of my life, whether through choice or death. It's not an easy thing for me to admit, that I still wish my father dead. He's proven that he's not going to change. Every time I start to hope that it's going to be different now, something happens to prove that while it's milder than it was when I lived under his roof, he will never stop seeing me as his possession. It's part of why I hate those teachings that children are a blessing from the Lord. Children are people, not things, not possessions to be handed out like fucking trophies to those who magically got it right. And I'm side tracking here, avoiding talking about this the way that I need to. I do that too often. I wander. I don't like to admit that about myself.

I have this illusion, this fantasy really that if only he was dead, gone, that it would allow me to finally grieve and would provide some kind of closure. My therapist suggested today that maybe I'm still wanting that relationship I never had with my father - there's truth to that, much as I don't want to admit to it, I want that relationship, the one I read about in books, or see in the lives of friends - that relationship where I am seen and celebrated for who I am, where love no longer means control or perfection. But I'm realistic enough to recognize that I'm not going to get that from my father. And while yes God can be that in a person's life, He's not that in mine, nor do I want Him to be that. My associations with the very idea of a parent is a painful one. There is nothing redemptive about seeing God as a parent. In fact it's that idea that makes me struggle with what a healthy relationship with the Divine could mean in my own life.

At the same time though, I'm drawn to the idea of a father. Someone who has got my back, who loves me, champions me, invests in me. I have that with women, which in and of itself is a miracle. I think I will always want what I never had.

I'm not holding onto relationship with my father in hopes that he'll change, so why am I hanging on? A piece of it is that right now it's less fearful to deal with him on the rare occasions that I have to, than to deal with the fallout from complete removal of him from my life. I'm terrified to let go, to disown this man who has brought me nothing but pain. I'm exhausted from being the "bad" daughter and frankly I wish one of my siblings would disown him first so that I don't have to be the one that breaks this new trail.

Removing him from my life however doesn't remove the lies he taught me or heal the wounds he inflicted. A sincere amends from him wouldn't be everything that I need either. This leaves me back in the place of wondering what would another layer of forgiveness look like here and now. I want freedom from all the threads of him that keep me tangled up and stuck. Therapy is helping with that, all the reading that I do helps, writing my truth - I have a toolbox full of tools that I'm using.

And I'm wondering how forgiveness plays into the mix. Because I think for me it needs to be a piece of it. All I know to do is to continue to walk in the direction of my healing. I can't make myself stop hating him. I don't act on my hatred, but it's still there. I've read the clichés and the books. I've heard that I need to let go and let God. But there is something mystical about forgiveness. Something of the Divine, of a Higher Power. Something more than just a formula to follow, an exercise to complete. This something else is going to have to kick in because in and of myself I cannot let go of my hatred. I no longer seek vengeance but that's no longer enough for me.

I know the right Christian answers here. They fall flat. I'm not wanting to dissect the mystical, yet I feel like there's something I need to do to help me continue to move forward. I just don't know what it is.

When I Allow Shame to Steal My Voice

It's after midnight. I need to be asleep. Instead I'm writing, after watching the first three episodes of Gilmore Girls. I never watched the whole show - I found it triggering too much of the time. My relationship with my Mom is distant, complicated, strained. Some of it is my fault. Some of it is hers. 

She's coming to visit next month. along with my father. I've been wrestling with my feelings around that for the past couple weeks. I'm not sure how to blog about it. I can write it for myself, but I don't know how to share it and so I've been quieter. It's one of the drawbacks of living afraid, of being raised in a world where you protect the family at all costs. I don't quite know how to stop. 

I lie to myself saying that I'm protecting what little relationship I have with my siblings and my mother. The truth has much more to do with my fear. My fear that people will be hurt by my truth. My fear that I will lose what little connection I have left with my family. My fear that it will end any sliver of hope of reconciliation. 

Deep down, I'm still a little girl wanting to be seen, loved, heard, accepted, valued, celebrated by the two people who brought her into this messed up world. Their version of acceptance though comes at the price of my Self. I will be accepted when I conform to who they want me to be - and I'm not sure that I even know who that person would be now. All I know is that I can't be anyone else. I can't hide my multiplicity, my self-injury scars, my recovery, my creativity, my evolving faith. I don't want to hide. 

I don't want to hide, yet here I am, hiding. Hiding my stories, hiding my truth, hiding my name, pouring over what I write to ensure there aren't too many identifying details, that my story couldn't be matched up by those I'm hiding from. 

I'm hiding because I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed that I'm damaged. Ashamed that I didn't leave the abuse earlier, that I stayed into adulthood. Ashamed that I couldn't find the right way to tell, to make it stop. I'm terrified that if I told my stories, you would side with my perpetrators because for most of my life, that's what every one did. I didn't know to call it abuse, or even abnormal. I'm ashamed to tell the details because I can't point to easily understood trauma - there were no broken bones, no hiding bruises, and those who molested, assaulted, and raped me weren't my parents. There have been too many people who have agreed with what my parents did. Agreed with their world view, their interpretation of Scripture, their God-given right to my life. 

I can't point to a single movement, cult, or faith tradition that harmed me. There were pieces from all over the map, from before there was a map. If my father had been a little more charismatic, dynamic, he would have made a great cult leader. As it was, people avoiding him like the plague. Adults lived in fear of him and left his children and wife stranded, without measurable help, holding onto broken promises, living out the cycle time after time. 

I got my butt handed to me today. Caiobhe wrote this amazing post that called my hiding right up on the carpet. I'm still wearing shame as though it actually covers and protects me. What a lie. Shame does nothing but steal my voice and rob me of living my life. It robs me of healing from the past, from moving forward to a place where fear no longer holds me as it's favourite captive. I'd gotten pretty good at telling myself that I didn't hold any shame any more. I got good at lying to myself that I had worked through my shame. Apparently it's time for another round. 

I feel shame for still having shame to work through. Ugh. It's this vicious circle, eating me from the inside out. I don't know how to allow myself to be in process, to be better but not yet whole. I'm somewhere between broken and healed - and I will always be somewhere in-between the two. I want to either be broken girl, who needs compassion, help, support, healing or the strong-I-learned-how-to-thrive-and-my-past-no-longer-holds-sway girl. I don't know how to do this both yet neither thing. But I think publishing this post is a step in the right direction. 

I Showed Up

I showed up
Shaking in my brave
No masks
not even make up to hide behind

I showed up
Uncertain of acceptance
Arms barred
scars showing

I showed up
Trembling tearful words
Honest, authentic
me

I showed up
Heart in my eyes
Brokenness and wholeness
Walking together into that room

I showed up
Breathing through panic
Triggered by past baggage
Ready to bolt

I showed up
And it was okay
My heart was heard
My words accepted
My story not scorned

I showed up
to women shaking in their brave
to real spilling down cheeks
to shared journeys

Tonight I showed up
Tomorrow I will do it again.

Ugly Truths: A Rant and A Confession

I feel like the red-headed bastard child. The one that is tolerated, but no one actually bothers to converse with. The child being permitted just this once to sit at the table with the grown ups, the real women. 

I've chosen not to have children. It's not that we can't, we don't know, we've never even tried. I spent most of my relationship with my husband long-distance until 6 months before we got married. I wanted time for the two of us to live in the same country, the same time zone before we became responsible for a tiny human. Only now it's been 5 years and I'm still saying no - because of his addiction, because of mine. Because when I don't get enough sleep, I physically cannot function. Old mostly managed health problems flare to the surface under stress, sleep loss, poor eating habits - all the things that come with a newborn. Because I still can't see a doctor for a women's exam due to the flashbacks and triggers that set me back in my healing for weeks. Because I won't subject a child to his emotional neglect and abuse. Because of a million reasons all of which boil down to this - I can't be a responsible mother yet. 

I'm angry. I'm angry because I know I'm making the right choice for me, for my marriage. I know it deep in my bones that this is a not now. I'm angry because there only seems to be room for SAHMs in the church. Career moms feel excluded. Single friends feel excluded. I feel excluded, looked down on - because in the very needed push to affirm those women who have made the choice to stay home with their children there has been another message sent. One that says we will only see you when you produce a child. That declares that motherhood is the highest calling of a woman and what God has designed us to do. For those of us who either by choice or by circumstances outside of our control do not have children  - not only do we have to deal with the social and societal ramifications of that choice, we're told that you will never truly understand God's love for you, that your calling and life choices are second best, and that you can't love anyone unconditionally. 

People tell me it must be nice to have so much free time. The bold ones when they find out that I'm not a mother and I don't work ask "so what do you do all day?" I'm usually so taken aback by the accusation that I mumble something incoherent to justify why I'm not working, not parenting, not doing something with my life that you can deem as valuable before escaping the conversation. 

Here's the real answer: I invest in me and the people around me. I fight to deprogram my brain from all the lies and false teachings and brainwashing that I endured for 22 years. I fight to stay sober, to live my life un-medicated and to not just feel my feelings, but to honour them even when I've thrown up yet again from crying the tears that couldn't be cried then.

 Everybody loves to point out that I'm free now, that I've made so much progress in my healing, that I'm so strong. It takes a hell of a lot of work day in and day out to be me. To show up in a world that I do not understand. I've had to learn new cultures - first when I left home and discovered a whole new world that was radically different than what I'd be taught to fear about it. Then when I moved from Canada to the USA - and to a very conservative side of the state. I don't understand this world I find myself in. It makes no sense. I fight to hold onto who I am, when I'm constantly swimming against the current. 

I spend my days working, wrestling with trauma. Mine, others. My phone rings, chirps, beeps with messages of pain and panic from women who feel unseen, unheard. Women who are fighting to live, fighting the lies of their pasts, fighting to not medicate, to live one day at a time. 

I get it. I'm fat. I'm socially awkward. I don't have the right clothes. I loathe small talk and getting to know you ice breakers. I no longer cover my scarred arms and that makes you uncomfortable. My story of being abused in the Church, by the Church makes you look at how you parent, raising ugly hidden questions you'd rather not see. 

I go to these events that are supposedly for all women. I watch you fawn over each other's perfect outfits, make-up and hair dos. I listen through speakers that assume that we are all wives and mothers, all white conservatives. I hear about events and opportunities - none of which fit my schedule, all of which require extra money that I do not have. You spread a little Jesus over the top, to go with your matching napkins and table centrepieces. I walk away feeling unseen, unheard, and unwelcome. 

And yet, I'm showing up again, protecting that small ember of hope that this time will be different. This time it's something I'm passionate about. This time, maybe there will be women there who are willing to be real, authentic and look past all the things I'm not to see who I am. To see my heart and my passion for women to heal and no longer be bound by the chains that have been wrapped so tightly that they are choking to death. I'm summoning every last scrap of brave that I have and putting all the tools I've learned in the last 8 years into my bag to take with me because I believe that one day, one of these times I will look around that room and see you. 

I will see your heart trying not to spill out of your eyes because your husband is addicted to porn and you have done everything you can to make yourself be enough for him. All the perfect clothes, and make up, are you trying to fill that ache inside of not being enough for the man who vowed to love, honour and cherish you. I will see you, the frazzled nerves from it being a miracle that you made it there and didn't forget a child at home because your husband is deployed yet again and the only way you have to cope with the loneliness and the fear is to form your life around your children. I will see that behind all your stories about your daughter is the remembered years of interviews and inspections, invasive questions and dashed hopes as you struggled through the adoption process. I will see the loneliness that hides behind your too cheerful chattering words. Your voice begging to be heard; your heart begging to be nurtured.

I show up hoping that today is the day I can see you and realize that none of us feel enough at these events but we show up, holding onto hope that we will be seen. 

Fragmented Fridays

Today was one of those days where by the time I got up, I was already behind.  I ran from one thing to the next.  Good things, things I love, and yet for most they got at best half my attention and focus.

Days like today remind me of the girl I used to be and the life I used to live.  I ran from school, to work, to relationship, to homework, to healing work with barely any sleep and never any rest.  I survived on caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, sugar, and self-harm.  I was a mess.  Everyone told me to slow down, that it was okay to take things off my plate.  I couldn't hear them.  I couldn't imagine a world where I wasn't constantly busy. I was the girl who lived her life always running, running from herself - her past and her pain.

Life now is rather different.  Between living with an inner ear condition that causes vertigo episodes and recovery, I don't live my life at a dead run. I have to be vigilant, to practice mindfulness and balance. I'm learning to live my life in the present, to honour my need to not live at a dead run.

Today I felt those shadows of that old way of life.  It was there in the way I didn't feel fully present.  There in the running to the next thing because I had finished the last.  There in the frenzied, frazzle that was my brain all day long.

For tonight I'm setting down my unfinished to do list.  I'm remembering the woman I am now.  The one who honours her need for rest, even when it feels like she's wasting time she doesn't have to spare.  I am the woman who knows she doesn't have to do it all.  The one who knows there is grace and that tomorrow has more than enough time for the things that I didn't finish from today.

Starting

It still feels surreal.  I'm actually doing this, Story 101. I'm nervous and so very excited.  I want to learn it all these next 10 weeks.  I want my voice back.  It's mine damn it - given to me by the One who knows me best.  My physical voice is a muscle - one that requires discipline, practice, repetition and care to be all it can be.  My written spirit voice is no different.  These 10 weeks are boot camp, a launching pad for me to no longer hide my words away in fear.

This is the first step toward secret dreams.  Ones I have only started to dream again.  Ones that I only dare to whisper to myself.  Story 101 is my next step in this journey of becoming me.  I know that I know that I know this is where Spirit has lead.

In the next 10 weeks, I can guarantee that there will be moments of wondering now deluded I must be to even imagine that I could write anything that others would find value in, much less bother to read.  This is no different than any other becoming thing that I have been lead to in the last almost 8 years since I found my freedom.  I never thought I could be as free as I am from the chains of the past.  Yet those chains keep falling off.

When the dark days come, let them come.  I have faced storms and doubts before.  I am learning to stand and lean into the driving pounding winds and rains.  Every time those storms strip away things that I no longer need to be bound by.  Every stripping away reveals another piece of hidden beauty, beauty that would not have been revealed without the stripping power of the storm.

Even precious metals need fire and hammering, gems require cutting - all to bring out the glorious beauty that can only be glimpsed in the raw potential.  If I am that precious, then I know I too will need refining for my beauty to be displayed to it's fullest extent.  The beauty is there - this is the next step to it being held, first by myself and then by others.

Temper Tantrums and Next Steps

Like most people I have patterns of behaviour in my life that are relatively predictable.  One of those patterns is my temper tantrums.  Every time I do something new, take another step forward or am placed in a situation that requires growth I inwardly throw a tantrum.  It goes something like this:

You can't make me.  I won't do it.  Nuh-uh this is stupid and it doesn't fit me anyway.  I'm too broken for this.  I'm further along now in my healing and I don't need this.  I don't get it.  I don't see the point.  YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!! YOU CAN'T! YOU CAN'T! YOU CAN'T!

I usually then plop down right where I am in a storm of angry tears.  See I resist because I'm afraid.  Every new step brings up all the fears.  I don't do well being pushed into things.  I sniff out unvoiced expectations like a blood hound.  Even when I know that one step comes after where I am, I still resist at first.

In my first time through the Twelve Steps, it became quickly apparent that every time we moved onto a new step my response would be "You can't make me do this."  I was blessed with leaders who were willing to stand out of the way and affirm that they weren't going to even try to make me do it.  I desperately need to know that I have a choice, one without strings attached to it.  I didn't have choices as a child and the choices that I made got me hurt even more.

The pattern is still here though.  Every time I run into something new, something that stretches me I throw myself down for a good old-fashioned tantrum.  God is so patient with me.  He's never shamed me for my tantrums.  He knows I'm scared.  He knows that I need the space to feel free to choose to take the step in front of me.

I get frustrated that this is the way that it is.  Too often I'm standing over my scared little girl-self screaming at her to grow up, stand up.  Telling her that is no way to behave and would she just do as I say because she's embarrassing me.  I'm a grown up and she doesn't get to carry on like this.  It's just not done.  I heap insults on her.  Rarely do I stoop down into her dirt and see her.  Often I grab her arm and drag her behind me, still kicking and screaming.

It doesn't work.  I always have to go back to her and make yet another amends, praying that God would please show me how to make her do what I need her to do.  It's the wrong kind of prayer though.  This time I'm asking that He would show me how to get down in the dirt with her and see her - her fears, her rage, her beauty.  She is fierce. Truth is, I need her.

Can I learn to touch her with gentleness, compassion, tenderness?  Can I learn to stop heaping judgement on her and instead wrap her in mercy?  I need to learn.  I must learn.  God help me learn.

Found Poetry - A Processing of Fear

I hate this theme of fear running through my words, my life, my heart, my veins.  The fear feels like it's bonded to my very blood.  I know it's March and for reasons beyond my understanding, the terror that comes with March, that terror in my blood - it shuts my heart down as the depression rears her ugly head for another life and death battle.

I have to laugh or cry right now.  This entire experience with Be so far has been staring my fear in the face, of allowing myself to be stripped down just a little bit more, of putting down things that aren't helping me to be fully me and picking up things that are helping me learn to dance, to be.

As I've read through our Found Poetry exercise for this week, I've tasted that old familiar shame. The one I heard time and again.  The one thrown at me any time I did something creative.  "That's so artsy-fartsy." Lectures on how only math, science, and engineering degrees were "real".  "Play the music as it's written...there's no rubato there and definitely no retard."  It was less painful back then to shut down any part that wasn't logical and rational.  I remember taking a right-brain/left-brain test in 2005 and I was very left.

These days I'm pretty close to centre.  A big piece of my healing over these last years has been about discovering my creativity.  Polyvore has given me some space in which to do that and it's been amazing to explore.  I've got a feeling that as I continue to heal, as I continue to become that I'm going to end up as a right-brain.  I'm discovering my love of crafting candles and blending oils.

Each step on this reclaiming of myself has been scary - and now here's the next baby step.  The exercise this week - oh I want to bawl like a baby.  To approach a passage of Scripture and find the words that taste just right from it....there's nothing about this that is safe.  I have put so much work into making sure that Scripture in my life is always in context.  What would it look like to let go of that for this?  I could use something else, but I don't want to.  I sense there's something here, something beyond the scope of the exercise because I see the colours of the Spirit dancing in my soul every time I read through the instructions.  There is freedom here, another layer, another piece.  I won't let fear snatch it from me.