Leaning into My In-Betweens

I was ranting at my therapist yesterday about this in-between place in my healing. I want a framework for this next piece of my healing - just like I wanted a framework for the pieces that came before. Between workbooks and several 12 step groups, I found those frameworks and was able to adapt them to be the guide I was looking for in my processing. Now I'm gearing up for a new phase. And just like every other phase of my life this far, I'm complaining that it's not getting here fast enough, that I don't have the right tools for this next piece. My therapist ever so gently called me out that once again I was getting ahead of myself. He reminded me that we're still mapping out what I'm working on, and until that is laid out, I don't even know what tools I need.

How often though is this my pattern, not just in healing by in how I approach life? I have a dream and a general idea of how I'm going to get there. I can see the step I'm on, and maybe even the next several down the road. Because I can see it, I get impatient. I start to push myself into places that I'm not quite ready to step into. Sometimes that push is exactly what I need and while I might flounder around for a little while, I do end up catching my feet under me. But then there are the times when no matter what I do, I can't get my footing. I drown. I claw my way back onto the step I'd been on before my great leap. Too often I back down at that point, decide that nope this wasn't the step for me to take and not only that but my entire dream was just that, a dream. I camp out on that step, making a home in a place that was meant to be temporary.

The contradiction of it all is I'm anxious to get to where I'm going. To prove that I can do what my parents didn't and heal from my woundedness without passing it on to others. I don't want to stand still and wait in this space for the next step to become clear and firm. I kick and scream, muddying the waters until I can't see even this step. I lose myself in my frustration of what comes next and forget to breathe in the space I am in.

I have these next six weeks, while my therapist is out of the country to allow this next piece to continue to form. I could spend them kicking and screaming at how I don't have tools and how this is unfair. I've definitely made that choice in the past. I would still eventually get to my next step, exhausted, needing rest, defiant.

I have another choice here. One born out of what this year of become has taught me. I can sit in this space, quiet my racing desperate need to not still be entangled in my past, and see. I can see into this place. See the next step that is still forming in front of me without having to jump on it. I can see deeper into myself, dig deeper into my own why.  I can choose to live this process in a way that brings life to my heart.

I can choose to stay in this moment even though it's uncomfortable. Even though I know that I have this new piece, this shift in my focus that is just brushing against my outstretched fingertips, I don't have to DO anything with it yet. My entire psyche is tuned to function in the tension between two opposing truths. It allowed me to survive, and now, it can help me to thrive. I can hold the truth that this space I'm in doesn't fit me any more and that the next space where I need to go isn't ready for me yet. I can lean into my in-between with intention, with purpose, allowing it to shape me, prepare me for this next shift.

Rhythms and Cycles

This post brought you to courtesy of reading The Artist's Rule by Christine Valters Paintner as part of Story Session's Story 201 e-course. 

I've spent years searching for balance. That one magic point where my house stays clean, I stay sane, the budget is honoured, and my creativity flourishes. I've yet to find it and now I'm becoming grateful that I never found balance. If I had, I would have tried to turn it into a performance metric, one more thing to unsuccessfully strive towards. One more way to feed the lies of not being enough, of being a drain on my husband.

There isn't one point of balance. There are many. It's not this mystic magical place where I make it all happen, but rather it's slowing down to sink deep into the season, to honour the cycle of my life, my season, my month, my week, my day. The idea has been creeping into my awareness through nature walks. My spirit sensing the truth, seeing that everything around us was created with a rhythm and each piece is necessary for nature to thrive.

I've been reading Paintner's The Artist's Rule and soaking in the ideas of not searching for a balance point, but instead of honouring the season that I am in. I recognize that right now that's hard because my inner artist and my inner monk are in two different seasons. I'm not sure yet how to bridge the two. My Artist is in Spring - coming fully alive, bubbling with new ideas and new life. My Monk is in late Autumn, shedding beliefs and lies that keep us from the rest and faith that nourishes us. I'm not certain how to live in two season at the same time.

Recognition though is the first step. I'm choosing to sink deep into the awareness of my seasons, to honour them and not force Spring to be Summer before it's time, or to run back to Summer because Autumn is painful.

As a monk and artist, I want to rise and fall like the ebb and flow of the ocean. I want to shed parts of myself in autumn, to go deeply inward in winter, to blossom into spring, and to shine forth and be radiant in summer. I want to live my life in healing rhythms that honor the lmits of my body, the pleasures of rest, and the delights of play. +Christine Valters Paintner, The Artist's Rule

When Impatience Becomes My Friend

Same song, umpteenth verse. I sit down to write, and fight to put one word after the next. Crafting any kind of sentence is torture. (and then my inner editor harps yet again about how I write in a passive tone, with too many gerunds and when am I going to step up to the plate and write something good "blah blah blah")
The two combine and equal too many pieces of half finished writing. Story plots scattered in multiple files, 15 unfinished (read: barely started) blog posts. This is the point at which it would be easy for me to quit. To declare that I'm not a writer and walk away from it all. But I'm not going to do that.

One of my major character defects is my impatience with myself. There's little compassion or grace for this to be a journey - whether that this is healing and recovery or coming alive or finding myself and my voice as a creative. My frustration with myself, with my limits sets me up for failure every stinking time. But I don't stay there.

That same impatience that steals my words, fuels my judgements, is the same drive that keeps me moving forward. That impatience, when it's not running my life, it turns into being driven, in a positive way. It means I show up yet again to write, to put one painstaking word after the next on the page. Impatience doesn't allow those story plots and fragments to get lost in my file system. It continues to pull them up, to stare at them, to write 50 words that are complete and utter shit because that impatience it motivates me.

Impatience tells me that this is not all that there is. This is not all that I will ever be. Impatience reminds me that I'm worth fighting for.

Notes Along the Journey: Interfaith Marriage

His lack of faith doesn't change that this is the man I trounce at cribbage. The one who vacuums our floors because the vacuum cleaner hates me. This is the man who texts to let me know he's running late because he remembers my irrational fears that he'll leave me or die unexpectedly.

This is still the man who held me through nights of endless flashbacks. The one who bound the wounds I inflicted on myself. He was the voice of reason in the middle of my insanity and despair.

He has struggled to face his past, to pursue his own recovery this past year and a half to give our marriage a fighting change. He's been the one to go toe to toe with me, holding his own, holding us when I was ready to walk away.  The one who has fought to take down his walls and share his heart, even as every protective instinct screamed for him to run and hide.

His rejection of the Divine doesn't change these pieces of who he is.

AND

None of these things change how I feel. Betrayed. Angry. Confused. Grief-stricken. It doesn't change my need to scream that this is not how the story is supposed to go. There isn't room for one more plot twist. It feels like the cruellest of ironies. As I have begun to find my footing in my faith again, to find glimpses of hope in how I could be part of community, he has slipped further away.

The loneliness threatens to drag me under. There are a few brave women I have found who are talking about this. I'm grateful for their words, their stories.

It's hard not to wonder where did I fail, to not demand an answer as to why God is passionate and intentional about pursuing my heart yet seems to not give a shit about my husband's.  That sounds like the God of my childhood, not the Divine being that I've grown to know and love. In all of this though, I feel held. I have a deep knowing that this story isn't over. I don't know the ending, but I know that honesty is necessary for growth.

I'm left in the same place I was before this bombshell - learning to love my husband in ways that are healthy and sustainable for both of us.

Standing Up For Me

My parents are coming to visit. Even typing that sentence makes me want to cry. I'm terrified. Scared out of my wits with all of the what ifs and what could happens. My protective instincts are kicking in and I am fighting like a mad woman to hold onto this self that I've finally discovered this year. I've done too much healing to deal with their visit in the ways that I have in the past, but not enough yet to decide if I am ready to no longer have them in any part of my life.

My fear has been stealing my voice, my creativity. It's robbed me of sleep, of peace, of the ability to rest. I am frantic, anxious, restless, unfocused. And I'm still free to choose.

I haven't lost what I've learned, even though it's gone into hiding for the last week. Those lessons and those tools, I still have them, I still know how to use them. I haven't lost me, even though right now it feels like I have. I am stronger than I give myself credit for. Today I am standing up and fighting for myself, for my voice, for my creativity. I won't allow fear to rob me of what freedom has brought. Today I lean into my fear, to hear what it has to teach me, to honour it's voice. But it's no longer the deciding force behind my actions.

I'm printing my pictures and creating my wall of colours. I'm leaving my books on their shelves. I'm showing up scared and brave, using my voice even when, especially when it's shaking. I'm honouring the gift of words that my Muses give me. Today I'm standing up for myself, not with my parents, that will come one day. First I need to learn to stand up for myself to my fear.

What's Next?

Five months into become, with Be finished and on the last week of Story 101, I'm wondering now what? I've gained some incredible tools this year. I'm owning the truth of my creative, artist heart, exploring in both words and photographs what is means to be vibrant and alive. There are projects, yes projects, plural in the works. Other than the times I've been ill, I've said yes to exercise 5-6 days a week, every week this year. I'm learning to honour my body and care for it. I have not begun to finish unpacking everything that I've learned so far this year. I can only imagine what the next 7 months are going to look like.

Heck I'm even asking "what's next" from a positive place, rather than dreading the next thing, certain it too will make life even more difficult. I know that I thrive on structure as long as I have freedom to pick and choose within that structure. The budget is not going to support more e-Courses for now, despite there being a couple that are tempting.

There isn't a road map for this part of the journey. I want one. I struggle to trust that I'm not wasting my time when I don't have that structure in place showing me where I'm headed. Yet, everything so far this year has happened without my planning it all out. Never in a million years did I dream that I'd be in the place that I am now. It's not been my plans that have gotten me here, it's been my yes. My yes to the tugging of my heart. My yes to making myself a priority in my life. I've jumped in brave and scared. It has been amazing.

Maybe I don't need to know what's next. What I need to do is to continue the road that I started this year, to say yes to the things that bring life to me, whatever shape or form they show up in. Here's to being brave and stepping forward without someone else's framework to hold me up.