Love you to Life.

Maybe this used to be true, before but in the early hours of this morning, in the newness of 2014 I changed the negative thinking, started a new pattern.  I thought about the roles we look for other people to fill in our lives, parent, mother, friend and I realized that I had the ability within me to fill all those roles.  And yes, I need friends to fill me with love and acceptance but they can only be echoes of the love I give myself.  And I suck at meditation, but this is how I did it.................

I kissed the palm of my hand, brought it to my forehead and pressed it there, and whispered to myself: "In this moment, in this place and until I lay my head back on the pillow tomorrow night I promise to take care of you.  I promise to protect you from ugly words and thoughts by bringing to light the beauty that is you and exposing the lies that have damaged you in the past.  I will provide you with discipline, structure and a gentle ass kicking when you need it to help create this beautiful life we have designed in our head.  I will remind you daily that you need to nourish your body with good food and exercise and I will listen patiently as you work through your excuses and then remind you why we did this and nag your ass till you do it.  :)  I will be the voice of reason when your body is weary and you're overwhelmed and you can't figure out if you're hungry, horny or lonely.
I will give you space to be creative, to indulge in fantasy, wonder and magic.  This I promise you."

I brought my hand to my lips again, kissed it gently and held it to my throat and whispered: "In this moment, in this place and until I lay my head back on the pillow tomorrow night I promise to take care of you.  I will help you to find the words as you walk alongside clients in their journey and the wisdom to know when your silence is what is required.  I will clear that knot of self-doubt and fear that stifles your ability to speak your truth.  This I promise you."

For the last time I kissed my hand and placed it on my heart and whispered: "In this moment, in this place and until I lay my head back on the pillow tomorrow night I promise to take care of you.  I will love you to death.

No.

I will love you to life.

This I promise you."

Happy Place

happy place 

place inside all of us where we are all happy and get the warm fuzzies.  Our happy places are insulated from the shitheads that make up just about everyone we encounter.

- Urban Dictionary

I totally think that nuggets of wisdom come to you when you're in the right frame of mind to receive the message. The seeds of those words are planted but sometimes it takes time for them to germinate, grow and blossom (okay, I failed biology, suck it).  That process of growth can be minutes, hours, days, months or even decades.  For me the concept of a Happy Place is a really good example of that.

As a survivor I became an expert at disassociating.  It was a wonderful trick of the mind to leave my body, fly far away from the pain.  Even when those horrible things weren't happening and I couldn't stand to be in my skin, to feel so vulnerable and unsafe in the world - when the shield of my fat didn't stop the panic, the scream rising in my throat I'd drift, float away in mind.  Far away, where no one could hurt me.

When the concept of a "happy place" was introduced to me it was described as a place that you created in your mind where you could get away from the stress of life, a place to find peace.  At the time I remember thinking, "but I already do that."  And yes, in a way I did, but I think I missed a big part of that definition, an important part.  See, when I disassociated from my body and floated away there was no peace in that place, it was just a dark void.  There was no happiness, no sadness, just.....nothing.  A bleak, dark, desolate prison in my mind where I could hide from pain.

And when I was in my body I judged myself so harshly, those kids on the playground who called me fat, well they weren't even trying...the inner bullying I did to myself left wounds and scars inside that no perpetrator could ever match.  Because I was always ready with a joke or inappropriate story I think I hid how I was feeling quite well, no one knew how I felt because I would never let myself be vulnerable enough with someone to share with them my broken, bruised heart.  And that bullying and those lies I told myself that I wasn't good enough, that no one like me or loved me I never could describe it, but this quote does a pretty good job:

"And it hurts that I can't be what everyone wants or what anyone needs

and it hurts that I can't be what I want or what I need

because I'm not enough and I won't be enough and I'll never be close to enough

and I'm just so damned tired."

- a.d.r.

In college I met a wonderful therapist, Kaia, and she helped me through some really dark times.  That first year of college, I still don't know how I made it through when every class I had triggered me, an experience, a memory...there were days when all I could do was just dig my fingernails deep into the floor to stop from falling off my world.  The first time I went to see her she asked how I was, I made a joke and said okay and she looked deep into my eyes and said "bullshit."  And the floodgates opened.  No one ever had seen past Wendy the clown to see the real me.  Ever.  And just like when you're a kid and you fall and hurt yourself, if your parent doesn't react and say "are you okay" all in a panic then you're all chill and shit, but as soon as they make a fuss you're a crying hot mess.  Same deal with her.  I couldn't reign it in, despite trying to be the tough girl.  But she shattered my defenses, she wouldn't let me avoid and she wouldn't let me hide.   She put a name to what I did when the abuse happened.  She validated me and unlike with my family who also joked about everything (you wonder where I got it from), she took what I had to say seriously.

She helped stop the panic attacks, showed me how to create a safe place for myself when I felt I couldn't breathe and terror clawed at my throat.  Kaia introduced me to other women, they too were survivors and their stories and shared experience made me think that maybe I wasn't alone in this.  They echoed my thoughts of feeling dirty, guilty and full of shame.  I was in a better place than I had probably been in years mentally, but I was far from well.  I used school work to escape, to not connect with people my own age.  I tutored and I was a note taker, I was even a foster parent.  And I ate and I ate and I ate some more.  Always going through periods of working out like a maniac for like 2 months, then having a set back and eating a fridge-and-a-half daily for 4 months. 

It was always this one step forward, five million steps back. Because you see food had always been my secret love, my comforter, my confessor, my worst enemy and my best friend.  I used food like some people use a razor blade to cut, piercing  their skin, marking it....sometimes to have physical pain that could equal my emotional pain and other times because I wanted to feel nothing at all, to stuff and avoid and numb out and hurt myself for some transgression.  And yes, the pressure cooker of emotions brewing in me had lessened, my time with Kaia and with group gave me space to let some of it out so I could at least function.  Of course at this time I discovered my new drug of choice, sex.   I had physical contact that I so desperately craved, connection and even if at the same time I was telling myself that I was ugly and that I was only good for sex.  What I realize is that for me it was a form of control.  I got to decide who got to have sex with me, it was almost a "fuck you" to my abusers to prove to them (not that they knew - I didn't say I was being logical) that I was in control.  There was no love in these encounters, just control and touch. 

When I graduated and was ready to leave college I got really overwhelmed again, out of control, not sure what my future held - and so damned scared of change that I went to that dark place again and things got really out of control....but I spoke about that in another post, I'm not going there again.

Those years after college were much the same.  Avoidance behaviours, acting out sexually.  Eating so out of control.  Numbing out.  Anything to face me.  And their were bad choices and bad behaviours and inner bullying and bullshit.  But there was also wonderful friends, cherished memories and gifts that I would never exchange.  Of course I also had sporadic therapy and it would help, peel off layers of hurt but they all felt like crisis management..... I wouldn't go until things were so bad that I couldn't function again.  It has seemed like I have always been striving for the "if only's".  

If only I could lose weight, I'd be happy.

If only I could go on vacation things at work wouldn't be so out of control.

If only I could find a boyfriend I wouldn't be so lonely.

If only I could win the lottery I'd never have money problems.

If only I was anything but who and what I am I'd be at peace.

In everything I did I was always running at a million miles per minute, in my head, in my job, in my life.  I don't think there was any time where I could just be.  And as I look at the events of my life, the abuse, the bad relationships, the addictions and even the cancer I realize it was life trying so very hard to get my attention and me being the hard headed stubborn little bitch that I am I tried to avoid life at all costs.  Short of taking a shovel and smacking me over the head with it life gave me sign after sign to stop, to slow down, to go to the inner but to no avail.

But there has been seeds germinating in my head from when I had cancer, words that a dear friend and fellow cancer survivor spoke to me.  She said "Wendy, Stop.  Breathe."

Little buds of that truth have been growing in my brain and when I started to take the anti-depressants in October the mental fog I had been blinded by lifted.  And I started to stop.  Stop saying yes when I meant no.  Stopped pushing my body to exhaustion and really listening when my body said it needed sleep, food, water...love.  I made playing with the dog a priority over staying at work for hours on end. Spending time with my parents and chronicling our memories on Facebook for all you to see touched a place in my heart and created joy.  I breathed.  Every day.  Deeply.  When I walk in the woods I slow down my breathing, force myself not to take greedy gulps of that sweet country air, but instead savour it slowly as I feel it enter my nose, throat, lungs....along with life, energy and abundance.  And the exhale is stress, tension and strain...sending it back to the earth.  I walk in prayer, this time that I hold sacred as I let the Universe heal me and in that solitude I have found peace and I've found me.  It has taken 41 years and it may take another 41 but this journey into the very core of my being it has been an encounter with the divine.

Slowly I am making peace with my past, memories that could once puncture and tear at my heart are now just lessons, gifts that have made me who I am today and I am grateful to be in a place where I can use that pain to help others.  Never before have I been able to sit so fully with another's pain without my own being just a huge a presence.  And as I cherish and nourish myself every day that well of giving that I have available just flows over for my clients and the passion and love that I have for this work fills my heart.

And that happy place, that mythical place in my mind that I create to avoid stress, well I don't need that because I am my happy place and life, it is a beautiful place.

The Key

I found the key to loving myself and it isn't to have a partner who tells me every day that I look beautiful (today I believe the exact phrase was "u looked amazing today.") - not that I don't appreciate that and encourage it but the key was me.  I chose every day to fall a little deeper in love with myself.

I remember in College when I first started to see a therapist and was really struggling with being negative and hating myself.  My therapist gave me this exercise where I was supposed to look in the mirror and tell myself that I loved myself.

Needless to say, I failed miserably at that exercise.  I couldn't look in the mirror and face the woman staring back, all I saw was ugliness there and I would just look away after a few seconds.  20 years ago I wasn't ready to learn that lesson, it just wasn't time.

But it was my time now.

I took the path of least resistance and started with my hair - because it has always been the one part of me that I really liked and I focused on it. Even though as a kid I got teased for being a ginger and it made me upset, part of me always liked that I was different, special that way.  Also didn't hurt that I've gotten a lot of compliments about it.  At times when I just felt like a big, blob of sexless fat my long hair made me feel pretty and feminine.

I thought about how my hair colour is tied so much to my personality and that feisty-ness and what makes me - me.  The length, the way it looks like dancing flames in the sunlight...... and I think it's just beautiful.

That I'm beautiful.

I started by looking at myself objectively, as if it wasn't me in the mirror - just a stranger that I was observing with none of the judgments that I'd place on myself.


I looked at the shape of my nose.  The shape and size, and upon close inspection I was taken by how damned adorable it was.  How cute, perky, perfect really.

But if I was entranced with my nose well then my lips were a revelation.  That full bottom lip, the delicate pink .... and that's when I fell in lust.  With that sexy bottom lip.... that delightful smirk, the devious smile.  I traced my finger along my lip, following that line, across to the dimples that flashed in my cheek when I smiled.

And then there were my eyes.

Oh my eyes.

The almond shape and the way the colour changed depending on my mood; navy blue when I was angry or stressed, an almost grey when I was happy, turned on, at peace.

And my lashes, they were so long when I took off my glasses.  I never noticed that before.

I fell in love with the curve of my eyebrow, the light, almost invisible arch.

My heart beat a little faster at the twinkle in my eyes, the depths I saw there, the pain, the beauty....like my friend Daniel says, you really can see a person's soul through their eyes.  And unlike twenty years ago, I didn't look away from the pain this time, I saw it, I honored it and saw that it too was part of the loveliness.

I became enchanted by my eyes.  They drew me in and when I looked at them I knew it was time for the love affair to expand.

In the past my body was a constant disappointment for me, a reason to feel ashamed..ugly.  Having lost over 85 pounds meant a lot of excess skin, scars on the outside from surgeries, hyterectomy and then there were the scars that were on the inside.  Those invisible ones that no one could see but that in my heart I felt were uglier than even that angry red line on my belly left over from removing my cancerous uterus.  A past of sexual abuse and holding onto shame that wasn't mine to hold onto anymore had made it impossible for me to see the beauty in those curves.  The femininity, the vulnerability, the beauty.  People probably wonder why I take so many pictures of myself to post on Facebook and they most likely assume that it's because I'm narcissistic but the reality is that I'm getting to know me, to fall in love with me and sometimes I need that picture to really believe it is me.

I take a picture of the curve of my breast, the bones in my shoulders, those delicate bones that made me cry the first time they appeared when I lost the first thirty pounds.  I take another picture to look at the shape of my bottom - a bum that actually has a shape now....that tapers down from my waist.  Then yet another of my legs, legs that look impossibly long.

It took months this process, this love affair but this first part was kind of superficial... lustful.  (I'm not saying that was a totally bad thing).  What I wanted was not just to love the sum of my parts, I wanted to love ME.  And as I thought about that I realized that love wasn't a noun, it was a verb and if I really wanted to love myself then it was action that was required.

After the diagnosis and the surgery I fell into a depression.  A deep depression.  Cancer had left my body but it still remained in my heart, in my soul...and on my mind.  I couldn't change that.  I couldn't stop myself from thinking every twinge, pain, bump or spot was the cancer returning.  I wasn't sleeping.  I was falling back into that same pattern of escaping life by working and pushing myself to exhaustion.  And I felt like I was on the edge of a breakdown.

Hell, if I was honest I think I actually had a breakdown.

And that is where the action came in.

After giving myself a verbal ass-kicking that I sorely needed about having fought so hard to be well that I wasn't going to let myself throw that (and me) away.  So I got help.  I talked to my doctor, I talked to my boss, I went back to see my therapist.  I took Friday's off and shortened my work week to 4 days instead of 5.  Despite a lot of internal conflict I broke down and started taking anti-depressants.  I started to be honest about what I needed and that included sleep, being around people I love, spending time with my boy...and making time for love.

It's only been a month but already I feel clearer mentally.  I feel rested.  I feel happy.  At peace.

Is the exercise finished?  No.  Every day I commit myself to this life-long love affair with myself.

And life, it has become so very beautiful.