Sometimes...

 Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

Sometimes even the best intentions backfire.

Sometimes they blow up in your face.

Sometimes what is in our heart doesn't always come out of our mouth in such a way to convey our true feelings or intentions.

Sometimes we give meaning to things based on our own internal messages rather than the message that is being conveyed.

Sometimes even in the truest of intentions...

Others get hurt.

Offended.

Irritated.

And sometimes no amount of trying to "work it out"...

can work it out.

Sometimes

it works out best

to just let go.

This...

can be one of the hardest things to do

yet can be one of the best things to do

and often is the seed that will allow us to grow.

In the beginning of my journey I looked to the world and those in it to adjust and "make" me feel ok. 


I tried to "work things out", often taking responsibility for how others were feeling and the choices they made. 


I had a sense of responsibility to make others ok and that others would make me feel ok.


And recently I've had a couple of situations where I got to learn this lesson again....


that its not about what others do, think or say that makes me feel "ok'...


but its about me learning and knowing how to be ok...


when others aren't. 

I Became the Student...


Photo Credit

Sometimes this just sucks rocks...BIG rocks

Sometimes this journey sucks. It just plain sucks...rocks. Big Rocks.

And sometimes I just have to poke fun at myself, like catching myself with the infamous "yeah - but" response to anyone who tried to coax me into looking at the glass half full...

Are you a citizen of the country that speaks "yabut"? ie Yeah - but it won't happen for me because of (fillintheblankcheckhere).

I didn't realize that I was creating my life by accepting the limiting perspective that was given to me by the well intentioned folks who were telling me that "mental illness is for life". I have since learned that I can "write my own check" and make my life what I want it to be - instead of what someone else tells me it is.

Did you know that you can write your own ticket to the city named anywhereintheworld? But you'll have to leave the country of yabut first!

And once I learned to be aware of and to challenge that "glass half full" thinking, I was able to decide that regardless of what others had to say...that I had the power to choose and create my best life each and every day.

If you believe you can - you most likely will. If you believe you can't - you most likely won't.

And it all began with believing there were options other that what I had been told were available to me. The journey has been bumpy for sure on somedays but I am finally the artist and my life is the canvas.

Have fun creating your best life ever today!

****

Please leave your feedback, share your own success' or ask your questions in the comments section...

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If you are looking for ideas on how to create you own best life try starting with the Resources tab at the top of this page. It's not an exhaustive collection by any means but a good place to start :)



I'm glad you stopped by today!

I DON'T Want to Talk About It: Going Through to Get Out of. Honoring the Pain of the Past

Resentments.

For the longest time I held onto resentments. I mean - really - how could I forgive those who had affected my life and changed me forever?

My life had been a nightmare. Trauma does that to a person.

Yet - it didn't have to stay that way.

But I didn't understand that by holding on to the quite justifiable anger that I was drawing out the pain, I was actually causing some of my own misery. I had slipped into the conundrum of post trauma stress as over time I struggled to avoid triggers and control my environment and those in it in an impotent effort to continue to avoid the emotional pain and feelings of helplessness that had become my "norm".

What changed that? What helped me to let go of the resentments that my life could have been different, that I could have been different had I not had the life experiences that I did?

First - it was learning to do the "hard work" of emotional healing - learning to recognize, and connect my emotions and start talking about how I felt about what happened to me instead of my past focus on what the perpetrators had done that had left me feeling helpless, hopeless.

To trust the process - the emotional healing process.

To stop focussing and thinking about what "they", "he", "she", "it" had done to me or on what had otherwise happened to me that I had no control over.

Doing this "instant replay" really served only one purpose and that was to support that "perpetual victimhood" I was experiencing by reliving the nightmare over and over; not just in my head, but in my conversations and relationships. In the beginning it was noticable that this was what I was doing but in time it unconsciouly permeated my life and who I had become.

This focus on external events perpetuated that feeling of helplessness that often comes with a trauma experience and circumvented the natural emotional process of healing.

Then to start talking about how I felt about what happened to me.

That I felt shamed, lost, lonely, confused. That I thought, as I had been told, that "it" was my fault, that I was bad, that I had feared for my life and well being.

But I didn't share this part of my journey with just anyone. Only a select few whom I knew would be able to sit with my pain and not try to "fix" it by offering suggestions that would serve only to once again place the focus on external "fixes" rather than the internal insight and awareness that brings change.

This part of the journey is not one to be openly shared with all the world but to be honored and respected amongst close and compassionate relationships. A trusted friend who is not doing their own trauma work, a qualified therapist that knows how to validate instead of dismiss this part of the healing process.

This is where the knowledge of the emotional healing process came into play. As I gradually moved from talking "story" and on to "processing" emotion - the darkness began to lift. The pain began to subside inside me.

Things that had been horrible triggers for me began to be things I could experience with intention. I began to see how events and situations that in the past would send me off the deep end were identifying opportunities for healing, grieving - that here I could go through to get out of the connected avoidance and pain.

I no longer had to hide from the world because I could now become a part of the world.

I began to use my words as an indicator, a marker of sorts, that there was more grief to be had. That there was more to be let go of in order to set myself free. When I found myself again focussing on, talking about, complaining or feeling angry at something that had been done "to" me...this resentment was telling me there was more work to be done - and that I was ready to go through this healing process in order to get out of the pain of the past that had stolen my life from me.

And as I noted in my poem of recent "A Walk in Compassion" - letting go of my anger, resentments and deep inner wounds does not give those who harmed me a free pass in life for what they did that harmed me - but finding this place brings me closer to peace.

****

Related posts: Know and Face Thine Enemy

The Keys to the Magic Kingdom

You Don't Have to be an Einstien: Knowledge is Empowerment (there is no "worse" than or comparing of trauma experiences...)

Once the Tears Have Dried

I have debated about publishing this post...but have chosen to do so because part of healing from the pain of the past can often include grieving how our own issues of "mental illness" or PTSd has affected others. Our friends, families and of course - the children.

Whatever label that we attach to our issues/symptoms in this journey the outcome is quite often similar for many of us. We have been changed from who we might have been had our life experiences been different.

The adult survivor of child hood issues struggles to develop and maintain the social connections that enhance our lives. A pervasive sense of powerlessness perpetuates a state of dependence and there is no hope that life will ever be more than surviving one day to the next.

The father who played with his daughter before he left for war becomes irritable, sullen, explosive. The mother who nursed her infant who is raped and is no longer kind and gentle but is lost in her own world where alcohol, drugs or cutting is the only relief from the torment of the noise in her head.

Today's post takes us to that place where we can talk about how our issues in those darkest places of our journey become manageable as we learn to embrace the pain of the past and live in today, creating the life we choose each day.

*****

Trauma makes us different.

And that realization sucked when I woke up out of the fog and realized just how different.

Control issues. Irritability. Blowing up for no visible reason. Depressed to the point of wishing to be anywhere but here; I did not want to die, only to know how to live. Wild spending sprees that served to help me avoid my emotional pain but served no other purpose. A mind that seemed to race of it's own accord, distorted thoughts that left me feeling paranoid, delusional. Isolation became my refuge.

So guarded and cautious of the future, so stifled by stuffing the past - that I missed so many "now" moments with my children and not realizing that I was missing "life" as I fought to forget the past. Insomnia, sleep deprivation, flashbacks, nightmares and fighting demons that were no longer there. I had become a different person than the mother who cradled and rocked her infants to sleep.

I was hurting the ones I loved in order to protect myself from the pain that would have brought healing.

And this is part of the "hard work" of finding freedom from the past, of healing.

Being able to see the past for what it was. Being able to own how my "crazy" affected and injured my children. Innocents.

They are now grown. But the pain sometimes creeps in when I am reminded of the years lost to the demons of the darkness of a past forgotten but not gone, emotional pain avoided rather than embraced and experienced.

The price paid to live in denial and avoidance.

I didn't know that I could learn to be free of the pain that I fought so hard to control and avoid. I knew that I didn't like the person I was when I was lost in the fog of PTSd aka mental illness. I didn't see that I had any power to control or change my reactive state of being. And while I knew that something was not "right", I didn't know how to "fix" it.

But today I can feel the sadness, the loss of those years, the moments I missed.

Today instead of hiding in shame I can own how my past affected their future. I can grieve. I can cry. I can embrace the emotional pain of my own past...today I can do this and stay present.

Grieving what was, what was lost and what will never be since I can't go back and have a "do over" and raise my children without the crazy's of PTSd aka "mental illness".

And once the tears have dried again, remembering what I do have today. The new relationship that we have created based on trust, respect and love. The hopes, the dreams, sharing the success' and challenges of life.

This is the reward for doing that "hard work" of taking back my life from the darkness that haunted - and hunted me - for so many years.

This is the payoff.

Finally being able to create and live the life of my choice today and every day...

...free of the demons of the past.

See my related post...Today I cried

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Thank you for stopping by today. Here is where I share my journey through the maze of "mental illness" by sharing parts of my story and some of the steps I have taken to be able to create and live best life each day.

It is possible to be free of the demons of the past. If you are looking for resources I've posted some links here. Not an exhaustive collection by any means but a good place to start :)

If you have any comments, feedback or questions I would like to invite you to leave them in the comments section...

If you would like to be notified of new content, please go to the sidebar to subscribe to the rss feed or email updates.

Be Your Own Hero

I can never become what I was meant to be when I am looking for what might have been.

In last nights episode of Smallville I found a very simple, yet profound lesson. A lesson that is key to "getting over" the past and letting go of trying to create the future - which only serves to steal from my today...

In this episode there is a beautiful young witch type person (sorry, didn't catch her name) who can grant anyone their "wish of the moment".

Chloe is envious of Lois' lifestyle and relationship with Clark - Clark is wishing to be a "normal" guy with a "normal" humdrum life.

They both get their wishes.

The kicker is that in this story, the wish-spell wears off when they no longer wish it.

In the story as the drama unfolds, Chloe has the realization that she is what she is and she is in the perfect place in her life and her life is exactly what it is supposed to be.

She has this insight as she is coaching Clark to accept himself for what he is - the superhero the world needs.

The camara pans out and returns to each of them - Chloe is now Chloe again. Clark is now Clark again.

They both appear happy and confident as though that "light bulb" went off in their heads at the same time.

You can never become what you were meant to be when you are looking for what might have been.

Chloe cheers Clark on - Clark leapt a tall building in a single bound and the day was saved....

Today I will choose again to let go of the things that I cannot change and come to an acceptance and appreciate that my life is mine for a reason. Today I will not focus on what might have been but in all that I am. Today I will become all that I was meant to be.

Today - I will be my own hero