FREEDOM

photo by Patricia

The rains have stopped, the moon shone bright, a rosy glow appears across the clear eastern horizon… Another day to handle being alive. Is it this hard for others? Calm your crazy insides, get a hold of the constant activity, breathe, let life be as life is and the rest is up to you.

That is the hard part, how much to hold myself accountable for. When to be strict, when to be lenient, and the basics of how to be gentle and loving, a must for others but for myself a cloudy issue.

The remnants of punishing tag along as if sewn on. Growing within a group of people who don’t want you talking about what must be talked about causes one to take it on their own shoulders, deep inside where it grows, molds and sours.

It is habit to kick at my being. It is a new path to offer sunshine, positivity, encouragement, and most of all the central belief that you are OK, you did nothing wrong, not then, not now. You are allowed mistakes without being Wrong or unfit to be born.

You are allowed a path to freedom…

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BREATHE

photo by Patricia

Day to day things change, small things like time of waking, the time breakfast is eaten, how long it takes to do one task before another is tackled… small variances that ought not to trouble a person or upset their balance. Yet my balance is easily disrupted.

Breathe… what to do next will come… and it may not be perfect like not much of anything is, and that is OK.

SPRING

photo by Patricia

Winter depression meet Spring. A low mood mixed with excitement feels jarring. Yet the juxtaposition is welcome as the knowledge exists that steadier days lie ahead. With the porch door open, a chorus of birds sing, just as they did upon waking through the window kept open all night due to warmer temperatures.

Spring brings erratic behavior and my hope is to temper it with a more peaceful, wise and safe approach. To get a hold of that wild horse and ease her into the beauty about to come, where the awakening of earth creates an awakening inside almost too much to behold and contain.

 

TENSION

photo by Patricia-Adirondacks , NY

The day breaks cloudy with rain. Through the window left open for the balmy night, a single bird chirps then is joined by another. The silence around that one song comforts. Rising quietly, donning bathrobe and slippers, the door is closed softly to not disturb Samuel.

The kitten, already at the door meowing, dances around my feet in need of comfort and contact. While brewing coffee a spoon of canned food is dropped in her dish and for a few moments there is blessed peace. 

Several days of sunshine have spoiled me, but rainy days have their place and offer their own type of comfort. The trees yawn up against the fog. Kitten goes onto the porch hunting birds through the screen with her shoulders hunched in preparation for the kill that will never happen. But she is happy…and quiet. 

Turning the heat on the fire up since the door is left open to appease the cat, wondering how best to fill this day, the little voice inside whispers, be with what is. No need to try to be something else than what really is.

That is a freedom never known til now. 

Let Life Unfold

photo by Patricia

The morning sky broke in deep crimson swaths across the east horizon, vibrant against the dark night giving way to day. The kitten growing to cat stresses my days with loud constant meowing.

The thought creeps in that a mistake might have been made. Will nothing appease a kitten that was rescued from an abusive home? Certainly my efforts haven’t succeeded and the gnawing thought of having to return her to the shelter drifts up.

But another day begins and with it efforts to appease her restlessness, and mine. Maybe we are too much alike.

 

Coping

photo by Patricia

Waking my shoulders hunch with usual tightness. The typical tension greeting each day takes hold just as consciousness does. It takes effort to combat the life-long symptoms of PTSD that trauma created during childhood, wiring in permanently because no intervention was provided to process it.

It is not unusual to look at another and still wish for the settledness that they naturally possess. With a long breath my shoulders unwind while rocking by the fire as warm sunshine splashes in through the sliding doors penetrating my rigidity. 

A call from my son on his way to work relaxes me even more creating space to just be. That is OK, and that is enough.  

The Love of Self

photo by son, Cory

Walking the meadow through snow then muddy patches where my boots suck in making splashes, my thoughts ponder this new journey where the possibility of liking myself becomes reality. A life of self-hate makes this a journey that may never have happened.

When attacked sexually by loved ones as a child, a child takes it upon herself and feels bad, dirty and disgusting. When trying to tell, the typical responses cause her to take it more inward where it creeps and grows.

The childhood monsters become her monsters. The monsters are intrepid in their dis-ease constantly haranguing her, banging with clubs in every moment and every instance, ‘it’s your fault, this argument is because of you, this person looked at you with malice (and probably they didn’t but had something on their mind), and on it goes.

There is no end to it for self-hate is all she knows. She cannot remember being a free child who laughs, runs, and plays with abandon. For every negative thing it is because she was born.

The medical attention and intervention required for the traumas occurring were never provided. The family takes the cowardly path and blames her, if not outright, then subtly so that she can never untangle the wiring.

The damage becomes permanent and chronic affecting every system in her body. Her life will be shortened dramatically because of it. If not taken by her own hand, then the damage done will take her life. As she ages she learns the toll of what took place. Despite it all a tiny spark of hope whispers, ‘it is not your fault.’ Her courage rises and she fights.

She fights for life and she shall have it. She shall find peace within herself. The road is hard. How can she accomplish this if being inside herself has not occurred since the age of eight?

Frightened to be where the monsters live deep down inside her, she lives elsewhere, a place to go besides the present moment. And she still goes there when life gets scary as it always does.

She learns to count breaths and it may be the first time she resided in her body and felt safe. Moments of the parts coming together as a whole stretched longer and she liked it. Yet there was still the trepidation of being inside herself, a stranger to own self, and always having hated what was there. But it had never really been explored.

The steps inward took decades, feeling safe inside with all the parts- physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental. Then accepting all that was found, especially the humanness where mistakes have been made, jealousies and all the other human emotions that are not looked highly on, they are there too.

Accepting all that makes her human occurs and with it great expansion into self with a depth of life that makes living worthwhile. Then the process begins of discovering that what is there isn’t all ‘bad.’ 

There is much good. And she begins to give herself permission to explore, and to like what she finds. She feels warmth for herself for the very first time, the warmth she had been craving her whole life. It had been there all along, but she had to be in there to find it.