The Tree Has Leaves!

I attended an early childhood conference this weekend, and something amazing has happened. During one of the workshops we were supposed to doodle something nature related, and I doodled a sketch of the tree that I've been sketching for twenty years, and this was the first tree in twenty years that has ever had leaves. The very first tree in twenty years that has ever had leaves. And not only leaves, but tiny purple buds of flowers!

Do not fear the dark stories. . . .

At first I thought the tree had a look of horror about it, but by the time I got home the tree was speaking to me, and it told me, "Do not fear The Dark Stories...for the beauty remains ever alive and vibrant, lying patiently in wait for the light to gently awaken the restless shadow of silent joy."

The restless shadow of silent joy is awakening!

I love what this tree has to say, with its first signs of life making clear that something is changing. And I will embrace this change, for this new tree has life vibrating all around it, with insects flittering around the branches and ants crawling up the stock of the trunk. . . and the music and love that flutters all around.

Let the awakening begin!

Lost Love, Found

Today is St. Valentine's Day, a day of celebrating love, so I have posted one of the many hearts that I have found along my path over these past three years. I honestly don't know why the heart rocks (and shapes) started to appear in my life, but they have become such a wonderfully expected piece of unexpected joy, so I honor these wonderful reminders that we are surrounded by love every day.

My life is a journey of love and healing.

I'm going through a lot right now, most of which no one person (except for me, and God, of course) really knows the full brunt of it. I don't need the world to know every detail of my life, but there are those moments when the behind the scenes process "leaks out" from behind the public persona, and I become all too human in ways that make me cringe and laugh at myself at the same time.

Abandonment issues are but only one of my Achilles heels.

Recent events in my world have caused a disturbance in the force. Someone who was in charge of something very important to me departed hastily, leaving the rest of us scrambling to figure out what we were going to do in response to being leaderless and potentially divided. And the night before last I read that he was forming a new group (rather than just taking an indefinite leave of absence publicly stated), which felt like a mule had kicked me in the stomach, leaving me nauseous and filled with uncertainty.

So I spent the day locked in the land of anxious thoughts, obsessed and fixated on the question, Why did he leave?

Well, last night, as I was tossing and turning in my normal routine of sleepless wall-gazing, I tried to find the source of my obsessive anxiety. And that's when it hit me: the roots to my obsessive anxiety about why he left go all the way back to when I was five years old and my Daddy walked out of my world. At five years old, my Dad was everything in my world, and when he walk away, it left a huge gaping hole in my heart that never found the answer to the burning question, Why did he leave?

And not only just, Why did he leave? But the deeper and more painful question, Why did he leave me?

To some, my need to understand the roots of my obsessive anxiety has no meaning for them. They think I am fixated on "the past" and should just "move on." The problem (for me) is that I grew up in a family system where there was no place for me to process what was happening in my life. So when my Dad walked away, there was no one there to help me process and make sense of that experience, because my job was to help my mom to stay emotionally grounded well enough to take care of us. So I had to tuck away all of those feelings so that I could focus on helping my mom, which has then left all of the feelings locked up inside of me. . .until now.

Yes, I have abandonment issues. . . lol. . . but I didn't get them all on my own.

What I find interesting is how this early childhood program is so perfectly timed in my life progression. Back when I was starting my master's grad school program, the family therapy program was all about family dynamics and family systems. That's where I started to process the drama of my very dysfunctional early life, but the focus then was on the family as a system, and not really the individual players. It was a good place for me to start, as I needed to sort through all of that drama first, to break the pieces down into "bite sized" chunks of emotional experience.

But now I am in the early childhood program where the focus is solely on the child. So what's happening now is that I am able to reflect on my own personal experiences as a young child as projected through the readings and class projects. Not everyone will process through this program the way that I do, but it is my way. I am using this program as a vehicle to search through my own childhood so that I can grow and develop my whole self, and not just the adult me who is engaged in this program.

I love the psychology of human growth and development, and I live my life as an in-progress work of art.

I think it's a wonderful sign that I am able to start accessing my feelings--MY feelings--from when I was a young child, instead of viewing my world as a character in the drama of my family. To feel the pain last night of the five year old me feeling lost and confused about why her daddy had left her is just such a gift, because now I can finally process through that very confusing and emotionally intense experience that's been locked up inside of my heart for nearly 45 years.

So my five year old self may have lost the love of her daddy all of those many years ago, but we are reminded each day of the love that surrounds us every time I find one of these endearing heart shapes along my path, the symbols of love found along the way. And I may still be "flying solo" on this most auspicious day of love, but I remain hopeful that someone will one day be able to love me for who I am, to love all of me, even the parts that still react to the dark stories that I carry within my heart and soul.

But in the mean time, I will continue to learn how to love myself in spite of my many limitations and liabilities. So Happy Valentine's Day to my little broken-hearted five year old self. . . .you are well loved and never alone <3

The Language of God

I have started to read and compare Bible passages from two different sources, which is giving different interpretations of the "same" pieces of scripture. This morning's reading was the story of Genesis, how God created the earth out of the empty void, and I've been thinking all day about the language of God.

God may (or may not) have actually given voice to creation in actual language, I don't know. But what I do know about the language that God uses to create is that it is studied every single day here on earth. . . only the academicians don't refer to it as studying the language of God. . . .in academia it's called Math, Biology, Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, etc.

The language of God that creates all living beings is DNA. . . .the encoded "language" that creates a whole living and breathing human being. It's amazing, actually...to really think about how a human being is able to walk and talk, live and breath as a developed outcome of the unique and specific DNA written just for each person.

And the language of  God that creates the elements of earth is found in the laws of Physics, the protons and electrons, top quarks and bottom quarks, and the special forces that create all of the specific and unique elements found on earth. These laws are the language of God, and we don't even really give honor to the deepest truth of this fact. Every object that moves and interacts with anything else is governed by these laws. . .the language of God.

I was driving to school this morning thinking about how invisible the language of God is, yet so blatently in our faces everywhere if we just look at the truth of what creates everything. At first when I saw the cars I thought, well they're clearly not made by God, but I was wrong. We humans may mix and shape various elements in ways that allow for the structure and function of a car to emerge, and we feel smug in the glory of that accomplishment, but we haven't created anything. It's all still governed by the laws of Chemistry and Physics, so we haven't created anything.

Reforming and reshaping isn't creating.

It makes me think about free will in a very different way, because cars are not something that God created, yet they are allowed to exist because the language of God that creates the elements allows for the mixing and reshaping to happen, even if it ends up harming people and the earth. We're like mad scientists running around playing with a language we can't comprehend in any meaningful way. . . .but we play with it anyway. . . .which is such a terrifying thought, really.

I so very much want to put God first, in the ways talked about from the reading this morning, but it's not easy. I tried to hold my attention all day long today on just how beautiful the language of God is, and it's amazing how easily distracted I was by the language of the inconsequential and unimportant.

Well, I may not have listened to the language of God very well today, but I will try again tomorrow. . . .I will definitely try again tomorrow. . .

The Ugly, The Bad, and The Good

The band had a gig last week, the first one that I've been involved with since I joined the band back in October, and I learned something very interesting about my crazy PTSD brain.

I had decided that I was perfectly content to not play anything (especially since I'm only on the chanter, and not the pipes like the rest of the guys), but I was called out to play, and so I did.

My anxiety was more about having a panic attack or passing out than what anyone thought about me or my playing, but when my reed clamped up my anxiety rose even higher.

So I stepped away to change reeds, which I did, and then I have no memory of going back to play. I know that I did. . .and I remember (in fragments) the rest of the evening, but I have no memory of playing Chanty once I returned with the replacement reed. I was in such a heightened stated of anxiety by that point that my brain interpretted that level of stress as a trauma event, and completely blocked out the memory, even though it was actually a "good" event.

My brain is not differentiating between "positive" and "life threatening" events. . . .all it knows is heightened anxiety = trauma.

The up-side to this very disturbing fact is that it helps me to understand (and accept) why I have such a hard time focusing and concentrating when I am stressed. I don't know what to do with this information yet, but I think it's another very important piece to the PTSD puzzle I am (unfortunately) tasked with solving.

It's funny how the reed clamping up is such a beautiful symbolic reflection of exactly what's happening in my brain. And the irony is that the reed that I apprently did use to play hasn't worked since that night. . . .another symbol of the work that remains for me to do. . . .to fix the broken reeds in my brain so that I can play without having the excitement interpretted as trauma. Good grief!

So I will play (in public) again, and again, and again, because now that I know how my brain is processing a heightened anxiety expiences, I will use them to my advantage by re-teaching my brain that a heightened anxiety experience can also mean that I am doing something exhillerating that I enjoy, (so that it doesn't just automatically respond as if I'm being assaulted again).

It will take time and effort, of course, to fix the broken reeds in my brain, as the PTSD brain is no quick or easy fix. . .but I will grind whatever grist the mill requires, because it's really very important that I be able to remember the ugly, the bad, and the good.