Energy Tokens

I have been exhausted. I have tried to write this blog several times and have been so tired that I only get a few lines out before I give it up. My husband encouraged me to write the blog for as long as I am able.

My life daily is filled with Energy Tokens. I get up and know what activities are facing me that day and then decide how to utilize the energy I can feel my body has available. When I am having a good day, I wake with lots of energy tokens. However, nothing compares to the tokens I used to wake with. If we take 100% as the way we wake when we feel good, then we convert that to tokens, you might wake with 100 tokens.

Some of us Type A personalities wake with 150 tokens or more a day. Having been that person living in my new normal of good days only having 75 to 80 tokens is frustrating.

Then I get sick after enjoying the 75 to 80 token days and get even more frustrating with having only 30 or 40 tokens.

For most of us sleep and food will regenerate the tokens at our disposal. For those with a chronic condition, we don't regenerate the tokens at the same rate. Sleep makes up for some missing tokens which is why I take naps on a daily basis and I wake frustrated that I didn't get more tokens back than I do.

I have gotten to where I am less upset about being sick and more upset about the debilitating effects the illness has on me. When I want to write and literally can't get my tired brain to contribute, it makes me crazy.  Conversely when I have full token days consistently, I get crazy annoyed when they go away. I feel like a failure.  My family gets used to 75 to 80 token Dia and then sudden have to pick up my slack around the house. When friends and family all whom I don't get to speak with often I find myself giving any tokens I have to them desperate to reconnect in any way possible.

This is one of the daily challenges for the chronically ill. And I don't write this to discourage family and friends from reaching out to the chronically ill. Facebook is a goddess send to the chronically ill. It takes less tokens to check Facebook and to send encouragement and love through Facebook than any other way. If you could send love or affection on Facebook actually revives our tokens as well.

People ask me all the time, "What can I do?" So send some love to those you know who are chronically ill on Facebook and think of it like giving them one energy token.  You can give an energy token a day by sentiments of love and encouragement to your friends on Facebook or by giving them a quick text on their phone. Especially if you wake with over 100 tokens a day, giving tokens of love to others when it costs you next to nothing, is the very best thing you do. Have you given a love token today?

Destiny or Survival?

Illustration by Will Worthington
Wildwood Tarot by
John Matthews and Mark Ryan

Since my award of disability, I have been furiously taking care of issues that have long been outstanding in my house hold. My son has clothes that fit again. He is getting a bed better suited to his long body than the twin he currently sleeps on. We paid off long standing debt and set money aside for future expenses that we know are coming.

               For me the biggest change is that I have entered an online course that is about Renaissance or Medieval astrology. I have wanted to do this for two years or more. Ever sense I ran into John Michael Greer at PantheaCon and discovered Geomancy. He in turn directed me to Christopher Warnock and RenaissanceAstrology.com and I have been driven to take his courses ever since.

               When I finally signed up and got my books ordered, I decided to go back and refresh myself in regards to geomancy. I had also acquired a new tarot deck by John Matthews, Mark Ryan and illustrator Will Worthington. Matthews is a scholar whose books I have been collecting for years. His insight into ancient Gallic structure and spiritual beliefs are simply unparalleled. I was excited about the The Wildwood Tarot because Matthews uses his knowledge of Gallic belief and myth coupled with Ryan’s knowledge of tarot and the beautiful art of Worthington to create a deck that called to me.

               So I started to do a daily study of these two divinatory tools. My refresher in geomancy has gone very well. I am enjoying it immensely and find, as I did previously, that geomancy is a powerful predictive tool with layers and layers of insight and meaning.

               Matthews Wildwood Tarot however, is still confounding me. It is the first time I have ever STUDIED a tarot deck. In the past, I have simply read the cards allowing Divinity to lead my definition of the cards and being completely unconcerned with the intent or meaning behind the decks creation. However, my respect for Matthews has me pulling a card per day and trying to decipher out what I think it means. After writing my impressions, I read the book definitions and then try to fit that into what is happening around my life or what I anticipate for my day ahead.

               Unlike my geomancy figures, this deck has me scrambling. Today’s card was the Knight of Vessels – Eel. I was surprised to learn that the Morrigian transforms into the eel in battle and that Cuchulainn’s famous spear, Gae Bolga takes its name from the eel. The book describes the meaning of this card as:

Purity of intent, your destiny defined, you’re able to bring wisdom and maturity to your tasks. Embarking on a quest of personal revelation, your vision leads you onward. Your deep feelings are expressed at every turn. (page 128, The Wildwood Tarot book) 

               What amused me about this is that this is the time in my life when I feel like I have no defined destiny. My life is about survival and daily health. Do I have enough energy to finish the laundry? Do I have enough energy to run the errands I need or want to run? I feel that I have been relegated to dissection of the baser of my needs. In Maslow Hierarchy of Needs, I often feel I am working at the base on safety, shelter, food and safety (I realize I said that twice). 

               It is the constant battle of those of us surviving incest, abuse and long term illness. Our world narrows and revolves around just making it through one more day. We aren’t as social. We don’t reach out as much and when we do our emotions are like sunburned skin. We want the sense of feeling community without the close personal contact. We are raw and fear anything that will rub against our already exposed nerves.

               I have lost so many friendships that have left this feeling of bereft-ness within me. I do not know how to restore the balance in some long time friendships or how to be of benefit to some from my past. I do not know how to rectify perceived wrongs. I do know I can try and move forward and hope I do better this time. I am a social person – very social and the interaction with others is another therapy for me.

               And none of these things are a well defined destiny. My well defined destiny in my past was to write and publish Family Coven and it hasn’t gotten done. Before that my well defined destiny was simply to write a book and be published and it hasn’t gotten done. The only constantly held destiny in my life is a belief that I have been called by Divinity to serve Divinity. Since my illness, I am simply stuck, feeling like my destiny is champagne in a bottle whose cork won’t give. My current pursuits are attempts to let some of the pressure of my excited champagne out in a controlled and measured way so that my bottle doesn’t explode.

               I am also struck by the correlation between destiny and the symbol of protection that the eel represents in ancient Gallic culture. I am unsure if I am subconsciously saying I have been protecting my destiny from scrutiny by hiding behind my disability and illness or if my illness and disability manifested to protect my long held beliefs regarding my destiny from scrutiny.

And you shall be naked, to me, in your rites.... Charge of the Goddess, Doreen Valiente with modifications by Lydia M N Crabtree

               Recently, when talking to my son about performing music, I told him to be an artist is to be willing to walk naked, emotionally, onto a stage in front of strangers and hope that what they see and hear of your emotions is something that resonates with them.

               Being called to priestesshood as I have been, I can say with certainty that walking out in the world and trying to uphold the oaths taken to the Lord and Lady is the same. You walk out and bare your naked self – emotionally, mentally, and spiritually – to the world around you and pray that what you say is what Divinity wants you to say. You do this without any guarantee that what you need to say is being said properly or heard as it needs to be heard or understood as it needs to be.

               In a way it is worse than displaying art because by nature spirituality is your core and your being. Someone starts critiquing how those are for you and they are saying that you are spiritually lost, not properly calibrated. It took me years to realize this. In this realization, I am able to see how often I did this to others which make the happening to me sharper because I feel the guilt of knowing I am feeling what I have caused others to feel.

               I woke today hoping to work on my book and end up writing a blog instead. I feel equal parts disappointment and relief. I wrote something, after all, which is always preferable to nothing and simultaneously I feel I am giving no benefit. The only destiny I feel I am living is to continue to learn and grow and develop. I serve when and if the opportunity arises and mostly I am left isolated from my past desires and without a road pointing to my “destiny defined.” I do not feel I am embarking on anything, just trying to get through each day and bring some type of meaning to the living of that day. It leads me to wonder if living to the best of one’s ability is destiny or survival.

Contractual Nightmares

The most disconcerting thing about violation is nightmares.

I went to bed last night fairly content with my lot in life. I was happy: happy with my husband and the life I am leading; happy about the future and my son’s imminent return from his winter visit out of state; happy about how blessed the Goddess and God have made my life.

Here I am four in the early morning when not even the commuters have crawled out of bed to face Monday morning traffic.  My nightmare last night was so vivid, I woke to find myself curled in a jumbled pile tucked up as close to my husband as possible. I was sweating in sheets and my unfortunate bid for the reassuring contact of my husband had left my back feeling like I had performed some type of unholy tantric acts in my sleep. My newly fixed nose was pretty beaten up having been stuffed into the soft blanket I often sleep with and the stress had caused a dsyautonomic flare. All my muscles ache and it feels like I have been hit by a bus that came barreling through my bedroom on silent wheels in a hushed violence. The only evidence of the strike was how difficult it was for me to untangle and stagger into the bathroom for pain medication.

The problem with my nightmares is that it takes whatever problem I have let sit in my subconscious and manifest those problems in my dream with a barbwire twisted sense of reality. Currently I am suffering maternal anxiety with my son so far away. We talked everyday about everything and nothing and him being gone for so long is a gnawing barb to my subconscious. Yesterday, two good friend’s had really bad days. I made one of them extremely upset and there was no resolution by choice. Sometimes bad days need to come and go before perspective can be reached and because of my deep and abiding love for my friends I chose not to confront the issue during that hot, instant of confusion that comes when stress overwhelms those we love and makes them a little difficult to accept that love we have.

These things for most of you would be minor bumps upon the road and certainly not nightmare worthy…for a survivor of incest and consistent childhood abuse it turns into this story.

We are in THE house. My family lived in multiple houses growing up and there was one house on the end of a cul-de-sac where the majority of the confusion and abuse I survived took place. It was from this house we suddenly upped and moved from the city to Nowhereville under mysterious circumstances to build a new house in the mountains of North Georgia. It was in this house where I meet my childhood best friend who would eventually find me as an adult and confront me about my father raping her. It was in this house where my bedroom was separated by an entire floor from my mother that I watched my father rape my sister on multiple occasions. The bad, ugly house that seems so innocuous on the exterior and was a place of mental, physical, emotional and spiritual anguish on the inside.

In this house, my biological mother is searching for my brother. Even in my dream, where I have been trained to lucid dream, I understood that it wasn’t my biological mother looking for my brother it was me looking for my son. Of course, we couldn’t find either. I was content to let the dream continue because even as my subconscious played out in Technicolor the feeling of loss I had been experiencing in my son’s absence, I understood that it was just that: a reflection; a mirage; a healthy way for my subconscious to better deal with my missing child. Besides, my waking, conscious, participating self knew that in less than twenty-four hours I would be at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport picking up my child, so he isn’t really lost, misplaced or even really gone.

Then my biological father enters the dream. At first he is what he has always been in my life, a threat. My father being a stone sober explosive abusive meant living weeks and months with a man that seemed as harmless as a fly, as upstanding as his Masonic brother’s believed. Then something would happen and our entire world would crumble, dishes would break, threats would be made and carried out, safety and security would morph into hatred and distrust. I would be ripped away from feeling loved and thrust into a world where nothing pleased my biological parents and I was left scrambling to figure out how to restore a more even keel to my own existence.

The threat his presence always represents is twofold: the eminent creation of violence and the establishment that I am not loved. Having been trained to participate and direct my dreams, at first I am able to keep his presence in my dream a threat only. I am able to handle the thoughts that I know are fabricated and not really a part of my current life. My biological father isn’t going to beat my biological brother or my son because he is missing. Neither is missing anyway. One has divorced himself from me and sided with my biological father and the other is safe in a bed in Massachusetts being loved and carried for and spoiled by others who love him. For awhile I am able to contain the dream centering it around looking for my biological brother with occasional appearances by my harried biological mother who is worried about waking my biological father.

“This is just a reflection of my anxiety regarding my missing son,” is the mantra my brain tries to chant without being overwhelmed by the tidal wave of emotions the dream is creating.

Then my biological father awakes demanding to know what is going on.

Once again I step in to try to manipulate the dream. Suddenly my dream self is dressed in a business suit and my father is naked but covered in his own bed. He used to sleep during the day and some of the most disastrous incidences often came from waking him accidently. We were trained to be quiet as mice or get snapped shut in the mouse trap that was my father’s violence and uncontrollable rage.

I confront him and the dream shifts to contract negotiations. I begin to tell my biological father that I have been in heated contract negotiations with a woman about property and that the woman thought she had figured out how to get out of our contract. However, she didn’t know the law very well and I had already gotten the signatures I needed so she was stuck!

I am swamped suddenly with a sense of foreboding and begin to struggle with feelings of love and acceptance. My heart is suddenly worried about whether or not I am being loved or I will continue to be loved. IN the dream I am trying to win my father’s affection with my prowess as a business woman and simultaneously worrying about the woman I am in contract with, whether or not she will continue to love me.

Remember my friend who was having a bad day? One of the crazier after effects of continued abuse is a belief that we are unworthy of love. Not the platitudes we spout breezily on Facebook or Twitter. LOVE – unconditional, constant and regardless love that is given without merit or regard to anything other than one person has decided to love another.

My friend is a survivor of her own hells and this type of love for her is different. She hasn’t had a lot of love that is based on a voluntary contract that has stuck and been unassailable even in disagreement or strife. In my dream, I am telling myself I have taken a contract to love her, even when she wants to get out of that contract; my love for her is binding. In the face of her fears about people continuing to love her without judgment, I am going to love her. In the face of my past and her past, I am going to love her.  My dream self is telling the manifestation of inconsistent love that I have figured out how to consistently love someone else despite the blueprints for loving I was given by my past.

Then my biological father says, “How do you know she will uphold the contract?”

BOOM! CRASH! BANG!

A dream that I had been able to steadily navigate overwhelms me as past feelings of regret and unloving come swarming in to assail my subconscious mind. I am surrounded by the white noise that has form and words and tells me all the things I fear the most:

“She won’t love you like you love her.”

“She will break this contract.”

“There are things you can do to make others not love you anymore. There will always be things you can do to lose the love of those around you.”

My subconscious mind provides me a ViewFinder of still photos showing me all those who have professed undying love for me and then found me lacking and unlovable. Many of these photos are persons from my past and some are even in my present. People I know or suspect for whatever reason do not love me anymore. It ends with a still photo of my beloved friend her face contorted in rage, all traces of love gone from her.

At this point the dream world shatters and I wake in that sweaty, aching heap trying desperately to reassure myself that my husband, my stone, my constant still loves me. If he were awake I would ask him and he would tell me. I ask him all the time, “Do you love me?” and he patiently answers, “Yes!”

“Of course!”

“You’re alright honey. I love you and will.”

But his warming assurances are locked in his own slumber and I know he has to get up soon and go to work, so I crawl out of bed and take pain medications and sit down to purge myself from the nightmare so I can face my own day unencumbered by the remnants of my own nightmare.

I know you are surprised that this dream isn’t violent. My most violent dreams come in that time just before sleep when I feel the most vulnerable. That is when I daily relieve the horrors of sexual and physical assault. My deep slumber is when I dream of the most damaging things done to me, the emotional and mental vestiges years of physical trauma inflicted upon my psyche. In the end, all survivors of childhood abuse ultimately worry about the love contracts in their lives.

We have love contracts with all the people we are in contact with from our most distant Facebook acquaintances to those very closest to us. These contracts are often unintentional and are developed over time. It is the unintentional nature of most love contracts that leave survivors of childhood abuse floating on a sea of uncertainty. My first marriage was a victim of a completely unintentional and ever evolving love contract. My current marriage is rock solid because of an intentionally built love contract.

One of the things I have come to understand, due largely because of my sisters of choice, Sarah and Crystal, is that love contracts do NOT have to be unintentional and they do not require anyone’s signature but my own. My friend who is freaked out and screaming and upset is actually worried about the expiration date of our love contract. What she hasn’t yet realized and accepted is that the contract for our friendship and love doesn’t have any stipulations in it. For adult survivors of abuse, contracts without stipulations are an unknown and unbelievable thing.  Without Sarah or Crystal or my late mother, Coco, I am unsure I would even understand that myself.

You see, it took people coming along and given me that unconditional, unstipulated contract of love to help me understand several things that are vital in loving. First, love is a choice based on nothing but the decision to love.

Why does my husband love me? Why does Sarah or Crystal love me? Why did Coco love me?

No reason whatsoever.  They decided to love me. They decided somewhere along the line to love me without stipulation. They decided to teach me how loving is suppose to look. Coco showed me the love contract all mothers should have for their children. It is the contract I have for my own son based upon the blueprint she gave me.

Sarah showed me the contract of unconditional, unstipulated, unassailable love. We have hurt each other deeply and those wounds have healed giving way to a deeper, more abiding love and affection. With each year that passes that love becomes something more than a contract and is almost like breathing. This love is the oxygen in my emotional system and reflects most accurately how my husband loves me.

Only his love adds to it all the affection, cuddling and awe that lovers give to one another. He sees me through the lens of his love contract and I am always beautiful. I am as beautiful to his loving eyes today as I was when I married him ten years ago or hand fasted him eleven years ago.

Crystal’s love is the responsible love. She is the tough love that says there are expectations and when you fall short, I will love you anyway because I know you. You would never intentionally harm anyone because I know you have been intentionally harmed and that thought you would do the same mortifies you. However, sometimes you act without thought, your impulse and pride get you and you need someone who loves you enough to tell you these things. It is a truer love in some sense than the lover’s contract Tony has and it is a harder love to believe in because I am left feeling that I will do something to be unloved and eventually my sister by choice will choose to love me no more.

It is this fear that my dream echoes for my other friend. She is worried about our love contract. She is scared that her own past and her own anxieties is going to run me off of loving her. In my dream I triumphantly tell my biological father that my contract with her is unbreakable and I owe Crystal for the knowledge of why.

The why is: I choose to love her and what she does or believes or chooses is irrelevant because my contract isn’t really with her, it is with myself. In fact, I do not believe you can actual have a contract of love with someone else really. Love is a decision you make in your heart to give something that has to be believed on with faith by the other party. You can’t wrap it up and gift it at Yule. You can’t quantify it. You can’t define it. It is outside the realms of this materialistic realm.

Once I understood this, I could choose who to love and what they did, the choices they make, the things they choose to do have no bareing on my contract to love them. I have contracted with myself to love them. I have said, “She I am going to love.”

He, I am going to love.

For me this means that I am going to try and see the person through the eyes love. When they rant and rail against the horrors of their past or present, I am going to love and try and understand the things they say and do are all tied back to a fear of losing love. When they assail me with hurtful words or actions, they are asking what the limits of my love are. Can they do something to make me not love them anymore? What is that thing? Where is that line? They are in essence saying, “I know there is something that will make you not love me anymore and I am going to find it before you do.”

Make no mistake there is a difference between love and healthy boundaries. I love people who are no longer in my life because they couldn’t maintain healthy boundaries and had to consistently push and push to figure what it was that would force me to not love them. I love them still and I have separated myself from their behavior. Truly a person can only accept love if they love themselves and most of us do not love ourselves enough to recognize when we are being loved.

I haven’t always had this outlook. There was at time when my judgment of others cost me dearly and I lost the respect and admiration that love is tied to of people I dearly wish I could still claim I have. There are some hurts, however, that never heal and some wrongs that do not deserve to be forgiven. Because of this knowledge I have of myself and how in the past I have broken my own contract to love others, I woke in a cold sweat, my insecurity rolling down my mind like the sweat down my back.

What if my friend doesn’t know about this intentional contract to love? What if they are unaware they are worried that they will do something to be unworthy of love? What if they have conditions on the contract to love me and I fall out of favor of their love?

Even as I wake I try to remind myself that isn’t how loving works really. Love is about my choice.

She, I choose to love.

Even if she has stipulations, even if there is something I does that make her love me no more.

She, I choose to love. 

My love for her is based solely on my decision to love and in the face of the most painful emotional turmoil; I can remain true to my decision. I can let my own worries of love and acceptances go, because I cannot control the behavior of others. I can however control my own.

She, I choose to love.

I can make these choices because others have chosen to love me.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
I love you because I know no other way
Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XVIII love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other wayI love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other wayI love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

 

 

Surgery Coming, Praise Be!

I am sure my childhood memory just makes
it seem this is the dog that bit my nose.

 Being an adult survivor of incest, physical and mental abuse, I am constantly surprised by the endless ways this abuse manifests in my body. Being in constant emotional and physical upheaval, I sucked my thumb well into my tween years, a habit my biological father abhorred. Although, many of my memories are vague or suppressed, I can clearly recall the first time he broke my nose.

It was over my thumb sucking. Being the middle child I was sitting in the back seat of our family station wagon going somewhere. My biological father was irritated already for some unknown reason (my biological father was not a drunk and never drank). Between my siblings, I was feeling tired and isolated. Suddenly, my head snapped back and my nose began to bleed.
 Coming back to my immediate surroundings, I hear my biological father yelling at my biological mother.
 “She keeps sucking that damn thing and I will rip it off. Maybe that will teach her!”

 I can remember further irritation on my biological father’s part that I had to go inside and change and then place me in the way back of the station wagon, laying down with cold compresses to stop the bleeding before my family had to make an appearance at wherever it was we were going.

 It wasn’t the only time a backhand found my nose. In my early years, this type of sudden and violent “correction” of behavior happened often. The first time I heard deviated septum, oddly enough, was when an injury occurred that had nothing to do with my biological father’s temper.
 I was in Dallas, TX visiting my biological father’s relations. They had a little, old yippy dog and neglected to tell me that it had a degenerative disk disease which caused it to bite people if they pet the dog on the back. I was in the back alone trying to stay off the radar of everyone sitting next to the dog for company. Suddenly, it jumped upon my chest and latched itself upon my nose ripping it up significantly.

 I was taken to the ER and remember that the police showed up after a loud argument about whether or not to call a plastic surgeon happened in the hall between my biological father and the attending physician. I can remember him saying, “Can’t you just stitch her up? I mean really even you said it would only be a few stitches.”

 The police came and sequestered me away from my biological father. They had to hand cuff him because he put up such a fuss about being separated from me. Then the plastic surgeon came in. He was very handsome and extremely kind. He brought me some food and Spirit, my favorite.

 After sometime had passed this young doctor screwed up his courage and in a room that held a case worker, a nurse and himself asked me the one thing I had hoped someone would ask me all my life.

 “Did your dad hit you?”

 I sat there in Dallas, TX and thought about what I knew about kids who ended up in the system. My life wasn’t so bad right? Better the devil you know, than the one you don’t, right? I hated Texas it was flat and barren and there weren’t any farms, only cattle. It was hotter and more humid than Georgia and I could watch the steam rise at all hours of the day off the asphalt that seemed endless.

Besides, I was raised to tell the truth.
 “Not this time. A dog jumped on my chest and bit my nose.”
 I can remember the adults standing in awe that I had suggested I was abused but insisted that this was not one of those times.

 “It is ok,” the handsome doctor said, “You can tell us if he hit you. We won’t let him do it again.”

 I nod sagely and say, “OK, he didn’t hit me….this time.”

 I can remember sitting there and praying that they would ask other questions. If he touched me in bad places or if he had hit me other times, but these adults were completely focused on my nose and couldn’t seem to get off that one issue.

 Later I would come to understand that not only did my nose show the signs of significant and frequent abuse but my front tooth had died after one of these violent episodes and it’s tell-tell color told the doctor’s that I had been hit in the face before.
 Several adults tried to get me to admit that he had hit me that day. I stood by my guns and kept dropping the only hints I had the nerve to drop.

Finally, my biological father’s family showed up with animal control and the dog in question. My biological father demanded that I be released after being treated. I can still remember sitting inside the room and listening to the officer and doctors arguing with my father in the hall. The authorities had decided they wanted to do a full physical exam and my biological father wouldn’t allow it. He also kept saying he wouldn’t pay for the nosey plastic surgeon that had been called into consult.

 Silence bore down on me and I can remember being really afraid that I would get hit later for all this commotion.

Then that handsome doctor got a menace to his voice.

 “If this child shows up in this ER again, you better believe I will be calling in a child counselor and another type of doctor to investigate my suspicion that she is being abused. And keep your God-damn money, I’ll give her my care free of charge. No one should have to live with outward reminders of stupid dogs or any other stupid thing.”

 I can remember him working over me and talking to me and the nurses the whole time he worked. He told me that he would tell my dad to get a cream to try to minimize the scarring but that he was doing all the stitches on the inside. He said without the cream I would have a small scare that might turn pink in the cold but that was ok because no one would wonder about because I would grow up and wear makeup anyway. He gave me very careful and explicit instructions on wound care making me repeat them back to him several times. Looking back I understand he worried I wouldn’t get any further care. As if this conversation spurred him on, he left me for the nurse to clean up as best she could (I had bleed profusely and simply covered in it.).

 He went out and asked about how long we would be in the state. My biological father suggested that we would leave the next day, even though I knew we had only just arrived. The doctor told him he had to see me again because the stitches I had been given needed professional removal and reminded my biological father again that he wasn’t charging him for anything he did.

 So we stayed the planned two weeks and I saw that doctor again in his office right before I left. My biological parents refused to leave my side during the visit even though the doctor suggested they do so. He removed his neat handy work, praised me for taking good care of the wound and promised me I would heal beautifully.

 Oddly enough, for a long time after this, I felt like someone somewhere out there knew the dirty secrets my biological family had worked so hard to hide and worried about me, maybe prayed for my safety and I was greatly comforted, even though I eventually returned to Georgia and the hell of incest and abuse.

 Survivors of incest and severe abuse live in bodies that have been worked over. I have back issues and my major joints (hips and shoulders) show signs of degenerative wear caused by the violence I endured. For me, my teeth have always been this reminder of my abuse whenever I looked in the mirror. This past year was spent getting that tooth fixed and it was just finished up after months of internal bleaching this past week.
 It turns out, although I can’t see anything but a small scar a little dog gave me in Texas, my nose was in worse shape than my tooth. Looking today at my CAT scan of my sinuses, the reason for the over dozen sinus infections this fiscal year was evident even to me and I am not an ENT. I knew I had a deviated septum because other allergists and doctors had noted it. What I didn’t realize was the damage affects the entire sinus cavity.

 My deviated septum curves sharply to the left. Since my biological father was fond of the right handed back hand, it makes sense. This curve causes the sinus on my right side to be all squished together. So when I have an allergy to something it completely blocks that nasal passage. On the left side or inside the curve of the deviated septum, my soft nasal tissues have ballooned. I do mean ballooned. They are enlarged and have created some relatively large pockets where bacteria can get in and infect my sinuses.

 At this point, even if I got the IgG treatment to bolster my immune system, it wouldn’t solve my sinus problems. Corrective surgery is the only viable solution coupled with IgG treatments which we are still fighting with the health insurance company to provide. As I currently have a sinus infection, the focus is to get it cleared up and find a window when I am not infected to perform corrective surgery. The small pain I felt as they dug around my sinus cavities to type the infection I have gave me a good taste of what I am going to feel like when I wake up from this surgery. It wasn’t pleasant.

 Despite this and the thorough warning the ENT gave about the extensive corrections that would occur to both nasal passages and the septum, I was cheerful as I drew a picture for Tony of my messed up sinus cavity as I remembered it from the CAT scan.

 “You seem awfully excited at the prospect of a bunch of pain and bed rest for three to five days,” he teased me with a wink and a knowing smile.

 I am. Just like that plastic surgeon said in Dallas, no one should have to live with the scars caused by dogs or anything else. This surgery will erase damage caused by a violent and indifferent man. No one but me will know the difference from the exterior; however, everyone in my family will benefit from having me well more than I am battling infections.

 Still, this surgery seems as important as the year long work on my teeth. It is like being permitted to erase some damage that represents years of abuse. It is like going to sleep and waking up being a little more whole than I have been since that day I was sitting in that station wagon.

 Now if we could just get the insurance company to approve the IgG treatments after the surgery, I think we might begin to see a significant improvement in my health. In the mean time, Alice and I are riding around in our own vehicle, finally, thanks to Judge Dole. I am careful to only drive when I know I am well enough and it is really exciting to be able to see my doctors most of which are within a two mile radius of my home. I was even able to take my boy to a well child care visit, the dentist and the dermatologist this week. All of which are less than two miles from my home. I don’t have to ask for rides or hope the Paratransit. Alice gets a roomy back end and is fascinated by the rear windshield wiper.

 I even spent an hour at the dealership today getting a careful and thorough walking through of all the features, got help programming all my doctor’s offices into the navigation system and learned all about putting my music on an SD card.
 Recently, I find myself priestessing others who suffer from PTSD and chronic illness. As I watch them struggle with the surprises and revelations that PTSD can bring, I feel an overwhelming gratefulness that I have my sisters, my husband and son, my God and Goddess and Judge Dole.

Despite all that has happened and all the damage that has been done to my body, I can honestly say I am blessed. As I age, continue counseling and continue to relentlessly seek healing for my body I am finding I can undo some damage. I can restore myself to more of wholeness than I was left in when I cut ties with my biological family. I had little choices in the damage I endured and all kinds of choices in how I mend and heal myself going forward.

 I changed my name and no longer bear that tie to the biological family that harmed me. I chose a middle name that better reflected who I am.

 I spent a year getting my teeth fixed and now I have a beautiful smile that doesn’t tell silent stories of abuse suffered.

 I am going to get my nose fixed. Just like I have spent years mending my inner soul from the difficulties of my childhood, my nose is going to get mended on the inside too.

 I have been validated and upheld by a Judge, my chosen sisters, my husband and my son. I have drawn to myself others who can share the journey of healing PTSD requires.
 There is so much I have been given that makes me glad I am a survivor and chose to live long enough to enjoy a place of blessing, love and hope.

Praise be the Morrigian and Mannan!
Praise for delivering my husband priest and blessed child!
Praise for guidance even when I thought the darkness had consumed me and I had been forgotten!
Praise for the love, security and stability I thought I would never find, keep or feel.
Praise for the other survivors who insure I no longer walk this path alone
Praise for two sisters who chose me as I chose them and love me in the manner of any family – the best they can.
Praise for the mother I loved and lost, choosing me and making “Daughter” have meaning,
Praise be the elements who represent those extended friends and adopted family who circle around me in ways I had never perceived or conceived.
Praise be that my sight is unblocked and now I can see them.
Praise be for a harvest I thought I would never see.
Praise be the lesson of the platypus and seven ravens.
Praise be.
Praise be.
Praise be. LMNC - 11/08/2012

Learning to Live Again

I've been thinking on this topic for a while. So much empowerment has come from honest communication about my medical situation. The only think I haven't talked about is my compromised immune system. I am currently trying to get as treatment for that and it has required a lot of back and forth with the insurance company. We are continuing to fight for the treatment. In the past twelve months I have had over a dozen different documented infections. This is because I am lacking in the immune response called IgA. I am also IgG deficient. The hope is that if we can get treatment for my immune system, then we can see a significant improvement to my overall health.

I have been trying hard to do more - exercise more, eat better. Today, the last remnants of years of abuse evidenced on my teeth were finally erased. I am really excited about this. Having the ability to care for your teeth is a thing that makes me feel worthy. There is also something very significant about having your tooth decay dug out on Samhein and cleaned and replaced. Made me feel like my teeth were symbolic of the new year.

My boy's new found devotion to Divinity is such a breath of fresh air that I can't help but be ecstatic about it. It has breathed new devotion into my own spirit.

Mostly I am having to learn again how to have a life while managing a long term debilitating illness. My Family Coven are making strides and I am still doing to much on a daily basis; however, we are learning tricks and tips toward organizing life to all our benefits while meeting every one's needs.

I have had some intense visions and dreams surrounding my patron God and Goddess. I can feel a peace and a certainty that we are provided for and will be provided for. It is a solidness I rest in.

Blessed be the time of the dying off of the old
The time of the welcoming of the new
Renewal of all that has been good and right
A breaking away from strife and spite.

Blessed be the last harvest that provides
For the long winter tides
A guarantee that with this harvest
Our bellies will be full, our minds at rest.

Blessed be the Lady, Crone, Dying Midwife,
She who walks not only the dead to rest but our strife away
Blessed be the Lord, Sage, Who stays with us
Waiting to protect us against the shortest of days.

Blessed be the harvest we can finally understand
That was planned, planted and begun before our needs could be named
And here our horn is full, our life over flowed
As the Old Year leaves and the New Year Reigns

Blessed be, the old, named and un-named,
Dead and dying
We honor you for all you were knowing that the link between all we are and have is tied irrevocably to death's we have had.

Revelations 5: Pie in the Face

I have a friend who hates banana cream pie. She rates her bad days in accordance to how many banana cream pies she feels like she has had flung at her face. I like the imagery even though I love banana cream pie.

If I was using her Pie in the Face scale, today is like a four pie day.

Which leads to another Revelation:

That mask is pretty, too bad it doesn’t let anyone understand what’s really going on.

I woke nauseous.  It felt like I had been beaten in my sleep. I was running a fever. My back was killing me. I had had anxiety dreams most of the night and couldn’t delineate between waking terror and sleeping terror. I had actually dreamed about trying to NOT throw up.

I jumped in the shower to bath with a Eucalyptus bath that I found at Publix that is great for fever reduction, aches and pains.

After that I took my nausea medication which I am not particular fond of but find it preferable to actually throwing up.

I then sat down to take care of some family business, notify Tony that today was going to be a particularly bad day and not to expect much out of me (dinner or house work). I wanted to play my cello today but my fingers are already swollen today so I am going to skip that.

It is this type of day that kept me hiding. I didn’t want anyone to see or know that it was bad like this. That in this moment the only solace I can find is my Alice and mindless TV.

When we ask people, “How do you feel  today?” Social convention tells us that the question isn’t one that we really want an answer to. I love my mother-in-law and she can go on for hours just answering that particular question. I don’t want to be like that, and, yet, no information is disastrous to anyone who isn’t living near enough to see me on a four pie day.

Also, for the chronically ill, a four pie day doesn’t stop life from happening. There are still small things that need to be done to make the family life move forward. It doesn’t mean that I am not thinking about writing or wanting to write even if I can’t. Pie in my face isn’t the only thing happening even on a Ten Pie in the Face Day.

Yet, when people deal with me that is the only question. “How do you feel today?” It is a bit redundant to ask the chronically ill how they feel.

I think maybe better questions would be, “What are you into today?”

“Anything interesting happening around you?”

“Have any plans this week or weekend?”

My husband has been asking his mother these questions and getting more information and more enjoyable discussions out of her. For the chronically ill, we would like to say to someone, “Today is a Four Pie in the Face Day and…..”

So, what are you into today? Anything interesting happening around you? Do you have plans this weekend?

 

Revelations Part 4 - PTSD

In this series I have focused on specific epiphanies I have had since I was declared legally disabled.

Some of these are:
I have not been forsaken.

You have not been forsaken. You are believed. You are supported. The Goddess and God are with you.
You are not misunderstood. You haven’t given enough education to be understood.
Teach and tolerance follows…and if not tolerance at least understanding and educated when decisions need to be made.
Dysautonomia is a complicated disorder whose physical impact has daily consequences.
My fourth epiphany is this:
Mind, body and spirit are one.
Most persons who follow an earth based spiritual path will tell you that this is true. I have often personally felt that this leads to some unintentional judgment on the part of some against those of us who are chronically ill. If mind, body and spirit are one, then you could THINK yourself well. I have written on this topic at various times during my disability and the simplest way to explain my current belief is this: if, in nature, disease is nature then disease within the human population is natural too.
What isn’t natural is the way that many of us end up ill. The interplay of pollutants, hormones and preservatives in our foods and even the chemicals that are used to process our foods are just beginning to be studied and understood. We know that these affects are debilitating in some. Tony suffers from migraines caused by MSG intolerance. The life changes we have to go through to accommodate this disorder is pretty extensive.

One of the other ways many of us end up ill is through prolonged psychological, sexual, physical and mental abuse. It is a medical fact that those who grow up in environments where stress is not the overwhelming energy around them are far healthy than those who do not. Further, I think that often those who were exposed to psychological, sexual, physical and/or mental abuse are lead to believe that with a strong will the long term affects of such exposure can be overcome.

It is not necessarily common knowledge that I was raised by a pedophile and rapists. The abuse took me to a place where I had a three day fugue, that is a time period in my life that I cannot account for where I was, where I had been, what had happened.

I came out of this fugue state in a batter women’s shelter. I had obviously been beaten and roughly treated. I was suffering from Pelvic Inflammatory Disease and had never willingly taken a sexual partner.  Slowly I remembered my name and the shelter relocated me out of the county and off the books because my biological father at the time was a deputy sheriff in the town that we lived in. Given my biological father’s position of authority and my outward state of terror, I wasn’t even offered a chance to press charges. Of course, remembering the abuse is an important factor to prosecution.

My childhood is one of crystal clear memories followed by periods of complete absence of memory. I seek counseling on a regular basis to combat PTSD attacks. These are periods where I relieve my abuse as if it is currently occurring. I lose time and become unclear of where I am or even who I am with. With counseling and medication, these episodes have lessened significantly. Stress is a major factor in their frequency and severity.

I used to believe that I could separate these events in my life. Box up my PTSD and my years of sexual, physical, mental and emotional abuse and separate them from what was physically happening to my body. However, it is of interest to note that nearly 80% of those who have Dysautonomia also suffer from PTSD and Anxiety. The theory is that years of living in a flight or fight response causes permanent physical damage to the body, especially to those who may have a genetic predisposition to problems, like neurocardiogenic syncope which I was born with.

My life has been one lived surrounded by an immediate biological family who treated me like an outcast. I often fought back against my physical abuse and was not known to holding my tongue even if that would have been to my benefit. My biological mother was and is the classic enabler. When my father tried to kill me with a 9mm automatic and missed her comment when confronted was, “If he really wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. So he was just playing around.”

This statement really sums up the tone I grew up with. When I married, my first husband met my handsome biological father and seemingly well put together mother and decided I was a liar. It is no hard stretch to understand that the marriage would fail. Not that I particularly blame my ex. My biological family could be charming and I was a mess. They had been calling me “mentally unstable” for years as an explanation for any number of cues that would have told authorities or other people I was being abused.

When Tony met my biological father, he told Tony that I was insane and if he was smart he would encourage me to enter into a treatment facility and give up custody of Sam. Tony stated firmly that his visits with my counselors and experts and the direct problems we had in our sexual life was all the confirmation he needed that my biological father was indeed a rapist and a pedophile.

Of course, I am not the only survivor. I have been approached by two girls who I went to elementary school and high school with. Both accused me of not protecting them from the rapes they received at my father’s hand or penis, as the case may be. There isn’t a whole lot an adult child of incest can say to another survivor. I was raised in a house of abuse and taught that abuse was normal. The fact that it never occurred to me to protect my friends was natural because the abuse was normal. Explaining the psychological damage these types of relationships have on people is difficult and an extremely foreign concept for most people.

I have always maintained that my life growing up was for a purpose. I don’t believe that I chose to come to this lifetime to be abused; however that doesn’t preclude me from trying to learn what I can from having been abused and surviving.

One thing that a life time of abuse of this magnitude does is destroy the fundamental guideposts that people use to set up and maintain relationships. There is a definite cycle where the survivor tends to attract abuse in all forms to themselves and then goes into what I call, “Whatever it takes mode.”
After realizing that you can identify abusers and chose to not have relationships with them, you begin to seek other types of relationships. However, your ability to set boundaries, understand other people’s boundaries and find a way to have a productive and mutually uplifting relationship is destroyed.

Oh, you will read books and go through programs and still the practical application can really be beyond your ability to execute.

I became a pleaser, a peace keeper. Somewhere deep in me is a little girl who thinks that if she is perfect: says the right things, does the right things then people will love her. I look at conflict as an opportunity for resolution and this usually means that I am willing to give up just about anything to bring peace and love around me.

Well before my official 2009 disability date, I was on a downward slide mentally, physically and emotionally. I was not well. I wanted to be adored and loved for who I was and felt strongly that I was loved and adored for what I could provide.

When I no longer felt I could provide to a larger group of people, I pulled back and focused on my family. A few friends weathered the storms with me and supported me as they could and over time I realized that as they did what they could, we were all working off of relationship constructs that didn’t really work before my catastrophic illness and certainly weren’t going to work under pressure.
For a little girl in me who understood that value is what you can do – have sex without making a big fuss – weather a huge beating and then wear the proper clothes to hide it so no one would know – take a beating for a sibling because they were angry and mad at the situation and I was mouthy. Being in adult relationships hasn’t lost a lot of these highly destructive and difficult to deal with constructs. I find myself in relationships trying to figure out what to DO to make them work. The concept that sometimes in relationships there is nothing to DO is really difficult for me to accept or even understand.

I keep trying. I am the peacemaker, the fixer. People are hurt, obviously I did the harm…maybe or maybe not that is truth; however, it is certainly my perspective. Others emotions and reactions to things scare me. People who are angry with me hit me. No, not anymore; however, when you reaction is to expect a strike, you expect that strike whether it is verbal or physical is irrelevant and in some twisted way you come to believe you deserve it. So I find myself in conflict with others fighting these ingrained reactions and looking for the emotional cues I have always understood – anger, resentment, annoyance.

When I got sick, for years during my illness, I believed that some of my relationships were one way. Later I would discover that those relationships were hiding aspects that were ugly and angry. That anger eventually erupted. As an adult I can rationalize what is going on with others and as a survivor I have all these complicated thought process that I know aren’t rational.

1. If someone is mad at me, do they love me? Did they ever?
2. If they are venting and I don’t feel like I am being heard, then should I just agree with them to make the situation go away?
3. If I am having anxiety is it because someone is mad at me and I don’t know it?
4. My entire life I thought abuse was normal and it wasn’t. If I believed that a relationship was one way for years and it wasn’t what do I do with that? What is my culpability? What do I do to fix it? I couldn’t fix my biological family…am I back in that situation.

My therapist and I have been asking, “What does Dia want out of relationships?”

 

It is an interesting question to ask oneself and the answer I know has changed significantly over time. I used to think that if I was adored by masses of people then somehow that girl in me would finally feel secure, safe. I no longer believe this to be true. Adoration is not the same as being known.

 

I have always maintained that I wanted my son to KNOW me. I wanted him to know my story and to know my triumphs and I wanted to KNOW him.

 

Knowledge, true knowledge, as always has been power for me. Most adult survivors of incest spend an average of four visits to mental hospitals. I have only been hospitalized once. When I left the system of the battered women’s shelter, my sponsor told me I might actually make it. When questioned she told me that most women eventually die at the hands of their abusers or spend their lives mentally and emotionally frozen, unable to do much of anything beyond subsisting. She felt I would actually thrive.

 

And I have in many ways. I have a son and a husband and we are not living in an abusive relationship. I have worked hard to distance myself from my biological family. I “divorced them” years ago and feel freedom and safety for it. I sought out and learned what motherly love really looked like and though that love is gone from this physical plane, it burns brightly as I deal with my boy. I have kept some semblance of my faith. I don’t attend large rituals anymore and that is ok. My quiet daily rituals are plenty for me.

 

Given all this, I still react to most all relational situations with the default all abusers have been trained to have. When someone is angry, I immediately internalize that anger and move into peacekeeper or fix it mode. The idea of giving someone space to feel on their own and process on their own is completely foreign to me and one I am working diligently on. I have had relationships where for years I was manipulated simply by my own desire to try to keep peace or fix situations that I alone could not fix. It has taken work on relationships one at a time to break these situations and keep them from continuing in destructive patterns.

 

The point of all this is if you deal with me and find my responses odd, they probably are. I am not necessarily just reacting to you and your relationship. I am reacting to years of abuse while I fight the conditioning that is a residual on my soul. When I ask questions, I am not being obtuse or mean or even sarcastic. I really need an answer. Asking questions is how I flesh out what is going on in a way that I can understand it.

 

I have had some great teachers and read some great books on communication. I try to utilize those tools to help me deal and I fail miserably often.

 

However, I believe what marks any survivor is their willingness to get up and go back for more. They try. They ask themselves questions and seek out their own answers and they relentlessly cling to relationships while trying to find a way for them to be healthy.

 

I plan on continuing to do this. I know it annoys some friends and I hope given this perspective understanding can continue to be shared.