ears-awake-eyes-opened

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

😂 Judgement of right and wrong aside, all of the blogging that I did here was *shadow work* for self-recovery/reclamation. For about 6 years, I expressed more authentically here than in any other space. Some folks didn’t like that expression and chose to block my account, which is totally fine. We’re each meant to please ourselves first and foremost, not the whole of the world. Tumblr was a portal to meeting myself deeply and fleshing out my “demons” and seeing that they’re just my humanness and a portal to expressing myself authentically in my regular life.

i'm seeing a lot of new ppl join tumblr who aren't making any spontaneous semi pathetic, oversharing personal textposts whatsoever and i just want to say you're doing it all wrong... this is not like instagram like meant to be some shiny highlight reel used to make u look good its supposed to be an incriminatingly revealing dark intimate look into your life & inner psyche while simultaneously no one knows who u are or gives a fuck... anyway hope this helps some of u get on the right track

#introspection #self recovery #self reclamation #shadow work #healing trauma

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

#tornado #healing trauma #Irene Lyon #somatics #Youtube

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

I love this memory from 5 years ago. It informs the work I’m doing now.

Self discovery

Words coming through me, moving through me to be written, are an expression of my life force. During that protracted time after trauma when the tension in my body was majorly blocking the flow of my life force, I felt like writing was keeping me alive. Perhaps I felt that way because it actually WAS keeping me alive. I understood I was living a half-life. I even wrote those exact words about it at some point. But I was feeling alive and staying alive in a world I didn’t want to be living in anymore. It was a first step in creating a world of my choosing within the bigger world.

It wasn’t a familiar step. The words just came to me along with the feelings; I wrote them down; and I shared them. At the time, I named the feeling of the language moving through me “divine love.” At the time, I described the feeling as being seen all the way through with my heart wide open. I understand that now to be my authentic self. Life force, divine love, divine energy, divine will, divine grace, Holy Spirit, qi, kundalini, creation, creator, source, God… I’m beginning to understand there is no difference.

We each have unique creative gifts, gifts of creation. Creation moves freely through me in language. It moves freely through others in music, engineering, etc. I also felt the free flow of creation in naturalist work. I didn’t *learn* how to be a naturalist or a writer. Like Will Hunting said, I could just show up and play at those things like Mozart did as a little child at the piano. I showed up and played, with creation moving through me.

I’m going to be paying attention to whenever I experience this free flow of creation, of my life force. I understand these activities are my callings, my soul’s purpose. I KNOW this with every fiber of my being. I don’t know yet how this will manifest next in the work of my life, but I certainly KNOW the feeling within me, of being seen all the way through with my heart wide open, of showing up to a thing and experiencing God moving through me as I play. I’ll be on the watch for it now in everything I do.

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

Memory. This was full of universal truths.

Mercy

I spent a long time feeling at the mercy of my body and emotions. Drawn to and repulsed by people in turn. Swept up in a mystical wind that smashed me around. With bruises under my eyes, I felt wrecked for “no good” reason. That was my self-judgement.

I’ve realized in connection with another, it’s not the other who makes me want. Want his presence or absence, want more or less. It’s my perspective that makes me want. It’s how I turn my impressions into thoughts and what I do with those thoughts.

If I resist them, I stand there pushing them away, locked in that embrace, dwelling in that intimacy. If I accept them, there is recognition, movement, and change because I’ve allowed the energy to flow. In any connection, the choice which to do is mine.

There has been no short end to my experience with want. I’ve felt the intensity until I accepted it, until I accepted myself for feeling it. That’s where home comes in for me. Home is not my house, my family, or any beloved. Home is me, my power that can’t be taken unless I give it away.

Being turned on is an experience between my mind and body. My adrenaline in my arms and my legs. I do it. I make it happen. There is no need for mercy.

#what we resist persists

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

#limerence #attachment trauma

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

#this song has me thinking about #effie trinket #strawberries and cigarettes #playlist #Youtube

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

One of the best resources I’ve encountered for healing attachment wounds

#limerence #attachment trauma #healing trauma #somatics #parts work #inner child work #Youtube

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

*Virtual connection*

is among the biggest illusions of our time. If I’ve learned nothing else in the past decade, then I’ve certainly learned this - with a vengeance. The softness of touch is an iridescent delicacy. It’s the sheen on bubbles blown in sunshine, popping on freckled skin. It’s the stickiness of summer washed away in laughter in the sprinklers. “Red Rover, Red Rover”... is it me? Is it my turn to let go and hold on again, so tight. Anything else feels grey in comparison. Have we forgotten? Have we really forgotten that much?

#2020 #facebook memories #illusions #connection

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

Connecting to our ‘fierce NO’

(Kelly Brogan “How to love ALL your parts and be self-sovereign”, The Wellness + Wisdom Podcast (Josh Trent))

“I think of that (fierce NO) as the dark feminine initiation. Normally there is somebody in a woman’s life; it could be a system but is often a person, often a lover/partner who is holding all the archetypal energies of a parent figure. And how you can fully express your NO in a way that you would never do if you were afraid this person was going to kill or punish you, how do you fully step into the NO, not a strategic sort of watered down version but your full NO.

“And I’ve watched so many women do this in my practice that we’ve seen it’s part of the archetypal journey because then your system begins to expand into the reality that actually here and now I can make choices and discern that I’m okay. Like I’m actually safe now. It’s (when) you can start to expand into these pattern disrupting moments where you can do the scary thing, that you subconsciously were worried was going to kill you, and survive, that you live in a more expanded reality. But first you have to own the fact that you have that fear.

“That fear fueled my entire activism career. It’s not because I’m a good person or because I wanted to help inform people; it’s because I was afraid of the projected man.”

#Kelly brogan #dark feminine #no contact

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

The drumroll at 2:36 still gets me.

It was strange to have felt like I belonged when I didn’t.

Giving up ultimately was hell. Sometimes I still remember that despite the passage of time.

#2015 #we belong #pat benatar #friendship loss

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

On my mind today

#time travel #2015 #playlist #summer dreaming

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

This song

…still meets the intensity of heartbreak. A timeless masterpiece.

#2015 #grief #alan parsons project #don’t answer me #limerence #playlist #friendship loss

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

On This Day

(Scrapbooked memories from my underworld journey and beyond)

April 4, 2010:

🎶“morning has broken, like the first morning. blackbird has spoken, like the first bird. praise for the singing, praise for the morning. praise for the springing fresh from the word...”🎶

April 4, 2012:

this april is so full of magesty. it's only the 4th, and i've already lost count of the number of ways it has taken my breath away.

April 4, 2015:

Free citizens of the United States of America should not have to beg for our rights. We must expect legislators to stand up for our rights and back down from their threats of medical tyranny. SB 277 is an outrageous, extreme act of oppression against a free people.

April 4, 2018:

No Contact is removing your choking hands from your own throat. If someone offered me a million dollars to be in that relationship (or anything like it) again, I wouldn’t take it. This is the relief that No Contact and codependency recovery offer in time. I still believe she is a dear person with a good heart; I still miss her companionship, especially during times when I can't connect with friends; I still cry every time I talk about her if you let me talk deeply enough to reach the trauma I'm still releasing. But nothing could persuade me to go back into the hellhole of being in relationship with a person with complex mental illness and signs of personality disorders.

I recognize not everyone has the freedom to go No Contact, due to coparenting or other extenuating circumstances. I understand not everybody wants to. I’m grateful for this freedom and choice. I don’t take it for granted. I was able to completely and permanently walk away from an unhealthy situation. I've been able to ease, in time, back into a normal life. I'm still getting there. Narcissists don’t have the capacity to do that. For them there is no “normal” life to ease back into. There never has been. They can discard you, erase all traces of you from their lives, replace you with a new FP, partner, source of supply; but none of this will resolve their pain because they can’t leave themselves.

April 4, 2019:

With the care I’ve given my body over the past few months, I see how beautiful it is, but I can’t enjoy it. My daily uniform is the pajamas I’ve worn forever and 30 pounds ago. The shirts are all stained with healing oils that haven’t worked. Most days I put my hair in a ponytail and under a hat without brushing it. In a ponytail, my hair is more silver now than amber.

I’ve become the disabled version of my dream girl, the one I met when I was 22 and then years later in another form. The former I wanted to be. You know those people who make you feel the potential in yourself. The latter I just wanted to be with. For the same reason. The potential in myself. Both times I was thwarted. Like I am now with healing. Sometimes I can’t make a thing work, no matter how hard I try.

I’ll never realize my potential in any of those ways. Sometimes life isn’t meant to be for growing old and growing into your full self. Sometimes life ends shortly after birth, with no silver in your hair and no dreams of your own realized.

I’ve had much more than that. I’ve enjoyed a lot of dreams. The ones I’ve slept with at night, and the ones long held in daylight and let go.

I’m terrified. Please pray for my back muscles to loosen and for my hypermobile vertebrae t5 to stay to the right, off of the rhomboid region. There are no words to describe my suffering. I need a miracle.

I need the highest prayers today. It’s crunch time for me and my unfolding understanding of divinity. I pray to get out of pain. Envisioning looseness and less volume in my back muscles to start. Thy will be done. Let it be. 🙏

April 4, 2020:

The ability to let go of people who would cage me is a gift. I KNOW this. Still, I don’t like anticipating the letting go.

“You’re not caged,” they say with heads shaking and eyes rolling, “Your door is unlocked. Stop spewing your ignorant bullshit and just keep your dirty ass at home.” Yep, actual words I’ve been told because I dare to *gasp* go out and live what I can of my shitty life.

Here’s the thing... when people cling in fear to a cage of their own making, eventually the powers that be will come around and lock the door from the outside, knowing the clingers won’t complain, rather they’ll give thanks for their own imprisonment.

I refuse the cage. I sing from the trees and the sky. I’m done with anyone who doesn’t honor MY choice for ME. I don’t need to sing for freedom, because I’ve already chosen it. Freedom is already mine.

We’re all birds with a choice to make. Until that choice is taken. History tells us that once they’ve locked the door from the outside, it’s too late. Our hearts and guts know it too if we listen.

“Caged Bird

BY MAYA ANGELOU

A free bird leaps

on the back of the wind

and floats downstream

till the current ends

and dips his wing

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn

and he names the sky his own

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.”

April 4, 2021:

Memory. Coincidentally I’ve been thinking this morning about the stream inside me. That stream the free bird floats upon to where the sky begins. Buried under all the work and pressure and pain, the stream is crystal clear as melting snow and teeming with life. It flows down my cheeks to the corners of my mouth as I write the deepest truths of connection and loneliness. My capacity to write lives within it. My connection with kindred spirits is there along with all the joyful things that effect my vitality. I KNOW the stream is there inside, underneath. And, yes, I have a fear of losing access to it. I know the words are in me; it’s just been so long since I’ve felt them truly flowing. I miss that quality of song. I miss those downy feathers catching the wind. I miss the snapping of little fingers, creating a million crickets, and filling the darkness. The bird’s dawn bright lawn becomes the fat worm’s grave of dreams I suppose. Either way is preferable to the cage. Most people just don’t get it. They’re even more batshit delusional than they were a year ago.

April 4, 2023:

Memory. Does the truly free bird actually sing? I wonder. Or does she just fly and eat and mate? And where does she get the energy for all of that? In 2021 ⬆️ I wrote about losing my inspiration to *sing.* Without the pressure of the cage, the artesian well in me is still dry. I get tempted lately to fill up the emptiness with merlot and feel alive that way. Because I can do that again without feeling sick. For now. Part of me is fine with that choice, desires that even. But many (most?) parts me are unclear about what they want. I wonder how so much time can pass without more clarity. Is there really THAT much freeze in my system?… Yes. The cage is wide open, and the bird so often chooses to lie on the floor, too uninspired and frozen to do much of anything. Who knew this would be the case less than a year after really meeting the feeling of freedom and stepping into that realm? Who knew with the sky and all the trees to choose from that the floor of the cage would so often be the choice? Who knew that I’d desire again at times to drink wine in order to feel my life force, when I know where that road led for my gut and my toe and my body as a whole? 🤷‍♀️ Why do I not go out and find places where the other free birds gather? Why do I not improve my nest? Why do I spend what feels like so much of my days in stillness and in the absence of desire? I can view the freeze as a *son of a bitch*. Or I can view it as a survival pattern of the little one whose system capped the intensity so often in anticipation of death that she never developed authentic desires. I don’t know what to do with that young part, but I know alcohol is not what she wants and writing is likely not what she wants either, or at least she wants something more/deeper than writing. She wants connection and she wants to feel her purpose. I’m not totally clear about how to consistently give her what she needs. I keep doing the work, and I work through my resistance to doing the work. Intoxicants take me out of connectedness and presence. Alcohol, internet, tv, *book learning*, even to an extent writing and eating when those aren’t inspired by real thirst for the flow of words and real empty-gut hunger for food… those all take me out of Self energy and out of my body and away from my parts. Maybe the little one who wants connection and purpose just needs my listening hand on my body, “I’m here; I’m listening.” I could choose to stay on the floor of the cage, listening constantly and sipping water when she’s thirsty, until she guides me to do something else. Hmmm…

#parts work #facebook memories #april 4 #the well #the cage #caged bird #the feeling of freedom #2020 #2021 #2023 #2019 #2018 #2015 #2012 #2010

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

Playing this for the first time in years.

My summer playlist. Perfect for dreaming.

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

I’ve said it countless times…but if you haven’t watched the show Chuck yet, please do. I don’t understand why it doesn’t get more hype. It is nerdy and action packed and hilarious…but above all, it is one of the most beautiful love stories I’ve ever seen. Watch it. You won’t regret it.

#i agree

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

#2015 #summer dreaming #nostalgia #shania twain #when you kiss me #limerence

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

“What human beings cannot contain of their experience—what has been traumatically overwhelming, unbearable, unthinkable—falls out of social discourse, but very often on to and into the next generation as an affective sensitivity or a chaotic urgency.”

– M. Gerard Fromm, from Lost in Transmission: Studies of Trauma Across Generations

#trauma #ancestral trauma #intergenerational trauma #anxiety #tornado