GPS Your Heart
Before recovery, I survived as a series of mostly unfortunate reactions. Consumed by confusion and fear of others people’s needs, demands, and criticisms I pinballed through my life- seeking only to hurt less. Never still nor quiet enough to hear what was in my heart♥. I lacked G.O.D.–Good Orderly Direction. What was clear and true in my FOO, I should get small and shut up(contract)-be less inconvenient…irritating. Overly sensitive and highly strung, my presence invited my family to lash out at me for the burden of my expression of feelings. The lashing and banishing made me become louder and more frantic. My experiences are not universal truths, yet they are real and they are MINE. Sharing my experience is how I connect and heal and grow. I go where I grow.
Just as some of us need more food, sleep, exercise, some of us require more time and space to recover from daily life in this overstimulating world. So silly and exhausting to try and hide this from others. Culturally, I guess, it is meant to be impressive, boasting self elected denial of our own needs and casually illuminating all the things we DO instead. I feel not only relief, but pleasure from admitting that “I just can’t do it.” Having Trusted Others who share this as a value is a spiritual triumph, especially for those with whom I choose to share a table and a bed. We mutually and collectively refuse the needless complexity of pretending…..and of tryyyyyyying to hard.
Lately, it has become apparent that the conversations need to begin now. Oh, how I want to impart healthy ideas about sex, bodies, love and intimacy. But who am I? What do I know? Please join the conversation, spread the word. Share your wisdom. We must do better for our children. With sex everywhere, we cannot be squeamish or silent and pretend it is all about love, marriage and babies, unless we want to create shame-filled sexuality for our children. I do not want that. Here is a little video, my first ever. I am eager to have the conversations with others– before I do with my sons. Please chime in here or email me or leave a comment. Let’s do this!
While on the treadmill at the Ymca, I locked onto E!’s Khloe Kardashian- Revenge Body. Seems like, with consistent safety, love, connection and support, people tend to achieve more. This is a huuuuuge differentiator– Those who DO and those who DO NOT grow up developing connection to god, family, community, and known innate talent or favorable attributes. Those blessed with any of these are the natural Badasses of the world, knowing and striving for their full potential–achieving greatness by their own internal measure–expanding natural talents and interests and seizing opportunities to give to and to serve–and not feeling the call to diminish others to elevate themselves. And there are those of us, who just want to be Ok, one day at a time as we discover our talents/interests and what it means to truly be of service, to get clear on who or what it is we intend to serve. It was not possible for me to recognize how to strive in these ways while obsessed with efforts to avoid given threats of despair. Despair was the only thing I had faith in, before recovery. Before faith, I had no models of, or experience with patience, acceptance, discipline, self-esteem, dignity, serenity.
Recovery invites me to have, recognize, and honor boundaries. Boundaries- my spiritual skin. I am naturally permeable and so without them everything gets right in and consumes me-leaving me full with other people’s information and needs, no mental space left for God or even for myself, only a need to invade someone else. My spiritual skin keeps me as me and you as you, protecting us all from the confusion of entanglement. I would describe my affiliations with my ex-husband and my family of origin as entanglements that formed before I developed boundaries– and as a consequence, died natural deaths in response to this spiritual development.
Tonight, my sons and I saw the movie 
