Relax- Calm Down

After my friend in the mountains directed me, in a moment of distress, to “relax”, I was able to calmly request the following without any blowback or negative consequences:

“Hey, next time you think of suggesting I take a breath and relax, will you please consider instead saying”: “what do you need or what can I do to make it better?” And he gladly does!!! What a miracle. Asking for what I need from the right people is another fruit of my recovery. And also recognizing that if he would have objected or defended his need to say that, that would have registered as my cue to move on. He continually reminds me in a loving, amazing soulful eye contacty way: “Just ask me directly if you need something, and if I can, I will give it to you.”

Favorite has been known to say to me in times of duress “It is not the end of the world” and I was able to let her know that upsets me- because to me, it feels dismissive and degrading. And she stopped saying that—to me! This is LOVE!!! The kind of love I need, crave, deserve, and intend to give. Where people can count on feeling heard, seen, welcome, safe, valued. Everyone gets to choose what matters to them. 🥰 Right? Like if you need/ prefer/ choose to keep saying and doing the dismissive things, so be it- but I gotta roll.

Showing deep care and regard for a person calls us to want to know: how to NOT make things feel harder, lonelier, worse, even when there is nothing we can do to make them better.

We'll figure it out together is a love language- Steve Maraboli Phototext

My Friend in the Mountains

Visits with my friend in the mountains continue for 5 days at a time every other week which works well for us.  He and I each unapologetically require stretches of solitude.  The hardest part of the arrangement, for me, is that I surrender much needed separation from all others- so that we may enjoy each other- only on my child-free weeks.  It has now been 5 months and I look forward to the time when introducing him to my sons feels appropriate, necessary, and fun, perhaps this summer.  

Since my friend in the mountains is retired and has no children, his daily (fully autonomous) life resumes when we part, while I am left with less time to recover from being on earth, in a body, with other humans, as a single mom and dedicated employee.  It is hard.  Balance is key. We are still figuring it out. Solitude without meaningful and sustainable connection is no good just as connection without sustained solitude has felt both unmanageable and unsatisfying. 

Fortunately, my bed and office space in my home are absolutely perfect for me-especially with proximity to zero other two legged beings. So, while I cry at our good byes, time all to myself, in my home does please, relieve and soothe me.  What a blessing and a miracle— to have a home I love – where I feel safe – physically & mentally able to relax….while also having a cool relationship to explore, as I heal, recover, and get to learn and practice more wholesome connection.

The intensity of affection (for lack of a perfect word) and appreciation I feel for my friend in the mountains is overwhelming.  I cry frequently and a lot—-from feeeeeling so deeply. And while he does not relate to my need to cry, he also does not mind or judge. He tells me that the best thing about me is that I continue to be exactly who and how I claim to be. This is the most honest realtionship I have had. If not for the politics, I would also have said that about my previous relationship (before the 2016 election- six of the seven years called for levels odf denying and pretending which made me feel dead inside, disconnected, resentful, and ashamed).

New Love- Old Wounds

Still enjoying the magic of every other week in the mountains with my new friend, and as we become more familiar and relaxed with each other, we are being slowly re-emersed back into reality where we, as humans, remain flawed, frustrating, annoying…. Yet another struggle for me – each time I have a non-paradise type feeling or even sense that he might, I panic. Because my formative and marital expereince proved consistently, that if one causes, honestly expresses or conveys non-pleasedness or uneasiness, on the heels of that would be- unspeakable and interminable tension which, for me, never stopped registering as cause for fear, pain, confusion.

Fortunately, New Friend does not object in the least, to me being human and healing and honest about uncomfortable thinking and feelings. Our time together is good, emotionally rich and safe, fun, sexy, uncomplicated (except for the parts where I make it complicated). I feel loved, nourished, nurtured, beyond welcome, close, connected, insulated and protected.

However, I am still me and my wounded/unhealed self begs regularly to threaten my own peace and serenity. I am easily triggered and well practiced in old reactive and unwell behaviors. For example, he does two things, which bug the shit out of me and— both are innocent…but I super dislike them–and am keenly aware of my shitty hair trigger reaction to them. I resist expressing them outright in a corrective and judgy type of way, but the trauma response is there gnawing on my bones. Why must healing and unlearning be a lifelong commitment and process, rather than a singular event? Why?!?!

In recovery, my third step (for the 97th time) helps me to practice acceptance for the things I cannot (and should not attempt to control or) change. Old programming and trauma informed me that– when one is disturbed or displeased by a thing-then – it must be a probelm to be worked on- corrected, or denied entirely. But that is damaging and dysfunctional thinking. Some things are simply unpleasant facts, made for acceptance. Like how about I let him be who and how he is without telling him about himself and also without internally losing my shit and becoming cold and withdrawn, as aresult of my own inability to regulate? I find it to be childish and harmful to attempt to make a person be different(or gone) so as to avoid having to manage challenging feelings and reactions to differing non-preferred behaviors.

I am a work in progress and grateful for this time with my new journeyman. He may not know it- but I see it- he too, is healing, without realizing or even meaning to. He really dislikes is not big on discussing or reflecting on harder less pretty parts of the past. For me, reflection and discussion are essential to my healing and growing into the person I was always meant to be…so that I may become bettter at recogninzing, recieving and offering whoelsome loving.

It Is Like This

It Is Like this

On my drives to and from the mountains to visit my new “friend”, the radio signal/reception fades in and out. Shuffling through stations I am blown away by the number of songs that if asked if I knew them, I would think no.  And then– songs I do not even know that I know, come on- the music takes me immediately back to a time where I first or last or regularly recall hearing it, and the feelings of that time. AND then– I in fact recall – every – single – word.  All words, lyrics, even the chorus to songs I had forgotten even existed. This seems a perfect metaphor for trauma.

Trauma-

It is like this.  PTSD is like this.  Things happened—confusing and damaging things imprinted on me- events and dynamics, which for so long, I could not identify or fully remember, because I lacked the language, but those traumas (definition of trauma:  deeply distressing experiences too big and difficult to process and manage alone) lived inside of me and shaped me, making it easy and desirable for those I burdened, to judge, label, dismiss me– as angry, peculiar, impossible, dramatic, selfish, lying, troublesome–an outsider. No good.

And still, decades later, when faced with a person who did the things OR even someone who reminds me of them, I am transported back to a moment of trauma, no longer in the real time- moment, in which technically I am now safe with actual choices.  My body and brain react immediately and intensely to the trigger and enter into fight or flight mode. Because I am reacting to People(fromthe past) who felt inclined and entitled to to make me pay, put me in my place, make me sorry—for interfering with their plan or pleasure. And for judgy people who lack the ability to courageously engage in the work of healing, repairing, and growing, they righteously focus on illumination of a my reaction to pain caused by them— using terms like erratic, deranged…dedicated to undermining, smearing, discrediting me, in a way which makes them feel right, justified… superior. Catherine G Whitney Ghoneim

Attachment and repair are indicated as critical components to raising trusting, resilient children who will thrive in their personal relationships. Healthy Attachment being defined as deep knowing and belief that “I am safe.  I matter. I am real” (as are my feelings and experiences) (even when they differ from yours)).

Am I real?  Am I safe?  Do I matter?  The people older than and in charge of me made certain to insure that, for me, the answer to these three questions was a resounding NO.  Communicating in all variety of ways that:
I am alone and discardable. That–My difficult feelings were unnatural, invalid, unwelcome, inadmissible:  Expressing them in any way placed me in the crosshairs and I was handled accordingly:  typically with mocking, silent treatment, banishment, and shunning.

Thankfully, I no longer worry(too much) about the unhealed people who misunderstand my reflection and healing for a need to rehash and a refusal to forgive, get over, move tf on. However, my need to diminish the shadow of my trauma and grief which falls squarely on my children, matters much more than the opionions of judgers with limited thinking. I am a work in progress. I heal for myself and those who love(with wholesome nurturing love- never desiring to punish) me.

I think in my family of origin as well as the family of my boys’ father, they have confused their retalliations for “natural consequences”. So grateful to now recognize that for what it is.

Jeff Brown Soul Sahping Photo Text Instagram

Held and Free

“A whole family is one in which each member can bring her full self to the table knowing that she will always be both held and free.” by Glennon Doyle

Having just returned from another week in the mountains with my new special friend, I am stunned again by my ability to spend 24/7 with another human him for days at a time– and enjoy it. The hardest part… saying goodbye. Fortunately, our next visit is 7 days away.

Together, we are enjoying that elusive state of freedom (to show up fully and exactly as we are) within deep and growing connection- a way of being which was absent for each of of us in our upbringings/families of origin. Those formative dynamics bred feelings of being both caged and untethered.

I can not know where this will go. AND- If it turns into everything- amazing(!) and if it does not, still amazing. This man (who, for now, shall remain nameless) is brilliant, sexy, hilarious, compassionate, curious, unafraid of not knowing or of being wrong or making and owning a mistake. Literally no trace of fragility – able and willing to communicate directly with full transparency and to engage an uncomfortable conversation. He makes zero effort to control, impress or manipulate others. His calm regulated, non-reactive ways are pure magic for my highly dysregulated nervous system. Who knew I could be so completely drawn to a person and also not feel panicked about possible sudden and mysterious abandonment/discard “prompted by” a thing I did or did not do or say?

Also, our shared regard for the planet, marginalized people, gun law reform, Covid, women’s rights to body autonomy(…..) rewards us with expansive conversations. I am thrilled that we each openly express what we think, feel, need, want and beliieve – and that doing so makes us closer.

The not sharing our thoughts on important matters in my previous relationship, it seems, was only slightly less divisive than if we had attempted to share about them, with a politically (highly) dissimilar person. It took time and outside help for me to realize and accept that the impact of our never shrinking political divide made our relationship both too much and not enough for me.

Scapegoating- How it begins

“Any time a small child gets labeled and referred to by a parent as too much or bad, that child/baby is actually being handed the job of covering for a parent with a fragile ego.” Reading those words today allowed me to breathe just a little more deeply. I feel the truth of this in my marrow.

I cringe now to recall my mother and sister ranting to me of how when my cousin, the most spirtually and emotionally grounded one in our family, had her first child– he was highly sensitive -requiring a lot of comfort and help with resting and self soothing. Because this cousin does not suffer from fragility, she and her husband went to great lengths to support him, rather than judging and resenting him, casting him out.

Both my mother and sister were stunned by the unearned grace and careful nurturing this “outrageous” baby received. They literally never spared a detail regarding how impossible this baby was. When another cousin brought two highly sensitive children into the world- the level of disgust and judgment for these two children (labelled terrors- exact word- : “terrors”) for requiring so much of their mother, defies articulation. I literally assumed they were monsters, until meeting them for the first time, a few years ago.

The eagerness to detail issues and struggles of our family members felt dirty, gossipy and judgy. And, sadly, I felt grateful to be on the recieving end of tales of defectiveness of others. I do believe my lack of interest and agreement was agitating to them and further solidified the division and differences between us. Seems they were always fighting for a binary status system of good or bad and personally designating where people stood, according to their shared need to perceive themselves as good, right, better, and in charge.

Must post later regarding plans for Christmas Eve with Bestie and Family, followed by a trip to the mountains with a new special friend. ♡ Merry Christmas to everyone, even the a-holes.

There is no right way to do a wrong thing. Harold Kushner Catherine G Whitney

AMEN(ds)

While there is no right way to do a wrong thing, there are countless wrong ways to do a right thing. Today, I am keenly aware of the value of frequent, immediate, and detailed apologies.  I find consistently, that only people in recovery are as into this, as I am. 

Holidays and birthdays are emotionally challenging for me.  Historically (in my family of origin and then similar marriage) special occasions were entirely stressful, guaranteed sources for shame and heartache.  And here we are— in the 2022 holiday- birthday season.  One day at a time, I will get through it.

My grief and anxiety during this time make me more brittle and likely to snap, over things which even just remind me of old pain and betrayals (This is trauma–PTSD- reacting to things from the past rather than the present).  As a human, I inevitably get things wrong.  In recovery, I get to practice making things right, when I have fallen short.  Acknowledging unfair or unreasonable behaviors or words by me and requesting a chance to begin again and do better. I ask questions to understand the thing which I have said or done which caused another pain. I am now clear: Our intention matters far less than our actual impact on others.

People get so caught up in their illusion of perfection, rightness, unfailing goodness, unable to acknowledge their own toxic/injurious reactions and decisions.  Rather than self reflecting and adjusting they cling mightily to their intention or justification and double tf down- just to keep feeling right. Jilan Catherine ghoneim Whitney Frank Whitney Annie Whitney Hunter Whitney

Making things right is something Greg and I practiced brilliantly in our 7 years together.  Our misunderstandings and conflicts were small, infrequent, and quickly resolved. Greg and I have now parted ways and I feel blessed to say that I believe that we left one another better than we found each other.   Much healing and growth, growth which did, for me, lead to the need to say good bye and wish each other the very best.

I treasure the relationships with bestie, my boys, colleagues, a brilliant sponsor and others, which allow me to grow along spirtual lines. Even my relationship with my dogs benefits from my recovery. Things which they do or need could otherwise vex me– feeling (at times): encroached upon, resentful, hostagey, financially exploited (lol–laughing but not jk). I look forward to sharing about my relationships with others, when it is suitable to do so.

I am a work in progress, seeking and seizing opportunities to practice making things right.

I wonder if the other girl (born to the woman who also gave birth to me) will justify spending time with the person I divorced, affirming their unwholesome bond, during this holiday season. The unforgivable thing is that my sons’ father will either try to wrangle them to join or burden them with a report of the visit, never minding how much this compromises them. As I fretted this aloud, my son asked me: “Mom, why must you always imagine the worst?” I told him: “I am not imagining… but remembering. A painful damaging betrayal– carried out, repeatedly.” I cannot spare them that grim reality, but I can work to minimize my commentary on their father’s choices.

I believe that as parents, it is our duty(and privelege) to help our children carry and hold things which feel too big and heavy for them. AND not hand them emotionally dark and complex matters, – and then judge them for their ability to manage or deny the pain of IT.

We are breaking/disrupting these cycles. One day at a time. Frank D Whitney Charlotte NC

Cycles of Healing

I would not have chosen the things which have harmed me but am grateful and proud of how I am allowing myself to be shaped by them. Recovery continues to teach me about mercy, redemption, and reconciliation. I am now awake and this quote expresses perfectly where I am in life: “I choose to love this time for once with all my intelligence.” “Splittings” by Adrienne Rich

In my family of origin, from my earliest days, I felt unwanted, unwelcome, hated, invalid, banished, shunned, discarded.  I learned self-loathing and worthlessness from the people whom I counted on to teach and show me love. To love a person, as I understand, means to be unconditionally FOR them and NEVER against them–acting as an enemy- willingly diminishing, harming or serving up pain.

While my pain and healing have been disruptive and agitating to those too uncomfortable to acknowledge the harm and pain that was, I know that there will be conversations and questions which come about from the younger generations in my family, if not also some of the older ones.

Since my healing is more important than proximity and access to blood relations,  I was forced to choose- as it is not possible to heal from the environment which makes you unwell, while still in that environment.  I did beg, literally begged for decades, repeatedly to do the work to heal together. I was notified that the issues and work were mine alone, fabricated, manufactured, imagined.

I have expressed countless times, my dedication to breaking or disrupting the cycles of pain, so as to not directly hand the dis-eased thinking and ways of being- to my sons.  And until today, I had not considered that I am aslo THE beginning– of a new cycle.  The cycle of healing, awakened parenting, living in ways which allow us each to see, feel, speak, acknowledge, and heal pain and difficult feelings which we both cause and experience. 

“I love you so long as you are pleasing me – doing only as I desire …and when you do not, it will be withheld from you.” This is the cycle of chaos and dysfunction that I am breaking one day at a time. The manipulating, forcing, pretending, denying, lie-telling, defending and covering up. It stops here— I make no claims to being healED—only to doing the work to become healed. I am a work in progress.

Someone at today’s meeting shared the following. I never stop being amazed to hear someone say a thing that I have felt unable to articulate. Amazing….

“The truth is I’m in need of repair every day, One Day at a Time and for the

rest of my life. I’m not going back to a fractured perspective, unclear boundaries, stifling

anxiety, crippling resentments, out of control “control”.”

Dog Whistling

So one of my sons has some serious skills when it comes to dog whistling and gaslighting and boy am I grateful I get to be a different sort of mom, than what I experienced. I get to be a loving witness and a trusted ally. I agree to see and hear them both, the best that I can(and not triangulate- no matter the temptation and familiarity). I continually explain to them that in a perfect world – what is true and kind would matter the most amount. But in this world, more people than not prefer a confident, poised liar/abuser (who does not personally affect them) to even the most innocent or vulnerable person– with intense reactions to pain, fear, discomfort. I am deeply aware and pained that my son has his sensitivity weaponized against him, by two family members whom he loves and from whom he also cannot change or catch a break. All I can do is love them both through it, call it out, and model something more wholesome than that. This is a cycle to break. It has fractured both sides of their families in every direction, with a fair amount of addiction and mental unwellness, some less perceptible.

I was thinking today of when I was maybe five years old, sitting at our dinner table in Fayetteville,NC, with only my mother and my sister, who was 11 or 12 at the time. My sister mouthed the words “you are a pig”. As a 5 year old who was highly sensitive and who was hungry for my sister’s love and approval, I burst into tears. When asked what was wrong (with me?—invariably the question and suggestion)  and I shared that my sister had just called me a pig, my mother quite literally gnashed her teeth and declared me crazy and a liar– because since she was sitting right there – she would have known if my sister had in fact, called me a pig.

At that age I lacked the skills to articulate that my sister had mouthed those words— like she didn’t say them out loud with her voice. While smiling aggressively at me, she silently mouthed them very definitively to only me, again. She was smugly triumphant- always. Jilan Catherine Ghoneim Whitney

And so, we all agreed in that moment, that I  was insane and bad. My mother would never be genuinely curious or concerned about my inner life, only annoyed, while performing sympathy and compassion for my sister, who had fallen prey to my antics. Such a loving and sensitive protective mother. Awww

Not only could I not trust my mother or sister, I could not trust myself to effectively deal with them–and being with each of them caused me great anxiety. Later that the day, I heard my mother on the brown coily corded kitchen phone, first with her mother and later with her brother, describing how awful and troublemaking I was – delusional and hysterical. 

On that day my sister and I learned important things about our roles and our power within that family.  Life was officially not safe for me from that day forward. It was ok to hurt Maggie. People who have abused me or sat silently as I  was degraded, prefer to recall only how undeniably angry and problematic I became around the age of adolescence.  I do not deny that it happened.  I had become unstable in that arrangement and then hormones were like grease to a fire.  It was impossibly destabilizing, hopeless.  This was home life.

With no known way to communicate my angst and no caring ally, that dynamic fucked me up at the deepest levels.  My mother’s frequent reports to her family primed the pump for our family trips to New York.   Everyone deeply encamped in the wrongness of Magda- the deranged, thin-skinned, defective, troublemaking liar, unworthy of love, protection, connection. There was nowhere to go but down.  And down I went.  This left my mother’s family feeling overwhelming compassion for her and my sister and observably disgusted and enraged by me, for constantly choosing to put them through so much. 

I’ve only recently learned the terminology dog whistle. So, at least, I now know exactly what that thing my sister so skillfully and regulary did to me, is called.

These two women shaped my ideas and core beliefs about truth, trust, worthiness, abuse, belittling, transparency, integrity, betrayal, honor, honesty, connection, safety. Everything I understood about those things began with what they modelled for me…until recovery and motherhood taught me something better, more true and good than anything I had known.

My First Bullies

Who in your life held you in unconditional high regard and rooted for you, ride or die 24-7-365?

Who in your life consistently instilled messages of doubt, fear, shame, guilt, defectiveness? Chances are that those very people made damn sure to amplify that message at every opportunity, to share with anyone who would listen. The person/people who did so to me, needed for me to be bad and wrong so they could feel right about how they treated me and for enlisting others to support their smear campaign. AND to help them curate affirm their identities as the perpetual victim, the martryr, the hero.

Having the primary women in my life bully me, collectively, particularly when I struggled in ways they could not relate to or manage, was devastating. Allowing and expecting my proximity only when I happened to please them, banishing and condemning me the rest of the time. Never ever to be counted on as trusted allies to me. Conditional af –soul-crushing and heart breaking. Not loving. Not kind. Not Safe. Always needing to punish/shame or rescue. Who even benefits from that….ohhhhh- naricissists do.

As I review these patterns and try to make sense, I am finding undeniable connection between the bully, coward, persecutor and the “rescuer”. It is one persona, seeking control, pity or admiration— at any cost.

It is a freaking miracle that I have been able to learn to recognize and address the negative effects on me and to examine toxic attitudes and behaviors which I learned, copied, developed to cope within that malignant dynamic. I have so many things which I have said and done which make me cringe, too many to count. Fortunately, 99% of them are more than 15 years behind me. Cliche as it is…hurt people, hurt people. And when we know better, we do better.

I am beyond grateful for all of the unlearning and reparenting. I can see many reasons for why I behaved as I did and in my effort to understand and explain it, if only to myself, I do not think for a moment, that having a reason is the same has having an excuse. Some things can simply not be excused. Forgiven, maybe, but not excused.

Without recovery, I absolutely would have (unknowingly and naturally) abused my children, simply by doing what I had learned and experienced: each time I annoyed, inconvenienced, challenged my bullies–typically by having and expressing a feeling or need.