Speak your truth. When people ty to shame or silence you. Double TF down.

Anne Lamott – Recovery Badass

After reading and rereading Anne Lamott’s most recent treasure: Dusk, Night, Dawn, I feel almost close to being able to fully and deeply breathe. Engaging with my ex, for the smallest thing, leaves me drained and triggered AF. His mere existence and our permanence of division, is something I never get to forget. Life is unecessarily complicated and uncomfortable for our children. These words by Anne Lamott, so perfectly express what it was like, in my family of origin and then in my marriage.

“Being or expecting to be fully seen along with seeing who the people in your family were, was ill advised. In fact the first rule of being the young child to unwell parents is to agree not to see what is going on.”

That gaslighty bullshit is toxic and the effects lasting. Ok, so I can only learn from the past AND still not change or forget it. Anne also references repentance: as to change directions so that we do not end up where we are heading. To change our minds in the deepest center of ourselves in a way that changes us and the course of our lives.

I think I can say with confidence that I do and have repented. My mind has been changed and open to recovery and retrieval of my spirit and truth. I hope to preserve my boys’ spirits and unique truths, or at the very least not diminish them. I am a work in progress. When I returned to this side of the country, I had unfounded hope for healing that could be possible. I was foolish. Hoping and trying was risky and difficult and right. My requests to do the work were punished, mocked and misrepresented.

Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me

I am still obssessed with the toxic and commonly held sentiments (not specifically aimed at me, just in general) and messaging of: You are the last, the least and the lowest: inferior and undeserving. Do not expect change and do not ask for more. If you are excluded, it is ONLY because you do not have what it takes. When people are diminished and forced to the margins, they have only gotten what they deserve and were asking for. They will just have to GET OVER IT.

I am currently reading Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me) and I just cannot even…

The pathology of abusing, lying, and deflecting responsibility for doing damage is rampant and nearly normalized. It is unrealistic to expect abusers to acknowledge or take responisiblity, to apologize or to make amends.  The greater the effort to call for accountability, the more they will blame others for their own actions, while at the same time denying their actions. And then wonder —why can’t they get over it yet?

Happy Valentine’s Day, Sweet Greg. I wished I were already healed and ooozing with joy and pink hearts on this day. I am still me. Healing. Recovering. Exhausted. Thank you for loving me. Being loved and treated unconditionally with kindness and acceptance is still unnatural and even uncomfortable, for me. Even after 5 beautiful years. I am a work in progress.

Thank you for accepting that depression and PTSD do not break for special occasions.

Big Shot

In Nothing Like I imagined, Mindy Kaling shares her delicious confession about an attempt to be a Big Shot. While out with her celeb buddy in L.A., a big time producer picked up their check (as a gesture to her friend). Mindy was blown away. She found that to be the most impressive move- evidence of being a true big shot. SO THEN– A few months later, while on vacation in Hawaii, at a high brow restaurant with her family, she proudly paid an immense dinner bill for a Hollywood Giant, whom she had never met— and was left feeling bitter and lame as a result of having received no acknowledgement by him.

Paying that bill, she realized, had nothing to do with generosity (The producer was a bazillionaire and completely untouched by having his check picked up- something he is used to, and does not need), but her own admitted desire for attention/acknowledgement, and hopes to appear as a big shot. She has since declared herself officially not a big shot, in this way, and is able to laugh at herself for foolishly throwing 2k$ at a stranger’s Christmas dinner. Gawd, I adore her. She totally owns (and charms us with) her madness. Mindy Kaling is Wholesome Badass 100%. I can never hear enough, from good people who are glad to openly learn from, share, and laugh at life’s lessons. I have always been pretty good at laughing at and sharing my most horrifying choices and behaviors. It used to be maybe because of a lack of esteem. But now, I think I am appreciating the gifts and freedom of humility—not humiliation, just knowing my size in this world. I am no longer fooled into believing that I might be hot shit or a piece of shit. Practicing humility is allowing me to live as a kinder person— to myself and to others. I learned all about it, for the first time, where? In Recovery, of course!

Night-Time

Even with 10+ years of recovery and spiritual retrieval work (though lately, the doing of the work is minimal and I find myself  right back in survival mode), I continue to lose hours and nights of sleep- rehashing theories on why my sister did what she did, TO me.  I recognize that my neeeeed to understand is a clever way of owning that I will not fully surrender/accept what has happened, repeatedly.  Mentally, I am ready to move TF on, but emotionally, I am bound more tightly to the pain– each time I must interact with my greatest reminder of her—(my boys’ father–my sister’s emotional and moral/soul equivalent).

According to these wise words of Rumi:  “The cure for the pain is in the pain.”  By this measure, I might be quite close to the cure.  I want to learn, grow, and expand from heartache, the most amount, and maybe I already have and and maybe the letting go makes it all too final.  Perhaps I will feel empty and lost without all of my pain. Who would I even be without it? I want to resolve the conflict (within myself—but also pathetically and most unrealistically with my ex husband) and not bypass it. I want peace most especially for our children. I must make peace with some hard shit.

Reminder to Myself:  I do not cause others to do things.  My words and choices certainly may inspire feelings– but cause behaviors, nope.  As I reflect on the few short  honeymoon reunions with my sister between 1992 and 2015, I recall in horrifying detail, her descriptions of (handling) undercutting and icing each of the women and girls in her family, with the exception of one.  Why did she boast those things to me– about sisters in laws, aunts, nieces, cousins, roommates, co-workers too?  Was she flexing at me, warning me to stand down?  I cannot help but marvel at the volumes of unfortunate details (my sister’s justification for demenaing them) I know about females with whom I have had little, if any contact.

She did the things to others.   But nobody ever checked her on it.  Nobody but me.  I wonder how many more ways and times I will need to remind myself of what I now, as an adult, with a program of recovery, am able to understand and articulate — and still not accept. Does acceptance really need to be so challenging and continuous, tho?

Please don't tell me to smile. Photo Text

Smile GDI!

I will not be a person who instructs another to smile.  What even is that? To me, that feels unwholesome— unsafe. I prefer an authentically non-plussed person over a curated smile-wearer or a tone policing controller, directing people on how to arrange their faces. That behavior is not unlike insisting a person wear a jacket when they are not cold. It is aggressive and inappropriate, not happy and not mellow-chill, at all. Also, I do not trust a person who is always wearing a smile. That is not normal, honest, or sane…. says the rarely smiling person who makes no claims to being normal or sane, only to healing and unlearning…practicing Letting Go.

AND—a) Forced or pasted on smiles are not proof of happiness or goodness. b) Happiness isn’t a requirement in honest healthy places.  Happiness IS certainly preferred to the alternative but, like all feelings, it comes and it goes.  Mine—- IT literally vaporizes in the presence of those who demand it.  Poof! Gone in under a second. Just let people be how and who they are. Right?

You would be so pretty if you smiled more“… Really, because you would be so pretty if you STFU and back off. HAAAAAATE IT. And it’s typically not “suggested” in the gentle, caring way. 

When someone says “smile” because it is what they need , it’s ok if you just can’t. Not all of us aspire to excel at performing happiness. Some of us just need to feel our feelings.

Rant over.

A little Mythological Enrichment for those whom have read this far (You’re welcome):

According to Greek legend, Procrustes had an iron bed on which he compelled his victims to lie. Here, if a victim was shorter than the bed, he stretched him by hammering or racking the body to fit. Alternatively, if the victim was longer than the bed, he cut off the legs to make the body fit the bed’s length. In either event the victim died. 

The “bed of Procrustes,” or “Procrustean bed,” has become proverbial for arbitrarily—and perhaps ruthlessly—forcing someone or something to fit into an unnatural scheme or pattern.

I won't be giving a fuck ever again. Fuckology quote

On Loyalty and Abuse

In a speech I heard today, it was said that “Patriotism is not loyalty to the president but to the country (in our case, the democracy)”. That brand of love for our country would allow us to unite in elevating the quality of life for all of the people. As I feel flattened by what is happening politically, I am reminded of the similar system in my family of origin and then marriage. In each, there is a person who declares their own personal agenda as equaling the best interest of the family, even while actively discounting dignity, humanity, and most basic, though differing, needs of some of its members.

Non- reverence to that person, will leave one morally excluded from the group’s conditional protection and inclusion. In this way, there is no room for collective growth or expansion. A strictly Zero-Sum mentality: “If I don’t dominate, destroy, exile one who challenges me, then I lose and they win.” One winner and one loser. Win-win is an impossibility. So, it makes sense to me, why the ongoing political chaos feels triggering AF.

On an almost related note… I have been informed now, of several instances in which one of my sons is punished by his father for revealing (to me–I AM his mother. He betrays no one by turning to me) disturbances during their weeks with him. So, my son shares but feels terrified that I will say something. Requiring emotionally developing children to keep silent secrets and to not honestly communicate pain or difficulty, is damaging–abusive.

Today, something traumatic for one of my sons occurred, actually, I suspect both are traumatized at some level -but only one of them panicked and called me for comfort. He called — hyperventilating — literally unable to regulate his breathing. The other will feel entirely blameless and disinterested in discussing and learning from his part in the event. It is bizarre and painful to observe one of my sons carrying all of the family guilt and shame and the other –none at all. The cycle has not yet been broken.

So not only did the thing happen, a thing which endangered the life of their puppy and my sons, — it was not mentioned or discussed, at all with or by their dad. My son said he felt insane—each acting as if nothing happened and also knowing THAT if he brings it up, he will be charged with creating drama. So if he brings pain to me, he is scolded as a tattle tale/snitch (such bullying language) by his dad –and if he brings it up directly to his father, he is acccused of creating drama. What a gaslighty bullshit situation. He will not be offered comfort or guidance– but diminished. I believe it makes their dad feel non-perfect for me to know that it is super hard at times. I fkn know it and live it. I am so grateful for my comfort with imperfection and vulnerability.

What in the actual fuck? This thing that is being demanded of growing boys, to not discuss the hard things (or else)—is not loyalty or even privacy. It is abuse of power and it makes me (and children) sick. This is like a playbook for HOW TO destroy a person’s sense of self, connection, and reality. Fuck.

Happy New Year

In true Magda- fashion, tired and hungry for my bed, silence, solitude, stillness, and my weighted blanket, I departed our celebration before midnight–AND nobody got even a little bothered or judgy about this. We all just laughed and hugged Good Night and Happy New Year. At 11:42 p.m.

It was lovely. Best New Years Ever (I may have expressed this exact sentiment last year, as well). Chirstmas Eve and Christmas Night were equally chill and without an expectation to rally til midnight.

I am terribly grateful for another year (holidays and special occasions included) with my people, my chosen family. Welcome 2021.

The important thing is that we maintain plausible deniability.

The Art of Plausible Deniability

Sometimes, what it looks like is all anyone (not looking too closely) will see.

Oh look, the wise benevolent docotor is helping so many girls. As I listend to one of Larry Nassar’s vicitm’s describe her repeated violations by him, with her mother often present in the room, I was equally comforted and distraught by the familiarity of her trauma. If your mother or the person you count on to protect you, does not protest or question a thing which compromises you, repeatedly…then it must be ok. Right?

I can now see why my female sibling would believe in the rightness of what she does/did, to me and to those who dare to inconvenience or challenge her. I am owning, claiming the things that I had been required to disown about myself and my lived experience. My authenticity and my voice are my win– fuck assimilation! I am actively learning about non-violent communication: when implemented– winning an argument at the expense of a realtionship is seen as a loss. My sister proudly brings out the biggest of guns to protect her identity. I am just now attempting to retrieve mine–all of it. I am taking extreme ownership over my story and my life. By her code, once you make certian people (primarily her (as an extension of my mother), my uncle, my grandmother) uncomfortable, your belonging is in jeopardy— You are a Jezebel and will be dealt with accordingly – a cautionary tale.

I finally comprehend that skillful use of rhetoric to dominate, out-maneuver, and even dismantle a person is not equivalent to being right, does not render your/my argument better, more true, or more correct. In fact…that type of behavior, those means of “winning” are abusive- even if done while dressed only in white and with your face arranged into a smile.

Let’s just say…. “I am a vile piece of shit”. I am willing to be wrong here, but I feel nearly certain that even if THAT were the case—-that– My sons nor I, nor even their father, deserved what was actively done to wreck and divide us, all.

I am not a POS— though for my first 30, I was a hot mess– raised with distorted beliefs about what is right, true, and just–and possessing little to no healthy relationship or coping skills. Thank gawd my most unwholesome behavior is more than two decades behind me. I am ever grateful that recovery and motherhood have prevented many instances of me saying or doing the thing that can never be taken back. The temptation has been immense.

Ugh- the anger and sadness are exhausting- but natural and required for healing. Healing takes work and time, so much time. Deep sigh.

Wish You Were Here

So Friday evening, after a long week with the boys, so much engagement and so many words, I was spent— and pleased to be draped across Favorite’s couch– with nothing needed or expected of me. Sweet Greg sent a text of his back patio & fire pit, along with the message “wish you were here” –and like a hot potato, — I tossed my phone to Favorite asking “What even am I supposed to say to that?” In under a second she offered me these words: “Looks nice”. It felt a lil assholey, but at least it was true.

The next day, while Greg was focusing intently on a new recipe, he was in the middle of counting out teaspoons of something when I asked; “Is there anything I can do?” He responded calmly – in a completely non-mean, no heat tone: “Yeh, shut the fuck up for a minute while I count these out.” And— I literally felt like dropping my pants.

Poor Sweet Greg. He knows I appreciate when he expresses a need or boundary without heat or anger. It makes me feel safe. We laughed at the insanity of me. I accept and forgive myself for not knowing how to comfortably recieve tender vulnerability and honest bids for connection. I am a work in progress. PS- Sweet Greg learned to say harsh things like STFU from me (over the course of our 5 years) and would probably not say that to any normal person who might feel more offended than charmed. Also, he may be mortified that I wrote about him speaking to me that way.

@ Flotuk The healing process is ugly as hell. It is not bubble baths and aromatherapy. It is accountability which brings guilt. It's getting to the root of your issues which is triggering and intense. Processing trauma often means you have to relive it which isn't easy but it's worth it.

Tell the Truth

Tell the Truth!!  

As a young and developing human, I had consistently recieved messaging that my body was wrong, too brown, too tall, too skinny, too sensitive, too clumsy-  not beautiful, not feminine—not to be desired or desirable. Same with my personality– too bold, too finicky, “overly” sensitive and emotional.

I carried, in this all wrong body, those heavy stories about my unlovability and irredeemability.    

Believing this way made it seem ok to be touched in ways which were unwholesome, unloving, confusing, traumatic—ways which I now recognize to be deeply wrong.  I feel 14 again, wondering: how could this all-wrong body have capacity for hope when it is full with pain, doubt, grief, shame, fear.  I am often stuck– feeling as though I am not nearly enough and simultaneously way more than too much: I am bad- incapable of and unworthy of love and connection.  This has literally been said to me directly and publicly. It went unchallenged, by even me- until…

I believed that my state of deeply and permanently damaged goods was my own doing.  Not only did I imagine, cause, invite, or deserve it—my uninformed reactions were equally sinful.  Self recrimination—seems an appropriate word to use here but I lack the savvy to effectively incorporate it into a meaningful sentence.

I was wretched and it was expressed in no uncertain terms, that I was neither good nor welcome—I did not belong-  I was unwanted–nothing but trouble.  For much of my life, I believed this terrible news, this lie.  Not only did I believe it, my reflexive behaviors affirmed and perpetuated the story of my non goodness.

Good news: I am loved and lovable but I had learned more about causing pain than about healing pain.  I knew how to hate and judge and until recovery, had not experienced healing, hope, or faith. Faith is not a belief system.  Faith is what was left after all of my beliefs were knocked down and I realized that I would still keep going.  I am ever grateful for a program of recovery to catch me and hold me and to offer me faith in something so much bigger than myself and those who elect to discard or diminish me.  

I recently learned that Rachel Held Evans had a sign above her desk which said: Tell the Truth. I definitely plan to order one for prominent display in our home. Being able to discover and to tell my truth, here, without attack, silencing, shaming, or smoke and mirror responses- continues to be essential to my healing and growth as a spiritually developing human and mother.

In this traditionally difficult season of holidays, my sweet son’s birthday and now the anniversary of my mother’s death (and the awful memory of how that was managed) I soothe myself by remembering what I know to be true as well as what I now know to be untrue. As for the holiday season, this too shall pass. hahaha- but seriously.

This week I again speculated what story could have been spun, to get buy in from all of my mother’s family and to justify the arrangements to exclude me. Then I think: Maybe this is how my mother did want it, me on the outside. If so, that is on her. If no, I am sad for the end of her life which was designed to keep us apart until her final days. My pathetically relentless efforts to connect and resolve were collectively ignored and denied. Truth: I did everything I knew to avail myself for the work of family healing. Nothing I did, suggested a desire for anything other. EVER. Healing together and looking at our issues was not mutually desired and never a legitimate possibility though.

Deep sigh–one day at a time, I will continue learning and healing—sharing my truth, my lived experience.