On Khloe Kardashian’s Revenge Body
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 
a bitter-sweet reality to be free of the dynamic. Recovery changed me at a cellular level, allowing me to unlearn things; like believing it acceptable to attack people’s personalities or character when they disturb me. What a menacing way to be in the world. I recall how I would hear a fantastic insult and mentally bookmark it for future use-100% sure that attacking and diminishing were necessary and inevitable responses to disturbance. I would find someone to blame for my discontent, talk shit about, and go after them. I forgive myself that♥ . Now that I know better, I choose to do better and to avoid those behaving in this way. As an adult, I am free to choose space from the raging of others. As a mother, it is my responsibility to model practices of recovery and serenity.
While grubbing Greg’s tasty taco/nacho “NYE dinner” – for no good reason, I clicked an email notification from my mother, 
When a person touches us and it feels wrong, IT IS. 100% unacceptable– to be touched in ways that feel yucky, unwanted, unwholesome. IT happening, is the beginning. After the moment passes, the wreckage persists- governing all that will follow. My downward spiral continued until…. I realized I could no longer continue suffering, struggling, thinking, fearing as I had for decades. The 
incomprehensible demoralization. I became “inexplicably” hysterical while she remained artfully buttoned up. And from there it unfolded. The impossible girl who can’t cope and the seemingly unruffled older sister, going along as if her only real issue is her troubling sister. She scored a shit-load of traction off of my hysteria. In fact, it 
Dear Mom,