The patterns I still carry, the ways old experiences can show up in the present, and my effort to sort out what I am remembering from what is actually happening now. Recovery, pattern recognition, regulation, and slowly gathering new evidence.
"Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know." — Pema Chödrön
With all of the therapy, writing, reading, reflection, and somatic work, a lot is coming up for me. Memories. Patterns. Correlations that I had not previously made. I am finding that this process is much less like the discovery of something new and much more like noticing something that has been there all along. I would describe it as so much stuff from the past lying in a tangled heap on a closet floor, too overwhelming to tackle or ignore.…
When the aggressor occupies the protected position, the injury is not limited to the original harm. The protection becomes part of the injury.
Something began when I was four years old, and it was reinforced, repeated, normalized, and sustained over the course of decades. The injury wasn't only the abuse itself. It was also the fact that the person who harmed me was favored, protected, believed, accommodated, and repeatedly restored to a position of legitimacy while I was not. Something bad happened, and the person who did it continued to occupy a protected position while my reality (moments of distress) was judged, minimized,…
A single healthy tree stands amid a dying forest, reminding us that isolated moments can be beautiful, but patterns reveal what is real.
Sheesh. How many more times will I have to navigate this particular circuit before I have learned everything I can from it? It almost feels as though I have been given a false map. There are things people say that, if I allow them to guide me, will take me completely off course because they don't align with reality, their actions, or my lived experience. I am starting to recognize that the real story lives inside the patterns. Words do…
Some relationships don't fall apart because of conflict. They slowly lose intimacy because conflict is never acknowledged, leaving no opportunity for repair. I've been thinking about how perfection, image management, and emotional avoidance can quietly replace accountability, making genuine connection increasingly difficult.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about the c-word...."conflict " and also--avoidance and repair. The archetype, to whom I have gravitated to like a moth to a flame, seems to have little room for either. Being non-pleased feels unacceptable. Causing displeasure feels unacceptable. Being imperfect feels unacceptable. So concerns don't get raised directly. They leak out sideways through passive aggression, distance, stonewalling, or the preTENSE that everything is fine. The script for that: All good. Everything is fine. No…
