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.
Who do you crave when you are in pain? Who unfailingly welcomes and solicits your unedited truth? Is it the perpetually smiling person dedicated to the optic and insisting that nothing is wrong? Whose music and books touch you deeply? Are they the messages of the politically correct and poised-the judgers and deniers of struggle? If you are sensitive, those people will cause you to become very sick. They will drive in you the need to cry, hide, pretend, disappear, numb, to be someone…
I felt thrilled and a little proud-ish to have enrolled in a class at the local university. I was satisfied by my initiative, planning, execution, arranging time off work, applying for tuition assistance through my company and mostly about becoming a student and learning. And then the shame, because I had not fully understood the nature of graduate work. It is not normal or healthy to feel shame for not knowing a thing. I guess a part of me still worries about what…
Deny, defend, deflect, dilute. I think it is natural to do these things when we are young and full of not knowing how to act right, particularly when we are feeling bad about something, maybe afraid, angry, sad or ashamed. We might do something unwholesome and then naturally prefer to evade shame and punishment. Some people, from early on, choose to say or do literally anything to avoid unpleasant consequences—unwilling to acknowledge, admit, accept, and amend. These seem to be the same…
Altruistic Donor is the term for a living donor who chooses to part with an organ for an unknown and unspecified recipient. Totally fascinated by words and language, I frittered some time contemplating how much the term applies to me. I am willing to donate a portion of my liver to a complete stranger, but would how would I feel if I were to learn my sister or ex needed some liver? Well, of course I would for my boys'…
