Summer-Blue

Small and new to the world, she looked up and found that the sky was summer-blue. The brilliance of it took her breath away. 

Such a vibrant, living sky! 

She stared at it with wonder, knowing this was where she was meant to be. All day she played in the azure glow.

And then it was night and the sky grew cold and black. 

She went inside and closed the door against the longing, mourning the summer-blue.

A little bigger and a little less new, she opened the door. She took just one step beyond the door, but nowhere was the summer-blue. A vast storm covered the world, horizon to horizon.

Gray and swirling.

Anger rumbling.

A flash of terror!

She slammed the door.

But she remembered the summer-blue.

In dreams and reverie, the warm memory of the azure glow ached inside her.  She pushed it aside, aside, aside and then, one day, she opened the door again. She wasn't so brave as to step outside, but even from the doorway she saw no summer-blue. Instead, the sky was dressed in white, attended by a frigid wind. Snow swirled and blew so hard she could barely close the door to its frantic appeal.

This time she shuttered the windows, closing herself more securely in her safe little room. She painted the ceiling blue. This is the sky, she told herself. Here, it will never change. I will always be safe.

She closed her eyes and waited for the warmth of that still-remembered glow. When it didn't come, she became one with the ache and told herself there was nothing beyond the door.

She became an adult within the shuttered windows and a closed door. Even as the seasons passed, she was safe. Even as her inner sky yellowed and pealed around the edges, she was safe. Even as the longing grew, she was safe.

And desperately miserable.

And wondered why?

Wasn't her inner sky every bit as good as that distant memory?
Didn't she have everything she required to survive?

Wasn't this room with its perfectly shuttered windows and impenetrable door exactly what she needed?

“Outside isn’t safe,” she told herself. “I have blue right here. Right here in my safe little room.”

She scowled at the dull and lifeless ceiling and then at her own reflection growing 

Anger

Longing

Despair

And it filled her up and her misery grew and finally she said, “Fine!" She flung the door wide and stepped through her fear, through her gritted teeth, through her resolve. She walked through the cold and through the darkness and through the constant barrage of her own misleading mind and then she saw it.
Had it been there all along?
The sky was summer-blue. And she remembered 

Light

Warmth

Life

And fear.
Fear was the illusion that kept her safe and she was so afraid to see. Too afraid to know know the summer-blue. For knowing it was to risk a return of the cold and the dark and the painful wind.

She returned to her safe little room and closed the door, falling deep into her delusion of safety in the one place where nothing would ever truly be safe... in her own private and unidentified hell. 

Soul Retrieval - Pieces of the Puzzle

When I was a teenager, there were times when I would look in the mirror and not see myself. If I wanted to fix my hair or look at some other part, close-up, I could see that part, but I couldn’t step back and see what I really looked like. I can’t explain exactly what this was like any better than that. I remember knowing that my reflection was there, moving a hand to see it move, but also being aware that I was not seeing it as it was.

During the Soul Retrieval, yesterday, I was told there would be a mirror. I turned and saw the mirror and for a moment I felt terrified that when I looked in the mirror I would not see anything. I knew I was really sitting on a couch in an office on a sunny June day and at the same time I was entrenched in the dream of the room on a crystal mountain, with the mirror. Part of me wondered what she would say if I told her I didn’t see anything. Part of me wanted to open my eyes in the real world and not look at the spirit-mirror.
But, I had to know.

It was a relief when I looked and saw it was just me. I look as I do in my head, younger than I am, less detailed, perhaps, but still it looked like me. I knew it was not really me I was looking at. It was both more and less than one would see in the “real world”. In a way, it was very much like staring into the “hole in the soul” as I wrote about it in this story.

Then she said something about missing pieces. I don’t know exactly what she said because it seems as if I wasn't hearing the words, but was understanding the concepts without hearing.

I looked at the mirror and the area around my abdomen faded out. There it was, in the middle of me, a missing piece just as she had suggested.
Again, the hole in the soul idea flashed through my mind.

She asked me if I could find the missing piece. I knew I could. I knew exactly where it was, and in the next instant, I was standing there.

This was so much like doing the DNMS work with C, with two big differences.

One is that when I am working on an issue with C, she will ask me where I am in whatever memory is being triggered. When I know, I am instantly there – just like I was yesterday during the Soul Retrieval. However, with C I always AM the missing piece. I relive the events as if they are happening in the present, as if I am that little child again.

Yesterday, it was more like standing in the room, watching.

The second difference is that while it felt safer, or more in control, to approach these pieces as an empowered adult, in another way I felt less in control during the Soul Retrieval than I do with C. When C works with me, I feel as if I am leading all the time. With this deeper hypnoses, or guided journey, I felt as if I was being pulled along.

I’m not sure how much of this is just me, how much is the trust level I have with C after two-and-a-half years of working together, and how much is the actual processes, but that is how it was for me - as if I was being led and I ws never quite sure where I was going to be taken.

So - its all about control! I saw C, last night, several hours after the Soul Retrieval,a nd when I said something about this control issue, she laughed and commented on my codependent nature. I had to smile at that. You mean I'm not supposed to want to be in control all the time?

This is a somewhat edited, tamed-down version of what I saw when I went looking for the first missing piece:

As if from above, I see the bedroom I had when I was growing up. I see myself as a toddler, lying in bed. My father is standing in front of me. Behind him, I see the missing piece. She is watching. In her wide-eyed stare I see confusion and terror and so much sadness. I reach down to this little one, standing behind my father as he looked when I was little.

I pick her up. I hold her close for a while, and then I look at her face. I tell her she is safe, it is safe now. I promise that I will always keep her safe.

The Rainbow Lady asks me what gift this missing piece has for me.

I say, Innocence.

Next, she tells me to breathe through my mouth, in a certain way, to bring the missing piece into me. I do the breathing, expecting that this is how this piece will come home, but that is not what happens. It isn’t in the breath, at all. The breathing is like a doorbell, but it isn’t the door. As soon as I start the breathing, I feel this little one – who it still seems I am holding, right now – absorb into me.

She is right here, in front of me, with me.

When I tried to explain this to C, last night, I was saying something about how these pieces were right with me, now.

She asked, “they weren’t before?”

I said, “yes, but now it’s different. Before, it was as if they were behind me, following me. Now I feel like they are right here,” and I put my hands on my arms in an embrace.

I can still feel them… right here.

I went back to the mirror three more times.

The second time, the missing piece was in my throat. When I find this piece she was also two-years-old. This time, she was standing outside the cabinet where I hid one night. Inside the cabinet, I saw myself curled up on top of the extra baby blankets my mother kept in there. Outside, I sensed that this is when I first knew that I could not say what was real.

That night, when I was two, was the beginning of this difficulty I have in expressing myself verbally – and maybe it is another key to unlocking that flow of words, for me. While I can write just about anything, in person you would probably be surprised by how little I am actually able to say. It is frustrating how the words just shut off, how they refuse to make the journey from my mind to my mouth, and how – if I try to force it – they disappear from my mind as well.

This is what I try to explain to the Rainbow Lady when she asks what gifts this piece has.
She is easy to understand.
She knows how to be safe.
She is good, and none of this is her fault.
There is no shame here, and it is safe to talk.

I turned the watcher away from the little sleeping child in the cabinet. I picked her up and brought her home.

The third time I went to the mirror, it was my hands that were missing. At first, when I went looking for the missing piece, I saw only a piano. Gradually, I realized there was a twelve-year-old version of me looking at the piano. She didn’t want to touch it. Inside her, I sensed that she did not want to be heard. Unlike the two-year-old who was afraid to say what she needed to say, the twelve-year-old’s silence was motivated more by anger than fear. It felt like an attack.
In her narrowed eyes and tight-lipped expression, I sensed stubbornness that I remember well.
You will never know me.
I am not going to let you in.
I have gifts to share, but you will never hear them.

And who is the “you” in those statements? It is the whole world. My mother used to tell me I always looked like I was mad at the world… and in this adolescent staring at the piano, that is exactly what I found. If I can really get her to the place where she feels safe, she can give me so much.

I have something to offer, but I am not going to let you have it, yet.

I did bring this one home, but her stubbornness is not gone. I feel it is going to take some coaxing to get to the gifts she has. What she brings is confidence to express myself and to allow my talents and gifts to be heard.

The final trip to the mirror was different. Instead of a missing piece, I saw a gray area. At first, I thought that was because this piece was closer to coming home, but that is not true. I believe this piece is not really ready to come home. Interestingly, she is the one I am the most aware of, right now, but instead of sensing her calmly inside, I feel as if she is clinging tightly to me, terrified I am going to let go. I’m not sure what I have to do to make her feel safe.

When I looked in the mirror that fourth time, the gray I saw was on my legs. I knew it was about the time when I was sick, when I was six-years-old. I didn’t see just one place, or one image, I saw a bombardment of images of me at age six.

The doctor touching my legs.
Screaming and squirming and then being held down so they could draw blood or give me shots.
Lying in bed, waiting for someone to come get me because I couldn’t walk.
Lying on the sofa in front of the TV, alone.
Needing to go to the bathroom, but no one was around to carry me there.
Annoyed expressions when someone would be saddled with the task of taking me to the bathroom.
Waiting as long as I could to ask.
Then waiting some more.
The doctor touching my legs.
Screaming and squirming and then being held down so they could draw blood or give me shots.
Needing to go to the bathroom, but no one was around to carry me there.

It was swirling around in my head, and I started to panic. I tried to open my eyes, but it was hard. I blinked and the room literally swam in front of me.
I hadn't realized I was lying down. I'd been sitting, last I knew.
I saw the Rainbow Lady.
She said something.
I said something.
I don't know what.
I sat up.
I felt embarrassed and agitated at the concern on her face.
Telling her I needed to use the bathroom certainly didn't make me feel any less embarrassed.
She got up and moved the curtain from the door, and I went out into the bright hall.

In the bathroom, I wondered how I was going to explain this. I felt really mortified and wondered if I’d screwed up the entire thing. There were still forty-five minutes left in the appointment time.
Is that going to be enough time to get back to where I was?
Do I want to?

While I washed my hands, I looked in the mirror.
It was just me – older than I expected, looking tired and a little afraid.
But just me.

I went back in the room.

She asked, “Was it too intense?”
I tried to explain about when I was sick, when I couldn’t walk for two months, how helpless I felt. How I always felt like a burden to whoever was stuck taking care of me, and how the worst part was having to go to the bathroom because I couldn't go myself and no one wanted to be bothered with it and how I saw this six-year-old there and I had to help her...
all the thoughts came out in some kind of jumble that she seemed to understand.

I still felt embarrassed.

She said, “You spoke up for her, and you took care of her.”

Yes. That is what I did.
That’s exactly what I did.

I sat down, closed my eyes, and soon I was back to the six-year-old. I found her easily enough and when I picked her up she held on and I felt how she’s been waiting for me, all this time.

In a way, it hasn’t been long, for her, because she is still six, stuck in time… but in a way, it was a very long time because two months of not being able to walk, and then having to relearn how to walk is a very long time to a six-year-old.

I brought her back, but as I said, this part is different. I know I have more work to do with this one. It’s important that I do this work because she has a very important gift.

Personal power.

Time was short, by the time I held the six-year-old. The Rainbow Lady went through the rest of the things, and it felt a little quick, in a way. Even so, I knew I had done enough for one day. I was emotionally drained and physically felt as if I really had climbed a mountain. When she talked about other missing pieces, she said something about them all coming home, and for a little bit I saw that twinkling, like it had been in my dream. Spirit fireflies danced over my head... and some came towards me, but others stayed where they were.

I went back to the purple meadow, and she played a song I know. It is one by Shaina Noll, which C has played before, and I found it very comforting.

Then she counted up to five.
The world came back a little more gently than it had when I'd suddenly pulled my self out of it to go to the bathroom.

She asked how it was.
I told her it was intense.
She said, “you did a lot.”

Yes… I did.
It was a wonderful experience and I’m glad I did it.
It doesn't feel like this Soul Retrieval was complete, and maybe there is no such thing. There is no one thing we can do to get back what we've lost along the way. It's all a process, a lot of hard work that brings about a gradual shift towards our true selves. For me, this was a special piece of the puzzle that I will always remember, and I might even try it again, someday.

What Happens TO you Does Not Define You

Yesterday, two different people talked to me about being afraid of finding out what “really” happened in childhood.

I remember that fear. For most of my life, I told myself I didn’t want to know. I convinced myself that it didn’t matter what happened. I knew things were not right. I knew I'd been controlled, enmeshed, restricted, held back… what difference did it make what the details were?

Now that the worst is behind me, I'm a big advocate of “knowing”. I believe people have to decide when they’re ready, it shouldn’t be forced on anyone, but I wish it was more commonly known how helpful it is to "know".

We are each made up of a unique recipe. The ingredients vary,the way they were added varies - the way they were mixed and prepared, the care or lack of care - all vary from person to person. This makes us each an exceptional dish with subtle flavors and complex textures that can’t be found anywhere else.

We have a sense of which parts of the dish we like best and which parts we would prefer to push to the edge of the plate and ignore… but if we don’t know the recipe, how can we possibly make more of the good stuff?

That's part of what I got from therapy in two and a half years - I learned that there is good inside me, and am coming to understand how to magnify those things while diminishing the things I would rather live without -
but the biggest part is fear.

I have been afraid for as long as I can remember. I was so scared all the time that it had become my normal – I hardly knew there was any other way to be. Call it nerves, anxiety, worry, concern, apprehension dread, or panic, its all just fear.

Why am I less afraid now? Why does the world seem more manageable since I have “remembered and processed” my past?

Imagine you are going to horror movie. You are expecting it to be scary, and it is. All through the movie, the suspense builds. The monster lurks in the darkness. You hear the screams of those who have to face it. You see the look of terror on their faces, but the monster hides in the shadows.

The movie nears the end. You know, any moment, you are finally going to see the awful creature. You scrunch back in your seat, cowering in anticipation.

Then, the moment of truth.
The monster is right there, in front of you!
Look at it!
It's... it's
It's a guy wearing a stupid costume.

That’s the thing – the unknown is scarier than the reality.
It just is. Our minds create so much more than the real world ever could.

The thing that goes bump in the night can't hurt you in the daylight!

So, I'm glad I've made this much progress and pushed through all I've faced, but I can’t tell my friends to take that step. I know that if they watch the end of the movie they will see that they are stronger than any monsters they find, but it has to be their choice, their decision, or else they will just close their eyes and miss the moment of truth.

All I can do is give them support - heartfelt support, because I have been there.

Yesterday, when one of my friends was talking about not wanting to face her demons, she also said, "I prefer to be around other crazy people because I don’t have to pretend to be something I’m not.”

I told her, “You don’t need to hide who you are. You’re awesome. You just need to remember that the things that happened TO you do not DEFINE you!”

And that is the core of it, isn’t it? Yes, the recipe is important – all the things that have happened have made us who we are and all the things we do with it now are going to create our future.

But, the monster isn’t the chef! He’s just a guy in a costume. Once we see him for what he is, we can kick his ugly ass out of the kitchen and create the gourmet meal we were meant to be.

Update

I had a remarkable session with my therapist this afternoon. I needed it. Yesterday was a lost day. I was in and out of myself all day, and it felt like the world was closing in.

A lot of my anxiety was being triggered by my therapist leaving town. It isn't the first time she's left town since I've been seeing her. It isn't the first time I've totally freaked out about it, either, but I think she and I both thought that I was in good enough shape that I wouldn't havesuch a tremendous melt-down this time.

So along with the anxiety, I felt like a complete failure all day because I wasn't able to pull myself out of the downward spiral. Everyone I talked to was telling me I needed to be more self-sufficient, that I couldn't always be dependent on someone else. Every time I heard that I felt more anxious, more like a failure and steadily grew more angry.

Can't they see that I am more self sufficient?
Does anyone realize that it is really hard all the time and that ninety percent of the time I am doing it on my own??

I don't know what I wanted as I wandered from one source to another looking for comfort, yesterday. What can anyone else do to pull me out of that hole? I can say that the one thing that I found the most reassuring was when I talked to a friend on a support site and told her how I was feeling. I said I was doing it a lot, but I just couldn't do it all the time.

She said, "I understand that. Nobody can do it all the time."

I think my anxiety level dropped about fifty percent just to hear someone tell me that I really was not expected to do it on my own all the time.

Thanks to everyone who was around for me yesterday. It meant a lot.

Feeling

Once upon a time, I lived in a place where it hurt too much to feel. Now that I'm beginning to feel, it's like living inside a tornado. Emotions swarm  and I have to decide which ones are appropriate to express. Because I am so inept at this, I try to deal with my emotions when I'm alone, but recently something has been coming up that I can't keep to myself. It is an intensified love for my kids and my husband.

I was really still a child when I met my husband, although I wouldn't have said so then. I was seventeen and he was at the sage old age of nineteen. And, he saved me. I had one foot out the door and the other in the grave. With no will to live and no good reason to die, I was floundering and waiting until I couldn't tread water any longer and could just give up.

And, oh yes, I am aware of how codependent we were in our need to save and be saved. To me it seemed like the magical fairy tale really was coming true.

Regardless, I've kept sturdy walls up between my real self and any other living thing, now allowing myself to experience the full presence of love for anyone.

Lately, I hear this phrase in my head all the time:

I love you.
It isn't sexual or physical at all, and it is definitely not the casual love one might put at the end of a letter. It's strong and innocent and it fills me up. It's startling. It comes from inside me, but to whom is it directed?
Sometimes it seems to be coming from me and to me
Sometimes it feels like it's intended for a Universal Power, which some call God
Sometimes it feels as if it's coming from God and is intended for me.
And then I suddenly find this little child inside and I am stuck again. Is this phrase from her? Is it for her?
Finally I settle on, all of the above.

The more I feel this love inside me, the more I want to express it to those around me. I'm still learning how to express my feeling. I just don't know how people do it.

But I gave it a shot. I know my husband would be amazed a the trepidation I felt as I readied myself to say the words I've said a million times, but to say them with full knowledge of their meaning and full presence to my heart. I said the words, and he said them back. Was there a moment of acknowledgement in his eyes? Did he feel something... different?

I feel as if I'm building a skyscraper with all the work I'm doing, and it may come tumbling down around me at any moment... but I can tell you, right at this moment, the view is awesome.

Sunflower Dreams

February 21, 2012

I'm deleting the text of this post as I write it into my memoir. I decided to leave the two images I included in the post, and not delete it altogether. The reason for this is that I value the comments from my readers very much. The comments are still visible, at the bottom of the post.