The Brief: How I Survived Childhood
My manuscript is currently pages of memories and insights. No order, just what I am remembering during the moments I write. I read that writers should …
Junk in my Trunk
Between Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and an article I read in The Mission Newsletter, I am writing for the sake of writing. Because that’s how …
A Frenchman and a Child
A Saboteur. It sounds like a handsome, romantic, traveling Frenchman. Oh, how I wish it were. After two decades of shitting on anything good that came …
…that which bring healing.
I am reading The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok. Her memories take shape as a.house or maybe a castle. Nevertheless, they take shape. I feel close …
Belonging
It’s the grown-up things that scare me the most. Keeping up a house, being a wife, getting out of bed in the mornings. All are on …
Rules to be Written
I finished House Rules tonight, underlining and scribbling notes in the margins because I couldn’t find my highlighter. I saw my family members in hers, Rachel …
Ramblings about Growth and Struggle
Can there be growth without struggle? I switch back and forth between contentment, anger, and sadness. One constant is that I always feel blessed. How can …
#7 and #8
My reading of Surviving a Borderline Parent by Kimberlee Roth and Freda B. Friedman, PH.D., LCSW has continued. Here are excerpts I connected with. Ongoing or …
Wandering through the Woes
I have these fears about my mother, irrational maybe, but based on her past behavior nothing would surprise me anymore. Actually, I think she could still …
Got Anger?
I had a revelation in a counseling session a couple weeks ago. For the first time, my counselor did the EMDR method. It was odd at …
Gratitude Season
It’s gratitude season for me. I have been recognizing all that I am blessed with and how, no matter how severe my depression and challenging motherless …
And this too shall pass
“May God have mercy on your soul,” my mother said. The bee sting is over. I’ve come to peace with her words. Like a Borderline, she …
May God Have Mercy on Your Soul
These are the words my mother left me with after finding me on Etsy. ETSY! How she found me can only be due to her stalker-rific …
Learning to be Loved
Most of my life I have steered clear of my sisters’ dad’s family. When we would go and visit the aunts and uncles and cousins, I …
Symptoms of BPD
I’ve done a bit more reading of Surviving a Borderline Parent by Kimberlee Roth and Freda B. Friedman , PH.D., LCSW. My last two readings were …
Struggle Forward
Struggle: this is a word I am familiar with. Sometimes too familiar, sometimes way too familiar. Hourly I find myself asking, “Will my struggle always be …
You are always enough.
I bought a journal off of Amazon with these words. My counselor and I are working on this concept – I’m good enough where I am. …
The Voice of Forgiveness
I recently listened to a guided meditation. There was one meditative point I have not been able to get out of my head. “Whatever you feel, …
The Identified Patient
One of the things I love about blogging, even though I am in my beginning stages and have a very small following, is that I can …
Revisiting the Past for a Better Future
Wow. How much personal work I have done! I am reading my hand-written journaling from 2011, and I did much writing during that year. And understandable …
My Mother and Domestic Violence
Writing a Memoir 101, a workshop I’m taking, is helping to strengthen my confidence as a writer and why I am worth reading. The book emphasizes …
Steps in All Directons
Sometimes I feel like I take 10 steps forward and then 2 steps back. And while I’m still moving forward and making progress, it’s those 2 …
Great-Grandparents: My Saving Grace
Knowing I would see Mam-ma and Pap-pa saved me from completely drowning in the trauma surrounding me. They provided me with a refuge away from my …
Depression Disguised/Disguised Depression
It’s true, I am healing from consequences I experienced due to my choices as an adult. I’m not blaming everything on my childhood. A lot of …
The 7 Types of Negative Parental Mirrors
I decided to continue on with my reading of Beverly Engel’s Healing Your Emotional Self”. It’s painful to read. It brings back many bad memories. During …
Nouwen Again
As I grow sleepy from my nighttime medication, I felt the need to pick up a Nouwen book from my book collection, to get some sense …
Accept the kindness from your inner self, and share your journey to nourish your mind and body, and yours alone
I am part of a community. A community of writers, and they all remind me of me. I can be myself. It’s still scary, of course. …
Bridal Shower Boundaries
But there she was, coming up to hug me, showering me with superficial comments about how long my hair is and how good I look. And …
Pretzels Before Pain
“You are just like mom!” my or-so-I-thought-confidante sister yells at me. Says the girl screaming at me because I said she was stressing me out by …
Sore, Not Soar
“Sometimes you have to find your wings on the way down,” I once heard someone say. Hopeful words if I hadn’t already hit the ground. Where …