Tag Archives: women

No means No

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Facebook is funny.  A while ago, I saw a picture of my ex-wife.  We don’t talk or get along right now and I don’t know if I should have hope that we will.  Time will tell.

This picture was amazing.  She was beaming ear to ear and she looked so happy.  I smiled.  When you are breaking each other’s hearts and breaking up, you don’t see a lot of smiles and I hadn’t seen her smile in what seems forever.  It doesn’t happen around me and I have to accept that.  But it’s beautiful.

She was standing in front of a VW Bus.  Apparently, she bought it after we broke up.  I had told her that if she bought a VW Bus that I would leave her.  I’ve had nothing but miserable experiences associated with them: from car accidents to getting my head puked on.  They are stuffed with horse hair and they smell like horses.  I hate them.   She sucked it up and went without.

There were things I wanted, that she said no to.  I sucked it up and went without.

Seeing that picture of her was amazing, because she was standing in front of a big, bright shiny YES.  And her smile said, YES.  And I cried because I stared at that picture of her in her shiny moment of yes and thought about 12 years of NO.  When she and I had denied each other various things, moments and events because of our fear.

I was packing for the move last night and I had an item that I bought a long time ago that used to represent hope.  But it had been denied so many times, that I threw it away because I realized that now it represented rejection to me.  A symbol is a symbol, the hope is in me.  I don’t need to carry an albatross.  It was not an actual albatross.

We’re both engaged now.  I am so much happier.  I am practicing YES all of the time: to me, my new partner, my path, my potential, my healing, my art.  E and I say a lot of yes and we have a good plan, but that plan generally leaves room for whatever then next most awesome thing is.

I hope she’s also getting YES and giving herself yes.  I hope that smile isn’t just for the camera and is there a lot, because it’s beautiful.  I’m glad she got that bus.  And I’m glad that I’ve finally learned that it’s just a thing.  Just a thing and it’s far more important to make your partner feel heard and loved.  It was so much easier for us to react on our fear and shut the other one down.

That isn’t and can’t be my life anymore.  I am cultivating an expansive YES.  And that is really scary sometimes.

ever since June 3rd

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I’ve had an email in my inbox that I’m terrified to read.  Turns out I’m not the only one who writes about the pain of the church.  One of the other people wrote their story and emailed it to me.  And I’m totally gonna read it.  But I’m scared.

I guess, I feel that their pain will be more real if I read it.  Maybe, it’s easier to think that it’s easier to contain if I’m the only one talking.  Maybe it’s cause I’m a Leo.

A double click will keep my commitment.  I feel like such a hypocrite, publishing tomes of my memories and not being able to read theirs.  But when I was showering, I thought about something else.  It’s bigger than me.  I think that reading their story will make mine times two. And open an exponential door into a monstrous house of pain.

If I hurt this much and they hurt this much – and there were 40 families.  That’s just too much.  It’s too big.  I feel like it’s opening the front cover of a really big book.

I also feel like this whole thing is a mystery.  I hear so many stories about how the church ended, how it crumbled.  But I don’t know 100% because I’m the one who walked away.  I got disowned by my family and excommunicated, yes I engineered it.  And yes that played a big part in exposing a lot of the BS going on.  But I’ve learned there were so many other factors at play.

So, after walking away from rubble it’s scary to walk back in and excavate and see what really went down and what the damage was.

But, dang I feel like a hypocrite for not being able to read that email.

outside talking to the outside looking inside

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Recently, I had a phone conversation with somebody who is the best friend of one of the people from the church.  (You found my blog online.  Now you are in it… Hope you don’t mind…)

But she’s been friends with the woman from the church since before the church.  And she knew all of these things that had happened.  She knew people, names, had socialized with some of us.  She knew my mom.  I heard what it was like for her to be the best friend of someone in a cult.

How scary, it must have been for her.  She walked a delicate balance because she didn’t want to drive her friend away.  She was a delicate anchor.

It made me think of the person I met before I left the church who told me that what I was experiencing might be abuse.  She was very gentle.  She knew that if she came at me passionately that I was freak out and shut down and run away.  I am forever grateful for her intuition that helped me find a way out of the church.

It was amazing to hear her talk about it.  Validating in a lot of ways, because what happened was so weird.  And sometimes it feels like a bizarre dream that took up the first half of my life and haunts the second half.  She talked about the cult de sac where so many people from the church lived and how some realtor listed it as hot property because it always sold so fast.  They didn’t know all of the demand was driven  by a cult trying to buy into the same area, and that once the church was gone the demand dried up as the families dispersed.

She talked about one of the women in the church, who has a very special place in my heart.  But she saw a completely opposite side of her.  And of course she would.  Because she doesn’t know that that woman was my very first dance teacher when I was five years old and she’s the one that gave me the keys to my soul’s freedom.  She was also my brother’s first art teacher and although the Army crushed my brother’s arm, he’s still an amazing artist.

There was anger in her voice and that made sense too.  The same anger that is in the voice of a lot of my friends.  The anger of “WHY DID THIS HAPPEN TO SOMEONE I LOVE”.

It was a good talk.  It was a hard talk.  I was proud of myself because when it got too triggery, I set a boundery and we moved on.  That for me is progress.   But, it really opened my eyes to the damage of the church.  The friends and family that were cut off from loved ones because of this cult.  Because of the spiritual abuse and the forced isolation.

I still have so much trouble reaching out to my blood family, because I see them as a them and not a me.  I am trying so hard to change that in me.  That and something called ambivalent attachment disorder, which is something you get when the people who are supposed to keep you safe do so only some of the time so it’s not reliable.

OMG TMI

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“Really, Suzi?  Wow.”

I’ve heard it a million times.

TMI!!!

I thought of this when I was blogging yesterday about what do you tell a client about PTSD.  What do you have to tell a client or a boss about a trauma, a disorder or a mental illness?  I don’t know.  Mine makes me kinda flippy outty and tactless and times.  There’s the crying.  People kind of notice.  There’s the good days where I’m not triggered.  Or the OK days where I can bottle it down into a nice little coal in my gullet.

But gullet coals aside…  Why the oversharing?  Why the saying too much?  It’s been hard on relationships because I’ll be out to dinner and the start a relationship with…”so the other day in bed…”  Keeping it classy.

So, I was thinking about it, and talking (too much jk) about it.  And then I went to therapy and danced and screamed about it, and it hit me.  Not literally.   But the cult maintained control over us by brainwashing us into over-confessing everything.  We were trained to tell every thought and every feeling, or we would feel awful-nauseous.  If we ever saw someone from the church and had a bad thought about them and didn’t tell them, it was a sin and we had to tell them before the next communion or it was like the sin was locked in forever.

By making us a self policing congregation it really cut down on enforcement.  Which is actually good business automation practice if you think about it-but back to the cult…

So, I am in pain if I allow myself privacy.  I feel like I am lying to you if I know something that I haven’t told you.  It’s misery.  And if you confess before something gets found out the punishment is somewhat lessened.  There is a constant paranoia scan in my head that is looking for wrongs committed…

So, this over-confessing still makes sense.  I’ve adapted it a little.  In the past few years, Ive been more jokey about it so that I can still make sure that I’ve said everything but in a jokey way so that I don’t get looked at like I’m a martian all the time.

I’m practicing privacy now.  Which is one of the reasons I’ve been so silent on the blog.  I’ve been evaluating again: what do I want to say?  Why do I want to say it?  What do I want to get out of this?

And so I don’t know that I know what I want.  But I know I have more to say.  And this is my forum.

Job Interview Fail

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So, I am in a job interview and it’s for a job I could totally rock.  I am being interviewed by a man and a woman, they own the company.  I know it’s going to be an interesting interview ego-wise, because the job is taking over something she’s created and nurtured for eight years.

They say, “So you’ve owned your own business?”

“Yes”

“What lessons have you taken away from that?”

“Well, you’ve got to learn to separate your creation from your self worth.  You’ve got to learn what you thrive at and delegate the rest.  You’ve got to find balance where you can.  And don’t start a business with someone you are married to.”

They shift uncomfortably.

I say, “So, you two are married?”

yup.  I say, “hmmmm.  Am I right?”  He nods and she shakes her head no.

“So should I just show myself the door?

They said no, but I didn’t get a call back either.

 

problems with authority 1

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You may not have noticed, but sometimes I have trouble with authority.  Most recently this played out with my personal trainer where she said, come in twice before our next appointment-do these things or “you’ll be punished”.  She couldn’t have been more playful when she said it.

I even wanted to come in.  But I swear that phrase triggered me and my “fuck you shoes” were glued to the floor and I couldn’t go.  I said about a thousand times, I need to go to the gym.  I wanted to go.  But I couldn’t get there.  Why couldn’t I just get off my ass?

I felt weak and dumb.  I didn’t feel like I was “rebelling”.  I just felt like there was a force field between me and there.  Like I couldn’t get there.  I realized that between doing something or taking a punishment, I will take my autonomy and their punishment every time just because I can.  To prove my freedom now.

But seriously, I’m 35.  They aren’t going to get me anymore.  Half of my brain knows that, if I hold my head to the side and smack it, will my lizard brain get it?   It gets exhausting trying to prove myself to them, especially since they aren’t there anymore.  And since what I was rebelling against was healthy for me and something I wanted.

This is one of the consequences of emotional and physical abuse.  Now that the SCARY is internalized the problems with authority and internalized and I have to be at the gym in 42 minutes explaining how we’re going to have to come up with different language so that I can get my ass to the gym while I work on the cobwebs in this new dark corner that’s been lit up for me.  And not feel like a jerk or a delicate flower or make her feel like a jerk.

all you need is love 3

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Trust

Based on the emotional work that I have been doing, I have been working to rebuild a loving relationship with my parents.  And, it’s been really amazing.  Pain has been brought up, but also a rush of sweet memories.

There was a lot of happiness in my childhood that fear and rage had blocked out.  Sitting with them as adults and hearing their stories of the cult.  Realizing that they were more than 10 years younger than I am now when it started.

I recently sent them a letter sharing something very intimate and delicate and hoping for a good response, trusting in the love and forgiveness that we have been building.  I wish I could copy their response here, but it’s too precious too me.

All I can tell you is that when I got their response, burst into tears.  I felt like I was in a warm pool.  E immediately wrapped around me.  I was sobbing.  It was so sweet, so pure, so loving.  It was so good.  When I could finally talk, I said “This is love”.

He said, “yes”.

I feel like armor is falling off of me.  Which has made me very sensitive: this has it’s positives and it’s negatives.  But for the first time in my life I’m not scared to talk to my parents.  I have no secrets, nothing to hide and I feel perfectly accepted.  I feel like I understand them better.  I am curious I have so much more to learn about them.

I started this blog wanting to heal cycles of abuse.  It’s working in me.  So much so, that now I want so much to have a child and feel like I could be an amazing mother.  The bridges that I am building with E and my family are creating are becoming strong.

Love sweet love

all you need is love 2

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Now it’s easy for me to feel that since I breached trust that I am horrible, icky, nasty.  I remember a time when I was 16 and I had my hair cut off as a punishment that if anyone asked why I cut my hair that I had to say that it was because I was a sinner and (something else I don’t remember…)  But that became a part of my identity, my scarlet A.

So, I feel like when I’ve “sinned”, or hurt somebody I love that I need to wear a banner of shame or an albatross.  It seems it’s more productive to learn from it and integrate it into your life and move on after forgiving yourself as a stronger more mindful person in the world.  Crazy.

So, E and I have been nesting and I feel really loved and supported.  I feel like I can make “mistakes” and he can make “mistakes” or we can “act from our shadows” or enact behaviors from our past that were once necessary.  Although in our initial communication, there may be misunderstanding there is light and space to step back and speak in a loving way about how we communicate and what the root is.

This and the giant rocks falling off of me, gave me a lot of courage.

all you need is love 1

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I’ve been very silent and internal.  Having posted a blog would have been like reaching into a tornado and pulling out one piece of debris and saying this is my focus.  But I’ve had no focus.

I mean, I’ve been focusing on my physical.  Which brings me right back to my emotional.  E’s and my living space that was quaint and intimate when we moved in has become neither and we need to go when our lease is up.  It’s an important part of our “stay in love plan”.

He and I went through a hard time recently.  There’s this sneaky person in me.  She used to sneak eat when she was growing up.  She used to get  tricked and then punished by authority figures.  She never could believe the reality presented to her was really what was going on.  So, this person (um…me) ended crafting her own reality in a lot of ways.  Becoming a kind of social manager, control freak, because if I know every thing that’s going on then there are no surprises.  I create the reality.  I am the knowing one.  I choose who to let in.  And while there aren’t a lot of surprises, there are surprises when you are with someone who actually wants to be with you creating your path equally.

It’s been so hard to let down the levels of walls and controls that I didn’t even know where there.  Manipulation that I didn’t realize I was spinning, so ingrained in me, until it was coming out of my mouth.  It’s been so hard to just be at peace and listen and be in a conversation without having to figure out what my move is three moves ahead.

So, to my credit I have a lot of successes in this.  A couple weeks ago, I didn’t have a success and this crack in the trust in our relationship is what led me to realize how deep this fear is of just being is.  Of believing that if I am totally honest and can have an open conversation about my wants and needs that it will most likely work out.  But if I am sneaky about it, it just won’t.

This has been a gift in our relationship, a lot of growing and healing has happened really fast.  I went and had some body work done and she hit an area where I had some stored trauma apparently and I cried for about 12 hours.   Then about 2 days later, I felt like 200 pounds of stone that I had been encased in fell off of me.

post injury report

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I’ve been doing what the chiropractor says and am feeling so much better. I am getting my stamina back. I can be on my feet now for a while without pain. I have caught myself dancing in the kitchen so I know I am definitely on the mend.

I can not stretch and walk without pain and am looking forward to hitting the gym again. I know I’ve gained some weight back. All of this bedriddenness and the discovery of chocolate croissant bread pudding hasn’t been the best.

But, it’s all good. I have no permanent damage. The gym is doing right by me and I’m going to get this beat.

Some physical would really help me right now because my emotional health has been in wonky-town. You see, with three major personal events all happening for me on April 1, I have been tensing up, gearing up and spinning out. I have been gathering support.

But I think I need to relax, release and celebrate the journey. And I think I know just how to do this. I’m just going to have to get my video camera.