My wounded child and the careening bus she sometimes drives

A week ago I returned from a retreat in Evia, Greece: Embodied Trauma Healing, led by Ralf Marzen who has studied with Laurence Heller who "wrote the book" on developmental trauma.

The one-week experience helped shine a light on the shapes of how my childhood trauma is still expressing itself in my adult life on large and small subtle planes. Whereas before, the effects seemed foggy, vague, I came from the retreat with more awareness and clarity, and last week a big trauma vortex materialized upon my return home.

It is incredible how much pain can come up from a past trauma when triggered by a current situation... was trying to grapple with what happened in my past that creates such an "illogical" reaction right now.... feeling the pain of opening up vulnerably to someone and feeling abandoned by them, even if they're not really abandoning me at all.

The only thing I can surmise is that when I was 3, my father had a bad car accident and left the country with my mother to recover in a New York hospital for 4 to 6 months. When he returned his personality was different and he was a little bit out of it, very disconnected from me. This traumatic experience was never processed so it was never completed because as a three-year-old I didn't have any language and the wisdom of the day was to pretend like nothing happened and everything is normal, to "protect" us children from emotions related to upsetting events. So even though it was a very upsetting event for the adults in the family, their approach was to not talk about it and stuff emotions and not explain or empathize with the four children who were surely freaking out on many levels, or just shutting down.

I have no direct memory of my three year old's experience, but last week while bending over with grief and intense crying in the kitchen, I did start to connect somewhere deep inside to the desperation of annihilation that my small child actually experienced, and that awareness made me cry so much harder feeling empathy for the little one who was completely abandoned and was completely empty and meaningless without her parents. I connected to awareness that the wound was never treated by her trusted caregivers.

Certain relationships today trigger that trauma experience of losing contact with my father.... So when a capable attractive man shows a special interest in me, even as a friend, and we connect vulnerably, I get drawn in and when we part, it can be very upsetting/triggering the childhood pain again. The more vulnerably I share with that person, the more deep into the wound our connection penetrates, and so when the connection ends (we both traveled home and went back to our lives after the one week in the retreat in this iteration, there have been many!) it's like the wound has been re-opened, and pus is flowing and the pain body is totally awakened.

So how can I complete the cycle of my 3 year old self losing her Dad's attention so I can safely share with people without feeling attached or abandoned?

I proceeded through flight, then freeze then fight responses as I went in and out of the trauma vortex over the course of 2.5 days. Thoughts of dying, going into the hospital, being in a tribal community with 20 people holding me in love and being a lover-partner to this guy were all fantasies I had. Then I popped out of the deep level of pain to a functioning place of going to the store with my faculties and language intact without wanting to fall back into despair... I had to function to deliver a workshop in a few days.

I called in my closest women friends as loving resource. I also spoke to this wonderful man and I criticized him for something he did the week before, and it was the weirdest thing to watch myself go there, to this blaming, wounded place again with him. Days later, I was reeling with regret that I let my little wounded child get a hold of the steering wheel of the bus of my life... she was careening through the relationship, banging into his knees. He had a pain response, and withdrew a bit... but has not totally fled. In many past situations when my wounded child would complain or ask for more attention, the man would flee and I would lose the whole connection, exactly my biggest fear.



This is a cruel affliction... grasping to something I want to survive and feel worth being alive, and it evaporates when I get needy. And I am ready to hold it all and take a bigger ownership to heal it.

I realize now how much my little girl has taken the wheel in my relationships with men who tap into the wound as well as with friends and bosses... making them responsible to fulfill some of my needs.

And I can celebrate huge strides I have made in the last 10 years, not taking things so personally in relationships to friends and acquaintances, and creating better boundaries with men who were objects of my source of validation. I have maintained friendships with two of the men who triggered a trauma vortex for me in the last 9 years (but 4 or 5 others failed, being turned off by that child presence) and this feels like a success worth celebrating.

An area for me to focus on is my struggle with self-care and self-love... I struggle with doing nice joyful things for myself like making music, dancing, singing, creating art or poems... I used to do these things when I had steady jobs and rich social connections. I started a path of spiritual and personal growth, and while I have deepened into some close friendships, I have much less social contact not working, and not hanging out at so many events or hosting parties as I used to.

My ultimate goal is to be a full adult in this lifetime who takes care of her inner child(ren)... I think I have a 3 year old and a 10 year old in there that need love and attention.

So what to do now?

• attend to my own thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
• pay attention to what I want and need and I ask for support.
• take care of myself. I move my body and I connect to music.
• (AKA #resource)
• be in touch with what is going on right now, including how I feel about it.
• accept 100 percent responsibility for my own happiness, security, and needs.
• recognize and celebrate my strengths, while remaining humble about my weaknesses.
• consciously celebrate my power, my qualities, my unique lovable beauty
• get therapy with trauma healing counselors

source https://psychcentral.com/blog/sobriety-for-a-love-addict/

= LOVE MYSELF

While my wounded child can get a little passionate driving the careening bus, she is also happy to sit in the back seat and be cuddled with a safe loving blanket.

The Myth of Psyche and Cupid

I found an old copy of "SHE: Understanding Feminine Psychology" by Robert A. Johnson and was skeptical that it would help me learn about feminine psychology, but I read this delightful account of a myth that actually does reflect some experiences I have had with men in a way that was quite comforting and reflective of some past events that helped me feel less self-blaming, and more accepting of the reality of some men's fears and blocks, and my own expectations and desires. 

Also, Robert Johnson helped me come to a new appreciation of myth as a conglomeration of a society's view of roles and existential perception. He says:

"A myth may be fantasy; it may be a product of the imagination, but it is nonetheless true and real. It depicts levels of reality that include the outer rational world as well as the less understood inner world within the psyche of each individual... A myth is a product of the collective imagination and not of scientific or rational development, but it is profoundly real. Because of its manner of development, through years of telling and refining by countless people, it carries a powerful collective meaning." 

So this struck a new chord for me and after reading this myth realized that this myth represents a collective experience of generations of people of a certain major culture and for that reason represents reality in a period of time for so many... I am left to wonder, if we had relied on oral tradition instead of written communication, how would this myth have evolved as we evolved in relationships with each other? Would the current account of the myth be different if we had not written it down?

 

Marking Transition with Vision Fast

In May of this year I embarked on a six day road trip to New Mexico where I would join a group of women to co-create a Vision Fast experience. For me, I was looking for a way to mark the end of a 2.5 year hiatus from the worldly material life of employment... a hiatus spent in trips to India and internal exploration and realization of my past trauma.

A hiatus spent questioning work life, who I choose for friends, why I fall in love, my need for validation, how to cultivate self-love, how my house can consume my attention, why I eat when I'm not hungry, my fear of what others think, my aging body, why I deny myself time for creativity, how to care for my mother, how I want to connect to myself and to God, what Christianity, Vedic philosophy, Buddhism, and Krishna consciousness have to teach about those things, practicing life coaching, and mostly, how I am being called to be in service. 

I still hadn't made a plan or any major decisions. I wanted some direction and some confidence about at least a few areas of life. In my previous explorations of shamanic traditions I had heard about Vision Fast tradition and had wanted to do it. So in Spring of this year I found the Women's Vision Fast organized by the School of Lost Borders. When I read the online description I knew that these people were the real deal. Sincere honest spiritually connected people that were in service to people's process, not posturing or marketing to garner the most participants. Their fees were reasonable, and their website was basic, with emphasis on the verbal content, not design or purchase process. I felt connected and confident enough to sign up. 

I allowed myself 6 days to drive the 24 hours to the Santa Fe area, stopping to camp alone by the coast in Florida, spending 2 days in rural quiet gracious historic St. Francisville, Louisiana, spending 2 days in a canyon of West Texas, and then arriving the night before at a campground in Cochiti Lake, NM. I allowed myself this time to be with myself. I enjoyed my own company as I explored a historic cemetery and some sleepy sprawling plantations. 

I enjoyed the books on CD during the 5 to 6 hours of driving each day. Between the trip out and the one back, I listened to: 1) "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R. Covey; 2) I tried "Care of the Soul" by Thomas Moore but stopped halfway through the first CD very uninspired after listening to S. Covey; 3) The Power of Vulnerability by Brene Brown; and 4) Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. Listening to these 3 books was in itself a valuable experience as I drove down highways in some of the most beautiful places I have ever been, having a lot of realizations about myself and about life!

The morning after I arrived at Cochiti Lake campground overlooking the largest blackest berm wall I have ever seen (retaining a giant reservoir), I gathered with the ladies in our first circle to share about why we were here; to share our individual reasons for wanting to be alone on the land. We were five participant women, ages 25 to 50, with two elder guides, Emerald North and Margaret Thompson, and two assistants, Galaxy and Kim Allen. 

The elder guides spoke about accessing our own deep internal wisdom and being on the land to connect with it. They shared about the medicine wheel of the 4 shields. The south shield is the childhood, based in the body, discovering the self (red). The west shield is the adolescence, going inside where it is dark to choose what from childhood we want to keep and what we want to leave behind (black). The north shield is the adulthood, where we are in action in the world (white). The east shield is elderhood, or spiritual life, where we connect it all and realize the higher purpose of being (yellow). Emerald then went through the aspects of living in an exaggerated way in any shield. Being depressed is exaggerated west shield. Being a workaholic is exaggerated north shield, etc. 

This framing helped me realize that perhaps my 2.5 years of hiatus had been a period of west shield reflection time for me where I sorted through what I have, what I have done, what I want to keep and what I want to shed... and my time alone in Vision Fast would be a time to claim what I want, and to my full adulthood. Moving out of the dark internal stage I would move forward, however slowly, in this spiral of expansion and development. 

The next few days were an exploration with the group guided by Emerald and Margaret, to reflect on what self-generated ceremony we could create on the Land. They talked about The Land and it's lessons for each of us, if we were present to receive. We were invited to ask the land for the gift of a message of how we can take our gifts to the people. It was made clear that this journey was one that was for the world, not for my own self. This spoke to me and I was moved. Yes, I want to serve with my highest gifts.

So what is stopping me? What is the roughness that seems to be providing resistance? Is it my perfectionism? I heard a snippet of public radio today that mentioned the conditioning of men to be courageous, and the conditioning of women to be perfect. Ouch! I resonated with that a lot! And I am gun-shy to move into a new area of vocation as I have changed careers once already and want to make the perfect choice this time.

I also suffer from wanting approval. And this is very painful and sticky for me because I do not wear the same shoes or pants or skirts that my parents wear. My clothes are very different, and my vehicle for life is very different, and much of how I live is a bit of a secret and hidden from many because I will be seen as different and then un-welcomed. A shaman once encouraged me to have spiritual confidence. This means to me to be confident with whatever spiritual practice that serves me, and not have fear about others' judgments. But I experience others as so intensely judgmental. Many friends in the science community might think me a cook if I mention my connection to God not to mention any devotional activities to God.

Emerald really challenged me that this desire for approval is rock sitting on my wings (my words). That it can cripple me and that my spirit is here to serve the world, and it WILL be different from what my mother or father or school friends expect of me. 

After sweet guidance, reflection and exploring questions, we each created an intention. I created "I am a full adult healer-teacher and edgy elder." 

I spent four days alone with the wild place of Ghost Ranch. I added up the hours of non-eating which was 108. I wonder if Emerald knew about this number. Hunger was with me every day until the last day.

Each day was it's own journey. One day was about creating an altar that was my own with mixed traditions, writing a song, and getting a very intimate visit from a very large snake that gave me permission to be different, be diligent and focused. One day was about an excursion into low-lying sculpted river arroyos with surprises of life, shape and depth where I experienced my confidence and strength. One was a day of rocks when I rinsed my shame into them and owned my real desires with the full moon. When I celebrated and ritualized this a band of coyotes reflected my intentions with such clear acknowledgement, I was intensely moved and validated. I experienced nature as a reflective listener many times. In the yowl of the coyotes, in the echos of the rocks, in the warmth of juniper's shelter, in the sound of rocks falling down with my heart, in the energy of my arms throwing them with the anger that they took to the river.

I can recall the juniper, the special rocks, the edge of the river, the swallows keeping watch over me... and I reconnect to that place of self-acceptance and self-attention that was the biggest act of love I have created for myself.

After the fast, I shared about it with my therapist in Gainesville. I talked about getting the message to live more vibrantly. Be with people more. Be in some action. Like watching a tennis match is good for some learning, but playing tennis you learn more. So I want to be in action, host sharing circles, host events and facilitate book discussions.

I told her about my experience on the last night of the fast connecting to big deep grief about my previous boss at the university; how I spent 7 years with her, and our relationship ended. I felt discarded after all that energy I put into the organization she and I jumpstarted together. All our time together culminated in a bad taste in her mouth and her not answering my emails, and no remnant of me on their website. My ego was crushed that there was no evidence that I had ever been there. My heart was hurt that I didn't feel any compassion or care from her. I cried for 2 hours grieving those things. I also grieved the realization that I hadn’t known myself enough to know that I wasn’t in service there; that I was not using my best skills while not giving her what she really needed. But I stayed anyway... I stayed even though I was not happy there, and she wasn't happy with me there. I didn't recognize when my energy had run it's course, and my lesson there was finished.

I spent two hours at 1 a.m. crying about this loss. About losing the relationship with my boss. Why was it so painful? What importance was I assigning to that person and that relationship? The power dynamic and my boss's personality were reminiscent of my relationship with my father I guess.

My internal little girl was waiting and yearning for approval and belonging with that boss and that organization... I didn't recognize that I was barking up the wrong tree, and my little girl was recreating the abandonment experience she had when she was 3. At that age, my father had a debilitating head injury from a car accident, and my parents both went to NYC for his hospitalization for 5 months. My three sisters and I all had different experiences of confusion, terror and abandonment, not having had it explained to us why the parents left or when they would return. I felt discarded in both of these cases.

The Vision Fast provided me with some cleansing of some weight of emotions... it provided me with clear space to express myself and yell, cry and be with myself without interruption or needing to clean things up. I could express fully with no timeline. I splayed out my body and heart on big rocks that were sun-baked and moon-bathed. I allowed my own body to be sun-baked and moon-bathed. And I felt transformed and cleansed and open for new possibilities for myself coming back home. It was not the transition I was expecting, but it was the transition I needed to experience... the letting go of past attachments to approval so I could move forward in my more authentic self.

#visionfast #visionquest #fasting #ceremony #ritual #selflove #selfgeneratedceremony #lostborders #ecotherapy #

I read "Mother Night" by Kurt Vonnegut

I finished reading Mother Night today. I took it from my room in Mom’s house… it was amazing writing by a guy who was a prisoner of war in Dresden when it got hit. He had to excavate burned bodies after the firestorm that Churchill ordered on that city that had a bunch of refugees from other cities that were carpet-bombed in an attempt to wear down civilian morale to stop Hitler’s advance around Europe/Asia.

How awful! To bomb civilians as a tactic of war; isn’t this a first form of terrorism in our western history? See his book, Slaughterhouse Five, one of his most famous.

I read an interview with Kurt Vonnegut which was amazing. He said he wished everyone in the US would read more books and write book reports. So I decided to write a little book report for him, may he rest or live on in peace and enlightenment (he died in 2007 while living in New York).

I want to start by saying I loved this book. Vonnegut has a genius droll sense of humor. A bit cynical in a fun clean way that helps us develop our own opinions. This book caused me to delved into WWII documentaries on Netflix. I guess I should be grateful, history is good to learn... better than learning what the damn Kardashians or maids of Downton Abbey are doing, probably. 

So the book is about an American-born guy, Howard W. Campbell, Jr., who moved to Germany with his parents at age 8 or 10 and became a propaganda announcer on the radio while sending code messages to Americans with his different intonations and speech patterns. The book didn’t really get into that so much… but it was about the character’s indifference toward the war and to either side of the warring factions. He just cared about his beautiful wife Helga and the “nation of two” that they created in their big double bed. That was the center of his world, and everything else was just puppetry. But he became a famous German war criminal across the world, and was not keen on being caught for it for a while.

Outside of his interest in the “nation of two” with Helga, he was driven by curiosity in the rest of his life. Not by beliefs, attachments or hatreds. He didn’t seem to have opinions on anything, and just listened to people with a reflective, supportive simple curiosity.

He wrote about one friend, “I was very fond of you, to the extent that I could be fond of anybody.”

Favorite passage in the book: page 162:

I have never seen a more sublime demonstration of the totalitarian mind, a mind which might be likened unto a system of gears whose teeth have been filed off at random. Such a snaggle-toothed thought-machine, driven by a standard or even a substandard libido, whirls with the jerky, noisy, gaudy pointlessness of cuckoo clock in Hell.

The boss G-man concluded wrongly that there were no teeth on the gears in the mind of Jones. “You’re completely crazy,” he said.

Jones wasn’t completely crazy. The dismaying thing about the classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, though mutilated, will have at its circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained, that are exquisitely machined. Hence the cuckoo clock in Hell – keeping perfect time for eight minutes and thirty three seconds, jumping ahead fourteen minutes, keeping perfect time for six seconds, jumping ahead for two seconds, keeping perfect time for two hours and one second, then jumping ahead a year. 

The missing teeth, of course, are simple, obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten-year-olds, in most cases. The willful filing off of gear teeth , the willful doing without certain obvious pieces of information. That was how a household as contradictory as one composed of Jones, Father Keeley, Vice-Bundesfueherer Krapptauer and the Black Fuehrer could exist in relative harmony. That was how my father in law could contain in one mind indifference toward slave women and love for a blue vase.

That was how Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz, could alternate over the loudspeakers of Auschwitz the great music [symphonies] and calls for corpse-carriers [that jewish prisoners volunteered to do].

That was how Nazi Germany could sense no important differences between civilization and hydrophobia.

That is the closest I can come to explaining the legions, the nations of lunatics I’ve seen in my time. And for me to attempt such a mechanical explanation is perhaps a reflection of the father whose son I was. Am. When I pause to think about it, which is rarely, I am after all, the son of an engineer.

Since there is no one else to praise me, I will praise myself – will say that I have never tampered with a single tooth in my thought machine, such as it is. There are teeth missing, God knows – some I was born without, teeth that will never grow. And other teeth have been stripped by the clutchless shifts of history.

But never have I willfully destroyed a tooth on a gear of my thinking machine. Never have I said to myself, “This fact I can do without.”

His Helga was killed in the war but it seemed for a few moments that she was saved, for she found him in New York where he was living under the cover of the busy confusing place of that city. She admitted to him later that she was in fact Helga’s sister, Resi, who was extremely attached to Mr. Campbell. He carried on with her as with his wife, and seemed to lover her in his way. But she killed herself with a cyanide pill when authorities came to the house of spies and operatives that he was mixed up in. Their little friendly group of people who all admired Campbell was getting broken up. People who admired him including Russian spies (Resi was one of them). She had a singleminded attachment to him and departed saying he had no capacity to love anymore, he just had “curiosity and a pair of eyes.” He was sad to lose the time with her, but was not attached to her specifically.

He was the epitome of passive. He got upset and violent one time (in his whole life!) when his prime hater and pursuer -hiding in his ransacked apartment - tried to kill him. But even then he explained away his comparison of Bernard B. O’Hare to the sounds and movings of a rat. But then clarified:

I do not mean to slander him by associating the sound he made with the sound of a rat. I do not think of O’Hare as a rat, though his actions with regard to me had the same nagging irrelevance as the rats’ scrabbling passions in my attic walls. I didn’t really know O’Hare and I didn’t want to know him. The fact of his having put me under arrest in Germany was a fact of submicroscopic interest to me. He wasn’t my nemesis. My gave was up long before O’Hare took me into custody. To me, O’Hare was simply one more gatherer of wind-blown trash in the tracks of war.

That guy accused Howard of being pure evil, and had obsessed his whole life about capturing Campbell. All the while Campbell never gave this guy, or much of anything else, a second thought. Campbell sort of lived in the moment.

That O’Hare guy vomited down the stairwell, and this disgusting mess kept Campbell from going out the building… but it was also the apartment of a Dr. Epstein on that landing that made him freeze and not move. He wanted to be captured for being a spy. He wanted to be turned in. Epstein was a jew and must want to help capture a known German war criminal. 

The only thing that could save him in the case was if there was proof that he had associated with an American spy agent. He was shipped off to Israel (he repeatedly reminded us that he was in that prison of his own free will). The Haifa institute was providing him with all sort of research and copy services. He seemed appreciative. He was appreciative of so many on all sides, of all ilks. He didn’t really hate anyone, but had a humorous lack of attachments to beliefs, morals, or sense of a correct life. If anyone was hurt due to his actions on the radio, he was oblivious and uninterested. 

An example of Vonnegut's funny ironic humor was an exchange that our hero Campbell had with Adolf Eichmann while walking down the hallway of the prison. The guards assumed they would want to talk to each other. Eichmann did not recognize Campell (though Eichmann had danced with Campbells' wife at a party in Germany) but when told who he was, asked Campbell for writing advice. "Should one get an agent?"

When released to freedom at one point, he froze standing in the street, not wanting to move or go anywhere. “It was not guilt that froze me. I had taught myself never to feel guilt”

It was not a ghastly sense of loss when his friends were taken away and Resi died; it was not a loathing of death; it was not heartbroken rage against injustice (“one might as well look for diamond tiaras in the gutter as for rewards and punishments that were fair”); it was not the thought that he was so unloved. What froze him, after being released from the house raid, was being released by his Blue Fairy Godfather (the American Spy Frank Wirtanen who appreciated his ‘service’) was the lack of curiosity.  It had flickered out.

“What had made me move through so many dead and pointless years was curiosity.”

In the end, while in the Israeli prison cell, he decided he would kill himself the next day after receiving a letter from his American agent who proclaimed his innocence as a German war criminal, and who in fact, “at personal sacrifices that proved total, became one of the most effective agents of the Second World War.”  

Several time in the book we see this guy Frank Wirtanen saying that Campbell was such an important American spy, which seemed a ridiculous claim about a playwright radio personality who so dispassionately followed simple orders to talk and cough in certain ways while writing plays on the side that actually did become quite popular.  So in the end, he was just a playwright who loved making love to his wife. 

#vonnegut #WWII #blackhumor #nazigermany #mothernight

Journey with Codependence

Ahh, what a time I have had in these last 7-8 years, heightening my awareness, through multiple friendships and romances, how my immature adult is wanting the things I didn't get as a child in a behavior pattern known to some, but a term shunned by many, as codependence. I have read 4 or 5 books about codependence, love addiction, the wounded heart, and women who love too much. They all have a common theme, that as children we were not wholly accepted exactly how we were and our parents wanted us to be a bit different, or just didn't see us and appreciate us as we already were.

According to Pia Mellody (a recognized expert at the phenomenon and treatment of it with an energy of positive acceptance and love) the signs of codependence in immature adult are:

1. Trouble valuing the self from within. Needing to get self-value from being wanted by others.
2. Personal boundary problems. Put up walls, or the opposite.
3. Difficulty being authentic about our feelings, needs and wants.
4. Difficulty attending to our own personal needs and wants, and having difficulty with interdependence.
5. Lacks an attitude of ‘moderation in all things.’ We may over- (or under-) indulge in eating, drinking, socializing, working, exercising etc.

and here is my understanding of what creates codependence patterns:

1. child was not treated as precious - child was ignored or abused
2. child was not treated as perfect as she is now- but expected to act certain way according to social norms, parental molding etc. 
3. child was not treated as dependent - her needs were not recognized, or were not important, and was expected to take care of herself or her parents either emotionally or physically. 
4. child was not treated as immature - was expected to do things inappropriate to her age, or was punished for acting her immature self
5. child was not treated as vulnerable - she wasn't protected, or certain healthy emotional boundaries were not created

I am starting to connect the dots between some fears and beliefs I have about myself, and what I experienced in childhood. I defintely experience all of the adult behaviors listed above, and can say that I also experienced all of the childhood experiences listed in the second list.  I don't want to go through my childhood experiences and traumas here now, but I listed out about 19 of them for a therapist I found a month ago, that specializes in helping clients using Pia Mellody's approach with practices, processes and work for recovery. 

Today I am feeling more connected to this awareness and process for myself after feeling some rejection by a friend whose family I know very well and had welcomed me to participate in their dynamics, which were very codependent so I felt super comfortable, happy and anxious at the same time. But lately I have felt that friend and the family being very distant and it's triggering some very big feelings of being unimportant and inconsequential. So my motivation in life drops when this happens and it turns into powerlessness. I feel powerless and go into a mode of doing things around the house to keep active at a level that is familiar and just like my mother who is a cleaning addict.

I notice I am having negative thoughts. I had a session with a therapist about managing Automatic Negative Thoughts... One of mine comes up after some romantic failures. I go to a place thinking that I am worthless. I finally realized, this is not healthy or normal, where did this come from?? I don't want to feel this way, and it doesn't really make sense that I feel this way when one man decides not to communicate with me anymore. 

I want to move beyond the stories of childhood and be in my adult self. The 5-step process is to 1. Grow up, 2. Face reality, 3. Grieve what I didn't have growing up, 4. Learn to parent myself, and 5. Learn to forgive. 

I have been doing a lot of #3 and #4 these last few months... I will look more at what the others are about. Pia Mellody's books are smart, relatable, not negative, and have useful tools. I don't feel broken or less than others. I feel happy to know what is happening and how to really feel into what is happening so I can more deeply heal and be happier in my life with positive thinking that is genuine. I feel more connected to the Divine, God, feeling the unconditional acceptance of that big huge force that is total love for all of us beings human or not!