Love & Glitter

Ten Steps Forward, Five Steps Back

Yesterday was MAHOOSIVELY AWESOME in so many ways, I stopped counting at fifty. I do this thing these days where every time something GOOD happens, I write it down. It's Andrea Schroeder's fault, really. She recommends this in her Creative Dream Incubator, and while I usually REFUSE TO DO HOMEWORK, I was compelled to take this practice up.

I'm so glad I did.

Something is happening. Shifting. My awareness is no longer sucked into the vortext of OMG DOOM as easily as it once was. Shit happens, and more often than not, I find myself shrugging. Okay, well, whatevs. What juicy bit of HAPPY can I find in the next ten minutes?

It's not denial. Denial feels all jaw clenched and taking it. Imagine me dressed in a kilt, wielding a sword, covered in blue woad paint...THAT'S it. Right there. Visual sweet spot. This feels like freedom. FREEDOM! FREEEEEEDOM!

***

Today is NOT one of those days. It's an anxiety day. I'm all "OMG DOOM" despite my best efforts to curb it. I think I need to move my body or something. Move that adrenaline out of the blood stream. Sweat it out. And I will. But I wanted to make note of this:

Change happens in fits and starts. 

(Effyone, are you listening?)

It's all ten steps forward and five steps back. 

And that's okay. I can be gentle with myself. I can let myself do this dance without self-recrimination because I am unfolding as I meant to. Some of my conditioning is really stubborn. Some of it has taken decades to unravel. I can TRUST that it will unravel in good time, but not if I bludgeon myself over the head about not unraveling it fast enough. It's unraveling as it should. I can trust that. 

I know why I'm anxious and I'm doing my best to fix it but it is something that isn't within my control. (I HATE THAT!) I am afraid I upset someone without even knowing when or how. I am filling in the blanks where silence is. I am all "WHAT DID I DO?" 

Probably nothing. 

But triggery girl is triggery, and I need to roll with it when the anxiety kicks in. No amount of talking myself out of it works. Movement helps. Arting helps. Self-care (of the EXTREME rose absolute in the bath water, candlelight, chocolate and soothing music variety) helps. 

This lovely meditation helps to. In the spirit of inviting the flow of goodness and ease and relaxation back into my anxiety addled body, I want to share it with you. 

 

I'm off to soak in rose absolute and then I'm going to art this out. <3

UPDATE

See, Effyone? It was totally nothing. *grins sheepishly and goes about her day* 

I Work For You

So, I got an "I'm subbing because I thought this was going to be fun but it's all about how messed up you are" message this morning.

I expected more than one after my raw, blubbery, in your face video of Friday's fame, but truth be told, it was the one and only one I got out of dozens of messages of appreciation and support. 

Fences were mended. Healing happened. People I *never* expected to hear from reached out with grace, which was not my intention at all, but felt like a nice little side of gravy on my already deliciously full plate of happy.

It feels like a little test. A little ball thrown by the Universe. So, Effy? You gonna walk that talk? 

Because, listen: it was not a necessary message, right? The unsubscribe link is right there. She (and she was a perfect stranger) could have just clicked it and voila! No more 'messed up Effy' in her inbox. I would have been perfectly within my right to hit reply and say something like "Was this necessary? Was it kind? Did you have to rain on my epiphany?"

But that's not how I *felt* about it. How I felt about it came in slow waves through my body as I reflected on how I should respond, and it was something like "Wow...well...obviously I don't work for you.  I'm happy you're going to find something that does!"

And I *really* meant it. 

Where once I would have shriveled up into a ball of shame and crawl off somewhere to die, this morning all I could think was "bless you". 

Messed up or not, I'll tell you this for nothing: I like who I'm becoming and I'm really glad that my way of being filters out the people who don't enjoy, need, or want what I'm doing in the world and draws closer those who do. 

I work for you. ♥

Coffee?

:)

In other news, I'm streaming live this afternoon at 1 p.m. EST. I have NO IDEA what I'm doing today. I'm going to let the spirit of Awen have it's way with me, but I bet you dollars to donuts that love and glitter will make it's way into the days program. 

The Rearview Mirror

So, this is interesting...

(Perhaps only to me, but still...)

Whenever I get a new computer, I do this thing where I go through my archives. It's good for a laugh at who I was back in 2000 (I have diary and blog archives that date back to that time), good for rediscovering old music, poetry, things I'd forgotten I'd written.

I've spent some time last night reading through some old posts and poetry and as I read, a pattern emerged for me:

The first ten years of my adulthood (so, 20 - 30) were spent offline and in search of ways to re-parent myself after a terrible traumatic childhood, and ways to parent my own kids better. So, we'll call that the 'relating to my inner and outer kids' period.

The next five years of my adulthood (so, 30 - 35) were spent straddling some kid stuff but mostly lots of romantic partnership stuff. 

The next five years (so, 35-40) were spent really tackling this 'being in a long term committed relationship' thing ~ with teenaged kids in tow.

And the last three years have been spent navigating how to be in the world (in friendship, in social circles) without losing myself.

The circles have been moving outward from a tight focus on me & my kids, rippling, spiraling outward to include more and more of the world.

And I feel like the circle is spiralling back in again. Now that I've done the parenting thing, done a lot of the re-parenting myself thing, done the 'figuring out how to be in a relationship with one person through thick and thin' thing, tackled the 'how to relate to the world at large' thing...

I'm back to square one these days, learning how to better relate to myself. What fuels me. What feeds me. What keeps me honest. What challenges me.

The care and feeding of the Effybean, if you will.

In looking back it feels as though I've both built up and torn down since I began the journey towards self-actualization in my late teens/early twenties. It seems I've torn down a lot of what the parental units conditioned me to believe about myself and built up my natural skills and talents. I've torn down a lot of what western culture and societal pressure conditions everyone to believe about themselves and built on what I know (or in some cases, what I wish) to be true. 

***

I've been accused of being self-absorbed throughout my life (especially by the parental units), but here's the thing: I am the only one I will never leave or lose. I am the only person I *have* to live with for the rest of my life. I strive to become the best 'me' I can be ~ not based on anyone elses standards but on the standards that rise up from the heart of me. So, it that makes me self-absorbed, I'm okay with that. I know this for sure: if I hadn't entered into this work of a lifetime, I might have parented exactly the way my parents parented. I might have stayed in abusive relationships. I might have been abusive myself. I might have never discovered my talent for wordsmithery or journal art. I might have been one of those sparkless, sad people with no lust for life who just gets by from day to day. I would have been no good to anybody.

At the end of the day, my heart's desire is to be useful. I know that I can't be useful as anything but a sad cautionary tale if I'm unconscious. 

So I strive to know myself. 

I work at it. Every single day. The good, the bad, the ugly ~ not one shred of me gets left in darkness. I examine it all. I'm ruthless. 

And because I feel compelled to do it, because I don't know any other way to be, it isn't even a 'virtue' that I can feel pride over. It's built into who I am. 

It's hard sometimes. Really hard.

But oh, so fruitful. 

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Because looking back the way I've done for the last few days, I see how far I've come. I see how much I've learned. I see the fruit of all this navel gazing, journaling, so-called self-absorption.

I'm useful.

And I'm happy about that. 

(This feels like a good moment to say Amen!)

xo

Effy

 

The Original Wound

So, we've moved (not so gently past) the losing my shit part of the program and into the dealing part, and I'm breathing a deeply grateful sigh of relief that instead of spending 48 hours in a twisty knot of ohmyfuckinggodthisisawful, I only spent about ten hours in that unfortunate state.

Between the manfingy running me a rose scented bath and my friend of 12 years reminding me (in not so gentle, but much needed terms) that I am okay with her, that I am better than okay, my bad moment turned into a pretty good and deeply insightful day. 

"You're owning your stuff." she said. "I hear a lot of how you are accountable for your experience" she said. And just in case you get the mistaken impression that she is all sweetness and light, she also said "Fuck them." and "People who see their shadow in you HATE you. That's ALWAYS been true. Get OVER it." 

So, this is the truth as I see it. This is how I move in the world. 

I like myself. I like how those I love always know where they stand. I like how I tell it like it is. I like how easily I let go of what isn't working for me. I like how freely I give of myself until I no longer feel like giving. I like that I say what I see. I like that I own my mistakes and do my best to fix them when given the opportunity, but I also like that I can move on from them. I like that I am adaptable. I like my strength. I like my fierceness. 

I affirm that I'm not here to make anyone else comfortable. I'm doing my own work, processing my own shit, owning my own life. 

Yes, I want to move with less thorn and more rose. I want to be a person of easy grace and forgiveness. I don't particularly like the fact that I attract more than my fair share of Teh Crazy ~ but I get that I probably attract it because I *am* my own fair share of Teh Crazy. It's also come to my attention that I mirror shadow for a lot of people. At first, that's attractive, but like any relationship, the honeymoon ends. They see shit in me they hate and so they hate me with a passion. We're not talking about the more healthy 'meh...not into her...moving on' type reaction that people without Teh Crazy practice with ease. We're talking *pure, unadulterated, vitrolic, bitter hate*.

It sucks sometimes. 

I'm not a victim of it, though, and most days I'm not sorry about it. Those who love me *realllllly love me* so it makes sense that those who hate me hate me with equal vigour. Thankfully, they are not equal in numbers, though sometimes they make a helluva cacophonous lot of noise. 

Here's where things get sticky for me: being blessed with my particular brand of neurosis, those who hate me with vigour and venom get a lot more of me than I'd like. I mean, I know (and the people that love me know) that they are projecting, and the bits of truth that swim in the public cess pools they produce are unrecognizable once they are done with the hyperbolic rhetoric. 

But I can know that in my head, and still hurt. I can listen to cooler heads and still feel completely baffled and frustrated and pissed off.

I don't get this kind of hate, and I don't hate that way. I don't hate, actually. Either I love you and I'm cool with you, or I love you and I'm pissed at you, or I am passing curious about you, or I kind of like you, or I am completely over you.  

I sure as hell had that kind of hate modeled for me, though.

See, those haters that I struggle with are pushing my original wound right in my face and because we're dealing with the original wound here I give a lot of weight to the hate. I keep trying to figure out why the hater hates instead of doing what a healthy human specimen does: turn the loved face toward the lover and loving back.

This is not me whining. This is me owning. That is my cross to bear, the proverbial thorn in my side. This is the curse I inherited from being despised by my mother. See, I mirrored her shadow, and she couldn't face it. Here was this angelic looking little girl (and I really was) who'd witnessed violence against her mother at the hands of her father, who had then been sexually abused by her mother's lover, who had then been emotionally abused by her mother's second husband, and my mother could not face that. She could not accept that her poor choices led to the gross violation of her child. If she'd ever asked, I would have forgiven her. She chose to project it all onto me, label me, and pretend to discard me while talking about me with family members and friends instead.

Kind of like my present haters do.  

Calling bullshit comes easily to me, but the consquences are still difficult for me to deal with. (See above with regards to the original wound.) You are talking to a girl who sat her mother down and said to her face "You didn't protect me from him." I was met with "He was very good to us, and you were a very provocative child." I was six. I always tell the truth hoping for resolution, but secretly I am braced for another line like that one, another indictment, another 'well, that's your fault and here's why...'

And with those I love, that fear is completely unfounded. They receive my truth with (initial discomfort but eventual) grace and acceptance. Shit gets worked out. The sun shines once more.

But I have a magnet for those things that will help me heal my original wound, so sometimes, I throw my truth around like pearls before swine (and, no. I'm not calling my haters swine. I'm calling my throwing around of truth wasteful.) and the results are usually very painful. 

Despite this and despite the brutal fucking travesty that was my childhood, adolescence, early (and even later) adulthood, despite the challenges I've faced, despite a brokenness many of you can't even possibly begin to imagine, I put myself back together. I faced my shit. I marched my ass to therapy. I owned my flawed humanity. I dared to write poetry. I dared to write at all. I faced my own failures. I made my amends (often, over and over again, because I fuck up a lot, as do we all). I lived through horrors and did not let it turn me into a messy pile of bitter victimhood. Okay, I had my moments (years) but I moved past them. I grew. I learned. I *thrived* and I continue to *thrive* and if I piss a few of you off along the way, well, sue me. No one is holding a gun to your head. If you like what I do, how I move through the world, great. If not, go find someone else to like.

This life? It's precious. I'm not being arrogant here. It weighs more than one life.  My sister, who experienced many of the same horrors I did, did not survive. She took her own life. So, when I take the bull by the horns, I see her face before me. When I face adversity, I see her face before me. When I stare down some random, entitled, nasty person who thinks I owe them something, like carte blanche to behave badly in my life, or my ear when they are pouring nothing but poison, or my hard work when it gains me nothing, or a chance to sit at my hearth fire uninvited, I see her face. Through her death, I have faced my own mortality and I know how precious life is. I know how important it is that shit gets worked out. I know how valuable time is and that it is not to be wasted on social niceties or relationships that make you unhappy or work that sucks the life out of you or people that don't value you. 

Because I'm living 'for two' in a sense, I live as honestly, as authentically, as boldly as I possibly can. And I inspire people to love me a lot. And I inspire people to despise me. And I'm coming to accept that neither is within my control. I give up. I'm going to be me. Lovers gonna love. Haters gonna hate. Some lovers will become haters. Some haters will (and have!) become lovers. 

I'm in a 'business' where everyone talks with a honeyed tongue, and I am no different in the sense that until you give me reason otherwise, I am going to love on you. I am going to support you, encourage you, fiercely defend your right to practice your art. I am going to tell you what I like about what you've made. I'm going to empathize with you when you're having a bad day, and I'm going to cheer with you when you're having a good day. I'm not here as a life coach (tried that. hate it) or a counsellor or an expert. I'm here as someone who is doing her *own* work where you can watch. That is my vocation. That is my way of being in the world. 

I'm going to respect your way of being in this world.

Even if you don't respect mine.

But I'm not going to sit in the lion's den with you and try to pull the thorn from your paw when you are screaming in my face that I put it there. I'm not going to agree with you that I put it there. I am not going to shrink so you can feel bigger. I am not going to go belly up so you can feel powerful. I'm not going to lie so you can feel comfortable.

My mother would love that. My sister would hate it.

Guess whose side I'm on?

 

 

 

People are People

True fact. Some people will come into your life all shiny and bright and you will fall head over heels in love with them. And then they will behave in ways that strike you as beneath them. Or they will disappoint you. Or they will grow in directions you can't fathom or follow. Or you will come to know with heart-breaking certainty that the shiny was fools gold and beneath it, they were calculating, self-serving, and mean-spirited. Or you will come to know that despite every effort on your part, they're never going to get you. Or you will realize that you just don't feel the 'it' you need to feel to keep walking with them any further. Another true fact. You will have very few people who are YOUR people. They're doing studies now on loneliness and how it's impacted by television. You know what I'm talking about. You watch Friends reruns and you think "I wish my life were like that. I wish I had that tribe of lovely people who lived in the same building or on the same street and no matter how bad things get with me, they care. They're there. They show up whenever they feel like without a phone call and I'm always glad to see them, and if not glad to see them, I'm, at the very least, totally delighted to tolerate them even though I'm in the middle of whatever I was doing before they showed up. And my house? Always impeccable. And if not impeccable? At least passable. And no one in my inner circle cares what my house looks like anyway so everyone can just waltz in any time of night or day and I am so ready to greet them with a smile and a hug. I probably have something freshly baked, or at least recently procured from a local bakery to serve them over fresh French pressed coffee. I am always oh soooo delighted to listen to them regale me with tales of their latest (likely disastrous) romantic adventure. I know for certain that when I need a carton of Hagen Daas and a carton of Kleenex, they are going to be there for me at all hours of the night or day. Right? And you can't admit to thinking that because you'd sound like a total loser, and that longing for friends like they depict on Friends makes you ineffably, unbearably lonely, which makes you watch more Friends, buy shit you see on Friends, and maybe even emulate a Friend or two because you really wish your life were like Friends. This is the truth as I know it: In my very real life, I don't have friends like Friends. I have people I know just well enough to like but not so well that I find myself disgusted with them. I have people I try to love for a while despite the lies they're telling their husbands or wives or the way they justify the way they neglect their children by calling it "Latest bizarre experiment we're performing on our kids against their will because we're too lazy to actually raise them". I admit I try to love them for entirely selfish reasons. I believe myself to be a loving person so I try. But then I meet people who steal food out of their own children's mouths or refuse to get a job despite being perfectly capable and absolutely poverty stricken. (I'm not talking about disabled people. I'm talking about perfectly capable people who would rather collect a check, who will *lie* to get that check, just so they don't have to bother getting a job that might interfere with bingo or The Soaps or finding themselves.) I have known people who let their girlfriends become prostitutes so that they could get their fix. I have known people who hit women in places that weren't visible so they wouldn't get caught. I have known people who rape children. There are the people I've known for twenty years that I know are adept at the social game - people who would not say shit if they had mouths full of it, but always have a warmish smile that never quite reaches their eyes. They kind of scare me, but I admit to being somewhat envious that they've mastered the whole "How to Win Friends And Influence People" thing. Then there are the people who always have the eye on the bottom line, and everything they 'offer' has a price tag - explicitly or covertly - hung on the merchandise they pass off as their friendship. You want so badly to believe they want to be your friend that you buy everything they're selling and then hate yourself for it later. And there are people so broken, so fucked up beyond repair that your heart beats faster just at the mere thought of having to deal with the shit they have to deal with on a regular basis - and some of *them* are family members. You'd think I'd have opted for crawling under a rock by now. But I haven't. Because I'm people. As a person, I'm cursed to want people in my life. And I do want them. I just find myself really, really reluctant to love any deeper than I might love, say, a brand of ice cream. Because loving people hurts, you know? It's exhausting and it fricken hurts! Because people are people. And sometimes, I need reminding, and when I need reminding the universe comes along with a two by four or a sledgehammer to bash me across the head with. And as I stand there bobbing and weaving a little from the Very Hard Smack across my Very Hard Head that contains a humanity that Very Much Wants People, I get another little reminder. I have people. I have people who tell me when I have spinach in my teeth and toilet paper hanging out the back of my skirt. I have people who read every damned thing I write however boring it is, and people that tell me in all honesty that the shit I wrote the other day was boring. I have people who can *hear* the truth and do not hate me for it, and people from whom the truth comes like clear, cool water at a time when I'm cracked earth. I have people who call me The Metatron and mean it as a compliment. I have people who recognize the value of a friend who does not pull punches and would rather have me bruise them than pretend everything's okay. I have people who would dig ditches to feed their kids, and I have people who do the hard work of parenting even when they don't feel like it. I have people who have cried with me over the damage done by a pedophile. I have people who tell their stories despite the enormous risk they know they're taking. I have people who put people over the bottom line and I have people I respect, who've earned my respect because they are authentic, truth-telling, no bullshit, self-aware, rocking people. There aren't many of them. I could count them on my fingers. They all have messy houses or neuroses about their houses. None of them look anything like Jennifer Aniston or Courtney Cox. Some of them are reading this right now. And I'm lucky. Because People are People and most of them suck, but the ones I love? The ones who have earned that love? Do not. That is all.