revelations in the dark

i am not leaving the dark.  not ready yet.  just saying.  i'm actually looking around down here and getting a new vantage point.  i'm beginning to understand why i am down here in a new way.  hello past trauma.  of course i am down here over and over again.  trauma drama mama.  no.  it's not drama.   just trauma mama.  no.  i don't want to be called that.  but i want to let myself acknowledge it.  admit it.  for so long i've felt like a whiner saying this.  but i'm gonna say it.  i had a hard childhood.  i've had some hard blows.  it's hard to say this though, because i know others have had harder ones.  i often tell myself,  i should just shut up and feel blessed for what i do have.  that's all i'm gonna say there on that, on feeling guilty for saying i had a hard time, to anyone other than my sister (s).  cuz in the reality of being me, in actuality, i am traumatized.  i am feeling like going back to do some more emdr type work is in my best interest.  i had a mama, my mama,  who couldn't keep me.  back and forth i went, flying on a plane by myself,  from her home to my dad's.  when i was with her, i was in a home that was not healthy.  cheating and lying and fighting between her and her men.   and me trying to keep the peace.  multiple step dads.  multiple affairs i was aware of when the step dads weren't.  and when i wasn't at her house, i was at my dad's house.  i went from one unhealthy house to the next.  my (half)sister, wasn't with me most of the time.  she had been sent to live with her dad.  so i weathered this craziness alone really.  at 8, my mama really let me go, and i went to stay with my dad in arkansas till i was 12.  i would have stayed on with him till i could flee the sad nest,  and be legally emancipated, but he and my step mom were heroin users.  and this was after he had been through hell and back from alcoholism.   all starting in vietnam.  dad and stepmom lost control completely when i was 12,  and i ran away for fear of my life from my stepmom.  i think she might have killed me had i not run.  they were in and out of rehab during that the last two years i lived with them.  i had two younger stepbrothers, and we were shuttled to weekly alanon meetings for those last two years i was there.  without my grandma, my dad's mom, being there as a touchstone to wholeness and health during those years, i am scared to imagine what would have happened to me.  once i ran away, my mom was feeling settled again, and decided to rescue me.  so i ended up with her and her fairly-new-to-me husband in colorado.  i ended up in a home that was healthier in some ways, but still, not healthy.  it was sad a lot of the time for me.  starting over, and being in this new home with a lack of real love was dark.  as a new young woman, i was keeping my mom's secrets from her husband, and feeling deeply wounded by it all.   somehow i made friends, and that was where i found some light in my last years of being under the helm in someone else's home.  to add to this bit of formative trauma, my first kid had severe birth trauma.  responding to his trauma, i became traumatized in a whole new way.  i've gone on for all of his life now stitching up the tears for both of us.  and then, when my firstborn was 2 and my second born was 3 months old, my dad died.  his liver seized by cancer.  it was another huge trauma to see my dad through his death at 58, when i was 27.  huge.  i can tell the stories of how my parents became the ways that they were, and understand it all in a way, that at least tells my soul that i was loved, under all the misfortune and poor decisions they made, their hearts were good.  but right now, i am not needing to know that they loved me.  i am needing to acknowledge the trauma that i've suffered.  the hard hits.  i've done years of therapy.  like ummmmm, 17.  my whole adult life, i've been in therapy.  i've done loads of emdr, but it's been about 8 years, i think since i immersed myself in emdr.  since then i've done many birth trauma workshops with my son,  and then many for me as well.  embodiment workshops in new mexico that gave me perspective i'm gonna be eternally grateful for.  but it's not enough.  these kinds of deep formative trauma experiences need attending to for the long haul.  breaks from working it out are good.  breaks are fine.  but getting back to the work of peeling away trauma layers so that i can get closer to my whole self is something i have to do.  periodically.  i'm lucky, cuz i know therapists who are really good at this stuff. i have a sister and friends who are really good at understanding, relating, and loving.  i have a husband who is an earthly god, and has stood by me through the whole of my adult life, well we met when i was 19,  while i've peeled layer after layer away.  and he's peeled his own layers off at the same time, so we've made quite a team.  i have three bright magical children who i just don't even know how to feel worthy of, so instead, i feel dumbfounded and crazy ass lucky. or something.  i am crazy lucky.  and i am crazy traumatized.  as a lot of us are.  and today, with the help of a therapist, i got the perspective, again, that i still have trauma buried deep within.  still.  i can do more healing.  and i will.  feeling into the hardness of the hits i've taken is somehow very calming and affirming.  like..., ok.  this is why i feel like i do.  i didn't do anything wrong.  i just got hurt badly.   understanding why i struggle, takes such a load off.  and it's odd that i have to be reminded.  i mean, how can i forget?  but i do somehow.  or i go on with my life thinking, maybe, now, i will be free of the wounds, now that i've done all this therapy.  freer, yes.  but not really free.  get back to work sweet savory self.  get back to the work of tending to yourself.  your healing.  of acknowledging that you have been hurt.  feel comforted knowing  there is loving help to be had.  you can be more free than this.  saying that, believing that, knowing that, that actually makes me feel better.  aaaaaaaaah.  

and now.  to change gears a bit.....  i went back in the archives of this blog recently and saw that i did this once a few years ago.  it made me want to do it again.  love.  i really hope noone takes offense in my sharing up there.  somehow everything can be taken that way.  but i did it for me.  i needed to do that.  for me.  for my deep dark self.  

what we wants:

miss H:  magic.  dark black silky slinky happy lively magic.  cleanliness.  loving exchanges to outnumber the hostile ones in this house.  to play words with friends about 10 times a day.  or more?  music lessons (if i keep saying that will it happen?).  to listen to more david bowie.  and brian eno.  to make a book of memories about pawpaw.  a never ending book of memories.  to lose some fear.  less fear.   less fear.  less fear.  less worry.  to find some newfound love of cooking, to experience the boredom of cooking vanish and some neat creative little happy food sprite join in the bland adventures of heather's food creations, and turn that bland into grand.

miss O:  time with her bears at home.  time with her friends at school.  to help with anything in the kitchen. to eat snacks constantly. to ice skate.  to tell of her most epic dreams at the breakfast table, tales that last solidly for ten or more minutes. to be a water bender....  to watch avatar, the last airbender. 

miss Z:  to stitch.  on the sewing machine, now that she's privy to the ways of it (!!!!).   her own machine (ha! let's take it slow my dear.) to play checkers.  to play with rats.  or cats.  to get a new baby rat.   to eat sweets constantly.  to ice skate.  to giggle.  to cackle.    to be a water bender.....to watch avatar, the last airbender all the time.  or to read it, or draw it.

mr. M:  to laugh.  to tease.  to play.  to get a new duck.  to count his current savings over and over again.  to trade 5 one dollar bills for a 5 dollar bill, and then back again.  repeatedly.  he's grasping the equality of the seemingly large obvious differences there (i did have five bills, now i have one ???  how is that the same?).   to go on a weekend overnight snowboarding trip with his dad.  to watch avatar the last airbender, all day long.

mr. D:  to drink coffee.  to make coffee.  to make love.  to swim.  to sleep through the night, to be free from insomnia.  to laugh.  to cry.  to do lots of face chat and phone chat with his mama.  to watch movies at night after the kids are asleep.  to have his gelato pint project grow wings and fly.  

LOVE.  LOVE.  LOVE.  love in the dark.