relief – The Whole Cookie

Daddy

There are those times when I’d like someone to know what is going on in my life, the struggle, the trial and yes the heartache, but saying it out loud makes it more of a reality. Life is certainly interesting. Just like that, someone can come back into my life only to begin the process of saying goodbye.

My heart has been heavy as I instinctively know where this part of my journey is leading. I begin to set things up and organize an end of life care plan and I wonder, have I been being prepared for this moment all along?

All I’ve ever wanted was time with you, to know you more, better and completely, but that wish never came to fruition. It’s as though I’ve been grieving and mourning the loss of you repeatedly for my entire life so far and then…

Easter Sunday comes and a stranger reached out to me through FB messenger. She informed me of the situation. Her mom, also essentially a stranger, had gone into the hospital and from there this conversation went on for 1 1/2 hours. I knew what I had to do and the next morning I began making calls, calling on all my resources, experience and knowledge from my in home care business to make a care plan and 3 days later I found myself in my car headed up north to visit the man I call Daddy. When I arrived, the situation was a little worse than I expected as I jumped into work mode to begin the process of a care plan.

In those first 8 hours I learned more than I ever knew and I will treasure them for the remainder of my life. My Daddy and I spent the day talking just the 2 of us, crying and sharing our hearts. Somehow I knew this was the moment I’d longed for since I was a little girl and in one sentence he was able to mend my deepest wound I’ve attempted to fill and repair on my own and with The Lord. I had always thought it had been irreparable after all this time until he told me of the day I was born. He spoke as if it were yesterday, how blessed he had felt. When he shared with me “the second they put you in my arms honey, I just knew you were my special, precious, baby girl and I loved you”. The feeling that washed over me was, “WANTED”.

A lifetime of this emptiness and struggle resolved with his simple declaration spoken from his heart to mine. God’s Mercy and Grace brought restoration I never knew I could have. Memories are few and very far between, but those that I do hold, I praise God for this ultimate gift today that I will cherish for eternity.

Now we walk through these days in preparation for our Daddy to go home to be with The Lord for only He knows the plan for the end that will be his new beginning for his restoration as he crosses the finish line to victory. Amen🙏🏻💫🙌🏼💖

Her path of authenticity

She thanked her profusely for never following through with her suicidal thoughts. She couldn’t bring herself to ask if there were actual attempts. She just let her brain assume so, but prayed there weren’t and won’t be anymore.
Fear…

These two are so freakishly alike it’s a beautiful harmonious connection. They’ve shared those thoughts as if these were good bonding moments. Really what it says is, “I know better than anyone, and understand your heavy heart, the devastating pain and deepest hurts you’re feeling”. Her mama couldn’t possibly know how she felt exactly, but the agony resonated. The feelings of complete despair and just a desire for the pain to stop. Yeah, that she gets.
Confusion…

Mama sits with her, she’s learning to listen, really hear her child’s anguish, obstacles, fears and all the past that floods her head and it all pours out. Sometimes her words are accompanied with anger and outbursts still, almost always with tears and probably for a long while still with confusion of what to do next. “Take it slow, but definitely at your pace”, she encourages her.
Processing…

Let her just vomit her words so the poison is extracted. “It’s ok”, she tells her, “I can hold it for you sweetie, I can take it”. Mama knows her frustration isn’t about her necessarily. She can be her sounding board, but not her punching bag or doormat. She’s learned that part of detachment pretty well. It’s not without difficulty when it’s your own child.
Unconditional…

Ever since she was 12 her favorite expression was, “I got this mom”. And you know, she always has. Mama smiles intently at her, “I know baby, but it’s ok not to have it all figured out right here right now. Give time time and let things come to you naturally when you can. Forcing solutions can be frustrating as hell, as can sitting still, I know”.
Wisdom…

Their talks are more frequent now and her mama is grateful for the relief she sees in her child’s face more often, now and then, here and there. This is only the beginning of all the transitions ahead, yet the only thing that ever matters to her mama is her children’s happiness, contentment and feeling loved, all of them.
Closeness…

She gave birth to her and her brothers, she has them all on borrowed time and she knows this too well. Time is fleeting and life is precious. How quickly it can disappear, how fragile it actually is. Guilt consumes her some days. The “if only’s” play out in her head and she cries. Sadness overwhelms her at times and she makes time to call her child just to say I love you. She can’t seem to hug her tight enough when she sees her. Never again will she ever feel her mama’s absence, nor will her brothers.
Available…

She thinks they still need her as they always have, but really it’s mama who’s needing them more.
Present…

✍🏼🧝🏻‍♀️

Sharing is caring

May you always know a Mama’s love and warmth… 💕

Did you know the child you birthed, may not be whom you thought they were? Can you understand they may be struggling with something more powerful, cunning and baffling than their own imagination? Do you accept what they perceive and actually know to be their truth, yet they’ve suppressed it for so long?

If you are further confused by what is seemingly bizarre and unexplainable behavior from a loved one, especially your own flesh and blood, the offspring you thought you knew, and you find yourself in constant concern, wonder and worry, you’re not alone, but they may feel as if they are.

Has you child come to you with a secret so deep they can’t muster up the words to speak so they stammer and stumble as they try to explain. You look at them perplexed, coaxing them to just say the words, assuring them it’s ok because you love them so much. You take notice the fear consuming them and yet you persuade them to trust you, hoping they feel safe. At last they just vomit the thing they wanted to share because in doing so they know, or at least can imagine, the relief they’ll feel once they open their busting heart.

Finally they blurt it out, the suppression they’ve been hiding behind, the one they could feel, but never knew why. They’ve felt crazy, like their own skin holding them together doesn’t really belong to them. They’re so uncomfortable they wish they could peel it away just to reveal what’s deep down within. Suddenly its out there and you can’t un-know the things you’ve been told and somehow you manage to take a gulp of air and exhale. You have little emotion, no true reaction yet as your heart begins to sing and you smile feeling their relief.

Terrified to tell you, but so desperate to get it out, they wait for you to say something, anything and the only thought to share is how much you love them. What else would a doting parent do? Reject this child or embrace them as you’ve always done? The choice is obviously the latter and so you choose that card and take the gamble. This child of yours is a sure bet so you feel pretty good about this decision.

For the past too many years to count, this child has been tormented inside, but by what? You pray for them and pour love into their souls. You cry over them, fret, worry and obsess over their very well being and still, until this blessed day would come, you continue to lose sleep and suffer for their pain.

They stray and stay away until they come back, wounded and confused, but you love them through it all. Because of you they can venture out to test the water and find their crooked way, but still you love them unconditionally because in a sense, they’re still yours. They face fear and they run, we watch and we wait, but somehow we find our way back to the other to touch home plate and feel that safety net wrap us up until we part another day.

Rest assured this path is their journey. They are never alone as we stand on the sidelines, cheering them along. They’ll find their way in the darkness and the light. Despite all the trials they will triumph in the night. Sleep well and take comfort they will be alright.

A loving, devoted mama bear.
I share because I care.

✍🏻🧝🏻‍♀️

Life is but a dream, or is it?

Where did you go, she asks herself night after night as the darkness engulfs her every thought with delight.

She reached for him, pulling back an empty sheet. Are you coming home soon, she wonders inside her private, deepest desire. She was sure he’d be here when she woke in the daylight hour.

The sun streamed across her face, kissing her gently and for a moment she smiled thinking it was him, feeling the warmth on her bare skin.

She peeked out of the corner from one eye. A sleepy smile emerging from her lips, it was all but a dream, such a beautiful cry.

He reached over to her side of the bed, wanting desperately to pull her in as he’d done every day for so long, yet when he felt over to the edge pulling back his own empty arm, he awoke more to realize her form truly gone.

He flicked the light on as he’d so often do, read for awhile just to get him through.

Off goes the light with a toss of the tablet and glasses too, sighing a deep groan from his chest, pounding so slow, he lies there and wonders why, trying to rest.

Now separated by his very own hand, she’s nowhere near, lying there without her, both left trying to understand.

Could he have opened himself up to her? Would she have welcomed his heart, he isn’t sure.

So much time has passed them by. Somehow they let it all fade away or wouldn’t continue to try.

Her balance was wobbly, but she didn’t know how to shake it all out. His forceful ways made her afraid, kept her living in fear with so much doubt.

She wouldn’t talk, living in the darkest room, not telling him any truths how deep the loneliness loomed.

Where had he gone, so far out of reach, she imagined he’d grown weary of his baby girl that he’d wanted to teach.

She was so good, exquisite and bright, she knows what the magic 8 ball said in all her glory that night.

He loves her more than he knows. He told her now and then. She sparkles and shines and is light on her toes.

She weeps not for him while she sleeps anymore, but dreams of him nightly, his breath on her neck as he gently grazes her lightly.

His love for her grows a little each day as he figures out what makes him happy and choosing to stay.

The words come freely and rhyme now and then. Love doesn’t cost a thing just to remember when. An easier time has arrived to be who she is. Closing his eyes until he feels her again.

They deserved a better ending after such an epic tale, so she raised her white flag and began to set sail…

🧖🏼‍♀️✍🏻

My head –> a big bag of weird

If this is the only day I have, this 24 hours to make choices, to live and to breathe, I think I better choose wisely because tomorrow I may be in a different place.

Today is my day to do what pleases just me. No one to answer to, no one to selflessly serve, no one to have expectations strictly placed on me. What a freedom to breathe, to feel and be still.

On the 3am hour I awoke, just opened an eye to see the clock. Lying there in the dark, I smelled the fresh air drifting in my open window. I heard the rustling of a critter in the crispy leaves below. There was an occasional car passing by the road down the drive. It made me wonder where they were off to, but only for a moment. Suddenly the hoot owl began talking to me too. I drew my attention back to the stillness, to the quiet, peaceful little haven I call mine. Inhaling easily, I relaxed into my freshly fluffed pillow. With the next exhalation I chose to rise and have coffee in my semi dark room and embrace this alone time.

My thinking was remaining in slow gear. This day belongs to me. I asked myself, how do I want to spend it? With another sip of my delicious hot cup of creamy caffeine, I began to think about my life, as I often do. I picked up my phone for a few minutes and scrolled mindlessly through social media for all of 2 minutes. What am I doing? This is never how I want to start my day and I was reminded of my recent, former life. It startled me going down that memory lane. I was reminded of the disconnect between us. His addiction to devices, that essentially was an accessory to the death of our relationship, or at least that was how the demise initially began.

As I allowed my thoughts to wander down that road, I could feel them in my whole body, the discomfort was ruffling while the anxiety tried to bubble up in my throat. Choices, I have them, use them wisely I told my inner being. I took those thoughts captive. I pushed them aside and proceeded to venture my mind down another path, remembering instantly where I was, right here and now, safe, in the presence of my own company, relaxed and breathing.

Taking my last sip I felt sleepy instead of awake. I think I’ll start my day over again. What a concept and, if want to, I can do this all day long. I’m only as happy as I make up my mind to be. (Abraham Lincoln) And with that, I shimmied down beneath my covers, feeling the cool air upon my face, I rolled over and closed my eyes. My mind floating off to a softness of memories. I hear my own voice talking to God, “it’s been awhile since I prayed about him. Won’t you please take the anger in my heart and make it more gentle? It’s only harming me.” Out loud in my noiseless room, I still hear the faint “who, who” from my feathered friend and I ask again why he hurt me, but no words came back to me, not even a small sense of relief, only more questions. This is not how I wish for my day to go. I began to write again while I took notice of my breath and I drifted off to sleep.

It’s a peculiar thing, the brain, how it can reach far back into the cave of darkness and still find the unwanted mess amongst the wet walls, dead lightbulbs and cobwebs. Who stores these things up so tightly and why? What purpose do they keep serving? I’ve convinced myself I need to remember so I won’t forget the wreckage that caused the defeating pain. Isn’t that how I learn my lessons? I’m beginning to doubt, yet here I am, keep on keeping on.

It’s in all the thinking, the clambering of thoughts wrestling around in my head that stirs up emotions from unresolved, unanswered questions, and so, I continue to ask and I continue to wait, maybe even hope for resolutions. Now the coffee kicks in as I stretch beneath my warm covers. A thought forms, the next part of my day emerges as a visual prop, get to the gym girl. Perhaps something revealing will shine down on me there. At least my focus will change with every rep and round…

🧖🏼‍♀️✍🏻

Deep thinker

He got it in his mind that women are to be more than submissive, but subservient and assuringly beneath him. The desperate need of his that they worship him as if he were a God. We are easily used, regularly dismissed and always ridiculed as if we possess no value or worth to dane to be in his presence without his permission. The perversity and depravity in that statement feels like a knife twisting in my heart as I groveled to be that worthy girl in his deemed place of honor.
Fuck that…

When I was 10, he showed me that same worthlessness and stole my youth with his control by devaluing me just as a professional manipulator behaves. I was being trained up to expect to be treated this way when I got older. The woman I was becoming didn’t matter and I deserved nothing more than what he gave and did for me or to me.
Fuck that…

He drilled it into my brain that my thoughts were insignificant, my needs were as well. No one wanted to hear about what I wanted or how I felt about anything at all. Being objectified began when I started to “develop” into that blossoming young teenager. How does a grown man become this way? I couldn’t think in terms such as this when I was a mere teen. From those days forward my attitude was only,
Fuck that…

I’ve learned to escape my body. To float up to the ceiling where I feel safely detached from whatever takes place in the moment happening below. I practice wading in the air as if I were swimming along a soothing stretch of the lake. From here I watch and wait and when everything begins to fade away and it’s safe to return to my body, I snuggle back in. Relieved once again, I can work to get myself to drift off to sleep where I can dream of a life that is calm and beautiful, free of the anxiety that wakes me most nights and even keeps me from that night’s sleep.
I pray for freedom…

After years of this way of existence, I’ve been coming back to my body, slowly allowing myself to feel things I never permitted myself to when it was a dangerous place to be. Never had I imagined the destruction of detaching from my very own self. It was all I knew. It’s what I practiced for survival. It’s what kept me going.
I prayed harder for freedom…

By retreating inside my own mind and hiding behind my fears of these monstrous sized men, I had developed a case of dissociation for my self protection. It became my only source of a coping mechanism that gave me the illusion of being bigger than those who were hell bent on creating my inferior self in order to feed their self created superior selves. When I could detach so completely from the situation, I became invincible as I checked out of the world for the terrifying moment I needed to escape from to be safe.
Freedom was what I craved…

The demons are as real as the dragons I battle. Maybe things will be better in another life, as if I have more than one. What am I doing, still and again? Why am I intent to suffer so? I am on a treasure hunt to find the glory in my story.
It’s time…

There came a day when I awoke after a decent night’s sleep. One where anxiety didn’t shoot me out of bed and my skin. This same night I hadn’t dreamed of my body floating up to the street light that sent a glow on the picture below as I often do. Instead, I was lying there, the light trickling in, listening to the hummingbirds feeding outside my window as Mr. Squirrel was playing like a monkey jumping from branch to branch and Mr. Monty the Rooster began his morning wake up call and it occurred to me… today is the day I believe I became sick of trying to make sense out of nonsense, so I just stopped. I truly felt more free. Suddenly, smiling to myself, I was reminded of the fable…

“The Scorpion and the Frog”
A scorpion, which cannot swim, asks a frog to carry it across a river on the frog’s back. The frog hesitates, afraid of being stung by the scorpion, but the scorpion argues that if it did that, they would both drown. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung him despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: “I couldn’t help it, it’s in my nature”.

🧖🏼‍♀️✍🏻

God’s mercy is the only explanation

He silenced her with his anger. Afraid to speak another word as a quick slap struck across her face. She sat there in disbelief, what was happening? Then, as he drew his hand back, he followed it with a stern, “get the fuck out”. Without hesitation, she swiftly rose to her feet and speaking not a word. In her mind she asked God, “is this it Lord?” and in that instant, she knew, she would never return to him again.

Her mind was racing after the appalling scene that occurred only moments before. It took her over two hours to mindlessly gather her belongings in the dark of the night. She was replaying the events of the day that led up to his finale of the evening. What had gone so wrong so fast? She kept hitting the rewind button yet nothing was explaining to her why she was packing up 8 1/2 years of her life in a whirlwind like a death sentence she just received. “Get the fuck out” kept flashing over head and made her move more swiftly.

Probably to his dismay and surprise, she wasn’t becoming enraged as her typical, dissociative behavior had surfaced in the past. This was much different then all the times before, more surreal. She had a calmness about her as she loaded bag after bag in her car. The moon was shining brightly on that warm summer’s night, but there was an icy energy exhuming all around, causing her brief moments of panic.

She saw him sitting quietly on the back deck where they spent so many days and nights together, but also to her, alone. Silently, she walked out to join him, grabbing her chair to sit beside him in hopes he had changed his mind, would apologize for his rash behavior and say he loves her. Instead he arose, saying not a word and went back inside. She sat there a little longer gazing out into the darkness without any words, saying goodbye to it all.

She was a little numb now and feeling hopeless. She herself entered the back door, her heart pleaded silently within her own pounding chest. “Tell me to stay. Make this all go away.” His words never came. Sitting down at the dining table expecting him to join her there now to…who knows what? Explain himself, have a conversation, anything, something, but he never did. Instead he approached her with only one question, “got everything?” She nodded and quickly stood to her feet, walking slowly to the door where he was already 3 steps ahead, waiting and she asked her final question fearing the answer, “this is what you want?” Forever in her heart she will always remember the last thing he ever said to her, “I can’t get what I want”. And with that, she didn’t act on the rage that was boiling inside of her. In fact, she used that energy to channel her ability to walk away and know this was everything he would ever give to her and that was nothing at all.

There was a kind of numbness and peacefulness washing over her when she got behind the wheel to drive a mile down the road to the cottage she never could understand why he insisted on her maintaining as a part time residence, until now.

They’ve done this dance too many times to remember now, but he kept count and blamed her for every infraction and incident. Each time just like the time before, he knew, or rather expected her to come back, pleading, crying, begging even groveling to take her in his arms and love her once again. The ties that bound them were unbreakable. She had convinced herself of this and that being alone without him was unbearable, but for a split second, she inhaled what she thought may have tasted a bit like… freedom? And, for the very first time that night, there in the darkness, she began to exhale and she smiled.

She pulled into the not so familiar driveway, got what she needed from her car for the night, unlocked the door and walked into the dark and seemingly lonely place. It felt empty and strange, or maybe that was just her projecting. She began to come down from the adrenaline rush that kept her going for the last 4 hours. She found the bed, right where she left it. The girl, who just earlier that day, had a life that was tortuously familiar with a man she had loved and respected for so very long and now, she felt very displaced climbing into her empty bed. She was ready to drop by this point as a tear streamed down her face she thought, what the fuck just happened?

🧖🏼‍♀️✍🏻