Soul Mosaic

Which terror is the biggest?

In looking back at my 2018 notes, whatever the specific items I listed in that email, I realized they boiled down to these core items:

• Fears (many)
• Shame
• Anxiety
• Rage
• Pain
• Self-hatred

The usual culprits, at least for me.

As to fear, it was interesting to see how many different things I was afraid of. And I can’t say that any one of them was bigger than another. They were all about equal in size…huge.

For example, at that point in time, even as I started to consider writing this book, I was ADAMANT that it would be under a pen name. I was absolutely TERRIFIED that any family members or people who knew me would see my name on the book. And I fully expected I would be attacked for speaking out loud. For that matter, I may yet be. But I feel differently about it now.

But at that point, I was even terrified of using a pen name. I still hated my younger self, was drowning in shame over many things in my life, and I still believed that telling my story would cause others pain, that I didn’t deserve to pursue this “navel-gazing,” and I would, rightly so, be attacked, then abandoned.

So it was no small thing that I even considered writing this. I will discuss efforts surrounding the issues of “why write, how, and how to manage courage and fear” in a few upcoming posts.

Reassuring my inner person

I find it helpful, especially when all my fears and emotions feel like they are ganging up on me, to get it out onto paper. Like an exorcism. That way I don’t have to carry them in my head, which both releases the pain of them and reassures me.

On that latter one – reassurance – I feel like as long as I have a list on paper, I know those things won’t be forgotten. For that hurting inner person at my core, it is calming. Soothing. She feels like this time she won’t be forgotten, stuffed down, or….locked behind that door again like in the past.

Sharpening the focus

It also helps me to formulate a coherent plan. I can’t just splatter rage all over the therapist’s office…well, I can, and there is a time for that, but in terms of us making a clear plan for the upcoming EMDR, that wouldn’t do.

“You know, I believe we have two lives. The one we learn with, and the one we live with after that.”
From the movie, The Natural

If ever a statement gave me hope that I COULD learn, catch up to others, and end up with a good life, it was this one. It was only a fleeting moment. After all, it was 1984, that most horrible year after I got out of my parents’ house, and I plunged into a pit of suicidal despair. But still, that one sentence gave me pause. And sometimes a pause makes all the difference in whether you stay or go….

I would also add this newer quote:

“With the clarity you have now, it is easy to look back and think: ‘I should have known better.’ But you couldn’t have. Because you only know now what time has taught you, and back then, you were only doing the best you could with what you knew.”
@SimonAlexanderO / tinybuddha.com

I’ve been told by more than one therapist that what I considered my past “failures” were simply me doing the best I could in the moment, to blindly learn all that I’d been prevented from learning by my father’s abuse. Each emphasized again and again, that I really had been doing the best I could at any moment.

It’s taken until now to really believe that. Oh, that I had believed this, years ago…. But I do now, and I am hopeful.

What IS alchemy and why do I bother with it?

In the previous post, I described my process to use “order” in this last section of the book to reach all the meaning and insights.

I showed this image of a bed covered with folders and notes, which I described as “all my clues” to who I am, at heart, and who I am becoming. That bed, with all those items, is my “power base” for healing.

But it was my husband who REALLY nailed a symbolism that I totally missed.