Soul Mosaic

In my first “baseline reading,” I spoke of emotional flashbacks. But, another fairly frequent “trauma companion” is nightmares. I’ll share more about them later, but as part of this “baseline,” I will give some background here.

While decades of therapy have healed much, nightmares still show up fairly often. Having dealt with them for years, I am *almost* used to them — at least most of the time. And generally, I shed their emotional upsets pretty quickly. In fact, in some of my recent ones, I even show up more as a fighter now than as that victim from the past. So, I guess that is progress.

But sometimes a nightmare will come along that can still blindside me with an emotional knock-out punch. That’s an indication that there is something I still need to work on because nightmares reveal where the heart is still bleeding.

The Trigger: Trip Planning

Yesterday I set up travel plans for us to go to visit our son in Savannah to celebrate my 70th birthday. Now it should be a short story — decide to go, settle the dates, make travel and hotel reservations, and then go and have a wonderful time. Yes. Maybe for many, that is the way it works. But…

For years I have struggled to “ask,” whether it be for help, for something I want, for some I need. It’s taken years but I am getting better at it. Yet even when I can now ask, I still struggle to feel I “deserve.”

So it was no small thing for me to say that I wanted this trip for my birthday. In fact, it was a major victory. I wasn’t interested in presents or big parties, just being with my immediate family — my treasure in life. But about that whole “I deserve” thing….