Expressed.

I've spent more of my life with repressed emotions than in any other state of being. And this is NOT the first time I've tried to wake everything up and process through/ heal old wounds. I've worked really hard to wake up this particular wound. I think the thing that surprises me is how deep it is. Who knew I had so much stuff hiding in here!

It's like a flood pouring out of me and I'm helpless to stop it. And why would I want to? I know what it's like to carry repressed grief around and it's not good. I wanted to let all of this out in the hope that there's something better on the other side of it. Classic example of be careful what you wish for.

Today was a good day for connecting with people. It was more intense than I expected. Being able to see human faces and hear their voices is so important and how cool is it that we live in a time where we can get that without the germs?

I was able to get back into some of my routines, but not others. That's normal life. Maybe tonight I'll get more than 3 hours sleep.  One day at a time.

I totally forgot to take a picture of that zebra square.

Tracking

This is about three fourths of a shawl. I did that thing where I jumped into the project without checking on the required amount of yarn first. Now I can't get anymore of this yarn. That's what I get from detouring from the original plan of alternating between a series of past unfinished projects and current projects.

So today I'm going to get back on my crafting track and start the next square in the Wildlife Graphghan. It looks like I finished a square in February when I was skipping blogging. It was a zebra and I didn't take a picture of it and now it's dark outside. Maybe I'll remember to take a picture tomorrow. Nothing seems very urgent right now.

I have little routines that are important to me and I've taken a break from most of them for a week. So my big goal for this upcoming week is to figure out what my routines look like with the entire world cancelled. Small goal....leaving my phone downstairs when I go to bed tonight... It's important because I'll sleep better but it's hard because having it closer makes me feel less isolated.

How I Get Through

The thing that gets me through the hard days is my faith. I believe that there is a power outside of me that is bigger than anything I can imagine. I believe that when I'm having all the feelings or laying in bed all day or getting outside in the fresh air or doing all the weird little "churchy" things I do that I'm not alone. More than that, that I'm loved and cherished unconditionally.

This belief has led me to a series of weird decisions over the last couple of years. I've been trying to learn more about Who this God is and what it is that He wants from me. Or to put it another way, I'm trying to figure out what love is and how to live out a life of loving and being loved. In pursuit of this knowledge, I've made a lot of changes big and small to how and where I live my life.

And I think it's working. I feel more loved than I've ever felt in my life. I feel more connected to myself and to my community than at any other time in my life. I'm still a work in progress when it comes to loving others and especially loving and forgiving myself.  However, I reached a point where I felt safe enough to start ripping the old crusty band-aids off the deepest, most painful wounds that I carry inside myself where no one can see them.

there's a toad hiding in there, it's funny

I've gone from living life in mostly robot mode, superficially feeling but mostly suppressing my emotional experiences, to giving myself permission to feel and to emote "out loud" in front of other people. I've found healing for some of the parts of me that I never knew could be healed. Sometimes that healing is messy. Sometimes it takes longer than I want it to. And it hurts. But there is pain that leads to life.

I've been learning to trust this healing process and to keep marching forward into the unknown where I expect to find a healthier, happier me. A Cheri that is a better human, wife, mother, friend, etc than the Cheri that's typing this post. Some of the days it's easier to keep this goal in sight, and I'm learning to be ok with the days that it is very difficult to see the point of anything. I know that emotions are a gift, but some days it's a gift I'd rather return. On the other hand, that whole robot mode thing didn't work out so well as a long-term coping mechanism....

some days I have to find a tiny piece of joy and hold on to it as tight as I can

I wonder if any of that makes sense outside my head. Some days are really hard and they suck and I hate it. But I can do hard things when I focus on my God. And then some days are totally awesome and I love it and for that I thank the God Who loves me.

First Day of Spring

Today is a much better day. I went out to my favorite creek, took in some sunshine and came back feeling motivated.

Yesterday I finished the next section on a past project that uses a crochet along called Around the Bases. In this project I chose a center square called Blizzard Warning! designed by Polly Plum of Every Trick on the Hook. ATB basically lets you choose any center square and then you add 16 borders around it, each border is called an inning. This is the 6th inning:

Well, most of the 5th inning is also in this picture...

I haven't decided how many innings I'm going to use. My big idea for this project is to make one of those cocoon shrugs. So I'm going to keep going until I think this is a Cheri-sized square. But it also needs more snowflakes so that's something that I'll have to figure out.

I do still have a lot of childhood traumas to process through now that I'm not repressing everything, but today I feel like I've made some progress and the pain is not as sharp. Healing is a wild journey.

Nature Therapy

Today I made it outside for some Nature Therapy. It's the last day of winter. I have a bit of a fascination with the seasons and weird things I learn from observing them. There are some great lessons in winter, resting and waiting and preparing for spring.... But I think spring is my favorite. Spring is life. Spring is new. Spring is hope.

Yesterday was a very hard day. In retrospect, it felt like every panic attack I ever repressed hit me at once. The fun thing with healing is that in order to get to it I have to go through all the repressed stuff. If I'd known in advance, I would have made some different choices, but as it is, I guess staying in bed all day was probably the best option.

Nothing says spring to me quite like running water, so I'm going to put a little video clip here. It's so nice to be out in creation, I think I'll take another dose of nature therapy tomorrow.

It's My Birthday. Thanks for Noticing Me.

Well. Today the world is a completely different place than when I last sat down and tried to write something on this blog. It's so bizarre. And when it comes down to it, what do I really have to complain about? We have food and shelter. I'm not worried about running out of toilet paper because we already occasionally use cloth wipes if we run out of TP at a time we can't afford to buy a new pack. So we're set. It's just where I'm at in my recovery journey that has nothing what-so-ever to do with the pandemic.

I'm not sure right now which parts of my life I've already typed up here and which parts I thought I should hold back. I'm a survivor of childhood abuse. It feels complicated to talk about it because I'm not the only survivor and we all have our own perspectives. Some of us don't think it was abuse. I take some efforts to make sure I only share a link to this blog with people that aren't likely to tell my parents or other relatives that I have a blog or that I've mentioned them. But I don't like the idea that my words could be used to hurt someone. Even those who have hurt me. I guess I'm still growing into the idea that my story belongs to me and that I have a right to tell it.

There are memes going around social media reminding everyone that while school is out there will be children in unsafe homes. School is their safe place and they don't know when they'll get back to it. That was me. Holidays were always the worst, the upside was knowing exactly which day it would end. Even into adulthood, I spend all the time between holidays building up a network of support and then the holidays come and most of that network retreats. I don't fault them, it's just the reality. I try to find ways to celebrate around the limitations and I'm super grateful for the friends that celebrate with me at weird times in weird ways.

This year my birthday wasn't on Spring Break. And it's a Tuesday. Tuesday is the day my Celebrate Recovery family meets. It didn't even matter if anyone knew it was my birthday, just being with my CR family doing our regular CR thing, that was what I most wanted to do. Instead I get the same social isolation of my abusive childhood. Happy Birthday to me.

For the last several months I've been working on "waking up" my feelings surrounding the ways my mother abused me. Sounds like a great idea right? My timing is impeccable too, because I managed to open a whole can of suppressed grief right before quarantine. You know what people most need when they're grieving? Hugs. Hugs and spending time with people. So that's going well.

I didn't get out of bed today. Several people did reach out to me and I answered about two of them. That's the speed I'm crawling. It seems pretty selfish. There's way worse going on in the world than reliving childhood traumas while in a completely safe place with access to many wonderful people who support me in any way they can. But that's my life today. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Valentine Countdown

This Heart Crab Applique pattern came from a blog called Golden Lucy Crafts, she has a rather large collection of heart shaped things that are going to come in very handy this month. I did change the legs on one of the crabs after a helpful veterinarian friend pointed out that they are backwards as written. 

In one of the Facebook groups I participate in, a woman named Jessie Mosher has been posting photos of little crochet food items that she's making and leaving in her fiance's lunchbox along with a little pun. So new for this year's Valentine Countdown is my attempt to emulate these punny little things. For today:

If you can't read it "we love you S'More"

I free handed the graham crackers and chocolate and borrowed the basic idea of the marshmallow from a blog called Whistle and Ivy. I added some stitches in some places and took out rounds in other places. There are some really great puns coming up, I'm kind of excited about it.

And we also managed to get in a hike today. The state park hosted a Groundhog Day Hike. A day early thanks to the sportsing event tomorrow. We started our hike with a visit from "Tuttle Creek Tom". The park ranger was so excited to pull off his presentation and he really did a great job. 

He kept checking on Tom and telling us how feisty he was tonight. He picked a kid from the crowd to be his assistant and gave him a top hat so we could do it up just like the movie. They both listened to Tom and reported that he predicts an early spring. I couldn't convince the girls to pose with Tom and the fabulous top hat.

Then we loaded up and drove over to another part of the park for the hike. We went on a trail that the girls and I have walked before but we learned that there were parts of the trail that we didn't know about or had forgotten between the first time we walked it until the most recent time. Here are some pictures from October 2014. 

It's currently more muddy and has no leaves on the trees, but it was too close to dark to take any pictures. It was a lovely day to get out and watch the sunset over the lake.