Today I’m grateful for…

the thunderstorm that rolled through here. I clearly have some unresolved trauma with it because each one sends me into survival mode. I feel like a dog that hides under a couch shaking. I’m grateful it wasn’t at night or I wouldn’t be able to sleep. But it was going off while I was in my first meeting and it was hard to stay emotionally available when I was also internally panicking. 

My mom confiding to me that she thinks she might have experienced CSA as well. Since doing my own work, I’ve been pretty certain that this was the case but it felt like a crushing blow to hear it anyway. And to hear her rationalizing it, describing her memory that she doesn’t realize yet is a memory. Just months ago I was where she was and now I hear her talking like I used to and mourn for the journey she’s about to undergo and the pain she had endured. She insists that she isn’t going to dive into it but in my experience, if repressed memories are beginning to crop up, it’s your soul’s way of pushing you towards healing. I have a feeling that something big is coming, and that she’s going to need a lot of support, and I’m going to have to get good at setting boundaries faster than I realized. And to have this strange mother-daughter bond that probably isn’t all that uncommon.

There are so many retirees in my SIA groups. I think they have kids, have jobs, and don’t have the time to address the trauma until they’re retired. And I’ve always wished my mom was one of these, attending meetings of her own, getting that community and release. But she didn’t have memories yet, she didn’t have a reason to be, or a ticket to admittance yet? Now she does and in some future may do this and I don’t know how to wrap my head around it. 

It’s a sex night but there’s just no time! We have dinner plans until late, so we’ll end up doing it after bedtime and I get so grumpy when we put off sleep for this. Sleep is so precious. And it makes me sad how not-precious being intimate feels. I know it’s my own doing, I just don’t know how to un-do it. And I feel awful that I can tell you this but not my partner. He really doesn’t deserve me treating our love like this, especially with me not communicating it. 

Upbeat gratitudes include…

• a great meeting today. We had a small group and everyone got to do two shares, which usually means it gets deeper and it did. It felt so wholesome and communal, and I appreciate everyone and their struggles so much.
• fully seeing and appreciating the difference my self-love practice has made on my life. It’s like night and day.