Tag: secret
-
As I wake up and shake off the dust, I’m finding myself again. I’m remembering who I am.
I’m finding my light.
I’ve written a lot about why I am the way I am, or, the way I was. Or, who I’m unbecoming. I do this because I never did. Write about it, that is. Or talk about it for that matter.
One of my core upsets is feeling misunderstood or unheard.
Silence has tortured me so much of my life. You want to punish me? Just stop talking to me. Pretend like I don’t exist. Anyone else feel this?
Ironically, God gave me an exhusband who stonewalled me for the majority of 15 years, a father who didn’t talk to me for ten years, family that never asks meaningful questions or listens deeply, friends who thought I was fine when I definitely wasn’t fine, a friend of 30 years who didn’t speak to me for the last two, and a Love, my twin…who didn’t speak to me for five long horrible years.
That’s a LOT of fucking silence.
(And Contrast… (Another blog post coming soon…))
Thanks to the mirror exercise, I now understand why everyone is silent. I now understand why I’ve suffered SO MUCH.
Because…. for most of my life… I didn’t listen to myself. I didn’t hear myself. I didn’t talk to myself. I didn’t understand myself.
I didn’t listen to myself when my insides screamed “run away!” and I laid there, paralyzed. I didn’t listen to myself when my soul wanted to end my marriage ten years ago but I chose to listen to everyone else, my mind, my fear, my ego instead. I didn’t listen to myself…the part of me who was SO IN LOVE with another man…I didn’t listen to her. I silenced her. I denied her. I tried to forget her. I tried to kill her in my mind. I tried to kill my soul.
I didn’t understand myself when I was a silenced kid carrying the weight of the world and didn’t know what to do with it or understand why. Why. Why. I didn’t hear myself crying out for help after every flashback and every nightmare. I didn’t understand myself and why I wanted to die…I didn’t listen to myself. I kept misunderstanding myself. I kept running from myself. I stonewalled myself.
So OF COURSE I would attract more and more situations and people who would keep misunderstanding me. OF COURSE I would keep trying to get people OUTSIDE of me to listen to me… But FAIL and FLAIL because I wasn’t listening to MYSELF.
This feeling of being misunderstood grew and grew especially over the past 5 years or so. God is good and I finally understand why. Because I continued to bury my heart, my truth, my self deeper and deeper. Every day for five years I denied her. I shut her up and I shut her down.
But, she still cried out, “See me, hear me!!!”.
But I buried myself alive.
I could blame everyone else. I want to. I have. You’ve read it. I’ve tried. But no one has shown up on my doorstep and apologized. Even if they did, I’m not even sure it would heal me at the depths of which I feel that pain.
So I write. Because I can. Because I know I’m not the only one. And because I NEED to.
I have 39 years of jumbled up thoughts and pain. Ten years of completely denying myself. A lifetime of completely denying myself of good, of Love.
It’s all coming out now. At first, it wasn’t pretty. I was full of anxiety and panic and desperation. Imagine being buried alive and then one day God takes a shovel and breaks the ground and says “wake up! Come out!”
Writing this now makes me realize that I had my Lazarus moment…. “Lazarus! Come forth!”
“Keturah! Wake up!!!!”
So there she is, my soul, buried six feet under. For the first time in ten years she’s seeing day light again.
My rescue felt like clawing my way out from six feet of packed in dirt. Like tens of thousands of feet had walked on me. It wasn’t pretty. He said I was flailing. Well….I think you might flail too if you realized you were buried alive.
So, I write. I write because I never spoke. Did I say words? Of course I did. Anyone who knows me knows that I have the tendency to be verbose. Especially when I’m anxious. Or when I’m flailing. Or when I’m trying to just survive.
My life is interesting in that the very thing that sets me free is the very thing that hurt me.
My dad is a writer. And an artist. He’s very talented, one of those starving artist and tortured types… Alone, poor, full of dreams but little manifestation. I refused to let that be me. So in my dead days (buried alive) I lost all interest in creating. I didn’t paint. I didn’t draw. I lost my spark. I became lackluster. I never wrote ever, so this is a new creative endeavor for me. And this is why…
All I remember of my dad from my childhood are his aspirations to be an author. He wrote prolifically. He drew pictures to accompany his writing. He was devoted, I’ll give him that. But if you read my earlier posts, you’ll remember that my dad was less than kind to me. And often, that abuse involved his writing.
And because of that, I refuse to become my dad. I refused to write.
The problem is, if I don’t create, I still become him… Full of dreams and no manifestation.
So, when I woke up, I chose to heal it instead continuing to be a victim to it. I healed it by just choosing to do it. For me. To become ME. I don’t expect anyone to read this. I don’t care if anyone reads it. I love hearing from people who do read it! But, because I felt forced to stay silent, and then forced myself to stay silent, my noise is now SO LOUD. My healing victory is claiming this for myself and trusting that God will put it in the path of those who need to read it.
When I decided to start a blog, I was terrified. I knew I had a secret and I knew I was supposed to tell it. Torn between doing what’s best for me and what everyone else wants, I was brought to my knees. God said to my soul… They need to hear it. They will read it.
Who is they? I’m still finding out. People come out.of.the.woods. to tell me how much this resonates. How they read me telling their story. Good. I’m glad ❤️. Thankfully, I don’t need validation anymore. I don’t need anyone to tell me I’m good or that I’m okay or that I’m making good decisions. I just CHOOSE to believe the God in me who says, “you’re perfect. It’s perfect. Your heart is beautiful. Shine your light baby girl. Say what you need to say”. So, if you’re reading and it helps you, Thank God. Because he told me to. I just listened. Thankfully, it helps me too ❤️🔥
So I guess I’m a writer. This is part of who I am now. This is how I choose to heal. And I’ll keep healing. I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep digging up the dirt, keep digging out of my grave, until I find all my light, all my good, and all my treasure. ❤️🔥
Honest. Kind. Shine. XxOoXXo.
-
This blog thingy is interesting. I already have posts scheduled out to Sunday but this one feels like it needs to come out today. It’s becoming more and more clear to me what is actually going on with me and while I started this blog to tell my big secret, it’s also helping me peel back all the layers of this onion. Or cake…or parfait…everyone loves parfaits.
I sure hope someone gets my jokes and movie quotes…
Last night my husband and I went out for ice cream. The kids are at my in-laws, my request, or plea, rather, and so we’ve had a few very wide open days to talk, run and grab lunch, basically do whatever we want. It’s …. nice? It’s interesting… that’s for sure.
So we went for ice cream and while we were out I was unpacking all kinds of emotional shit. Which brought me to this statement: “Have I talked to you about my thoughts about work?” He replied with a statement indicating that I indeed had not caught him up on the latest developments of my work related thoughts.
Earlier in the day I was listening to the most recent episode of Glennon Doyle’s We Can Do Hard Things Podcast. At the end of the podcast someone suggested to make a list of all the things you feel like you have to do. Then go down through the list and ask yourself, “Do I want to do this?” “Do I really have to do this?” Because I process super fast and really without consciously thinking I am, I suppose I got there, at least to one thing that I don’t want to do and I don’t have to do. It at least got me to the point where I was prompted to bring it up to my life partner.
It’s not that cut and dry, though. Being a therapist, for me anyway, comes with a greater joy and responsibility than just going to work for a paycheck. I’m not punching a time clock, I don’t hang out at a water cooler. I can’t waste hours playing mahjong or do any of my work mindlessly. I’m not judging those of you who are able to do any of this! I’ve had jobs like this too. Of course not every moment is wasting time away! But in nearly every job I’ve had, even other human services jobs, in an average 8 hour day there are plenty of opportunities to veg, space out, be careless, mindless, absent.
Not as a private practice, self pay, therapist. I am IN IT. ALL THE TIME. I’m not complaining. I LOVE my job. It’s more than just a job though. It’s a lifestyle. I have to be a certain kind of person, with certain ‘levels’ of growth and mindset, and personal/other insight to be one that is pursued and respected in my field. I’m in private practice which means all of my clients come to me either through word of mouth or through Psychology Today. If I’m a shitty therapist, that news is going to travel fast. As it should.
So those questions, what do you have to do and what do you want to do are very very layered and nuanced for me.
Do I have to work? Yes….and no…
Do I want to work? Yes….and no…
Maybe most people feel this way about their jobs. But unlike me, if I’m not in a good spot mentally, emotionally, spiritually– it’s unethical for me to work. It doesn’t matter how much I want to, how much I “need” the money, how guilty I feel for not working and all the ripple effects that causes. If at my core I know that I can’t hold safe space for my clients, for whatever reason, I can’t work. It’s unsafe, unethical, dangerous, irresponsible. I know other people have jobs where this is the case. Surgeons, forklift operators… There’s lots of us who have jobs where we have to be on our A game nearly 100% of the time. When you work for a company, there’s built in bs time. BS meetings, lunch breaks, scheduled time between meetings, meetings that you can totally skip out on if you have a headache or the poops. When you work for a company, you get paid for those often unplanned 20-40 minute “need-to-collect-myself” moments.
If this happens to me as a therapist, in my current work situation, which I do not plan to or want to change, I have to cancel a full session or push through. Sometimes we push through. My therapist was feeling sick the other day- she pushed through. She also asked crappy questions and judged me- which I know wasn’t intended, of course. Still happened.
The problem with being a therapist is that to do a good job and feel good afterward we have to be damn near perfect. And there’s no such thing as perfect. So we hope and pray for clients who remember our humanity and give us lots of grace…but we can’t expect this! All my clients pay out of pocket. Can you imagine paying a painter to paint your ceiling and he’s having a shitty day and splatters paint everywhere? Would you hire him to come back? Would you refer him to your friends? NO! Most people, especially these days, would be really pissed. We don’t live in a culture that encourages grace.
Nor do I want to expect or need a lot of grace.
So… this is what asking myself, “what do I want, what do I need” has led me to. So MANY PEOPLE do not have the ‘luxury’? ability? to do what I NEED to do, right now. I can’t put it off anymore. I need to take time to heal.
I am a therapist but I am also a trauma survivor. My trauma messaging, triggers, and nervous system responses run deep and wide. The Secret revealed to me that while I thought I’ve been dealing and healing the past 10+ years… I wasn’t …. not completely. And not enough for me to ethically and safely practice therapy.
Our world does not make it easy to do trauma recovery. As a trauma informed therapist, a passionate trauma-healing focused friend, believer, mother, etc etc etc, I have come to realize that this burden of trauma that I carry in my body, that we all carry in one way or another (think 2020), is just a lot. We are all crumbling.
It doesn’t really matter how much I want to work. It doesn’t really matter if I need to. I can’t.
I’m grateful that God has orchestrated my life and circumstances in such a way that l am actually able to do the trauma and emotional healing work right now that I have not been able to do my whole life. I’ve tried. I’ve been open and conscious and aware of my triggers and how the messaging shows up in most areas of my life. I’ve been in some kind of therapy consistently for the past 10 years. I’ve done lots of work around codependency, PTSD, self-love, and spirituality. I’ve basically devoted every moment of my life over the past 10 years to becoming a better human. But my secret revealed to me that there are deep deep parts of me that are still reacting and if I don’t heal it, I will fuck up. I can’t do that. I won’t do that to myself or to anyone else.
I need to heal.
I’m grateful for this very public platform. I don’t care who reads or doesn’t read. I know God will put it in the hands of those who need to hear it. Pray with me that he will reveal it to those who need permission to take the space they need to heal.
Thanks for reading ❤️
“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
2 Corinthians 4:8,9,16-18
Honest. Kind. Shine.
Keturah Mae Shine 