Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Seattle Girl on Cape Cod: Writing Through The Pain

 Hello fellow Earthlings,

I tend to hang out in the positive polarity of life, but no one is immune to PAIN. It's an EARTHLING condition. And there is physical, mental and spiritual pain and sometimes they are all tied together, even if we think they are separate.

A few weeks ago, I opened Pandora's box and unearthed my journals from when my marriage ended. If anything will jolt you back into a timeframe you just as soon have forgotten, reading past journals of that time will.

I am writing a new book called Venus on Fire about my transformation after my marriage ended. In December, I rented a private office up the street from me in Yarmouth, Cape Cod and set it all up with a sofa and chairs, a desk, a lamp, plants, books, and journals. I made it comfortable and inspirational and I thought I had set myself up for a smooth ride.

Nope.

Reading through those old journals did something to me. My body is confused. Am I living in this timeline or that timeline. Maybe I have a leg in both of them. And then, of course, I started to beat myself up that I didn't have a handle on things or that things weren't moving along faster in the book writing world. 

As I dug further into my past,  my body started to give out. My eyes got infected (both of them) and I couldn't wear my contacts. I felt a pain in my chest that I couldn't shake. I felt a lot of anger that may not have been expressed from my marriage and the ending of said marriage. I accidentally  sat on my only ancient pair of glasses and broke them in two. My fiancĂ© Scott glued them together with super glue, using tissue paper to hold the glue. So now I was going even further back to when I was a kid and got teased all the time for wearing glasses. More Pain. He tried to make it better my removing the tissue and coloring in the glob of glue with a pen (bless his heart, his intentions were pure). I put them on and felt like the biggest nerd known to mankind


Me at a Vision Board Class I taught on January 14th with my nerdy glasses
Me with my nerdy glasses at Ritual on Cape Cod where I taught a Vision Board/Intuitive Writing Workshop

I also felt lost and depressed. I didn't have a clear vision of my future or what I am trying to accomplish. I have so many things I want to do, but feel like I'm sinking in thick mud and to lift one boot up and put the other one down into this dense, thick stuff is easier said than done.

So I'm wading through the shit. We all have to do it at some point. Many people just as soon keep Pandora's box shut tight and buried....forever...

The thing is, this book is NOT a book about divorce. It's a book about what came out of a divorce. It's a book about empowerment, transformation and overcoming obstacles. It's book about seeing the truth of who I was, who I am and who I am becoming. We are always becoming. Each one of us is not the same person we were two seconds ago. 

I realize that to talk about this transformation, I have to understand where I was and put myself back there. I now get that I also need to keep myself insulated a bit when I do that. It would behoove me to have some self-care in place. If I'm journeying back in time, it would be nice to have a heated seat, a good drink, driving gloves, a nice pair of shades, an air bag and my seat belt fastened. 

So today I really fell apart, but my airbag protected me. I went to a yoga class in the morning, I reached out on Facebook for love and support (I know that's a weird place to do it, but it's where all my peeps are in one place), I had my home professionally cleaned (That's part of self care for me).

As I walked the steps up to my office to attend a college meeting, I began to feel my hands get clammy and my heart race. I called the eye doc and asked if I was having a reaction to the antibiotic drops I need to put in my eyes 4 times a day for the eye infection. She said that a racing heart was uncommon, but I should go to ER or Urgent Care. 

I talked myself down from the cliff a bit. I decided things weren't so urgent. I slowed my breathing down and meditated. I asked myself what I needed. 

The answer was REST.

So I cancelled all my classes and laid down on my 'therapy' sofa in my office with a scarf over my eyes and listened to 15 minutes of guided meditation. I really let myself release whatever wanted to be released.

Interestingly, I am surrounded by therapists. My office building is a therapy office with one real estate broker and one recluse author (me). Even though most of the therapists use sound machines to block the noise of their conversations, every once in a while I get bits and pieces. When I first moved in, I overheard, "Your relationship is RUPTURED. You have to accept the fact that it is RUPTURED." For some reason, the word ruptured rang in my head all day that day. So while white noise machines where whirling outside office doors today, my own therapist in Seattle had an opening in her schedule. What a relief. 

She said, "Maybe you should write about how it feels to write this book. Maybe you should say what you are going through."

So here I am, on my blog, letting you know that it aint no picnic.

But I'm going to keep on keeping on despite all the pain. 

And maybe I'll even get some cute glasses...