Living As All of Me

[HannahOne]

Sanmagic7, thank you for reading. It's so good to hear you're finding a clearing I the storm.

[TheBigBlue]

I'm here with you, Hannah, reading this and feeling how much you're carrying.

You don't have to hold it all alone right now. 💛 

[NarcKiddo]

I can't make it up to these little ones, I can't make it worth it. I feel them looking at me with big eyes, asking me what I've done for them. Have I vindicated them, have I made it right, have I gotten them justice, have I brought them healing in a silver cup? I have not.

I'm only bringing them more punishment. That's how it feels.

I'm sorry. This resonates. This is your journal, so forgive me if I am overstepping, please. And tell me if you would like me to edit or remove this post.

I question whether they really are judging you and questioning you in that way. I fully get why you would feel they are and that they are justified in doing so. However, are you perhaps setting a very high bar for yourself when maybe all they need is for you to be good enough? Which I am sure you are. The way you have cared for your own children is proof of that. It is appalling that the little HannahOnes had to go through what they did. Adult you was not there then. Just as you are getting to know them, so they are getting to know you. They are not always going to trust you when you reassure them that you are not in fact bringing them more punishment. Only time and love will allow them to see that.

I got into a horrible state when my therapist suggested we reduce our sessions because I was doing so well. I became immediately convinced that I was totally incapable of bearing the responsibility for the little NKs if I spoke with my T once every 2 weeks instead of once a week. It was a total trauma reaction. We did not reduce frequency and the therapy moved into a much deeper phase. I am glad my therapist made her suggestion but it was terrifying at the time. For all of the NKs.

I'm getting better at looking after the little NKs now but it can be very overwhelming and it can be very hard to be kind to myself in the process.

I hope some of these comments may feel helpful but all of our experiences are different so I will not at all take offence if you tell me this was all a load of guff and ask me to get rid of it.

 

[HannahOne]

Thank you for being with me, TheBigBlue! 

[HannahOne]

Nk, thank you for reading and commenting. You're right.

I spent the day with the inner children and I was wrong. Yes, there is a part of me that decided that in order to keep going I would have to make a big amazing happy life. That's how I motivated myself. In the past.

In the present, that is not what they need. They don't need me to have a cool job, a house, a family, etc. They just need me to be present with them. To not blame them. They just need understanding.

I didn't have any of that. It's not easy to find it now as an adult of middle age with almost grown kids, post pandemic I became isolated. I don't have a therapist at the moment. And because of the old idea that I have to become someone else in order to be sane and happy, people in my life don't know my backstory. People know I was "raised by wolves" and they know I'm sometimes easily spooked. They don't know what it was.

The forum is giving me some of that knowing / being known, even anonymously.

And I can give it to myself. I came here to post about my understanding.

I'm quite stunned. My whole life I was blended with this part's agenda, idea, that my inner children, my past selves, needed me to "make things right." But I don't think that's really what they need. That's what they've been told they need. They don't know there's another option. Like being loved.

Thank you for sharing your experience of working with your little NKs. I know not everyone thinks in these terms so it's good to find some others who do experience themselves this way. Thank you also for being considerate by offering to remove or edit, that's kind of you. I don't feel that way at all. Even if I hadn't come to the conclusion that I was mistaken! But I was wrong. I had a whole "Good Will Hunting" moment this morning! It wasn't my fault.... and I don't need to fix it. They don't need my career or my happiness. They're kids. They just need love.

[HannahOne]

TW grief, health stuff, trauma stuff, drama

I cried all night and into the morning, threw up. And felt better.

I hung out with myself. I apologized to myself and as I apologized I realized, it wasn't my fault. It was "Good Will Hunting" all over the place.

As a kid, I never needed jobs. Or a house. Or to have a family. Or degrees. That's not what I needed.I didn't need a pain-free life or a happy life.  

That's what I promised myself, as a way to keep going. A magical future.

But what I needed was to not be alone. To not have to hide. To be understood. To be cared for. To be loved. To be seen and heard for the reality of me.

That's all I need now. I don't have to make my life bigger and better or compensate for something. I don't have to do or undo or redo. I don't have to make it right or make it worth it. I don't have to wear a pink ribbon or be a perfect patient. That's not what these parts of me need.

They just need my acceptance. I just need to be with myself.

It's not my fault. It's not my fault. It wasn't my fault.

I am sorry I blamed myself. Blamed myself for existing. For being a preemie. Blamed my need for food. Blamed my body. Blamed my flesh. Blamed being born female. Blamed being at all. And, it's not my fault I blamed myself. That's what abused kids do.

So many moments linked up in my memory. My mother screaming at me to put a shirt on when I was five. The doctor with his ungloved hands. Riding the bus new to puberty, feeling strange in my skin. My high school boyfriend wanting to touch me, me so scared, him not understanding why am I so scared. Wearing a tank top for the first time away from the religion. The midwife taking a history, "everyone in my family dies of cancer." "that's enough history!" she said, measuring my belly. When the milk came in, feeling like a mammal, a fountain, a goddess, a cow. A cow goddess. Nursing the babies, round the clock, on the toilet, in my sleep, walking around Target. Milk leaking through my silk blouse at work, every two hours aching for the baby. Pumping milk in the bathroom in my heels, pumping milk in the car in the parking lot. Weaning the last baby. The hormonal downshift. Getting back into a bikini, barely. The mammogram, crying on the biopsy table. All of that is all of me.

I blamed being female, I blamed my body that was ground zero where the acts of terror took place. But I don't deserve punishment, from a deity or anyone else. I'm a human, I screw up like all humans, I'm imperfect, lumpy, I lean, I am lax and lippy. I'm entitled to be human like anyone, to take up space, a B cup worth of space, a C cup when nursing or pregnant, and entitled to be flat if that's how this goes. Or concave. Whatever. It's not a punishment. It's just reality.

None of my inner kids needed me to work so hard. Needed me to be anything other than what I am. They only needed my attention, my awareness, my care, my support, my understanding and acceptance. Those things are without cost, I don't have to go get them, turn myself into a pretzel to achieve them. I can give them to myself now and in the weeks and months ahead. The events of my life, the traumatic environment, was not my fault. I wasn't kidnapped by a creep in a white van. I was born in the van. That's not. my. fault. 

I didn't need anything but what any human needs. A safe adult to be with me, to see me for what I was, to hear me, to love me. I am sorry I didn't have that. And I can be that now.

I do have a lot of work to do! Just not the kind of work I thought. I am working inside, seeing who to hang out with, who to love, who needs to be heard. And explaining how it wasn't because I exist or am female or anything about me.

Feeling very sad and very light.

[sanmagic7]

may i add, hannah1, it's not your fault.  it really isn't, and i'm so glad you were able to come to that realization.  i think it's one of the biggest ones we here on the forum or anywhere can come to.

i can feel the grief, and it brought tears to my eyes reading about it, about you, your realizations.  about how you now know what you and your littles needed and continue to need is love, in all its myriad ways.  just active love.  not just the words, but what goes along w/ it, what shows it.  it's all we've ever needed, besides guidance thru the years in order to grow up, meet the world, and become the adults we were meant to be.  you're on your way, and i'm very glad for you.  keep going, ok?  this was a lot.  love and a gentle, caring hug for you and all your littles.  

[TheBigBlue]

It's not my fault. It wasn't my fault.

I didn't need anything but what any human needs. A safe adult to be with me, to see me for what I was, to hear me, to love me. I am sorry I didn't have that. And I can be that now.

Feeling very sad and very light.

Thank you for putting this into words, Hannah. I am crying with you - for you - and also for me, and for many on this forum.

I am so very sorry that you didn't have that. That I didn't have that. That so many of us didn't. It sucks. It is colossally unfair - but it was never our fault.

And that "you can be that now" feels very powerful.
💛

[HannahOne]

TW religion

All my life I believed a deity was in charge. Controlling things. Making things happen to me. Rewarding and punishing me, a sky daddy carrot and sticking me from above. Watching me, judging me. Literally making things happen. Or watching, and choosing not to intervene. If I did this yoga and literally bent myself into a pretzel, if I did this religion, a life confession and an ice cold dunk in my jeans, if I took a new name, if I gave enough cash....

I no longer believe in a sky daddy. That's very recent. About two years ago it just cracked and fell like a massive pane of glass.

If I no longer believe in such a system, if I no longer believe it could have possibly been my fault, then it was literally an accident of the universe.

It was random nature and rotten nurture.

It wasn't meant to happen. It wasn't meant to happen to me. I wasn't cursed. I am not Eve. It was not a plan. I just happened to be born in the van.

It could have been otherwise. Through accidents of time and space, through DNA and too many Coors light... it was due to the brush of a butterfly's wing and the polar winds in the spring of 1975.

None of it had anything to do with me.

I feel like a stone happily skipping across space-time. I'm literally an accident of the universe. Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! 

Who knows what such a happy accident might do today?

[HannahOne]

Thank you SanMagic7 and TheBigBlue for reading. And for affirming, it's not my fault. Yipee!!  I feel like I lost fifty pounds. 

I wanted to thank you both for the tears and for sharing your experience. It really means a lot to me. To be felt with. That's something we didn't get as children. There's something profound about feeling with another person. And here, when we feel with each other we're also feeling for ourselves. I think that's part of why the forum can be healing. Growing up we couldn't afford to feel much, or to feel for ourselves.  

[HannahOne]

I wanted to  reflect briefly on the wildlife rehab. I am not sure it's the right fit for me. My plan at college was to be a vet but by second year bio I couldn't go forward. The dissection was too hard on me emotionally and I was dissociating and not able to learn the names of the body parts. I happily went into a different major that didn't trigger me the same way. On revisiting animal rehab, I can see why I am drawn to it. And also, I'm still not sure I can hack it. I think I am too sensitive.

One thing that I want to find a way to pursue is animal psychology. I learned it while training horses and I need to get back to it In the rehab, the psychology is mainly focused on not habituating the animals to humans. You don't want them to leave the rehab thinking humans are safe or seeking out humans. It destroys their wildness, their very selfhood, their identity as a wild creature.

No habituating! That means no talking. None! And no peeking. All the animals are behind a sheet. If you look at them, you think you're just harmlessly peeking. But they are terrified, to them your eyes are in the front of your head so you're a predator. It's called capture myopathy---they can literally die of fright if you look at them.

Everyone wants to feed the baby squirrels. No one wants to de-gut the mice or clean up after the raptors. No one realizes you don't gaze into the eye of the baby squirrel and call it George while feeding it. You put the baby squirrel into a pillowcase to feed it, so it can't see you, so it doesn't habituate. Wildlife rehab is not about the human. To do rehab you have to leave your humanness at the door and enter into their world, leaving as small a trace as possible. 

The difference between a domestic animal and a wild one is quite sobering. There is a clear barrier between a wild animal and me. I felt it like a wall of energy. Not so the goat at the rescue farm who jumps up to stare into my eyes, or Frank who runs down the hall to chin my leg. The wild animal is sovereign of his own way. And that needs protection, protection from the intrusion of human speech, human eyes, human touch. We can destroy the wildness, and that destroys the animal.

This struck me so deeply. As a child, there was no safe place to hide. No place to avoid being peeked at. And I habituated to the way I was treated. It became normal. As a young person I unconsciously sought it out early on. There was endless talking, babbling, noise, labeling me this, calling me that, so much noise I lost my instincts. Lost my homing compass. Lost my focus on living my life. My sovereignty was not respected, there was no energetic wall around me. My own skin was not a boundary. Instead of dreaming about what I wanted to be when I grow up and actually feeling into that, into who I really am, I was focused on finding a refuge from the noise, the chaos. I couldn't even hear myself think. I wandered from career path to career path but couldn't feel what fit, only what did not.... I didn't have a clear sense of identity, of who I was.

The goal of the rehab is to rehab and release. But half the animals that come in cannot be saved. And some that can recover can't be released. I walked around and looked at them, the hawks in large enclosures, the crow, " very social animal," his sign says, specimen 2018-4562. He's been there seven years, a very social animal, living alone. Would euthanasia have been kinder, I dont' want to debate. But seeing him robbed of his selfhood, his wildness, having to live in a small enclosure, it broke my heart. He's alive, but he's not living his life.

I want to live. Not in a small enclosure. I want to live into all my selfhood. I want to get beyond healing and recovery and into living. And there's no beyond to get to, only right now. And right now, I want to feel into what interests me. Where my feet want to go. I'm going from career path to career path, but now I'm going with All of Me. And that makes a difference. I'm not looking for a refuse. I'm feeling into different places. I am glad I went to the wildlife rehab. I am glad I went to the rescue farm. I am glad I will be training to tutor ESL. I am glad to try Pilates class. I want to find a way to get back to animal psych.