When Mother’s Day Is Complicated

Mother’s Day sometimes brings up a host of feelings for me. You see, my mother was mentally ill, and because she wasn’t properly treated until I was half way through high school, her moods would swing from the deep lows of debilitating depression, into the highs of mania that seriously skewed her outlook on life. I was raised by a mother who couldn’t be a stable and loving mother all the time.

Looking back, I know she did the best she could, and that’s all anyone can ask. But when your mother verbally cuts you down, attacking at the drop of a hat, it has an effect on a person. What I didn’t know until I discovered healing work, was how the dynamics of our relationship, especially during my early years, affected me as an adult.

I thought moving out and being on my own, geographically separating myself from my mother, was the answer. If I’m not around to be the target of her mania, I’ll be ok. It took years and some really effective healing work to not only see how my formative years were creating dysfunction in my adult life, but to change it, to heal it. To let go of the pain and dysfunction.

It sometimes makes me sad that my mother and I didn’t have a close and loving relationship as many other people have. But when I became a mother myself, it warmed my heart to hear Mom tell me what a good mother I am to my son. Having no one close by to teach me, I was left to follow my heart and be resourceful. So far, it’s working out pretty well.

On this Mother’s Day, with Mom gone now, I send her love and appreciation.

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Spring Tulip Festival 2016

This gallery contains 3 photos.

Originally posted on Life Is A Journey… Not A Guided Tour:
Every April, the county where in live in Washington state celebrates the advent of spring with a Tulip Festival. It runs the entire month, but the flowers come up and…

Surrender

There comes a time when it’s ok to stop and surrender. And breathe.

Time To Tack

We all sail through this journey of life, holding fast to the tiller, sometimes steering with all our might, and sometimes letting the wind and current move us where they will. We head out to sea, looking for grand adventures, tacking and jibing around objects, raising and lowering the sails. Coming in to port during storms, and occasionally needing to ride them out at sea.

Sailing isn’t a world of moving from point A to point B in a straight line. And neither is life. It’s a journey including several changes in course, and course corrections as necessary. And within each voyage, there are obstacles, both seen and unseen. Rocks and shifting sands, sometimes above the water where we can see them, and sometimes below. Much of the time, we pass by or over them with grace and ease. And then there are the times we’re blown off course, or an aid to navigation has failed and we end up on the rocks.

A little over two years ago, the voyage of my son’s education ended up on the rocks. I had to make some hard decisions, and as much as I thought at the time that all would soon be well after a period of adjustment, all was not well.

Since then, we’ve been tacking back and forth, floundering a bit, and trying different sails. We’re still trying to find a better fit.

I took my son out of school because after years of pushing him to go, dealing with anxiety and misery, he’d reached his point of no return. Since then, we’ve been working with a tiny private school that guides students through their own independent and individualized education. My son is basically homeschooled, but with some specific guidelines in order to fulfill our state’s graduation requirements. We’ve created a curriculum that’s a mishmash of prepackaged courses and courses we create with the help of his teacher.

Going this route has taken a ton of pressure off both me and my son, and I thought it would mean the end of one horrific storm of misery.

What it did was shine a spotlight on one area in particular that’s become a blockade. My son’s mental health. By the end of last fall, after trying a variety of things over the previous year and then some, it became glaringly obvious that my son has very real issues with anxiety and panic attacks. In December I gave him two options to help create change, and he chose working with my very talented hypnotherapist, who is also a mental health counselor. (The other choice was medication).

That tack took my son into uncharted waters, and any time he’s thrust into uncharted waters, his nemesis, anxiety, shows up. As difficult as it was, he went to several sessions. And he was even able to have short experiences of hypnosis during a few of them. But after over three months of weekly visits, trying as hard as he could, I realized that my son’s brain needs more help. Panic attacks are no joke.

So, it’s time for another tack. One I’ve been putting off until I tried every other intervention I could. Time to try medication. Because my mother was bipolar and her mother had mental health issues that were never diagnosed, there is a family propensity for mental health challenges. I, myself have had my struggles at different times in my life, and I have a niece and a nephew who benefit from medication, so the familial connection is most assuredly there. In my case, energy healing has made all the difference.

My hope is that with the right medication, my son will have the chemical support for his brain such that he might be able to work with my hypnotherapist again, without succumbing to his nemesis, panic. She has several great tools that could help him change his life.

For now, we sail on our present course, waiting for doctors appointments. Waiting for assistance as we move through somewhat murky waters, still somewhat unsure of where this journey will end up.

Kundalini Awakening, One Year In

I’ve been trying to write this post for a while now, but my brain is being rewired so significantly that trying to focus remains illusive on many days. Struggling to hold thoughts in my mind, crafting them into word images as the thoughts disappear. I never knew how important the ability to maintain focus is when trying to write, until I lost it. Here goes nothing.

Recently, a friend asked me what Kundalini energy is, and because most of the people I know have never heard of it, here’s a post about it, having it activated in me just over a year ago.

We are all created from energy first. Our physical bodies are made because cells combine and multiply. But we don’t often think about what keeps us alive and allows the cells to live in the first place. And what tells the DNA in our cells to turn on and off? Energy. Life force energy. It primes the pump of our heart, transmits information, and withdraws from our body at the end of life.

You can connect with a facet of this life force energy through meditation, and through altered states of consciousness; and some people have spontaneous experiences of it. It feels like unconditional love and a state of oneness.

Kundalini energy is another type of energy that’s seen as a creative force (it stimulates change), and lies dormant within our bodies. Most people live their entire lives completely unaware of it because it never becomes active. However, people in some cultures such as the Hindu are fully aware of it and participate in activities like Kundalini yoga and meditative practices with the specific goal of activating their Kundalini energy.

As much as I don’t do yoga or have a practice of meditation, I can see that the healing work I’ve been doing allowed the potential for this energy to become spontaneously active in me. What Kundalini energy is doing in me is much like what I was accomplishing in my healing sessions, yet exponentially deeper. Activated Kundalini energy leads to the union of personal consciousness and cosmic and divine consciousness.

It changes our consciousness. It changes how we perceive ourselves and our entire world.

The strength of Kundalini is what allows us to expand infinitely so that we can see the whole universe within our own Self. Then, we no longer remain a limited, bound creature; we achieve total union with Universal Consciousness.

Imagine the lifelong racist who falls in love with their bi-racial grandchild and suddenly realizes that the people they’ve been persecuting are really no different from them, and they let go of a lifetime of hate. That’s a major shift in consciousness. It’s a step in the direction of knowing that even when our outer wrapper looks different, and our cultures and languages are different, deep inside, every single person on this planet ultimately has the same wants, needs, and emotions. It’s a step toward Oneness.

Kundalini energy acts on a person’s body and mind, creating exponential healing over the course of years. Usually the first few years are the most intense, with lots of change going on inside a person.

Bit by bit, unconscious beliefs and thoughts that don’t resonate with unconditional love, compassion, and unity, are bubbling up from within me and are being let go. Kundalini energy is moving this process forward, changing me from the inside out.

I’m changing from a caterpillar into a butterfly without Mother Nature’s brilliant pupa state, allowing that creature to completely step out of life by creating a cocoon where it is fully supported in its metamorphosis.

Going through such an intense metamorphosis as a human being has all sorts of physical and mental discomfort that a person just has to deal with until the cocoon of change slows.

That’s the part of a Kundalini Awakening you might not read about in your yoga and meditation magazine. They’ll write about things like the union of personal consciousness with Divine consciousness, to get you to join a Kundalini yoga class, because it sounds so amazing (and in fact, it is). But if you’re thinking about activating your Kundalini energy as a DIY project, absolutely do not ever do this in a million years without guidance and support.

I’m far enough along into the process to see that although, yes, my Kundalini energy spontaneously activated in a big way, the healing work I did over the several years prior, and everything I’d learned about myself as both physical and energy/spirit, prepared me for this experience.

Change of this sort, at this magnitude, letting go of a lifetime of human pain and disconnection, is massively challenging. The long and short of it is, the past year has been one of more discomfort than I’ve ever had to deal with so continually, and it’s not over. Fortunately, as with everything in life, the discomfort has waves of intensity, keeping life bearable enough that I’m still here, chugging along.

In the meanwhile, as all sorts of pain and anger I’ve carried around in my heart is being healed, the amount of love and acceptance that’s able to flow through is ever increasing.

It’s very synchronous that I’m finishing this up around Easter Sunday, because Kundalini energy changes a person’s consciousness, shifting us into a Christened state of consciousness, where our internal truth becomes one of unconditional love and Oneness. As much as I’m very aware that my human body has a finite life span, I also know that when my body passes away, my self-awareness won’t. I’ll still be me, yet without the struggle, hardship, and the physical, visceral pleasures that we experience in life.

Jesus’ teachings were all about helping us know that we exist beyond our physical bodies (as many native traditions have never forgotten), and that our inner truth is one of love. His teachings were all about helping us connect with this inner truth, teaching us that peace can be found deep within our own hearts. And that anyone can find it.

When you change your own heart, the way you experience the world will change.

So, my friends, I’m being rebirthed from the inside out, courtesy of Kundalini energy. The lens through which I see the world is being changed markedly. My inner truth is shifting and changing, moving step-by-step every closer to love.

When We Make Plans, God Laughs

What’s that expression? When you make plans, God laughs. Yep. We trundle along our lives doing what’s expected of us, making bold plans for what our lives will look like in five, ten, or twenty years. And some of it will come to fruition. And some won’t.

Some of our dreams will change along the way, some hopes dashed on the rocks, and some things will turn out better than even our imagination can dream.

When I was a girl, my life was going to be school – work – marriage – family of my own by the time I was 26. Then God laughed. And he laughed again and again.

Many of my plans didn’t happen. Or it they did happen, my time-table was way off.

The cool thing is, having a spiritual awakening was never on my radar. Until it happened.

Discovering a thing called Energy Healing was never on my radar until one day when it crossed my path, and having nothing to lose, decided to give it a try.

Little did I know that waking up spiritually and getting into Energy Healing would change my life in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

Having a Kundalini awakening was never on my radar either. Until it happened. And as much as it’s being a bit of trial by fire type of experience, and what my life looks like from the outside isn’t changing, I am changing. It is changing me from the inside out.

These days, when life shoots my plans down, I am more willing and able to see the grace and higher wisdom in what can come from it.

Molting

Today I feel like a lobster, molting. I’m delicate, sensitive, and haven’t quite got my bearings. I crave solitude and quiet. I hide away in the rocks, saying little to those around me.

I’m a snake whose skin is peeling off, shedding that which no longer fits, is no longer needed.

I’m deep inside a chrysalis, undergoing metamorphosis. Transforming my very consciousness. The caterpillar transforms in a few weeks. For me, it’s happening over many months, to possibly a few years. I don’t really know how long I’ll be in the soup of Kundalini metamorphosis.

Today, it’s having recently cast off vibrations of fear around being a mother and worrying about her child.

When my son struggles, it affects me, as it would any mother. And with the most recent school shooting, and all the fear it brought up across the country, something deep inside me began to rattle and shake free. Fear of losing my son. Every mother’s fear of losing their child. Fear of my son not making it in the world. It suddenly burst up from deep within me. That distinct part of my psyche that was so very scared rose up with a flood of tears. That part of me who I’ve been holding separate because of fear, was able to come back into my heart; the fear unlocked and freed.

Because I am changed these days, instead of the fear sitting in my cells, becoming triggered over and over, when a fear is activated, it comes all the way up and out of my entire system.

Glands and muscles around my heart ached as I sobbed, letting go of the fear they’d held for lifetimes. Yes. We hold fear in our bodies. How my DNA is expressed is now changed.

Two days later, I’m raw. Internally, I’m in pieces as my body and mind shift to echo my spirit, my changed consciousness.

Tired, sensitive, and sore, I find the balance of doing what I must and taking care of myself as necessary. Lots of quiet time. Alone time.

Watching all sorts of thoughts leaving my consciousness as echoes of former fear visit on their way out. Knowing they are no longer my truth. Not a fun process, but part of it all. “My son’s life will be shit if he can’t do this or won’t do that.” Lie. “My son could die at any moment.” Lie.

Eventually, the tiredness, sensitivity and wonky thoughts pass, creating a new normal.

And one day, I’ll feel less like a pupa and more like a butterfly.

 

A Sea Story

The fiberglass hull crashed through the waves, chopping them with its hard chine. Wind blew the spray onto everything on the open deck: passengers, bags, and the Captain, as she ducked behind the pitiful windshield and gripped the steering wheel. Water ran down everywhere that wasn’t covered by her rain jacket, her glasses covered by salt water, obscuring her vision. Running nearly blind, she licked the salt from her lips, a taste she hadn’t tasted in far too long.

Sense memories flashing back to swimming in front of the cottage and water skiing between lobster buoys in her younger days. But this afternoon, she was trying to get her guys safely back to their little cove. What began as a fun adventure to check out a lighthouse she hadn’t seen since she was a child, turned into half a day of riding swells that with the afternoon’s increasing winds grew, making landfall on the island dangerously impossible, and the trip home more than soggy.

The ride out from the mooring area hadn’t been too bad, a little choppy, with land blocking most of the northwesterlies. Once the crew of three rounded the southern tip, reaching open ocean, their course took them across the mouth of a large river that was swallowing long, gentle swells. With 23 ft. of boat under them and over 200 horsepower to push them, they slowed down to a comfortable 4000 rpm and headed to the far side of the river, where off the neighboring peninsula lay a small island that rose just over 125 ft from the water. Atop her sat the second oldest lighthouse in the state, something the boy had wanted to see for a few years.

Seguin Island Light, Maine

Because they were only in the area for a short vacation, they decided today would be the day to make it over there. As they made their way past rocky ledges and neared the light, waves crashed across rocks and across the tiny harbor. There was no safe harbor, so the small crew hung just off the lee of the island, in the calmest water the Captain could find. Swells lifted and lowered them about four to six feet as the wind continued to increase. They spent a short while holding position, having some lunch, and taking such pictures as they could, until it became obvious that they’d best head home.

Making way to return across the mouth of the river, the tide must have turned, because what had been long gentle swells were mounding up into shorter waves as wind and tide fought each other. The Captain had everything on deck secured, the hull pounding as it rode up the side of the wave and dove into the trough. She briefly considered altering course for a drier ride, tacking like a sailboat, but there was no course that would keep them dry and get them home, so she opted for the most direct route, slowing for safety. With the winds and seas, the boat was too small and too open. Waves drenched everyone and everything, the water running down the deck and out the well at the transom.

They finally reached the north side of the river, rounded the bend at another small lighthouse, and headed up the bay for home. By the time the Captain returned her crew of two to the dock, the only part of her that was still dry was about ten inches of her mid-section. She offloaded their bags at the dock with her guys and took the boat back to the mooring to put it to bed for the night. Before rowing the skiff back to the dock, she licked the salt off her glasses and found a few square inches of dry t-shirt to dry them off, as she used to do, back when she worked the local boats full-time.

Even though the trip wasn’t what they’d hoped, the Captain was glad to be back on the water, putting her rusty skills once again to task.

They now had a sea story that the whole family could share.

Rain

Rain gently floats down in sheets of mist
Obscuring the distant view.

Rain drops plop from the sky
Splattering in puddles, watering all it lands on.

Huge droplets of water pour down
Drenching all who dare to venture out.

Water and frozen balls fall together
The balls bouncing and then melting.

Drip, drop, splish, splash
The water cycle begins again.

Another Step In The Journey

You know how, when you’re deep in the middle of going through something, there are times you really want to reach out and connect? Times you need a friend to talk to or to vent to, or times you really just want to bounce ideas off someone? And then there are times you close ranks and are just going through it, not yet far enough along to be able to look back, because you haven’t popped out the other side yet?

Have you ever been in both places at the same time? Been going through one long, major thing that seems never-ending, yet something else pops up that becomes even more of a focus?

Yup. Right there. Going through an intense spiritual/physical/mental process that not too many people here in the US are even aware exists (Kundalini awakening). And to keep it interesting, no two people’s Kundalini awakening experience is the same, by along shot.

While my own internal world is being flipped on its head (in many very uncomfortable ways), and will continue to do so for likely several more months, or possibly longer (I have no real idea when this shit will be behind me), I am a mother. And in the past few years my son has some old challenges that, with puberty, have come to the forefront. Specifically, his anxiety. We’re far enough along in this little adventure that I can finally talk about it – a little bit.

Anxiety took my son down just under two years ago, necessitating pulling him out of school. When I took him out of school, I naïvely thought he’d bounce back and could do his school work online using a public school online option, or perhaps follow a curriculum much like what he’d been doing, just doing it at home instead of at school.

My first step was having him see a doctor who not only has medical training, but who is also intuitive and who has healing skills.

We followed a strict diet and used supplements for over a year. And they helped his body heal some physical things that had gotten out of whack. And my son had some energy healing work done on him.

The form of education we went with was very different from what his public school education had looked like. We deschooled and unschooled, having experiences and talking about what was learned. We learned to see life’s learning moments at every turn, working with a private school whose students all learn independently, at home.

During my son’s summer break over a year ago, I took him to see a very talented energy healer, one who has helped me a lot. However, with my son now being a teenager, and being able to feel other people’s energy as invasive, it’s become too uncomfortable for him to have other healers work on his energy field; manipulating it. So he won’t allow healers to work on him right now.

This fall, with specific requirements around my son’s education having changed (because he’s now in ninth grade), the way I’m handing his education looks and feels more like regular school. With that, the anxiety has been rolling back in with grand form.

The fall was a time of trying to cope with my own extreme challenges, while trying to teach my son, watching his anxiety melt his brain on a daily basis. I had to deal with my own fears of not giving my son a good enough education. And figure out how to teach someone who has learning disabilities, attention challenges, sensory processing issues, who is a teenager, and who is my own son. Who is a teenager! Whose brain melts down every time he even thinks about having to do school work.

Plainly, the past few months have been far from easy or relaxing. What’s the word for it? Oh yeah. A fucking nightmare time of practicing extreme patience.

I understand that anxiety is all about unconscious fears becoming activated when triggered. My son has huge triggers around having to do school work, and as fear and anxiety rises in him, his brain’s higher cognitive functions shut down. A part of him believes he’s about to die, and his brain reacts in kind. When he’s in this state, he can only do so much learning; so school work has been going very slowly.

Something about the hormones of puberty have made his anxiety ten times worse than it was when he was younger. And because I can’t turn back time or shut off his hormones, we deal with what’s here.

Most people, once they even understand that their child has a mental health issue that significantly impacts an area of their life that can’t be avoided, would seek out medical advice, that would land them in a psychiatrist’s office. And if I didn’t know what I know, that’s where we’d already have gone.

But I have experience with mental health issues, and I also know the power of energy healing. I know the benefits, and the limitations of head meds and talk therapy. And I know psych drugs all come with side effects. I’m also keenly aware of the cost of head meds, and the limitations that health insurance plans can put on which ones they’ll cover, and how much they’ll cover. And that’s even if a person has health insurance.

Back when my son was in elementary school, was struggling mightily, and according to their tests, didn’t qualify for an Individualized Education Plan, I had him evaluated by a neuropsychologist. She diagnosed him with ADHD, dyslexia and anxiety, on top of his pre-existing diagnosis of Sensory Processing Disorder. According to her report, the only way we could help our son be able to do better in school, was to put him on medication to improve his ability to focus.

He was ten. No mother wants to put their child on a daily medication that will change their brain, but like a dutiful mother, I took my son to his doctor, who prescribed medication after medication, changing the dose and monitoring my son’s behavior. I wanted it to help him. I knew that other kids benefitted from it, so it might help my kid too.

What happened was seeing that my son, who always struggled to do his homework after school, soon completely fell apart. Any and all self-control he could muster to comply with the wishes of others, was gone. His ability to pay attention in class wasn’t enhanced one little bit. And the side effects of these medications soon brought my son to the brink of suicide. Three medications. A nightmare.

Needless to say, my son, who is now a six-foot tall teenager, has less than no desire to see if medication can help him.

Modern medicine has no idea why my son couldn’t pay attention in school. It could only diagnose that he struggled mightily to stay focused on his teacher, and lots of things just didn’t compute. Based on a few things my son recently mentioned, I think it actually has more to do with his having dyslexia and not catching on to what was being taught, and then feeling overwhelmed and giving up. At the same time, he’s so intuitive that he can feel everyone’s emotions around him. Can you imagine being a child in a classroom of 25 – 30 kids, feeling all their emotions, trying to pay attention to a teacher who is inauthentic (his two worst years), and you don’t understand what they’re teaching, but you’re too shut down to ask for help because you’ve already gotten the message loud and clear that life is easier if you just shut up and sit still?

This fall, seeing clearly that my son’s issues with anxiety need to be addressed, and after a few months of my own personal hell subsiding enough that I could function somewhat again, I had a chat with the boy to explain to him about this brain condition he’s got going on.

I told him it’s not his fault, and there is a big component of it that’s beyond his control. But at the same time, it’s affecting his life enough that it’s time to be addressed. I gave him the choice of seeing his doctor, going the route of trying some medications again, or seeing my hypnotherapist. He chose working with my hypnotherapist.

It’s definitely a more challenging way to go at the moment, but if he can work with her, the changes he can create for himself can be life changing.

So far, the visits have been an exercise in patience, in noticing subtle progress, and in commitment. It will take time and persistence. More than I realized when the idea occurred to me in the first place.

It didn’t occur to me that merely sitting with his eyes closed, being asked to picture things in his mind, would set him off. But of course. He’s doing something that’s not really his idea in the first place, with a person he doesn’t know, fearing the unknown at every turn. Trigger, trigger, trigger! So much of life is and has been uncomfortable to traumatizing for my son, simply because he’s such an extraordinarily sensitive being.

I didn’t even think that a big part of this process would be learning to trust a stranger, and would be learning to trust in something he’s never done before and doesn’t even understand. But he’s doing it. Baby step by baby step. He’s getting there.

My prayers lately have been for patience. And to keep the faith.

I know how amazingly powerful the processes my hypnotherapist uses can be, from my own experiences. And I want that for my son. I know that the process can reverse effects of trauma, and can deactivate unconscious emotional triggers.

It’s hard to watch my child turn into a shadow of himself day after day. And as much as possible, I keep my focus on the potential of what hypnotherapy can do for him. I try so hard to keep my eyes on that prize, and not let fear, doom and gloom take over. Which is exceptionally challenging with my own mind being rewired, going through its own process.

For now, plan B (meds) is still in my back pocket. If and when we need to go there, I’ll pull it out. But we’re not there yet. Not by a long shot.