Trying to Find Clarity

(This was originally written March 2015.) 

My blog has always, and will always be a place for me to work through problems. A place to try and find clarity. I have found that the more I write about my life and things I feel, the more perspective I am able to have because I have to dig deep to be able to say these things out loud. None of it has been easy. I’ve decided in this post that I’m going to try and use my voice to discuss an issue that has plagued me for so many years. I want to desperately understand. I NEED some clarity.

I do not understand family dynamics. I don’t understand my place in a family. Where do I fit? I am unpredictable. Volatile. And I can create chaos.

Seth and I tried to discuss this issue last night and he said that it is going to take a lot of time for people to get over how bad I have offended them ………hey! Wait, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Right now, people I know are dying around me. There is so much suffering. In the grand scheme of things this life is just a matter of days and moments. SO why do we have to do it alone because someone has been offended? Well, hello family and friends. Let me introduce you to my blog. Yup, I get that you don’t want to talk to me to try and gain understanding. Start reading and get caught up. I discuss my life and the challenges I have faced having severe brain trauma and a personality disorder. I discuss my marriage in depth. I have strangers in seven countries that read what I write. They are grateful that I am bringing these issues to the surface because no one else is talking about it and most of the time they tell me their story as well. This is a record for my daughters and their children to read. Speaking my truth is empowering.

But I struggle with feeling that I am worthy of love. Always have. Right now the only people that I know without a doubt love and accept me are my parents. When I told that to Seth, he said that maybe they are the only ones that can love me right now.

That stung.

I am 33 years old going on 34. If my parents are the only people on the face of this earth that can love me … after all the people I have met and interacted with and cared for over the years, what a sad reality. It is lonely and isolating. We are not meant to be alone. We are not meant to feel alone. Yet how many of us do?

Random fact about me: I am a person that loves to talk on the phone. I don’t like to text unless I have to. I crave human interaction. Yet no one calls me unless I call them first. No one called me or checked in when I was dying. I guess Seth decided to withhold it from most of his family. My parents kept it pretty private as well. I figure that if you withhold that kind of stuff from people that care about you, then you must be ashamed. Doesn’t matter whether that is true or not. I wasn’t ashamed of it and I didn’t care who knew. After I gave birth to my daughter and over the course of 18 months I was hospitalized 5 times. I did not want to live. I was experiencing an extreme case of postpartum psychosis that mixed with BPD created a deadly combination. Shameful? I guess. Why I couldn’t have just died one of those 10-15 times that I have tried I do not know.

Yes, I realize that I have a greater purpose. But a big part of me still wishes that I would have died anyway. No one should be able to take hundreds of pills, cut themselves open, breathe in deadly fumes over and over again and live to talk about it. I do not feel ashamed for what I have done. Sad? Yes. Pained that I caused those around me to feel fear and pain? Yes. Shame? No.

Question: If I did die, who would notice or care? Don’t say my kids because yes I know they would care. I’m asking in a broader sense. Who would care? I have a close relationship with my parents. They would care. But would anyone else notice? Would they think about me sometimes? Probably. They would initially post about it on Facebook and question why it happened. But then it fades. People move on because they have to.

So family: If I have offended you and you are pushing yourself away from knowing me and my daughters because of it, then stop. I’m really trying to understand. What is the purpose of family?

God gave Adam Eve because he said it was not good for man to be alone. It is not good for anyone to be alone. I’m guessing a good portion of my family feels alone as well, and we probably don’t know how to fix it. Our society is screwed up like that.

I read an interesting article a few weeks ago about the power of kindness. That researchers could predict whether people were happy in their marriage based on the amount of kindness in the relationship. I’m going to say that extends to other family members as well. The more you are kind to others, the more you forget yourself and the better relationships you create.

I feel that I have earned the right to be happy. And I can choose happiness. Right now I am lost. When people you know die and you start to inspect your life and what it means, it can be a very sad journey to take.

As far as I know, there has only been one person to walk this earth in perfection. He chose to take on our imperfections, our pain. He suffered for MY imperfections, for MY pain. Yours too. So I understand why I lived in a way that if I didn’t think I could do something perfectly, I wouldn’t try at all. I became ashamed as my many failures started to pile up.

When you look at the nights sky, do you see the moon and the stars, or the just the darkness that surrounds them? How would you feel if I chose to dismiss your light because there was darkness surrounding you? I shine because of the darkness.

Watch the video I posted. Does it make you realize how insignificant you are? Or do view the opposite like me and you realize your great significance? I see the beauty. If there are as many people as stars in the sky then how GREAT must God be to personally show His love for me. I feel His great love surround me daily. I know He cares about me. I am but a grain of sand and yet God loves me anyway. How great is our worth?! IF God can love as many stars number the sky then why can’t we love each other? How come we find fault and diminish the light in others?

Stop

It isn’t About Me

So this is continued from a post on Facebook, which I have never done before, but there are too many things I want to say and I need you to be able to read this at your own pace. So here was how my FB post started … and then I will continue on writing from here.

I just had a big life changing Oprah AH-HA moment! Bear with me as I write this. I’m mean really, thank goodness that the Universe likes to keep me in check. I wrote a post on Sunday on Facebook, kind of lashing out at people who I feel won’t try to open themselves up to understand me and my illness. Especially after I have reached out and helped them  through so many life problems because of my unique perspective that my illness has taught me. I had this big feeling come over me that even though I took it very offensively…

It wasn’t about ME.

I absolutely needed to remove myself from the equation.

Then other things started to happen. First, I started writing a new blog post. Then I got a notification from Momastery. Glenn Doyle Melton (who writes Momastery) is my Warrior Guide who says everything I wish I could say, only better.

Somehow through a series of events I ended up on Momastery.com and was watching THIS YouTube video with Glennon that I hadn’t seen before. You should watch it right now so we can all experience this light shining moment together! It is only 5 minutes! Do it!

Welcome back. Did that hit you hard like me? Oh my goodness, it was BEAUTIFUL!! Make you want to hear more from her? Well, it did for me. So then finally, I searched her on YouTube and found a rarely viewed video she did for her sorority this year that is AMAZING.

This is what caused my ah-ha moment.

And maybe it is just me that needed to hear it today, but I think you need to hear it too.

This is something you can listen to without actually watching the screen. Turn it on this morning as you get ready or go through your emails, whatever. Take the time. It is worth it. Listen to every word. Let it fill your soul.

Personally, I learn best by taking notes when I’m listening to important things in life. Then I watch it again. Take more notes. Then repeat. I copied my notes to this post so I could better share this with you and to help articulate my points. Here is the video, and what follows are my notes and interpretations.

The theme of where she was speaking was “Our time to Shine”. So she wanted to know, If we are all the same, then why is it that some people shine so bright they can light up the entire room? What is so different?

She made a list of people that SHINE to her, and the common trait is that they all have Purpose and Peace. Purpose and Peace = Joy. And Joyful women are the women who shine. They have absolutely nothing in common, but they all do the same things each day. Little disciplines in their life that they do that result in Joy.

1. Relentless Eliminators of Poison in their Lives. (Coal Miners and Canary example). They know what the poisons are in their lives and they get rid of them. Period. Eliminate toxic relationships. One of the awesome, best things of being a grown up is you don’t have to have friends you don’t like. You can gently let them go. It is much kinder to let them go gracefully, then to hold them close and hate them. Because that is poison. JUST let them go. Liberate both of you. Sometimes you can’t get rid of every person or habit in your life, but you must make boundaries around them. You can love and find the beauty in almost any human being as long as there are firm boundaries in place. (Steel bars).

2. Women who shine are really really good listeners to themselves. They make it a priority to daily find a time of “quiet”. And they only take orders from the voice they hear in the quiet. When the voices get too crazy, sit down, be still, take a deep breath and listen to whatever guides you. “You are enough, all is well.” Wisdom is always speaking in the same volume to every single person. but people that shine are the ones that are quiet enough to hear it. We think they are making incredible decisions and we think they are so lucky, it is just that they became quiet enough to hear what is being said.

3. Souls not Roles. If we only identify completely in our ROLES it can be extremely dangerous. What happens when our kids leave this home or heaven forbid pass away. What happens when your husband leaves? What happens when you get laid off and are no longer this career person? Then what are you? That it why it is important to understand that you are your SOUL not your role. Find something that you LOVE. That you know you will love when you are 12, 30 or 75 because your soul identifies with it. (Beach, hot tea and reading). You will be able to say, “This is ME! It has nothing to do with the roles in my life, but makes my soul sing.” Bad times, good times all pass, but no matter what, roles come and go, And as long as I know what my soul needs, I will be fine.

4. A belief in Abundance. Scarcity tells us there is ONE pie. And if someone gets a big piece of the pie, then there isn’t enough for all of us. When a person is living in scarcity, they tend to tear others down. Those living in ABUNDANCE lift other women up especially  in public. The good news is that whether you live in scarcity or abundance, we are all jealous of each other. Shiny people feel jealous too. Their discipline though helps them counteract that because they know it isn’t true. They take action to make the feeling go away. They make it a practice to publicly praise whoever it is that is causing it and it slowly helps releases the jealousy. And then amazing things happen because when we lift each other up, we all rise together and connections are made. That is the law of abundance.

True of all the shiny women. Whether insanely famous or struggling to find their way.  None of them know what the hell they are doing. They are all scared to death all the time. They are doing the best they can. Plans don’t work for all of them. They are scared with every new thing that they try. We have this idea that brave, shiny people aren’t scared. And the idea that we have to be better before we get started with what we are put here on this earth to do, is a huge mistake. All we have to do here is ONE – We have to follow our dreams and TWO–  We have to serve our brothers and sisters.

There is no number 3. We don’t have to get better first, we just show up now, completely as we are.

We are all made of exactly the same stuff. The Shiniest people we know just practice these tiny daily disciplines. They relentlessly eliminate negativity and poisons easily and without much angst or thought. They get quiet often and only take orders from that inner voice. The know that they are a soul and they are not their role. They live with the idea of abundance and take every opportunity to lift others up, over and over. And finally they just show up scared.

 

OKAY!! Synopsis done. My ah-ha moment came because I realized that some people know more than me. I DO have a mental illness that at times can be toxic to those sensitive to it. And maybe my friend is just that, a sensitive person. I would much rather she let me go gently, then to hold me close and hate me for making her feel not at peace. After that realization, the rest of the video just sent light bulbs off all over the place. I am slowly starting to digest it all and can’t wait to watch more. I have really missed focusing on my personal growth lately. I have gotten busy with work and the holidays and more work, work, and work.

But what I learned today is that I can’t effectively lead others unless I live and breathe these five amazing disciplines. So again:

Be a Relentless Eliminator of Poison in your life

Take time each day to quietly listen to yourself

Know that your soul is more important than any role

Always believe in Abundance never scarcity.

Show up and do it Scared

So what do you think? You can let me know back on my Facebook page. I posted my favorite Ted Talks from Brene Brown and Glennon in the comments of that post as well. Thanks for taking this journey with me. Hopefully you had a few light bulbs go off as well. Much love!

xoxo – Kristin