Cycles

"Strong Woman" vs. "Self Will"...where do you draw the line?

Alone in this world raising a child, things get muddied...
I knew a woman with a gambling problem who was the Treasurer of her Book Club...she stole a great deal of money over the period of several years.

I admire this woman for many reasons, even the theft. She was in a tremendous amount of pain from multiple losses in a short amount of time. Doing anything she could to stay alive long enough to deal with the pain and loss.

Too many people cannot handle the pain, and choose to exit stage left.

Human beings are not hard wired to take hit after hit and be happy, joyous and free...it doesn't work that way, no one is exempt from getting inadvertently stuck in the the cycle of grief.

To recognize the fact one is stuck, takes self examination. Self examination takes courage. Courage means facing fears. Facing fears takes faith in something greater than you.

Last night for the first time since the loss of my daughter, I recognized I was stuck in the cycle of grief. I've been participating in a workshop for the last five weeks...started back in theeeerapy over the summer, and finally after almost nine years it clicked.

It's where my sense of humor went, it's where my art went, it's where my ability to get close to people went, it's where everything that had meaning in my life minus Mer, went. It wasn't fear, it was/is grief and loss.

You may be saying "No shit?" but when the pain is so enormous, the losses come one after another, hit after hit...remember Psych 101...we shut down the hard drive to stay alive. Self preservation at any cost is instinctual.

I don't have the ability to change myself...I can take action, I can do things differently, but I can't change myself. I learned this lesson a long time ago. The lesson I haven't learned is allowing myself to be manipulated out of fear and guilt over the past.

I habitually choose people who harm me to reach out to, and that has to stop now. As children of God we stand on our feet, we don't crawl before anyone.

"Strong Woman vs. Self Will"...where do you draw the line?