Satisfaction

Aaah the satisfaction of a blank page What shall I write? I like the idea of the art of revolution, don't start a business, start a revolution. I would like to start revolutionizing corporate America. Seems like a lot to take on.

Anyway, that's a post for another time. Today I sit here sort of terrified because I want to write a letter to my mother. I mean I don't really want to write it, but tonight is the first time I think I have a beginning, a point and an ending. So here goes.

Dear Mom,

I am so tired of the cold silence between us. There are layers and layers of misunderstandings and I don't even know where to start. But I am going to try one last time because I love you and I want a relationship with you and I desperately need you in my life and I think if you are suffering as much as I am at not having a relationship that at least somewhat works then I must try again.

I know it;s been hard because you have been getting negative feedback from me for a long time. It's true that there are many things I am angry about but I think there are a few roots. I hope.

First, when we last spoke I asked you for 4 things, one of them was a way to ask for space that works for you and you didn't provide this, you just stopped calling and decided I didn't want you to call but that wasn't what I was asking. That was a misunderstanding and just robbed us of the opportunity to work together on a need I have.

After our 3 hour conversation before I got pregnant and before our trip to BG, I truly thought we had taken a turn to better understanding each other. That time I felt we hashed out a lot of things and I was so happy. One of the things that has remained with me after that conversation is that you said I had someone over at Christmas one year and didn't want to see you. At the time we spoke I didn't think I had but then I remembered that there was a Christmas I had a cold and didn't want to see anyone, including you and Grandma. But I felt lonely so Dragan came over to watch a movie.
I didn't mean to tell you an untruth, I had just forgotten but the underlying question is why does it matter what I do with my time in my house? How I choose to spend my time is my business since I became an adult. If I chose to stay home and watch movies on Christmas then that's what I did, You may not like it, but part of having a good relationship with anyone is respecting their choices.

I am basically mad about a few things. First the many times you humiliated and shamed me in Canada. The many times you criticized me. The viciousness with which you would yell at me so that you were literally foaming white at the mouth.

Once you told me that you felt like your leg was cut off because we didn't have a relationship that suited you. Well how do you think I felt, not to have a mother?

Now, as a mother myself and spending 6 long lonely months at home and feeling isolated, the reality of my motherless predicament is even more excruciatingly painful.

Yes I describe my pain with such vivid detail and I know it's hard to hear. Yesterday in my writing class a girl wrote that in her darkest of tsunami during her mental illness breakdown, Jesus knelt down beside her and wept.That to me just spoke of the deepest compassion one can have for another - to kneel beside them and weep with them.

Nah, I can't even believe I am attempting the gargantuan task of writing this letter. Ok. Deep breath. Stay with the process.

You were such a great mom. I remember going to plays and puppet shows, I remember you drawing me math puzzles, and painting my doll's nails when we had to rehabilitate old dolls at the kindergarten. I remember one play where they made water by waving blue pieces of cloth. It was so magical. You really did an amazing job of fostering my artistic side as a child and my sense of wander. You also really fostered my language skills and my intelligence. I remember you sewing the "e" on my dress, I remember holding you I remember your sweet smell and loving you.

When we were separated in BG I dreamt about being with you every day. I couldn't wait to hold you and to tell you how much I missed you and I loved you and I told myself it would all be OK once we were together again.

But my hopes slowly faded. The first sign of your state of mental health was that when we were delayed for our flight in NY, Looking back now, maybe you had a nervous breakdown. I could not understand why you were so worried but it made me so uneasy, after all I was traveling with my only parent to a new country. I tried to console you and comfort you. But who was consoling and comforting me?

When we arrived in Bloomington, many things were a blur because I was so traumatized. Recently more memories are surfaceing like the fact that you bought me barbies, made me chicken soup and put it in my pink "my little pony" thermos for lunch in my babrbie lunchbox. I remember the ham sandwitches you made me enrolled me in art class, swimming lessons and tried to teach me to drive. But what also stands out from that time was that when we had to buy a car, you wanted me, a 10 yr old to help you make a decision and that felt very unsettling and scary. But that's not the part that was hard, what was so hard was getting yelled at by you, being told I was "spoiled" when I was traumatized and also I remember you yelling at me because I was washing the dishes with cold water but I didn't know how to wash dishes, I had never washed dishes before. I just wish you had found it in yourself to be a little more kind to me but I recognize now that you were in a very poor state of mental health due to your separation and also your hernia surgery,

When we lived in Boulder I remember being forced to go on walks when I didn't want to and I remember the scary story you told me about the girl that got a beer bottle kicked up her vagina after she got abducted by a man and a woman and I was only 11. I was so traumatized by this. Also, as I reflect back now I realize you were pretty depressed and you were not really emotionally available. That is when I started to lose hope that we would ever reconnect as mother and daughter.

When we all reconnected in Toronto, your mental health must have suffered further because of your constant stress with Dad maybe. Those were hard years for all of us but also some of the most stable we have had as a family. In those years I remember you yelling at me because you asked me to clean something and I didn't clean it to your approval. Our relationship became more and more strained as you used helping me with homework as an excuse to flaunt your superiority. You used these opportunities to humiliate and shame me and I only now understand that that's how you must have been taught in Bulgaria but it sure hurt and destroyed any sense of closeness I felt with you.

Later, in San Diego once Dad moved out you made fun of me for being an "artist". You taunted me with that word because I wore a white skirt sewn inside out with ruffles. I remember Arnut was there and he told you to leave me alone. But at that time you also stood by me when Melanie came to visit which was brave and loving and meant the world to me and you also helped me buy my first car. You also let me use your Neon to get a job and you were very kind to share your car with me.

When I moved out to my apartment in Hillcrest you sometimes, well no often pressured and guilted me to get together with you and you especially wanted me to comply with this when Gramma was here. You resorted to guilt and what felt to me like an enormous amount of forcefulness and you frequently violated my boundaries.
'
I have recently been researching narcissism and I am not saying you are one but you definitely often seemed a very focused on your desires, ignoring mine and my needs. If you had just left me alone, and given me some space I would have come of my own free will. I felt that you didn't care about me or what I wanted and you wanted everything to look prefect to grandma and like we were a happy mother-daughter pair when I felt that you had abandoned me emotionally long ago by not being interested in my true feelings.

That left me not wanting to spend time with you because I began to realize you were not really interested in a real relationship where two people exchange needs. You seemed interested only in getting your needs met, regardless of the cost to me and how things felt on the inside. When I refused to comply with a phony relationship based on not only pretenses but what seemed like a one-way street, you blamed me and refused to take responsibility for your part in it until your sister had a talk with you.

Only then did your behavior towards me start to change, I think also it was around the time that you got to know Mario which I think helped you see the artist in me.

Over the last few years you have backed off a lot. You helped me financially when I was in Spain which I appreciate tremendously and you also helped a great amount when Alessandra was born and I appreciated so much all the little ways you wanted to let me know you cared; by buying hose handles and the slow cooker and the racks for the pot lids and little things for Ale. I want you to know that these things have not gone unappreciated but it's all bittersweet because while you are so physically generous, you still need to be right, to point out my part in an upset and to be defensive even while I was completely sleep deprived and in excruciating pain. I wish you would have just let some things go, epsecially then when I was incapable of coherent emotions. Sometimes you have a really hard time seeing beyond your need to be right.

I have never said you were a horrible mother. You did some things very well, especially when I was young. I have only two bad memories all of my other memories are wonderful dn sweet.

I forgive you for my teenage years because I know that you had a lot of depression and anxiety.

I forgive you for your constant force on me to comply with your wishes in my 20s because I realize you were still depressed and anxious from the divorce.

All I am asking you to do is stop insisting that you are always right. Try to take responsibility for your mistakes and try not to make them again. Try not to use guilt to get what you want.

I know an over focus on yourselves you and Dad both have as an overcompensation to survive the shame and humiliation and being constantly pushed down by communism. To survive one creates a removed sense of self-importance and superiority.

I understand this and I understand it was a psychological survival mechanism you and Dad had to fashion to survive. But using it in your personal relationships, you will always be trying to prove your superiority instead of fostering connection and it will most likely leave you feeling alone and alienated from those you want to be close with the most - like me.

I think you have realized that by now. We all make mistakes. We are all human. No one was born a mother. We all have to learn and keep learning. We all all swimming in this life of beauty and brutality, naked. We are all vulnerable and imperfect and we all struggle.

What makes the struggle harder is alienation. You say I alienate you but by always needing to be right and superior you alienate yourself. Your defense mechanism is to say, "I don't agree with you."

It doesn't matter if you agree or disagree with my feelings and ideas. You are entitled to your opinion and you are entitled to disagree. But how many disagreements have led to the connection we both seek?

None. What if we choose choose to see and understand instead?

You did a lot of things amazingly well. And you also made mistakes. So does everyone. Take note, apologize, move on and try not to make the same mistake again. If you do, apologize again and keep going.

Love Emi

Wow that wasn't so bad, took about 30 mins and I feel much better

Narcissists, Communists and Artists

There are days the sky moves just so. It is beautiful to watch the clouds glide past the horizon of my balcony window. Something is coming alive in me, little by little. It's a small seed. The cracking of the shell is hurting. I thought you only go through growing pains once in your life.

Thirty six years of grief are enough. How does it stop? The happiest I have been in my life is when I was as far away from my parents as possible. And when I was doing art as a regular practice, in community.

Never make the mistake of taking a narcissist on. You will be attacked for your very being and end up feeling small, incapable and impotent in your life. The narcissistic parent will take this opportunity to offer help using it as a way to infantize, manipulate and guilt you. You will end up enraged, confused and feeling crazy in your own reality.

I think Communism made my parents narcissistic. They grew up there until their 30s. It wasn't communism by itself, but the particular flavor that played out in Bulgaria. The humiliation, degradation and shaming, I think for most people, created a split personality to survive it. The humiliated and downtrodden diminished self and the aggrandizement of the self in an attempt to compensate for the degradation. We can see this in Hung Moo's biography. In modern psychology we call this split personality bipolar disorder and narcissism is a particular type. It doesn't mean you cannot function in the "real world". In fact most narcissist function extremely well because they attach their sense of self to achievement and power as a way to compensate for what they lack in self-esteem.

What does all this terminology do for you and for me, where does it leave us? Without parents....but also with validation.

Get busy living or get busy dying

If I was 65 now, or 70, I would tell myself, GO FOR IT! Jump into life with all you have. Don't hesitate. Jump in with both feet and live your dreams. The only way you can receive God's gifts is to show up for them and where they swim is in the river of life.

I had a practical demonstration of this when one day at the end of a workshop everyone circled up for a hug. I desperately had to pee so I told the girl next to me to please take my hug for me and hug back, once the circle-in got to me.

But then I realized that was a ridiculous request so I stayed put holding my pee.

Frozen Woman

The ice was so thick. It stood between them like a quadruple-paned window, not letting an iota of sound in or out. She felt frozen, stuck in time. She wasn't the ice queen of Hans Christien Andersen's stories, the one that steals Kai and magically freezes his heart. No, her heart was hot, beating, she could feel it. But when she looked for it in her chest, she was amazed that actually, where it seemed to beat and throb was in the feeling in her lower abdomen and in between her legs. There, life throbbed, yearned and lot her know that she was, indeed, alive. If it wasn't for that one feeling of deep yearning and heat, her life might have stopped altogether, frozen in time. And she might have become Frozen Woman.

Now, some emotional and temporal distance between the present and the time she felt frozen seemed like a safe space to write about it. To write about Her. To write about Frozen Woman.

It's a hot summer day. It's hard to think that anything might be frozen for too long. But she was. For eight years. Frozen.

She felt like life was happening around her. Like she was just recycling old feelings, old emotions, old beliefs, old memories. That there was nothing left in life to get to know, nothing to discover, nothing to experience that wasn't already somewhere in the realm of the experiencED. She felt so heavy with it. You might think that, since she was frozen, she would float to the surface of her life like frozen water, which, as ice, it does. In fact we owe life to this one simple principle, ice floating. Because if ice didn't float, it would sink. And if it sank, the bottoms of lakes, rivers and even the ocean would freeze, leaving no nutrients available to decompose and create nourishment for life.

Despite the fact that she was ice and should have floated, she felt that she was sinking. Deeper and deeper into an ocean of disconnection and fear.

She must not have sank, thought. She must have floated, because, somehow, little by little, as life does, the current stirred and brought her around and around again to spring. To thaw, to saw new seeds. To welcome the birds flying home from their long flight away in the South. She must have somehow miraculously floated to the right place within herself where she could begin to melt. She floated on home.

The REAL voyage....

July 15, 2014

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Marcel Proust

I had seen this in my acupuncturist’s office for years. And today, as in many times I go to see her, it took on the life of its meaning. It is often puzzling how, as we grow and age, we can take so many events and occurrences and mis-categorize them,  misinterpret them, misunderstand them. Such was the event of my father’s leaving.

He left when I was six but as an HSP I probably knew he was thinking about it at 5. He left communist Bulgaria so I could have a better life. I know that now in my bones and blood and I thank him from the deepest of namastes. I see him, old and frail, white hair, small, perhaps crippled in a wheel chair. I see myself a mother, grown and capable, an accomplished writer, my life soaked, drenched with meaning and contribution, holding him. Loving him, calling him Tati, the love flowing between us, the understanding creating a loop of palpable electricity.

It’s a tricky business this life thing. Fatherhood, motherhood, daughterhood. I am glad I get to experience not only daughterhood but also motherhood. Until now I had insisted on misunderstanding him. I insisted on knowing he had abandoned me. But today, when Esther said I still had the parasite we had been trying to get rid of for months, we asked deeper questions and this came up. I am open to seeing this in a new way, I told my guides. And then the perception opened the realization of how wrong I had been in my stubbornness not to see the truth but how not seeing the truth was how things were mean to be somehow and it was all perfect.

Because I would look at Emil my husband with my daughter and stubbornly tell myself that my father never loved me that much, how could he have, he abandoned me. But now I see one of the biggest wounds of my life in a different light. He didn’t abandon me; he did it for me, so that I could have a better life, so that he could forge a way. It took a lot of courage what he did. And I was willing to see that. See that if I hadn’t come over when I did, at 10 yrs old, I may have come over later, when the iron curtain fell, and of my own volition, feeling less extracted from my homeland.

But then I would not speak English as fluently as I do now. I may not be as deeply seeped in the North American culture. And perhaps I would not have been able to write as well or as eloquently and publish so many books, contributing to millions of lives. As I sit here, before this happens, I dream of being a contribution, sharing with you the deep soul work we are all here to do, to encourage you to help you keep doing the deep work. Because that is the evolution, that is the process, that is the steps we must all take to heal ourselves and the world. And good thing, because all things are moving to healing. And collectively, so are we.

I opened to the guides and I said I accept, I accept. I must channel like this more. I thought of Melissa seaman. They said to write type type type and they danced around in a rhythmical song and dance that made me laugh and cry at the same time, knowing, sensing, believing deeply, that whis walk out into faith, putting one foot in front of the other, as Esther said, is all I ever have to do. So here I am writing writing writing, typing typing typing.

I come home to my peaceful home, a woman now, a mother, a wife. I know one day I would get here, and feel successful. I am still looking around marveling at my life. Except for my health. But we all have our work.

I ask if Emil my husband will support me, and I know he will. I helped him start his business and now he is giving my daughter and I the gift of my being able to stay home with her. And write.

Thank you God,

go to the next door

I used to peddle art. Don't ask me why, with a bio tech and business double major with honors, I decided to participate in the cacophony of going door to door and letting people yell at me.

At the time I was reading Carlos Castaneda books and was very aware of my sensitivity and the tendency to take things personally. I thought this took away from my power and so I decided doing the door to door sales would toughen me up. It would be my warrior training. My enlightened warrior training.

And boy was it ever. I learned so many things out there. After the endless doors of defeat, failed sales, people calling me the b word and telling me to get out, I had two choices; give up and go home or go tot he next door. In moments of pit less despair and hurt offense I would ask the Universe, "what to I do now?" and the answer would come, clear as day, "go to the next door." And so I did. And then I would sell 20 paintings to 2 people and make $400 bucks

I also learned that people pay for your energy. It SEEMED like I was selling art out there, but I wasn't really. I was trading energy. Some people were just not interested and that was OK, they were not rude about it they were just busy and engrossed in their own life. But for those whose interest I may have piqued, it didn't start with the art, it started with me

Did I have confidence? Was I able to capture their attention? And in the end why did they want to listen to me talk anyway?

There was a girl in my office selling hundreds of dollars worth of art EVERY DAY. There was one day when I decided if she could do it, so could I. And that one decision changed my life.

A few weeks ago I decided, if other people are successful coaches and motivators, I could be also.
This one decision is going to change my life. And I am going to the next door.

I am going to knock on that door and walk in, with all I am.

Dreams

My top 5 Values:

1. Spirituality, sense of purpose and Faith
2. Authenticity, Honesty and Genuineness
3. Creativity, Ingenuity and Originality
4. Gratitude
5. Bravery, Valor and Courage

Wow what a satisfying night, as my art therapist would say. It is so fulfilling to be seen, not just for where you are but also for who you are and where you can go with what IS you. Emilia, who IS you? A guy interested in me once asked and I laugh because I ask myself that daily. Who IS you? What wants to be created through you? What does God Source Infinite Creativity want you to create in your world, now? Now. Because now is all there is. I cannot create yesterday or tomorrow. I can only create now.

This online blog is beginning to replace my personal journal. My personal journal is morphing into less words and more art. And the words are making their way onto this page.

Out of the blue, a job as a trainer recently opened up and I, surprising myself by how excited I was, applied. Emil supported me and I took the next step after the interview, which is to request the job.

The amazing thing is that success is when opportunity meets preparedness. And I was prepared for this because I had been going to career counseling over the last year, really delving into what is a good fit. Emil and I prayed that God would make this job happen or close the door. God didn't close the door, so I kept going. My only concern is that it's not taking me away from my real purpose of writing and speaking about my own ideas, discoveries and sharing myself with the world. My prayer is that it take me closer to my dream not further from it.

I didn't slide into my 30s the way I did into my 20s, an easy slippery deeply disturbed but comfortable ride. Arriving into my 30s and now my late 30s feels like a squeaky wheel. Laden with health issues, addictive and very unproductive thoughts but yet clutching my belief in God's purpose for everything, I arrive here. I am baffled by the pretense and the fakeness. I am baffled that most people seem to devote as much energy as possible to not being who they truly are. I refuse to pretend in my marriage, with my friends and at work. I see pretending as death.

Yet many relationships ask for pretense, thankfully not the ones at work, just my parents!!! And my aunt, uncle and cousin. There is nothing as stressful in my life as my parents' preference that I just pretend. And for their sake I do. But because I do I avoid them. We don't have a connection, we just have a duty. They are the only place in my life where I pretend for survival, not from choice. Because if I don't pretend that they are "good" parents I will be attacked, ridiculed, criticized. I don't even share anything with them anymore. In looking at this, I realize we don't even have the same values.

I tell myself that I will have to take care of them they are old but that's not now. Living in the now, I make a different choice and that is to move if not physically, at least emotionally as far away from them as I can.

But it's Ok to pretend when you are faking it to make it, when you are conscious of it and doing it for a good reason. Right?

I am going to pretend that I can do 100% of anything that I deeply desire. I am just going to keep pretending.

I am seeing my friends drop off the radar of dreaming like flies. But I believe in dreams. I believe in doing anything and everything possible to live your dream and to support others' dreams.

I want to live my dream, I don't want my dreams to die, I want my daughter to see me following them. And I want her to see me supporting her father in them.

I want to support my husband in his dreams.

They are going to have to pry my dreams out of my dead little hands, because I am going to dream until the very day I die.

I SO deeply long to share this blog. But I am SO chicken to cross-post to FB.

Last night as I lay there going to sleep, I felt the fire in my belly. The fiery horse. The primal power. I felt this amazing gift. Then I remembered the quote my art therapist has on her journal, "My passion devours my terror."

I saw a job post as a trainer. I applied. I got an interview. My husband, humble and walking in faith said that if it's from God, who is he to say whether or not I should take the job? He said all he could do is support me in whatever I chose.Thank you God for my incredible husband.

I didn't think I would be feeding my Baby formula. I didn't think I would work full time and I didn't think I would put her with a caregiver. But if those are the things that work for our family, work for me, work for our life as it actually is, not as how we would want it to be, then why not let those ideals go?

My fiery horse, the tan tien, is just churning and churning. I hope yours is too.

Today my father asks me, for his birthday, to either buy or make a card and write down three of our best memories. I look back in my mind, shuffle through as through a deck of index cards, searching. I find good memories, sure, but they are all bittersweet. For example there was the time when, after he had already left and my mother had left, we went to the Black Sea. This had been a family tradition that fell apart once my parents tried to flee communism. My father had been gone a year and come back. The year that he was back, my mother had gone to meet him in Bloomington, Indiana. She stayed there and he came back "to get me". But when he was back, he was often gone late at night, leaving me alone at 8 and I was anxious and terrified because I had already lost my mother. He also had affairs.
So the good memory about us being on the bus together, when he came back, going to the Black Sea is also dripping with deep sadness, because my mother wasn't there and because I felt so betrayed by him.
I remember other good memories, like the time we went hiking in Laguna Mountain. But he was angry at my mother and said she was like the dog who got spooked by him and then lunged to bite him.
Or the time we went hiking in Penasquitos canyon and he talked about how much he had to give up to have a family and to support my mother and I and how he had never been able to follow his dreams because of us.
When Dr. Gibson said that they were still treating me like a child, I wasn't exactly sure what he meant. When he said they were people who should have never had children, I was sometimes hurt. And finally when he said, they were emotionally manipulative and controlling, I wasn't so sure. But that was over 6 years ago and over the years I have seen how this is all true. As an only child I had no one to corroborate the evidence, except the daughter of my father's brother, who also grew up with similar parents. But because there was a divorce and my father had a second marriage and divorce, little by little the truth is illuminated. There is a Flamenco letra that says:

Por las cosas mas oscuras el tiempo tiene la clave y con la corta o la larga con el tiempo, todo se sabe.

For the things most hidden time has the key and whether you take the long way or the short way, with time all becomes clear.

So when my Dad asks for three good memories, I have a hard time picking out some that are just good. But will I tell him this? No. Will I be authentic and say, dear Dad you did a lot of things poorly and you did some things well, here they are. No. He wants me to feed his idea that he's not that bad of a father, his delusions that he didn't really mess up that bad when in his heart he knows differently. What's important is that he tries to fix it now, but he's not truly all that capable of having an honest and transparent relationship. But he tries. And for that, I won't hold this semi-dirty laundry up for him to see. On his deathbed it will be between him and God. It's actually none of my business.
Recently I shared with him some things about the PPD I have been experiencing and his response was to want to sit down with me to resolve it. Maybe he thinks that's what a concerned father should do. Maybe there are others out there, without fathers, who would want nothing more but for a concerned father to want to sit down and solve things with them. But to me it is belittling and controlling. I want him to say what, ironically his mother, my grandmother says to me, which is that I am a smart and capable girl and that I will find a way through this.
I know now why the control, the gripping. When we have no faith in ourselves to roll with the punches, to have cognitive flexibility and adaptability, we control, oppress and force others to comply. And that is never the way to a true relationship. Then we convince others that it's their fault, unwilling to look at our part in it.
So good memories, yes there are some, but there are very few that are without a dark cloud just because that's how my father and my mother rolled. They didn't love or respect each other and found no peace with each other. Yes I know they loved me but they just could not show it in a way that was visible.
So let's see, good memories, without a dark cloud, dear father, for your 59th birthday.
I must have been five and you woke me up by tickling my face with a long piece of grass. That day was full of delights. We went for a picnic in the grass with mom and you took photos. I don't remember ever feeling so happy and loved, except for the time I would beg you and mom to mummy me in a blanket just one more time, each holding one end and swinging me in it like a hammock. It was delightful to be in between my two parents, because I loved them.
The third good memory is not specific, it's just general times I heard you play your guitar, there is a classical piece I will always remember as you.
Beyond that, most of my memories are of yelling, cruel words and forced intimacy, criticism, rage and control.
I wish it was different, and perhaps you can get away with pacifying yourself into disillusion but I have long learned to have strong boundaries and there is very little that is safe to share with you. We are not close.

Love, your daughter