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