Transcript: Episode 109
109. Women’s Conference
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[Short piano piece is played, lasting about 20 seconds]
I have so much to share about what’s happened this weekend. It was so huge for us. I can’t even. I don’t know if I even can come up with words to explain how good for us this weekend was, and what even happened. I don’t know that I can explain all of it even, and I am terrified that I won’t be able to hold onto it. So, it’s really important that I talk about it and I write about it, because I need all of me to hear it and to know it and to work together to hold onto it. Because of what happened this weekend, I don’t want to lose. And what happened this weekend, I don’t want to slip through my fingers or fade away or disappear from me knowing and understanding and accepting the pieces that in this very moment, I’m able to hold onto. Does that make sense? It was so huge.
Before I get started though, I will say that part of it talks about the Women’s Conference I went to that was an interdenominational church conference, but it was not church. And so I will mention some of that sometimes and there may be some reference to God. I don’t even know what I’m going to share, but it’s not necessarily a Molly podcast. And, I do talk about church abuse in just a little bit. I need to mention that, because it’s part of what was good and healing about this conference. So, that is a trigger warning, just so you know, but it’s not a preachy podcast, and I’m not here trying to do anything to anybody. I’m just sharing out of a thousand things that happened this weekend -- that was part of it. Okay? So, you need to know that before you listen.
So, I’ve even, just in passing -- if that’s too much for you, totally skip this episode. But, if you are also someone who has been hurt in that way, or shares that in common, or you can sort of take care of yourself in passing as you listen, then keep listening, because this weekend was so huge. I know I keep saying that, but it’s so big that I still have to process even how big it was, and how good it was.
But, it didn’t start out good. So, let me back way, way way up. Last week was terrible. It was so, so hard. It was such a hard week. It was a hard week in parenting. It was a hard week in real life. It was a hard week with friends. Everything went wrong. So, just to even explain how hard last week was, I’m just going to go through a list. I’m just going to go through the list of how hard last week was.
First of all, The Husband was struggling with his depression stuff, but he got to see his therapist extra, which is good. And, he got EMDR, which is amazing. He’s loving that. He’s continuing to do that, and we’ll talk about that with him later.
But then, we have the six outside kids, right, and all of them are adopted from foster care, and all of them have special needs, and it was a disaster last week as school started. So, we have one child who came into foster care, because the mother was stealing from the stores, and hiding the items on the child. So, the police caught her, and so the child came into foster care after five years of being homeless, and being taught how to steal. And so, this child has lived with us for six years now, and that’s not been an issue for a long time - the stealing. As school transitioned back, and because of Africa, those behaviors totally came back, and we just found out about it last week. And so, we found like 200 items -- maybe more than 200 things that our child had taken, and we had to help her return them, and we had to process with her, and it was just an explosion of emotions from her -- from her, I mean.
We managed to stay calm, which I was actually really impressed with, and proud of how we worked together through that, but it was so, so intense, and it was exhausting, and it took days. And, I can’t even explain. That would be a whole other podcast of itself. It’s just hard, and to see from the outside -- I know those of us with DID have so much trauma and so many issues with attachment, but to see it from the outside, as we tried to help our child -- was so rough. It was so hard. And, there’s just this part of you that always grieves as their parent, because when you adopt a child from foster care, there is nothing you can do to undo what they have already been through before they came to live with you. You can try really hard to parent them. You can help them go to therapy. You can love them so much, and there can be so much healing, and I know there’s hope in that, and we’ve come so far in our life as a family together, but we still can’t undo what they’ve already been through.
And, seeing them from the outside is just heartbreaking. It was so, so hard, and it was so, so sad to see our child struggling. And so that was really, really difficult.
And then the other thing that happened is that the children went back to school, and that’s always hard for everyone as we transition, even though we try and they’re in their school routine already, like weeks before school starts. We did our best to get them ready and transition, but we have two boys with autism. And oh my goodness, it was awful. One of them was already a runner from school, and one of them reverted back to screaming for hours each morning - hours of screaming. Can I tell you how triggering that is? Let me just say the best thing about being a deaf person with cochlear implants is being able to take your ears off, because uh, that screaming. He hasn’t done that since April. He’s made so much progress, and has been doing so well all summer, but because of the transition, he totally just reverted back to this old school stuff of screaming, and saying terrible things when he was screaming. Uh!
It is the -- again, the hard part about fostering -- of being in the trenches -- of how do our therapists do it? Our therapist -- like all of us collectively -- would they listen to all this stuff and they deal with all of our acting out, or they deal with all of our whatever -- like, uh. It’s so hard to foster. It’s so hard to foster, and when you adopt them, you are committing to them, and you don’t actually have even as many resources as you do when you’re fostering. That maybe is something that needs to change, at least where we live. But it stays hard, but it’s worth it, because we love them, and caring for them well is important to us. But, oh my goodness, it was a hard week.
And then our other child, who had surgery on his spine last spring -- if you guys remember that -- it was -- he has cerebral palsy. We also found out that he has spina bifida, and so there were these surgeries he was supposed to have as a baby, but because of neglect, before he came to us, it was never done. And so now he’s fighting to be able to maintain his ability to walk and to control his bowels. And so he had this big surgery last spring that was supposed to help with his spine, and maybe stop some of those issues that he was struggling with all of the sudden -- and he was having lots of falls, so he was getting hurt. And, this surgery was supposed to help with all of that, but they warned us that whatever symptoms and deterioration had already happened because he didn’t have the surgery when he was a baby, that that would not be able to be reversed. This would be his new baseline.
So, the surgery was a big deal and it was an emergency, and they scheduled it right away, because anything that happened that he got worse with, they would not be able to undo. Does that make sense? And so he was starting to have these falls, and he was starting to lose control of his bowels, and they’re like, “We have to have surgery right now to fix this, because if he loses his ability to walk altogether, or loses his ability to control his bowels at all, that we’re not going to be able to fix that.” And so we had the surgery and he’s been flat on his back all summer, and he’s finally recovering and being able to be back on his bike and walking and has really been doing well. And, it was a brutal surgery and a brutal recovery, especially for summer time. But, he’s tried so hard. Bless his heart. That’s what you say in the real south, the actual south that is geographically south. Bless his heart.
And so we were so glad to sort of get through that, but the first week of school he had a fall already, and got hurt at school. And, he already had a day where he had an accident in his pants. And, he’s like 10, 11, and so it’s not like he’s a little boy, and so he’s aware that it’s a problem, and there’s social implications, and he was just so sad. And, it’s so hard that we can’t just fix that for him, and that he’s continuing to struggle. So, that was not a behavioral issue, but it was still a hard thing that we went through.
And then the other thing that happened with our children, which was kind of a big thing, although it was not an intentional behavioral issue, it was just hard that it happened -- was that our youngest two girls were playing out in the backyard, sort of heading in the direction of where the park is, that we go to a lot, and they picked some flowers for us, and brought them to us. But, they were not flowers, they were poison oak vines. And so, two of our children were covered in poison oak, and we spent the first week of school having to go and put lotion on them, and medicine on them, and take care of that. And it was just a hard week in parenting, with all of those things going on, and going back to school. It was rough. [Laughs] It was really rough.
And then we had our two children, who are in the hospital a lot, were both in the hospital this week. And so, it was just a hard week going into things, and it was exhausting. And then it all sort of culminated Friday, where we had a palliative care meeting for our youngest daughter. Those of you who have listened for a long time know that she has as lot of airway problems. Her mother -- biological mother -- did a lot of drugs and alcohol while she was pregnant with her and her twin sister. And so she has all this medical drama and medical trauma from complications from that. And so she has airway issues and she has a lot of surgeries, and she was not supposed to live this long, but she keeps pulling through. She has surgery after surgery, and coma after coma, and code after code, but she just keeps pulling through.
So, our youngest daughter is on palliative care, and we had another meeting about how it’s high-risk season because of germs, and she’s trying to go to Pre-K, but she’s only well enough to go for like half a day, four days a week. But, she’s being able to do it. And you guys -- oh my goodness - if you knew her, and met her, and saw her [laughs], she’s the most feisty little spirit, and that is what has kept her alive, and she’s amazing. And her good days, you would almost not know anything was wrong with her. But, her bad days… she’s literally fighting to stay alive. And so palliative care was all about how we’re going to lose her one of these times. She can’t just keep fighting through the colds. At some point, we’re going to lose her, and it was about what is quality of life look like for a four year old, and how does that change as she starts school. And so what can she have control over and choose for herself, and those kinds of things that are about giving her power to live her fullest life as much as she’s able to comfortably. And so those are difficult conversations. They really want us to sign a DNR, which we’re not ready to do yet, but also, we don’t want them to keep hurting her. It’s so complicated, and it’s so hard, and emotionally, this week, or last week, it was exhausting.
And, I’m not just sharing all of this to complain. I don’t mean to complain, but just for the context of where we are and where we’ve been. On top of that, we had four funerals last week. We had several friends that died, and then one of our good friends, maybe our only friend that lives where we live -- her grandmother died. And, she was our son’s teacher and has become a close friend, and we adore her. And, we’re trying really hard in the friendship department. And so, we really had to show up. And so we had four funerals last week, on top of everything else, and it was just so emotional.
So, the other thing that happened was that we lost a friend, who has felt neglected since we went to Africa. And while that was not at all intentional, we absolutely understand that they felt this way. And one of the challenges of DID, and being friends with someone who has DID, is that when we lose time, they sometimes lose time with us as well. And besides that, to communicate all that’s happened to us since Africa, we haven’t even been able to do that with The Husband, and barely been able to do that with the therapist. And so, we absolutely have not been able to do that with friends, and we’re still so new at learning how to be friends, that I 100% agree that we’ve not been able to communicate those things, or talk about what’s going on. And so, when so much keeps happening, and time keeps passing, and there's more and more loss that’s not shared, that absolutely makes a friendship difficult.
And so while I’m super sad about it, and we have absolutely been grieving it, we also have not had the spoons to fix it, or repair it, or be able to do anything about it. And so it’s just been watching this plane crash, in slow motion. It’s just awful and sad and heartbreaking, and there’s nothing I can do about it. There’s no drama there, and there’s no ill feelings there, and we will just continue to be learning about friendship. But, that’s part of what this weekend was about, and so we will take that with us, and try to keep learning and doing better, and see if that’s something that we can fix so that we can do a better job in the future. I don’t know how else to handle it besides that.
So that was our entire context for the weekend. That is what we were coming out of going into this. There were a hundred reasons not to come, and a hundred reasons not to be able to do this weekend, and a hundred reasons why this weekend would be too much. But also, there was free childcare. [Laughs] So, I’m just saying when you have six children and somebody says, “Hey, there’s free childcare at this event”, you go, even if you sleep through the event. You show up and you deliver your children to their fun adventures and free childcare, and then you just go take a nap in your car. I don’t even care.
I’m partly kidding, but also if you’re a parent, you understand what I mean. And I mean that in the very most fun way. The children had a blast. They had all kinds of activities and it was so good for them. And I think after the difficult week we had, and their struggles with the transition back to school, that getting away and playing really hard, and having the playing field sort of leveled, where everyone was sort of on the same page, and everything was good, and nobody was in trouble, and they could just play hard, and meet new friends, and enjoy themselves in a mega playground, and all these kinds of things -- it was so good for them. And the children needed that, just sort of a stress free getaway, and a night in a hotel and swimming pools and the big breakfast they had in the lobby downstairs -- all of this -- they needed that so much.
And so it was good that we came, and then The Husband took them the next day, after the conference was over. The Husband took them to the grandparents, and so they got to spend time with the grandparents. They got to get loved on and spoiled. And now they are back home. And this morning, while we go to see the therapist, they will go back to school, and hopefully have a better week, because they had all of this fun and all of this loving. Because we understand that they were not struggling, because they are bad. We understand that they are struggling because so much was going on, and even us losing our friend was a big trigger to them. So, having to have that conversation with them was another loss, which they did not need. But, it’s just a fact of life. It’s just a part of life. And so all of us have to learn to deal with this, both inside and outside kids and everything. Everyone just has to process -- this is what’s happened. We have -- there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s a very sad situation, and so between that and the deaths and school starting and everyone’s different struggles -- it was just a hard week. And so they need -- as much as I’m teasing about childcare -- they really needed this weekend as much as we did, to just everyone calm down, and to play, and to be loved, and to get some special attention. And, we were able to do one on one time with each of the children, rotating them through with the grandparents, and all of this. So, it was a good thing. It was good for them. It was good for us. It was good for us as a family. And, hopefully, hopefully they will go to school today and have a better week as we sort of get into the routine of things this fall.
We are staying in the hotel an extra night to see the therapist today. So, we’ll go home later today, as far as I know. We’re not going to land in South Carolina. We’ll go home today, but I have to tell you about this conference.
So, we have new friends, which is really scary, and really hard to do, but our lives have sort of intertwined because of our children. And so our daughter, who is on palliative care, has a friend who is also just a little preschooler, who’s fighting cancer. And so our lives -- because of the hospital -- kind of overlapped, and it’s kind of a God thing. I know -- I don’t know how else to explain that. That’s why I put the trigger warning at the beginning, because I don’t know how to explain this, without also talking about a God thing. And by that, I simply mean that it’s bigger than what I can understand, or explain, or process. And, I don’t really want to go into details about that all exactly, because that’s not my story to tell. And so the podcast is not really the place to talk about it.
What matters about it is what we’re learning about friendship, and that part I do need to talk about on the podcast. So, that’s the context. These new friends that we’ve met through our daughter were participating in a conference that they were putting on near where we used to live in Oklahoma. But, here’s what’s crazy -- it’s not near where we used to live in Oklahoma, as in before we had to move to Kansas City, because of the hospital for our daughter. It’s where we lived when we grew up, like when we were young, like where the house with the attic is. Right? Do you get it? This is how huge it is.
So, this is what happened to us, because we had this very hard week last week, that was just brutal -- and then it ended with the palliative care meeting for our daughter, which was also brutal, and we’re in the context of struggling, because we just lost these friendships, and so we don’t even have the support we usually have. And it’s just heartbreaking. So, we could not be in a more vulnerable place than we were in by Friday afternoon, last week. Do you see what I mean?
So, trying to stay present, trying to wrestle internally through all the layers of what was happening -- it was difficult. It was so difficult, but not only was it difficult and not only were we in a vulnerable space with less support -- we were literally driving into a landmine of triggers. So, our new friends are -- because a variety of circumstances, and because of how safe they are, and because of the good boundaries that they have, and because of the layers of our connection that are just bigger than what I can explain, bigger than us -- like nothing of it was intentional, and nothing of it was planning -- it just sort of unfolded into what it is.
They know about the therapist and they know about DID. In fact, our new friend has listened to the podcast even. So, that’s huge, because it’s our first time to have a friend who we are connected to in sort of everyday life, who knows about DID. And so that’s been a huge thing, and she has been amazing in just accepting us as we are, and accepting all of us, without being intrusive about it, or overwhelming with it. And I don’t mean that anyone else has. I just meant that I have appreciated that about her.
But, it’s been a fascinating experience having that level of safety in a new friendship, where I get to interact with them in real life, on a daily basis. So, that was helpful coming into this weekend, because they knew that the conference would be a big deal for us to go, because of anxiety - the big crowds. Some of the layers of what would be difficult for us to go to a church kind of conference -- and let me clarify, that the conference was not some kind of church conference that was about making you believe certain things or do certain things. It wasn’t that kind of conference. It was just a Women’s Conference. But, it was an interdenominational gathering. So, this community or county sort of had this gathering for women of faith, who wanted just to gather. And it was about strengthening women and empowering women and how to do friendship, relationships. It was really powerful. There was some layers of God included, but it was just focused on loving each other, and learning how to be friends, and there not being drama, and there not being cattiness, and there not being gossip, and just how to be healthy, wholesome friends who support and love each other as women.
And so it could not have been more perfect timing for us, while we were just getting called out on friendship anyway, to go and literally have this whole conference about being friends, and about being loved as you are, and about being cared for, no matter what you're going through, or what you're feeling or what you’re struggling with, or what addictions you have, or any of those coping skills that are more difficult for other people to deal with on the outside sometimes, and that you don’t always realize how hard it is for you to deal with yourself. And so it could not have been more perfect timing, and it was so powerful and amazing and good.
But, we knew going into it, and our friends knew going into it that some of those pieces would be challenging for us. But, we were prepared and we had mints and we had peppermints and we did the things we could to prepare to communicate, which all of that is progress for us - to be able to talk about those things and to say what we need. All of that is huge, okay, so just that much was progress.
What we did not realize, and what they did not realize is what a landmine of triggers it would be. Literally driving into the hills, where the woods are, where the house is, where the attic is -- we are here. We are here [laughs] in the area, where we grew up. Having avoided it for almost two decades, maybe three decades [laughs], if you count when we started moving around as an adolescent from foster care. I can’t tell you what a big deal this is, that this is where we are. And at first it was so awful, and it was so hard. Our hotel is literally ten minutes from where the father is buried. The conference is around the corner from the hospital from where the mother died. The church where the conference was, is where the father was a music minister when we were young. So, what I wanted to say and why I put the trigger warning at the beginning of the podcast, is because part of what we had to face is that amongst everything else of our past and history and the different parts of trauma -- the different parts of us hold -- one of those big pieces is abuse from people who were church leaders.
And so, I’m not going to go into details about that. We don’t trauma dump on the podcast, but I say that in this case in reference to what we faced this weekend. That’s how big this weekend was. And, what was amazing is that one of our friends, who was giving one of the talks, spoke about being angry at God, and being open and vulnerable in a relationship with God, and how that is a separate thing from the church. And I want to be really careful about talking about this, because I know it can be a triggering thing for some. But, it was a powerful thing for us, because there have been lots of other people in the past who -- therapists or other people -- who have told us, you need to separate what happened to you from who the church is, or who God is.
But, here’s the thing, as someone with DID, I’m already really good at separating things. That’s not actually helpful advice. I mean, I get what they’re saying, that when people are stupid, or mean, or awful, it’s not that God wanted them to, and it’s not fair that we, as individuals, or we as a society, blame all of this crap on God. It’s not God’s fault that people chose poorly. I get that. I get enough theologically or philosophically or however you want to say it, just in the universe, that people are responsible for their own choices. And I even get if you’re going to put all of that in a God context, I even get the part of how I would not have the ability to choose good, or to choose wisely, or to choose well, if i didn’t already have the ability to choose, and that all of us having the ability to choose means that there are going to be people who chose poorly, and who choose badly, and who do terrible things with that freedom to choose.
So, I can say that, and I can get that intellectually and cognitively, but to wrestle with that on a practical level when you’re the one who’s been hurt, is really, really hard. And it gets more complicated when you’re hurt by the people who are supposed to represent God, because at the very least, no matter what your perspective of God is, that absolutely impacts things. And that’s a whole other layer of misuse of power. So, people have said to me in the past, “You have to be able to separate that, and you can’t blame God for what people do.” And I get that, but also, at the same time, these are people who are supposed to be representing God. So, it’s really hard not to blame God for what they do while they’re representing Him. Do you see what I mean?
But also, I understand that when they are not -- again, just cognitively, just cognitively -- I get what they’re saying, that when these people are not behaving in a way that is congruent with who the real god is, or what goodness is, that they’re not really representing God faithfully, or consistently, or well, or at all, when they’re not doing what He says. And I can get that cognitively, but when you're a child and these things are happening, that’s not the message that you receive. You receive the message that this person represents God, who is hurting you. Do you see what I mean? And so it’s a big, big thing, even without going into any details of abuse-specific stuff. It’s a big deal.
And so as a person with DID, I understand what you’re saying, and I get it when you say you need to separate what people did from who God is. I get what you’re saying about the separating, except as someone who’s dissociative -- what I’m saying is, I’m already really good at separating stuff. I don’t need a God who makes me separate things more. I don’t need a God who is separated from the rest of my existence. If I’m going to have a God, and if I’m going to have healing -- whatever I decide that means for me -- then I need a God who can bring the pieces together, not have more separation.
And so this weekend, when my friend was giving her talk, she was the first person who ever said that to me. Because what she talked about in her story and through her story, was how people at church are really good at acting good, and are really good at performing good, and that those things are good. And that’s fine, but what we’re not good at is giving God our bad, and giving God our not enough, and giving God our not liked. So, all of the pieces that we feel like are not enough, that God wants those pieces too, that we can give those pieces to God too.
And so what it reminded me of was all of the stuff we’ve been learning about shame theory, and about attunement, because if God -- whatever your version of God is -- if that is only dismissive, if that is turning away from you, if that is only accepting Parts of you, then there’s not healing there, because there can’t be connection. So, no wonder we feel disconnected from any version of God if we can’t give all of ourselves in good and safe ways, especially if we’ve been through any kind of abuse by people who are supposed to represent God on any level.
And so she was saying that when hard things happen, and when there’s abuse, or when we are grieving, or when we are struggling with something, that it’s okay to give those pieces to God too. And it’s okay to ask for help for those pieces too. So, do you see how big this is and how powerful it was, in a way that was coming to me from a person I trust and that feels safe? To have someone say, “No, all of you is acceptable, and all of you is loved, and all of you matters”? It was so huge, you guys. It was so huge. And I know I’m even cutting out all the good parts, because I’m trying really hard not to trigger people too much, because I don’t at all want to sound preachy. I just mean for a lot of people who are survivors, this is a big piece of what’s hard, and not that other people had abuse in the same way or context I did, but I grew up without even talking about things that happened at church, without even getting into any of that. I grew up with my father on the stage, directing the music, and all of these things happening at home.
And if that is my representation of how God thinks of me, or how God treats me, or what God is going to do to me, then that’s not helpful. I mean, that’s trauma. That’s trauma. It is spiritual trauma, on top of everything else. And what happened this weekend was, that image of my father on the stage, was replaced with seeing the therapist on the stage. And I don’t mean that in a weird way, or a creepy way, or a bad boundaries way. I mean trying to replace my image of God as a bad parent who hurt me, into the closest thing I can get to an image of healing, which would be for me, right now, the therapist.
So, almost in a visualization way, of being able to replace that image with a new image -- and part of that I got from The Husband, who's been going through EMDR, and so I was trying to practice. I don’t mean I was EMDing myself. There was nothing like that, just trying to do my own work, and trying to think if I want healing from this experience, then I need that image replaced. And so somehow, this weekend, after all of the hard things we went through this week that literally used up and stripped me of defenses, so that I was in such a vulnerable place, and coming to this place geographically, that holds so many memories, and so much history -- to be exposed to that. So, some exposure therapy by default almost -- being exposed to these things that held so much power and seeing even the walls of the church have been painted, like they have repented.
It is powerful that I was able to do this in safe ways. I am not recommending you just drive back to your home of your childhood and expose yourself, and open up yourself to all of that. That’s not what I’m saying. We’re really careful about how we did this, and we did this with a lot of support, once we got here, and we wrote and processed as things happened. And, I didn’t even attend the whole conference. It was too much. I went to the first night, which was sort of just an opening thing, to learn my way around, expose myself to the people, and to get used to -- okay, I can do this, and I’m not alone, because my friend is here. And then the next morning, I went to hear my friend talk and that was all. That was plenty. And I was okay enough with caring for myself to know that that was plenty, and to just withdraw from the rest of it. Okay?
So, I didn’t even have the intense experience that other people had with the full conference, because for me, this was enough. For us, this is what we needed, and it was huge. It was huge. And so, what matters is that we came out of this experience not only trying to sort of integrate our experience of -- our perspective of -- God as some kind of healer, and God as something safe, and God as something good, but also other very practical pieces. Like, going to the hospital and seeing that our mother is not there. Our mother is dead. And going to the grave and seeing that the father is still there. I mean, we didn’t like dig him up or anything, but we can see the gravestone. He is dead. Our parents are dead. And that has been something we have been trying to just remember for two years in therapy. We have been trying just to remember that the parents are dead, and that now time is safe. And that’s part of why.
And so for us -- and I know this isn’t true for everyone, because some people, their parents are still alive -- other people, they even still live with their parents -- but I’m talking about for us, in our experience, that’s one way that we’re able to test to see. I don’t know if we’ve talked about this on the podcast or not. It’s actually one way we use, in therapy, to test if we’re in now time or if we’re in memory time. Because if we can see the therapist, we are in now time. If we can see the parents, we are in memory time. And so that’s one way we’re able to distinguish between the two.
So, if we’re going to talk about God and spirituality, that is our night and our day. We are learning to separate. We’re just on the first period of creation. [Laughs] We are able to separate night and day. If the parents are there, that is memory time. If the therapist is there, that is now time. And this weekend, we were able to come back to this place, in now time, and see that these people are gone. And this place, without them, is beautiful. And the people here are good, and there are safe people in the world. And this matters, because when you just have a specific memory of a specific place, like a house or the attic or even the woods, that feels like it is bad and it is hard and it is dangerous -- then it feels like it can follow you. It feels like it -- when it feels like it’s in now time, it feels like it’s after you -- like these shadows are ever coming after you, like The Nothing. You know, like in The Neverending Story? Have you seen that movie - the children’s movie from like when we were little? [Laughs] It follows like The Nothing, like it’s just coming after you. But when you can confront it, and stand it down, and put it in its place -- the place is in the past. It’s not even in this part of Oklahoma.
We thought when you’re in memory time, it feels like this place is bad forever. But it’s not the place, it’s what happened. And what happened is in the past. It’s over. So, when we go to therapy today, our plan -- I don’t know if we can do it. I don’t know if we can do it. We’ve been working up to this for months. So again, it’s not that it’s a quick fix. It’s not that it’s an instantaneous thing, because we have been working up to this for months. And I don’t know if we can even do it today. But, our plan and our goal is when we get to therapy today, to say out loud, “This is what happened, and here’s how I felt, and that is memory time, and I know it’s memory time, because of this and this and this, and I know that my parents are dead, and I know that now time is safe, because of this and this and this. And because of Africa, and because of facing things like this week, because I can do hard things, I also know that even in now time, when things are difficult, I’m still safe, because I have these resources, and because I have this power within myself, and because I have these people who are safe and can help me, and I have these people to talk to, and I have these friends I can message or email or connect with when I’m ready. And that’s what makes now time safe.”
And to be able to hold all of these things, and to be able to do this, is one of the biggest, most huge breakthroughs that we’ve had… ever. So, maybe to you it doesn’t relate at all, and maybe to you, you’re not there yet, or maybe to you it’s too much, or maybe you’re already good at this piece, but for us, it’s huge what happened this weekend. It changes everything. And not just because we went to a conference about God, but because we came here, to this place, and held our ground. Because I came here, to this place, with these people, and I stayed.
So, here’s the difference -- the difference is that when we first got here, and it was hard, and it was triggering, I thought I was going to fall apart. I thought I was not going to be able to hold myself together. I felt switchy. I felt fuzzy. I felt overwhelmed and overstimulated. I felt not good enough and not strong enough. And all of those things weren’t true. But while I was here, I also learned that feeling all of those things is okay. It makes sense with what we’ve been through, that we would struggle like that. It makes sense that when we have been through what we have been through, that we would not know how to do friendships. It makes sense with what we’ve been through, that we would not want to come back to this place. It makes sense with what we have been through, that we would not want to pray to a God who only wants something from me, or a part of me. And it makes sense that coming here, in now time, with safe people and good support, would be empowering. And it makes sense that learning how to do authentic relationships with people and with God, where we can be vulnerable, and real, and even angry, or hurt, or betrayed, or struggling, and that be acceptable, and still be safe. It makes sense that that would be healing.
It was so good. It was so good this weekend. And I hope by sharing a bit of it, that we can hold onto it ourselves. I know that when we leave therapy and we go back home, it’s such a process for us, because we’re four hours away, right, so it’s this big drive, and we stop to write. So, we don’t get home from therapy -- we get out of therapy at noon and we don’t get home from therapy until 9 or 10 at night. And so it’s this big ordeal, and then the next morning, we have to hit the ground running, because we get up at 3 o’clock to work, and start getting children up at 7 o’clock, and send them to school. And then we have -- the youngest is home all morning, until it’s time for Pre-K. There’s no break. Last year she could go to Pre-K all day, and this year she’s home all day in the mornings. And so -- because she’s not able physically to go to school all day -- and so it’s different than in the past, and there’s not a break, and there’s not time to relax or care for ourselves as much as well. And we’re going to have to figure that out, and we’re going to have to navigate that. And so that’s part of what we will learn, the same way as the children are transitioning back to school.
But in all of that, and in that transition, and in that trying to practice these practical things, I don’t want to lose what we gained for ourselves this weekend. And I don’t want to lose my own presence and my own progress gained this weekend. So, we will be writing about it in the notebook. We have written an entire notebook, like 70 pages, about it already. And we will talk about it in therapy today, and we will write about it in other ways and share about it, but I need to talk about it, and I need to hold onto it, because I want this to be real, where I have permission from myself and my God, and even good, safe people, to feel what there is to feel, to need what I need, to exist as I am, but also not be condemned by any of it. And to still have permission to be a work in progress, and to have the grace and opportunity to continue to progress, and to continue to learn, and to continue to become more than just what happened to me.
This was big, you guys. It was really big. Thanks for letting me talk about it.
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