Recovery

NaPoWriMo 2024: Grateful Haiku

“Grateful”
My heart is grateful
I’ve done the work of healing
Continuing growth

lem 04/05/2024









Ten years ago I finally ended an 18 year toxic and abusive relationship. I was subsequently diagnosed with Bipolar 2 disorder and PTSD. I was drowning in anxiety and depression. I felt broken beyond repair and never imagined I would ever independently support myself again. I hadn’t been employed since mid-2012.

Four years ago, as COVID shut down the world, I graduated from a Peer Certification program and became an Adult Mental Health Peer Wellness Specialist. I started working for the organization I currently work with as a part-time Mental Health Aid. I didn’t know if I could hold that job. I had a panic attack and went to the Urgent Walk-in Clinic for mental health support after I made a medication error at work.

A year later, I got my first professional Peer position, working with people classified as living with Severe and Persistent Mental Illness. I struggled to figure out how I could support them with my vastly different life experience…but I did it and I did it well.

I’ve transitioned into two different Peer roles since then. The most recent one was when I started working full-time in the program I had once been a client in. Since I began that position on October 30, I’ve been challenged to take on leadership responsibilities, making decisions and co-leading a team that includes professional counselors with Master’s degrees. Due to my mental health issues I only have a high school diploma. I never imagined I would ever be in a role like that.

Today I had my second interview for a Peer Supervisor position at the Urgent Walk-in Clinic I utilized four years ago. This afternoon I was offered the position.

With the help and support of my faith community, Bridge City Community Church , I have faced and fought through my trauma and seemingly never ending personal and family crises. Five of the last ten years, I have been a client of the organization I now work for. It’s been a long, hard, painful journey. The recovery process isn’t over and I will always have to manage symptoms. But now I have the tools and support to do it.

All of this to say, we can and do recover!

Advent 2023 Day 7

This is a song our Teaching Elder, who is leading worship, has asked us to learn for this weekend’s gathering.

As I was listening to it, I felt that this is what I have experienced as the Holy Spirit.

I don’t know how to articulate it other than to say it feels like having peace and comfort rising from inside of me and covering me from the outside at the same time. I gain a sense of companionship and that even if I’m walking through a painful, scary, challenging time, I’m not doing it alone.

Lyrics found on MelodicWorship.com

[Verse 1]
When I am lost inside my mind
Sing me the hope I cannot find.

When my despair has left me blind
Sing me the tune I’ve left behind

[Chorus]
Will you sing over me?
Will you sing over me?
Sing of the goodness I cannot see
Will you sing over me?

[Verse 2]
When all the grief my hands
When I’ve forgotten who I am

I can’t feel anything but shame
Sing out me back my name

[Chorus]
Will you sing over me?
Will you sing over me?
Sing of the goodness I cannot see
Will you sing over me?
Will you sing over me?

[Bridge]
When I sink down beneath the fear
The weight more than I bear
Keep singing low
I cannot hear
I’ll sing for you, I swear

[Chorus]
Will you sing over me?
Will you sing over me?
Sing of the goodness I cannot see
Will you sing over me?

Will you sing over me?
Will you sing over me?
Sing of the goodness I cannot see
Will you sing over me?

Will you sing over me?
Will you sing over me?
Will you sing over me?

Advent 2023 Day 3 – First Sunday: Hope
Image colored in “Mandala Coloring Book Adults” app in the Google Play Store. Edited in Pic Collage.

Hope

Things feel dire and hopeless in the world right now.

In my country we are struggling with more and more people, including children, experiencing houselessness. Substance use disorder is affecting more and more people, both those experiencing addiction and the people around them. People experiencing mental health, emotional, and behavioral challenges aren’t able to access necessary services and treatment. These three conditions feed into each other.

War, genocide, and human rights violations are happening throughout the world.

Where does hope come from? Who can we place our hope with? Government, institutions, and politicians? Probably not. We can hope those things have the power, willingness, and support to make changes. But it’s the kind of fatalistic hope that’s filled with doubt and scorn. It doesn’t believe in itself.

What is hope that believes in itself, what can it do, and where does it come from?

Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see. Through their faith, the people in days of old earned a good reputation.

Hebrews 11:1-2 (NLT)

Real hope is rooted in faith. Hope rooted in faith results in constructive action. Constructive action by people with hope rooted in faith may not change the whole world all at once, but it changes the world of the people connected to them one by one.

For example, almost 10 years ago, I was enmeshed in an emotionally toxic and abusive relationship with someone I’d been in since 1996. We’d had a child together who was almost 5. My mental health was deteriorating. I had lost, some would say given up, relationships with my two adult children. On our child’s fifth birthday, there was a major conflict between this person and my visibly pregnant middle child. It didn’t get physical but the tension in the air was ripe with the potential for it. My child and their partner moved out that night and I thought I’d lost them forever.

When I went to church the next day, I felt defeated and hopeless.

There was a meeting for the children’s ministry program after service and during the meeting, conflict arose. When it was my turn to speak, I simply stated that I had too much conflict at home to be able to cope with it at church and would no longer participate.

After the meeting, one woman approached me and offered to walk through whatever I was going through with me if I was willing to let her. I didn’t have anyone else to turn to, so I said, “yes.”

Today, I have good relationships with both of my adult children. I am single-parenting my almost 15-year-old child and have a good relationship with them. I’m working a full-time job for the first time in 15 years. I have friends I can connect with and count on. Best of all, the work I do redeems all the trauma I’ve experienced since childhood and enables me to walk alongside other people who are on their healing and recovery journey.

One woman, stepping out in faith, held hope for me until I could hold it for myself. Now, I hold it for others.

I have faith that things improve. I have faith that we can and do recover. That faith grounds my hope and enables me to take action to help myself and support others.

For those of us who have faith in God the Father, Son, and Spirit our actions should be ones of hope on behalf of others. I hope more of us do exactly that.

You don’t have to have faith in the same God as I do, or any god at all, to have faith that things can and do improve. That faith is the foundation of hope that your action can change the world of one person for the better. Hope will spread and action will expand in that way.

Advent 2023: Day 2
Image colored in “Mandala Coloring Book Adults” app in the Google Play Store. Edited in Pic Collage.

Advent

What is it? Essentially it’s a countdown to Christmas Day. It began as a Christian tradition. It’s a way to focus on the coming Christ child as the bringer of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. In a way it’s also a symbol what we’re waiting to see manifested at the second coming of the Christ. A more detailed explanation can be found here.

In modern times, the countdown has become more of a secular one, with a daily calendar of gifts ranging from small to big, from chocolate to jewelry and everything in between.

I’m a practicing Christian. I’m not affiliated with a particular denomination or “brand” of Christianity. I worship, learn, and wrestle with my faith in the context of a small, independent, community of fellow believers. Our Teaching Elder (more commonly thought of as a “pastor”) is Marc Schelske, author of “The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-given Purpose and power of Your Emotions” and Journaling for Spiritual Growth, as well as a couple of others with more on the way. He focuses on what it means to worship, serve, and follow a God who characterizes “other centered, co-suffering love.”

I could go on and on (and likely will do so in the future) but I want to get back to Advent and why I’m choosing to focus on this right now.

I’ve been wrestling with my faith a bit, recently. In the face of rampant gun violence and theocratic politics in America, genocidal wars and terrorism, human trafficking and domestic violence, I’m struggling with the concepts and practice of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love.

So, I’m taking some baby steps to reconnecting with those aspects of my faith. Thus my digital Advent calendar.

My process is to excerpt a snippet of scripture from The Revised Common Lectionary Advent readings on a daily basis and pair it with a piece of digital art I’ve colored. I didn’t create the images. I use a coloring app from the Google Play Store and the Pic Collage app to edit the image.

I hope you will connect in some way that’s helpful and positive for you.

Nanopoblano Day 30: Wrapping up the blog challenge
My worksite.

Well, I missed posting Sunday through Wednesday of this week. Life’s mundanities got in the way on Sunday. Then, on Monday there was a traumatic incident where I work. You can read about it here. I’ve spent the last three days just getting through the day. The math says, with this post, I completed 87% of the challenge. Good enough.

I wrote the following on Tuesday night and shared it with the Trauma Support Team at my work yesterday.

Close to Home
A friend of mine was violently harmed
where I work, yesterday.
Of course, I was sad
scared for his wellbeing
but what was there for me
to feel traumatized by?
It is a risk of living in America these days.
It is a risk of the system I work in.
It is a risk of the job he does.
I was fine . . . or so I thought.

This morning,
after my usual sleepless night,
I went to work,
walking in the cold,
not thinking about
what the day would look like.
We were closed to the public.
Many co-workers stayed home.
I was fine . . . or so I thought.

The more I heard people sharing
their feelings and thoughts,
the more I heard
the details of what happened
and what my friend had gone through,
the less fine I felt.

Dissociated mind
Disconnected thoughts
Disoriented self
Dissatisfied with life
Disturbed reality
Distressed emotions
Distorted beliefs

Unaware of what’s real
Filled with pain and confusion
All that matters is to make it stop
Stand up and fight for your life
Make the pain stop
Go to the source
Make it stop

I don’t know the words
to describe how full I feel
of the emptiness
inside my mind and heart.
I’m not filled with fear,
yet fear is not absent,
My safe place was never safe.
Safety was an illusion
that has now been shattered
the way a prism shatters the light,
refracting it into the multihued
spectrum of bright colors.
Only, here, there is no
beautiful rainbow to be seen
after the storm of yesterday’s violence.
This violence, so close to home,
feels like an extension of the violence
happening throughout the world.
I have no control over any of it.
Near or far,
the violence isn’t mine to control.
I can protest it.
I can appeal to the powers that be,
to change their policies,
to change their responses,
to change the infrastructure,
but I have no power over anyone else,
only myself.

lem 11/28/2023

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 23: Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving. If you gather with family and friends today, I hope it is as conflict and friction free as possible. I hope the charcuterie boards and chips bowls contain your favorites, that the turkey is moist and that the rest of the meal be flavorful, safe, and texturally pleasing.

If you’re alone and don’t want to be, I see you. I know how painful it can be to be isolated and lonely in general and more so on holidays. Please hang in there. I hope you find people to spend time with and good food to share with them.

For those who are caught up in danger, violence, grief, and displacement, I’m sorry for your heart, your trauma, and your loss. I hope kindness, provision, and safety find you.

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 20: The Advent of Peace, part 2
Photo by Disha Sheta on Pexels.com

Yesterday’s post kind of ended on a depressing note. I am hoping today’s will end on a more positive one. However, I am figuring this out as I go and we will see where we end up.

I am part of a different kind of Christian faith community. We don’t do sermons and programs the way they are traditionally done in the US. We use a dialogical approach to teaching and learning about the bible and theology. No one preaches and tells us what to think or believe. We have a conversation and discussion. We ask questions. We wrestle with the text and talk about the difficulties within it.

Someone reads the scripture. We all sit in silence for several moments while we contemplate what was read. Then we identify things about the passage that stand out to us and that we have questions about. Our teaching elder goes through the room, writing down the questions and concerns the members of the congregation express. Then he gives context and background to the passage. He describes the culture and belief systems of the time in which the passage was written. He identifies the source or the author, if known, or who tradition says is the author and makes sure we know it may not have been that individual. He talks about the audience and who they were and what things they were going through as a society at the time. Then we discuss.

Last night we read Psalm 46. It talks about God being our strength and refuge when the world is raging and being torn apart. We had a lot of discussion about what it means for him to be that. We talked about co-regulation and grounding. The idea that when we’re feeling overwhelmed with fear and worry, we can turn to God and trust him to cope with the worry and fear we can’t. We also talked about God’s peace that passes all understanding. Somehow, even though we can’t make sense of things that are causing worry and fear, we can trust that God will carry us through these things and we don’t have to make sense of them.

I’ve personally experienced this kind of inner peace. It’s enabled me to move through and walk through traumatic events and to do the work to heal, grow, and recover from a lot of personal trauma. It’s helped me to stand face-to-face with a loud, angry, and abusive person and stop cowering and caving into his angry demands out of fear.

However, it doesn’t address the question of why isn’t God bringing peace to the world in the midst of all the violence and conflict I talked about in yesterday’s post.

I asked the question: How do we share a message of hope and faith in God and his peace in a world that is burning down around us and tell people that the all powerful, all loving God is bringing peace?

That question sparked more discussion about what it means to be people of a God of peace and love. We are to be the peacemakers and the peace bringers in the world around us, but doing so under the guidance and ability provided by him through his Spirit.

Get grounded in God’s peace and carry that into the world through our words and actions with each other and those in the world around us. I can’t solve the problems of the world, but I can bring some of God’s peace into the world around me.

I don’t know if that’s any more satisfactory an answer than I had yesterday. But, it’s the only one I have at the moment. I’ve experienced too much goodness, growth, and healing through my faith and belief in God and Jesus to deny that they exist. I don’t expect or ask anyone else to believe because I say so. Instead, I will do my best to share the gifts I’ve received and hope it brings goodness, growth, and healing to those around me. That’s the best I can do.

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 11: From the archives – Morning Mourning
Photo by Ennie Horvath on Pexels.com

Eyes glistening with unshed tears
Fighting the well founded fears
Aware of our end from this beginning
Foreknowledge in my brain is spinning

This is not a forever love
But, still a gift from above
To enjoy our time and desire
Not the time for a funeral pyre

I must accept what we have now
I simply don’t know how
Anticipation of our end with dread
I must get these things out of my head

I feel my focus switching
My perspective shifting
Now is the time to appreciate
The good that is, to elevate

My heart filling with deep gratitude
I’m making appreciation my attitude
I’m so lucky to have you in my life
You are my respite from strife

Your subtle care and overt desire
Sparking to life my internal fire
Seeing you puts a smile on my face
Knowing one day I’ll feel your embrace

You always make me feel special
Even when forceful you are gentle
At my worst, you see the best
Your presence brings me rest

I love the color and the look in your eyes
What they see in me fills me with surprise
Your mouth, your smile are perfect
Your face, your form void of defect

You have all of me, as long as we last
I’ll cherish the memories of our past
While we are here, I give you all of me
When it’s time I’ll let you go freely

For this moment, in this morning
I’ll let go this untimely mourning
Joy is filling my heart and filling
My eyes with tears glistening

lem 03/27/2018

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 9: From the archives – My story in verse
Photo by freestocks.org on Pexels.com

I signed up for this blog challenge before I knew for sure I would be going back to work full-time this month. So, I’m scrambling (just a little) to keep up. I’ve completed blog challenges when I’ve had nothing much to do other than write. However, I have several failed challenges under my belt with over 120 drafts that I started over the years to prove it. I’m determined to complete this challenge because I owe it to myself to follow through on the one commitment that I made at the end of 2022: To focus on my writing and build my craft. Therefore, I have decided that this month is about the consistency of posting, even if I’m not able to write the way I really want to. To that end, I’m reviewing the drafts and pulling some of my previously unposted work. This poem was written in 2018.

My Life in Verse

Lying here crying over you,
As I promised I wouldn’t do.
Forgetting to my own self be true.
Reacting like a kid without a clue.

I’m too old to be doing this;
telling myself, you I would not miss.
Forgetting as I remember your kiss.
Reminded by your ghost dis.

When will these voices cease?
How do I gain release?
My mind, I need to quiesce.
My soul is seeking deep peace.

You’re not what this is truly about.
You’ve triggered all my fear and doubt.
You’ve broken my resolve so stout.
I just want to scream and shout.

In my infancy it all began
when I thought my father so quicky ran.
Teaching me not to depend on a man.
Relationship was not part of my plan.

Then, a kiss, unbidden.
A “love” to keep hidden.
Right by wrong overridden.
In society ’twas forbidden.

Rejection turned to twisted revenge.
My mom sought avidly to avenge.
Her sanity began to unhinge,
darkening her spirit more than a tinge.

Understanding nothing at my age.
Inner pain turned to outward rage.
Her brokeness I could not gauge.
Her torment she sought to assuage

Burdened by her own embattled past;
that agony, that pain could not last.
A deep darkness so wide and vast,
Unburdended with a final blast.

All this before I was a teen,
shaped into a spirit so mean.
Attempting to affect a stoic mien
inevitably set the scene:

A life repeatedly caught in love’s mirage,
built entirely through self-sabotage.
I see each one lost in a montage.
Unsure if I can withstand the barrage.

Full circle…I’m back to you.
Missing what you say and do.
I fell, despite what we both knew.
My heart, stolen, lost to your coup.

lem 04/09/2018

Nanopoblano 2023 Day 4: Parenting Neurodivergence
Photo by Bruno Thethe on Pexels.com

I’m a neurodivergent parent of a neurodivergent teenager (14). Our brains are not only different from the neurotypical brains of the world, they’re different from each other. My neurodivergence is from Bipolar 2 Disorder and C-PTSD. My kiddo’s is from Autism and includes “Pathological Demand Avoidance.” Although the PDA has not been officially diagnosed, almost all of my kiddo’s behaviors point to it.

I’m also single-parenting and have Type 2 Diabetes that has progressed to the point where I have peripheral neuropathy in both feet. Additionally fibromyalgia and hypothyroidism factor into the equation. I’ve been working 20 hours/week because of these issues, but the “benefits” (subsidized housing, SNAP, Medicaid) in combination with the half-time don’t allow me to afford a vehicle to be able to do basic things like grocery shopping and getting to medical appointments easily and in a timely manner. Public transportation and neurodivergence don’t mix, especially with my kiddo. So, I applied for and was offered a full-time position at work. I’m super excited AND super scared.

Here’s the current set of issues:

  1. With the PDA basic, everyday things like personal hygiene, throwing garbage away, taking care of the animals, and attending school don’t happen.
  2. Not having my child have good hygiene, a clean environment, and consistently attending school can cause me to be investigated for neglecting them.
  3. Living with PTSD, Bipolar 2 Disorder, and Type 2 Diabetes means my mental and physical energy is already limited at the beginning of the day. Subtract the energy drain of full-time employment and what’s left over is what’s available to navigate parenting and meeting governmental expectations.

I live in a perpetual state of worry and stress regarding the fact that I can’t/don’t maintain a clean apartment, can’t get my kid to bathe and brush their teeth, and can’t get them to do school of any kind – in-person or online. I feel like I’m constantly having to prove how difficult my child is to the “powers that be, while at the same time masking and downplaying my own difficulties so I don’t lose them to government intervention.

All of this would be exhausting enough. However, I’ve been taking care of children for 40 years, essentially parenting them since I was 14 when I was taking care of my baby cousin to the point people thought she was my child. So, I’ve been at this level of exhaustion for at least 25 years. (I have two older children who are 37 and 30.)

I’m tired. How am I supposed to be independent and self-sufficient when I’m the only one to meet all the needs both my kiddo and I experience? I get up and go to work five days a week to support others who are experiencing similar struggles, knowing that what I have to offer isn’t sufficient for meeting my needs, much less theirs. Thankfully, my job as a Peer Wellness Specialist isn’t to fix the people I work with or fulfill their needs. It’s to use my lived experience to support them in navigating and working through their own recovery. That I can do and I’m good at it. If only parenting was that easy for me.

#Nanopoblano2023