Frozen Nowhere

Starting over and learning to love MY life…

Holy Epiphany Mama!

June26
(I am still fairly annoyed that, for some reason or other, I am unable to upload posts from work to my bloggity blog place… I blame it on some special hidden bit of WordPress that I am not aware of. No matter what it is, I cannot update directly from my work computer to my blog and so I find that sometimes I forget to update the blog… oops, my bad)
Okay… so I have done something for myself, part of self-care, that I have been struggling with on my own for a long time.
I signed up for an e-course! Specifically, the Making Space for your Goddess to Shine ecourse.
When I did this I got a lot of “feedback” from people in my life asking WHY I thought I needed to spend money to just go through my house and toss out crap I didn’t need anymore? The questions and comments ranged from the simple head patting type (“okay, you *think* you need help with things, if you really say so”) to the disparaging (“Why would you spend your good money on something that you should be able to do by yourself? What is this really going to show you that you don’t already know?)… and yet I still did it.
What can I say, I’m stubborn that way.
Because, despite knowing that I am absolutely ENTITLED to throw things away (or give them away or sell them or just get them out of my home in some manner) I have been resistant to doing it.
I have stuff. Mounds of stuff. Piles of Stuff. Massive mountains of stuff.
And the net effect of it is a sense of dreading overwhelm…
Which results in the internal dialog that goes like this:
“OMG, I have too much stuff, I feel stifled and closed in”
“Then get rid of it”
“But OMG, where do I start?”
And (because I am me) the most logical place to start is not anywhere PHYSICAL. Nope, in order to make any sort of change type thing I need to UNDERSTAND what is making me feel the feels I feel…
Which is why I needed the guidance of something like this… because I suspect that the sense of creeping anxiety and discomfort in my home is less about the STUFF in it and more about something deeper that I am not allowing myself to notice…
And beause I needed to stop THINKING about spirituality and start DOING it (and by doing it I mean “build an altar”, which is something I seriously put off for a year…) and so a course that not only would help me discover something about myself, declutter my apartment AND give me a gentle push to set up an altar? Well… that’s gotta be worth a small hit to the credit card! (dont’ worry, I’ve already paid that off!!)
And so I paid…
And week one started and I dutifully downloaded and printed out the materials for week one…
Then was overwhelmed by the creeping anxiety and ran away
Literally… I freaked out and stayed out of my home for most of the week. I mean, I read over things, I did a bit of thinking about it… then I fled my home for everything but supper and sleeping. I shopped, I walked, I went of of town to stay with Reg and his daughters (Thursday through Sunday nights)…
I felt… alone.
So THIS week (which SHOULD be week 2) I decided to start week 1 over again and work them in combination. I had started to identify THINGS and categories for things… and I had planned out and started building my altar, I went through the sheets again and wrote down things as they occurred to me… and I checked in on Twitter to see if there were any other people taking the course along with me, out there… somewhere…
(You see, I also had a really hard time actually reaching out for support from the leaders of the course, but that’s another blog post… probably the previous one, actually).
And through this process I got support from @zenatplay and @kyeli (of Pace and Kyeli and The Freak Revolution (of whic I am also a very VERY quiet member)). I have to admit that once I didn’t feel ALONE in the process, I started to feel a little bit better about the idea of being in the process.
And I started to actually THINK about what was going on and my history and the creeping anxiety…
And it hit me…
I haven’t EVER spent the time to think about what I needed from my home!! That was the KEY to this whole feeling of unease in my space.
2 years ago (June 24) I finally made the move to leave my marriage after almost 10 years.
Since then I have not felt completely comfortable in my own space or by myself.
I have viewed my home as just a shelter, a temporary space.
When I moved into my home I had almost nothing.
The only thing I had to take comfort in was my computer. And I retreated online to find solace in my feeling of creeping anxiety at being alone in a space that hadn’t felt like mine. I started retreating when my marriage started to falter, when I stopped feeling safe and comfortable within the home of my husband… and it was the only place I felt safe with now…
The space was huge and empty and I felt hollow and alone… a small scrunched up soul in a huge vast emptiness trying to define myself. The comforts I had from a “home” were gone, I had none left.
TheEx dumped things that he didn’t want onto me. These were not things that I felt a particular connection with, but I felt I should take them for the very reason that I had NOTHING.
The space and emptiness, after having spent so many years collecting meaningful and beautiful things, hurt a lot. I felt LOST. I felt ALONE. I felt SCARED.
I felt HOME-less.
Because I was.
I had a space to live, I had shelter. I didn’t have a HOME.
I bought THINGS. Things that filled the space in my apartment. I bought things to fill my time. I bought CLUTTER… ho-hum items that didn’t do anything for me in any capacity. And why? Because the loss of so much loved history was hurting me.
This I realized last night:
The stuff I am holding, the stuff that is overwhelming me, has been filling space because I have felt ANXIOUS about the losses I have suffered, because I have felt uncomfortable facing who I am and what I want. BECAUSE I have not addressed MY needs and because I have not allowed myself the permission to make the space into what *I* need rather than just a place to hold stuff…
The stuff can’t replace my needs for love and acceptance. It can’t repair my broken family. It can’t create love.
But I can. I can make a place to flourish. To learn to be accepted for who I am, to accept the love that is all around me, to accept who I have become and the changes I have gone through unfurling after my marriage.
It’s not about getting rid of stuff… not really. Its about helping the soul flourish — finding the stuff that helps and reutilizing or removing the stuff that gets in the way or holds the soul back…
posted under My Life, Spirit | 2 Comments »

Fighting my natural instincts

June23

I am a cusp person.

Astrologically I am considered an Aries/Taurus cusp, being that my birthday is on the day when it switches over from Aries to Taurus. I have been told that I am definitivly an Aries, based on the time and date of my birth… but I still tend to have quite a few Taurean traits as well.

Personality wise, I cusp between introvert and extrovert. No matter how many times I take the MBTI test I cannot get a consistent reading of introversion/extroversion. And for that matter, I can’t make up my OWN mind, which causes me a lot of weird feelings when I’m with groups of people.

You see… I LIKE being involved. I thrive on it. I like being part of something with a group of people.

But I’m also shy.

So I LIKE being involved, and will volunteer and likely take up almost any opportunity to go out and join a group… but I put things off when I go to join groups because I am not entirely comfortable making new friends.

I get recharged from being around groups of people. I don’t like to be alone all the time. But I also find it draining to try and get out and meet new people too… and when I am newly in a group I feel very tongue tied and nervous.

And so, despite the fact that I have extroverted tendancies (like group activities, like social gatherings, like to talk to other adults, feel recharged when in groups) I fade into introversion because I feel socially awkward with new people.

I want to be noticed, I want to be talked to… but I don’t know how to go about breaking the ice with new people!

I am almost afraid to talk to people, to be noticed. Its a throw back attitude from my marriage, where I had to always be afraid of what I was saying and to whom, lest even the smallest hint of my spirituality and the “liberal” non-christian views I held, different from those of my (thankfully SOON now) Ex might escape and embarass him in some way. Its the constant vigilance against who I really am, my REAL interests or feelings, that gets me.

Do you KNOW how hard it is to make friends if you still have that gremlin sitting on your shoulder asking you “Are you ALLOWED to say that?” every time to start a conversation with someone?

It’s HARD.

I FEEL like a friendly person. I THINK I get along well with others.

But I always feel like the outsider, that there are things that are best left hidden from view, that are deep and dark and not-at-all chocolately goodness about me.

I have struggled in the recent past to get past the shyness. I have TRIED to join in more activity… albeit only online. And yet I can’t get to the point of making my prescence known…

The thing is… I don’t know HOW to be noticed anymore.

I write in obscurity, despite the fact that a lot of the things that I write about are directly in response to what I read in some of the blogs that I read every day or the podcasts that I listen to or the online groups in which I lurk. And I don’t know how to get feedback from these people who I respect, whom I am TRYING to figure out how to engage in dialog.

I leave comments, I twitter when I have a thoughtful response, I link my blog in comment fields, I put up banners for things I get involved in (when I can figure out how to do it, I’ve been having difficulty with that lately)… where are the lines?

Its not that I want someone to PRAISE me… I would like to enter a dialog with others and open myself up (not to attack) to different points of view and different ways to look at similar situations. I want to know if I am on the right track, if anyone has ever gone through something like this before and have advice. I want to know that there are other people OUT there…

But how does one go about doing this? I know I should comment more, and I’m trying. I know I should WRITE more. I should find a way to get things OUT to people who would read, who would give feedback or spark a new direction in which to think of things. I tweet when I post on the blog. I post on both my blog and my open diary. Can I email people directly? Is that allowed? Can I ask for feedback to people whom I respect? What is allowed and what is going to come across as “teen angst” or as creepy/whiny/stalkerish?

I just don’t know…

What do you do when you need encouragement from an online group in which you “belong”?

posted under My Life, Spirit | 1 Comment »

Whatcha gonna do about it, Girly?

June16
Now, I am well aware that I am aware that I need to make changes in my life. I am also aware that I have been both avoiding doing the things that I KNOW that I should do to make changes, and worrying about the impact of changing my routine…

If you know me personally you know that I have been going back and forth, mentally pacing about WANTING to change and having the ideas of how I can start to change, and then FREAKING OUT because in order to make the changes I would have to commit to DOING something…

So I go from the THOUGHT (east) of what I want to change, I build in the DESIRE (south) to change things in my life, I start feeling EMOTIONAL (west) about how much I need to make these changes…

And then I get stuck there… I get caught up in the constant emotional feedback loop  — I want to do this, I have to do this… but I can’t do this, I don’t know how to do this, how can I start doing this right now, where do I start… but I have to change this, I have to do this… but… — and I never make the final leap to the completion of my circle… I have so far not been able to make the move to DO (north) the things that I know I need to do.

I’m having manifest problems. Obviously my sticking point is in the mud… somewhere between the water of the west (emotions) and the eart of the north (physical/doing) I get bogged down.
At least I REALIZE this, right?

Right?

Okay… so realizing things doesn’t really HELP get things done, in fact we’ve already established that I have no problem with facing the things going on in my mental processes (the East, ironically enough). I have no end of ability to conceptualize what I want changed, I can come up with ideas and thoughts and visualizations about solutions or outcomes… but I can’t get the kick in the ass to do the WORK that I need to do to “break ground”…

Its a blockage, something I stumble over. And in stumbling, I end up sitting in the grass ruminating over the fall rather than dealing with the  WHY of the stopping, I go back to thinking about something ELSE rather than making the move FORWARD to make my goals a reality. Instead of inspecting the thing getting in my way, I start thinking about other things, avoiding acknowledging that there is a THING (whether this is a physical, spiritual, emotional, or mental THING) getting in my way.

And so I have fallen into a pattern of become the thought provoker, the instigator, the idea girl… I get the ideas and then I find someone ELSE to pump up about them and send them on their way… never really completing anything myself.

And it HURTS.

But the “othersiders” (people who are on the otherside of my consciousness, aka not ME (laugh)) seem to think of these issues, these “stucknesses” as non-important and tend to brush them aside in my struggle to find myself and grow in myself. The advice I get focuses mainly on forcing the doing without getting down and looking at what the stumbling block really IS…

“Just write every day for X amount of minutes and after a while you’ll get used to it” — well, I might get used to it, but I doubt that the stuckness troll that lives under that particular bridge will just “go away”. I might be able to generate text, but in my experience the actual FEELING of forced/timed writing just to write makes me feel almost SICK. Trying to force a habit of writing doesn’t get my voice out, it doesn’t RELIEVE pressure, it creates a feeling of punishment that becomes associated with the process. It is the same thing with drawing and knitting and any other thing I resist.

Most of the advice is just the same as if I said I was afraid of bees (which, I am not, btw…):
  • You’re just being silly, there isn’t anything to be afraid of
  • It can’t hurt you
  • Its more afraid of you than you are of it
  • It doesn’t even register you as a threat
  • You’re anthromorphizing this
  • Stand still and it won’t notice you
  • Its a good thing, you shouldn’t be afraid of it, a bee(creativity) is a good thing for the world (and then all the reasons bees are good for everything)
  • stop screaming!
I’m not sure you get the point, but there it is anyway.

So… without droning (snicker) on endlessly about the stuckness, I have decided that I need to find OTHER ways, other than forcing myself to start dreading the things that I am longing to do… and thus ensuring that I STOP not only doing these things but AVOID doing them at all costs.
Which is, to change my perspective.

I intend to find out what I am stumbling over here, taking a look at the things in my environment that detract from what I want to do… taking a look at the way my enviroment, my diet, my level of exercise, my social activities, and my spirituality are all working or not working. I think there is something THERE.

So… for the next 6 weeks I am working on getting my environment in order (or at least HOPEFULLY getting it in order) and getting rid of things that I no longer need or want or serve any purpose other than to make me feel bad about things…

And so I started out on the Making Space for your Goddess To Shine Online course…

And I’ll try to keep up with how this is changing me and things and if it is helping me do anything in my life…
posted under My Life, Spirit | No Comments »

June14
I haven’t been writing lately…
 
I know this, you (the imaginary people who exist out there in the interwebs) this… my friends know this…
 
And yet there are times I feel helpless to change this situation.
 
Right now every time I sit down to write I end up ranting over the boring crap in my life:
  • theEx and the legal, financial, and parental changes he wants to impose on my life on a continuous basis
  • feeling distressingly STUCK in my life and not knowing what I want to change, much less HOW to change it…
  • feeling LONELY, and not knowing how to change THAT without the drastic measure of starting to date again (because, really, there is nothing WRONG with my relationship with Reg, its that I need to start socializing with OTHER people and start getting out and being more active in my OWN interests and things)
  • feeling distressed in my home — wanting to change SOMETHING there, declutter and organize, but, again, unsure where to start
  • and the overreaching constant concerns about finances and debt and GOALS FOR THE FUTURE (say that in your head in a booming echo voice, please)
 
And I don’t WANT to write about these things anymore.
 
I mean, the post-separation pre-divorce stuff is frustrating, but no one cares. TheEx is not a very thoughtful person, and that is just a way of life. It’s why I left him, ultimately.
 
The rest is just stuckness… the more I write about not knowing what to change to make my life better, the more confused I feel about it.
 
There are certain things I know I NEED to do to change my life … I need to get out and do more things with more people. I need to declutter my home. I need to organize myself. I need to start exercising again. I need to start eating better. I need to be more proactive, instead of waiting until the very last minute to do things. 
 
Its just… how?
 
I have had a real problem getting out and being SOCIAL. Since high school, when I was a pretty social person, I have really not had much clue about how to get to the point where I am socializing with other people. I have tried joining Mommy groups, to fall into and out of cliques due to some undefined rules of “mommyhood”. I have drifted in and out of Pagan community groups, never quite feeling right with the people in them. I have attempted to be part of needlework and knitting groups, to have scheduling issues and interpersonal conflicts cause stresses I didn’t need.
I tried going the gym and taking classes there. But the gym is not the place to make friends, not really. I mean,  I might be able to meet MEN, but I don’t think I would be able to successfully meet new friends. People at the gym fall into a narrow set of categories: those there to work out to be fit, those who are serious about working out, and those who are there just to be seen (you know, the girls wearing makeup while working out?)… and although getting some exercise was good, I still felt lonely.
 
I don’t feel like I FIT anywhere… I’m not a cookie cutter person, by any streach of the imagination. I have a variety of interests and hobbies, but I don’t obsess like many others I know, which makes it hard for me to enter social groups with truely dedicated people. 
Maybe its a failure of mine. Maybe I don’t have passion… 
But that’s not how I feel. 
I feel that I have passion, its just that I don’t NEED to talk about it incessantly or push my feelings on others or talk about it. I have no tv shows that I simply HAVE to watch or books I would stand in line to buy. I don’t follow any sports teams. I don’t belong to any covens or churches or any working spiritual groups. I don’t collect anything. 
Are those the trappings of passion?
Where is my passion. 
I just don’t know anymore, but I feel it it still there. 
So I have decided to enroll in a course online to help me getting back in touch with what I need in terms of creativity and decluttering…
And I hope that it gives me a place to start.
 
posted under My Life, Spirit | 1 Comment »

Finding the words

May28
If you knew me in “real life” you might find it weird that I keep a blog… or not…
 
I have a strained relationship with words and writing. Its almost as my ability for hands-on creativity has a restraining order against me, I must stay at least 100 cm away from anything remotely creative and only admire from a distance.
 
Yet I have a blog, and I occasionally write here. I have also kept an online “diary” relatively successfully for about 10 years on Open Diary. Not as a daily practice, but at least a few posts a month… So there is proof that I *CAN* write…
 
Just not the way I want to… not the places I want to or the subjects or genres or using the materials i would like to use.
 
I experience an almost paralyzing anxiety… its very odd and very complicated.
 
From age 5 until I was about 13 I was a compulsive writer/colourer/drawer… if I could get a hold of a piece of paper and some form of writing implement I was all over it. GirlChild is EXACTLY the same way. I filled pads of paper, lined notebooks, memo books, and even rolls of register paper (you know, from cash registers or adding machines? yeah) with every imaginable thing — I practiced printing and handwriting, drew pictures, devised codes, tracked every imaginable quantitative event, wrote fiction, poetry, and plays… you name it I probably scribbled it on something somewhere.
 
By age 13 I had started to compulsively carry spiral bound notebooks around with me everywhere I went. I had a book for ideas and a book for stories and a book for poems and a book for the novel I was writing. And at home, where no one could find it, I started a diary.
 
Eventually I stopped having separate books for different things and just had one book for everything writing and drawing related that I carried, along with assorted pens, pencils and colouring devices which I used during the day, and my diaries, kept in my room where they couldn’t be discovered.
 
This continued until I was 18. I FILLED numerous books with scribblings and ideas and words and drawings. I filled BOOKS with journaling. I thought nothing of the fact that I wrote compulsively… that I expressed my thoughts and feelings in words. I thought it was NORMAL for me to pound out 20 single-space, double sided sheets of binder paper a day on a novel, play or poetry.
 
Until the day it all stopped.
 
I can’t point to any ONE thing that caused the shift in my thinking, and its likely that it was not just one thing but a combination of things that caused the rift between myself and my creative side:
  • I started dating a boy (I will not say man, because he wasn’t a man in any sense of the word) which quite quickly became both very serious and VERY dangerous
  • I started university and with that came an attitude change from “being creative” to “being studious”
  • I had less free time — between full time studies and having to be mindful of my boyfriend full time
 
I changed from a girl who was creative and care-free to a woman who was anxious and always having to be mindful of various factors of her environment. I had a boyfriend who was very emotionally needy and unstable (he was later diagnosed as bipolar, but at that time he didn’t know it) and demanded a lot from me — I was given rule after rule after rule for my life… and the amazing thing is that I never QUESTIONED these rules or regulations at all (and I dated him for 3 years!!)…
 
I suspect (but have no direct proof) that my boyfriend at that time was reading my notebooks and journals during our relationship. While I can’t remember specifics of conversations a lot of the time, I do remember that I started to self-edit my journals… resorting to creating a sort of coded language to write anything I suspected I would get into trouble for. After a while I felt so nervous about what I was writing or doodling in my diaries and journals that I was hiding not only my diaries but ALL my books and markers and pencils and paints… 
I know there were “rules” put forth, I know there were restrictions. I can’t remember what or why… but they got internalized — the fear of having things read, of being caught writing or doodling or journalling got worse and worse. 
The specific rules have faded to the point that I am not sure what the rules really ARE. Instead I am left with the lingering feeling of unease when picking up a pen to write in a book. 
“Unease” is such a wimpy word for how I feel… The feeling is emotional and physical at the same time, a deep, creeping sense like itching inside my chest, inability to breathe, and pounding heartbeat. Emotionally I feel anxious — fight or flight type of panic overwhelms me. Mentally I feel that I am doign something “wrong” or against some rule, I feel sitting and writing is “lazy” like I should be doing something else (anything else!!) like cleaning the house or baking or attempting to knit (and when I attempt to knit I feel I should be trying to scrapbook…etc). I have it in the back of my mind things like:
  • “this is a waste of time”
  • “look at how messy the handwriting is”
 
And recently whenever I start to write (or knit or scrapbook or do anything creative) I feel the muscles in my hands and arms (particularly my right hand and wrist, which is the hand I use to WRITE with (although I don’t have the same issue when I type, and I do a lot MORE of that and i SHOULD be getting carpal tunnel about… oh… NOW…)) to the point that sometimes holding a pen is painful…
 
I think I am “stuck”… I don’t know how to unclog this drain… 
 
The problem is that I have a lot of ideas and words and things inside of me, and no way to express them “safely” (yet). When I sit to think about it, when I go to DO something to relieve the pressure in my heart I get the pain in my hands. Its an information bottleneck… and I’m not sure where to go from HERE…
 
I know THESE things to be true:
  1. I love to use words.
  2. I love to write
  3. I want to express myself
  4. I have something to say
  5. I want to share this aspect of myself with my children
  6. this will allow me to heal from the emotional and spiritual aspects of the abusive relationships that I rose above*
  7. Once I am able to start exploring my creative side I will be better able to open up SPIRITUALLY
 
 
 
______________________________________________________
* I have decided I am not going to fall into feeling like I was a “victim” of abuse. I was abused, it is a statement of something that I allowed into my life for a brief period and which I choose to walk away from. While there have been lasting effects, I can rise above and relearn to become myself… This is MY paradigm shift, I do not expect anyone else to utilize it…
 
 
posted under My Life, Spirit | No Comments »
« Older EntriesNewer Entries »

This is the blog of a 30-something woman. I am a single mother of 2 children (9 year old son, 7 year old daughter). I am walking a Pagan Path. I am divorced. I am a geek girl. I am a nature’s child. I am a seeker. I am a talker. I am sometimes jubilant, sometimes creative, sometimes anxious, sometimes bitter… I run the gamut of emotions as I go through walking not only my Pagan Path but my everyday daily LIFE Path.

My interests include creativity, art, crafts, magick, nature, spirituality, writing, collecting blank books, pens and office supplies, technology, myths, kids, colours… hell… I might write on ANYTHING that strikes my fancy.


Follow me!!


By TwitterIcon.com
Subscribe in a reader

Subscribe via email update

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

The Freak Manifesto

Click here to download your copy of the Freak Manifesto

Things I am up to right now!

52 WEEKS TO AWESOME!!!

The Next Chapter: The HAPPY BOOK
THE GIGGLE Mail around Group

Goddess Leonie’s Wonderful Goddess School!!


Click here to view more details


2010 Goddess Workbook!
Goddess Leonie's Guide to 2010 Goodness!!

Categories

Calendar Widget

July 2010
M T W T F S S
« Jun    
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031