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Client Journal: Holding Pain with Love

Last night I just stayed up writing all night about my throughts and my feelings that have been running through me over the past few days.

“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”

-Jim Morrison

This quote hit me like a ton of bricks. I wanted to say something about it but I said my other thought first.

I have supressed my pain so much and have been ashamed about it. I was taught that it was the right thing to do. My pain has been made into something bad or made fun of or disregarded as something trivial in my family. I built up so much rage against my family for it, and then rage towards myself for continuing the practice. I have to defend and fight for my right to feel my pain to express it, to have it received by myself, my family and people who have been in my life in the past. The only time I could really express my pain was when I would draw or paint something. That was the only time my pain would not be ridiculed or dismissed.

I want to come to a place where I can feel my pain for myself. I want to hold it up high and let it guide me. Let it help me learn and listen. My pain is deep and profound and it’s great. It always has been. That’s why it has always pushed me to constantly create when I was younger.

The great thing about doing The Telling is that I had a moment where i could hold my pain up and show it to others and have it received. It was a very proud moment for me. When my mother told me that a family friend or relative told her about it and criticized me for it, it made me angry at first because I felt like, “Here I go having to fight and defend my pain again,” but I validated my pain for myself. I don’t need to explain myself to anyone. I know what I went through and I know how it has and still affects me. If I let that comment take over it would destroy me. I can’t go back to that. I love that quote.

Client Journal: Tasting the Wound

Tonight I shared my story. I spoke about what happened with my grandmother, and my cousin as well. I also spoke about what was going on in my family, how emotionally abusive my father is, how I felt and feel abandoned and rejected by my mother. I spoke about how hard it is for me to trust and connect with people and myself, to stay in my body, to be open and vulnerable, and my fear of letting people know the real me. I spoke about my cutting and eating disorders and how that it (in my opinion) led to me getting epilepsy. While I was talking, my body felt triggered. I was feeling anxious and scared. I was crying, I felt dizzy, my fingers went a little numb. My tongue felt numb and I got a metallic taste in my mouth. After I shared my story, the facilitator asked everyone what they connected with.

One woman identified with the counting. To cope with her abuse, she started counting how many steps she took and how many words she wrote down. Another woman said that what was strong for her was when I spoke about one of my seizure episodes. (I was about 16 or 17 and I was trying to ask for help. I was thinking, “I need help!”, but what came out instead was, “I’m going fishing with my sister!”) She said she connected because she understood the feeling of thinking and feeling one thing, but saying something completely opposite.

What surprised me where the physical sensations. It was the first time I felt dizzy and got that taste in mouth. When I finished speaking, I asked for a hug. I needed some comforting and something to bring me into myself. Everyone gave me a hug and I felt warm and safe. I told them that and thanked them. Right now I feel physically tired, like I ran 4 miles. Emotionally, I feel very full. And that fullness has me feeling warm and safe.

Yesterday at group we spoke about how we received the first woman’s story and what it brought up for us. I spoke about how since she was talking about her father, I started thinking about my own father and how scared I am of him. I’m scared of his rage. How I feel extremely sad and hurt because we do not have a relationship. I spoke about how I project that onto men, how it is hard for me to relax and be myself because I am scared that I will end up with a man who is like him.

One of the other women then started to talk about how she minimizes what happened to her; her mom is a victim of sexual abuse and constantly reminds her that her abuse was “nothing” compared to what she went through. As this particular woman spoke about her relationship with her mom, I resonated with what she was saying in the sense that this woman bases her identity and emotion on what her mom thinks, feels, and acts. Everything in my body tightened. I felt anxious sad and scared. I had to get this feeling out of my body! I took a deep breath, and told this woman in the way I could relate to what she was saying. How I spent a large portion of my life trying to be my mom, part 2, and how I am in the process of untangling myself from her so I can find my own identity. My own self.

When I started talking about it, my body released and I didn’t feel as anxious. The facilitator noticed this, and asked the other women what happens to them and their bodies when they are triggered. She spoke about how it’s is a normal reaction to trauma, but stressed the importance of expressing and releasing.

I never thought I would say this, but it is getting easier to express, and a little easier to identify the gripping that happens in my body when I am triggered.

All Heart – Repost from Breakthrough: Lara Luzim Dance

The heart is a powerful icon. It breeds images of love, of passion, of throwing caution to the wind. Most people are afraid to trust their heart. So many of us have had our hearts broken, shattered, disappointed. We rarely believe it is a rational way to make important choices. I disagree…that’s a cop-out. The heart beats and blood flows and sends messages to our brain, our body without adornment or judgement. It is our minds that judge it…our bodies that shut down on it. Our heart has the capacity to hold all of our triumphs and failures. If we don’t open it, unthaw it, and feel the intensity of all its bliss and pain…if we choose not to listen to what it’s saying, we can easily end up in cliched situations and mediocre relationships. We love the wrong people, trust the wrong patterns, control the wrong outcomes just so we don’t have to feel what our heart truly wants. READ THE WHOLE ENTRY ON BREAKTHROUGH: LARA LUZIM DANCE

Marta Luzim’s Writing the Wave: Beyond the Love She Seeks

I swear, the earth will surely be complete to him and her who shall be complete. Earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken. Inside I feel the edges of thorns that silently prick away at my soul. I am challenged to find a new light, a new avenue to see the God of delight in my every sight.

I gaze down at the earth and see cracks and pieces of leaves left over from weather change and erosion. How do you feel complete when around the corner is the unknown, the mystery of death. Yet, I die every day to something new in me. A new way of seeing my body, not something to pound away at to fit into my clothes, the way it feels, smells and sees. The skin on my hand, it’s veins stare at me, blue and pulsing, that is life in me. The way my husband sighs, the way the air smells of oranges, the way the woman holding a water bottle still seems dehydrated. What are we hiding from? We are mortal, but want to live forever as souls forever young and alive new born, children running and playing in the ocean.
Some can sit on a plane that is hitting horrendous turbulence and say, “I am in Jesus hands. I am in God’s hands.”

I cannot be in God’s hands with such surrender. So I cling to life in a way that strangles the life out of it. At times afraid to go forward in case I die. Because I think that if I let go, all the unfinished life yet to live is over. They ask, “Don’t you believe in an after-life?” I do, and then who cares? I am only first beginning to learn to love in this life. I have so much to learn about love. Love is so complex; fragmented, holy, fierce and wounded. My heart pumps throughout this life crying, yearning, drinking every last bit of its tigress pull of thunderous energy. Life is not placid for me. Although outside my window frames swaying palms, tiger lilies and buzzing sounds of the night. Inside my body, I walk a jungle, dark, roars of unfriendly terrain under my feet. Step by step, wondering if quick sand will suck me under. Each moment stressed with exciting terror that washes away all complacency and beliefs that I might for one second know or understand why I am here. I live life awakening in each moment, learning how to be here without reservation. As wise Indian teacher asked, “Why are we here?” He answered his own question, “To be alive.”

My outside does not reflect my insides unless I sit very still and never move out of the spot I sit in, smell the Febreeze in my sheets and the garlic from my stove. Then I am safe. Only when a hurricane approaches do my insides match my outsides. I don’t know what it means not to be jagged. I know moments when I am thrilled just be alive. Life is for me is the Olam Tikkum, the Hebrew purpose to mend a broken world. I step on the jagged pieces and breathe. The earth pierces the soles of feet. I look up and see the sky with its omnipresent clouds and I wonder, how is this life such a paradox?

Marta’s guest post for Crystal Saltrelli’s “Living with Gastroparesis” Blog

Read Marta’s soulful and personal guest post on Crystal Saltrelli’s blog, Living with Gastroparesis. Crystal is a Gastroparesis Patient-Expert and Certified Health Counselor,

Gastroparesis: Curse or Blessing?

Find out more about Crystal Saltrelli

Client Journal: Hearing the Mother’s Voice

Client: I am split and part of me is my mother – I hear her voice and it is the part of me that is self-loathing and does not want me to be happy. The other part of me, the sensitive and vulnerable part, wants to break out, but the mom part is stronger and keeps me stuck. I want to get away from all of her hatred and sadness. I am twelve in this writing and I feel like I’m twelve again after I read it. I feel a great sense of loss, and when I look back I can see how I hang onto things, even when I don’t really want them, because I hate the feeling of loss.

Delve In
Marta: Hate the feeling of loss. It is heartbreaking. Yet it can open us up to drink in life in new ways, go after what we really want and live the life we want to live. Feel the bittersweet warmth of love.

Why do you hate your feelings, whether it be sadness or loss? It is life to feel. Feelings tell us what we need and want. They give us knowledge of ourselves. You cannot get rid of your feelings. You can listen to them and let them lead you. What do you think your sadness and loss means about you?

This is your “critical mother” in you, saying you’re too sensitive, too much, too, too.

This is what makes you unhappy, that your mother says you can’t be a feeling person and you don’t know how to express from your feelings because you were never allowed to.

Just for a moment ask yourself: Who do you want to share your sadness and loss with? Who are you afraid of losing? Can you love them more because you might lose them? What are you sad about? Can you find what you lost and can the sadness help you reclaim it?

Change – Repost from Break Through: Lara Luzim Dance

Change sneaks up on you like a ghost in the night. One day you look in the mirror and there you are…somehow different from the last time you looked. I thought I had my life planned out. But it seems that plan was not fully challenging my true destination. If you asked me 5 years ago what my life would look like today, it would not have been where I’m at now. I thought I would be married with kids, living a solid life with someone I thought I would be with forever. I guess the universe had other plans. Chance and circumstance intervened and here I am, forced to reckon with the woman in the mirror that has been screaming at me to pay attention to her. I never intended to have this life, and at the same time it is exactly where I am supposed to be. Like sliding doors, 30 seconds can alter your path forever, and if you’re lucky it will throw you off the path you were on, and back on the one that was intended all along.  READ THE WHOLE ENTRY ON BREAK THROUGH: LARA LUZIM DANCE

If I could hear you talking to me now it would sound like this

Rain. Soft, drip, on the green, leathery soft leaf. It drums, and beats, comforting me like a lullabye, and cascades like a song from the clouds where the water goddess lives. The grass sings and reaches, thirsty for the sweet rain that floods the tips of their blades, a tongue that slurps down the heaven’s ocean spray, like a child deserted from their homeland. Rain. It runs through my fingerprints, like river tributaries and through the lines of my skin…it fills me with light liquid, allows my throat to open to drink in the moist, flavorful wet air, travel into my cells, around and around in my belly. If I keep watering my empty hole with this rain, it will hydrate my insatiable soul with life-giving forces that shout to the elves and fairies. This life pulsates the dew, lilies and daffodils, the wheat, and flows into everything rooted to the earth. This rain, it keeps everything fluid and waving through tough winds and torrid deserts that need their sand dunes quenched, and fires that burns trees alive. All of nature needs the rain. Even the hurricanes come to whip up the darkness of the abyss and once again leave the earth with the sparkle and glimmer of saturation, and fullness. Rain, it is the universal milk of the divine…rain…it carries me down rivers, across oceans and beyond. Rain, the symphony of the pat, pat, patter against the pavement…rain converges and unites each human’s flesh to each drop, a drop with every human, dead or alive, their name is written in the rain. It is our ancestors coming home to us, whispering, ‘stand in the rain, let it drown you, devour you, devote you to all that is awakened within you.’ Rain, I lust for the rain. It is the lover that never ceases to give. It is the rainbow that waits for the wishes that release its magic. Rain is beyond, beyond, anything that is earthly, and when it comes to earth, it is angels tapping us saying, ‘I am here. Don’t leave. Stay with me. I will give your hearts’ desire.’ Warmth, connect heaven and earth within your heart and cocoon my soul in the mother’s womb. The child wants to go there, hide there, keep out the world that gobbles her innocence…the child leaps into the rain and disappears into the mystery..

Client Journal: Pregnant Dream

Last night I had an interesting dream. I saw three versions of myself: Me as a little girl of about 9 years old, me as a young pregnant woman, and me as an adult in the mid/late thirties. In the dream, it was dark. Little Me and Pregnant Me were very confused and very frightened. Pregnant Me was running around feeling very anxious, scared and stressed about the upcoming birth of the baby. I think Pregnant Me was 9 months pregnant, due any day now. Little Me was extremely scared and lonely. Only Adult Me was calm. Little Me ran up to Adult Me and said,”I don’t want to be here anymore. Can we leave? I don’t want to stay here anymore.” And Adult Me said, “Sure, of course we can leave. Don’t worry, you don’t have to stay and suffer for me anymore.” Then I woke up.