faith...

i decided to not be jaded any more...i decided to see what is out there in life....i decided to forget the lonely howl...and run with the idea of soft fur and two sets of tracks...i aint gonna fall prey to more empty pocket dreams...i aint gonna fall hard for false promises either...i aint gonna listen to my head when it comes to love...i am gonna listen to my heart all the way...and if my heartbeat matches up with yours...well i will dance there in the moonlight with you...but i aint gonna fall for broken tunes...this next dance has to be the one...so save the last dance for me tonight...if your dance card has got the room...see mine is full as well...but...all the lines have got your name written down...so if you have the time...i have the moon...come dance with me and see how high we will go...come dance with me tonight...

improv

here in the darkness the sky opens...stars spill out...ocean rises up to press her hips against the curve of the moon...waves shiver to shore...i am stretched out on the wet sand waiting...you rise...glistening...shimmering scales fall and float away...you walk a bit unsteady...yet here you are...brave...kneeling...hands whisper their prayers...full tongues dance...speak to me in tongues mermaid...tell me your stories and i will tell you mine...we will speak this language of love all night...

passion

my muse is back...and in the most accidental way...i bumped into her mid-flight...between earth and sky...she didnt smile brightly or say much of anything but she was there...and i breathed her in like stardust and stayed high for the rest of the day...i am going to paint now...i will finish my book...and there are poems crowding my heart like crows over a pregnant cornfield...i am going to love the hours good and strong...pulling off amazing feats of fancy...i am standing on the roof of my tree house shouting as the storm smashes down...i am laughing...i am open...my heart is ablaze...and i feel free...i know now...love is not a calm pool to sink into...love is a slash of lightning...love is a fire...love is roaring through me tonight...

no more duct tape moments...

i have been spending alot of time in life duct taping myself back together...come on colleen keep it together for the day and then you can fall apart tonight...come on colleen and get thru this week and you can sit down and have the crying jag on sunday morning...come on colleen ignore the unhappiness and fake it...fake it til you make it...push yourself harder colleen...come on and be grateful dang it!...other folks have it much harder!...why arent you fixed yet?!...you know all the stuff you are suppose to heal...why arent you healed?!!!...

so you get the chatter in my head?...for years...i am going to say nearly 20 years of self work...exploring my inner "stuff" when i could...gleaning universal truth...opening up...piecing things together...figuring out what has kept breaking me...depressing me...derailing my life...

breaking and repairing became the cycle...always seeing myself as this work in progress...yet all i was doing was trying to maintain a facade...trying to get love and keep it...trying to be good...trying...which when you try you never succeed...another morsel of wisdom i "learned" but never embraced...

in me was a critical mass building and i never knew it...words, images, memories moving me towards understanding...people have come into my life to chip away at my resistance...to unveil my own healing...so many moments racked up to lead to the full understanding of myself and the why...finally!...why do i do the things i do...why cant i fix my life...why do i get discouraged...why do i give up...and wow weeeee...i am so understanding of it and so forgiving of it and so grateful to understand...now i can change my negative behaviors from such a place of strength...i can accept with ease the things i needed to accept about my life...and oh my gosh i can forgive and love my parents finally...and when it is not too late to show them...with an open heart and the deepest compassion possible...what a gift...i go down south to see them soon and am actually looking forward to it...to the level of loving them i have reached is amazing..the forgiveness...it is so grace filled to forgive...and i have...i dont have to seek approval by self sacrifice and servitude...i can simply be a daughter and not anything else...

so lately with the depression and suicidal feelings i had to look at all the dark parts of myself...the anger...the hurt...the fears...i had to keep peeling and peeling away...i had to isolate memories and put them in a timeline to see what was happening then...it was hard at first to place myself in a certain year or environment...there for many years i was at my mamaws, my aunts land and then at my parents...so i had a hard time assigning an age to myself and what was happening to my parents and why they directed such anger towards me...such incredible dislike...

and yet i did just that...it was around 6 grade and some of 7th...i had to wear dresses every day was a rule that popped up and my dad or mom would check to see if i was wearing them....i would sneak pants to school and at least wear them with a dress...which was not odd at the time because some girls did this for gym class...i just did it all day...tucking a dress in my pants at times...or peeling it off if it was a jumper dress with a blouse underneath to keep on...this was one huge friction that had my mom telling me she loved me but didnt like me...she wanted a girl and not another boy she would say...no one was ever going to love me she would say often...yet she would never say why...i never knew why...i just thought it meant she wouldnt and others wouldnt love me period....

this timeline alone began to make the light bulb come on...i did not understood her rejection of me so often...even before when i was younger she didnt like that i would squat like my dad when he was doing work...or how i stood with my fingers hooked in my belt loops...little things always...but then around 6 grade my dad started joining in...button your jacket...part your hair in the middle more...so many little things...always trying to correct my looks and my body movements..."sit like a lady"...

being around them was stressful...they had alot going on in their relationship...alot of fighting and unhappy times...but then it would get focused on me and they had something to come together over...

the preacher came  and did a laying on of hands to heal me but i didnt know from what...dad told me more than once i was unloveable as well as mom who often said it...and then there was the threats of sending me away...to "prunty town" or "weston"...an orphanage and the other a mental institution...but why? was i such a bad girl i would think and try harder...do more...for everyone...friends, family, relatives, volunteer work...i was one tired kid so often...

every time with these threats i thought it was because i was a bad daughter...i did fight to not wear dresses and i did want boys tennis shoes to play basketball in...i  wanted these things for myself but to them it was no no no....so i would sneak and wear a neighbor boys hand me down converses...i would go off for days and play ball...finally a cool woman doctor in town told them to let me play b-ball and wear pants...she was a lesbian and had a huge understanding of my suffering...she told them it would help strengthen my bones...made it all out to be a medical thing...way cool...

so long long story winding around to this...

the root of my self hate was the hate they placed in me...and their hatred of me stemmed from....drum roll please...the fear i might be gay...

wow huh?...i honestly never deeply let that register...i mean i have figured out what the preacher was trying to heal me of...but i never thought the hatred was so mean...i thought it was just...you know i dont know what i was thinking all these years...maybe i have never felt this dislike of being gay...no internalized homophobia...i love who i am...have never felt ashamed or bad about it...i feel like i was created with perfection and who i am is great...honestly i love being gay...it is normal to me...a perfect fit...i dont dislike men and boys...i do enjoy them...but i enjoy women and i especially enjoy being around bi-sexual women and lesbians...i also have a great fondness for transgender folks...i love their energy...i love everyone...lol...but see i was born a lesbian and it has never felt evil, sinful, wrong...i truly have never felt one moment of shame...i know i am loved by the unseen....i have always felt this profound embrace and love from the god i know to be pure and loving...and i know i will go completely home to that perfection some day...

but i never truly let myself understand just how much my parents didnt like me...and even earlier than 6th grade...when i was very young and already "different"....

and so after this big light bulb moment a couple of days ago i was able to sit with it and let it blossom in my mind...this new knowing...

my parents rejected me not because i was a bad person or unlovable...but because i was gay and they couldnt handle it...it was their stuff and not mine all along...all the hate my mother has directed towards me...all my dad's weird stuff towards me...they havent liked me because i am gay...

seems so obvious but i never thought about it because it is so very foreign to even consider a parent rejecting a child on such a basic thing and letting it come out in all these different ways...of seeing me as less than, as seeing me without family and not attached to a place, to see me as a servant, to see me as not well...all of it...

these are the roots i am now pulling up...this is my depression...my self sabotage...my low esteem...my enslavement to ego...my exile from my own life...

and for the past couple of days i am beginning to accept or re-accept my body and be comfortable with it...to accept my aloneness and am beginning to love my apartment...i am enjoying a level of peace i cant even understand yet...

i see my young life and all the strength i had then and the woman i am now and i am integrating the two...i have been strong all along but not able to cope at times...i felt disliked and unloved so often...

but wow if i thought i had an open heart before it is nothing compared to what is now happening...and my trust in people who say they love me or care about me is finding an acceptance within me...i am beginning to trust love from others for the first time since i was rejected by my parents...

last night on the phone with my mom i told her i have always been in love with cloris leachman...she is just one of those women who are smart, seems independent and strong and has a wicked good sense of humor i relate to...and so i made my mother laugh describing how i would have proposed to cloris and how we would have run off to las vegas to get married...i would have dressed as liberace and cloris as elvis...just for the whacky visual of it...and my mom laughed and laughed...

and in that moment i whole heartedly loved my mom again...forgiveness came...for everything...for it all...not one thing to hold onto...i can feel for her again and love her...i tell her i love her at the end of phone calls and yet it is just a level of love...now i get to love this woman who gave birth to me...just as she is...where she is at in her life...as a daughter...

and?

and i can love and accept myself as the good daughter, kind person, loving friend, spritual being, creative bohemian, big hearted tree hugging lesbian i am...i really like myself...i would marry me...lol...i am a cool person and it is great to know that....and feel it...and believe it at last...i am likeable and i am lovable...

ta-dah... 

morning prayer

fear is the sharp clawed snatch of happiness from my life...discouragement is the the surrender of my happiness...suffering is the embrace of fear...this morning fear makes no prey of me...whatever i face today i face it with love and compassion...i give this gift to myself and to all i meet...namaste...

thank you...

hallelujah...a good song to close out the night with...a lot of things making sense for me suddenly...a great peace comes from this and complete acceptance...understanding now...the why answered...the why of it all...the big why...i cursed myself...and now i released myself...and all that is left is the praise and the gratitude...for all of it...for my silly little life...

i am reminded of the time the plane i was in took a nose dive as it was landing in chicago...we all grabbed the seats in front of us...the engines whined...folks screamed...but all i could think was "thank you"...to god...yes to god...thank you...for life and for the mystery...for keeping it interesting...for the challenges...for the beauty...for every inch of it...for the rough parts and the smooth...and so for this day as well...nd for my healing...the healing of the wounded healer...thank you...

changeling

True change is within;

leave the outside as it is. 
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama

i took a journey into the darkness of myself and found it to be one of those places of great pain but also of great lessons in letting go and finding acceptance in myself...sometimes the greatest sojourn to take is to those places within...to look with compassion and yet without hiding anything from your inspection...we have all done things we dont like to look at...i have done much to deny myself love while at the same time starving for it....what torture to sit at a feast and not eat....why?...to ask why was the first step onto the path of my healing...but only the first...the harder steps came with great suffering yet with an overriding love from Spirit...

i faced the risk of death by own hands a few times recently...one night was very difficult...i sat alone in my apartment with the keys in my hand ready to drive and find a place away from others to end my life...instead i prayed...in exhaustion finally i fell asleep...i had a comforting dream...the unseen kindly bringing a dream of the stars and the trees and a treehouse i was going to in my mind for awhile...it kept me alive another day...there was another time i had to go over to someones house and stay with them so i wasnt alone... 

i braved going to a gathering of women and afterwards felt so incredibly alone and in pain...this was a close call too...but i held on...i have those i love and i do not want to hurt them by ending my life...they have been my manna from heaven...the thoughts of them and their goodness coming through when my suffering was the greatest... 

i made myself do the small things of simply brushing my teeth and getting dressed...i then did bigger things of going out and being around others...isolation is my first desire but the worst thing i can do to myself...so i would go out...i let myself forget the stress and pressures of my life and would enjoy a few hours of being around others...

alone i would pray and meditate...i would cry and feel the hurt when it was safe to do so...i would consciously release my pain even as it would fill back up in my mind....i would explore the pain...asking it questions...understanding it...having compassion for myself at last...seeing myself as i see others...with respect and love and of great worth...i felt my own pain and suffering in a different way...

i began claiming my own healing...i accepted the idea i could heal myself...and i began to do the work of healing myself...reading books, youtube surfing self help, praying, meditating, caretaking myself as i would another...finding the roots of my sorrow...

then it came to me...

it isnt that i want to die...i want the suffering to end...and so the question i placed at the center of my own healing altar has been  "what is causing me to suffer?"...and this is when the click happened...the key was turned in the lock of my own heart...at the root of my own desire to die was the answer...and when i found the root system this was when i began to create a living ritual of death...death of old thinking, old habits, old self punishing ways...i dont have to kill myself off...i kill the roots of my depression off...the invasive foreign "entity" growing in me...the unhappiness activated in me when i was young...spreading like kudzu through the tree of my life...this curse...

a big understanding of my own cycles of suffering has occurred...i have growing seasons of this depression...i have fed it and it has grown...i have allowed it to be there...i have kept it alive...it is not an enemy or a friend...it is just a thing that was placed into me when i was young...a seed of thought from my parents...the seed of "you will never be loved"...and all this time i have let that seed grow into this vine choking my life out of me...

so here are the important questions for you if you suffer from this unique depression...what has taken root in me? what is causing me to suffer? and what ritual can i create and practice for myself to remove the thoughts that feed depression? or come up with your own set of questions...your own visuals...

you still get to kill something...just not yourself...mine is a negative aspect of ego which keeps growing back...and why does it grow back?...because i have not dealt with the root cause...until now...and it isnt a quick process...i have to watch myself and see when i begin to feed the well rooted vine of self hate...i have to keep removing it all together...i am not all the way well but i have this amazing chance to feel how i should have felt when i was a child and was pure in love...i have this chance and i am working very hard daily to remove all this self hate, self punishment, self exile...to remove the thoughts put in me long ago and to allow myself to feel loved by others and by the infinite love that is...

i keep thinking i have killed off the roots and yet a thought comes which shows me it is still there in me...but now i have a chance...i need to let myself have the energy to do the work...i need to be conscious of this self work...and i am...i feel close...i feel like i may experience this lifting away of all the tangled vine of suffering and the roots of my curse...i am giving it my best efforts...i am hopeful...i am not going to claim victory yet like i have before...not knowing it was still in me...but i do now...i know the last of the roots are there...i can feel them...and i will remove them as well...