Monthly Archives: December 2024

Dec22

my magical mystery tour

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There is a part of me that thinks I must be really stupid. How on earth could I get to be seventy years of age and just now be figuring myself out?! It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood, into my thirties certainly, before I began to realize that my life wasn’t all light and love. I thought I had a magical childhood. And there is much truth in that. In many ways it was.

And there was trauma. I wouldn’t even catch a glimpse of that until the lives of my siblings began to unravel. In my twenties I divorced my son’s father. He was a drunk, and a mean and ornery one. But in my mind, I had made a bad choice. He was a bad guy. It was all his fault. None of that had anything to do with me. But it did, of course.

I stayed single for many years. Not because I wanted to; I just kept meeting losers. In that time I began to look at alcoholism. It was pervasive in my family, and seemingly in my friends as well. My siblings were drinking and drugging and they couldn’t seem to keep jobs or housing. They were all struggling to function. I understood there was a problem. I wanted to understand the common denominator. Alcohol became the scapegoat, the cause of all their difficulties. I didn’t drink, so I didn’t have a problem. I was alright; the world was all wrong.

When yet another of my romantic relationships went south, I sought out a therapist. There seemed to be a pattern emerging here. And that brilliant woman kicked me out at the end of the first session. She told me to get my butt to some ACOA meetings before I made another appointment with any counselor. What the heck was ACOA?

Days later I walked into a church to attend a free meeting, just to see what it was about. ACOA. Adult Children of Alcoholics. There were a few people bustling about, setting flyers on each of the seats. I picked one up as I sat and looked at it. “Adult children of alcoholics guess at what normal behavior is.” That first sentence was a gut punch. And my first clue.

But over the next decade or so, as my self awareness began to be explored and expanded, I would come to see that alcoholism was not the problem, but a symptom. A symptom of a deep psychosis that had been passed down from generation to generation, likely for centuries.

It was only the first symptom I would see. I would learn about fetal alcohol syndrome, and see evidence of that throughout my family. There was some sort of actual brain damage. Then I learned about autism, and saw it everywhere I looked. In my 60’s a counselor diagnosed me with Complex PTSD. And then I learned about narcissism – and narcissistic abuse became a huge piece of the puzzle. And most recently being diagnosed with ADHD. That’s enlightening. The dominoes fall, one by one.

If I continue to be lucky and stay healthy, I presume that I will likely run out of life before the puzzle is complete. This is a lifelong discovery. And it is coming full circle. I wasn’t wrong about having had a wonderful childhood; it was just not the full picture. I want the full picture.

What I now hope for more than anything is that I recover the magic of my childhood. Because I now understand that my magical childhood wasn’t an imaginary construct. It wasn’t fragile. It wasn’t fleeting. It was me. I was the magic.

You are the magic in your life. Let’s explore how we know this, and how this works in the days and weeks to come…

Dec21

spell check and repetitive nightmares

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Recently, in my never ending search for more input, I stumbled upon the PBS Masterpiece Mystery called The Marlow Murder Club. I’m obsessed, for several reasons. I’ve watched the existing 4 episodes of season 1 twice now. I almost always watch every episode at least twice of any show that I enjoy – certainly any mystery. I have terrible anxiety watching the first time. I cannot stand not knowing what will happen. And so, sitting on the edge of my seat fretting, I miss a lot of details. I pick them up the second time through, when I can relax because I already know the outcome. Yep, I’m one of those people who always reads the last chapter before starting the book.

The protagonist of the series is Judith Potts, my new imaginary best friend. Do try to live up. One of the things I related to is her job. Or perhaps her advocation. She is a crossword puzzle setter. As a child, when I wasn’t drawing my own paper dolls (anatomically correct, of course), I was creating crossword puzzles. I made them up for my friends and siblings. Honestly, I think I only stopped because for some inexplainable reason they weren’t interested! It was my idea of fun. Apparently not theirs.

Did I ever tell you about the nightmare I had repeatedly as a child? I walked home from school, into the house, found my Mom at the kitchen sink…and when she turned around to greet me, it wasn’t my mother. The woman asked me my address. This was it, so I must have remembered it wrong. But I didn’t know any other address. I went out and retraced my steps all the way back to school and home again. But it was a stranger’s house, and when I had no way to find my way home I woke terrified.

In retrospect I find the nightmare revealing. I knew I was amongst strangers by the time I was going to school. I never fit there, in my family. I never fit in my school. Town. World. I have never fit. And yet I have spent the better part of seventy years trying. And now I’m not.

Now I am exploring who I might really be, you know, if I am not trying to fit or be accepted. If I am not trying on others’ lives. So I’m going back to the wonderfully satisfying hobby of puzzle setting. For the shear joy of it, because it relaxes me…and I might take up writing murder mysteries, too. Spell check!

Dec20

the biggest bugaboo of all

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Early this morning I woke from a nightmare. A silly common nightmare, you know the kind…back in high school, can’t find my class, hearing snickering behind me as I realize that my shoes don’t match. And I also woke realizing that I am terribly dehydrated. So up, feed the cat, put the coffee on, and down a big glass of water.

Routine is my new best friend. I say new because, well…recently at the doctor we had the conversation about getting a formal diagnosis for ADHD, and trying some medication. I can’t stay focused; I am literally losing track of time. Like a living nightmare, I must admit to myself that this is a typical pattern for me around the holidays. And I am far too old for this.

I’m too old to be just waking up and seeing how debilitating this has been my entire life. Better late than never. I guess. It suddenly occurs to me that this is why wisdom doesn’t seem to stick; I repeatedly have to learn these patterns over again. It feels like psychological amnesia. Hence the school nightmare.

But what I do have is a toolbox, a repertoire of resources, developed over the decades. At 70, I finally have a doctor I trust and love. That only took way too long. I have a therapist who knows me now, 3 years into treatment. A support system of friends. I know who has my back. Those things take a lifetime to develop when you are dysfunctional. And they are precious.

That’s the only gift I have for you this Christmas – learn psychological self care. Learn to recognize when you are being gaslit, yes. More importantly, learn to catch yourself when you are gaslighting yourself. When you are undermining your self esteem, or making compromises that threaten your integrity.

Will I continue to have nightmares of being back in school all my life? I suspect I will. I am certainly committed to being a student all my life. I would never want to stop learning and growing. I would never want to stop being curious. Just a little more curious than scared. That’s all it takes to keep moving forward. As my Mom Doris would say, “move along smartly now.”

You’re in the constant company of God. Act accordingly.

Dec15

crisp roast potatoes and the Reindeer Union

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Well…as I am slowly getting back into writing daily, I find myself with a couple of short posts this week. This one is just for the fun of it, and who is more fun than Stephen Mangen? I’ve always admired how he thinks fast on his feet. He reminds me of my brother who was also astonishingly quick witted. My Mother carried that trait into our family, and my son inherited it. I, on the other hand, am one of “those people” who suddenly think of a clever retort at 3 a.m. the day after the conversation.

Dec14

Gloria!

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“If we are lucky not to be displaced by war or poverty, the places we live are like bird’s nests.” – Gloria Steinem

I have long since lost count of how many times I have moved. Here’s a confession few know about me: I have been married four times. Three husbands, four marriages. All four ended in divorce. My first husband was a high school boyfriend. My parents had agreed to send me to boarding school after I threatened to run away – and I did so one summer. I managed to hide out for a couple of weeks in friend’s basements before a friend’s mother agreed to intervene on my behalf. By the age of 15 I couldn’t live at home any longer. I instinctively knew the situation was abusive, although it would be decades before I even began to unravel that situation.

I was 18 the first time I got married, and it only took a few months to figure out that my husband had a drug problem, and a few more months to realize there was nothing I could do about it. So I went “back home” to my parents, but only for a few awful days before finding a girlfriend I could rent a room from. And I never looked back, although I did go back again and again to pack up my younger siblings one by one and move them out. Not soon enough, of course, as the damage was done. Scrambling for survival myself, a safe place to sleep was all I had to offer.

By the third time I got married in my forties, I was no longer enduring physical or sexual abuse. That marriage would also prove intolerable, and not once, but twice. To this day we are still friends, and to this day he yet fails to comprehend any responsibility in it’s failing. As he so often said, we didn’t have a problem. I had a problem. As it happened, he was right, and my problem had a name.

The first fifty years of childhood are the hardest. I survived them by being scrappy. For the first 3 decades of living on my own I was able to find decent work, and when an emergency or large expense threatened my housing and independence, I would supplement my meager income by selling off family heirlooms, primarily beautiful antique furniture. I wish I could have kept it. Only a few small momentos still exist.

But this way of life (which I am only grateful for) leaves it’s scars. One of mine seems to be a deep, simmering grief for the home – THE home – that I have never known. It is truly all I’ve ever wanted for. A home of my own. Safe. Clean. Beautiful. A nest. Perhaps that is why I have always been fascinated by bird nests?!

In October of 1990, House and Garden magazine published an article by Gloria Steinem about her newly decorated NYC apartment, ‘Ms. Steinem on the Home Front.’ I still have that magazine. Somehow weird items have survived all the relocations…but in truth, this article made my heart sing. It has continued to inspire me all these years.

This morning, the 12th of December, 2024, I opened my YouTube feed and found this story. Gloria Steinem talking about her home of 58 years. I am watching through tears. If I had no other inspiration at all, Gloria would be enough.

Dec12

cat lady

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My first cat was a calico kitten my Mom got me at around the age of four. I wouldn’t remember why, of course…perhaps I was grumpy about having a new sibling. I named her Patches. I do remember Mom and I sat very still on the floor peeking in to watch her giving birth to a litter of kittens in the bottom of my wardrobe, and being heartbroken when I couldn’t keep them all.

At the time my parents had a boxer named Duchess who kept getting out and terrorizing the neighborhood. She jumped through the living room picture window once and took off down the street. I remember the woman who came to pick her up when Mom found her a new home on a farm. But I was very sad. She was soon replaced with a Cocker Spaniel I named Blackie, because, well, black. Apparently my imagination was not yet fully developed. And so began my life-long love of animals. Growing up in a family with five children we always had cats and dogs and birds and fish and my sister had a horse. Most of our pets lived long luxurious lives I’m happy to report.

Many years ago I lost my beloved cat Polly (Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day) and I was devastated. It doesn’t get easier to lose a pet as you get older; it gets harder. I would never replace her – she wasn’t replaceable. Now I know that. I didn’t think my heart could survive much more loss. I was wrong.

But I did get a puppy a few years later. A Pembroke Welsh Corgi, precisely because I was unfamiliar with the breed. She wouldn’t remind me of the dogs I had loved and lost. When she became older and was slowing down my husband and I adopted a rescue Corgi looking for a forever home, Oliver. And when we lost Christie and were still grieving a year on, my vet insisted I adopt another Corgi rescue in need of a loving home, and we brought home Hariat. With each loss, still devastated and depressed months later, I would adopt another dog hoping to help my aging dog cope and find a new lease on life. My last was Odie, a miniature Beagle from the Kent County Animal Shelter; he was the first Beagle I had ever known. I couldn’t open my heart for another Corgi.

Hariat and Odie are the reason I live where I am now. I bought a house for my elderly dogs. Priority requirement: no steps out into the yard. We had been here several months when I was asked if I could help out a family member by cat sitting Chewy. The dogs have been gone for a few years now, but I still have Chew-chew.

The name has never suited him. He is regal, probably mostly Maine Coon. He deserves a sophisticated moniker befitting his royal presence, but I would never change it. He was already several years old when he came to my house. There was no period of adjustment necessary. He immediately became one of the dogs. He’s a cat-dog.

Is he actually quite different from cats I have known in my past, or am I different now? It’s the latter, of course. The longer I have interacted with animals, both wild and domestic, the more they have taught me over the decades. Not only are they sentient, but incredibly intelligent.

Feline Chewy and canine Odie were inseparable until we lost Odie to cancer shortly after the pandemic began. Since, I’ve begun to suspect that Chewy has felt he carries sole responsibility for my well being, and has had to become my assist animal. He will often wake me at night when I am having a nightmare or my breathing is erratic. Last night he was buggin’ me buggin’ me buggin’ me, as he often does in the middle of the night. Wake up! Did he want food? No. In a weirdly unusual move, he tried to knock my water glass off the nightstand. I poured some fresh cold water and he took a sip, sat back and gave me “the look.” It’s intensely judgmental and rather implies my utter lack of understanding; the telepathic message is one of impatience.

Then he jumped off the bed and walked over to his water bowl, sat and looked down at it, and then looked back at me. I said, “I will if you will.” And we both drank water at the same time. We hoomans are dim-witted and hard to train, aren’t we?!

So, I am a cat lady for life. I miss the dogs terribly. But it’s just going to be Chewy and I for as long as I can possibly keep him healthy and alive. We are a team. Are you a cat lady? If you know what a privilege that is, you just know. Judith Potts knows. She has her confidant, Jasper.

Dec11

ready to be well

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Recently I posted a journal entry about being diagnosed with ADHD, and while that is true, the writing sounded whiney to me. Have I mentioned that I am now coming out of a depression? I’ve been back on antidepressants for almost a month. I feel like a different person. Truthfully, the SSRI’s don’t take away the sadness or gloomy outlook – and I wouldn’t want them to. I know when they are working because I first have a physiological response: my shoulders come down, my chest expands, I breathe easier. My joints ache less. The nightmares abate and I can sleep restfully. I’m calmer in every situation.

And then the healing can begin. My thinking begins to untangle – not unravel like a dumpster fire in a flash flood! But untangle – and make sense again. I can follow one thread to the next in a cohesive way; I can think straight again. I can think. I can reason.

Next come the creative urges. Beauty excites me again…I hadn’t noticed when that had stopped happening. Ahhhhh….I have inklings of delight again. The medication allows me to relax just enough to sleep, to dream, to imagine. And that is how it works. It doesn’t take away my frustrations, my difficulties, or my grief. It allows me to cope with them. To sort through them, prioritize them, and plan for productive change. I can love my life again.

I don’t remember the first time I realized how glad I am to be here now – to have been born exactly when and where I was born. This way, baby. To be exactly who I am. I think it could have been grade school – but certainly by junior high, I became aware of feeling gratitude…and enjoying every little detail of every little thing around me. When my physiology gets turned around here and now get reversed to now and here – which is nowhere. Pardon the word soup, but I can be silly again, too.

By it’s very nature, mental illness is immaturity in action. Acting silly isn’t. The difference is presence. The difference is being childlike, not childish. I used to joke when people said something about entering their second childhood – that I’ve never left my first. Seriously. Never stop being childlike, delighted by every little detail of life.

Dec7

pull your head out of your past

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That was the message I “heard” in my morning meditation. Do my spirit guides know my language, or what?! I’ve been perseverating for days…weeks…months…years – okay – decades now, about doing something…anything…creative or productive or proactive to help myself out of this malaise. “This” malaise is commonly known as poverty. Struggling financially, but more so, spiritually.

The J.O.B. (Just Over Broke) hasn’t been working out so well the past decade or so…you don’t want me to work for you. Everyone I’ve worked for lately dies. Just sayin’…

Over 13 years ago I started this blog in an attempt to write my way out of a nervous breakdown. It worked, and I’ve been writing since. Several years ago I began making videos on my own YouTube channel, Crow Quill Tarot. I have also painted some paintings in that time period; I’ve drawn. Made jewelry. But I don’t feel creative. Getting started is always a challenge and requires a shove. But finishing…well, I’ll let you know when I’ve finished something.

Most of my adult life I have assigned myself a “winter project.” I enroll in a class or two, or study on my own, a new subject or skill I think I would like to master. This fall I decided to study astrology. After all, it’s all the rage. I’ve toyed with going back to making videos on the tarot channel, but there are hundreds (maybe thousands?) doing it, and well. People with far more technical expertise.

And many, if not most of them – certainly the most popular and successful, are incorporating astrology into the tarot readings. In fact, that is how they have “delineated” the collective. And there’s where I got hung up – right there, at delineation. Collective = our common humanity, if I understand it correctly. How we are not only alike, but psychically connected. That understanding I have no problem with. But once I start defining myself and others, and using a fixed set of criteria, I am in the business of predicting the future. I call that fortune telling. And not only has it never interested me, but it is a sad and gross mis-use of the infinitely present tarot.

“The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine.” – Indigo Girls

So, I have been struggling to understand how astrology fits for me. I had a teacher in ninth grade who asked each student on the first day of her class what their sun sign was. Some didn’t know, so she asked their birthday and told them. Then she proceeded to assign us into study groups accordingly – that is, those students she didn’t send to the office to transfer to another classroom because their sign wasn’t compatible with hers.

When I listen to tarot readers using astrology to “clarify” messages I break out in a rash. It goes something like this: “this person may be a Leo or a Sag…or a Scorpio…or they could be…” until they’ve listed 9 out of the 12 signs. They have missed the point of the tarot entirely – which is a precise methodology for developing self awareness and hence, intuition. Intuition. Helllloooooooo! How intuitive are you if you need to list every possibility?! Make up your everlovin’ mind! WHAT are you saying, exactly? To me. I’m not listening because I want to know about my mother’s sister’s neighbor’s cousin. It sounds like they are trying to connect with everyone and anyone. Because that’s how they make money. And so, in the interest of learning, I have listened to many different readers addressing all the 12 zodiac signs. And identified with something in each of them. So now what?!

I want to make money. So I keep going back over this in my mind. And this morning I was meditating on why don’t I get astrology? Why isn’t it clicking for me?! And I heard, “because you are every sign.” Yes, yes I am.

And the bubble in my chest popped. I’m every sign. You are every sign. How can this be? Because we are not the past. We are not even who we were yesterday. We have been transfigured. We have risen. We do not need to keep reliving the crucifixion and the resurrection. We are on the other side of that now. It’s over. Pull your head out of your past.

“What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them, and they have changed since then.” – T. S. Eliot