Tag Archives: Compassion

Universal Call Out

Posted on by
Reply

The first time was at a mixer a few months ago.  I was talking to a brilliant, charming man in a fez.  How could you not love a guy in a fez? It was a great conversation.  I would wear a fez, but my head is far too round and giant.  He told me what he did and it was awesome.  I told him what I did, “How can that be your passion?”  He wasn’t rude, he was genuine.  I was side-swiped.  I did what I did, like Rumpelstiltskin I told him that it was.  I stomped my straw of a lie and smiled pretty and tried to sell him gold.  I felt like I had sullied what had been one minute a go a true, real, human experience.  Curses.  Gross.

Hi, I’m Feisty Boots.  I am here on this planet to use my life experiences as a means of illumination against spiritual abuse in the world.  I write and speak so that people who have been hurt by leaders and family who have claimed that their abusive power came from a divine source don’t feel alone.  I believe that the unheard victim can get back on the wheel of abuse and become an abuser and I want to do what I can to stop that cycle.  I have seen the foulest of human nature and been told that it is the love of god and having broken free from that.  I write out those experiences and that process so that others in similar situations can take heart.

That’s a scary thing to say out loud.  Wish I had the guts that day.  Yesterday I met with two people for business and ended up talking about this anyway.  They were far more interested in this.

A woman with experience is in my life and she has some great ideas, I think I will start a step at a time.  Let’s see if I can work this transition.

base

Posted on by
Reply

My oldest nephew has reminded me about “base”.  Nothing can get you at “base”.  Base is perhaps the most important thing.  And I’m really glad that in play, kids have something to run to where all of the scariness stops and they are control.  When they are on base, they stop the world and process the chase, the overstimulation of the craziness and then when its time to go again they re-enter the game.

The sufferer of ptsd (I’m trying not to capitalize it, I think that’s great advice.  Thanks, A!) frequently feels chased.  I’ve got a thing or twelve on my emotional plate right now.  I have about 4 family relationships I am working on right now.  We still don’t have our stuff from the pirates and that is winding down, I hope we may have our stuff by Christmas.  My new job is great and not easy.

E and I continually work to connect to be “base”.  It is so good.  It’s really hard right now.  The pirates have our bed.  This weekend in a hotel was the first time we’ve slept together in a bed since 9/25.  And we are working so hard to keep our emotional connection sweet.  I’m really lucky, because the air mattresses and other sleeping arrangements have led us both to a lot of back pain through this ordeal and it’s not getting us down.  We’re just taking care of each other.

After a really hard week, A texts me….  She simply says, “I bet you look beautiful and your hair smells like strawberries”.   I laugh because she was close, 3000 miles away and my hair smelled like pumpkins.  My best friend is the master of sweet understatement, she can say better in 9 words what I was trying to tell you in 1,200.  And she smells like caramel, but she doesn’t have to put stuff in her hair to create a scent like I do.  A is “base”.  A is bass to my melody.

I am “base”.  I keep the motion and the flow in my life.  I swim the channel of shadows toward the light.  I love and forgive and connect and sting when I harm people and get pissed off when I have to do the right things and it’s hard.  I try to stop when I can’t and I try to go when I should.  And I learn from my little wild guru nephew about base and safe and stop.

Here’s a new feeling

Posted on by
Reply

Rage.

I have to say that I’ve done a lot of work to peel off the whys of abuse.  I’ve walked many paths.  I’ve marveled at so many people’s rage.  I didn’t get it.  Now I do.  In the last month, starting in the middle of the road trip, I do.

Rage.

So many friends have had rage because they couldn’t protect me.  I said it was fine.  But from a different vantage, from this different angle, I see different pathways and how history that I thought I knew – form different pictures.  I want to throw up.

Now I know more and can see patterns and history and a much larger picture is coming together.  And this picture is not redeeming: I am learning how some families struggle with certain demons for generations.

The more I speak out, the more I can see back and am aware of what created the environment that makes a family susceptible to a cult.  A family is taught shame and secrets.  A family is taught that they are so flawed that there is no hope for them.  I want to know where this dark mythology started in my blood.

I have deep compassion.  But I have rage.  Because these lies have scarred just about everybody I love.  And now that I see the patterns, now that I am 3,000 miles away – I can see clearly.

Rage.  It took a lot of therapy to find mine.  And it was hard to name, but I drew a straight line to it in a cliche shower epiphany this morning.  Now that I know it, I can’t unknow it.  I’m straight up pissed off.

It’s not just why me and why my family.  It’s why anyone.  I want to start with me and mine.  Only love and compassion will fight this.  This is beyond morality and judgement, they doesn’t exist in this level.  There is only love, non-judgement and compassion.

I have to dig deeper, ask questions, publicly gut myself and write about it.  I have to be someone who sheds light and helps it stop.

ever since June 3rd

Posted on by
5

I’ve had an email in my inbox that I’m terrified to read.  Turns out I’m not the only one who writes about the pain of the church.  One of the other people wrote their story and emailed it to me.  And I’m totally gonna read it.  But I’m scared.

I guess, I feel that their pain will be more real if I read it.  Maybe, it’s easier to think that it’s easier to contain if I’m the only one talking.  Maybe it’s cause I’m a Leo.

A double click will keep my commitment.  I feel like such a hypocrite, publishing tomes of my memories and not being able to read theirs.  But when I was showering, I thought about something else.  It’s bigger than me.  I think that reading their story will make mine times two. And open an exponential door into a monstrous house of pain.

If I hurt this much and they hurt this much – and there were 40 families.  That’s just too much.  It’s too big.  I feel like it’s opening the front cover of a really big book.

I also feel like this whole thing is a mystery.  I hear so many stories about how the church ended, how it crumbled.  But I don’t know 100% because I’m the one who walked away.  I got disowned by my family and excommunicated, yes I engineered it.  And yes that played a big part in exposing a lot of the BS going on.  But I’ve learned there were so many other factors at play.

So, after walking away from rubble it’s scary to walk back in and excavate and see what really went down and what the damage was.

But, dang I feel like a hypocrite for not being able to read that email.

outside talking to the outside looking inside

Posted on by
Reply

Recently, I had a phone conversation with somebody who is the best friend of one of the people from the church.  (You found my blog online.  Now you are in it… Hope you don’t mind…)

But she’s been friends with the woman from the church since before the church.  And she knew all of these things that had happened.  She knew people, names, had socialized with some of us.  She knew my mom.  I heard what it was like for her to be the best friend of someone in a cult.

How scary, it must have been for her.  She walked a delicate balance because she didn’t want to drive her friend away.  She was a delicate anchor.

It made me think of the person I met before I left the church who told me that what I was experiencing might be abuse.  She was very gentle.  She knew that if she came at me passionately that I was freak out and shut down and run away.  I am forever grateful for her intuition that helped me find a way out of the church.

It was amazing to hear her talk about it.  Validating in a lot of ways, because what happened was so weird.  And sometimes it feels like a bizarre dream that took up the first half of my life and haunts the second half.  She talked about the cult de sac where so many people from the church lived and how some realtor listed it as hot property because it always sold so fast.  They didn’t know all of the demand was driven  by a cult trying to buy into the same area, and that once the church was gone the demand dried up as the families dispersed.

She talked about one of the women in the church, who has a very special place in my heart.  But she saw a completely opposite side of her.  And of course she would.  Because she doesn’t know that that woman was my very first dance teacher when I was five years old and she’s the one that gave me the keys to my soul’s freedom.  She was also my brother’s first art teacher and although the Army crushed my brother’s arm, he’s still an amazing artist.

There was anger in her voice and that made sense too.  The same anger that is in the voice of a lot of my friends.  The anger of “WHY DID THIS HAPPEN TO SOMEONE I LOVE”.

It was a good talk.  It was a hard talk.  I was proud of myself because when it got too triggery, I set a boundery and we moved on.  That for me is progress.   But, it really opened my eyes to the damage of the church.  The friends and family that were cut off from loved ones because of this cult.  Because of the spiritual abuse and the forced isolation.

I still have so much trouble reaching out to my blood family, because I see them as a them and not a me.  I am trying so hard to change that in me.  That and something called ambivalent attachment disorder, which is something you get when the people who are supposed to keep you safe do so only some of the time so it’s not reliable.

OMG TMI

Posted on by
6

“Really, Suzi?  Wow.”

I’ve heard it a million times.

TMI!!!

I thought of this when I was blogging yesterday about what do you tell a client about PTSD.  What do you have to tell a client or a boss about a trauma, a disorder or a mental illness?  I don’t know.  Mine makes me kinda flippy outty and tactless and times.  There’s the crying.  People kind of notice.  There’s the good days where I’m not triggered.  Or the OK days where I can bottle it down into a nice little coal in my gullet.

But gullet coals aside…  Why the oversharing?  Why the saying too much?  It’s been hard on relationships because I’ll be out to dinner and the start a relationship with…”so the other day in bed…”  Keeping it classy.

So, I was thinking about it, and talking (too much jk) about it.  And then I went to therapy and danced and screamed about it, and it hit me.  Not literally.   But the cult maintained control over us by brainwashing us into over-confessing everything.  We were trained to tell every thought and every feeling, or we would feel awful-nauseous.  If we ever saw someone from the church and had a bad thought about them and didn’t tell them, it was a sin and we had to tell them before the next communion or it was like the sin was locked in forever.

By making us a self policing congregation it really cut down on enforcement.  Which is actually good business automation practice if you think about it-but back to the cult…

So, I am in pain if I allow myself privacy.  I feel like I am lying to you if I know something that I haven’t told you.  It’s misery.  And if you confess before something gets found out the punishment is somewhat lessened.  There is a constant paranoia scan in my head that is looking for wrongs committed…

So, this over-confessing still makes sense.  I’ve adapted it a little.  In the past few years, Ive been more jokey about it so that I can still make sure that I’ve said everything but in a jokey way so that I don’t get looked at like I’m a martian all the time.

I’m practicing privacy now.  Which is one of the reasons I’ve been so silent on the blog.  I’ve been evaluating again: what do I want to say?  Why do I want to say it?  What do I want to get out of this?

And so I don’t know that I know what I want.  But I know I have more to say.  And this is my forum.

everybody limbo

Posted on by
1

I’ve been enjoying contracting.  I’ve picked up clients and done a lot of work.  Since prioritizing recovery from my PTSD and trying to knit my brain back together from the nervous breakdown it’s been a hard path.  What do you share with a client?  I am much more fragile than I used to be.  But also stronger now that I am sober.  Sobriety is stupid because I feel a lot more feelings, but apparently that’s part of the point of it.

 

My contracts have been on average four months.  And that seems to be the lifespan for what I can handle right now.  I have told some clients about the PTSD and it has backfired horribly, others I didn’t and it wasn’t an issue.  With one boss, who had anger issues (probably because of his cocaine issue) I left the contract because I was horribly triggered when he flew into a rage and slammed his hand on the desk.  The sound of his hand on the wood desk was exactly the sound that it would make when a oak rod would hit someone.  I winced and started to have a panic attack and never came back.  Horribly unprofessional: on both of our parts.  But you know what…  I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe and I felt like I was going to die.  I went home with every intention of coming back the next day.  But I couldn’t get out of bed for three days.  My body would not let me go back.

 

Another client and I worked together really well.  He spoke so conceptually, and I am so literal.  He told me that he thought I was autistic.  I told him I wasn’t.  “He said, well there’s something wrong with you.  English can’t be your first language.”  And I realized that I was so sheltered by my cult growing up and we definitely had our own culture.  After that, I was with my friends and it was such an eclectic group that I was just accepted.  From there I went into IT, and well, weird just happens there.  In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m in the world for the first time without a massive support system and there are all of these people commenting on me and it’s vulnerable out here.  I am so grateful for E and my scaled down support system.

The gig I have now is hard and very much in limbo.  It’s not in limbo because of me there are just changes going on and a lot of stress.  I kind of wish it was about me.  But it’s not.  I am dealing with some politics and some people’s fear.  It seems like we’re waiting.  And I hate limbo.  Because limbo is the part where you wait and you fear.  It’s an uneasy, wait till dad gets home, kinda feeling.  And there is tension.

It’s hard being a cog in the wheel, after you’ve been the driver.  Because I used to have the map and make decisions.  I think that feeling of control really helped manage my PTSD.  But since I’m not prioritizing my career now and I’m prioritizing my recovery and my love life, I am sitting back and dealing with the other side of those issues.  And it’s really really uncomfortable.

I hate waiting.

 

 

ouch

Posted on by
4

Life is better for me sober.  I have to say I miss some of the social situations in which there was a lot of drinking, but it’s still better for me to stay away for now.  My last real binge was in Sacramento, where apparently I do most of my drinking, on January 29.  So, it’s been a long time.  I don’t think I’ve had as much as a glass of wine in about three months.

But there’s this part now, where other people are getting used to my sobriety now.  And they are telling me how my drinking affected them.  How things I thought were hilarious, were in fact-horrible.  I feel really humbled and grateful because I get to heal a lot of relationships.  It’s the hardest when it’s from E, BFF or M and they are telling me about pain that my drinking has caused.  They keep sticking with me and I love them so much.

It’s overwhelming and I try not to get self-loathing.  In a lot of ways, I was coping the best I could then and now I can cope better.  I trust the people who are supposed to stay in my life will do so.  But I’m sure that, same as with the divorce – I may lose some more in the process.

This triggers something in me, because I need to keep solid on my emotional boundaries.  The church forced us to confess every thought, every feeling.  And I don’t have to do that anymore, but that is really hard.  I think that feeling like I owed everyone everything that was in me, was one of the reasons that I needed to be numb – or have an excuse when I drank.  Or maybe alcohol is delicious and I’m a drunk.

Obviously still working on it.  I don’t know if I need a why.  What happened to me was big, and I needed to slow down my brain – stop the hyper-vigilance and coast for a while.  Most sufferers of PTSD self medicate in some way, and I think that I’ve been working really hard and caring for myself in a lot of ways, and now having a really caring, understanding partner, these parts are coming together to take these shaky steps of trust towards dropping this crutch.

all you need is love 3

Posted on by
Reply

Trust

Based on the emotional work that I have been doing, I have been working to rebuild a loving relationship with my parents.  And, it’s been really amazing.  Pain has been brought up, but also a rush of sweet memories.

There was a lot of happiness in my childhood that fear and rage had blocked out.  Sitting with them as adults and hearing their stories of the cult.  Realizing that they were more than 10 years younger than I am now when it started.

I recently sent them a letter sharing something very intimate and delicate and hoping for a good response, trusting in the love and forgiveness that we have been building.  I wish I could copy their response here, but it’s too precious too me.

All I can tell you is that when I got their response, burst into tears.  I felt like I was in a warm pool.  E immediately wrapped around me.  I was sobbing.  It was so sweet, so pure, so loving.  It was so good.  When I could finally talk, I said “This is love”.

He said, “yes”.

I feel like armor is falling off of me.  Which has made me very sensitive: this has it’s positives and it’s negatives.  But for the first time in my life I’m not scared to talk to my parents.  I have no secrets, nothing to hide and I feel perfectly accepted.  I feel like I understand them better.  I am curious I have so much more to learn about them.

I started this blog wanting to heal cycles of abuse.  It’s working in me.  So much so, that now I want so much to have a child and feel like I could be an amazing mother.  The bridges that I am building with E and my family are creating are becoming strong.

Love sweet love

all you need is love 2

Posted on by
Reply

Now it’s easy for me to feel that since I breached trust that I am horrible, icky, nasty.  I remember a time when I was 16 and I had my hair cut off as a punishment that if anyone asked why I cut my hair that I had to say that it was because I was a sinner and (something else I don’t remember…)  But that became a part of my identity, my scarlet A.

So, I feel like when I’ve “sinned”, or hurt somebody I love that I need to wear a banner of shame or an albatross.  It seems it’s more productive to learn from it and integrate it into your life and move on after forgiving yourself as a stronger more mindful person in the world.  Crazy.

So, E and I have been nesting and I feel really loved and supported.  I feel like I can make “mistakes” and he can make “mistakes” or we can “act from our shadows” or enact behaviors from our past that were once necessary.  Although in our initial communication, there may be misunderstanding there is light and space to step back and speak in a loving way about how we communicate and what the root is.

This and the giant rocks falling off of me, gave me a lot of courage.