Tedder's Blog, page 34

LifeStruction with Eric Winfield Podcast Live Tonight | 4-17-23 @ 6:00 pm (MST) 9:00 (EST) 7:00 pm (PST)

Going live tonight on Facebook ~ here’s the link : https://www.Facebook.com/LifeStruction.

We will be discussing my new book A Prisoner by No Crime of My Own. Audiobook coming next week! Watch for it.

Jewels, Gems & Gunpowder

I would love to hear from you! Sharing Saturday with you.

A Jewel: Shout your story from the rooftop! The power for freedom comes by using our voices. Use your voice. Tell your story. Let healing begin.

A Gem: Don’t be silent. Don’t let shame stop you. Take the first step and tell the truth to yourself. It’s the best gift you can give yourself. The gift of truth.

Metaphorical Gunpowder: I am enough.

Please comment below by leaving your jewel, a gem or something you keep yourself free from with metaphorical gunpowder.

All love!

Let The Light In

Learning to gear the music again and find my creativity within after trauma has been an ongoing process.

Sometimes, I feel stifled and unable to access creative parts within me. Other times, I feel driven to create and express myself. Part of getting to deeper parts of ourselves means releasing pain.

I’ve found I need to allow the music to speak to me. To own the lyrics as if they were the whispers of my soul that I stopped listening to half a lifetime ago.

Your creativity belongs to you. It’s part of you. No one can take it away. It may take time to heal, or it may come rushing back all at once. But no matter which path your healing takes, it will be the one that you – unique, beautiful, brilliant you – are meant to walk.

How is your soul calling you to step into the light?

F N’ F (Fear Not Friday)

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On the discussion of fear — Do you fear FEAR itself?

If you have ever experienced a panic attack, you do not want to have them. They can be debilitating. When I feel that slight nudge coming over me that a panic attack is right around the corner, I get scared. That is how fear works on me as well.

I don’t like fear. I’ve been scared longer than I haven’t been. I have learned to do things even though I am scared, but fear is just gross.

Fear is described as “an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.” In my life, fear has not been irrational but rather something created in me because of very real circumstances.

Awe, fear. The dreadful feeling that comes over me as night falls.

Do you know how I have defeated most fear in my life? Faith — that’s how.

Standing alert at all times is what my body has become accustomed to. Learning to defeat fear takes a journey, strong faith, and praying like there will be no tomorrow!

Happy Friday!

Undone

Domestic violence, physical abuse, sexual abuse, alcoholism, drug abuse, neglect, untreated mental illness, abandonment, loss – that is the foundation for which I experienced childhood.

I’m doing everything in my power to stop the patterns of dysfunction inherited from past generations. Generations whose parenting was informed by the look good vs the actual good. Who abused their natural power over children and forfeited the right to have any say over the raising of this next generation.

Some days I do better than others. Often, I have to fight against ingrained reactions, more often than I would like to admit. After all, while I am raising them, I am also re-raising myself.

But every day, I go to bed with ease knowing that I did my best to pick up the slack of previous generations.

I am at peace, knowing my kids are inheriting my strengths more than my faults.

I am in awe, watching them fine tune their demand to be heard and seen.

I can literally hear the cycle coming to a halt.

The light in my children’s eyes keep me going & reconnects me to the change I want to be for them; to end the dysfunction that has leaked into generations before.

“For every lie I unlearn, I learn something new.” ~ Ani DiFranco

Abandoned, But Not Forgotten

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If I didn’t honor myself by returning to my past, and bringing vindication where I could, I would have been left abandoned. I would have abandoned myself.

I had to force myself to remember me.

Everything around me told me to stop seeking, stop turning over rocks. “Learn to live,” they would tell me. Didn’t they see that’s exactly what I was doing?

I understand now that my goals to uncover my past made them more uncomfortable than it made me. No one liked hearing my story. Not really. I’m not taking about just my family, I’m talking about friends, acquaintances and all the rest that happened along during the years.

Forget me not!

We are not being self-centered nor are we indulging in self pity when we uncover our past. It’s a way out of the forest of abandonment. Trees of denial and thickets of shame keep us hidden in darkness.

House on Delaware Lane – July 1967

This is the house I grew up in until I turned four. That’s me in the background, three years old, peering out from behind the corner. I was raped on the couch this family is sitting on. The brick fireplace in the picture was my focal point during those brutal attacks.

In 11 months, I will witness a vicious rape and a senseless murder.

Don’t be alarmed for me. It’s over. I have honored my past by returning to it. I stayed as long as I needed to. To grieve. To witness. To heal.

Don’t let anyone stop you on your journey. There is an end point to the rainbow and a pot of gold is waiting.

Shame & Disconnection

For a long time I felt lost and disconnected. Like I was going through the motions of my life, but I’m not really present in it.

It was like I abandoned myself & didn’t know how to connect with my own feelings and needs. And that’s scary, because it means I didn’t really know who I was.

Disconnection involves cutting off from some aspect of ourselves. There are different forms that disconnection can take. All provide us with some kind of protection, but all are ultimately harmful, because they leave us cut off from our own internal reality and from the reality of the external situation.

Fear, disconnection, and shame distort both our inner and outer reality. They distort inner reality by compromising our relationship with ourselves, and they distort outer reality by compromising our relationships with others.

Moreover, if a trauma-world is created during childhood, these distortions become our “normality,” and we are unable to recognize what we are living. Then, we have little choice but to behave in ways that create repetitive and self-perpetuating cycles of trauma, both in ourselves and others.

Once we are out of danger, and if we have enough support, we may be able to reconnect to our pain and fear, and process them. However, without support, our unprocessed emotions remain locked away in our unconscious minds and bodies. This is because we simply can’t function if we allow overwhelming emotions into awareness.

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Comfort ~ How Do You Find Comfort?

Pain and fear are two separate things. I can fear pain, pain can create fear, but they are separate. Pain and fear have been in my life longer than anything else.

Love and living a pain-free live — that’s relatively new.

Comfort has a few definitions:

a state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint: “room for four people to travel in comfort”the easing or alleviation of a person’s feelings of grief or distress

One comfort is for our flesh and bones. The other comfort is an internal comfort – the kind that touches a broken heart. While I like both comforts, the first comfort is minimal without having the second comfort in your life.

For example, I can receive a beautiful spa massage and my heart can be in pain.

Internal pain is what survivors of sexual crimes deal with, often accompanied by a body that betrays them through aches, pains, and a variety of illnesses.

I hear a lot of stories from victims as a result of my openness. What I find makes my story uniquely different is that I believe in a God that comforts me. I have cried out to him more times than I can count. It works! It is on the miraculous side, really.

When the pain didn’t subside, I called out to a God that was bigger than the circumstances. A God who could see around the corner for me and know what would be coming next.

Faith is what has set my story apart. God is never done with us. He is never tired of our struggles. In our humanity is where is does his best work.

Teaser Tuesday

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From the book A Prisoner by No Crime of My Own, I share tidbits from the manuscript with you each Tuesday.

Chapter 13 – An Olympic Race

. . . continued . . .

My oldest daughter, Brit, describes her grandparents here: 

“The Devil with a baby face. As he grew older and darker, his skin seemed to drape over bone, a white-skulls face. Eyes so dark they seemed a cavern through which the night was pouring; a pinprick of red in the center, perceptible to even the smallest in the family. A physical embodiment of eternal war. He’s always watching, always listening; his cold, totalitarian breath forever on your neck.

Grandma had a face filled with a desperate, yearning malevolence and had made a home where harm was the norm, where evil settled in the corners like dust. In her there was a blankness that held unspeakable darkness if one were to scratch at the surface. She was a bloodthirsty follower with remorseless manipulation honed under years of supervision from the Devil himself.

They hurled themselves upon weaker, more innocent people. A will and lust for power, for lust itself.

An Evil that would rather kill the person doing the questioning than take a realistic look at itself.

Evil colonized them.”

Most could see the evil lurking in their souls – right behind their corneas was a presence that was not their own. I did not then and will not now enter a pissing match with evil. You are supposed to by biblical standards depart from evil. And that’s just what I did. I also taught my children to do the same thing.

To keep people together through the guise of forgiveness with those who have miserably abused us was and is just wrong. I had every right to walk away to safety. To find peace away from them. I do not have to feel guilt or shame for not being there with them, to support them, to listen to their bullshit. I simply do not have to do that. Religious ways would tell me that I should feel the urge to care for my parents as they grow old. Help them find redemption. Okay. That’s fine – fine for them.

. . .

(Inter)Dependency

I often get confused about codependency, interdependency, and what healthy attachment looks like in general. What does it feel like? How do I know I’m in a relationship with healthy levels of attachment?

Codependency is an unhealthy form of dependency, but it’s not dependency in and of itself that’s the problem.

There are healthy forms of dependency, otherwise known as interdependency, that make relationships stronger. But distinguishing codependency from interdependency can be tricky — especially if you haven’t experienced many healthy relationships yourself.

However, in codependent relationships, one person is doing most of the giving, but not being given much in return. Codependency can also be defined as being overly preoccupied with your partner to the point of losing your own sense of who you are and what you need This is a recipe for burnout, resentment, and dissatisfaction but also a good way to tell if there’s imbalance in the relationship.

With that being said: I’ve learned there’s nothing wrong with needing others, relying on others, and asking for help. Healthy dependency, involves a mutual give and take; both people give and receive support, encouragement, help, and so on. Don’t be afraid of healthy dependency … it can feel scary and engulfing but if it’s safe and the right kind, it can be the most nourishing thing for healing growth.

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