Tedder's Blog, page 40

Something in the Water

There’s just something in the air …It all feels like something’s closing in on us, becoming more severe, as we inch, faster and faster, toward implosion. 

People don’t seem well. Which is strange because for many years, I felt everyone around me had it so together. When I came to, got sober and started to heal, I began to realize that this was not particularly true. Many, if not all people, seemed to be in constant suffering around me.

The defining difference was that they seemed better at hiding it.

But I couldn’t hide it. I couldn’t push down all the horrible things I had endured and the toxic culture which seemed to allow it. Plus, being in addiction brought me far away from all the things that people seemed so caught up in – materialism, vacuous interaction, dead end jobs, disconnection, rampant denial and all the rest.

At least my addiction was proof that I could not accept these things, that I would not allow what happened to me to be swept under the rug. I wanted my pain to be a marker … a buoy in the endless dark water that was my life.

Gabor Maté said: “So much of what we call abnormality in this culture is actually normal responses to an abnormal culture. The abnormality does not reside in the pathology of the individuals, but in the very culture that drives people into suffering and dysfunction.

There is still a big part of me that feels addict are the ones responding appropriately to this culture … not the other way around.

What do you think? Comment your thoughts below!

B

Mirror Mirror ~ Introspection

Introspection — what better way to start a week.

Question – What do you NOT forgive yourself for?

A journal entry of mine from December 17, 2006:

Wasted days and wasted nights is the song that jollies my mind tonight. Little Miss Going Out Needing Attention Too Much! I have got to chill. Hide away and rest.

Personal journal

The road to healing and discovery is not an easy one. Had I turned off the road, I would have been lost, stuck, and failed. It was a messy journey and still is sometimes.

Do I forgive myself for all the choices I’ve made through the years? I wonder. The married men I slept with, the wasted nights I spent chasing misery because I hadn’t walked through forgiveness and was full of anger.

I’ve carried shame about my own choices, too. Not just the shame from my upbringing. There is a cost to the run.

I had to choose to never stop trying to make better choices.

What do you hold against yourself today?

Jewels, Gems & Gunpowder

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

A Jewel: Shame is a scar of incest that is difficult to remove. We so often think it was our fault, we were unlovable or we are somehow complicit in the crime. I remember today that this is not my shame. I didn’t do it.

A Gem: Courage is defined by taking the next step in life afraid.

Metaphorical Gunpowder: I will not stand still and allow the enemies of my life to win. I choose to fight.

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

All love!

Will I Ever Feel Whole Again?

There will be days that you do. And days that you don’t. But the good days will start to outnumber the bad.

I have come to believe that from suffering comes grace. And so when find acceptance in my suffering I am able to grow. Yes, it sounds like BS. It is still true.

All the greatest healing I’ve experienced in my life has come from an experience that the God placed in front of me and not something that I made happen. That’s the beauty of a spiritual path: when you surrender and allow God to do his thing, true healing is presented to you.

In every moment God is conspiring to bring you toward right-minded thinking and the energy of love. It’s your choice to lean toward love or lean toward fear.

God is with you in good days and bad but you get to choose your attitude and your willingness and openness for change and awe.

Many women say “no” to healing because they don’t want to go through the pain of uncovering buried feelings, fears, and memories. They choose to limp through life rather than pursue the arduous path of freedom from the past. 

Why does healing have to be so difficult? Isn’t it enough to have suffered through the trauma in the first place? Surely, God is able to miraculously take away the fear, the pain and the sadness. Yet most often he asks us to walk through grief and sorrow to get to the other side of healing. 

B

F N’ F (Fear Not Friday)

Question — Do you fear using your voice?

When you walk into a McDonald’s and order a burger with fries and a shake, how did you accomplish that? By using your voice.

When you call a customer service help line with a problem and you find a solution, how did you accomplish that? By using your voice.

It’s time for a review at work and you are brave enough to ask for a raise and express some of your concerns, how did you accomplish that? By using your voice.

Now, I want my life to be better than my past. I need to expunge the suffering I have in my soul and the burdens I carry from walking through such abuse. I long to live a life that is free from pain, guilt and worry. How do you do that? By using your voice.

Your voice does indeed work. It could be the reason you fear using it. It forces people to listen.

Settle for nothing less than using your voice!

Invisible Burdens

For a long time, being messing in my addiction was a way to demonstrate my pain to the outside world. It was a way to keep it in the faces of everyone who hurt me. By keeping my pain prominent, I would make sure that nobody forgot what happened to me.

Today, I don’t have that same burning need to make my pain visible. Because I have honored my pain, worked through it and has it validated by people who actually love me….the need to feel seen has all but evaporated.

Everything that makes our soul tremble, everything that makes us feel uncertain, fearful, and confused, has a very specific purpose from a HIGHER perspective, and every time you face your fears and anxieties that make you feel like you are stepping on sweltering grounds, you just UNRAVEL another, deeper layer of yourself within you, you never thought existed.

It is a beautiful process that will being you closer to your pain, yes, but also more at peace with it.

My pain still exists. The past has not been forgetter. But today, it doesn’t not need to define who I am.

B

Do You Feel Laughed At?

Entry from my journal dated May 24, 2006:

The day is undetermined. The future echoes the same. Where will I be in 15years. Answers undetermined. Mine not yet to know.
Will I prevail in a lawsuit against Cathy? Or silently do I subside into the side shadows. Unknown.

I wrote those words 16 years, 9 months, 7 days ago. Wow! So much has happened during these years. On this day I hadn’t seen much victory. It seemed they all laughed at me when I said I was going to tell the truth, stand up and make them pay for their actions.

I did prevail in the lawsuit against a former attorney I worked with, turned sister-in-law. It was a success. I didn’t know it would be the day I wrote these words but I won!

I have had so many victories through these last 16 years and failures as well. When I wrote this I had just left the first firm I worked for as a legal assistant. Today, I am leaving my third firm as a Director of Professional Development & Training. That is quite an accomplishment. All the while conducting an investigation into myself. Digging through the murder, trying to fix and heal all of it.

You can do it too!

I will be celebrating my fifth wedding anniversary to a wonderful husband on March 10. I heard God call me to move to a new state away from where are all the crime occurred. Today, I wake up happy. Truly at rest for maybe the first time in my life.

16 years, 9 months, and 7 days! Wow…thank you Father, I never dreamed I would be where I am today. You have guided me, talked to me, set me free from so many things – I want to tell you thank you.

If you believe your abusers are winning, think again! Stand with God. He will show you the path, illuminate for you your future, and walk you through the pain of healing your past into victory.

Do not believe the mockers. They lose every time. I have lived it.

The Stranger Inside

On the topic of acting …

I am reminded of the facad you are encouraged to maintain in order to survive…in order to go on with your daily life. This acting starts young and the facade grows deeper and more insidious with time and before long, not even you can unravel the false person you have become from the authentic person you were meant to be.

Your ‘apparently normal part’ dominates your mind; it’s numb appears to be in control. It is the actor.

You had shut out the past as a way to survive, but occasionally the trauma will breakthrough, and you suddenly become flooded with fear and pain. But then you push it down deeper and become more desperate to appear normal and functional.

But the actor cannot manage forever. Sooner or later, she must exit the stage and get on with real life. She must confront the ghosts, the horrors, the darkness … in order to find the light.

B

Acting is Reacting

In a home of incest I always felt like I was acting. I was given a role in the cast but I was never given a script. It’s a terrible way to live unless your reality is miserable and cannot be talked about.

Performers of the grandest kind often come from homes of neglect and abuse. We have been taught acting our entire lives.

When you feel miserable, smile. When you hurt, pretend you don’t. We you are writhing with intense pain, block it.

You have to get real good at it or you will not survive abusive homes.

Acting without a script.

Method acting is not used in criminally abusive homes. Growing up you never rely on personal experience and memory! Both your experience and your memory are to be thrown away.

To live authentically today is the hardest part of healing. I liked acting because it was what I was taught. No matter who I met, I could pretend.

Today, I’m Jodie. I don’t want to pretend and I don’t want to be around pretenders.

Teaser Tuesday

From the book A Prisoner by No Crime of My Own,

Chapter 8 – Prophecy

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me.”

– Charlotte Brontë

As my family of origin struggled to move past our disclosures of abuse, my father fell ill. He, of course, maintained that we were all liars and had no idea what we were talking about. By this time my mother had moved back in with him, after a short stint of living on her own. She said, “I was lonely. None of you kids ever came to see me.”

I can’t image why.

Dad was put in the hospital. My mother was stricken with a fear that she may lose him. She was a blubbering mess, clutching her purse as if holding onto my father’s soul. She could not lose him, that was clear. She had us go to the hospital chapel and pray for him. She wouldn’t hold up well without his dark strength. Who would she fight with? Who would she love? Who would protect her hidden evil?

Eventually, the doctor came out and informed my mother about a procedure he was planning to run, and she literally collapsed to the floor. In truth, it made me sick. I hated watching how much she loved this sick, miserable man. I was still close to my siblings at this time and told everyone I would keep watch through the night on Dad’s condition, that they needed to take Mom home. They did and I stayed and prayed for him until morning.

I was terrified to stay at the hospital. I didn’t want to sit next to my father alone but had been given that role a long time before. Growing up, my father had pitted us against each other and the special attention he’d given me angered the entire household. Hadn’t they seen the price I paid?

My father was in ICU. I needed someone with me to wrap my panicked nerves. I called my mother-in-law, Deb, and she came to the hospital and sat with me until morning.

In the coming days, as he recovered, I continued to visit him. One day after he was moved from the ICU, I came to see him and sat down beside his bed. I looked at the breathing tube down his throat and took his hand in mine and caressed it. I was betrothed to him, and he knew it. His restrained eyes looked at me in defeat. Not being able to speak, a very small tear rolled out of his eye and down his temple. I wanted to believe with all my heart that Dad would recover and say he was terribly sorry, that he loved us all, and it was going to be okay. His inability to speak enabled me to project my deepest longings onto him and to briefly fantasize about his impending apology to the family, to me.

When the tube was finally removed a few days later, I walked into his hospital room, anticipating comforting words of affirmation about the pain inflicted by his hands. I sat gently on the bed, and he pulled me close to him in an embrace.

He whispered in my ear, “I’ve got my life, I’ve got my baby girl, but I’ve still got this lie.”

My heart fell to the floor. My dreams of him loving us were smashed. I pushed him away from me, stood, and walked out of that room.

I only saw my father a handful of times after that. He had chosen deceit and the battle between us was on.

About six months before this illness, I’d dreamt that my father was milling about his house. The dream began with a man crawling in a downstairs window at my dad’s house. He stayed in the house a long time. The dream finished with my father walking away from the house with a limp. It was strange to me at the time but also something I couldn’t ignore.

I prayed about the dream. I knew that the man who crawled through my dad’s window was evil. It was like death had come in. I opened my bible and ironically read about a six-month period. Strange to me, but notable, I looked ahead at the calendar six months and made note of it. Almost to the day six months later, my father entered the hospital – fighting for his life.

When Dad returned home from the hospital – yep, he walked with a limp.

Was this odd dream a prophecy fulfilled? I was in a true battle of good and evil. Just like they depict in a comic-book story. Who could stand the strongest for their side?