Alexis Rose's Blog, page 45

Lessons from the Flowers

I take with me the lessons of the flowers.

I will persevere and grow

silently displaying my beauty and strength.

I will reach towards the sun

hold fast during storms

I will live life fully in bloom.

©words and photo: Alexis Rose

 

 

Thank you for reading my memoir, Untangled, A Story of Resilience, Courage, and Triumph

http://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph/dp/1514213222

https://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph-ebook/dp/B013XA4856

Dear Symptoms, Please Go Away!

I like the simplicity of this picture I borrowed from Google images. It’s a simple way for me to understand that try as I might, there are reasons my PTSD symptoms sometimes still have a firm chokehold on me. The list can be long depending on the time of year and triggers. It’s a paradox to me that all the healing I’ve done over the summer has increased my symptoms this Fall. It’s been a beautiful Autumn here in the Midwest. In fact, we hit 70 degrees the other day! I can appreciate the wonderful weather, but the long season has prolonged my symptoms. If only my PTSD understood the calendar and I could time my flashbacks to only happen on certain calendar dates. That would be awesome! I was feeling terribly guilty last week about my level of functioning, until my wonderful boss said to me, “It’s okay, that you’re feeling this way right now.” All of a sudden, I felt less guilty and more accepting of what was happening to me. I was able to roll with the symptoms over the weekend vs. feeling like I was failing myself, my family, my friends, my boss. I’m sharing my three most frustrating symptoms. Perhaps some will relate to them, and for others, maybe they can provide an understanding if you know or have heard of someone who has PTSD. I bank on the fact that how they look today may not be how they look in the future.

Flashbacks-The fiercest of my symptoms. They can come at any time, although I can pretty much guarantee that certain things will trigger them. I was showing my therapist a picture of something I had found the other day and he said, “Do you think it’s a good idea to be looking at images that are most probably guaranteed to trigger you?” Oh, yeah, I just found them so compelling and validating, that I didn’t realize that I was probably sending myself into memory mode. My flashbacks are also triggered by the time of year and anniversary dates of trauma. I know I need to be patient with them. It wasn’t until a few months ago that I understood that I had been having flashbacks for about 30 years. I was casually telling my therapist about an incident I witnessed every night after going to bed. I was telling him how I would wake up each night and witness and event happening outside my window. I was telling him this because I thought it was so unusual that my boyfriend and roommate slept through this every night. He looked at me quizzically and said, “you were having a flashback.” I lived in a very quiet, safe area and what I was describing couldn’t possibly go unnoticed by others. Especially if it happened more than once. I was stunned. I just never thought I was having flashbacks, I just thought it was extraordinary that I had such heavy sleepers in my house. I learned that since I have been experiencing flashbacks for about 30 years I need to be patient. Ugh! Patience.

Work-Unfortunately the severity of my symptoms has left me with the inability to work full-time, well, even part-time. I’m cleared to work 2 hours a day if I’m having a good day. I simply can’t concentrate. My brain shuts down. I went from having a wonderful job, with stellar benefits to disability. I was in the marketing and recruiting industry. I’m extremely grateful that I have been hired by two wonderful people, one who owns a healing arts center, and one who owns a wellness center to help with their marketing a few hours a week. They are stellar individuals, who understand trauma and PTSD. I can’t be in an office setting. My startle response is off the hook sometimes. While doing some work in a massage business, I would startle and yelp when someone walked through the door for their massage appointment. Talk about feeling unprofessional! The customers who are coming in for a relaxing massage are starting their wellness experience by apologizing for scaring me. Awkward for both of us. Granted I live in the mid-west and we apologize for everything, but it was still awkward. If I push my brain and don’t listen as it starts to shut down, and do just one more thing it can start a chain reaction of symptoms and send me down for the count for a couple of days.  Writing has been a wonderful outlet. Writing, a skill I developed because I used it as a healing tool is my light from the dark.

Overwhelmed: The inability to concentrate can be over-whelming for me. I know what I want to do and what I want my brain to do but I’m simply unable to do it. I’m too overwhelmed. Making choices at the grocery store, menu choices from a restaurant, even jumping in the car to run errands can feel daunting. Just too many moving pieces. Sometimes as night approaches it feels overwhelming because I know it’s highly probable that sometime during the night I will have nightmares. I practice good sleep hygiene. I’m mindful about what I read or watch on t.v. I set my intentions, find and acknowledge the perfect moments I had during the day, all my bag of tricks, but the nightmares still come.

And sometimes it’s nothing….I’m overwhelmed because I’m a survivor of trauma and have PTSD and that’s just the way it is, even though I wish it was different.

I had to learn and keep reminding myself that I am working hard to heal and it’s not anything I did, or am doing, to cause these symptoms. I’m not perpetuating them, I am living with them. When I lose sight of this I find myself getting very angry at my PTSD. Well, to be honest, I’m often angry at, which detracts from the reasons I have it and can interrupt the healing process. So when that happens, I make myself stop, sit down, reflect, rest and try to focus on the goal of what I want for my life. I’m assuming next Autumn will be less triggering, I have to assume that, because why not? Why not continue to believe that these symptoms will lessen their choke-hold…After all, I’m asking nicely, Dear Symptoms, Please Go Away!

 

 

Thank you for reading my memoir, Untangled, A Story of Resilience, Courage, and Triumph

http://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph/dp/1514213222

https://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph-ebook/dp/B013XA4856

Happy Birthday to my Son

With the promise of the next generation 

his sweet cry announced his arrival into the world. 

Our hearts melted with that first look, touched by his innocence.

Welcome little one; You, our continued legacy 

will be surrounded by love, warmth, and support

for a life with endless possibility.

©Alexis Rose

( Happy Birthday to my son, Cody. He isn’t a baby anymore but our hearts still melt when he walks into a room)

 

 

photo: pixabay

 

 

Thank you for reading my memoir, Untangled, A Story of Resilience, Courage, and Triumph

http://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph/dp/1514213222

https://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph-ebook/dp/B013XA4856

A Reservoir of Left-Over Feelings

I once felt I was an object walking around, keenly disguised as a human. A thin veneer of skin covering the hurt, pain, and sorrow that lay underneath. Now I know that I’m a whole person who was objectified. I’m grateful for this feeling, this knowledge, this acceptance. It took me eight long years to get to this point and I make sure I acknowledge my hard work. It’s a hard-earned, middle finger to my perpetrators that they couldn’t take my humanity, my personness from me.  Where I once had no memory of a past, I now have a congruent, truthful timeline and I’m happy about it. In a bizarre sometimes I can’t wrap my mind around the awful truth kind of happiness. 

But what that’s left me with, is a Reservoir of Left-Over Feelings. I drew the reservoir and in it are the following feelings: Anxiety, depressed, desperation, fear, numb, violated, insignificant, grief, alone, unloved, neglected, shock, pain, confusion, anger, afraid, dirty, sadness, rejected, confusion, disgust, small, loneliness, ugly, abandoned, disappointed, hopeless, betrayed.

Sometimes these feeling are still prevalent in my everyday life, especially when I get triggered and have flashbacks and at anniversary times of the year. They are there, even though I have dealt with and processed the memories. I have dealt with the traumas but these feeling are byproducts of the abuse. The feelings don’t just leave because I have talked about them, written, used art, or emoted over them. It’s okay, I have learned that feelings are time-limited and are like sets of waves, and I have learned to ride them like an expert surfer.

I  also feel lots of love, hope, happiness, contentment, support, trust, and for that, I am grateful. It makes me smile. There are still times when the PTSD symptoms are so pronounced that I have to remind myself of the love and support because the intensity of what’s happening inside of me can bring about shame and I begin questioning whether or not I’m a burden.

I used to tell myself that if I could take a strainer and scoop out the byproduct of my past I would. Those feelings frustrate me and make me feel like the words of a mind dis-eased. I thought scooping them away meant more room for happiness, contentment, hope, and love.  Those feelings are what drive my desire to live. But then I realized that it’s important to have and feel those left-over feelings. I wasn’t able to experience them the first four decades of my life. They were repressed, never to be taken out. Now I know that it’s a very important part of my healing process, and they cannot be talked or drawn away. They have to be felt. I also realized that I have to heal the little person inside of me, not just look at it from an adult perspective. The emotions and pain feel immature and at the same time as old as the dinosaurs. That’s pain has to be acknowledged, it’s left-over feelings.

So I continue to accept that sometimes the reservoir will get stirred up and wavy, but also remembering to rest and enjoy the calm waters when the waves are still and peaceful. I will let the byproduct of my past continue to come to the surface, knowing that eventually it will spill over and float away to open water, taken away by the currents and becoming part of my past.

That’s where I’m at today. Why am I there? Because it’s Fall. a time of year that brings with it triggers, triggers everywhere. I made it through the worst of it by sheer chutzpah, but now there is the fallout. The reservoir of leftover dinosaur feelings. It’s painful, but as always, I am hopeful!

 

 

Thank you for reading my memoir, Untangled, A Story of Resilience, Courage, and Triumph

http://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph/dp/1514213222

https://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph-ebook/dp/B013XA4856

 

 

With Friendship you can Face Anything

Shaking off the morning dew

while taking flight

a friend is soaring next to you.

Their encouragement helps 

you rise above adversity.

Giving you faith that with friendship

you can face anything.

©Alexis Rose, photo: pixabay

 

 

Thank you for reading my memoir, Untangled, A Story of Resilience, Courage, and Triumph

http://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph/dp/1514213222

https://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph-ebook/dp/B013XA4856

 

The Woods

At an early age, I began collecting odd things like rocks, a bag of dirt, a lock of hair, a cuff-link, or anything that I thought would provide proof of my existence. I hid these things in safe places all over my room. I didn’t keep too many of them in one place for fear that someone would find my cache and I would lose my whole collection.

I thought these artifacts could prove where I was, what was happening to me, and who was with me. In my mind, these were my smoking guns.  I was already trying to gain control over my young life and circumstances. I couldn’t have known that years later, these would be precious breadcrumbs for me to follow as I began recovering my repressed childhood memories.

I was living in a world of secrets. I was born into a family with a strong European bloodline. I was indoctrinated into the family rules at a very young age, at the hands of my grandparents, uncle, aunt, and father. The secrets involved inter-generational abuse, incest, and seasonal secret society rituals.

At a very early age, I’d learned to disconnect from myself and either watch what was happening to me from afar or try to project the pain outside of my body. When I was abused at night, I would find a window in the bedroom and imagine the house next door on fire. I saw the flames shooting up the sides of the house in vivid orange and red; the heat and the spiky flames consuming the house. I found a way to externalize and dissociate from the pain and humiliation.

That fire raged outside my window most nights until we moved to Sheridan the summer I was nine.   That fire and my dream of living alone on the lake were my golden thread of survival. That thread kept the pieces of my shattered soul together and gave me the strength I needed to wake up and face another day. My raging fires were imaginary, but there were countless times in my young years that I had witnessed real and frightening rituals. These took place in the fall and spring with a group of six men, five others and my father.

They took place in temple basements, houses, or the woods and once, even in a mausoleum. They were held in the fall and spring of each year around full moons or holidays. They seemed very elaborate in my young mind. The men were dressed in robes, with candles burning and someone holding a staff with an ornate gold medallion on the top. In shadows cast by the candles, they chanted, sometimes handled snakes, and engaged in ritualistic child abuse.

The fall rituals were held in the woods. I may have been taken to the woods before the age of seven, but that year was a turning point for me. I began to understand how dire my situation was becoming. It was a sunny but cool autumn day with brightly colored leaves on the trees. I was sitting next to a teenage girl who told me her name was Jennifer. She looked beautiful to me, with long blond hair that would blow back from her face with the wind. She was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. She looked to me like a free spirit who belonged at a folk concert singing and dancing, but instead, she was on edge. Just like me, she was a frightened child watching the men in the clearing.

Without warning, Jennifer got up and started running onto the trails to the left of us.  My only thought was to run after her. She veered to the right and I stayed straight. From the sounds of leaves crunching behind me, I knew someone was closing in on me. Before I had time to think, one of the men caught up with me, grabbing me from behind.

He pulled me along the path to meet up with the others who had run after Jennifer. I saw the men standing in a semi-circle. Jennifer was on the ground in front of them. She was lying quiet and still, her pretty blond hair covering her eyes. I don’t know how long I stood there but I do remember one of the men saying to me, “This is what happens to girls who run away.”  As a man led me away from the clearing, I remember wishing that I could have pushed Jennifer’s hair away from her face. I didn’t want her pretty hair to be so messy in front of those men, and I wondered how could she see what was happening to her, with her hair over her eyes.

That thought and her image haunted me into my adulthood. I don’t know for sure what happened to Jennifer that day.  She may have just been knocked out or something more sinister may have befallen her. The men weren’t done with their rituals for the day. They built a fire, carried in a tiny goat that made sounds like a baby, cut its throat and did more ceremony. I remember watching the men with the smoke rising and the smell of burning animal flesh and blood. I remember feeling terrified. Everything seemed to happen so fast that day. What horrified me was that Jennifer was lying in a clearing in the woods, and the men never stopped their perverse festivities.

A few days after the incident in the woods, I took the chance to stray from the safety of my backyard.  I was sitting on my neighbor’s front steps looking at a little mirror with a red plastic case. I looked up and saw my mother storming down the street yelling at me. I panicked when I saw her, dropped the mirror and ran; but not before I heard it shatter on the concrete. My mother shrieked at me as she followed me back to our house. She came in and stood in the kitchen with my father, and I lost it. I started screaming at them that I knew what happened in the woods and that they had killed Jennifer.

My parents became enraged. My mother started toward me and I instinctively turned to run down the two steps leading to the back door, not thinking about the basement steps to the right of me.  I thought I felt a push and the gut-wrenching surprise of losing my balance and falling down the basement stairs. I grabbed the railing to stop myself and felt my hip come down hard as I tugged in the other direction to stop my fall. I groped my way to the bottom of the stairs, hurt and stunned only to look up to see my parents standing on the steps.

My father looked down at me and said, “You are dead to us, and you will never talk about what happened the other day.” I was in pain, confused and terrified but I knew they were serious. They had looks of utter disgust on their faces. I vowed to myself that I would never talk about what happened in the woods and I believed I was dead to them. After what I had witnessed in those woods, I had every reason to believe anything they said. I only was seven years old.

Excerpt from Untangled, A Story of Resilience, Courage, and Triumph

 

 

 

 

Thank you for reading my memoir, Untangled, A Story of Resilience, Courage, and Triumph

http://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph/dp/1514213222

https://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph-ebook/dp/B013XA4856

 

It’s A Blog-O-Ween! Let’s Party!

Have some fun and meet some new people over at acookingpotandtwistedtales.com/2016/1.... I have met some amazing people during Jacqueline’s meet-n-greet parties.

a cooking pot and twistedtales

Welcome to my house. I’ll try hard not to terrify you to death

Embers of the Afterglow

Turning around to see where I had been

I noticed the sun tending to

the embers of the afterglow.

Etching the memory deep into my mind, and spirit

I walk away with a sigh while filling up with strength and courage

knowing that this  is a perfect moment. 

©Alexis Rose, photo:pixabay

 

Thank you for reading my memoir, Untangled, A Story of Resilience, Courage, and Triumph

http://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph/dp/1514213222

https://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph-ebook/dp/B013XA4856

 

If I Could Tell You How It Feels

It doesn’t matter if it’s cold, hot sunny, snowing or raining.

There is no telling when it’s going to strike.

Are they alive or dead?

Is that pain echoes from the pain long ago that resurfaces with memory?

It’s like being held hostage by your mind

Thinking that today will be the day I am free.

 

I look like everyone else.

I know the difference between right and wrong.

Yet in my head I often can’t remember

the last ten minutes of my life, or what day, year or time it is.

Are those smells real or is that a smell from a place and time when I

Was being held hostage against my will?

Am I really hearing the sounds of helicopters, planes, cicadas and birds?

Or is that the sound coming from a place that no longer exists

and should never be talked about?

 

I want so much to be like everyone else.

So I will keep pulling myself up the rope

Out of the clutches of PTSD

and the skeleton hands of the past that keep trying to pull me down.

I am like everyone else

only my job is to live, so I can live.

That’s all I can ask of myself some days if I’m going to have a future.

 

photo: pixabay

 

Thank you for reading my memoir, Untangled, A Story of Resilience, Courage, and Triumph

http://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph/dp/1514213222

https://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph-ebook/dp/B013XA4856

The Waves of Emotion

So much emotion!

I feel thankful, I feel  happy, I feel stunned.

I feel tired, I feel  confused, I feel scared and sometimes terrified.

I feel a sense of peace and connectedness to the world around me.

I feel hope, I feel calm.

I’m full of anxiety, fear, doubt, restlessness.

I am up, I am down, I am happy and I am sad. I feel fear, I am content. 

I feel so many emotions that sometimes I’m not sure how to deal with any of them. So instead of trying to deal with them, I’m learning to let each one pass through me as they come.

Emotions; We all have them, and they come and go like waves. Some of them are little sets of gentle ripples and some are as intense as a tsunami. Waves come and waves go, each breaking on the shore and each is time limited. 

I have learned to sit with the emotion, to understand that even the most intense feelings will soon ebb. The emotion won’t take up all the space in my body, mind, and soul.

When I feel them begin to rise, I try for control. I want to balance perfectly and ride them to the shore with ease. That’s not life, even the most eloquent and prophetic surfer wipes out. It’s okay because soon another emotional set of waves will come soon enough. That’s normal, natural, human nature. 

I feel grateful.

 

photo: pixabay

Thank you for reading my memoir, Untangled, A Story of Resilience, Courage, and Triumph

http://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph/dp/1514213222

https://www.amazon.com/Untangled-story-resilience-courage-triumph-ebook/dp/B013XA4856