Originally published January 9, 2024 on my Substack publication: https://amiddleagedsurvivor.substack.com/ This past year my healing took a big leap forward, and I give credit in part to music for that. Both because of something I learned in a Polyvagal/Nervous System course I took last year around this time and because I’ve recently realized how important music is to me after too many decades of letting its steady presence seep out of my life. Always curious about different modalities that could complement my healing journey, last winter I signed up for an eight-week class by Australian nervous-system-healing guru Jessica Maguire. I
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The color of my futureis a past broke open andLaid to rest within the expanseof what’s Possible. I smile amidst bright tearsof my own making and The Molasses riptide changesto gentle Champagne.My body rests and floats,held up by imagination, bubbles.My own strength. Yours. Dread spins into nothingness.I am the Curiosity that remains. I am MagicI am WholeI am SafeI am Here That noon hour of painand fear dissolves ina mixture of blues, pinks,purples and golden glitter.Exposed to light —the static & chaos recede Abracadabra! I Say:With my file folder of words.Because I am Powerful. I am NowI am the calm
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(Trigger warning.) I took this selfie one week after a registered sex offender walked into a bookstore on a busy urban thoroughfare where I was working, engaged me (groomed me) in conversation about the literature genre of science fiction and other topics for 30 minutes, waited for the store to clear, lured me out from behind the check-out desk to show him a specific author’s books, and attacked me from behind. In this photo I was at the kitchen sink, cleaning the knife wounds and stitches on my hand, and it occurred to me for the first time at that
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This photo was about four weeks AFTER in 2018. My husband helped pace me to a third-place, age-group finish. I was running on pure anger and adrenaline and determination and yelled, “Fuck Him!!!!!” inside my head when I crossed the finish line a second after this photo was taken. Or maybe I yelled it out loud. I don’t remember. But it was very satisfying and I’m so appreciative of John for helping me achieve that. I felt incredibly empowered, and I still have that race result on my fridge five years later. It was the first super-positive experience I had
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October 7, 2022 Happy Birthday, Dad! You would be 94 years old. That’s so astounding to me! You have never gone, fully. I understand how that works now. I carry you in my heart and in my drive and in my personality. And in my biology, my aging – I see myself in you more and more. In Mom, too. I’ve been thinking about you a lot the last couple of weeks, as I go through an initial batch of your videos and slides that I’ve finally started to get digitized. It’s interesting to see through your eyes what you
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(TW: Trigger Warning) Toward the end of June, I had to remind myself again that it’s okay to be still sometimes and to not “produce.” It’s a good reminder for me in general, as it’s my nature to go after things with passion, take on too much and be rigid with my plans. But when my brain is waving a white flag after a trigger, as it was then, I find I need to silence the self-critical voice inside my head judging me for not being more productive — for not being able to focus on what I had been
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