Thoughts...about thoughts

It's been a LONG time since I've really journaled.  I don't know why.  But I guess that's okay.  I don't journal unless the need comes upon me, and tonight it has.  The last couple times I saw my dad, he gave me more of my mom's things.  Up until today, I'd had tons of her clothes and other little things stuffed in my car trunk and backseat for months.  The last time I went to a support group meeting, I brought it up, and someone remarked that every time I got in my car or went to buy groceries and couldn't fit them in the trunk, it was a silent reminder of having to go through the stuff and it was probably eating away at me.  She was right.  So I finally got all the stuff out today and went through it.  I had been putting it off because I remember how painful it was to go through her stuff that I had when I last moved.  We had scheduled our house closing on Mother's Day weekend to give me a distraction and something to be excited about.  But I ended up having to go through tons of her clothes while packing, so my plan kind of backfired.  I was putting off doing it again because I knew it would hurt.  But at the same time, putting it off longer and longer was hurting me too.  I am getting rid of anything that I never saw her wear or that wasn't "her."  That's the easy part.  The hard part was seeing the clothes that were SO "her."  But the hardEST part was finding one of her hairs on one of the dresses.  I absolutely broke down seeing that real, tangible piece of her existence here.  Something that wasn't just a memory or a feeling...something I could see and touch.  That one hair is all I have left of my mom's person.  The rest of her is ash, and while I am glad to have the ashes with me, they obviously don't show any of her form.  I tried to wrap the hair up so I wouldn't lose it, and the ceiling fan blew it away.  I fell apart even worse.  I kept asking God to please give it back because it was all I had, and I felt like I was almost losing her all over again.  I grabbed our dinky little flashlight that doesn't always work and went in a frantic search, knowing the chances of finding it were next to impossible.  The hair was blonde and white, and in a house like ours with pets, there is always fur everywhere.  My boyfriend, godsend that he is, came running with a better flashlight, turned off the overhead light, and got down on his hands and knees on the floor with me to look for it.  And he found it.  I was so happy.  It's safely tucked away now.  I never knew the hair from someone's head could become so very important.  All the clothes still kind of smelled like her.  I don't know how that is.  My cat was smelling them and decided the stack was a good place for a bath and a nap (see photo), so my progress was halted for a while.  He may have just liked it because it was soft, but it comforted me thinking that maybe he smelled his grandma and was comforted too.  They loved each other a lot.

I've been going through a lot the last few months.  Not just about my mom but a lot in general.  I'm seeing a hypnotherapist-counselor and after one session am seeing some major changes in my thinking patterns and my perspective in general.  She has really made it hit home for me that our thoughts create our world, our reality.  Whatever we think, that is what we know, whether it is an accurate perception or not.  To US, it is.  Your mind and logic can know that a fear or feeling you have is irrational or not based in truth.  But if your subconscious has believed something for a long time, it's extremely hard to retrain it to sync with your conscious mind.  A lot of the issues and fears I have are for that reason.  For so long I have felt like such a victim in life.  Everything seemed to happen TO me, nothing felt in my control, and it was scary.  I've been living in constant fear of who is going to be the next loved one to die or abandon me.  My brain knows I can't live life that way and that I am so consumed with fear that I can't even fully enjoy being with my loved ones while I still have them.  My brain knows that just because my ex-husband got tired of me and wanted out does not mean my boyfriend will do the same thing to me.  But my subconscious is in such fear that I have never had any peace.  I am so afraid that the moment I decide to become content and really happy in my life, that's when the next bad thing is going to hit.  So I'm never relaxed or at peace.  I'm always expecting the worst, trying to prepare for it, and I'm just sabotaging myself.  But the session has helped me start to turn my thoughts and perspective around.  I've been less fearful the past few days since.  It's hard letting go of old thoughts and ways even when you know they're draining all of your energy and joy, because it's all you've known.  I thought life and my experiences had jaded me.  But actually, I let myself become jaded.  And there's a difference.  She kept reaffirming to me that nobody can hurt me emotionally anymore unless I continue to allow them to.  I keep repeating that to myself and it works.  I will find a way to let go of the damage from my ex-husband's words and actions and stop allowing it to hurt me.  I also found out through the session that I don't know if I think I deserve to be happy.  I mean, logically, I know I deserve to be happy.  But some part of me feels that would be selfish.  Why?  Most likely because I watched my mom be that way.  She was very unhappy with lots of areas of her life, and she allowed that to make her a martyr and sacrifice everything for everyone's happiness but her own.  She taught me more about unconditional love than anyone ever has.  She always made it her goal to make everyone she came in contact with feel special, worthy, and valuable as a person.  But she never figured out how to do it for herself.  I am much the same way, come to find out.  Not that it is her fault, don't get me wrong, but she didn't fully love herself and was therefore unable to really teach me through example how to truly love MYself.  I go around trying to make people feel good about themselves as much as I can and tell them all the good qualities I see in them and let them know they are worthy.  But it is hard to really do that for myself.  I told the hypnotherapist that one of the hardest things about losing my mom is knowing that no one can or will ever love me unconditionally like that again.  Not in the same way as her.  But she made me realize that I can love MYSELF that way.  What a concept - I never looked at it that way before.  If I made a mistake in my life, would my mom chastise me for it and tell me how stupid I was and that I couldn't make decisions?  No, of course not.  But yet I always do it to myself.  I have decided to try and see myself through my mother's eyes and love myself accordingly.  Or see myself the way I see my mother: human and broken sometimes but incredible and wonderful and valuable nonetheless, able to learn important life lessons through mistakes and tragedy.  I have realized from talking with several friends lately that most of us are way too hard on ourselves.  We are so afraid of not being accepted for who we are and we are our own worst critics.  I may not be perfect, but I don't have to be.  I will become comfortable with actually cutting myself some slack for not being perfect!  I may not be the best bikini body on the beach, but dammit, I worked hard to lose 30 pounds and I'm going to wear my bikini on the beach and feel good about myself.  I may not be the best at whatever, but it's not really a big deal.  I don't really have to prove myself and my worth to everyone like I think I do.  My mom had a poster in her home office that said I AM ME, AND I AM OKAY.  She was trying.  Maybe that's another mantra I'll start repeating to myself.  Another one is something I found on Etsy by The Black Apple that says: I LOVE EVERYTHING IN YOU THAT HURTS.  I have taped that to my mirror along with one that says I AM NOT BEAUTIFUL LIKE YOU, I AM BEAUTIFUL LIKE ME.  And I will repeat those things to myself every time I look in the mirror.  I love myself along with my hurts.  If you tell yourself something enough times, eventually you will believe it and it will become part of who you are.  While we may not have control over everything in our lives, we can have control over that, and that is so empowering to me.  I have watched The Secret and am a big believer in it (although not to an extreme sense that some people take it).  But the concepts never fully sank in until talking with the hypnotherapist.  One of the things she had me visualize was walking up to the child version of myself, seeing myself as a little girl standing there in front of me.  I reached into her (me) and started pulling out all the darkness and fear inside her.  It was like a dark cloud, something real I could see in my mind, and I pulled and pulled like a clown pulling out a never-ending string of scarves tied together until I felt a release within me.  Then my child and I lit a match and set the pile of darkness afire.  It may sound hokey, but it was so powerful to me...seeing, even if only in my mind, the fears and negativity inside me as a visible darkness made me realize what poison itreally is.  It's toxic and has been eating away at me over time.  I had a wonderful, sweet, happy childhood...it was only when Ihit adulthood that everything seemed to go to crap.  But the wounded parts of me are very childlike and make me feel small and weak like a child.  So visualizing myself that way and healing her actually healed me.  I am starting to feel braver.  It's not all magically fixed all of a sudden.  It takes constant work every day.  But I'm tired of being so drained.  And I want to stop looking to other people to validate me and realize I can do that for myself.

Now that I have done some things I've been putting off, I want to also finally finish the book Motherless Daughters and other books about this I've put off.  A friend in one of my support groups told me she had come to the realization that she needed to stop looking at it as something depressing and change her perspective into looking at it as something that will help her.  She said we're all looking for answers but keep avoiding this book that holds so many of the answers for us.  It may be hard to work through it, but it's harder still to put it off and keep living in the same patterns.

The bunny (bunnies - there are two now) is still active in the yard a lot.  I go out and talk to him like I'm talking to my mom sometimes.  Even though I don't think he IS her, just from her, it helps me to have something I can look at, something alive and tangible, to talk to.  I still haven't had a dream about my mom in months and months.  I would really like to...I miss it. 

Anyway, I swear there was more I wanted to write about, but I'm exhausted and I think it's time for sleep.