An Invincible Summer - A Woman's Journey

When your heart is beating quickly,  it's hard to catch your breath. When your life is overwhelming, you feel as if you'll drown. The world seems full of dark shadows,  lightness is hard to find. The foe is the voice in your head, you just can't shut it down. Stop, close your eyes, relax your body, breathe deeply, exhale slowly...repeat as needed. 

Loving life these days. Working my program and feeling fairly calm and peaceful. The relationship with my Boy Scout keeps moving forward in a special way and my relationship with the Secret Keeper has taken a new, softer path. The Boy Scout continues to challenge me to communicate better, fight fairly and rebuild trust. Additionally, in a unique way all his own, he challenges my need to make everyone around me behave in a certain way so that I can feel safe. I have learned to keep my mouth shut on occasion....what a novel idea! The black and white has turned a little grayer. The Secret Keeper continues to teach me about forgiveness, empathy and the reconstruction of relationships. As he tries to rebuild a life for himself while battling a pretty severe mental illness, I learn to not take offense when feeling manipulated and, with some ease, love the man that still desires to be a good dad. Sometimes, if I feel that heavy weight on my chest that makes it hard to breath, ...

Had a wonderful weekend in Huntington Beach CA. The weather was gorgeous and, for the most part, the weekend was smooth sailing. Just have to say how grateful I feel for the shortening duration of the "episodes" that were once a very prominent part of my life. By episodes I mean the time I spent in rage or anger due to the random events that triggered that fear inside of me.  Now it is clear that it was just a voice inside of me saying, "You are NOT enough, you are NOT and will never be enough". Grateful for the knowledge that it  is not true....I am OK. So many people walk this earth being the victim, resenting others for things that they, themselves were responsible for, expecting others to make them happy. They are blind to their own mistakes and shortcomings because it is so much easier to say someone else did it. The 4th and 5th Steps of Al-Anon were the catalyst for drastic changes in my life. They allowed my to take personal stock, forgive my transg...

For some strange reason, anxiety has reared its ugly head. Never before have I experienced it to this degree. Freaking out a bit, I was assigning the feelings inappropriately, giving them to someone else instead of taking ownership and dealing with it. With recognition comes responsibility and addressing it the best way possible for me, myself and I. New to this particular game, I searched out some aids. YouTube, mediation and positive affirmation videos helped some. Also, a guy named Leo with Actualized.com helped too. I fell in love with this guy months back and starting gleaming whatever I could from his videos. His talks about mindfulness, meditation, personal growth and mastering emotions were terrific. Unfortunately, there are a few of his videos that I wholeheartedly despise...especially the one on advice to women about sex and the way to a man's heart. Taking what I could use and leaving the rest has helped. On my run yesterday, his advice was to recognize what ...

Breath deep. Smile wide. Concentrate on the things, small or large, that you are grateful for. If all else fails, run..... Anxiety is a bitch but so am I.