Mary's Thoughts & Things

Self-care, self-love, and healing have become a big, big, big part of my life.

Self-deprecation, sarcasm, criticism, complaining and self-loathing are no longer welcome here.

And even if it feels like a full-time job, sometimes, managing my mental, physical, spiritual and emotional health, it has to be. 

Because I spent so many years ignoring my needs, my feelings. Ignoring myself, really. Peeling apart from my soul bit by bitter bit.

BUT...

I’ve learned this year what it means to be an empath, and how to love that part of me.

I’ve reflected on why alcohol became such a big part of my life at such an early age and am heading into my 9th month alcohol-free, more on that later.

My vision board reads, “I am NO Martyr”.

I’m breaking the familial patterns of debt through minimalism and #daveramsey.

I’m cutting sugar.

I’m meditating every. single. day. and uncovering terms like alexithymia, understanding how trauma has shaped my upbringing, who I grew into.

I’m advocating for EMDR and working to rewire this lovely brain.  I legitimately keep a list of Emotions on my phone and in my journal because I’m still learning how to identify these in my own body, and talk about them honestly.

And it’s GOOD.

And even when it’s not, even when I’m crawled into a ball on the back of the struggle bus, riding through Slump-town, I can look back on where I came from and know I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.

Praise God.

Elizabeth Gilbert said it best:

Like #careers

and #politics

and #dreams

and #ideas

and #movement

and #art

and #creation

and #resilience

and #motherhood

and #sisterhood

and #nature

and #exploration

and #emotions

and #rage

and #forgiveness

and #music

and #film

and #finance

and #mindfulness

And I’ll think about this every time I greet my nieces and automatically move to comment on their appearance- their hair, their outfits, their accessories. Do we do this to boys?

And I’ll think about this every time I scroll through Instagram, comparing myself to strangers. Society loves a good cat fight- pitting women against women. What scraps are we fighting over?

We are more than our bodies- more than breasts and skin and hair and pretty faces. We are more than smiles and kindness and sweetness.

A weekend of learning.

We are sending these teen daughters out to swim in this age of social media- Snapchat, sex, self-objectification and the water’s full of sharks.

My daughter has barely turned twelve and at this age my first #metoo moment was a Veteran- three years old.

Our girls are looking at their changing bodies and reflections in the mirror and I’m terrified they’ll start to reject what they see as I did. I don’t want it to take twenty years for my daughter to relearn what was lost at this age. How to love herself, feed herself. How to nourish her heart and mind and body and soul and spirit.

How to know an emotion when she’s feeling it, not as an afterthought. How to honor her intuition. How to love what’s in the mirror because SHE has defined her beauty, not the world.

How to stand in her power and draw up her shoulders to their fullest height and carve her boundaries in stone and fucking say NO.

Middle school is a hard time for most.

And if our parents didn’t notice then, today’s parents aren’t looking either. We see past our daughters while posting celebrations about their milestones. We share how much we love them while they starve and clamor for our attention. We’re barely looking up.

And we wonder where we’ve missed the mark?

This year I fell in love with running in the moments when I raced back for myself. Like Alice pressing on, each door smaller then the last. It was no white rabbit hunt, but running back to littler versions of myself. Mary at 19. Mary at 16. Mary at 12. Mary at 9.

All of my 33 years: made wise, made strong. Mile after mile.

Running back for these girls, running back to myself.

You are here now.

You are safe now.

Mile after mile.

This weekend I looked up long enough to see my daughter struggling. And I drew up my courage and breath and words and boundaries and I protected her. As I wish someone had done for me.

But the triggers were set a long time ago- and every nerve in my body is shot from the effort of trying to remember that this is now, not then. And even in tapping or breathing or walking or counting, I haven’t yet learned how to avoid the tailspin. Because the body keeps the score.

Today I was reminded that in between podcasts and traffic, bills and credit scores, striving and social media, there are people.

People who carry pain, hidden deep from view.

People who are grieving, who are dying. Sooner than the rest of us.

And I think that no one ever regrets being kind. Taking extra time to smile or ask someone a question. To stop and listen. To say a silent prayer for someone as you pass in the hall. To strive to find what we have in common, not what makes us different.

To break generational patterns by loving our children exactly as they are and not for who we think they should be.

To find peace and love and healing within our own selves. 

This year has seen a manifestation of what feels like a million dreams bursting into real life.

My husband took the plunge of entrepreneurship and started his own business.

My cousin followed her lifelong dream and packed her family up to relocate permanently to Ireland. 

After a decade of LA living, my big sister and her fiance decided to move home to Phoenix, with my beloved niece and brand new baby nephew in tow. Just in time, as we said good-bye to our littlest sister as she, too, departed for her graduate program at the University of Limerick (Éirinn go Brách!).

My best friend is making incredible strides in her counseling career.

Two dear friends are planning to exchange their wedding vows.

And just this morning I read about a group of friends with the courage to launch their non-profit, a lifelong dream aimed at supporting underprivileged communities in AZ.

________________________________________________

It feels like magic is dancing at the seams of all of our favorite dreams, and it feels like warmth and sunshine and fluttering yellow butterflies. 

Like falling in love. 

Like a slow whispered, ‘Yessssssss’.

______________________________________________ 

I’ve been thinking, too, about how the pain of grief freezes us in our tracks. How trauma robs us of not only peace in the present, but permits our haunted pasts to dance and duel against our future hopes.

As children, we were taught to dream. But at some point, my dreaming stopped. Fear crept in and made a home out of my heartache and lived there for so many years.

But as my healing continues, I’m remembering what it feels like to be swept under the current of fantasy. To look up, wild-eyed under covers, asking, “What If?” to a star-blanketed sky.

And just this morning, as I drove to work, goosebumps prickled up my arm as a flash of inspiration struck my heart. 

It caught my breath, heart-beating loudly.

It was clear and plain and firm.

My dream said, “Write”.

I am risk-averse in recovery.

But I haven’t always been this way.

There used to be a time when I delighted in rebellion- something savory and sexy about bold and brash choices, in shocking those around me. A motorcycle-riding boyfriend, a solo trip across the country to see my estranged opiate-addicted father, a secret elopement. This was when I  hung my hat on the hooks of my family’s colored disappointment- smug in delivering what the good Irish-Catholic bred women always expected- ‘Mary- the troubled child’. Inside, I raged with resentment. Inside was pain buried so deep it shook me to my core to let it  peek from under covers. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph”.

Flash forward to my mid-twenties- freshly divorced and cleaning up the mess my father left when he mixed too many pills and laid down to die on my living room couch (”accidental overdose, I think the toxicologist report declared)- found me in recovery. Sobering up, counting steps, and single-  trying to raise my young daughter without my own parents to guide me. Over-correcting the barrel-through-life mentality that swept me away in my late teens. Shocked at how far off I’d veered  from the path I’d set out for.

Years later, deep in introspection, come memories bubbling to the surface.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

You flash back to the earliest you can recall- the sound of rain hitting third-story rooftop shingles, the music of the Travelling Wilbury’s floating up from downstairs. It sounds like a party, but it’s just Mommy and Daddy. And the light snooze of your big sister- warm and asleep and dancing in dreamland beside you. I am 3 and from the dark corners of the attic floor, a sound unmistakable despite the laughter and rain and music and sister’s gentle purring. It is the rustle of movement. It is the slither of something- somethings- coming out of the chimney.

And fear tears through you like a lightning bolt- ripping the scream out of your lungs before you realize where its coming from. And your cries are joined by your sister’s while your parents’ dumbstruck horror dawns into understanding.  Having raced to the top of the attic stairs, lantern in hand, Mommy joins in the shrieking as all realize a dozen Copperhead snakes are twisting from the chimney- darting in every direction. Thick, scaled bodies, gray and pulsing, bright yellow tails catching the light. A newborn den.

Then quick light lightning, Daddy’s gone down the stairs and returns back wielding a large, black, shining machete. “Stand back, Echan” he says to Mommy, and she readily obliges. Like a Samurai king he hacks and spins and slashes the snakes to bits across the bedroom floor-  young daughters and beautiful Korean wife staring on in silent shock. A gruesome midnight sword fight.

The scene is over, the snakes all dead, the cries have stopped. Mommy and Daddy refuse your pleas to sleep on the couch downstairs. To escape from the snake corpse pit. “It’s back to sleep”, Daddy holds firm. Tear-stained toddlers were no whiskey chaser. Lights out.

So you huddle as close as you can to your sister’s warm body- her strong back thawing your frozen body- reminding you to breath. You stare on in the darkness thinking about how once your eyes close, the Coppherhead mother may come back for revenge. To swallow you up alive.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - 

I heard a story of how baby elephants are rope-tied to a secured pole to prevent them from running away. When they are young, they learn that no amount of pulling or pushing will serve strength enough for freedom. So they grow and they grow, and the rope stays fastened until they no longer try. Freedom to a full grown elephant is one push or pull away, but by that time there’s nothing to indicate their might and majesty will serve them up their heart’s desire.

Today is a new and different day and although I’ve never lived it before, I have been here. Some days are like that.

Transformation snuck in through the backdoor as I was steady focused on today’s habits-  moving my body everyday. Listening to how my body responds to food. Using softer words. 

I’ve maintained my goal weight for over a year now, and thought it an anniversary worth celebrating. It’s not that I had to hit my goal weight to love myself- it’s quite the opposite. When I began loving myself, my body responded with gratitude.

To continuous transformation, in every season. To self-love, beginning with bite-sized pieces.

Of who I’ve been. and who I’m becoming.

Terrifying.

Because the little girl in me wants to be still. Safe. Quiet and unseen. A bunny in a thornbush. Trapped there so long it feels like home.

But the soul knows when it’s hurting, because it’s clamoring to be freed. Future me says, “come out and find me. Let’s dance and play and fill our days with more laughter than grief and more hope than sorrow.”

And I’ve glimpsed the sunshine but I am not wholly accustomed to life outside the thornbush. But oh, how I want to be.

Do I have the courage.

To become

Who i am meant

I’m walking into 2019 with the most peace, joy, and excitement than I’ve ever greeted a New Year.

I rang in the new year with my amazing husband, daughter, and brother-and-sister-in-laws while finishing an entire bottle of champagne single-handedly, polishing off the last bits of Christmas chocolate that remained in our pantry, and creating this magical vision board, which I’m rather proud of :) :) :)

My resolutions and intentions for the year are as follows:

1. Positive Language Only

I am currently reading Jack Canfield’s “The Success Principles” and he reminds us of the important Dale Carnegie quote of being “Hearty in Your Approbation, and Lavish in Your Praise”. For me, this means no complaining, no criticizing, no self-deprecation, no “I Can’t” statements and no playing the victim. This year, I take 100% responsibility for my life. 

2. Focus on Health

Last year, I finally achieved my goal weight and developed consistent habits in working out and in what and how I eat. I changed my relationship with food. I felt a renewed sense of love and appreciation for my body. My anxiety symptoms decreased, and my depression lifted. I realized my food sensitivities through paying more attention to my body. This year, I will continue to prioritize my health by giving up alcohol, refined sugar and gluten. I’ll run a half marathon and prepare for a full marathon in January of 2020! I’ll continue to make my health- physical, mental, emotional- a priority every day.

3. Spark My Passion!

This year is all about discovering what my ideal business and career will be. It’s about writing, and telling my story. It’s dancing again- with a goal to perform on stage. It’s reading and practicing The Artist’s Way- morning pages, artist dates, and finding a Mastermind group. This year, I will graduate with my Bachelor’s Degree- and enroll in a life coaching program. This year I will imagine what I want to be when I grow up.

4. Konmari Method 

I am in love with Marie Kondo and obsessed with “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up”. This system of simplification, minimalism, and gratitude will be adopted into our home, our eating, our schedules and my mental health practices. I could geek out over cleaning and organization all. day. long.

While those four are the Big Ideas, I also have the following goals and focuses:

Support Hubby in his business dreams.

Eliminate all debt.

Get passports, visit cousins in Ireland

Family reunion over the summer