Leveling the Ditches

July 14, 2025July 14, 2025 ~ juliemonroe1980 ~ Leave a comment

I’ve spent alot of the last 20 years going to therapy. I’ve had a couple of good therapists during that time who have really done some hard work with me and have made all the difference in helping to guide me in becoming who I am today. I’ve tried to be very careful not to put them on pedestals in my mind, but I am grateful for the time and patience and consistency that they have offered me as I healed wounds, began to learn that I have way more self agency than I ever thought, and started to imagine that it might actually be possible for me to become the kind of person I want to be.

One of these therapists really hardly talked at all during our sessions. I drove an hour to her home office every Wednesday for six months when I desperately needed help in moving out of ambivalence to determine if I was going to ask my then-husband for a divorce or suck up my misery and resign to staying in a bad situation for the long haul. I knew I wanted out, but I was desperately afraid. Each week I would walk in and greet her standard poodle Izzy, and then sit on her couch, while she sat patiently in her chair waiting for me to start talking. She never pushed me, never cajoled me into telling her what was on my mind. Instead, she just calmly and empathetically listened while I talked myself into being brave and the readiness to take the big leap off the proverbial cliff that had been calling my name for over ten years. That six months of non-judgmental listening was one of the best gifts I’ve ever received. She could have told me from the start what I should do. She could have offered me all kinds of therapeutic techniques to employ in the situation. But somehow she knew that what I needed most was someone who would just sit, and listen, and hold space for me to cry, and rage, and process all of my feelings and fear out loud. Then one day, after that six months, I woke up and knew exactly what I needed to do, and I did it. I took a running leap and launched off the biggest, scariest cliff of my life, knowing that I would be OK.

I can’t stop thinking about Mary Oliver’s poem, The Journey, as I write this, especially the last part of the poem. That therapist allowed me the time and space to really start hearing MY voice amidst all the voices around me, real and hypothetical, with their endless commentary and judgment about my life.

…and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Owning All Our “Stuff”

The other really impactful therapist in my life…she’s done alot of listening, but she has pushed me so hard over the last five years. I can’t fake it with her, can’t wiggle out of reach of her concentrated stares that forewarn me she’s about to confront me on some lie I’ve been telling myself. She’s the kind of therapist that is immensely kind and empathetic, but she also knows when to tell me to cut the crap and stop faffing around. When I slander myself or make some self-deprecating statement, she forces me to rephrase what I intended to say before she will allow the conversation to move forward. She is also so matter of fact, and has mostly never gotten perturbed by whatever I’ve thrown at her. ‘You’re really angry now, Julie,” she’d say. “But at some point you’re not going to be angry anymore.” Or, “Fuck may be your favorite word to describe everything right now, Julie, but at some point you won’t need it anymore.” This particular therapist refuses to let me cop out and defer to others for direction on how my life should go. She has always been insistent that my intuition is spot on and that I don’t need anyone, and certainly not a man or a relationship, to save me, and that everything I will ever need is right inside of me. It took me a couple of years, but I finally started to believe it.

One huge lesson that I’ve been learning, especially over the last five years, is that we all have traumas of varying degrees, and we are all wounded…and while we can’t change the things that happened to us and made us afraid, or feel broken, or ashamed…it is our responsibility to determine how we will respond and heal from those things. Admittedly, this can be a hard realization to swallow. It is easier, especially early on, to want to point back to our deep hurts and the people that hurt us, and cast the blame onto them. And often, we want them to have to pay the price for what they did to us, or to come to us and apologize….or at least give us explanations for why they did what they did. Or, sometimes, we just take on the guilt and blame of all of our traumas, and cling, even unconsciously, to the belief that we deserved what was done to us because we are inherently unworthy or unlovable or “messed up”.

It is much easier for us to remain victims regarding our traumas and shame. I mean, if we’re honest about it, there are some real payoffs to allowing ourselves to remain in that state. If we work it right, it can grant us alot of attention from other people, it allows us to control others’ actions around us so they don’t make us uncomfortable or “trigger” us, it allows us to not have to take responsibility for our lives and choices, and it enables us to maintain the status quo, shifting blame to others for us not creating the lives that we want.

What I just said above can come across really harsh, I know it. I used to get so irritated when I would hear things like this.

“So, we’re just letting people who hurt us off the hook? Why do I have to be responsible for fixing things that others broke in me? Why are you putting the burden on me…don’t you know what they did to me?” This is where pain and suffering need to be differentiated. When “those” people hurt us, they caused us pain. For sure. It was real, and terrible, and unjustified, and we didn’t deserve it. But when we carry what happened to us in the past into our present, WE are perpetuating that pain as unnecessary suffering. As harsh and unfair as it sounds and feels, we are causing our own continued suffering when we remain identified with the past.

Even while I’m writing this I’m bristling up a bit. It still bothers me a little, even though I’ve become pretty convinced it is true. But I do know this: I am no longer OK with events that happened decades ago, or people that are long dead, or even hurtful people that are in the periphery of my life, to control my happiness, my sense of self worth, or have any ultimate say in my journey to becoming the person I’m aiming to be. It’s a matter of anger and pain transformation. We have to look deeply at the pain that we experienced, and deeply feel the sadness and grief and anger, and allow these energies to be transformed within us so that they no longer perpetuate suffering, but rather, motivate us to action that is directed in our favor and towards our own personal good.

Letting Go of Blame

This is a hard one, for sure. Most of us, I think, are hurt the worst in our childhoods. Those wounds, whether intended by others or completely accidental, can help shape our personalities, influence whether we learn to fight, flee, freeze, or fawn, and can paralyze our ability to trust ourselves and believe that we have voices that deserve to be heard. Conversely, those wounds can cause us to lash out at others, or condescend, or learn to blatantly disregard the rights of others as we strive to gain some sense of security in our lives.

There are a billion videos and books out these days on narcissists, mother wounds, father wounds, etc. I mostly think this is a good thing: the presence of these kinds of materials shows that we as a society are becoming more aware of how we are shaped in our childhood by various people and circumstances, and how the patterns of codependency and toxic relationships can pull us in and play out. True, some of these topics have become trendy and overused, and NOT EVERYONE is a narcissist. To riff off something similar that a friend of mine once said, I know’s there’s not a narcissist behind every rock, but I’d like to be able recognize when a real narcissist is behind the rock in front of me.

I think it’s really good that it is no longer so taboo or uncomfortable for people to talk about going to therapy, and that it is more openly encouraged these days. That we are allowed to look back on our lives and name the things and people that hurt us, acknowledging that many of those events were not OK. Even more so, I’m very glad that we are speaking the message more and more openly that we are not required to do life or stay in relationship with people that have hurt or continue to hurt us. It is OK to divorce family members, or to even set up very firm, clear boundaries for interactions. It is OK to have varying levels of intimacy with different people in your life; it doesn’t make you dishonest if you aren’t as transparent with one person as you are another. I’m so grateful for all the great books on boundaries that have been published over the last couple of decades, especially for those of us who grew up suffering, without any sense of space, personal or otherwise, that we could say belonged solely to us.

At the same time, I have heard alot of people gripe about how we need to stop blaming our parents for everything. “That’s just the way it was in the 80s.” Or, “My parents whipped my ass and I turned out just fine.” (I internally take issue with this statement every time I hear someone say it.). Or, “These younger generations are just lazy, don’t appreciate the value of hard work, are too soft, (insert a billion similar phrases here).” Most of the time these statements annoy me, and I want to slip them my therapist’s number and tell them it might help to talk to someone. But I also recognize that at a certain level, they are right. Not about this generation being lazy or that we all deserved a good spanking. At some point in each of our journeys, we have to let go of the blame game and stop linking all of our pain and our hurts to “that person” or “that one event”. Endless blaming and shifting of responsibility to others is never going to get us to where we want to go, long term. Early on, when we start down our paths to healing, it is good and necessary to recognize who and what hurt us and stop making excuses for them. Alot of those things absolutely need to be called out. But then, as we start to grow and expand and begin to take our rightful places in this world, the blame game has to stop or we’ll remain stuck – Stuck at a life level I think may actually be worse than the place we started from.

A medical intuitive and spiritual teacher that I really like, Caroline Myss, often tells a story about how at some point, it is crucial that we let go of the blame game and dis-identify with our trauma. She tells of a Native American ritual that helps people get over their traumas and soul wounds. I can’t remember all the details from her telling of it, but basically the idea is that the community would listen to the telling of one’s trauma three times, but after that, they would turn their back on the remembering and telling of the trauma. Not because they didn’t care about the person or recognize the significance of that deeply painful experience, but because they knew that continually reliving and affirming the existence of the experience did the individual no good. Ultimately, it would keep the person stuck.

We are not meant to stay wounded. We are supposed to move through our tragedies and challenges and to help each other move through the many painful episodes of our lives. By remaining stuck in the power of our wounds, we block our own transformation. We overlook the greater gifts inherent in our wounds – the strength to overcome them and the lessons that we are meant to receive through them. Wounds are the means through which we enter the hearts of other people. They are meant to teach us to become compassionate and wise.

– Caroline Myss

Something that sometimes annoys me is that once you get to a certain point in your healing journey, and try to employ the blame game or verbally recall your traumas out of a conscious or unconscious need for attention or affirmation or whatever…it will fall flat. I’ve noticed that every once in a while, especially when I’m tired or just really needing affection or intimacy from loved ones, instead of just openly asking for what I want or need, I’ll conjure up something that is related to a past trauma of mine, and it involves me somehow recounting that trauma and how much my current feelings or the situation is reminiscent of it. Almost every time I do this, I get an ick feeling mid way through my “trauma telling” that advises me to stop going down that path….to stop talking… that it’s not serving me. Telling me that if I need connection I just need to ask for it. But more often than not, I’ll push through, tell me story, and sure enough, the outcome I was “hoping” for fell flat or I came away feeling manipulative and gross. Not because I was telling a lie or was consciously trying to manipulate someone into giving me what I needed, but because I recognized that I’m past those traumas…they’re old stories that no longer define me, and when I try to re-identify with them, it makes me feel inauthentic and icky. As it should.

At some point, we just need to drop our stories.

On Forgiveness, Briefly

I was talking with my therapist the other day about an unexpected existential crisis that arose in me about COVID vaccines and big pharma, of all things. The actual details of why Pfizer and Ventavia were causing me angst really don’t matter, but what came out of this conversation through some verbal processing felt really helpful to me. My therapist and I were honing in on how the belief about the situation was making me feel, and I was able to identify multiple instances from my childhood in which I felt the same way.

As my therapist and I worked through my uncomfortable feelings around my vaccine crisis, and how they were bringing up similar feelings that I’ve felt before, I felt I needed to qualify to her that while I was bringing up a story from the past, I was not trying to throw anyone under the bus. I was not trying to launch into repeated angry tirades about how someone hurt me in the past and made me feel exactly how I felt now. Rather, I just wanted to express that I could perceive my thoughts and feelings traveling down well know roads in my mind. These roads were first laid down by people and hurtful events, but over time, I allowed them to become deep, worn, well traveled grooves that would come to direct so many of my behaviors and responses to different life events.

As I began verbally processing about all of this, my therapist threw in a zinger as she always does. To paraphrase what she said to me: people and events hurt us one time, or in isolated events, but then we perpetuate that hurt long term in ourselves.

Dude, that is a painful thing to think about, to write down. But I think it is also wildly liberating. Because…it implies we are not doomed to live forever in the shadows of what was done to us. We may not have the choice about pain that is caused us, but we have agency over how long we want to suffer from that pain. That feels like gospel good news to me.

The interesting thing about the conversation was that when I think about those childhood events connected to my current feelings, there was no anger present. No blame. No pointing fingers. It was just a noticing that my anxiety and fear of what my crisis might be saying about me was the same anxiety and fear that I had felt multiple times before. The feelings were yucky, but familiar. The thought patterns surrounding them were well tracked in my mind and I knew every bump and curve along their paths. I used to be angry when I made connections between these feelings and old events. I knew exactly which adults in my life had caused those feelings in me when I was a child and exactly how they wronged me. And for a long, long time, I would allow that rage and resentment to rise up in me when I thought about the specific ways they had hurt me. But at some point, with my therapist’s help and alot of internal shadow work, I realized the anger was no longer serving me and it was time to transform it and forgive “those people”. Forgiveness and what I think it means are a whole other conversation, too long for today. But ultimately, I realized I was tiring of carrying around pointless anger that did nothing but keep me stuck and miserable about the apologies I was never going to get. In the meantime, here is another great offering from Caroline Myss, to chew on for a minute:

Ultimately, forgiveness is a battle between the righteousness of your ego and your capacity to transcend whatever situation you’ve experienced that has shattered the following myths that maintain that suffering is deserving of recognition, reward, or righteous vengeance:

God is on your side and only your side.

Justice should be logical and reasonable and always serve your side of the story.

God follows the code of human law – if you do only good things, bad things will never happen to you, and, of course, you never do bad things.

You are entitled to have all things work out in your favor.

Leveling the Ditches

We learn protective mechanisms and ways of being to survive hard things in childhood. Our ability to creatively defend ourselves in different ways speaks to our resiliency and drive to continue living. Many of these behaviors and responses to traumas and childhood are cemented into our personalities and foundational patterns and ways of being as we grow older. Our beliefs and involuntary reactions form what I like to think of as ruts or ditches in our minds…basically well used cognitive and emotional pathways that are carved into us and serve us, at least for a time, until they don’t. Science tells us that neurons that fire together, wire together. Our brains try to be efficient and from what I’ve read, especially in relation to addiction science, create neural pathways that strengthen the more that neurons in those pathways fire.

Those “ditches” in our minds are really helpful because they help with memory, and habit, and doing similar behaviors without having to relearn them over and over or to require constant thinking about what we’re doing all the time. However, they can become maladaptive, especially when we are adults and are interacting with life using the same thinking and behaviors that we utilized when we were younger. When we are children, the ditches are safe places to hide in, low places that can sometimes shelter us from chaos or mayhem around us. They can protect us from absolutely being broken in spirit by hurtful people or unthinkable events. But when we’re older, the ditches can become deep ravines we repeatedly fall into that hinder our forward progress. They may still be places we can hide in for a time, but they may also keep us hidden from good things that want to come into our lives.

Here’s a quick example of a protective “ditch” from my childhood. When I was young, probably about 9 or 10, I began experiencing really strong “sleep attacks” that seemed to hit me out of nowhere. I wouldn’t automatically fall asleep, but I would suddenly feel exhausted and overwhelmingly sleepy and it would be all I could do to stay awake. Whenever I could, I would succumb gratefully to these attacks, and sleep deeply. I experienced these sleep attacks all the way up into my early 30s. Their presence, in addition to frequent migraines and generally poor sleep at night, drove me to get a sleep study done. Initially I was diagnosed with non-cataplexic narcolepsy, with the diagnosis eventually being changed by a sleep neurologist to “an idiopathic sleep disorder.” Basically, I had an abnormal sleep study and was not getting restorative sleep. This was likely contributing to my sleep attacks during the day, but the cause of my abnormal study was unclear.

Long story short…not long after I had this sleep study done, I really got serious about personal healing and self development. I went through a major faith deconstruction and then gradually started reconstructing it, I stopped believing that I had multiple mental health disorders as numerous healthcare providers had convinced me over the previous decade, I found the therapist who really knew how to listen, and I started questioning my entire belief system about…well…everything. And wouldn’t you know….the constant migraines and sleep attacks just completely went away on their own. As I look back on the sleep attacks, I can now clearly see that they were a defense mechanism for me when I was a child. When I was confronted with emotions or events that were too big and overwhelming for me to handle, my body would put me to sleep. Maybe a little like dissociation. And when I would wake up, I would feel like I could move on from whatever had happened. Once I really started doing the deep introspective shadow work into myself, and started learning how to transform my pain and fears, I no longer needed to be “rescued” by sleep. That ditch was no longer needed, no longer serving me; it was eventually abandoned and filled in as my mind found new, healthier paths for which to navigate life.

My Ultimate Point in this Post?

At some point, it is time for us to start leveling the ditches. Eventually, we need to start filling them up so they can no longer serve as our familiar, comfortable, “automatic” pathways. It is time to start carving out new neural pathways and thought patterns in our brains and minds that actually serve us now that we are grownups. This isn’t an easy task, and it requires us to take on radical responsibility for ourselves and our lives, but as far as I can tell, it is absolutely worth it.

You know that saying attributed to Paul the Apostle in the New Testament? “When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.” 1 Corinthians 13:11, NLT. When I was younger, I would read this verse and feel like Paul was dissing childhood a bit. But no…he was saying that the way we thought and approached life as a child served us then, but now it’s time to rework all of that and use the reasoning abilities we have as adults to approach the lives we are living now.

I suspect that over time many of these feeling and memory ditches in my mind may become more and more shallow, until eventually, I no longer associate them with “events” or “people”. At least, I hope. They will just be small dips in the road that I encounter every so often, where I recognize a “feeling” that I’ve had before. But instead of falling into a deep ditch where I get stuck in old stories and what people did to me, I can just feel the feeling, let it pass, and keep moving on.

Final Thoughts

Turns out, I was not ever really upset about Pfizer and Ventavia. Not surprising. It was the “thing behind the thing” that I was upset by. Thoughts about a situation with COVID and vaccines dredged up similar feelings that I knew very well, feelings that were ultimately tied to core wounds and beliefs about myself. As I talked to my therapist about all this, I was able to move through those feelings pretty quickly and gain resolution so much faster than I ever used to be able to. What really excited me about the process, though, and showed me I’m actually making some good progress? I didn’t have to go back and get angry at anyone or anything that helped contribute to my core wounds and fears, and I was able to recognize that I didn’t even have to be angry at Pfizer and Ventavia even though it was news about them that appeared to undo me for a few hours.

All I had to do was sit quietly, talk through my feelings and find their origin, question whether my beliefs about them were true or not, decide that what I was believing about myself in the moment was not true, and then move forward, choosing to believe better about myself. In the matter of the one half hour long chat with my therapist, that particular fear ditch got filled in and leveled out just a little bit more.

To Myself On My 45th Birthday…

March 19, 2025 ~ juliemonroe1980 ~ Leave a comment

This is a post I started a few years ago, and each birthday I am adding a new insight that I learned that year or some idea that helped carry me through.

A random assortment of things that I’ve picked up over ~~38 39~~ 40 ~~41 42~~ 4~~3-44-~~ 45 years, from people, books, and my own experience. These are my rules to live by

1. Kierkegaard was right….life is a beautiful mystery meant to be lived and experienced and played and danced, not a problem that needs to be solved.

2. You can’t choose who you love; you either do or you don’t, and you are free to love whomever even if they don’t love you back. And you can be OK with being loved back or not being loved back.

3. It is never too late to stop, turn around, and go in the other direction.

4. Where you live doesn’t matter, and where you live doesn’t bring happiness. You can be just as happy in a little house in nowheresville as you can be in a big house in a happening place.

5. How other people treat you has little to do with you. They are dealing with their stories about you. Likewise, when you have a problem with someone else, it is really a problem within yourself. You are projecting your own baggage onto other people.

6. Eat less. Eat unadulterated food as much as possible. Plants. You’ll just feel better.

7. Try to never make decisions rooted in fear, guilt, or shame. Choose what you want in your heart and stand by your decision.

8. God isn’t angry. He/she was never angry.

9. You don’t have any problems right now. Your “problems” are either in the future or the past, and those are just illusions.

10. Do whatever necessary to protect your sleep rhythms. It heals you.

11. Don’t forgive people to make them feel better. Do it simply to liberate yourself.

12. Cut yourself some slack when parenting. The things that scarred you are not the same things that will scar your children. Stop trying to extrapolate how every one of your mistakes will ruin your kids’ lives.

13. Two glasses of wine in one sitting is enough.

14. Sometimes radical self-care looks like complete irresponsibility in the eyes of others. Just carry on. You know what you need.

15. Pay attention to your dreams; they can tell you alot about yourself, and sometimes offer glimpses into the future.

16. Let your children be your teachers: they reflect back to you who you are.

17. Welcome whoever life brings your way, but intentionally choose who you do relationship with.

18. Give away most of your stuff. Only keep what brings you joy.

19. Don’t wait for the perfect temperature; go outside and play anyway.

20. You can do more than you think you can; it’s all really just a mind game.

21. Your parents did the best they could with what they knew at the time. Generally.

22. Family is not always biological. They are sometimes found in the most unexpected people.

23. Find what you’re really passionate about and pursue it with abandon.

24. It is possible to find at least one commonality with every single person you meet.

25. Jesus was totally right when he said to find yourself you must first lose yourself.

26. Working in the hospital can freak you out. Healthy people get sick. Get the flu shot.

27. Cheese and corn syrup are in literally everything. Read the labels.

28. Sometimes you need to plan diligently, deliberately. And sometimes you need to be bat-shit crazy impulsive.

29. Community is important, whatever that looks like for you.

30. Sometimes the scariest option is the absolute best option.

31. Just buy the hammock.

32. Don’t avoid doing what you really want to do just because no one is there to do it with you.

33. Live your questions; don’t demand answers for everything.

34. Surround yourself with people of all ages. Babies and the very old usually have the most sense.

35. Don’t hit. Ever. It won’t bring the results you want.

36. Don’t punish yourself for making a bad mistake by living with that mistake forever.

37. People will exploit you only as far as you will tolerate their behavior.

38. There is enough.

39. Everything belongs.

40. Sit with a dying person, and really SEE them. It might be the most meaningful thing you ever do, and it might be the only time they’ve ever really been seen for who they are and not what they do.

41. The obstacle is the path, and the Gospel is not the ability to avoid pain; it is the grace and mercy we are given to be able to hold pain, both in ourselves and for others, without being destroyed by it.

42. Pursue your authentic self with relentless abandon and don’t be afraid of the unknowingness.

43. Stop putting other people on pedestals above you. Climb up on your own pedestal and be damn proud of it.

44. The pain is there to show you something, to teach you something. It is a gift to save you from endless suffering if you can be brave enough to let it be your teacher.

45. Stuff that happens to me and around me are just events. It’s what I believe about the events that determine my reality and my feelings about them. If I believe the Universe is benevolent, I will only see and experience a benevolent Universe. If I believe the Universe is against me, that is the Universe I will experience.

Bass Notes, Resonance, and Additive Relationship

January 29, 2022 ~ juliemonroe1980 ~ Leave a comment

One of my best friends is a bass player, of both the bass guitar and upright bass varieties. Watching him play is amazing, and there is nothing like feeling a good deep note vibrate away from the instrument and right through your body.

I’m a very amateur musician and don’t quite have the language and vocabulary to speak all that intelligently about music, but I have always believed that bass notes are what ground it….they keep it from being too superficial and safe from flying off into the unicorn land of pretty melodies that sound nice but lack real substance. Rob Bell, one of my other best friends (who I’ve never actually met in person or ever talked to and in fact he has no clue that I even exist) frequently talks about many things/people/etc having too much treble and not enough bass. The first time I heard him use this analogy on his podcast, I loved it and now I frequently reference it. So many things in life aren’t well rooted in anything, aren’t grounded, lack wisdom, are unbalanced, or are a mile wide and inch deep, as the saying goes. Bass is essential; like the deep roots of a great old tree, it holds us steady and firm.

A couple of months ago I was listening to my friend jam with some other musicians in an informal setting…him on his upright, a saxophonist, and a drummer. They didn’t seem to have a plan in place when they started to play, and the saxophonist took the lead, and then the drummer and my friend followed on their instruments. The impromput jazz that resulted for the next 45 minutes was mesmerizing. As someone who has played piano since I was nine, and led my church congregation in hymns on the piano for 5 years as a young adult, I had never spontaneously jammed with anyone. Most of the time, I’m one of those people who has to be told what key we’re playing in, and I’m not great at improvisation. So, I was amazed when this little group of musicians started playing jazz and there was no discussion ahead of time of what key was going to be played, or what direction the music was going to take.

Later that evening, after the show was over, I asked me friend how he knew what key to play in, when it was the saxophonist who took the lead but never specified this detail. My friend told me it was hard to explain, but that when they started playing, they would just kind of “find each other”, and thus, land on the same key. My heart broke wide open when I heard him say that, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. People finding each other and the right key on instruments by listening and being sensitive and paying attention to each other. Which then led me to thinking about moments when people will meet each other at just the right time, in just the right place, sometimes completely unexpectedly. Or how people might pass by each other in life for a while, as acquaitances or friends, but then something happens that interwines you at some deep level and you know that you and that person are going to somehow be bonded forever. Which led me to thinking about standing waves and resonance and how sometimes magic happens out of nowhere with people…and there’s no real explanation for any of it, and all that is left is it to just be grateful that it happened and receive the lessons and gifts it has brought with its arrival.

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So, super quick physics lesson. On standing waves. Don’t groan….there’s a reason I’m bringing this up, and I think it will help better illustrate a point I want to make later, which is basically the crux of this whole blog post.

A standing wave occurs when two waves going the opposite direction, that have the same frequency, superimpose on top of each other through interference. They just line up and fit each other perfectly. The end result is that they either completely cancel each other out, or they add to each other. When this happens, it oftens creates an illusion that the wave is standing still, which is where “standing wave” comes from. While you may not off hand recognize what I’m talking about, you’ve experienced a standing wave when you pluck a guitar string. If you want to geek out a bit and really understand the point, watch this video:

We often use the phrase “I resonate with that” or “I resonate with that person”, meaning that we ‘get’ or feel like we fundamentally connect with “that person”, or what was just said. Something about whatever we resonated with feels true to us at more of a core level….our frequency of being seems to match up with the frequency that that person or thought is operating from.

Finding resonance, especially with people, is kind of magical, and it feels like, at least to me, that in those moments I’m a little more connected with everything outside of me and I feel a little less alone in the world. Sometimes, it is so strong that it feels like life is standing still, just like those standing waves. It is such a good thing to feel understood, and to think that, at least to a certain point, you really understand another person in a meaningful way. When you meet someone who plays a bass note, figuratively speaking, that you’re also playing….when your values, or goals, or things that bring you deep joy, or even life pain, match up with that person and you feel “okay-er” because now you know you’re not out alone by yourself in the universe… when you’re not the only one playing that particular bass note.

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Photo credit: Me, requisite blog photo eye candy

My understanding of relationships, especially romantic relationships, has evolved significantly over the last twenty years. For much of my life, although I don’t think I always consciously knew how strongly I believed it, I thought that a big factor in women reaching their full potential and happiness was to find partnership and contentment in relationship with a man. But, because of my religious background, this understanding was pretty skewed. Eve screwed up in the garden, which pretty much tainted the rest of female-dom, and it was now our job to redeem ourselves by becoming Proverbs 31 women, raising perfect children, and supporting our men. I’ve written about this before, but in churches I was a part of, there was definitely a sense of lower class citizenship if women were unmarried, and if, God forbid, you got divorced, you fell to a negative status, even below that of spinsters or not-yet married virgins who hadn’t landed a man yet. Yes, a little hyperbole and snark here, but hopefully you get my point.

After I got married and had been married for quite a number of years, my understanding of husband/wife relationships shifted…away from the idea of the wife needing to submit and be a helpmeet ( “Ugh, I despise that concept now”) to her husband who was supposedly appointed by God to be the head of household. I moved to more of a complementary mindset that was being propogated by slightly more progressive Christians….basically saying that men and women bring their own strengths to the relationships and create a “whole” by the uniqueness that they each contribute. Thus, the marriage becomes complete by the two parts brought to it. I am not intending to jump into theology much here, and I clearly do not hold to traditional marriage concepts in many ways, or think that marriage or committed relationships are only for men with women. I’m bringing this up simply as a foundation for a later point.

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Photo credit: Me, more requisite eye candy. Also, squirrels are awesome.

I definitely grew up with a sense that I was not fundamentally OK, and I have been working my way out of this state of being since I was a child. I remember, from the age of about 4/5 to around 11, I would be doing normal life things and suddenly an invisible energy would come over me and kind of paralyze me for a minute, and I would get this horrible, uncomfortable sense that I didn’t belong….that things were not right in the world….that I wasn’t OK for being here. I have no clue what triggered these experiences, other than that they usually happened when I was alone. I also don’t know what eventually made them stop coming, but it was definitely good riddance. Each time I experienced that energy, I would literally want to crawl out of my skin. Next to panic attacks, they were some of the worst things I’ve ever exprienced in life. Thankfully, they typically only lasted about 30 seconds to a minute at a time.

For so many other reasons, which I’ve probably blogged about ad nauseum in the past, I grew up so wicked insecure and untrusting of myself. I always needed external validation to feel OK, I needed an outside committee to help me make any major decisions, and I clung so tightly to rigid rule-based paradigms because, while I hated being a rule-follower, doing so made me feel safe.

These insecurities naturally extended out to my relationships with people. When you don’t feel like you’re inherently good and worthy and deserving, you don’t particularly want to be around people but at the same time you absolutely want and need to be around people so that maybe some of them will make you feel OK. Or, you search like crazy for the person who will fill the gaps in you, or complete you. And then, when you try and try and try to get valiation you need, and people won’t offer it to you for whatever reason, or you finally realize that outside validation isn’t actually as satisfying and fulfilling as what you once thought…it can all feel like a hopeless, damn mess.

I felt like a hopeless damn mess for the first 30 years of my life.

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A good friend of mine recently reminded me of a Shel Silverstein book I first read years ago and then forgot about. When I reread the story this time, it hit me hard, and I finally “got” it in a way that I never had before. As a prelude to that book, watch this video on another of his books first.

If you skipped over the vidoe, take the time to watch it. It’s clearly dramatized for kids, but it is brilliant. The incomplete circle is constantly searching for it’s missing piece, only to be discouraged or rejected. And then, finally, it finds a missing piece that fits it perfectly, and actually want to fit it, and they end up combining, thinking that at long last, they had reached fullfillment and that they were both now complete and OK. But, as it turned out, this sense of finding completeness in each other, and relying on that other person to HAVE to be there in order to be complete, was stifling. And the incomplete circle ended up discarding something that actually was probably not a bad thing for him simply because too much was put on that piece to carry and be responsible for.

But then!!!!!! Silverstein’s brilliant message comes across in this next book, the one my friend reminded me of. In this case, it is from the perspective of the missing piece, not the incomplete circle.

OH my GOD I love this story so much. It really resonates me with me. (See what I did there?). Starting with the desperate search to find the piece that would complete me, then finding what I thought was that peice when I got married only to discover that my missing piece didn’t want to grow with me and DID NOT like the directions I was growing….to the parts about feeling so completely stuck and incapable of movement…..to meeting a handful of people who were complete in themselves and encouraged me that I could be, too…..all the way to me finally getting brave, flopping over a couple of times, and starting to wear off the hurt, sharp edges of myself…..and beginning to learn to feel more OK in myself, a complete circle on my own.

OK, now I want to try to bring all of these ideas full circle (see, I did it again. :D) and tie in what it means to be complete, and experience resonance with someone, but in an additive and not subtractive way.

Like I talked about earlier, finding deep resonance with a person can be magical, and it can definitely make the universe feel a little more personal, a little more connected. But one thing I know of myself is that it can be easy to grasp hard on to that resonance…to be like, “Look! I found my missing piece! Don’t you see this resonance we have?!” And there’s nothing wrong with finding resonance and connecting deeply with someone. But where we, (I) can get into trouble is when we see that resonance as a source of validation that we are fundamentally OK, or when we start to lose ourselves in that resonance permanently.

Standing waves have two types of points called nodes and antinodes. Nodes are where the passing waves intefere with each other in a way that they cancel each other out. Antinodes are the places where the two waves create constructive interference, resulting in an increase of amplitude….they become additive together to what they were individually. I really like nodes/antinodes as a metaphor for what can happen when we are in a deep, bonded relationship with someone. If we lose ourselves in the relationship, or think that it completes us, then there is the potential to completely cancel out any of the power and good things that come from the relationship. But, if you can stay in the relationship in such a way that you recognize you are complete and the other person is complete and there is no sense of grasping, then your energies can combine in a beneficial and healthy way.

I hope I’m making a little sense. This all makes sense it my head, but it’s hard to get out into words.

Photo credit: Me. Even more requisite eye candy.

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I had a conversation a few weeks ago with my therapist about some of these ideas I’m writing about here, especially Silverstein’s books. I told her that after rereading the Big O story that my friend reminded me about, I was simultaneously both in love with it and also extremely uncomfortable. I explained that the idea of rolling along through life BY someone, but never actually physically or deeply connected as the story implies, felt so paralyzingly lonely to me. Parallel play, with two people in their own little boxes/worlds, is all I could envision from the story. I don’t want to be codependent with anyone, but strong, deep, safe, trusting, meaningful connection is so very important to me.

Right there on the spot, my therapist came up with a metaphor that helped me tremendously. I value her opinion so much because at age 70, she has lived an abundant life, is a freaking badass, and I want to be just like her when I grow up. She explained that a healthy relationship with someone in who you find resonance, is like a set of train tracks that merge together for a bit, but then split back apart to run parallel to each other, only to merge together again. It’s a constant coming together and moving apart

My therapist’s metaphor and helpful words were the bass note I needed. Being whole and complete isn’t about ultra-indepenence or never committing and connecting intimately with another person. And resonating with someone on a deep and meaningful level isn’t about merging together so tightly forever that you completely lose yourself in each other.

Real love….real, authentic, meaningful relationship is about having the freedom to come together and move apart without fear of grasping or being rejected….without the NEED to have someone with you every moment so that you’ll feel validated, but WANTING that person there often because you see their presence in your life ( and vice versa) as additive and not complementary. And beyond all of that, real love, even with someone whom you resonate deeply with, doesn’t grab and cling and despair when one of you wants to leave the relationship….because being complete in yourself means knowing that the lack of that other person may be sad and you may grieve hard, but it’s not going to invalidate you as a person, or make you any less, or break you. I also think, as I’ve mentioned in other blog posts….when you bond strongly with someone in a healthy, good way that is additive to both of your lives, you’re never truly going to lose that person….you will always be connected in some way, and the love will never just go away.

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Yep, feeling these things deeply today. None of this comes easy. It’s not like you can just wake up one day and say, “Well, hey! I feel super complete in myself and I will no longer strive to find my missing piece, and if I meet someone who resonates strongly with me I promise to never grasp or cling!” So much of this involves learning about the attachment styles that formed you when you were growing up, and rerouting your neural grooves in you brain so that you can start operating out of new belief patterns. It involves allowing yourself to get really uncomfortable for a while, facing your feelings and biggest fears.

I’m not a Big O yet. I don’t roll smoothly along next to people. I still get stuck sometimes and do more of an awkward flip-flop motion than cruising breezily along. But these big bass note lessons have been working their way into me over the past many years, and they’re finally starting to take.

May we all know that we are good and worthy and complete, just as we are. May we be able to “find” our way to the people that we can resonate deeply with. And may we all learn to love well, and be loved well.