another chapter in this story
I’ve gone on a spiral walk over the years through many dimensions of healing-
A deep layer of pain and dysregulation
I was an edgy young mother- living in a big stucco house in a subdivision where all of the earth had been scraped over and covered in concrete
Sleeping poorly- no real grasp of nutrition even though i thought i did, for i had been working at vegan/raw restaurants (happy omnivore now eating back yard duck eggs and grass fed butter everyday)
I raged in my own way-
Front yard fruit trees and cloth diaper clothesline-
A rat-attracting compost pile in the back yard- a tiny veggie patch.
Anxious -seeking relief.
Plants come through-
I kept to the wilds of the suburbs
I found elderberry and turkey tail
And cleavers and
When we were outside near the creek-
In the sliver of wild where the native oak grew and the rabbits hopped
Where the earth was free of concrete and chain stores
I felt peaceful
Even joyful
I watched my children play with sticks and water
And my life was right.
in this post i shared a little about my life post divorce–
I used to make salads for money at a local farm to fork pub and brewery. I was a produce buyer from the local farmers. I thought i was doing important work, a missionary of the organic farm and sustainable food. I had to value myself because i was not particularly valued as a kitchen employee. I was replaceable. I had failed as a farmer previous to this. I called myself Polly Compost because i thought myself a suburban anarchist with a compost pile. I admired the drifters that caught freight trains near my home. They seemed untamed and free to me.
i’ve been led by the mushrooms in my dreams. i have seen the place, and a greener world. i love you.
i’ve been waiting for you.
I’ll follow you anywhere–
another wave of healing enters my body and soul- i am higher than i’ve ever been and it’s because i’m in love. i’m in love so hard that all i can feel is joy, i feel blessed, i feel like a cosmic beam of great fortune has honed in on me and i’m soaring over mountains. of course, i’m talking about Chris. my love. my forest prince. my nature nerd. my home. my starman with a closet full of flannel and a mandolin. how could someone so divine choose me? it was a high that took about 3 years to simmer into the more mellow, easy, and joyful devotion we have now. i’ll share the link from when we went on a mushroom hunt and NO HYPERBOLE fell into instant mad love.
how could anything be other than perfect now that we’re together? (<—-link to a blog post of when my life magically transformed over night.) we build our lives in leaps and bounds. we move into together in weeks, i’m finally leaving the valley and it’s suburbs for the forested foothills of my home town. we score a micro cabin near the old mill site that’s 100 years old for rent. we start a garden. there’s a giant cherry tree in the back yard that just inundates us with fruit. we make jelly and wine. we mushroom hunt all year round. we work odd jobs, he as a server and me as a barista in the cutest tiny town coffee shop that i can walk to. he gets promoted wherever he goes and increases his earning power and skill set., becoming a waste water technician and then later a certified arborist. i travel and teach at groovy gatherings what i’ve learned about life and healing and land a solid job as a garden teacher, in a school garden that i can walk to , on a hill above a blueberry farm, surrounded by woods. i’m utterly enchanted. chris and my sons bond well and all of my wildest dreams have come true. the despair, the depression, the anxiety, have lifted. for now.
Even before the cherry started blooming you were out there in the garden, getting ready for our homegrown summer dinners canned tomatoes in the winter sorta dreams. 🙏– from my journal.
I fell so in love- which led to new baby dreams after unconsciously suffering during the pregnancy and infancy of my two oldest children. (teen mom, married later into Mormonism and quickly got pregnant again.)
Pregnancy stirred up more of what was hidden- an inability to sit with discomfort- the mind and body spiraling into stress, despair, anxiety, insomnia, and depression.
I did not know what was happening to me. I did not know what was wrong with me. I felt broken.
I talked to counselors and therapists and even lined up another psychiatrist because i felt like i was in an emergency state, and was even prescribed an ssri and a benzodiazepine. I never took any of those medications. They still sit in my bathroom cabinet, shoved all the way in the back in a crumpled pharmacy bag.
It didn’t sit right with my body and soul. It wasn’t until after my pregnancy and miraculous joyful birth and postpartum period that i learned about CPTSD (childhood /complex post traumatic stress disorder. ) i learned about emotional flashbacks, i learned about attachment theory- i looked deeply into my early childhood and so a great deal of benign neglect- (one of 13 children entrenched in mormonism)- I remember terror at night as a tiny human, sobbing myself to sleep. (cry it out was the norm.) this is an injury to a developing nervous system. Folks will develop habits and sometimes maladaptive coping mechanisms. 15 years smoking weed (formerly) and a life time of emotional eating, i can attest. Don’t even mention the dissociation, leaving my body, and intense day dreaming. i remember having a stomach ache (anxiety) as a young human when my parents would leave me in the care of my older siblings ( no care, often violence and torturous teasing at the hand of malicious siblings)
I followed the thread of anxiety and panic all the way to my current life, and learned how to reparent myself. To watch my inner talk. To speak so kindly to myself.
To RE-regulate my body and nervous system, with a helpful 12 step called writing your fears and resentments, and then releasing them to a higher power. (anna runkle of the “crappy childhood fairy “ on youtube teaches this technique)
I read books- what happend to you? Cptsd- from surviving to thriving– by pete walker . and breaking the habit of being yourself by dr joe dispenza
….more later- thank you for sharing this space with me–
dolly xoxo
did you like reading about my journey? i have a few posts that carry the same threads for you to explore…