Losing my heart food

I think my heart is closed down.

I just came back from a dance class at the college, which felt glorious and fun. Doing fun dance steps, swaying to the beats of the music, brought me back to the olden days when dancing was nurturing for me. I practically grew up in a dance studio from the time I was four or five. My second home, is what my Mom would call it. The poor woman had to play taximom to my sister and I back and forth to the studio. I grew up with the owner’s daughter, Haley, and I have fond memories of playing with Dawn dolls and dollhouses in her room at the back of the studio.

There are some bad memories too, when I got older in high school, still dancing, but then battling body image, a tough teacher now saying curves were not good, and as a result, the beginning of an eating disorder. Some of those memories are coming back as my older body has entered the dance class among the young ones, but I don’t want those memories to override my joy.

The coincidences are overpowering right now in regards to this class. My one dance teacher was Russian and called me affectionately “Runny.” This teacher at the college is also Russian. When I heard her call my name the same way, mixed feelings swept through me.

Old loves and lost joy are the themes coming up for me now. I used to adore writing and took every class at the college I could. My first writing class I met one of my best friends and felt a delicious belonging I hadn’t felt for some time. I am now taking a class in play and screenwriting, which brings me back to my acting days, more times of belonging and happiness.

I haven’t lost drawing, which I am grateful for. Through the years, however hard they may have been, I kept at it. Paper and pen flowing.

Ironically, I taught my Fairy Joy class this summer for the first time. I needed the class most of all. You see, I had lost my joy and closed my heart. I know this now. We are raising a very sweet and charming kid, who has lots and lots of issues from having a very tough beginning. That beginning colored her world and made it a place of hard survival and trauma. The problem is, she doesn’t differentiate between then and now. She has the same tactics: manipulation to get what she needs, lying, false accusations, splitting, triangulation, creating drama, etc. It’s way above even the normal teenage stuff. But what she shows others is a perfect young girl, so we look like the bad guys. As you can imagine, it’s been very, very hard for us to give while not feeling anger.

So, I am exhausted. I’m spent. My husband and I  meet with several therapists a week to learn how to parent her and try to undo the exhaustion, the lack of joy, and the misunderstood & uneducated comments from the outside world.

Which brings me back to my joy and the classes. What I wrote first here is the most telling. Dance was nurturing. Through trips to the studio I spent time with my Mom, who has since crossed over too early. Mom was nurturance growing up. Writing is from my soul–a gift from me to you. Drawing connects me to that little girl unaffected by the losses and pains of the world. In the process of trying to heal our little girl, we got caught up and began to live in the rollercoaster of her world–a very dark, hurting place. And much worse, those who were meant to be helpful, hurt us much more, by not witnessing us or honoring our needs. From this dark place, we forgot how to nurture ourselves. We may even have felt we didn’t deserve to be nurtured. The message we repeatedly got: Parents only give selflessly and have no needs of their own. I’ve seen this dynamic lately mirrored in my outside world by not getting what I need–the very basics. But I had forgotten the food for my soul, the very basics for my inner world’s needs–the art, the words, the movement, the mothering!

God, the Universe, my spirit helpers, brought me to these classes and gave me the coincidences. This has led me to the understanding that we can not give from an empty place. As parents we have a right to our own needs too. As healers, artists and teachers, also. We need to open our hearts again and we can only truly do that when we are fed.

(If you are needing your joy back, consider the Fairy Joy class to rediscover what feeds you. Sign-ups are happening right now.)

Moms and talking to dead people

Historically this is a tough week for me. My mom crossed over on May 5th fourteen years. It’s a day that comes around with a thud whether I acknowledge it or not. To add insult to injury (boy, I love that expression), dealing with our special needs daughter, we now have frequent family therapy sessions. And in yesterday’s session, it came up that since I am not my daughter’s biological mom, I am not her “real” mom. It was a little insensitive oops-wording from our therapist. Ouch! With Mother’s Day approaching, all these mom injuries are hitting the fan.

Last night, my head ached. This is a sure sign that someone on the other side is trying to communicate. I saw lots of owls–my mom’s favorite creature, before she showed me a weird vision. It my childhood home. We had one fancy room that was the guest living room. Technically, it was highly impractical for a home with kids and a shedding dog. The couch was white with soft fur that you wanted to touch but couldn’t. In this room, there were fancy artifacts, expensive paintings and a glass coffee table. We were not allowed to hang out here, much less sit on the couch. (Although our beagle was known on occasion to sit there when no one was home.) It was the guest living room, after all, for entertaining, but my parents never entertained in it. Ironically then, the room sat like a museum. Out of all visions my Mom could send at this time was a clear picture of the white couch.

How did this vision apply to my mothering or grieving issues?  When I told my pal Wendy this story she blurted out, “Don’t save the best for other people!” This of course, would follow my other posts here of leaving myself last often.

How much have we learned from our Moms about giving to ourselves vs. giving to others? Were there false messages along the way? Was that special couch that I couldn’t touch a symbol that I couldn’t have the special things and treatment? That was for everyone else? Was my daughter now that couch? I could see it, take care of it for the past five years, be mom, but the role of mom was reserved and belonged to others? How long was I taught this odd withholding?

The miraculous part of all of this is Mom, fourteen years later, must have done some soul-searching on the other side to have learned this lesson now, and is now anxious to impart this wisdom to her daughter as she must painfully watch as she repeats her past mistakes.

The Universe is streamlining me

The past few weeks, the Universe or God (whatever your preference or beliefs), has been streamlining and cleaning up my life. It doesn’t feel good or look good, but I am sure when it is done, it will be what is the very best. Our relationship with our daughter is going through huge upheaval from her early past coming up (frustrating because we don’t have any control over her past),  and affecting the present, but we are finding through lots of needed family therapy, the family needed the re-tuning to be a more harmonic group based on the present.

We will soon be moving to a newer and nicer place that we hope will be a better version for us. After selling our house, our first rental wasn’t the best. We lucked out with this temporary gig because we could have all our dogs, etc., and the rent was cheap, but we’ve been living with one bathroom and I got clearly the lesson was to ask for and expect more.

Today, a representative from Fairy School in the UK informed me that Fairy School, those words, were copyrighted. That fairy school is a francise of kid’s parties. Sounds good actually. If I was in the Uk, I’d probably want to attend. My school consists of psychic and very woo-woo classes, probably which, the little girls might run from screaming. So, I had to retool and rename everything Fairy Online School, which, once I get past the huge irritation and all the hours redoing the website, I realized was much more of an accurate name. I do offer, afterall, online classes, and it is an ON LINE school.

I am thinking of cutting my hair, maybe streamlining that. I think I will take the initiative so the Universe doesn’t have me catching my hair in a door or something. Sorry, cancel that. But you get the drift.

Maybe I am just being forced to be more honest with my life; more authentic and truthful of what I want and need. In those areas where I am holding on to what doesn’t belong, it seems I am getting some help eliminating, whether I like it or not.