Like Words Together Reflections from the deep end of Practice.

At 2:30 I realized I needed shower and to get all my stuff together. I had a 4PM therapy appointment schedule with GM followed by 5:30 physical therapy with IW. It seemed like a tough combination but it really seemed to work well and I didn't feel too rushed. It was such a big help the AM did the driving, which was really quite a lot, but it made the whole thing go smoothly. Unfortunately my appointment with IW ended quite late, nearly 7PM (she is often running late by the time she sees her late afternoon appointments, but even still I was surprised at the time).

I remembered to talk with GM about the strange interaction with my Mom the day after my birthday. The joking, laughing about the paddle. GM just shook her head for a few moments and finally asked, "Does she really joke about that, think it's funny?"

I noted that my Mom, still within the past two years, tells a story of how I buried all of her wooden spoons after school one day because I was tired of being spanked with them. "Hah-hah, don't kids do the damnedest things?"

Of course in the past two years this whole thing, the absolutely desperation I felt as a child doing that. Crawling under the bushes surrounding the back yard, putting each one in a different place. And oh did I get it when she got home and discovered what I'd done. Funny, she always leaves that part out when she tells the story. GM noted to me that growing up not only were my feelings invalidated but the confusion that must have been caused by my Mom then joking about it all.

I was all over the place during my session. Moving from that, because talking about it felt irritating again. I also wanted to talk about my feeling the disappointment so hugely over the family trip then connecting that through to how things happened as a kid. That I would be looking forward to things, counting on them and find myself grounded over something trivial or at the mercy of Mom's decisions, especially around moving so often.

In talking about it, getting validation that this insight was valuable and that I was understandably hurt as a kid, it struck that since connecting the hurt around the disappointment to all the endless disappointments as a child I had felt better. There is far less the sensation of being minimized or unimportant. Yes, there is still disappointment, but it feels reasonable in proportion and not nagging at me in the same way anymore.

I was talking to AM about the Mom stuff while going to IW's studio, and he noted how my Mom's mental illness really makes it impossible for her to really be honest with herself, or anyone else about the past. I had noted that the rest of that day with Mom, after the incident, there was distance. I was stuck with the thought that I really didn't know what to say to her at all and she too was fairly silent. AM commented that if she gets too close to the truth she would have to admit that worse than not always being a good mother she was a downright abusive ones at times. I noted that when the truth gets too close Mom makes a joke. That's why she tells jokes about the things that still give me nightmares.

IW noted that my pain seemed more stabilized. She did what she called some fluid work before getting into my trigger points. She held her hands first on the top and bottom of my left hip, keeping one hand under the sacrum and sit bone. She eventually moved her other hand from the surface of the hip to the bottom of the top curve. It felt very tender, not awful, but intense.

Intense enough that it was difficult to just chat. I closed my eyes and tried to settle into the body. I breathed in and looked at the area that hurt, seeing the left edge of the sacrum glowing orange red, occasionally pulsing into the side of the hip and the top of the femur. I could feel the edge of the panicked feelings that showed up last month when she worked on a trigger point on the sit bone. I tried to breath through the leg, pulling in healing energy on the in breaths and exhaling out through the left hip trying to push out the panic, the hurt, move it down and out of the leg.

When IW finally worked on the trigger points there were far few than usual. This was what she had been hoping for by spending that time on the fluid/energy. The few trigger points left weren't quite as bad except for a couple around the left sit bone. She ended by doing more fluid work and cranial work as well. I felt the top of my head tingling and when I went to stand up I felt the room recede for a moment. Not dizzy, but a real spacey feeling.

I was having a some difficult reconnecting after being so focused on my breath, checking into the hip and noticing how much heavier it felt now, less tensed up. AM was a little frustrated it had taken so long, in large part because he'd been running errands in the car all day and his knee was hurting him. My spacey mind and his tired mind didn't mesh up well at first, I think it was largely my not integrating after therapy. Not that we were truly irritated or angry at all, I could just feel how we were not connecting up.

CK was just starting dinner when I got to the flat. We had lovely summer veggies with sprouted wheat pasta. It was very nice and not just because the tomatoes & zucchini came from our garden. She and I watched the first episode of True Blood after we ate, I'm interested enough to watch a couple more episodes to see how the story develops.

The books CK ordered on Sunday arrived today. I was laughing at the stack on the coffee table, Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero (a kick-ass vegan cookbook), a copy of Regular Expression Recipes, Urban Tantra by Barbara Carrellas, and Tantric Sex of Women by Christa Schulte. This combination is so apt, all it really needs is a book about Hatha Yoga and one about Zen and everything would be covered!

Bed soon, we're both tired and it has been a really busy week, especially for CK.