Notes Along the Way
A Practical Guide to Deciding When to Apologize
There is a metric ton of privilege in this approach. I'm an educated, well-off, heterosexual, white ciswoman living in the southeastern part of the United States; I have several runways worth of room to be ridiculous.
How Do You Determine What You Want in Life?
Knowing what you want provides direction.
It seems simplistic. In a world that pushes us always to be moving, it’s not simple. When we’re always on the go, rushing to do this or fix that, we may act intentionally in the short term and find ourselves on the eastbound train to California.
Welcome to Zombieville. Where We Survive while Internally Frozen.
I recently spent four frozen days in the Deep South.
The early fall temperatures were actually lovely. Highs in the low 80s and lows in the high 50s. Ideal enough for me, I popped open many of my windows.
Yet, I found myself frozen in a chair, playing Suduku and listening to Michelle Sagara’s [Chronicles of Elantra](https://michellesagara.com/series/chronicles_of_elantra/) series, unable to travel the five feet into my office to work on the stuff that needed to get done.
The Authenticity Trap
In a way, it’s individualism in its highest form. Do whatever you want, however you want, whenever you want to do it.
Focusing on making this “true-core” something the world can see dismisses the historic efforts folks have made to survive within the cultural context they were living through, ignores the reality of unwritten social contracts, and neglects the costs of violating those contracts. It’s the ultimate “be yourself” message without consideration for the consequences of being yourself.
Failing Calculus Saved My Life
For me, perfection falls into the category of absolute words. Absolute words, for me, have one precise, immutable meaning…
There Is No One True Way
Try to dig your way out of your mess with just one or two of them, and you’ll find yourself back at this place again because you’re not just the stories you tell, your brain, your body, or your emotions.
See and honor the complexity of your human system, from all of the microbiomes we have in our gut to how we interact with the world.
Why Does Reliance On Our Humor, Smarts, Or Usefulness Complicate Our Lives So Much?
Then come the inevitable moments where we aren’t funny, smart, or useful, and we experience the folks we’re with ignoring or attacking what we’re experiencing. Not only do these moments suck green fuzzy rocks, but they also reinforce our belief that only the funny, smart, or useful parts those parts will be welcome.
Tackling the Armor Takes Intention
Spending years in a defense-focused survival mode often creates a hard outer shell around our expectations for how we need to show up in the world to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe.
Neurotraumatized
Most days, I feel like I fail at fitting neatly into most categories of I understand what it means to be human. I've been told innumerable times that my brain works differently than most folks. That "most folks" includes friends and acquaintances living with ADHD and autism.
Believe Both Sides of the But
From a simple logic perspective, ‘but’ and ‘and’ get coded the same way. The statement to the right and the statement to the left of the conjunctive word have to be true for the statement to be true.
The Quiet Traumas
My path toward recognition and acceptance of my own developmental trauma took much longer to surface. The oppressive, regimented, quiet nature of my childhood doesn’t fit the common narrative for childhood trauma.
Benefits of Hiring a Reclaimation Coach
You're hiring a professional friend. Someone you meet with regularly who has spent their time in hard places and walked their path out…
Intentions Underpinning the Life Support Paradigm
The Life Support Paradigm is explained and defined as broadly as possible. Each of us comes to trying to understand our lives so we can shift our approach and make what we experience more in line with the life we want to have differently.
Why I Do Family of Origin Work
And for a lot of years, and through a lot of programs. I focused on having compassion for everybody but myself. Whether it was the church or therapy, the focus was figuring out how to have some compassion for my mother.
Support Is Being Helpful without Helping
*I’m being left behind again,* a resigned inner voice noted as the group I visited Teotihuacan with moved forward much faster than I could manage. My hips ached, my breathing wasn’t sucking enough air, and the sun sapped my energy. Still, I plodded along behind, knowing movement, even slowly, was the only way…
Yay, There’s the Life Support Paradigm! Now What?
When we define life support as doing the things necessary to live the life we want, we establish an intention for what we want to achieve with the tasks under the life support umbrella. The Life Support Paradigm serves as a map, identifying possibilities of where we might spend some time and attention figuring out how to best support ourselves.
The Life Support Paradigm
Having kicked self-care to the curb in my last post, today I’m going to expand on just what Life Support is by describing the Life Support Paradigm.
Kick Self-Care to the Curb and Embrace Life Support
The word self-care is bullshit. Straight up, there was no other way to say it, but it’s just a dumb way to identify and talk about things. Even the people championing the ideas and concepts behind self-care find the word too small, too narrow, or too misunderstood.