Tomorrow will mark three months since I have posted anything to this website.Â
Ironically, this is par for the course with me – if you have followed me and my writing here over the last five years, my little hiatus probably wasn’t surprising.
All the same, here I am, back and ready to share what happened and what I have been learning as I continue to heal my childhood wounds and learn to live with Complex PTSD.
Here is a quick walk through my summer …
June
In June of this year there was a huge dynamic shift in a relationship that is very important to me. For the first time in my life, I communicated boundaries and I said out loud that my feelings matter. My boundary has not been received well and the resulting fall out has filled me with grief as I work to accept this new normal.
The magnitude of this shift activated some of my protective responses and I began to withdraw and go silent as I processed everything. My go-to is freeze/avoidance – countering these responses takes everything out of me, and this experience was no different.
July
It took 2.5 years to breach my family’s defenses but it got through all the same and for the month of July we were all sick with COVID. Thankfully for us it was like a cold and no one needed medical aid outside of our home, but it was still rough all the same. My husband and I both spent the whole month symptomatic and the fatigue that weighed on us lasted weeks afterward.
Simultaneously I began a Certified Peer Support Specialist training class that I applied and was accepted into months earlier. This class ended in August and I will be taking my certification exam later this month – stay turned!
August
I decided to intentionally take a break from online work. Aside from the occasional post here and there to my Instagram, I took the majority of the month off to focus on my family and on myself. I spend most of my time doing the work to heal my childhood wounds: reflecting, processing, feeling, and redirecting – I felt it was time to prioritize living the work and enjoying the fruits of my labor.
We spent the month of August attending local festivals, movie nights, visiting the lake, meals out, and visiting family. We did our best to come together as a family before school started …
Present Day
For the last two years I have been homeschooling my daughter.
This year she is going in-person as her fierce 2nd grader Self. She just started classes and we are figuring out and settling into a new schedule. It’s nutso how many of my own childhood insecurities and fears are surfacing that I need to navigate and manage. And how many anxieties I have simply living in today’s world sending my child to school. A story for another time.
So What Am I Doing Now?
It’s so weird to be home, typing this, in a quiet house; my little one in school and my hubby off to work. But what am I doing with myself these days? Well, a lot of the same, but also a couple new things:
- I drop off and pick up my kiddo from school each day, I try my hardest to help my hubby around the house, and I still work part time as a delivery driver.
- I am getting better at self-love which is helping me be better at self-care.
- I am actively sharing my daily journey on Instagram.
- I facilitate weekly Survivor’s Circle Peer Support Groups for adult survivors of trauma and abuse living with Complex PTSD
- I provide 1:1 peer support to survivors looking for company on this journey and some extra support from time to time.
Living the Healing
Ultimately I am living the healing that I am doing. I am learning to embrace and accept life in all of its moments of joy and its moments of challenge. I am building trust in myself and I am closing the gap between the truth that I know in my head, and the truth that I feel in my body.
I am learning and feeling what it means to embody the work that I am doing and embracing my worth and my authenticity without apology, shame, or guilt. Not easy tasks by any means, yet some of the most empowering work I have ever done for myself.
On goes the journey
~Shanon