These Hands Are Small, I know...

But They're not yours, they are my own.-Jewel

I have always hated my hands.  They are ugly!  They are wrinkly and freckly and oversized.  I have complained about them because they look like my Mother's hands, I lovingly refer to them as 'Ape Hands' and I have been hiding them since I was a little girl.

When I was young, they were actually covered...and I mean COVERED with warts!  I learned, the other day, from my friend Charles, who I went to middle and high school with, I was highly judged, laughed at and thought to be dirty because of them.  Charles loved me and my warts always, by the way!

Once, when I was 11, my gymnastics coach's five year old daughter started laughing and told me I had 80 year old lady hands!

Now, recently, I've been on a journey of self discovery and self love.  I honestly don't know how, when or why I started this (besides the fact that it's very necessary), but I do know that the influence of Jason Mraz and his joyologist friend Tricia Huffman (who I wish was my joyologist friend) might have had something to do with it, and if not, have helped me along my way.  Either way, I was thinking about my hands today and I decided that I've had a change of heart. 

I decided to focus on the positive and not judge a book by it's cover, and here's what I've come up with.

These are amazing hands!  They are a healer's hands, a midwife's hands, a nurse's hands.  They have been a child's hands, a mother's hands and a daughter's hands.  An athlete's hands, a lover's hands, and a bully's hands. 

These hands have felt much more than the large majority of other hands on this earth.  They have been the first thing to touch a silky warm newborn, gently guiding her from the safety of her mother's womb, to her first breath in this breathtaking world.  They have cradled the bodies and held the hands of lonely strangers as they take the journey from the safety of Mother Earth to their last breath in this heart breaking world.  They have stroked the hair of the man who created me as he realized he was drifting away. 

They have been broken, bruised and bloody, they have taken a beating in the process of protecting the goal for the team.  They have caught the toddler who leaned just-a-bit too far over the edge of the railing.  They have held the blood inside a man whose femoral vein ruptured...for 2.5 hours until they could find a vascular surgeon and a surgical team who could repair this vessel so this man could continue living.

All of these phalangeal facts are right off the top of my head, and if I took more time to actually think about it, I'd bet I could come up with a thousand more unbelievabilities that these hands have been a part of.

So, dispite the chewed up cuticles, the rice paper nails, the deep wrinkles, reminiscent of an 80 year old lady and dispite the fact that my skin is SOOO dry that alone, they could suck up enough moisture to relieve the pressure on a breeching dam, my hands are f*cking amazing and I love and appreciate them!

While thinking this over today, I was realizing the ease of which my hands knew exactly how to guide the baby from the nourishing placenta to the nourishing breast, that this probably isn't the first lifetime where these hands have served a midwife and scores of blissful mothers and babies well. 

This Wounded Healer's hands were chosen especially for me and given to me as a gift to be used to serve others.  They have their unique characteristics for a reason, and they are wonderful!

The Wounded Healer

When I was 27, I was in a severe state of internal emotional turmoil.  I had come to the realization that even though I was dealt an unfair hand in life, the Universe, the world, nor the powers that be owed me nothing.  I dwelled in misery, daily and in tears nightly attempting to distinguish between the basic human needs that weren't being met and the roadblocks I was building to prevent them from being met.  Desperately and daily I fought internally, trying to figure why happiness consistently evaded me.  I constantly felt raped, broken, smothered, abandoned, raw and viscerally wounded.  I had seen and experienced more than most my age.  And although my wounds were many, one in particular seemed to have painful claws pitted deep into my spirit, my being, my heart and my Self.  The time had come to face the reality of what was done to me.  The one thing, so personal, so wreched, so final, so....

My healing began online.  Reading stories of others helped me understand that not only was nothing my fault (how could it be, I was only 4), nor was I alone in my struggle for wholeness.  I came across an online community called The Wounded Healer's Journal , a safe haven for adults struggling with childhood sexual abuse.  I communed with fellow survivors (I actually dispise that term, it indicates the idea that sexual abuse could have lead to death-emotional death is one thing, but that term seems so final-I'll come up with something better) who gently taught me that the only way to not be held hostage by my wound was to face it.  I took it one step further, I told my parents, which was extremely difficult, but by standing up and speaking out, helped 3 others who are close to me take control of their own wounds inflicted by the same person; AND I decided to be proud of my scar, wearing my wound on my sleeve, talking freely about it to anyone who has an interest or a similar wound that needs attention.  It can only fester if it is kept hidden, and I had kept it hidden for way too long. I ripped off the makeshift bandage and let the fresh air and sunlight start the healing process.

OK, that was a long way to get to what I was getting at.  The Wounded Healer's Journal spoke to me so personally, that the title became my persona.  Considering I had always been in a field of caring, helping and healing, ie. EMT, doula, childbirth educator, volunteering with women having emotional trauma after abortion, working with pregnant teens, and my latest venture (at the time), nursing school.  I WAS a Wounded Healer in the flesh.  It was my name on MySpace, Facebook and many other sites where you go by a screen name.

Now, coming to terms with, and facing your personal wounds helps in the realm of guilt and the feeling of being 'damaged goods'.  However, I remained bruised and listless, not so much thinking that the Universe owed me something to make up for my injury, but rather more of a 'why me' type of feeling.  This feeling continued to manifest itself, along with other wounds I'd suffered, which were many!  I felt that the people who inflicted these wounds on me had ruined me for my intended purpose in the Universe.  How could I change the world, one person at a time when my being had been shattered into so many pieces?  If my being wasn't whole, how could I help other people put themselves back together?  Especially since I couldn't figure how to put myself back together.  What a hypocrite I'd be!

So even though I'd faced my wounds, the result was a giant increase in depression, loss of interest in everything, the development of dissociative disorder, insomnia, suicidal thoughts and a general disdain for life and everything in it.  This has been my state for several years, up until recently.  Due to this change, I no longer felt like a healer, I quit working with pregnant and laboring teens and women, stopped volunteering with the abortion trauma group, muddled through life and finished nursing school...no longer having a desire to be a nurse.  Due to the shift in Healer status, I took on the persona of a Shattered Angel (still my email address, all one word @comcast.net) beings that I was meant to be an angel here on earth to help and guide others, but had been too wounded and fragmented to fulfill my Purpose.

Wow, still haven't gotten to the point!  Recently, I have decided, due to a plethora of life circumstances, I have felt the need to find a way to recede from negativity and begin uplifting other souls again.  I started a facebook page called Eye Thoughts to help spread positive thinking, and learned that I needed to own this page, looking daily for positive quotes and motivational tidbits, as much as I thought others might need positive things in their daily Facebook news feed.

Tonight, while looking for quotes for Eye Thoughts, I was typing in my Google search box which gives you ideas for what you might be looking for according to what you type.  Out of the corner of my eye, at the bottom of the list that Google gave me was 'Wounded Healer'.  I wasn't doing much else other than building my list of motivational quotes and tidbits, so I thought, 'What the hell, it will probably take me to the Wounded Healer's Journal, and clicked on it.

I found this: http://www.realitysandwich.com/wounded_healer

It seems that a Wounded Healer is an archetype that was described by Carl Jung a long time ago.  Not only that, it was like reading about myself.  I sat here speechless with my hand over my open mouth the entire time I read this article...and it is a LONG article!

This article is like something that was written for me, by the Universe Herself, and hidden in the depts of the interweb just waiting to be excavated and used as a handbook for the Shattered Angel to renew herself and be the truest form of a Wounded Healer.

I intended for this blog entry to tell all about this article, but it didn't turn out that way.  This entry is ridiculously long, but I am still overwhelmed by the personal impact of this article on me.  This feels like a handbook to my spirit!  This may be the answer I've looked for for as long as I can remember!

If you have the time, please indulge yourself in the article, but be warned...It may not have the psychological impact that it had on me, it may fly right over your head if you are not soul searching at this time.  It is a very deep, spiritual (not biblical-spiritual, rather Universal-spiritual) read very sagelike, shamanic wisdom.  Beings that it's 1am, I'm going to end this blog here.  In the morning, I am going to re-read this article and I will write my review, according to a true Wounded Healer, as I meant for this blog to be!

And tonight, having read this and gained an amazing inner peace and knowledge of my personal oneness with both myself and the Universe, dispite my insomnia and my sleep anxiety....I will sleep peacefully as a whole being, something I have not done in many, many years.

Crossroads

I am at a crossroads.  I am struggling to overcome the stronghold that depression, ADD, dissociative disorder, anger, regret and negativity have on me.  I'm trying to learn to make my own happiness.  Some days, I am able to remain positive, uplifting and healing to both myself and others.  Other days (like yesterday) I fight my tears every second.

Why?  Why are some days so much easier than others?  Why am I thoroughly motivated for change on some days and don't want to get out of bed on others?  Where is the answer?  Does it lie in my own mind, my own psyche?  Or do I need the medications, the self help books, and the nutritional supplements?

My body and mind have been through hell.  This time last year, I was heavily medicated with a heavy dose of Prozac, Xanax and Adderall so I could psychologically function, and also was on a nice dosage of oxycontin and percocet daily so I could function physically after my medical misadventure which left me in gripping amounts of physical pain.  Unfortunately, even with all of this, I suffered from severe sleep anxiety and self medicated with another 40mg (yes, an entire 40mg EVERY night) of percocet, just to numb myself enough to catch a few hours of sleep.

I will tell you, none of that worked.  Withdrawal from the oxycontin was horrendous.  But I worked with my doctor and did it.  However, I was still on all of the rest of the drugs.  Even with the Adderall, I was a zombie throughout the day due to the narcotic induced sleep routine I had made for myself.

My life was falling apart.  I lost my job, my husband hated me, I hated me, and some very ugly thoughts ran through my head daily.  I had no money, I had no friends, I had no job, and my home life was nothing short of a joke.  Oh yeah, and with no job came no health insurance, and with no health insurance and no money, the ability to maintain my pharmaceutical lifeline made life even more overwhelming.

Throughout the next few months, I contemplated, I planned, I skated through.  I lied, I blamed, I self medicated, I was miserable.  I wanted so desperately to have some semblance of normal, to feel human again, to be the person I once was.

I worked diligently to stop self medicating with the percocet, even for sleep.  I got away for a few weekends to South Carolina for Midwifery workshops (which were a joke) and camped alone in the state park.  I searched, I looked, I begged.  I knew a better me was in there somewhere.  I finally, toward the end of the summer became narcotic free.  The sleep anxiety subsided somewhat, even though on a bad day, I still fidget to no end while trying to rest.  And then, I ran out of Prozac and didn't have the money to refill it.

Withdrawal from that was pretty rough too.  Note to others-you shouldn't stop taking any mind altering medication cold turkey.  Especially when you take twice the normal adult dose.  My eyes twitched, I had no sense of balance, and I forgot normal, everyday things, like how to pump gas.

Two weeks ago, I decided to make an attempt at making myself a happier person through better nutrition, positivity and having a giving spirit.  I started a page on Facebook called Eye Thoughts, where I post positive quotes, images and tidbits several times throughout the day.  If you 'Like' the Eye Thoughts page, you will get little bits of positivity in your News Feed on your Facebook page.  Right now, I have 12 people who  have 'Liked' my EyeThoughts page, all of them are on my personal friends list.

While I'd LOVE to have more people to uplift and support through this outlet, I'm realizing that I need it as much as I need to provide it.

Yesterday was a particularly bad day for me.  We are working on 'our' house (anyone who knows me will know why I put that in quotes, those who don't, I have extremely strong emotions regarding my living arrangement, but that's a blog entry for another day) and I had an EXTREMELY difficult time with that as well as everything else going on in my life right now (also another blog for another day).

I managed to sleep for about 1.5 solid hours last night, but today is a new day.  I'm feeling good, feeling positive, and I think this is a good start to my blog.  What follows will be more in depth, more thought provoking and hopefully you can learn and grow through my ups and downs in dealing with life plagued with psychological disorders-while clawing my way through toward happiness and fulfillment.