Your timing is always so accurate for me lol. This was a great read over morning coffee while it pours rain outside. I've been sitting here mulling over a few things for weeks. Maybe this is a great day to start!
My god, isn't it? I laughed my ass off. It's pouring rain here, too. I was going to go run steps but they're covered with slick moss so....not today. The gym, though.
Brilliant as always! My recent scare with possible breast cancer, my partner in the hospital and rehab for 39 days with transverse myelitis, and me losing my job during that time made me realize I'm not asking permission for anything anymore. It took a crisis to shove me off that cliff and while it doesn't matter who I got there, I am now there!
SO GOOD to see you over here Shelly! I am going to be moving Walkabout over here slowly but wanted to establish a presence first. I am so very glad that you are okay, albeit what you've been through is no fun. Please stay connected. Thanks!
I love your badass attitude and courage to follow your own path. I also have been following Joan McDonald for a long time. She's truly inspiring! When I was 36 I took up ballet as a hobby. That was an age when professional dancers retire. But I went full out and even performed en pointe. It's amazing what one can do when you put your mind to it. I agree that the self is often an obstacle. But I also want to mention that in people who have suffered from emotional abuse (especiallythose with Complex PTSD), the wound is often the obstacle. So it's important to note that we can't always blame ourselves for not being able to achieve certain things. Self-blame and shame is in fact detrimental to getting self-motivation.
To that, I haven't been on Substack long enough for me to share my whole story which is all over Medium (2200 articles and more) and my blog at WalkaboutSaga.com. I suffered incest as an adolescent. Was raped in the military by four different men, all of them senior officers, one of them a psychiatrist to whom I was assigned for treatment for sexual assault. It would be fair to say I know something about complex PTSD, Louisa. What I write is from the standpoint of having been through all that and I still embrace life. I still do all the things. I still keep going. What I just shared with you is a fraction of a fraction of what I've been through, not shared as a one-upsmanship move (that's just rude) but to make the larger point. If we are women, most of us have suffered sexual trauma. Some of us, a LOT of it. I'm in the latter category. The way I engage with life is because of these things. That is strictly my choice and how I choose to cope with the damage inflicted on me- it's part of why I write. I've been bankrupt, I have had multiple OCDs including forty years of eating disorders, I could go on and on and on. I have some idea of what it's like to have the holy shit beaten out of you emotionally. And I still choose life. I use those experiences to make my backbone like steel. That is my choice, and it isn't everyone's. I cannot let those experiences limit, cripple or hamstring me. We all have choices, and speaking only for myself here, I refuse to let those experiences define me. They have refined me, sculpted me and strengthened me. Yes, they did damage. And they are my stepping stones moving forward. That is one major way in how I define badass.
I also research and spend time interviewing other people with similar stories, people whose lives sound like bad Saturday afternoon B movies yet they choose joy.
To your example: when I was 68, I took up aerial silks. I had terrible CMC arthritis in both hands, and I did it anyway at 68, up until surgery on both my hands. These are choices, just as recognizing that we have the option to choose how to negotiate emotional terms with the awful things we have experienced. That is badass. Badassery isn't limited to our resumes. It is in so very many ways how we embrace the often horrific emotional insults that we as humans experience. We all do. Nobody comes out of this free and clear. However- and again, I speak only for myself, here, Louisa, those events have, every single one of them, been my greatest teachers, my greatest allies in personal growth, and in all ways, delivered compassion and empathy. Without experiencing our own pain, we are robbed of empathy. Perhaps that is pain's greatest gift- we are in community, and being in community, we can heal ourselves.
I've only been on Substack for two months, and there is no way I could possibly adequately delve into these complexities as I also write for several other pubs, am rehabbing after seven major surgeries, am starting a brand new business and my house is under major construction due to water damage and a broken HVAC system just as winter is beginning. There's a lot going on. I get to learn to dance on top of those things and make fun of them, or I allow them to drag me under. Life's worst insults have taught me out to make fun of the shit life throws at us. Compared to some of what I've been through, what's going on right now is child's play. The gift that I got is to learn how to interact with the events of my life and let them grow me rather than have a diagnosis of PTSD define me. I'm not saying you are- again, Louisa, I can only speak to my personal experience.
I most emphatically do not wish to have people's emotional traumas rob them of life. Forty years of eating disorders robbed me of a shitton of life. So I really do know what I'm talking about. I've been choosing differently since I turned sixty, and what I've learned is part of what informs my articles. All of life is a choice. All of it. And while we didn't get to choose what others did to us we most emphatically do get to choose how we will respond to it, and how that sculpts us going forward.
I appreciate your challenge, and hope you hear the sincerity in this response.
Julia, thank you for giving me (us readers) the context of your life's experiences. I appreciate learning about them, and my respect to you for choosing life and challenging yourself despite all the hardships and trauma you have gone through. This is why I really enjoy reading articles written by people who have had a lot of experiences and hardship and have chosen to share what has become their "crystals." I esepcially resonate with this: "Without experiencing our own pain, we are robbed of empathy. Perhaps that is pain's greatest gift- we are in community, and being in community, we can heal ourselves." This is the reason I write here on Substack. I also don't want any diagnosis to define me. Instead, I want to break the taboo (particularly within the Asian community) of mental health and normalize the discussion.
Your comment resonates, for mental health is a stigma with in the Asian community as well as in the Black community. That's an additional burden, to not be able to speak your truth. It took me forty years to speak the truth about the rapes, and that began an even harder fight with the VA to get help. We are not our diagnoses. We are our character. We are the sum of our stories, which includes all the bad shit, and then whatever heroic efforts we make to to turn that into the brick and mortar building of a good life, defined by us. Thank you.
I love what you said here, and resonate with the challenges of dealing with the stigma on mental health in our respective community. So much respect to you for showing us how you define and build your unique life with the raw materials of your experience.
Your timing is always so accurate for me lol. This was a great read over morning coffee while it pours rain outside. I've been sitting here mulling over a few things for weeks. Maybe this is a great day to start!
PS: That running down the hill sign is gold. 😁
My god, isn't it? I laughed my ass off. It's pouring rain here, too. I was going to go run steps but they're covered with slick moss so....not today. The gym, though.
Brilliant as always! My recent scare with possible breast cancer, my partner in the hospital and rehab for 39 days with transverse myelitis, and me losing my job during that time made me realize I'm not asking permission for anything anymore. It took a crisis to shove me off that cliff and while it doesn't matter who I got there, I am now there!
SO GOOD to see you over here Shelly! I am going to be moving Walkabout over here slowly but wanted to establish a presence first. I am so very glad that you are okay, albeit what you've been through is no fun. Please stay connected. Thanks!
I love your badass attitude and courage to follow your own path. I also have been following Joan McDonald for a long time. She's truly inspiring! When I was 36 I took up ballet as a hobby. That was an age when professional dancers retire. But I went full out and even performed en pointe. It's amazing what one can do when you put your mind to it. I agree that the self is often an obstacle. But I also want to mention that in people who have suffered from emotional abuse (especiallythose with Complex PTSD), the wound is often the obstacle. So it's important to note that we can't always blame ourselves for not being able to achieve certain things. Self-blame and shame is in fact detrimental to getting self-motivation.
To that, I haven't been on Substack long enough for me to share my whole story which is all over Medium (2200 articles and more) and my blog at WalkaboutSaga.com. I suffered incest as an adolescent. Was raped in the military by four different men, all of them senior officers, one of them a psychiatrist to whom I was assigned for treatment for sexual assault. It would be fair to say I know something about complex PTSD, Louisa. What I write is from the standpoint of having been through all that and I still embrace life. I still do all the things. I still keep going. What I just shared with you is a fraction of a fraction of what I've been through, not shared as a one-upsmanship move (that's just rude) but to make the larger point. If we are women, most of us have suffered sexual trauma. Some of us, a LOT of it. I'm in the latter category. The way I engage with life is because of these things. That is strictly my choice and how I choose to cope with the damage inflicted on me- it's part of why I write. I've been bankrupt, I have had multiple OCDs including forty years of eating disorders, I could go on and on and on. I have some idea of what it's like to have the holy shit beaten out of you emotionally. And I still choose life. I use those experiences to make my backbone like steel. That is my choice, and it isn't everyone's. I cannot let those experiences limit, cripple or hamstring me. We all have choices, and speaking only for myself here, I refuse to let those experiences define me. They have refined me, sculpted me and strengthened me. Yes, they did damage. And they are my stepping stones moving forward. That is one major way in how I define badass.
I also research and spend time interviewing other people with similar stories, people whose lives sound like bad Saturday afternoon B movies yet they choose joy.
To your example: when I was 68, I took up aerial silks. I had terrible CMC arthritis in both hands, and I did it anyway at 68, up until surgery on both my hands. These are choices, just as recognizing that we have the option to choose how to negotiate emotional terms with the awful things we have experienced. That is badass. Badassery isn't limited to our resumes. It is in so very many ways how we embrace the often horrific emotional insults that we as humans experience. We all do. Nobody comes out of this free and clear. However- and again, I speak only for myself, here, Louisa, those events have, every single one of them, been my greatest teachers, my greatest allies in personal growth, and in all ways, delivered compassion and empathy. Without experiencing our own pain, we are robbed of empathy. Perhaps that is pain's greatest gift- we are in community, and being in community, we can heal ourselves.
I've only been on Substack for two months, and there is no way I could possibly adequately delve into these complexities as I also write for several other pubs, am rehabbing after seven major surgeries, am starting a brand new business and my house is under major construction due to water damage and a broken HVAC system just as winter is beginning. There's a lot going on. I get to learn to dance on top of those things and make fun of them, or I allow them to drag me under. Life's worst insults have taught me out to make fun of the shit life throws at us. Compared to some of what I've been through, what's going on right now is child's play. The gift that I got is to learn how to interact with the events of my life and let them grow me rather than have a diagnosis of PTSD define me. I'm not saying you are- again, Louisa, I can only speak to my personal experience.
I most emphatically do not wish to have people's emotional traumas rob them of life. Forty years of eating disorders robbed me of a shitton of life. So I really do know what I'm talking about. I've been choosing differently since I turned sixty, and what I've learned is part of what informs my articles. All of life is a choice. All of it. And while we didn't get to choose what others did to us we most emphatically do get to choose how we will respond to it, and how that sculpts us going forward.
I appreciate your challenge, and hope you hear the sincerity in this response.
Julia, thank you for giving me (us readers) the context of your life's experiences. I appreciate learning about them, and my respect to you for choosing life and challenging yourself despite all the hardships and trauma you have gone through. This is why I really enjoy reading articles written by people who have had a lot of experiences and hardship and have chosen to share what has become their "crystals." I esepcially resonate with this: "Without experiencing our own pain, we are robbed of empathy. Perhaps that is pain's greatest gift- we are in community, and being in community, we can heal ourselves." This is the reason I write here on Substack. I also don't want any diagnosis to define me. Instead, I want to break the taboo (particularly within the Asian community) of mental health and normalize the discussion.
Your comment resonates, for mental health is a stigma with in the Asian community as well as in the Black community. That's an additional burden, to not be able to speak your truth. It took me forty years to speak the truth about the rapes, and that began an even harder fight with the VA to get help. We are not our diagnoses. We are our character. We are the sum of our stories, which includes all the bad shit, and then whatever heroic efforts we make to to turn that into the brick and mortar building of a good life, defined by us. Thank you.
I love what you said here, and resonate with the challenges of dealing with the stigma on mental health in our respective community. So much respect to you for showing us how you define and build your unique life with the raw materials of your experience.
Thank you for the kind words, Louisa. And with that I have to head to the gym, there are body parts needing rebuilding!