Mindspace

Post Retreat

We usually spend the last session of the retreat talking about the descent to the bottom of the hill.
And i have to say a part of me wondered if i was regressing because i was the most distracted i've ever been going up there. i was coming off the high of a great week with clients, i was just so excited to be in a retreat with people i knew, i was anxious that my mentors were getting sick and dying on me, i wanted to see them, hug them, memorize their faces.
i was irritated with the presenters, slightly arrogant about their content, secretly feeling like i could do a better job, vaguely thrilled that my one contributing comment seemed to be the source of discussions in many small groups.
Yet coming home from the mountain top, i realized, it did get to me. i've been more comfortable in my own skin, i slept for the first time through 2 nights without the anxious spells of something i failed to do, i got a chance to do EMDR on myself while working through those anxious spells and those wakings seem to stop. Yesterday for the first time, i remembered drawing protective and clean boundaries in my dreams, i don't remember the content of them, but i remember being conscious about what thoughts and negative energy i allowed in them. i am blogging more, which is always a good pulse on my ability to slow down and examine my  inner life. It was the wildest thing.
This morning i meditated with my favorite guided meditations from  Mediation 24/7, and i actually made it through 3 meditations without calling a friend to take the edge off the anxiety.
i've woken up for 2 days in a row, taking 20 deep breaths. Today i showed up to exercise early and took my time to change into exercise clothes instead of hurrying in late.
I survived a triggered conversation with my husband last night, remaining present enough to self-correct a horrendous vision i was formulating of him when he told me he was going work " day and night" and this new part time gig. 
The afterglow of time set aside for retreat.
Even if i was severely distracted, non-present, and inattentive while i was there. God's voice is sure, persistent and lingering as i come home.
That night, when i was severely triggered having dinner with Mom and Dad ( his ), i was able to take off and take care of myself, getting a massage and shopping while i worked off the anxiety and tension of being in the unexpected presence of them.
Thank you Lord, i tell my clients, you always reward us for showing up. Not always doing the work, but simply showing up. i make myself available to your blessing, even if i was reticent and rebellious the whole time. 
You reach me, you ground me, you reward me with life everlasting.

12 years at San Damiano

I'm up here in my favorite runaway place San Damiano.
In the 12 years i've come up here, i've always come up on a Friday evening. I've always called 5 minutes till the retreat starts to confirm attendance; Like a thief in the night, i come driving up the hill after 2 hours of rush hour traffic, exhausted from the stop and go, on the heels of crying children running after the car, my clothes thrown together, me finishing up calls with clients in the car.
Today because i worked Monday, i had the day off, i wandered around the morning lost, answered some calls so i missed my exercise class, was distracted all through my Al-anon meeting, asked my husband out to lunch, went home, napped, day dreamed in bed, took a shower, got lost in thought there too. And then leisurely found my way to San Damiano on the first day of Memorial Day weekend, with no traffic at all. i even stopped by Trader Joes to get all my favorite comfort food -- cooke dough filled dark chocolate and rosemary and raisin crackers.
It's hard to believe i've been coming up here for over 10 years now. 2000 was the year, i turned down this brand new house my in-laws bought for me. i remember coming here trembling with fear after saying no to them terrified that they would guilt me into changing my mind. That year marked the beginning of now 12 years of recovery -- my first introduction to twelve step, my first retreat, my first looking at my codependency and my need to please as a disease.
The beginning of a turn in my marriage -- a change in what my friend calls " false advertising ". i can't say our marriage got easier or better after that, but i have to say a part of me swells with pride when my husband says i am a "RECOVERING" codependent. i think he's not too pleased with my getting healthy. Life has gotten harder for him.
But i'm wandering the grounds, amazed at being here on a Friday in daylight, thrilled that i don't have to twitch all evening and take till Saturday afternoon to calm down. i left a cold and  chilly Palo Alto to come to a sun-bathed Danville, the grounds ablaze with flowers and the water trickling in my ear.

Either i have grown, or i am completely discombobulated.

Bouquets from Heaven

He showed up this weekend God, twice now in ways he probably doesn't even know.
Maybe, more accurately -- You showed up. i got 2 bouquets of flowers today -- evidence that You are working on my behalf.
Yesterday my husband finally said that maybe his sleep habits were affecting his work ( DUH! ) and that he was going to try to sleep early at 10.30 from now on. i wasn't even present enough to register how huge that was.
Today he actually told me that he attempted to keep to the limit of bottles of wine he promised me he was going to drink during his party. Just that he tried, and that he told the guests the limit was huge. He promised 3, they drank 4. For his parties, it was a miracle.
i told my therapist today, part of me doesn't want him to get well. How else would we monitor the mania, how else would i account for being in Al-anon for 3 years.
I am reminded of the conviction God gave me years ago about my favorite Bible hero Joseph, that had he not done his own personal work all the years in prison, the day God finally opened the jail gates and told him he was Pharaoh, he would have been too bitter to embrace God's dream for him.
I feel like i am right on the brink of that work. That God is about to give me what i've been wanting my whole life, and i am too bitter and angry to receive. i want an account, i want an explanation for the hell i've been through. i don't want God to fix it, i want God to understand how horrible it's been. i just want acknowledgment and validation. i don't care for the suffering to stop.i have a high threshold of pain. i don't have a high threshold of being invisible.
But just for today, i am clutching both my bouquets tightly. As i told my therapist, when i see the Giver as God, i am moved to tears. When i see them as gifts from my husband, my heart is hardened and guarded.
Every good and perfect gift comes from you God -- i'll take it from you.

The kids have been so clingy lately. Right on the heels of 10 days of vacationing -- we couldn't be more in love.
Aidan is in his prime -- brimming over with chivalry, rushing to get me towels if soap gets in my eyes, helping me get and put away groceries, giving me massages and opening my car door. Today he even agreed to exfoliate WITH me ( i think he thinks it's a fair exchange for me cheering him on with basketball ) and we spent 10 minutes just putting moisturizer on our faces.
Nally is insatiable - " My love tank is 28%"  ( this is at 930 at night  ), jumps in my arms, takes up breast feeding position and wants to be rocked in the rocking chair. I think one day i wouldn't have 2 children who fight for my touch, cuddles, massages, songs, prayers and hi-lows. This lady stops and watches our daily good bye ritual at the school and says " Affectionate day ? " i say " No, this is EVERYDAY" 
I feel so blessed to have children who still think i am the best thing since sliced bread.

Gratitude List

Thank you for a wonderful Monday God,
I feel your love and care for me,

• as i get my keys this morning for my new Palo Alto office,
• for having enough time to get to the Dailey Method and exercise again
• for how my 12-step group resonated with the share i thought was so random and unrelated
• for grace to be able to let go and accept the fact that my manicurist couldn't fit me in today
• for a brand new  Palo Alto client referred by a good friend
• to be able to call 3 people today without worrying about who they symbolize in my life -- just to give without expecting anything in return,
• for the ease to be able to trust the kids will get done with homework without rushing them and squeezing in every sliver of time,
• for Firestone serving my belts in 1.5 hours
• for the resources to pay for the belts
• for enough time to shop at Trader Joe's and Costco
• for having enough time to get my new name plate for my office
• for the warm welcome my colleagues give me at my new office -- offering to inscribe my name up on the door
• for successfully scheduling an appointment with my acupuncturist whom i haven't seen in 7 months because of scheduling difficulties.
• meaningful conversation with my friend Jane
• for a fully booked week even though i don't need to count my hours anymore.
• great prayer time this morning in the car praying for humility and teachability.
• a renewed ability to write and blog with freedom.

i feel so full, so lavished on, so loved. Today as i choose to not know, not think, not pre-think, or pre-know -- i covenant to relish your peace and goodness in the moment.

 

Chinese Speech Competition

Got the kids to school on time today. Proud and pleased with myself for not raging, for not yelling, for not dropping them off stressed and impaired for learning.
But i made the terrible mistake of working on the speech in the car. Aidan asked to hear his speech so i started and it went downhill from there. i heard Aidan's and then i wanted to hear Nally's and hers wasn't halfway ready and she was a sullen, reticient wet noodle about it.
And i told her calmly how disappointed i am with her, how she didn't keep her end of the bargain which was to memorize 1.5 pages of the speech over the weekend.That was the deal we made when they went skiing over the weekend. 
And for the first time, my child who always holds me tight when i drop her off, always has me kiss her a million times, just walked off.
My heart just sank. 
A part of me chided myself for working with Aidan and not Nally yesterday after homework and taking the easy way out of enjoying them and watching Modern Family with them instead. A part of me scolds me for trusting her when i saw her work on her speech yesterday by herself and not check to see progress.
It seems like every time i choose to let go and trust the process and trust the resources -- people fail. The school teacher doesn't translate, the tutor does a poor job. After having a fit about REFUSING TO DO IT THIS YEAR and being ALL OUT OF CHINESE, i have to rewrite it. 2 weeks and hours of Al-anon later i am still doing all the things i said i wouldn't do this time round because the whole process is just STRESSFUL and KILLS ME!
So this year, i am so determined to work my program. i decide the speech competition is just one giant metaphor for all the things i cannot control. What is written, how it's written, how much practice the kids get at school, what the tutor is doing with them since i am working.
i guess, this is the first year i don't have the energy and time and air time to work with them. And also,i  don't have the resilience to fight with Nally anymore. Part of me is so stuck in the space of "f-its", if you don't want to learn your multiplications, your speech, figure out your punctuation, learn to spell -- it's on you. i've been playing skip counting songs since you were two years old, i have offered to homeschool and work with you,i have paid through the nose for tutors, but now it's on you.
It's like i was talking to a mother of a 4th grader yesterday. " She's going to learn to not lie, manipulate, be late on her homework not because of you, but because of herself. You're not a good enough reason. "If only i can relinquish the residue guilt that goes with that. The lingering haunting refrains of perhaps somehow, in someway i could have done better. If i did it THIS WAY, with this theory, if i readjust myself -- you will finally take ownership for this crucial issues in your life. 
Bonafide co-addict behavior. It's the Al-anon anthem, the codependent pledge. i keep imagining these homeless kids or children of alcoholic families who learn to wake up in the morning, get the family going, fed and ready all by themselves because their parents are passed out in bed.
I did it with my husband's drinking, i am doing it with my kids. And i know better, working with mothers of teens, that adolescence is one giant period of grief work where we really confront the fact that we have little or no control over the outcome of our children's lives.

So this year, with the Chinese Speech Competition:

• I am going to offer my help at homework time.
• Work with only anyone who asks for it.
• Stop when it gets stressful.
• Let the tutor, school, life and maybe this whole experience create enough stress and urgency in them to get their act together.
• Guard my own serenity, well being, relationship with them at all costs
• Embrace daily the fact that they might go up there and bomb it.
• Decide that that would be the most valuable experience they could have
• Breathe, breathe, go to meetings and breathe
• Talk to my therapist about this

Chinese Speech Competition

I practiced my Al-anon program with my Chinese speech competition yesterday ( whoops Freudian slip ) the kids' Chinese speech competition.
i had what my teen client would call a " mild case of the fuck its " i just literally threw the speeches the kids wrote across the room and refused to translate them. i said "It's not fair! Other parents who don't know Chinese can't do this, can't coach this, can't do half as much as i do. They're kids do fine, better and they're not a wreck the way i am every year! " I refuse to do this anymore. Like i told the people in my Al-anon group " I am all out of Chinese ".
It's been such a long road, and this year, i am spent. i started out with all the aspirations and plans, and a word a day and teaching Aidan to be an ESL kid and now Chinese has ended up being this painful, resigned space where i try to not think about what i was learning at their age, and let the teacher be teacher.
But the Chinese Speech Competition is huge somehow, it's such a source of stress, somehow it encapsulates home and here and all my dreams for them as a speech and drama student myself. i can't let it go, but i have no control of how it'll go. My children are untrainable. They are wet noodles with rolled eyes and they won't let me use years of speech experience.
Parenting is such a mean joke. It's like they loan you kids, they look like you, they have your traits, they have your weaknesses and possibly your strengths, but for the life of me, they don't have your life.
And everyday, i am both celebrating and grieving that. They don't have my life, not even a little. They don't read at the same time, they don't write the same way. Maybe because at the end of the day, it hits me hard, because i didn't grow up here, so i have no clue how their experience is supposed to be.
Although maybe God is merciful because if they were in Singapore, i'd be a constant wreck all day knowing the educational system there and how it's run. 
But anyway, i took a deep breath, and showered. Came back and thought self-care. What do i need to get through the Chinese Speech Competition. What am i willing to do to get through ?
So i handed my husband one child, i did the other and emailed the English drafts to the teacher. There, it's theirs. i hired a private speech coach twice a week for the next 3 weeks but that's the most i am willing to do. i am going to sit back this year and watch it the way other parents do every year and not be strung out on a limb.
It is after all, their speech competition.

Meditation on Tea

I bought a new bunch of teas from my favorite bookstore "East Meet West" and as i sat down this morning with my the tea Lychee Coconut, i realized the tea i had dismissed as tasteless just 2 nights ago was really subtle.
i am trying to wake up in the mornings and drink a cup of hot tea while i meditate and breathe. The warmth of the cup and the liquid in my system has always been comforting and grounding. 
But today as i read Silence and Stillness in Every Season by John Main for Lent, i realize how still i have to be to taste my tea.
And this morning, because i am not rushing around my writing group, because i am not hurriedly gulping down a cup, i am tasting the sweetness of the lychee and the earthiness of the coconut peeping through.
Maybe after 20 breaths, i will really be tasting my tea.

Santa Sabina

The kids are away this weekend, and for the first time i don't have to bend over backwards arranging babysitting for a retreat.  No screaming dramatic children running behind my car as i leave.
For a moment, i actually felt like one of my clients who said about her marriage " Now that i have all the reason to leave, i really wonder if i want to leave"
But i forced myself to "seize the day" and literally typed in this weekend's dates and the word "retreat " in Google and found a Lenten retreat in right in my backyard, San Rafael, Santa Sabina.
I had just visited here last year for a Hildegarde Von Bingen retreat and was really struck by the quietness of the place. It's in the Dominican Order and i have to say, i really feel a different energy from the Franciscan hospitality that has been my home retreat at San Damiano. They are cooler, more reserved. Very committed to silence -- the whole house is silent and it can come across aloof. 
I was laughing because they showed us a picture of St Dominic  and he had his hand to his mouth going " shhhhh". Me and Natalie, we are texting each other chomping down my meal silently in the dining hall going " shhhhhh i'm eating".
But i have to say, something about the whole house being committed to silence is relaxing.
Yesterday, the retreat leader talked about "giving each other the gift of silence" and being "connected by silence" and i am so aware of how i struggle with silence. Somewhere between my childhood friends giving me the "silent treatment", the idea of being "sent to my room", my teenage years when my mother and i barely spoke, i still feel so punished by silence. i remembered being so anxious with my last psychotherapist's silence i ended up in fetal position tied up in knots.
I think about how sad i was the first time enoch and i drove long distance and i realized, he was perfectly content to drive all 5 hours in silence. I remember how hurt i was on 20 hour flights when he would put in ear-plugs under the flight headsets so he could drown out the plane engines. Such precious times to communicate, and he would choose to be silent.
On very good days, God teases me that my marriage is one long silent retreat and if i can survive that, i can survive anything.
On better days, He challenges me with the thought that perhaps my husband is my spiritual challenge, my spiritual practice, that i have to face all the anxiety and panic, isolation and rejection when he chooses not to speak to me. Not because he is punitive or punishing ( mostly ) but because he is content with silence.
Someday, i am going to have to reconcile myself with being able to silent with others that i care about, instead of only with strangers
  

Gratitude

It's been a lovely week of clients lord.
My practice is full. i know better now to assume it'll be full next week void of cancellations. But what is warming my heart to see and realize is that my client-ale is building. i may not have a full week, but the clients i do have, stay and they internalize me as a resource and they come back.
It's been a week of 3 "returning clients". It never fails to warm my heart. It lets me know that i have been successful with termination. That they have left with a secure connection knowing that i will be always be here for them and they can come back whenever they need.
To me, if there is only one thing i do right in therapy -- it's that. Given my own fears of abandonment and leaving.
But thank you Lord. i finish my hours this month. It's been such a poignant and meaningful journey. i feel so grateful to Christian Counseling Center -- for the opportunity to graduate with a full practice, to feel ownership and pride in working in the field.
This agency that i simply stumbled upon, simply ran into has now become such a core launching pad for my practice. Today as i am 55 hours to the end, i have 15 consistent clients, a referral pool and contacts in the San Jose area.
I remember as a contractor hating the marketing business development part of my own business. Thankful and grateful that getting clients as a therapist has come more naturally.