Finding Faith

I had thought of calling this entry "Spiritual Crisis", however as I thought of it I found that really did not describe where I am at.   I have been through a lot in the last two years especially with my daughter's cancer treatment, however much of what I am experiencing goes much deeper and much further back in my history.  The culmination of working on old trauma, damage, fears and layer on everything that has or has not happened in my life since then and the end result is the chaotic hot mess that is me.

I lay awake during the night last night looking back over my life.  I am on the verge of....I don't know what.  Financially my life is in tatters.  "Find a job" is the most frequent response by well meaning people in my life.  However, it's not as cut and dry for me.  I am an emotional and mental mess, the thought of being away from my child is more intense that ever.  It's not only from the trauma of her diagnosis, it's been going on for years before that.  All I have ever wanted was to stay home and raise this gift of mine.  No one really seems to understand where I am coming from.  She is my miracle, after being told I'd never be able to have children without medical intervention (and even then a small chance of that).  She graced my life with her light, I became a different and better person.  However, looking back over the last twenty years I see a lot of lacking on my part.  Insulated off from a harsh world was all I could manage. I had one amazing pastoral counselor in my late-20's that got me back out into the world after a very bad time with agoraphobia and such intense apathy that I didn't care if I lived or died. Around this time I had such a breakdown, I'm not sure what it's called but I snapped and just shut down.  I crawled into bed and that was it, unresponsive and just not there. I had no sense of time.  I feel rather weak, with how I handle stress and life in general.  I've never felt comfortable in my skin, or where I am in life. Very out of place and not knowing what to do about it.  I had attributed much of this to my shutting out all of the psychic overload I lived with since I was very young.  Feeling emotions, seeing spirit (usually angry nasties) and having a sense of knowing I just had no clue what to do with.  It was this same pastoral counselor who guided me through the hell I lived with inside myself.  She was such a gift for me.

So fast forward to now, I am coming back out of a very dark place.  I've journaled for the last two years, well, five actually, and looking back I can recognise improvement.  I tend to bury my head in the sand when everything gets to be too much. I obsessively focus elsewhere because I have no idea what to do and asking for help tends to get me nowhere much of the time.  I am not sure what my soul signed on for in this life but holy shit!  I feel like I was dumped in here solo and expected to learn it all by myself.  I often cannot think straight so I get so lost.  I have moments of clarity when it all makes sense and I get a plan and then it's as though I wake the next morning with amnesia, weeks or months go by before I realise what happened.  What is laughable is that I can do readings and see other's situation so crystal clear and I can't even manage a teensy fraction of that for myself.  I fall into the single mother with little to no means of income, a child still in cancer treatment and a mountain of debt staring me down.  Assistance from social security has blown up in my face and their mistake is now threatening to cost me nearly $7,000.  I am fighting it and hope for victory and one less stressor however no matter how many affirmations, or positive thoughts I have had-shit blows up in my face repeatedly.  So how does one find and maintain faith despite it all?

I am at it again, working to stay positive, affirmations, nightly thankfuls, trying to get out into the world again and slowly I am feeling better.  I am aware that this year will bring huge changes for me and I strive tonot let that thought overwhelm me.  Coming from a past of abuse, trauma and lots of fear, it is often a struggle to maintain positivity.   As a Libra I function best as a duo, though in my life I have chose that other half of my duo most horridly.  I've attracted the dregs of humanity so much that I realized I must hate myself and see myself as useless and unlovable that I don't deserve the very best in life. That thought breaks my heart, I hear my grandmother and my grandfather behind me right now, trying to tell me all the wonderful things that make me special and worth loving.  These are the two who loved me best in my childhood.  My grandfather Bryan passed away 31 years ago next week and I grieved his loss so intensely, never finding closure until last Samhuinn when, after my 3rd Reiki attunement that summer,  he finally was able to get through my thick cocoon.  I now know he has been with me for all of those thirty years, close by and holding me up when everything goes to shit.  I grieve the loss of more time with him on this earth so I could get to know him as a teenager and an adult.  To know more of his history and life in his younger years.  Now I work at through piece-mealed snippets of photos, records and stories, it helps me to connect with him a bit better and I am able to hear more of what he tries to tell me, or just letting me know he's nearby.  Oftentimes with he and my grandmother, they tend to *chastise* me when I speak or think negatively of myself. 

I thank them for their presences, because it helps to keep me going when things go all kerfluffled. I recognize lately that I am coming out of a very deep, dark cave.  I feel lighter, sometimes more hopeful and I work hard to be a happy person for my daughter, who senses everything I feel no matter how much I wall it off.  She deserves to see her mother happy and to get a glimpse of the silly person she has been known to be.  I loathe being the serious, only parent carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders.  What I am working at now is to try and figure out what it is I need to do, I get no answers beyond "Be patient" and "don't worry". Leaves me wanting to screech like a banshee.  It takes a lot for me to find a counselor or the like to help me find my way.  I don't feel I can do this alone any longer, I've taken 14 years of it on my own and apart from raising the most amazing 12 year old I have failed miserably in everything other aspect of my life.  Bad choices are the big thing, but I sacrificed my happiness in order to have treasured time with my girl.  We made the best of life with her father, I hated every second of life with him but it gave me such wonderful times with her and with the land so it was well worth the price.  Now I am trying to find that life, minus toxic assholes, once again for my girl and I.  Our own home, farm, garden, time to pursue my passions and reconnect with my spiritual side and combine it with my energy and bodywork career interests.  It may seem easy to others, however for this extreme introvert it is sheer hell.  Still, every day I work to may at least the teensiest of baby steps forward, so hopefully I will be on the upswing soon enough and I can shed this overcoat of blah and be on my way to help others. The key, I have been seeing, is to maintain faith.  Which brings me right back to the "how?".  Faith is a foreign concept for me and it's moments like this I wish I were a church going person, because faith and ministers/pastors seem to go hand in hand in my thinking.

But that could be the Mormon-influenced Catholic upbringing I had.....