Saturday, May 19, 2018

The Nourse Theater in Hayes Valley.

COMMENCEMENT!

The date is set, the place has been set, now I just need to get through the next four months of school.

My God.

It is actually going to happen.

I am going to graduate in May!

I’ve never been to the Nourse Theater, but it looks lovely.

I had, for some reason, thought it would be at the Palace of Fine Arts, I seemed to recall having seen photos from a previous cohort’s graduation, but it’s not there and though I love the Palace, I’m happy the commencement ceremonies will be held close to my school.

It feels right somehow.

I’ve a few ideas for what I want to do to celebrate, definitely toss the hat up into the air.

Which reminds me I think I’m going to have to purchase a cap and gown.

An expense I really don’t fucking want to deal with since well I’ll only be wearing it once, but I don’t believe the school rents them.

What I have heard from a few people in my group supervision at my internship, is that folks from previous cohorts may lend them out.

Unfortunately both the people in my group supervision who graduated last year from my same program are a lot shorter than me.

Like, a lot, I wouldn’t be able to fit in a cap and gown that either of them wore.

I’ll suck it up, just one more expense that I wasn’t counting on when I applied to the program.

Like the $5,000 I will have spent on a licenced therapist while I’m in the program.

I love my therapist though, she’s great, also a graduate from the same program that I am in, and I do get her sliding scale fee, $120 an hour, since she knows I’m a student and my school requires that I see a licenced MFT while I’m in practicum.

At first it was really hard to think about spending that kind of money once a week, but having been with her now for 33 sessions, I track them on my Track My Hours BBS app, I can say with not one doubt in my head that it’s been so worth it.

Having an outlet, having support, having a place to explore whatever I’ve been going through while I’ve been in practicum has been such a huge help.

I have worked around a lot of family of origin trauma’s, incest, neglect, physical abuse, emotional abuse, violence in my family system, with my father, with my step-father, a five-year relationship that went sour and led to being a statistic on domestic violence, my alcohol and drug use, and abuse and subsequent journey into recovery.

It still amazes me that I am sober, that I didn’t do a rehab or a recovery house.

The thought of having to do that scares the living shit out of me, I see a lot of folks in and out of recovery houses and there doesn’t seem to be an answer there.

Perhaps an introduction to a solution, definitely a clean and safe place off the streets, but so often the folks I see from those places don’t seem to have much hope.

Then again, my own perception is probably skewed.

Anyway.

Therapy.

My therapist.

So fucking glad to work with her.

I have worked on self-esteem issues, self-advocacy, self-care, setting boundaries.

I have worked through transference and counter transferences with my clients.

Frankly such a relief to have that as an outlet.

I had a couple of back to back days of intense client sessions.

Really good, don’t get me wrong, but super intense.

Grateful that I get to show up for my clients and be a good therapist.

At least I think I’m good.

The feedback has been good, both from my supervisors and from my clients, but my God, there’s always so much more to learn.

And then there’s all the learning that I have done.

All the work that I have done over the last two and a half years, so much work, so much processing, so much learning, so many articles and books and videos, so, so, so many fucking papers, so much practice, so much showing up, being vulnerable, leaning into the vulnerability and growing.

Painful growth and glorious growth and heartbreaking growth.

I can’t wait to graduate.

The ritual is important for me.

I know it will probably be boring as hell, but there is something here that needs to be done for me, an enactment, the crossing of the stage, the flipping the tassel on my cap from one side to the other, to signify that I have graduated.

I need that ceremony.

It feels very important to me to acknowledge the rite of passage.

And I want to have a party.

I really, really do.

I really have thought quite a bit about having it at Ocean Beach, a bonfire, blankets in the sand, some snacks, I don’t really care about food, but some cold bevvies in a cooler, all non-alcoholic thank you.

I think it would be easier for me to facilitate than making reservations for a big dinner party somewhere.

It’s not so much the food that’s important, it’s the people.

I see a big bundle of balloons on the beach, a bonfire, and a bunch of folks standing around and hanging out, simple, easy, sweet.

The only drawback to Ocean Beach is that the beach doesn’t really have bathrooms, there are port-a-potties, but that’s it.

Then again, like I can’t handle that, how many times have I gone to Burning Man?

Heh.

I did have it suggested that I have it at my house, and there’s some appeal there and also not, I can’t decide.  I could have a fire in the back yard, there’s a fire pit, there are tables and chairs and the yard is big enough to accommodate plenty of folks, and there’s a bathroom.

I’d probably need to clear it with the landlady, but I can’t think that she would say no.

There’s also a grill I could use.

I just get a little edgy about having people come in and out of my house, but then again, it could be sweet.

Oh, so many things to plan.

But not right yet.

Not right now.

Now is time for sleep.

It’s been a long week.

Grateful that I made it through.

Grateful for all the love in my life.

So.

Deeply.

Deeply.

Grateful.

For all the love.

 

And Just Like That

I have registered for my last semester of class!

I can hardly believe it.

It feels very surreal.

And.

Fucking amazing.

I will have three classes next semester.

Once a month I will be in class.

Five weekends.

I will be in class from 9 a.m. until 4p.m. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

January.

February.

March.

April.

May.

I will graduate Saturday, May 19th.

Holy fuck.

It’s really happening.

I have to take Integrative Seminar, I really don’t know what that is, and Research Methods, which sounds boring as fuck and like a class that is a box to check off.

The other “class” is my practicum, or what I often refer to as my internship.

I’ll still be seeing the same amount of clients, but I may move some of them around, I’m not quite sure yet.

And that’s ok, that can be figured out later.

I was just looking over the piece of paper that I have been making little check marks on for the last three years.

Here’s a list of the classes I have taken and passed, passed pretty well, you could say, I’ve got a 4.0 thank you very much.

I have taken Group Dynamics.

Therapeutic Communication.

Human Development

Integral Philosophy

Psychodynamics I and II.

The Clinical Relationship.

Professional Ethics and Family Law I and II.

Multicultural Counseling and the Family.

Applied Spirituality.

Gestalt Therapy.

Family Dynamics and Therapy.

Psychopathology and Psychological Assessment.

Child Therapy.

Trauma.

Couple Counseling.

Community Mental Heal & The Recovery Model.

Special Topics in Psychotherapy.

Transpersonal Psychotherapy.

Alcohol & Chemical Dependency Counseling.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.

Jungian Dream Work.

Psychopharmacology and Human Sexuality.

Elder, Spousal, & Child Abuse.

And practicum which includes Individual Supervision and Group Supervision.

Whew.

That’s a lot of reading.

Just reading the list made me shake my head, I did all of those?

Really?

Amazing.

And I just have to do three more classes.

Sure.

I have to finish this semester first, but I will, I will.

OH, and although its a not a “class” I am also required by my program to attend 52 weeks of personal therapy with a licensed MFT.

Today marked 26 weeks.

Half way there.

I’m not actually worried about getting in all the therapy, which is one little thing that I don’t have to stress about, thankfully, my therapist went through my program and she told me that she would sign my paper even if I didn’t get the full 52 weeks.

I get the sense though that I will get the requisite amount of hours.

The therapy is good for me.

I have been getting to work through a lot of things that I never even knew I had to delve into, some of which I probably have been needing to address for years without even realizing I did.

I like my therapist a lot and she really has a good perspective on me and who I am and sometimes there is a lightness and a friendliness and almost a sense of talking to not just a contemporary, but a friend, a friend with a lot of perception.

A lot.

And a really helpful way of reframing my experience and also validating all the work I do.

I do a lot.

In some sense I’m a fucking therapists wet dream.

I do the work, I don’t make her work, I process the fuck out of my shit.

I do a lot of grieving, I let go of a lot and then I jump right back in.

Today’s session left me pretty wrung out and sad.

It was mainly expressed first through anger, which has always been a very dangerous emotion for me, I don’t think it was ever safe for me to express anger in my family and I didn’t often even realize I had it unless I was enraged and that feeling, rage, scared me to death.

Very dangerous and very rarely expressed.

Almost never.

I can remember a few times touching into it and frightened me badly.

I know better now, there isn’t really anything wrong with anger, it’s a sign, and it’s a primary emotion, it’s a top emotion, but there’s generally secondary emotions underneath it and that’s where I need to look, under the covers of anger and see what’s underneath.

Most often for me, it’s fear.

Fear of losing something I think I have or fear of not getting what I want.

I had a lot of fear come up today and it was hard to slog through, but I knew the anger I felt was about fear and eventually it all came out and I felt sick with it, on fire with it, I felt like I wanted to vomit it all out, retch it into the wastebasket, scream it into a pillow on the couch.

I just cried a lot and it moved.

It’s probably still moving.

Ah, all the things I get to work on, so very many.

I have discovered so much about myself from doing my course work and now, in the therapy, getting out the secrets and the sadness and the trauma and all the stuff I carry around like it’s a special knapsack full of rocks.

I just want to let them all go, put them back into the stream and let myself float away.

I have burdened myself for so long with false ideas.

“I failed,” I crumpled into my hands, I buried my face in my palms and just sobbed.

I won’t get into the specifics, they’re not relevant, but I can say in a general sense that I have been carrying around the idea that I failed at something and that I had not even realized I believed about myself, that I failed so badly at something that I ruined another’s life.

A.  Who am I to say I’m God?

I’m just not that powerful.

B. I was a child.

I was a child doing an adults job.

Granted.

A super precocious child who might have given off the impression that she knew what she was doing, but ultimately, at the end of the story, I was doing an adult’s job with the resources of a child.

A poverty-stricken, neglected, abused child.

Smart as fuck.

But a baby.

I was just a little girl trying to hold it all together and I couldn’t, I couldn’t make it work and I have been, for years, decades, even, carrying around this idea that I failed.

I was shocked when that popped out of my mouth.

My God.

Oh, sweet, sweet, baby girl.

You tried so hard, you didn’t fail, you did the best you could.

And you got out.

I could barely carry the burden of taking care of myself.

Jesus Christ.

I’m still in awe of my session today.

That so much got sorted out.

Really astounds me.

Therapy.

Wow.

It fucking works.

It so damn does.

Thank God.

Thank fucking God.

Asking For What

I need.

Not always.

But a lot more.

Even when it is uncomfortable.

Like it was today.

My employer left me a check for the work I did over the weekend and it was not correct.

It was much less than I had anticipated and I knew, knew without a doubt, that I would need to address it.

There were years and years when this sort of thing would have thrown me for a loop.

All the things I’m not allowed to say, to ask for, to accept.

That I am enough, that my time is worth my payment, correct payment, that I am allowed to correct a mistake, that I can have conflict.

And resolution.

I knew that there was no malice on my employer’s part and that it was simply a mistake.

But.

For a few minutes, about the first fifteen at work, I was a bit upset.

Then.

I reasoned with my own self, with my stupid, silly, unwarranted fears, and I got the fuck over myself.

So when my employer came home today and handed me the check, I handed it back and said, “I don’t feel this is correct, would you please double-check the math.”

She did, I was correct, and she re-wrote the check and then added, that it had been an accident, which I had known, but still felt good to hear, and then she apologized.

My goodness.

It was a nice moment.

It was uncomfortable, but I did it and I didn’t make a big deal out of it either.

I just acted as if.

Fabulous.

Of course.

I blew my load on that one and when presented with an opportunity to do more of that same negotiating for myself, I couldn’t quite do it.

I was going to kill another fantasy and ask a guy out on an official date, we did that “we should hang out dance” last week when I bumped into him in the neighborhood where I work and I saw him tonight after work, but I couldn’t quite pull the trigger.

I suspect I wasn’t ready to kill the fantasy quite yet.

I will.

To move on would be nice.

Maybe that will be one of my goals in therapy.

I have my second session tomorrow and my therapist, I sort of like saying that, suggested that I think about what some of my therapeutic goals are.

We already agreed that her supporting me through the school program was a big draw for me, especially as she went through the same program.

She also suggested that we look at ways that I could manage my anxiety.

I figure I’d love to work on dating.

Which means I will probably be addressing a lot of family of origin issues.

I will need to address the abuse, trauma, neglect, incest, and emotional violence I grew up with.

No biggie.

REALLY.

Heh.

I can clearly see a number of patterns in my dating life–emotional love affairs with unavailable men, being in love with unavailable or uninterested men, not being in relationships for years, crushing on guys but not saying anything, obsessing, blah, blah, blah.

Not knowing how to date.

All of it, really, goes back to instinct and ways of being that don’t serve me.

I can fucking see it clear as day.

But.

I haven’t a great road map for moving forward.

And really.

I am my own worse navigator.

I had sent out that message a few days ago to a man I have always had a crush on and getting a pretty decent response for yes, let’s do a coffee in the next few weeks.

I sent back my availability and haven’t gotten a response

So of course, last night, as I’m about to drop off to sleep, my diseased brain attacks.

“Psst, you should have paused longer before responding to his message, you came off too eager.”

Fuck you brain.

This was followed up by a brief, thank God, obsessive thought of what should I have messaged instead to get the result I want….

Ooh.

Aha!

There.

That.

What should I have said to get the message I wanted.

Well, duh, lady, that’s manipulation.

And if it’s not meant to be I can’t manipulate it into happening.

And if it’s meant to be, I can’t fuck it up.

Whew.

Also.

I am human.

If I made a “mistake” in my communication that led to this man not responding in the time I wanted, then I made a mistake and I’m allowed to make mistakes.

I can fuck things up.

I don’t like to fuck things up, I want to be perfect.

But I suspect that need for perfection is what really stands in the way of me killing the fantasy with the other guy I saw tonight.

I want to get it perfect so I can control the results.

Again.

That’s manipulation.

So.

I vow here.

Just to get it off my chest, next time I see dude, I’ll just cut to the chase and pin down a time to “hang out.”

I would rather fall flat on my face than try more to figure it out.

I can see that the figuring it out is never going to serve me and it will just drive me nuts over time.

I’m already crazy enough.

Hello.

I’m in therapy.

Hahahahaha.

Sorry.

Not sorry.

I had to.

Anyway.

Seems there’s plenty of fodder for my therapeutic goals.

Ahem.

I’ll be back in school this upcoming weekend, so that will also land on the table, or the couch, as the case may be, plenty of stuff to look at there.  Although I feel quite prepared for the weekend of classes.

I’m actually almost completely finished with my reading for not just this weekend, but the final weekend, for my Couples Therapy class.  We have a fairly big final project/paper that I wanted to have as much reading done for as possible, get all the lectures under my belt and be ready to tackle it right away after the weekend of classes.

I just want to finish so I can go to Paris.

That’s really where my brain is at.

The one fantasy I am not willing to kill.

Paris, my dream, my reward, my carrot to get me through the next two weekends of classwork.

It’s all happening.

And I’m allowed to stand up for it and take it in and accept it.

This life.

Lovely, luscious, and all mine.

I don’t want to waste it on fantasy and unrequited love.

I want to be present for the gift it is.

One moment at a time.

All the things.

They are happening.

Yes.

Yes.

They.

Are.

From Garbage Bags

To graduate school.

I was sitting in my Therapeutic Communications class and something was said about the video we had just watched, a really intense video of Nancy McWilliams demonstrating psychoanalysis with a woman who was trying to negotiate a domestic abuse situation.

It was a surreal story.

It was just an hour of therapy and so much ground got covered and the therapist was amazing, directing subtly, strengthening the client, reflecting back to her, empathizing with the client.

I got a lot out of it.

A LOT.

I also got annoyed with a fellow in my cohort who kept asking questions.

Pushing questions that, as I saw it, were serving the person asking them but then, the professor used the questions to illustrate some key points in the reading we had to do for class and also to help teach the class some really salient information about being a therapist.

We, as a class, were then invited to see how our own need for resolution may be at odds with the clients.

I remember flaring up inside when the questions were being asked and feeling that there was this well of antipathy inside me.

I got annoyed.

Then I realized that I was annoyed because if I had been that woman, if I had been that client, and the solution was to get me to see a solution immediately, I wouldn’t have been able to get there, in fact, I would have said, fuck you, fuck the therapy, and I will deal with this on my own.

In effect.

What I did do.

On my own.

With a lot of help from some close friends, I got out of an abusive relationship.

It was not physically abusive until the end.

He hit me when I broke up with him.

I ran out into the street.

In the middle of January with no socks on, a pair of jeans underneath a flannel nightgown.

Now.

For those of you that know me, this is highly unusual.

Even in the dead of winter.

Even in Wisconsin.

Even in January with below freezing temperatures.

I always, since I was about 17 and the step father moved out of the house, I always, slept in the nude.

That night.

I wore a nightgown.

Intuition.

Premonition.

I don’t know.

I can’t say.

But I did.

And when I ran shivering, scared, uncertain where to go and which direction to take.

I knew I couldn’t go running down East Johnson Street, he would find me too fast.

I ran to the Sentry Shopping Centre that was on East Washington.

I ducked along the cement walls and found my way to a pay telephone, remember those?

I called 911.

I got a response and they said they would be sending a car out to me.

That was when I heard my ex-boyfriends car.

In all actuality, our car, it was just as much mine as his, we had both bought it, an older Jetta.

I could hear it turning and I hoped it was heading toward East Johnson.

But.

It wasn’t.

And I got frantic with the operator on the phone and tried to cram myself down into that very small phone booth and make myself invisible in my flannel nightgown with corn flowers on white cotton, with a ruffled that was piped with blue ribbon, with cuffs that reminded me of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Little House on the Prairie.  I watched the car, the little blue Jetta grinding up the street, hoping against hope that he could not see me flattened against the wall of the phone booth.

I believe.

Looking back.

That was the last time I ever wore a flannel night-gown.

It’s been thirteen years since that night.

Almost fourteen.

Will be fourteen in January.

That’s when I left him.

The operator on the 911 call held me together until the police arrived to take me to a friend’s house.

I will never forget the way the lights looked wicking past the back seat window, the calls coming in over the radio, the destination never seeming further away as the sodium street lights glowed sullen in the snow, the hush of the streets, the lack of traffic, the drive around the lake on John Nolan Drive.

Then my friend’s house.

I refused to talk to the police.

I did not give up the ex-boyfriend.

I was too co-dependent.

I did not want him to get in trouble.

He got in trouble anyway, it just took a little longer.

I suppose I could have navigated it differently, but I didn’t know the difference and I didn’t know how to do it.

I do now.

But I look back at that girl, that young woman with such love and compassion, what I went through to get from there to here.

And.

How long I told myself that it was normal, that it was something that happened, that I could somehow normalize the trauma of fleeing my own home in my nightgown in January in Wisconsin.

I was isolated.

My friend, my best friend and her husband were in town visiting and they noticed it.

Another friend and her partner were in town.

They all had tried to get me to see the light at some point.

My ex-boyfriend pretty much blamed them for the timing of the break up.

He was probably right, but I did not understand how much until later.

My best friend navigated me going into work the next day to tell them I had an emergency and was leaving town for the weekend.

The plan was to get my stuff and take me up North to Hudson where I could chill out and figure out what I had to do next.

I was in shock.

My ex saw us leave my place of employment, he had been driving around Madison all night looking for me and who knows how many times he was circling the block where I worked.

He whipped into the parking lot and flew out of his car, our car.

He tried to get to me.

He tried to talk to me.

My friends were all in shock.

Then.

He spit on me.

Full on in the face.

Suddenly the guys stepped forward and corralled him.

My friends got me into the back of their car.

We pulled out burning rubber.

Two seconds later my ex got in his car and pursued.

My friend’s husband lost him after a few intersections.

We flew to my house.

I unlocked the door and having no idea what to do, I grabbed a large black garbage bag and threw random clothes into it.

I ran around my house.

My sweet little home that I had lived in, nested in, hosted Christmas dinners and Thanksgivings in, had made our home, was now an unfamiliar territory or terror and fear and I just had to get out of it.

My ex didn’t get back to the house before I left.

I was that fast.

I huddled in the back seat of my friend’s Saturn and numbly watched the landscape go by.

I remember passing a refinery and thinking how spooky and eery and utterly beautiful it was in the night with the flashing lights and the mists shimmering into the black void of sky.

I reflected on this in class.

All the memories that came up.

Then the tears.

The joy of knowing, that despite myself, for it would be another long year and a half before there was closure and ultimately, really not until I moved to San Francisco in 2002 did I get finality on the relationship (he stalked me for a year and a half and I got a restraining order that he violated once then he got to go jail and do work release through the Huber program the city had in place for inmates with work release options, two full years of restraining order and yet I saw him twice more before things were all said and done.  Ah alcoholism, how I love thee, not), I had made it out.

I made it out.

I had tears of utter gratitude and awe on my cheeks at how far I have come.

From being a woman fleeing her own home with a garbage bag full of random grabbed things.

To a fully self-supporting, radically self-reliant, strong, resilient, loving, kind, compassionate, tender-hearted woman.

From garbage to graduate school.

A small transformation.

A flowering woman in bloom.

A wide open heart.

Vulnerable and strong.

“We both were tempered by fire,” my friend told me, leaning into me in sweet confidence, “but the heat of your fire was hotter than mine, and I want you to know I acknowledge that.”

Tempered.

Strong.

Flexible.

And full of empathy and compassion.

For the client on the video screen who couldn’t get out.

And.

For myself.

The woman who did.

My life continues to unfold.

And amaze.

I am graced.

I.

Really.

Truly.

Am.

I’m Gonna Make It!

I might be saying this a tiny bit premature, as I rest with my foot elevated and the perennial sack of frozen peas adorning my ankle, but I think I am.

I am going to make it through my first week back to work.

Today was a pretty damn good day too.

I got to be reunited with my little girl Thursday and she was such a pumpkin and it was so awesome to see her, so many new words and stories and hugs and she immediately demanded to have the lip gloss in my bag.

“What flavor?” I asked her, with an indulgent smile.

“Pink!” she said, then “more, I ate it.”

Ah, yeah, and that’s not what we’re supposed to do, sugar britches, but ok, a tiny bit more.

Today was also my first day doing a nanny share with her and one of my other boys, the youngest, the one who is teething like a poor sick beaver.

I tried it all.

Teething sticks, toothbrushes, ice cubes, frozen mango, frozen grapes, crackers.

He is partial to chewing on shoe laces and the ends of my sweatshirt lace caps from my hoodie.

Anything to alleviate the pain.

Poor guy.

The good news, kid, you won’t remember the pain.

He got super feverish with it this afternoon and couldn’t get settled down and finally I just held him and rubbed his little shoulders and blew on his face and cuddled him until he fell asleep.

Then I just let him sleep there until my other monkey woke up from her nap and miracle of miracles, I mean, how the hell did this magic happen, I swapped them out.

“Carmen!”

She called from out her room.

“Carmen! I pooped!”

No ignoring that.

Sometimes if she wakes up a little and squeaks, I give it a minute, she might just roll back asleep, in fact, often does, but a poop, nope, no going back to sleep with a load in her pants.

I got up off the couch, with the little boy on me, hot face tucked into my bosom, arms bunched underneath his chest, little legs swinging out and walked to my girls bedroom.

I opened it slow.

“Shhhh, A.  shhhh, R. is sleeping.”

Her eyes got big.

“I pooped.” She whispered.

“I know, I got ya, can you help me like a big girl?”

She nodded.

I walked in, closed the door behind me to keep the room dark.

“Ok, lady pants, stand in the corner of your bed by Massimo (her stuffed bear–dad has a thing for Mexican masked wrestlers, and Massimo often sports one, although today he was in a pair of outgrown red and white polka dot footie pajamas that the little miss had outgrown), and hang tight two seconds.”

She moved over to the corner of the crib by her bear, eyes tracking me, quiet as a little mouse and I leaned over the crib on my tip toes, keeping the small bunny on my chest until the last possible second, then plopped him down soft as soft can be on the warm nest of blankets just vacated.

He rolled over, opened one eye, saw me, I smiled and said, sleep bunny, and he closed his eyes and did just that.

I scooped up my little girl, got her out of her sleep sack, changed the poop diaper, put her in her training pants, she’s almost potty trained, and pulled on her tights, I scooped up her hair elastics and some barrettes, and hugged her tight to me and tiptoed out the door, pulling it shut behind me.

Success!

I don’t know exactly how it happened, but my god, it did.

And I was grateful, upon reflection that it had worked out that way, I was now unable to leave the house to do a second outing to the park.

The up and down the stairs–my Thursday family lives in a three-story walk up on the top floor–combined with the outing to the park in the morning, had done me in pretty well.

My little lady and I read books and she had snacks and we whiled away the afternoon reading the entire collection of Lyle, Lyle Crocodile.

It was a great way to get through the afternoon and my little teething monkey slept an hour and a half, his fever broke and he was up just ten minutes before mom came for pick up.

Perfection.

I gave mom the down low on the day and expressed how the massage had work and she said, “he loves back rubs!”

And the words of my friend came into my ear.

“You really should do body work.”

The words of my best friends eleven year old son came into my mind, “oh my god, mom, you’re right, she’s good.”

The words of a lover.

“Why aren’t you doing this for a living?”

While I had sat on the couch waiting for him to settle down, humming my little tuneless song, rubbing his back, with my eyes closed, matching his breath in and out with my own, and then feeling without thought, just touching his muscles in his small little body, I thought, maybe this is what I should do.

Pediatric massage therapy.

It would be lovely service.

I am good with children.

And I could perhaps even help kids with body issues, god only knows I have some experience with physical and sexual trauma from child hood, I can relate to that.

And I love kids.

And I know how to hold them.

So, hmm.

Perhaps something to explore.

I know I give good massage and one of the reasons why I have always said no, I don’t want to do this, is because I feel like there can be an ickiness factor.

An unwanted sexual nature to it and also that there are just some folks I don’t want to touch or be paid to touch.

I don’t think I would get that if I was working with kids.

I feel like this is something to explore and something I could explore while continuing to nanny.

I have some research to do.

And my bag of frozen peas is almost unfrozen.

One more day and I will have made it through.

So grateful for this experience.

For the help, for the love, for all the unexpected gifts and insights.

Looking forward to the full recovery and the playing it forward.

And now off to elevate more and drink some tea.