Tag: #radicalacceptance

Spirituality

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MariaTeresa

I intended to write this post about the Divine Intervention session I had on Friday but today has been an up and down roller coaster of emotions that I feel needs to be processed properly and takes precedence over that. In short, it was amazing and I can really feel a major shift going on which is probably in part the reason why I feel so emotional today.

Today April 26th is my youngest son Miles’s 15th birthday. Unfortunately I haven’t gotten to see him in almost 4 years. Parent alienation is a real and terrible thing. I have a very close and awesome relationship with my oldest son Tyler, Ty we affectionately call him. Ty lives with his grandparents, my ex-husband’s parents and they are very good to him. Ty moved out when he was 16 because he couldn’t stand living under my ex-husband’s thumb any longer. They always butted heads and he was actually very mean to Ty, like cruel even. I could never understand it being our firstborn why he treated him so poorly. I observed a jealousy he harbored against him early on even. I was a stay at home mother and Ty and I have always been super close.

This post is about Miles however. My boys are almost 4 years apart and I always refer to him as my sunshine🌞 and my snuggle bunny! He came into this world so happy, full of life with dimples highlighting his big smile and a great giggling laugh😂 Lately and because of our separation unfortunately Ty is the only person who gives me updates on his brother’s wellbeing. My ex has refused to speak to me for over 6 years now. It’s so ignorant and petty, trying to erase me because he’s hurt still that I wanted a divorce. He must be because to have moved on and having two new children with his current partner still has him apparently bitter towards me. He still thinks having nothing to do with me is the best option. He is oblivious to the fact he is actively hurting my boys, our boys. Ty has told me he can’t understand why his father had two more children and that they were the exact reason he moved out at 16.

Ty has told me Miles is becoming more and more angry. Especially now with our current lockdown and quarantine situation, he has to participate in long distance schooling and doesn’t see his friends. He is stuck in a house with a two year old and a 10 month old daily. His father hardly pays him any attention because the little ones demand so much of his time and because his mind has been poisoned to believe lies about his mother. Miles hasn’t spoken to me on his own in over three years. He will only talk to me when he’s with Ty at their grandparents house. I write hand written letters to him all the time because I have been blocked from social media and he has asked Ty to not give me his cell number.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t completely see and understand why he is so angry. His father and I divorced when he was only 6. I needed to recreate my life after all the trauma I endured in the state we were living in and I made the hardest decision of my life to move very far away to another region of the country to do it. In the beginning we would talk all the time, video chat and I would make yearly trips back to visit. In the last four years my finances have been terrible and I can’t afford the trip. I get it he feels abandoned. He blames me because that’s what he hears from his father. At 15, he lacks the emotional maturity and life experiences that Ty has at almost 19 and living on his own for almost 3 years. Living with his grandparents just started 7 months ago. Before that his girlfriend’s mother let him live with them. The lack of communication on my ex-husband’s side towards me has had me in the dark and unaware if most of these details until recently.

I should mention too that from 2017 up until Christmas of 2019 I had zero communication with either of my sons. That was a very dark and depressing time for me. I finally reached out to my ex brother in-law and begged him to give me my ex-husband’s phone number. I called but he refused to answer. I asked my sister to reach out and get a message to Ty. As soon as Ty knew I cared and was looking for him, he reached out via social media. It was the best Christmas present I could ever get!

Since Ty and I have reconnected, I have been patiently waiting for Miles to come around but from what Ty tells me poor Miles’s is getting more and more angry. He doesn’t want to interact with Ty even much anymore and they were so incredibly close during and after the divorce. I know it hurts Ty and today everything came to a boiling point .

It was pouring raining there today. Ty rode 6 miles on his bike to his father’s house with the birthday card I sent, a gift card from me, a letter I had written a month ago (I’m not allowed(according to him, not court appointed to have my ex-husband’s address , therefore everything must be mailed to his parents house. Let me state here too that I share 50% custody of my boys as is stated in our divorce decree) and $40 in cash he was giving to his brother for his birthday. Miles refused to come outside and told Ty he didn’t want anything from me. When Ty called he was really upset. He told me, “Mom, I have to move Miles out of Dad’s.” We spoke at length about what I believe Miles is going through at 15, taking into account his current living situation and being shutoff from his mother. I told Ty how proud I am of him for attempting to deliver the gifts. I told him he is being the bigger person, with so much emotional intelligence for a young man and being the man I raised him to always be…. kind, considerate and compassionate towards others, especially family.

I went for a twelve mile run after hearing all of this. The first long distance run I’ve taken since before the shutdown. I love the park near my house because it has a huge lake and a beautiful ten mile path looping around it just south east of Dallas. Running in general clears my head and is how I processed my divorce 10 years ago. Running near water soothes my soul💙

View from a bridge

When I run I usually talk with God. Sometimes out loud depending on if I’m alone on the path but mostly in my head. This afternoon I asked God to touch Miles’s heart and allow him to feel my love for him and his brother’s love too. Ty was really upset and thought for sure he wouldn’t change his mind when I told him I had a feeling he would. I definitely didn’t expect him to do a 180 turn around today, but that’s exactly what happened! Thank you God🙏 Miles agreed to meet him halfway so he could get his gifts.

Here’s a picture from the very last birthday we actually spent together, 9 years ago when he was turning 6🎉

Happy birthday Miles🎉

Here’s a picture Ty took and shared with me from over the summer. This shot showcases Miles’s goofball personality 😂

Miles is the ultimate gamer🎮

To sum up today I will share a painting and a poem I finished yesterday. It’s interesting how both were started on Friday night before any of this happened. I think my mind must have been channeling it and trying to process it beforehand. I am so grateful for my creative outlets that help me make sense of my big giant heart💖

Can’t see the forest for the trees🎨
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I now have 2 books of poetry available on Amazon!

https://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Musings-Maria-Pratico/dp/1798567504/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=%22emotional+musings%22&qid=1587010926&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087H7D1VS/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=Emotional+Musings&qid=1587663034&sr=8-3

Mental health

My relationship with myself

MariaTeresa

This summer has been chock full of unexpected realizations, observations and shifts in my perception relating to my past traumas. As I continue to heal and incorporate new skills for coping, my therapist lent me a book entitled, “Unf*ck your brain”. It’s an easy read and I was able to read most of it on the plane during the recent visit with my family. Today I finished the last ten pages.

I’ve read many self help books but haven’t read anything in that category in years. Now that I’m solely focused on my own healing, I took this opportunity to really soak up the information this book presents. It’s a very common sense approach to understanding how your brain operates, reacts and handles trauma, the potential and possibilities for real change. Neuroplasticity, which is the ability of the brain to form and reorganize synaptic connections, especially in response to learning or experience or following injury. Each chapter is a break down of brain functions and the chemical responses to our emotions.

Awareness is more than 90% of the battle. Learning about and becoming aware of my triggers can help me slow the process of my reactors and responses to my emotions and behaviors. I’m not new at this but given my current circumstances this book was a good refresher. This is a long repetitive process because our brains love recognizing patterns and we become creatures of habit. Disrupting and challenging my thoughts can help rewire my brain’s ability to cope in a more productive way. I learned that emotions only last 90 seconds. They are meant to be temporary and when they persist longer than that, we have entered mood territory.

The best tool for rewiring the brain is meditation. The ability for my brain to recall a state of mindfulness and calm is extremely beneficial once I become triggered. It takes practice but it’s the best thing I have learned in self healing.

I expierienced many ah-ha moments reading this book. I made an important connection between my trauma and what is called “traumatic grief”. My brain displaced and delayed the grieving process in order for my survival at the time of my trauma. Our brains are hard wired for survival. Any feeling you don’t allow yourself to process, will keep reappearing until it is healed. If you feel it, you can heal it! I believe the disconnection I carried for so long of not feeling worthy enough to heal, not trusting or believing in myself created enormous amounts of guilt and shame. Then I was stuck in a pattern of feel, hurt, push aside and suffer. Over and over again throughout the years.

My patterns for a long time were centered around blocking and resisting painful and uncomfortable feelings. As a result of the traumatic grief I have been carrying, I believe much of it in my subconscious, has led my brain to establish this chronic cycle of depression and anxiety. A quote in the book that resonates with me is, ” no one ever told me that grief is so much like fear”. Our cultural expectation is to possess rather than release. We are conditioned to hold on to something rather than letting it go.

The expierience of traumatic grief is created when we don’t allow or aren’t allowed the necessary grieving process. My sexual abuse has a child was something so painful, uncomfortable, confusing and scary that I simply didn’t allow myself to feel it. It created this inside motor of fear that literally drove me. For so long I have thought my spirit animal is a rabbit. Always hypervigilant and nervous.

I’m reexamining the relationships within myself. That is the area I must attend to because it’s the foundation for everything. My ego, attachments, feelings of chronic abandonment and displaced emotions have created a disproportionate reaction in other situations. All of this has played a role in developing a constant trauma response to life. For example, keeping myself busy and always moving soothed my anxiety but further delayed my grieving process and once the memories came rushing back, I was thrown sideways.

This book explained the biochemical roots of my brain’s reactions to stress. Most of this is the perfect storm combination of genetics and triggers. It’s more validation that I’m not crazy. I’m giving myself permission to honor my grief and by accepting it I’m showing myself grace. I will have to develop a new spirit animal now!

Self compassion is something I never really thought about until recently. It’s the opposite of self esteem. Focusing on my insides rather than my outside successes and failures. It means forgiving myself. That which I wasn’t aware of, I didn’t have the opportunity to heal. Now that I’m so much more conscious of it, it helps me make sense of what happened in my past, how the fight/flight/freeze patterns developed in my brain.

My relationship with radically accepting not only myself at this moment but what has happened in my past to bring me to this point is now my main focus. I’m using this time wisely so that I can fully heal and let go. My trauma recovery timeline has been disrupted many times over the years. I will not do myself the disservice of over analyzing why but I now see that much of what happened to me was not given the proper amount of time and focus to heal. Researchers have found that ninety days is the basic timeline for reestablishing equilibrium after a trauma. Each trauma is unique to that individual. There is no cookie cutter, one size fits all for healing mental and emotional trauma.

Another variable that I must recognize is my experience as an empath. We sensitives are the people that notice early on what is dark, broken and hidden in our society. For much of my journey I was an unrealized empath, meaning that I immediately took on the discomfort around me like it was my responsibility to feel all the dark brokenness around me. My vibration was lowered to match my environment. I didn’t acknowledge this or know how to talk about it. Now I’m shifting to allowing for a higher vibration by first aligning myself so that I may raise the vibration and offer solutions. Seeing the situation from my inner being. Pretty deep stuff.

This is hard work. I follow a couple of awesome profiles on Instagram that help by providing me daily reminders. Positive affirmations and guidance so that I can do the work. I’m challenging myself to allow and make room for change. It’s all part of the ever changing process of healing and growth. Becoming more aware and adjusting as is necessary. Following my inner guides so that my spirit can shine through unfiltered.

The definition of radical acceptance is this, “Radical acceptance“means completely and totally accepting something from the depths of your soul, with your heart and mind. I’m determined to keep moving forward by intensifying my ongoing relationship with acceptance which will allow myself continued healing. Namaste y’all🧘‍♀️