I have unspoken prayers. One of them is why am I the way I am? Why is it so difficult for me to throw things away? Why are my living spaces so cluttered? I know I work full time. I know I don't have 'systems' in place. There is a lot of back log to go through, and a lot of memories to unpack. If I had to pick a time where I simply gave up, it was when my mother passed. The first wave of giving up was before she passed and she entrusted me with her treasures (junk). Then when the whole estate thing happened, I had to get a lot of my own things back from her home. That was tough.
When I first moved in to this house, it was very nice because I was living here, but the bulk of my belongings were at the old house! From March to May I was bringing over more, and more. Eventually the realtor hired his son for a day to help us bring the last things over. There had been a moving truck Mid March but there were lots of little things.
I've taken time off, now that Anthony is away at school. I've worked maybe two weeks or three weeks a month. I've made some headway, but the termite tenting really set me back.
For Christmas, I was a little embarrassed. Anthony gave me a beautiful new espresso machine. It's so elegant. And I had to clear out so much stuff to make room for it. The old one was not very dependable. It had been so long since I had made espresso or latte that I saw a little mold growing in the water tank of the old one.
Something happened on Christmas Eve that was an answer to my prayers. I had wanted to go to Souplantation restaurant. Anthony had a roommate near the restaurant which is about an hour away from where we live. We invited the roommate.
When we dropped off the roommate, we had a chance to go inside their home and see their garden.
Immediately, I was struck by the home's appearance. It had fruit trees in the front yard. And inside, every horizontal surface was packed with items. Not junk. Useful things. Clean things. But ready just in case--for example, saved shopping bags and containers. It was everywhere except the dining table. The home was spacious, large, there was a Christmas tree.
In the back yard you were overwhelmed with the skills of a master gardener! A gazebo, supports for the plants, seedlings coming up in the dirt, and containers of new baby plants all over the concrete under the patio. I enjoy speaking 'gardening'--a language of love taught to me by my grandparents. My grandfather was the orchard specialist by training. But there were some trees I had never seen and was not able to identify.
The grandmother is the gardener.
She is so excited and generous! She picked for us a gallon zip lock of kumquats after we enjoyed tasting some. She gave us sugar cane, sugar cane starter plants, two loquat saplings, a grape bush starter, and three dragon fruit starters. Plus seeds! tomato seeds, two kinds, and greens.
I saw the small silver cross on her neck.
I put two and two together.
Back in her home country where she had been a farmer, her beliefs would have led to persecution. And back where she was from, the farmers often did not get the fruits of their labor. She was old enough to have lived through war, several of them, and undoubtedly experienced hunger.
Here, in the United States, she took full advantage of the opportunity of bare land. To grow things to eat. Not flowers, not landscaping...FOOD. Anthony's roommate said that growing up they rarely had to go to the store to purchase produce. They always had what they needed.
And I understood.
Complex trauma with hunger manifests itself in the two patterns I had observed in the grandmother: the packed surfaces, and the garden. The same as me.
I experienced war indirectly--the stories of my mother about their hunger and the suffering of war in Sicily , as well as the suffering of my grandfather as a soldier (he had to drink his own urine, there was no water. You let it sit overnight, it separated, and you skim off the top and drink the rest). There were my earliest memories, these stories. Then along the way, I accumulated my own complex trauma (grape when I was four).
When God answers a prayer, you are able to move forward. Your things holding you back do not hold you back any more.
Today, I threw out not only the old espresso machine, I threw out two pairs of boots that had the soles come off them. One was my comfortable snowboarding boots I wore as snow boots to New York. The other were my faux UGGS I got from Target long ago that I wore to breakfast yesterday. I could tell you how the shoes unglued--both times I was sitting at high top tables on barstools, my feet couldn't touch the ground, and I braced myself on the horizontal part of the chair. Today I threw out boxes I didn't need. And even dug out some photo albums of my sisters I had been keeping for her here. It was nice to look through them. I saw my medical school graduation.
I lost a lot of weight back then by walking in the park across the street every day. I did it to relieve stress actually, not to lose weight. So today, I put my phone in my pocket, set the timer, and walked for thirty minutes. It felt so good to be doing something like that!
Even though my mom yelled at me, a lot, growing up, and I couldn't yell back, ever...Even though my own body was violated at a very young age and I was told to keep it a secret...Even though being a single mom was traumatic enough (being abandoned in pregnancy, then going through custody proceedings, and the every other weekend trauma)...Even though being in healthcare is also really hard on your body/mind/emotions/soul....I am learning that my time is my own. And how I see things is okay to make decisions on how I run my home. There is a lot to throw away. I also threw away my beloved leather Roller Derby white roller skates with the yellow wheels. I could fit my feet in them. But like my wise neurosurgeon once remarked on a colleague who died in a motorcycle accident as a senior--there comes a time where our reflexes slow and we must stop certain activities. I said goodbye to them. Yes, on eBay they are worth about forty dollars, but shipping is also about that much. It's not worth the effort.
Do I feel lighter?
Yes.
I was always afraid of being yelled at for doing something wrong. Or for not having the ability to replace something if I got rid of it. This is the philosophy of lack.
Lack is not a philosophy of Heaven.
And even though we experience LACK, Creator was really firm with me about the boots. 'You have a pair of rain boots that fit and you can use them in rain or snow'. And also, Creator has a really nice pair of snow boots waiting for me. Not sure when I am supposed to get them. But they are ready. If I held on to my ones (I had bought the glue!) I would not have had the opening to receive the new ones.
I'm going to go make a meat loaf. One of my comfort foods.
Be sure to keep your eyes open for when Creator guides you through the answers to your unspoken prayers, too!
Ross
Trauma takes a long time to heal. Often the more usual course is through multiple lifetimes. Your soul is important, both for you and your life experience, and for your interaction with others on a soul level. This is more than replying to social media. This is the work of the heart. I never grow tired of it.
For my trauma, I needed both time in nature and lots of happy memories, time to heal, and actual teams of expert healers to guide me on my path back in order to reconnect with those I had neglected in my own life walk.
Everything happens for the betterment of us as a human!
clap! clap!
Aloha and Mahalos,
Namaste,
Peace,
Ross and Carla
The Couple
