Ready to be the Exile

In therapy, someone might value their own feelings for the first time. The therapist finds the person’s wounds, the times in the past where the world has overwhelmed them.

Later there will be a time for an academic understanding. I have no idea about other clients. But for me as client, healing comes in being in the Exile, the part which could not cope, which was rejected by a protector, and feeling her feelings in the moment of overwhelm, despair, splitting off, becoming Exile.

I was blessed to watch a therapist and person in action over zoom, and as they find the person’s exile I become that exile, feeling the hurt and need to protect and incomprehension, curling up in anguish, and hearing the need of the person for me, the exile, to get up and be an adult and only when I feel the person’s love for me, the exile, as I am, being able to move from that foetal position.

Two days later, there was Heather, co-creating my liberation.

I wanted to go back to The Piano Incident. I was eight, disputing with my mother, weeping though Big Boys Don’t Cry, and part of me became the Exile, lost, abandoned, weeping on the floor. Part of me became the Protector, as young as the Exile but with an idea of how to survive: Get up! Do the more difficult thing, and stretch yourself! Be a Man!

In 2009 I told people of the incident, every person I imagined I just might be able to trust with it, and I felt the full anguish of the Exile as if possessed by her. I told of lying on the floor crying, and my mother just looking at me: “SHE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND!” With all the hurt of that Exile. And then in September 2009 I realised. Oh, riiiight. She didn’t understand. She was who she was, with her limitations. It felt like forgiveness, a great step forward.

It was. I had been trapped in the pain of the exile, reliving it, unable to move on. I could not process that pain. Then I “forgave my mother” and put the pain in the background again. I obeyed the protector, getting up, trying to stretch myself, Getting On with my life and work. I realised it was not forgiveness, for that implies a wrong, but acceptance of who she was, a human being.

I feel that moment in my body now as I tell Heather of it, of my back tenser than ever and my gut repelled but my head up, hopeful, facing the world again: I managed about another three years. I was not ready to heal, so I girded my loins, and kept them girded until it was no longer possible and I retreated.

Now I am ready. I lie down on the floor, and curl up in my misery. I am that exile, in the moment of splitting, weeping, arguing with my mother. She stands over me, and part of me splits off to be the Protector, who knows what the Person must do: Be a Man, do what I am asked even if I think it stretches me too far. That frightened yet certain eight year old stands over me, beside my mother.

As the Exile, I feel my No, my disgust, in my gut. As I imagine the Protector my back tightens in stress.

The risk with affirmations is that they reinforce the Protector not the Exile, but I state the affirmations both need to hear.
Now, I am grown up.
I have agency. I can stretch myself if I wish, or refuse to attempt the difficult thing.
I have choice. I can do what I want to do. I can love what I love.
I can be my feminine self.

I dance my joy. Movement expresses my feelings even better than writing.

Then I think of some of the things I choose. I choose to look at art. I want to see a Caravaggio, loaned from Naples to the National Gallery. I choose to play the piano. These are things my parents introduced me to. Are they truly my choice? I think of them. Various experiences of art are soul-responses, my delight, my reality. I am clear enough on that. On the piano, we discuss the Pathetique sonata. My mother did not like how I put my whole body into those great crashing chords at the end of the first movement. Somewhere, Beethoven uses the instruction “Break the piano.” It was a fortepiano, wood-framed, but still.

-Rock and Roll!
-Yeah!

This is me. I want to play that piece so that someone thinks, I have never quite heard it like that, and it is the only way to play it. And I am far from that class of pianist.

These things that I want, I have so much work to do that perhaps they are impossible. I desire to be my feminine self, and it is no longer forbidden, but I have so much work on my voice, to project it in a head-resonance, unbroken pitch. I want to be a counsellor, and there is so much training to go through.

I feel the tension. But it is not the miserable tension of the Protector, that eight year old boy inside me.

If therapist and client simply look at the wound, and discuss how the client feels about it now, they may hardly advance at all. It might just reinforce the Protector, the false introjected understanding of what must be done, seeing the pain from the Protector’s point of view. I find that feeling myself as the Exile at the moment of exile, feeling the despair and anguish and accepting them, then stating the affirmation the Exile needs to hear, is liberating. The Exiles are us. We need to process their feeling, and for me that means feeling and accepting it.

I feel the Protector inside me, and give him a hug. Thank you for that work. You do not need to do it any more. I know you meant my good, and have carried that anguish all these years.

The vagus nerve is mine, to feel what I feel. I will not reject its responses. My chakras are mine, to feel what they feel, the information I need.

I can make a fuss

In Internal Family Systems, we find unconscious parts of ourselves which could not deal with a situation we were in, or the feelings that evoked, so blanked it from consciousness. The unconscious part, the “Exile”, is defended by a “Protector”, a way we react: it comes forth when the Exile is reminded of its shame. Others call this a Trigger.

In finding the Exile and helping it process the emotion about the original trauma, Richard Schwartz asks what age the exile thinks the person is. The exile’s understanding is frozen at the age of the trauma: if it occurred when I was three, then the exile thinks I am three. So, we find out what age I was when the trauma happened.

Then we tell it how old I actually am. I am 57, able to accept and process the emotions, and having a particular view of the trauma- it was unfair and wrong and I do not have to tolerate such things. So the protector is unnecessary. Well done, good and faithful servant, now relax. The exile is integrated, the trigger is disarmed, the person has a quantum of healing.

For two people to be perfectly attuned and also both free may be impossible. Our relationship ruptures, and when we repair it we strengthen it. I saw a presentation by Mali Parke on anger. She explained when there is a breach without repair, one will descend through stages: from social engagement into fight/flight, or activation; then freeze, where the body is tense; and finally enter immobilisation, seeing no possible action to take. Immobilisation is a major component of depression. Repair means getting back to social engagement.

This is a post about joy, liberation and empowerment. There is one bit which is disgusting: I ingested a long hair or fibre, and in the shower I felt it extruding from my bottom. I pulled on it until it all came out. I felt disgust and discomfort, but also an imperative for my survival:

I must not make a fuss.

I must not discuss this. I must not even show any feeling about it. Now, I have no recollection about such an experience before, and it is disgusting (my feelings are valid) but not in itself traumatising or life-changing: in my ideal understanding of emotions in the living human I could feel disgust and then move on. But I also felt that imperative.

I felt a need to process this with Kate. I did not want to discuss the hair, which provoked my inner conflict, but the conflict itself. I can’t get it out of my mind. I feel I ought to be able to feel disgust, process the feeling, move on. Or to just suppress the feeling and move on. Instead I want to talk about the feelings, in order to process them. But I can’t meet her eyes.

Part of me is telling me not to make a fuss. However another part believes Self could process the feeling and move on but for the protector which demands that I don’t make a fuss, don’t be conscious of the feeling or show it.

What does the protector (or Exile, whatever, the distinction is unclear now) need?

It is immobilised. I am moved to act this out: I curl up on the floor. What do I need? Not reassurance, but to be told that my feelings matter. How old is that part? I do not know. Rather than tell it I am 57, I say I am adult now, and can create beautiful things that people love.

And- I have a partner who loves me! I can make a fuss!

Only then could I tell her about the hair. Starting this story with the hair feels like a sign of liberation.

In March 2023 the exile was too young for an age in years to be meaningful. When I said, “I am old enough to go out, get food, come home, prepare and eat it” that produced a relaxation in me, a relief. It felt right. In Chichester Cathedral I felt constrained, possibly immobilised, and an age statement seemed irrelevant, as I was enmeshed until age 30. Saying I am 57 does not, by itself, indicate greater power or agency. Instead, I have come up with a statement about myself, now, which mitigates the hurt.

I am able to make decisions about where I go and what I do.

That produces the same quantum of relief.

I have a number of these affirmations:
I am old enough to go out, get food, come home, prepare and eat it
I can create beautiful things that people love
I have a partner who loves me, who will accept and help me process my feelings
I can make a fuss
I am able to make decisions about where I go and what I do

In each, I am saying what the Exile needs to hear in order to feel safe. “I am 57”- that is, I am an adult, able to move through the world as an adult- is the IFS equivalent, but when it is not enough for me these bespoke affirmations heal the Exile and bring it home. Then, I am looking out through my own eyes is an assertion that the Exile is home and free.

My partner loves me. I can process my feelings with her. If this co-dependency, it is not a bad kind. I am human. I need relationship. Possibly, having ruptured my relationship with tout le monde when I depended on my mother and became enmeshed, I am repairing it through Kate now. I can respect and love myself if I can connect and experience her respect and love. Possibly a therapist could help me heal, with love- or even with clearly perceiving and accepting, valuing, me, and communicating that.

My friend does not like affirmations. They feel like something she is supposed to believe- some off the peg concept that will make her improve, such as, “Every day in every way I get better and better”. This is different: it is the truth about the adult that the exile, the lost child within, needs to hear.

I have guessed the affirmation I need, and felt it freeing and empowering me. I have guessed an affirmation for another, seen her relax as she welcomes it and feels its truth, and it is one of the most delightful experiences I have had.

Then I ask the person to imagine themself as that lost child, hugging this big, beautiful adult that they are now, feeling held and supported by that adult, as well as imagining themself as the adult hugging the lost child. She was lost, and is found.

Adverse childhood experiences, implicit memory, empathy, trauma

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are not just bad stuff that happened; they have been quantified, defined in a list of ten, and subject to research on their effect on adult health. Here’s the quiz.

The ACEs list is about violence- fear of hurt, being hit, sexual assault- and being unprotected- feeling nobody loved you, not having enough to eat, biological parents abandoning you- perhaps by bad things happening to household members- being mentally ill, going to prison, being alcoholic, mother being hit.

I note that question about mother or stepmother being hit, but not father or stepfather. I don’t know enough about the test to critique it.

How is it used? It is a definition of childhood abuse and neglect which can help children now, by letting teachers and others see children who need support; it can show how important that support is, through the observation that people with a high ACE score are prone to physical and mental illness. Even, we can have some sympathy with someone in prison, because of their high ACE score. They have done bad things in part because they had it bad.

And, as the NPR article explained, some people with a high ACE score have resilience, possibly because of a loving, supportive relationship as a child- with a teacher or grandparent. The CDC has things to say on ACE, and there have been studies.

So ACE score is an indicator, but not a predictor. To make a theory of why some people have difficulty with resilience, I find the concept of implicit memory, which I came across through Bonnie Badenoch, more useful. The amygdala lays down unconscious memory based on your feelings, and then interprets the world according to those memories. So ACEs would affect that; but in some people good experiences would mitigate it, and they might turn out resilient anyway.

I may have come across ACEs before, but online saw a presentation by Carey Sipp, who scores nine out of ten. She “stopped the toxic cycle for her family”- her children are now in their thirties.

I score zero on the ACE list. Here’s me in 2016, unable to justify to myself or others why I feel so unable to go out to work. I had the idea that it did not matter how badly I suffered in childhood; what mattered was how I am now. So, if I “stubbed my toe once”, that was enough: I did not need to have suffered something no human could bear. I still judge myself, even after the experiences of healing the baby, about how much I suffered, really, but much less.

I was terrified my sickness benefits would stop, and now they have stopped I am glad of it. I was terrified the system would say I did not qualify. I have no idea how to make a life for myself beyond isolation. Those healing experiences make it easier to accept how badly I have been hurt, and the concept of implicit memory gives a theoretical backing I can accept intellectually. I want people saying they are hurt to be believed, however they express it, and the hurt of those prisoners to be recognised even if they cannot articulate it.

After writing this, I worked with Heather. She mentioned the Still Face experiment. I curled up, in horror and pain. She commented how my body’s movement showed my feelings flowing. Yes: and with a trans person, resonating, I was wriggling in delight. We discuss my mother. Considering her, I am watchful.

Oh, I took some notes. At one point I demonstrated what my mother did to me, with an old metaphor: I crumpled up a piece of paper, then gently and painstakingly smoothed it. She crushed me. I am smoothing myself out. “Take your time,” Heather said. My fear is inherited from my mother. It was hers. But she would not have been conscious of fear: for her, I am sure her way of being was rooted in self-respect and doing Right. In both, she appears normal, even admirable, to the world. Well, she maintained a marriage for 33 years, until death; she brought up two children; she had a job, and left a house with its mortgage paid off. It’s a reasonable life, if unremarkable. It has conventional marks of success.

She wanted to appear normal, and not be seen. I believe she was terrified of being seen and known, of her feelings being knowable. I say again about looking out of my own eyes. Yes, says Heather, I had told her. She wanted to hear again. It makes me feel powerful, makes me delight in my body.

My concept of normal is my mother’s. It is from the 1950s, and she could just about make it work in the 1980s. In the 2020s, it is impossible. My algorithm has broken down in terrible confusion. I hide away. That fear is hers, though she never felt it consciously.

I have an image of cuddling my mother, who shrinks to a baby. I love and succour this baby, cradling her in my arms. She need never fear again. I will love you. You are loved, free to be who you are.

It is not the 1950s, but the 2020s! Come, see how the world has changed, its full beauty and terror, its majesty and incomprehensibility, feel your freedom. I will love and support you.

Prompted by Heather, I move my body, feeling a physical sense of opening out. I feel love, freedom, power. I feel in my body, in my heart, gut, throat chakra. I need not classify, now, those feelings, or even understand them. They are there, to accept, and to explore and know over the coming months.

A Liberation

I am looking out of my own eyes. I have rescued something within me, that was stuck or imprisoned. My unconscious sense of what I needed led me. I trusted it, and followed it, step by step, without any idea of where it was going. Kate held the space, in love, without commenting.

To contact the unconscious, Bonnie suggests drawing or nondominant handwriting. I did not want to do these things. The leader wanted me to explore through movement, and I assented. I stood up, in order to move through the space of my living room. I was led to lie down.

I moved my arm. It was me, and not me, moving it. It was the process, whole-me, all that is within my skin. My conscious self assented to it. Something unconscious moved it. My left arm moved at random, and I knew it was a baby’s movements, when the baby is learning what connections in the brain will allow it to co-ordinate movement. We make, prune and myelinate connections, learning what connections control limbs to do as we wish. I am myself as a baby, on the floor, unable to roll over. Yet the baby’s cry does not bring my parents. They have an idea that babies must be taught to sleep and eat on schedule. Possibly there was something more than just that between me and my mother.

In this moment, my upper back which holds my habitual tension does not feel tense. The baby’s was not so tense. The baby was in touch and aware of vagus nerve stimuli: I was in touch with my “gut feelings”.

My gut resented my parents’ actions.

That resentment was too much for me, as a baby. I was dependant. I had to propitiate my mother. Having felt the gut feeling, and suppressed it, the tension in my back returned.

My inner critic is now challenging such perceptions, but not denying them with the full force of terror it held before. I am sure enough that this is what is going on.

Again I was led to move by my unconscious, and again I assented. I voiced what I was doing. I am now an adult, and can show that stuck baby within me that I am an adult. I can sit up, and stay sat up unsupported. I vocalised that. Then, I can crawl around the floor. Something in me is giving an amused (not derisive) challenge. “Mmmm. Really?” But it is true enough for me. I crawl around the room. Then, I stand up. I can stand, unsupported. I take a step. I can walk, all by myself.

And now, I am looking out through my own eyes. The baby, who was not heard and responded to- something froze in me at that time, and it is unfrozen. I have been getting more and more in touch with bodily sensations for some time, but my body now feels more alive than before. When I say, “I am looking out through my own eyes” I feel joyful and energised.

There is an exercise at the end of the Hoffman process designed to let the “inner child” experience growing up. I may be using ideas and concepts which I have taken in. I have a sense that my mother’s fear lives inside me: it is hers, and not mine. I may approach that, later. I have a sense that it is a fear inculcated when she was a baby. I want to heal my mother, and so heal myself.

Walking back from the park, Kate and I watched a cloud. In the time it took to walk the length of the street, it had vanished into thin air.

Time travel

“Time travel is brilliant!” said the woman. We shared our experiences. It needs well-held, and facilitated, and needs the subject to be present in the experience and open to it.

The traveller has had an emotional reaction which appears disproportionate to a current situation. With the facilitator, they find a memory which fits the emotion. It may be of them as a small child, in a situation which they could not cope with and were not helped with. They were overwhelmed.

The overwhelm created a traumatic memory. The situation provoking it becomes something to fear. The fear produces the stuck reaction.

Together, we imagine going back to that small child, and offering sympathy and support. They do not have to cope with this alone. There are warm, loving, supportive adults, the traveller and the facilitator, to hold and support them. They offer a hug. The child has a free choice. Sarah Peyton describes the technique.

I have facilitated this once. I spoke as moved by intuition, in fear and trembling, and when it worked and my friend was grateful I was pleased. I think of it now with great pleasure. My slight variation, which I have not read elsewhere, was in the hug to imagine herself as the child, being hugged by the strong, capable adult.

Richard Schwartz, founder of Internal Family Systems, practises something like this. He asks if the child has any idea how old the adult is. I returned to a child self too young to understand age in years, so told her I was old enough to go out of the house, get food, bring it home and prepare it: I was capable of giving the child the care she needs.

With a friend holding space for me, I go back to that incident when I was eight. This has been an important memory for me. I have done a lot of work on it. For this child, in denial, being masculine was terribly important. The memory symbolises my childhood feeling that I was isolated, and had to take care of myself. I would approach the world intellectually. My feelings had no value.

I have seen this technique done, and always with a happy ending. Here, I am handling ways of being which have been fundamental to my response to the world. Seeking control. Favouring intellect and rationality over feeling, though I have come to see that is an illusion and come to value, appreciate and understand my feelings over years. Isolating, though I have never completely isolated and have been coming out more and more this year.

So, my child self, symbolising my commitment so long ago to self-sufficiency, control, and intellect over feelings, knowing how that has felt safe in chaos over years, is not going to be lured into a hug quite yet. We travelled back in time to meet him, and he is suspicious. I decided that rather than end the practice there, I would sit with it. Essentially, the child, wanting control, finding safety in intellect, isolating because everyone lets me down, time travelled forwards to now.

Hello, Stephen. This is my life now.

The child is still suspicious. I hope she can see how beautiful she is.

After 48 hours, I have done my processing.
It was the right decision at the time.
My situation was very difficult.
My situation has changed.

The child is ready for a hug.

December roses! I took this picture in the park this week.

Metta and healing

I am loveable. I deserve my love.
I am loveable. I need my love.
I love myself.
I am beautiful.
I deserve to care for myself, look after myself, tend to myself.

When I first encountered Metta meditation, I found love for myself difficult. I thought of it, thought, that’s enough, go on to others, and went on to others. I did not practise Metta meditation long. My journey over the last thirteen years has been to learn to love myself. If I do not love myself, nobody else will, and human beings need Love.

I am pleased with my progress. I love myself. This means I am a healthier human being, better able to be in the world. When Ulla Koenig led Metta meditation, it was not words to repeat but her voice introducing the practice, calling to mind different aspects of it, and sitting with the feeling, and what it brought up in us. Practising compassion for myself, I was happy, and wrote the above. It is a sign of my growth and healing.

Then she moved on to a person with whom you have an easy relationship. It could be someone you do not know well, someone in a shop you regularly exchange a few words with.

The person with an easy relationship: I cannot think of anyone. The woman in the library, who worked to print the thing I wanted, comes to mind after. I wanted to help her help me, and not curse herself too hard when things did not immediately work. It was a good interaction. Each cared for the other, and the task. I exchange a few words on the till at Aldi, usually. And in all other contexts where I know people, there is stuff. There is always stuff.

At this I felt pain, and went off to prepare breakfast, half-listening to Ulla Koenig rather than sitting with the practice. When I started, it seemed a wonderful idea. I would be The Meditator, a channel for Love flowing into the world. I stopped because it was difficult.

The meditation shows me where I have difficulty with compassion. I am not that pure channel for Love. It shows me the blocks, and may help me work on them.

I will practice compassion for myself. That pain needs my attention. Feeling it in that moment was intense: my isolation is painful (though if I had more social interaction I would not necessarily have easy relationships). I leapt away from the source of immediate awareness of the pain. I cannot leap away from the pain itself. I can work to keep it beyond my awareness, or make choices in awareness of it. It is old pain and current pain, pain at difficulty relating to others, pain at how I have responded. There is the tincture of shame and blame, which I can ease: I know I have always done my best, in my circumstances.

My own healing is my first concern. I will love and care for myself. I will notice and value my pain, and work to heal the wounds which produce it.

I am covered with wounds, scars, and old pain. It makes me react in pain, angrily and defensively, and isolates me further. I need presence in the true self, not the ego; in the self, not the various exiles, protectors and firefighters. How could I possibly not flinch, and act to minimise my experience of pain? I need awareness of the pain of the Exiled parts of me, and to sit with it, salving it with love, care and attention.

Heart and Ego

I cannot resist the World. I can only resist myself. The Process- this changing agglomeration of atoms and ideas which is the closest thing in the world to “I”- can turn against itself, or not. I can feel anger, and a desire to suppress this anger out of consciousness, both at once, and that is the Resistance I experience, which gets in the way.

I can start to cease resisting at a retreat centre. My attention is on a whirl of thoughts, rumination, resentment, relitigating old disputes I lost long ago, so resisting the mourning of that loss, preventing me processing the loss and moving on, and then my attention is on a tree or a river, which is beautiful, and I feel delight, and I accept that delight.

I resist mourning that loss, because it is too painful. I resist my anger, because I have suffered for expressing anger. It is not the World I resist, but myself, and so move through the world bearing the pain of my resistance. I am frightened of the world because it will produce feelings in me which I cannot bear, so I retreat from it, and on my retreat I see beauty, feel delight, and begin to learn to accept my own feelings.

All these words are judgments- beauty, delight, acceptance. I crystalise a moment in the flow, and judge it, then apply words. And I am a creature of words.

There is “awareness”, of what is within and without me, and “experience”, my response to it, which may include aversion, a turning away, or delight, an opening up. Martin Aylward quotes the Buddha: awareness cradles experience. I am simply aware of my own delight and aversion, accepting them. Aversion is more difficult for me than delight.

Having seen beauty in a leaf or a river I learn to see beauty in concrete, new or derelict. I practice being in the now, with my surroundings and my experience of them, rather than cut off, thinking of past and future. Or, I consider the beauty of concrete rather than making judgments and plans it would behove me to make. I would love a Rule I could put in words and know which was right at any particular moment, but my experience is that trying to live by rules stops me responding optimally to what is, and I cannot draft them. How does “playfulness” fit in my taxonomy? Paying attention to my feelings at different times of day- walking along the street, doing a puzzle- has been beneficial.

Today, I had a decision I could not make. Both possibilities seemed equally attractive, but I needed to reject one, which seemed unbearable. Eventually I decided to pick the one the Heart, or True Self, wanted, and reject the one Rationality, or the Ego, wanted. I identified them: the Heart speaks in a higher, softer voice, the Ego in a deeper one. I chose the option I voiced in that higher voice.

This is huge for me. It is linked to transition: the Heart, the softer voice, feels more feminine. And sometimes I do not trust it: what I call the Ego does not feel safe. I want to live from Heart, and that feels unbearably intense, so I must veg out for most of the day.

Ego seeks safety in my articulacy, in argument and persuasion. I need to persuade myself, fearing my mere desire is not enough. Then, I speak in the deeper, harsher voice. The desire is spoken by Heart, in the softer, higher voice. The choice was whether to eat meat or vegetarian that evening, as I had to buy food. I had wanted to go to the supermarket early in the morning, but could not make the decision until mid-afternoon, and spent much time before then numb, because the desires of WHAT I CALL “heart” and “ego” were so perfectly balanced.

Holding a teddy bear, I feel compassion for the bear feeling all its feelings.

I argued with a man who thought JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock were completely reasonable, attacked by “trans rights extremists”. He even remembered Lisa Keogh, who he thought had behaved reasonably. He was lost in the propaganda of The Times. My articulacy felt useful, but I may merely have alienated him.

The Right No III

Today I am celebrating my inner Mnyuh. As Richard Schwartz might say it is part of me, wishing me well. She or he is relentlessly negative, peevish and mean. She can find something nasty to say about anyone or anything. I have not respected or valued her sufficiently, and this may have distorted her.

It’s too hot. The tube will be dirty, smelly and crowded. That 19th century woman artist the Tate is showcasing will be derivative and dull as the Guardian said.

Etc. Give Mnyuh her head, and see where she pulls.

I wrote that yesterday morning, and by the evening I had moved on. Mnyuh is a childish response to not being allowed to refuse stuff. I will sulk and be disagreeable and cause unpleasantness for others because I can’t just say no. Mnyuh seeks out some part of an experience to object to, so it will have an argument against the whole. The tube was crowded at times. In the evening, another trans woman noticed and smiled at me, and I smiled back and noticed. I like Annie-Louisa Swynnerton, so I am sharing her pictures. Laura Knight wrote, “Any woman reaching the heights in the fine arts had been almost unknown until Mrs Swynnerton came and broke down the barriers of prejudice”. Of course she means in England, but still. A huge painting of a child on a pony, painted like a heroic Equestrian, is beautiful. The girl must have loved it.

Not knowing my “No”, being unable to refuse what I do not like nor embrace it with Serenity, limits my capacity to know desire. In the 90s my life was a slog. I wrote in my diary going to my traineeship, “I cannot endure this job. I must enjoy it,” but I hated it and was glad to leave in disgrace though I did not know what else I would do. Then at the CAB I saw an older welfare rights worker for the council, and thought, that is my fate, this just goes on. Well, life does.

“Accepting the fact of our death, we are enabled to live more fully.” I checked the quote: it’s actually “the fact of death, we are freed”. All death, all loss, all endings, all change. Humans notice loss more than gain. If I can accept a loss I can move on from it, rather than fruitlessly craving what I never really possessed.

She asked, “What do you want?” I had no idea. I want to survive. I want to be safe. I want to hide away and not be noticed. These are fearful. So “No” becomes resistance to anything new. If, as I believed in my heart, I was worthless, nothing could be good to me.

There is my ordinary speaking voice, coming from ego, what I imagine to be acceptable, sensible, rational, and my true self which talks in a softer voice, which Richard Schwartz calls simply “Self” as “false Self” is an impossibility. Self was crushed, and has been manifesting. Self loves beauty, and challenge. I want to play the piano, though the teenager playing Chopin so brilliantly at St Pancras makes my playing seem plodding to me. I wanted to swim to the Palace Pier and back, a round trip of about a kilometre, despite the swell. I felt triumph going under it, and dismay at the thought of swimming back.

I want to challenge myself, and overcome.

My no is reflexive. I started this blog by rejecting it, wanting Positivity, engagement, delight. I found it stayed with me, then was resurgent. I am uncoiling slowly, like a cautious pangolin. Having my No as my shield to use as I please, valuing myself and my right, I begin to find my Yes. Or, if I can give a clear and cheerful No, I am able to see the boundary I need, and enforce it. If my Mnyuh resurfaces, I will notice and value it: it shows me I am fearful of enforcing a boundary I desire, and that is good to know.

Balance and freedom

I am not who I thought I was. I am not what I was taught to respect.

Yesterday I was in my house, reading things which made me feel under threat, and today I went to London. I cycled to the station in sunshine, with the wind behind me.

A week ago K told me a ritual around letting go past decisions which no longer serve. In my cot, I decided to do whatever it took to please my mother, whatever the cost. It was a matter of survival.

I have shared on this, with ACA. I said I do not need to prove this to you. I believe it. I breathe that in. I do not need to justify myself or second-guess myself. I need to see.

The ritual asks if I can value the decision and see its worth for me, whether it now serves me, whether I can let it go.

I am grateful for the decision, which kept me alive. I am grateful for that part of me which enforced it on me. And then it became just normal. I could not even see it. Here is part of how I came to see it. I am so glad I came to see it.

I sat on the crowded train beside a woman, and felt the fear and anguish of my inner critic or controlling parent. I am letting the decision go in my own time. I hugged myself, caressed the bare skin of my arms, and cried quietly. There are times when I can contain the upset part of me, let her cry and scream somewhere safe within, and times when showing her proper respect means giving her access to express feeling through my body in the world. It is healing.

The woman got off the train. I sit beside the roof support, but there are six inches of window. I look through it at fields, trees and houses, hungrily: I need this beauty. I spent too long yesterday with the flat, single-colour planes of internal walls and the glowing screen feeding fear and anger.

At St Pancras I play the prelude. Cecilia is delighted: she is waiting for a train to the airport after doing Europe in 14 days with three other tourists and a guide. It’s been a hoot. She is from Texas. She suggests I visit the US. Two weeks might let me do one or two cities.

I walk along Euston road. It is busy and loud. I move my arms and shoulders to release emotion.

In meeting ministry is on the peace testimony. The peace I am called to make, if I may, is with any women’s rights campaigners who need me out, without abasing myself or denying my needs. Ukraine is not my concern.

I had the idea I need balance. I remain inspired by my teenage niece’s declaring something “yucky”. Such clarity. My habit is to rationalise, explain, justify, make a case. I would rather take others with me, and do not want to adopt a common opinion to hide away and be safe any more. It is not safe. There is perhaps a balance between the clarity and the argument. Or perhaps I only need know what I feel, as long as I can be clear about my perceptions.

In meeting I rock and convulse with the fear of my infant self and the sense-impressions of the day. It is relief, the anguish I feel at laying down a burden.

Then with J to the Tate, to the Isaac Julien exhibition. Here are beautiful films about slavery, and death by AIDS, homophobic assault or drowning. They are intense. The world is intense. I might hide from it less. It is my home.

I like being this person that I am. I am glad to be able to appreciate and express who I am. It is freedom.

Facing the Monster

My life is governed by fear, such that most days I do not go out. I fear myself, and that fear comes from my enmeshed relationship. It is fear of how my mother might react if I show my true character in any spontaneous act. It is fear the monster will get me. Or, I fear the world, and that comes from my mother’s fear of the world. Some of my fear is stoked by media transphobia: people feel justified speaking such hostility to trans women and our rights. And a little of my fear comes from my actual experiences, just enough to keep the rest simmering.

These are my goals for recovery:

I mourn and process my past.
I lose my fear of displeasing my dead mother.
I feel my feelings fully, and value them as my perception of the world and my needs.
I see others as they are, and relate to them well.
I know my own goals and desires, and pursue them.
I express my gifts in the world, as a blessing on myself and others.

My fears of my mother, and hers of the world, do not relate to me now, and I want to be free of them. Such fear could only come from terror of death. I imagine her rejection when I was a baby, and I had to self-abnegate, to be the child she wanted, in order to survive.

I see more how my craziness works. On Sunday 26 February I made a remark to a woman in Tate Modern which upset my protective self and I had to go home. On Tuesday I heard the bin lorry just as I finished drying myself after the shower, so threw on coat and sandals to take my bin out. I stood, bare legged, feeling humiliated. Then I noticed that rather than process the feelings, I was trying to suppress them, in order to appear calm, though I was alone. Then I went to an ACA meeting and was needlessly unpleasant. And, when there is a feeling I find uncomfortable I take refuge in puzzles or social media. The answer in each case is to feel and accept the feelings.

Here am I, aged 56, governed by fear of displeasing my mother by showing a feeling unacceptable to her. I have been rewatching BoJack Horseman on Netflix, which shows both people maturing and getting on with their lives, and one character stuck in his monstrous childhood with an implacable inner critic, miserable, lonely, impulsive, chaotic and harmful. It shows that no experience, however extreme, has to be a person’s bottom: they can carry on as ridiculous and harmful as they ever were, and stopping drinking is not recovery. I find it wise, humane and beautiful, with a darkness at the centre, and it helps me understand myself. The second last episode is a near death experience. After, I noodled on the socials for a bit, then went late to Pendle Hill zoom worship.

I felt my infant terror of death. I was there, completely dependent, and terrified of not being cared for as I needed. I felt as afraid as I have ever been conscious of feeling. I was shaking and weeping. I started saying to my mother/the monster,

Do it.

Do it. Do it. Do it. Do as you wish. Do it. I will not placate you.

I thought of writing this for The Friend, and the Doubt inside me is saying nobody will believe me and I don’t want people to know and I would not be able to write about it and either persuade, inform or entertain. So I am writing about it here. It seems Big, and meaningful, and time will tell.