Category: Grief / Loss / Trauma

Thank You, Troubles

by The Blyss Catalyst, posted in Grief / Loss / Trauma, Uncategorized

8/31/16

I warned myself it’d be a trying and emotional trip on many levels for a myriad of reasons, so I can’t be disoriented that I’m leaving feeling wiped, a bit nauseous (literally, but that might be from the junk masquerading as “food” that I kept shoveling in attempts to suppress the stress), and heart-tender….And yet, on the very same plane, the trip was fulfilling and filled to the brim with blessings (like I got to fall in immediate swoon with Lauren Taylor and her brilliant babygirl Taylor, who are Lucy’s new amazingly awesome caregivers and who’ve gone above & beyond their caregiving duties to make her feel welcomed and me feel at ease! Love you two mucho a LAWT!)….If my strife has taught me anything (and in fact it’s taught me a phd’s worth), it’s that there are simply no absolutes, and love and pain and hardships and miracles – and everything in between – can, and often do, work in cahoots together, co-existing ever so oddly and perfectly together. I feel all the feels. I’m bigger inside than ever before..and I’m headed back to the West a little banged up but stretched ever more so in the direction of my true divine Self.

Thank you, ache, thank you, troubles. I trust the propulsion of your push.

What I Do Know

by The Blyss Catalyst, posted in Grief / Loss / Trauma, Growth & Transformation, Romance, Sex, & Dating, Self-Love, Uncategorized

I’ve gone a little quiet these days. Sometimes I process challenging times publicly and creatively; but some darkness renders me speechless for I don’t yet have the words or actions that even closely resemble feelings that have no shape or coherence yet. To say the least, it’s been a grating and grueling year, a disorienting and losing-myself one. And it has grown me and deepened me as all darkness does. It’s opened my eyes to more of what I do want in life by contrast of having experienced so much of what I do not.

And now, at the outset of an already grinding year (few years, to be honest), it seems that I have just a bit more uphill to go before the big upswing, which I know is certain to come, as life’s pendulums always ensure.

What’s up right now is that I’ve lost my job, my house, and my long-term relationship in the span of a month. I feel like I’m walking around in life with no epidermis, all raw and gooey and like I have no identity or container to hold my parts together, and I’m dripping all over the place, staining the sidewalks with my mess.

But what’s also up is that after a lifetime of tremendous losses, traumas, heartbreaks and formidable mountains of adversity, I now know a few things about myself and times like these. It is in this knowing where I’ll find my footing and my safety in an otherwise very unsafe-feeling time.

And what I do know is this:

I know I’ve made it through all of my bad days and not one has failed to spit me out to the other side transformed. Not one have I not come out singing. Not one hasn’t turned out to be the catalyst to my next plane of expansion and self-actualization (in other words, made me more ME).

What I do know is that times like these only prompt me to dial up the self-love and compassion, and out of that, I synthesize with my Higher Self in a deeper and more avowed way than ever before. A more in-my-own-corner way than ever before.

What I do know is that when I’m forced to confront fear and loss and confusion triggered by present events, I then have an opportunity to heal the parts of my past where all that is actually sourced from, and I always choose to dive deep into that opening, as much as it wrings the hell out of my heart to do so. I know that if I just stay in the fire, many old hurts that have long overstayed their welcome will be exhumed and purified from me and I’ll be that much freer, that much more rooted in my Light. And what I do know is that facing fear and pain only musters out of me the tools I have to battle those beasts, and I’m prompted to call upon the medicines I know — dance and movement, meditation, journaling, EFT, prayer, my personal growth resources, community, time in nature, and on — just throw everything I got at it. Here is where all of those seminars and workshops and all the conscious learning come out of the world of insight and actually play out and pay off.

What I do know is that because things always work out for me in the end (and they do for all of us), having traversed yet another once formidable mountain only serves to have me more connected to humanity and be a space for others going through the painful places where I have been. I get the honor of being allowed in there with them because they can trust that I can hold space for any kind of experience, that there isn’t anything they can give me that I can’t be with, and they would be right. And so my dark places only serve to make me more of a contribution in and to the world, and thus they are a gift to me, for that is perhaps the best me I could possibly be, and ultimately the reason I’m on this planet.

What I do know is that I always have a choice, no matter what life throws at me. And I choose to stay in the fire, and trust. I choose that when the bottom is dropped, the only way for me is up.

I hope you do too, because the world needs the gift of more humans like that.

To our collective transformative fire…i love you, brave ones.

Mama Spirit Grad Day Year 3

by The Blyss Catalyst, posted in Grief / Loss / Trauma

8/8/18

8.8 My Mama’s Spirit Graduation Day. 3 years today. And I’m only now turning the corner of accepting the reality that she’s never coming back. Grief can be a slow brew like that.

All day today and the few days leading up, I’ve been exploring what this day means to me, trying to get present to all that it contains and what there is to honor of it. And while I do find myself somewhat tender and somber about it, something else keeps rising up, trumping the pain this day holds — by far. My mind keeps frogleaping the ache to go right to it.

And that is all the people who came rushing in to hold me tight through this time 3 years ago, and never let go since. Those who showed up and kept showing up, so that I could fall apart safely, knowing they were there to gather me. Who threw all their love and all their support and all their tools for healing into the void left by the catastrophic event. The humans without which I’d have been swallowed up by the dark, endlessly lost and floating alone in the abyss like a kite with no string.

I dedicate this day to you. To all you who tethered me to the earth, and made it safe to come back down to. I owe my life — and regrown heart — to you.

Prayer hands emoji times infinity 🙏🏽 I love you with all of my lost and found soul, sacred family.

[i apologize if you’re not tagged yet and you were someone who in some way held space for me and helped me heal; I’ll keep adding more as my mind gets represenced to all who came through in a direct & chronic way. I’m sorry for the delay. The years have held so many. A good problem to have.]

Living with Monsters

by The Blyss Catalyst, posted in Grief / Loss / Trauma

Suicide doesn’t end the pain. It just transfers it to other people. And I can attest to that the pain never goes away. You just get better at living with it.

It’s like suddenly a behemoth, scary, grotesque monster moves into your house and won’t ever leave, forever. So you just get used to the big blobby thing and live with it. You learn to talk with it, hear it out, sob your guts out with it, maybe even help it heal – slowly, be just a little less monstery…..But at the end of the day, no matter what you ever do, there’s still a giant fucking monster in your house.

There’s still this big ol’ cumbersome thing taking up all that space, making messes, and causing some people to run in the opposite direction from you. No matter how well you learn to deal with it, it’s still always going to be something to manage. Forever.

Please don’t be afraid to reach out for help. Making people you love live with that monster is way, WAY scarier.

National Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273-8255 ☎️

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It’s the Clutching That’s Hard

by The Blyss Catalyst, posted in Grief / Loss / Trauma, Healing, Uncategorized

Maybe things feel hard because i’m clinging so tightly to the past and to the way i think they ought to be. When the winds try to blow you loose, of course it hurts if you’re clutching to a tree fighting against them. Losing the past surely brings some pain, but it’s nothing compared to the pain of grasping on to what is no longer for you.

I think underneath all this pain and struggle i’m feeling right now is ultimately the sense of losing myself – the self i’ve always recognized as me. The Alyssa I was with a mother on the planet, the loss of which reshapes the whole configuration of one’s world entirely. Mom’s not coming back, and I’m still busy resisting that, therefore i’m also resisting that the Alyssa I knew back when i had her is no longer the me that i am or am emerging into. I’m something i do not yet know. And that scares the LIVING BEJEEZUS out of me. I have never known me without her. I have never not known the security and familiarity of the me that I am through her eyes. I’d venture to say she was the most influential, impactful factor to my life, and thus the life i had was largely shaped by her being in it. My whole world had her stamp. The struggle i’m now in feels like one of survival, and the threat of it has been showing up all over the place – in the realm of money, living situations, work, relationships, well-being, etc.….but ultimately, I think it’s about surviving her departure with the Alyssa I know still intact. It’s a losing game, because that just isn’t possible. I’m not that girl anymore. I want to be, but i simply can’t be. I can keep parts of her, but by definition, i am not the Alyssa i was and have known for so many decades. So the overriding essence that’s there all over my life is this feeling of being no one for some time. This in-between being that isn’t this or that. Not anything definable or knowable. Not even to my own self. Just one big edgeless becoming. Into what I don’t know, because even the plans and visions and intentions I once had for myself – well they’re all part of the me that I was. With these past few topsy-turvy, turned-inside-out-y years, all has been detonated. Everything must be reconfigured. Except there is no “re-“ to any of this. I am not rebuilding because that would call for reconstruction from the old parts to build again some sense of order that I once knew. I have more new parts to me now than old and I’ve no idea yet how they work, what makes them go, what new things they can do.

Some of you may have read a passage somewhere out there in the personal growth space about a biology teacher named Mr. Bartlett. Here it is (by unknown):

I remember Mr. Bartlett. In biology class he discusses the transformation of caterpillar into butterfly —

”What is the process that goes on inside a cocoon?” he asks. “Has anyone ever seen a picture of the insect at the halfway point between caterpillar and butterfly? Does anyone know what it looks like?” No one has or does. The next week, Mr. Bartlett finds a cocoon in the woods and brings it into the classroom. We crowd around as he takes a blade and neatly slices it in two.

The cocoon looks empty.

“There is nothing in there,” says one of the kids.

“Oh, it’s in there,” says Mr Bartlett. “It just doesn’t have a shape right now. The living organic material is spun right into the cocoon. Caterpillar is gone, butterfly is yet to come.” We stare in wonder.

“Real Transformation” says Mr Bartlett, “means giving up one form before you have another. It requires the willingness to be nothing for a while….”

If you’re reading this and you’re one of the ones on my team who loves me, thank you for the space you’ve given me to be who I am, what I am becoming, and to be nothing in the in-between. And thank you for the grace you give me to be scared but listening me as strong through it all.

Have you also been clinging to a you or a past or some iteration of something that no longer is, and can you too feel the constraint of that gravity? Can you give yourself the permission to let go and be in the wilderness of the unknown for a while, in order to become something beyond your current definitions and known edges? Can you see the adventure in that, and are you willing to feel the pain and the fears of Real Transformation, trusting it will all be okay? Way way better than okay, for life rewards bravery. Can you keep in this sacred knowing? I am holding space for you.

Cheers to life, in all its configurations

OJ / Lyss

Move Over Broken Way

by The Blyss Catalyst, posted in Grief / Loss / Trauma
Suicide didn’t really take her. Depression & Anxiety did. Isolation and the pain of pleasurelessness did. The tragedy of lack of community was her sickle. It’s what happens when our joy is strangled; when our Truth is ripped out from our skin. We die. In many kinds of ways. With some, it happens slowly over the decades, while in others, it tears in quick like a snake, all at once in that crushing soul-blow kind of way.
It came in like that with her, a swift and sudden venom. Only the last 3 or 4 months of life did the Fog of Lies descend to the degree that they did, to maul her Truth apart. But that was enough. She fought her big beautiful heart out, to the death. But they won. They told her that true, cozy, artful and yummy Joy was out of her reach. That Tribe was the thing of ancient legend and fable, not to be believed in this day, at her age. And if you want to know how it is I fiercely carry on, it is that I’m on a mission to avenge my mother’s killers. I’m out to invest the rest of my life telling depression to go FUCK itself on behalf of all its cheated victims by way of catalyzing the potent power of play and laughter to free all beings on earth, birthrighted to their Truth – which is to say we are none more than bliss and bone. A wild love incarnate.
On my watch, society will no longer regard joy-inducing things as an afterthought luxury partitioned for our leisure time, but will recognize them as lifesaving medicine. Or I will die trying. As long as I’m breathing, this world will have to deal with me on my fluorescent soapbox, shouting with all my might in a unicorn onesie and clown nose on, that the silly is sacred, that exploring is our mind’s air, that sock-sliding across floors saves souls, dance breaks at work need be standard and secret handshakes a modus operandi, intimacy in community is healthcare, sisterhood & brotherhood are as crucial to wellness as water, cuddling is cellular regrowth, music is a salve, making art, any art, is our spirit’s devotion to its maker, hand-holding is as natural as blinking, comedians, healers, shamans and artists are on par with doctors, games are as necessary as taxes, lightheartedness is the new heart surgery, grounding practices and belly laughter and ample time outdoors with our bare feet caressing the earth should be written into our medical plans.
The Puritanical reign is as OVER as it was murderous. Let the stuffy, buttoned-up kin suffer in sweetless silence, but let my people go. F..R..E..E..D..O..M is having its heyday now, and hey hey brethren, can I tag you in? FUN is about to rightly displace the stupidity of boring convention and all that is heavy will step down from its false throne. I hereby declare my life as a coup to overthrow the status quo, which never did know what the hell it was ever doing for us in the first place. The era of the carrot-chasing, the buckled-down, the disconnected, disenchanted isolated is going DOWN, for it is no match for me. For the Love Warriors who make up my army. We are the loosey-goosey, UNbuckled clowns. The wild ones who haven’t forgotten the bliss in our blood. The ones willingly swept up by sweet whimsy, intoxicated by life’s constant enchantment, for we can still smell the magic, our senses not yet punched out of us.
To those who smirk and speak of love and laughter as a cheesy cliche, like too-cool-for-school girls, you better RUN from me. I will call you out on your cowardice. I will make a mockery of your oh-so-serious systems. Your straight-laced, poker-faced, undergraced, spirit-sucking systems. Make way, all you nose-to-the-grindstone, pleasureless zombies. You got some trouble coming your way and it’s about to rock your stiff, dumb joke of a paradigm. The soul-suppression you subscribe to took my mother but forgot she had a successor, and it messed with the WRONG om-ie. I’m ushering in a new day dawning, and it means business about FUN and play. It has to now; it’s come down to a matter of life and death.
If you’re not with me, and I know many who aren’t, you can go take a goddam hike. And I mean that quite literally. It could very well un-chisel and change your mind.
Do it in a tutu, get a few long tree hugs in there, and it just might save your soul…
Screen Shot 2019-01-21 at 2.51.45 PM.png

Move Over, Broken Way.

by The Blyss Catalyst, posted in Grief / Loss / Trauma 
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Suicide didn’t really take her. Depression & Anxiety did. Isolation and the pain of pleasurelessness did. The tragedy of lack of community was her sickle. It’s what happens when our joy is strangled; when our Truth is ripped out from our skin. We die. In many kinds of ways. With some, it happens slowly over the decades, while in others, it tears in quick like a snake, all at once in that crushing soul-blow kind of way.

 

It came in like that with her, a swift and sudden venom. Only the last 3 or 4 months of life did the Fog of Lies descend to the degree that they did, to maul her Truth apart. But that was enough. She fought her big beautiful heart out, to the death. But they won. They told her that true, cozy, artful and yummy Joy was out of her reach. That Tribe was the thing of ancient legend and fable, not to be believed in this day, at her age. And if you want to know how it is I fiercely carry on, it is that I’m on a mission to avenge my mother’s killers. I’m out to invest the rest of my life telling depression to go FUCK itself on behalf of all its cheated victims by way of catalyzing the potent power of play and laughter to free all beings on earth, birthrighted to their Truth – which is to say we are none more than bliss and bone. A wild love incarnate.

 

On my watch, society will no longer regard joy-inducing things as an afterthought luxury partitioned for our leisure time, but will recognize them as lifesaving medicine. Or I will die trying. As long as I’m breathing, this world will have to deal with me on my fluorescent soapbox, shouting with all my might in a unicorn onesie and clown nose on, that the silly is sacred, that exploring is our mind’s air, that sock-sliding across floors saves souls, dance breaks at work need be standard and secret handshakes a modus operandi, intimacy in community is healthcare, sisterhood & brotherhood are as crucial to wellness as water, cuddling is cellular regrowth, music is a salve, making art, any art, is our spirit’s devotion to its maker, hand-holding is as natural as blinking, comedians, healers, shamans and artists are on par with doctors, games are as necessary as taxes, lightheartedness is the new heart surgery, grounding practices and belly laughter and ample time outdoors with our bare feet caressing the earth should be written into our medical plans.

 

The Puritanical reign is as OVER as it was murderous. Let the stuffy, buttoned-up kin suffer in sweetless silence, but let my people go. F..R..E..E..D..O..M is having its heyday now, and hey hey brethren, can I tag you in? FUN is about to rightly displace the stupidity of boring convention and all that is heavy will step down from its false throne. I hereby declare my life as a coup to overthrow the status quo, which never did know what the hell it was ever doing for us in the first place. The era of the carrot-chasing, the buckled-down, the disconnected, disenchanted isolated is going DOWN, for it is no match for me. For the Love Warriors who make up my army. We are the loosey-goosey, UNbuckled clowns. The wild ones who haven’t forgotten the bliss in our blood. The ones willingly swept up by sweet whimsy, intoxicated by life’s constant enchantment, for we can still smell the magic, our senses not yet punched out of us.

 

To those who smirk and speak of love and laughter as a cheesy cliche, like too-cool-for-school girls, you better RUN from me. I will call you out on your cowardice. I will make a mockery of your oh-so-serious systems. Your straight-laced, poker-faced, undergraced, spirit-sucking systems. Make way, all you nose-to-the-grindstone, pleasureless zombies. You got some trouble coming your way and it’s about to rock your stiff, dumb joke of a paradigm. The soul-suppression you subscribe to took my mother but forgot she had a successor, and it messed with the WRONG om-ie. I’m ushering in a new day dawning, and it means business about FUN and play. It has to now; it’s come down to a matter of life and death.
If you’re not with me, and I know many who aren’t, you can go take a goddam hike. And I mean that quite literally. It could very well un-chisel and change your mind.

 

Do it in a tutu, get a few long tree hugs in there, and it just might save your soul…