2024! How did that happen? I haven't written here in so long. I was plagued for years and years of stressful caregiving of mom and didn't feel like this was a safe place to express my feelings since she read the blog. I couldn't say what I really wanted to say, and therefore I mostly kept it all bottled up inside. But mom died August 15, 2022. And I've been processing and grieving ever since. So now I feel ready to get some feelings and thoughts and memories out of my head. No one might ever read this, or know that it is still here, but that's ok! Are blogs even a thing? Do blogreader apps exist? Is it all Substack now? Doesn't matter. This is for me.
The years of mom care caused a lot of trauma in me--so much that I didn't realize just how bad things were in my head and heart and body. After she died, I sort of stopped being able to sleep....my body wouldn't let me rest. Either I would have a nighttime panic attack and gasp awake, or I would have horrible recurring nightmares about 5 nights a week that were all based on real things that happened in the past. It became unsustainable. So both my therapist and my doctor recommended I try EMDR therapy for my CPTSD. I started the process with a new therapist mid-May, and now here on July 25, I can say that it is already working and is incredibly effective. I may or may not talk more about that here in the future, but some proof that it's working is the fact that I am writing here at all. I am unclogging lots of funk. Doing the hard work. It's grueling, but I am worth the effort.
So we'll see if this stream of consciousness writing helps the process. Let's chat about mental health, substance abuse, life, grief, healing, moving forward, and thinking back.
