Client Journal: Loss of the Feminine

Post Date February 04, 2011
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Client: It has been difficult to stay with the feminine this week. I took some baths and did EFT which helped a little. I’ve been pretty cranky all week (had my period, too). I feel impatient and the male part of me is very strong and wants to take over. I have been trying to stay with the feminine all week. I also gained ten pounds so I’m not happy with my body – I prefer to be skinny and not curvy like I feel now. I was able to drop into my grief last night and feel it in my stomach…grief for my neglect.  Overall, I feel like shit.

Marta: You are digging deeper into a core wound of being feminine. Have compassion for the rage for the loss of the feminine.

Marta Luzim’s Writing The Wave: The Dark Side of Female Relationships

Post Date October 26, 2010
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Category Marta Luzim's Writing The Wave

It is potently important to give a voice to the abuses towards women in a patriarchal society. Every woman in our culture has been affected by male dominance. But it is also deeply important to be aware of the dark side of female relationships. It has been taboo to talk about the pain of female competition, negativity and abuse of women against women, mother against daughter, sister against sister. This article reveals some truths of these acts. In certain tribes in Africa, female circumcision, although mandated by men, is performed by women. For many of my clients, the abuse is perpetuated by mothers and sisters, as you can read in the entries on this blog. Women need to accept that they too can be abusers…each gender needs to take responsibility for their acts of violence, heal and forgive.

My mother physically and emotionally abused me. My sister emotionally betrayed me. I learned rage as a way to protect myself from their abuse. Learning to trust the feminine has be a lifelong journey…and one that has been rewarding, filled with faith, hope and a miraculous understanding of the feminine, free of societal myths and stereotypes. My wounds of being a female have been the road to my creative and spiritual evolution… and the healing still goes on.

Read this article: ‘The Twisted Sisterhood’ — The Dark Side of Female Friendship Explored – Lemondrop.com

Client Journal: How Much do I want to Live? What are the No’s?

Post Date August 23, 2010
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Client: What is the fucking point? I live in a world where women are hated and raped and abused. Why should I have a story or a life when at any time it could be taken away from me?

Why am I willing to annihilate and die? Because we all die anyway, right? I mean, what is the difference if I submit to inevitable death? I don’t want to live. I’m fucking TIRED. 20 years of Fibromyalgia….why wouldn’t I want to die? To wake up half dead every morning for the last 20 years, I yearn for the other half to just let. me. go…Why not let me go to sleep, to rest forever, finally to stop struggling to stay awake to pretend I care, to be a mom and a wife. All exhausting work on top of being exhausted.

And then the degradation of being a woman in our society. I feel degraded as a person every day of my life. Billboards, ads, tv, movies, all degrading all the time! Why would I want more of THAT? What is so great about this life?

Why am I saying “no” to this process, to diving in?
Money.
I’m bleeding funds from our nest egg to go to grad school. Plus weekly acupuncture, bi monthly massage, chiropractor, supplements, all for fibromyalgia. I just quit my part time teaching job that was mostly paying for N’s preschool b/c I was getting stressed to the point of anxiety from working, motherhood and being a graduate student and trying to juggle it all. I have bled J’s $ ever since we got married b/c of health, therapy, etc. When will I give back????? How much can I ask of one person?

Time.
School, N, wife/relationship time, some semblance of a social life, teaching yoga…where is the time to devote to this work?

I hate Process
It is so much work for what? 2 steps fwd, 1 or 2 back. I don’t believe in freedom, I believe in getting by. And I hate that life. Who isn’t living like a drone? Is life supposed to be vibrant and joyful? Seems like so much is set up for us to be exhausted, asleep, just getting by, shutting down, in survival mode.

Because it is selfish and pointless to work on yourself (my sisters’ voice…working class values).
I’m annoyed I have to work so hard just to be alive.
I’m angry that I have to work so hard just to keep from wanting to die all the time.

I feel cheated. given a life only to be defeated by the world so that I can’t really live it. Fuck that! I’d like to just check out.

And yet.

A voice propels me forward, knows that feeling this way is no good. Knows that I cannot carry out the rest of my life in a waiting room for death, for the end of all suffering and drama and crap that this life has become. When I was a child, I knew that the world hated me as a girl and hated the feminine. Why live in a world like that? Why grace such a place with my soul? Fuck. Them.

More “No’s”
It is too much work. I’m too far gone. 40 years of living and I’m just lost (not to mention lots of therapy). I used to feel the pulse of life, the call to depth and fire. Now I’m coasting, floating along, holding my breath and waiting waiting waiting waiting. I want someone to snap me out of it. I want my child to snap me out of it. I want N to save me, to wake me up. I want him to be more awake than I, to tell me what to do. I want to be the child, I want him to be the wise one. I want to be held when I’m hurting, to fall asleep in someone’s arms, to be loved as much as I love N. No one loves me that much. I look at him and feel such tenderness, such softness. I see his beauty and it blows me away. And when he sasses me or gets needy or whiny or defiant that warmth goes cold and I hold my breath and just get through the day.

I don’t want to just get through the day. I want to build the day from the ground up and feel how it reflects me and my desires. I want it to be okay to have desires for myself. I want my sisters’ voices out of my head. I want to stop sliding back into “black sheep” status. How did I get there again?

I want to be bold and strong and beautiful. I want to care viscerally for people. I want to love again. I want the numbness, the floating, the depression to disintegrate so I can be me again. I lost me and because of it I’m totally self-absorbed, trying to find me again.

When I was on Zoloft for the postpartum depression, some of that old adventurous me came back. I was happy, but not entirely like myself. Or is it that I’ve been depressed my whole life so that’s what feels like me? Maybe, on the Zoloft, I had experience of myself without depression. Maybe that was the real me. But the sexual dysfunction and the weight gain made me sad or at least frustrated.

How do I embrace life again? Tonight at R and K’s party, I saw diversity in age, ability, socio-economic status, religion and sexual preference. A colorful wheel of humanity and that is what I crave. My world is so white, predictable, controlled, homogeneous. I want Omega again. As Michael Franti says: “All the freaky people make the beauty of the world”.

But how do I find this as a middle class wife and mother/ How can I get freaky in this life I’ve chosen? Open it up. Find ways. grow. expand. embrace. allow. invite. BREATHE.

I fundamentally cannot access feeling like I’m worth it.

I realized that I have not been living my authentic life for the last 6-7 years. When J declared he could no longer live the “itinerant lifestyle” of an actor, I chose to submit to conventional life to be with him. It was clear to him how he needed to live to be authentic and he made it happen. I adopted his lifestyle and it is literally killing a part of me (that feels very primal and important). Having a child was the final nail in the coffin.

Now I am awakening to the realization that I have not chosen to live MY life but to live J’s. He works hard to make his life work for me, supporting my graduate school is the latest way, but these are merely accommodations within his framework rather than my own holistic lifestyle choices. I’ve been dying and now I am considering turning my attention toward living my own life. How do I do that and still have my marriage and motherhood?
(I feel like a jerk for complaining when this marriage has helped me to survive).

More no:
what if there isn’t a bottom? what if I keep digging and digging and end up tearing myself apart? There must be a resting point, a place wehre I can say “it is enough now”.

what if my problem is truly chemical? what if all the therapy and process in the world will not find the bottom of the well of depression? When I was on Zoloft for postpartum depression, I was happy. That was my baseline. Now I’m back to a baseline of quiet sadness and disconnection. what if I work and I work and that baseline remains b/c I’m just not processing serotonin well?

I like to think that if the inner conflict resolves, the chemistry will too. But I don’t know. And I’m afraid to place hope in process and come up short.

Marta: There are two streams of feeling and thoughts that need to be separated out…and explored. Read carefully and we will review it good work and full expression…

the personal     questioning on both levels if life is worth living..
and the global

Your personal angst in finding your life within your marriage: a lot to cover here in your beliefs, feelings and intentions.. what is stopping you from living a life that reflects your soul? Why does your marriage to J distract you? It sounds like there is guilt? obligation? role stereotyping…you’re needing information here on individuation and finding the SELF. and equality in the marriage…

“a jerk for complaining when this marriage has helped feel like helped me to survive”: A lot of judgment here… appreciation for J being a dedicated husband does not negate your personal needs and dreams..

and the angst of the trauma, rage, powerlessness, terror in the collective consciousness of the global evolution of being a woman,
Your purpose is in this struggle…you are here to change the things in the world that you need to change and heal in yourself…the personal comes first then the global…you are mixing up the two and stuck in the powerlessness to make a difference in your own life as well as the world. Your need to love the innocence of your own child, that you see in N, and your impatience with his individuation also reflects your own struggle to grow emotionally…

Visualize the powerless woman…personally. we cannot change the world until we change ourselves.
Visualize the powerless woman, globally…the adult knows she cannot change the world, only the parts where she can make a difference.

Feelings of powerlessness are powerful when they motivate you to surrender, be humble and activate receiving your purpose your purpose and passion in life.

You use powerlessness to alienate, collapse and hate yourself as a woman. These are victim feelings, that are still unhealed and unexpressed…and victim is the child…this is not good or bad, right or wrong…only to be explored….victims usually victimize whether themselves or others…so that is your purpose to learn about the victim/victimizer so you can help other woman do that as well…with this pattern…a lot of women carry it…

It would be important to track your fear, love/hate of being a woman… and the child’s need to be held and heard and seen,

Does this make sense?

masterful, courageous and meaningful expression…You are so close K. Closer than you think to your authentic self…I know it might not seem that way in your shadow expressions…but you are so aware of your conflictual truth…I am going to re-read again with laser eye to pinpoint what needs to be sorted out into beliefs, feelings and expression…there is a lot wired up…your questioning is legitimate…but you answered these questions without realizing it…thank you for being so honest…be kind to yourself…and know you can create the life you want…it takes patience and fortitude…and I believe you have both…or you wouldn’t be continuing this work with all your doubts, fears and anger

Client Journal: Anger at the Feminine

Post Date March 26, 2010
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So I started thinking about session and I began reading the anger chapter again in the shadow side…

I realize sometimes when I first come into a session I have a hard time expressing what I want to work on..so i decided to try and center myself and come in a bit.

I try to people please and by doing this I suppress my own feelings..

While just having a conversation with my mother or sister I start to feel enraged..disgusted and suffocated. As this feeling grows stronger, I am yessing them to death and letting them vent whatever it is they are saying while all along the anger is building inside.

I am not sure where the core of this anger stems and where to even begin with it….I am trying to pinpoint something very specific. All I can come up with..is my mothers mental illness..her constant need for attention…her lies…her anger…all that she lays on me…I feel emotionally drained every-time I see her ..I dread spending time with her and I feel angry around her…she constantly sucks off of me….I reject her a lot and then feel angry because this guilt comes up and I get stuck and shut down.

I constantly let her get away with her behavior…because the alternative feels even worse, when I do express myself , my anger feels like it is hitting a brick wall and bouncing back at me…my anger gets rejected which angers me more…I only feel better when I lash out at her in a childish way because i finally feel heard.

I experience that same feeling with C constantly but on a different level..I feel she is always rejecting my feelings and I am always judging and “parenting” her…getting angry because I cant change her or control her…I hate to admit that, but when I am honest with myself I realize I try to control her out of some type of fear. I never trust her. I also try to please her and I am constantly doing things for her even at the expense of my own needs. I then blame her and get angry.

I am constantly rejected by her when I try to express that my needs arent being met and she somehow manipulates and denies that what I have expressed is even valid again a wall I hit. So now I am finally trying to take some responsibility that I am rejecting myself and no one else is responsible for this but me…I cant go on with this cycle with C, it doesn’t feel good any more…and my needs are never going to be met…

I wish I knew what that pull was to her…I guess its just the pattern energy..
I come at her with intensity and try to connect but it is all to deep and overwhelming for her and then I feel rejected so I then try to control her. She begins pushing me away and I cling even harder…rejected and needy, until finally I get sick of feeling so rejected so I get angry and take my power back, I then turn around and push her away, only for her to come back chasing me…a cycle that never seems to move forward…the longer it goes on the more resentments and crap that piles up.

I get so angry that I can’t change her..its ridiculous. She will do something that I perceive as rejection because i am trying to connect with her while she is trying to escape…I then start feeling angry and begin to judge her…only to realize I am escaping myself by trying to fix her.