Award acceptance!

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I am blessed and honored with receiving the Very Inspiring Blogger Award from Elyn at Letters to dom, as well as the blog pensées sans frontières.

Here are seven things about myself:

  1. Chihuahua dogs are my favs. My grandmother raised chihuahuas, and I thought all kids got their first dog from their grandma. Unfortunately, in adulthood, I’ve developed a dog allergy, so I’m getting allergy shots so that I can get a chihuahua soon.
  2. I am very accident prone. This is why I don’t ski, snowboard or do anything remotely daring as a sport. I create enough mishaps just going through everyday life!
  3. I have a very loud laugh that is also easily identifiable. People know I’m laughing from rooms away!
  4. Libraries and bookstores are favorite hangout places of mine.
  5. I am a tea snob. No coffee for me!
  6. There is no explanation for my love affair with Ireland. I don’t have a drop of Irish blood in me. In fact, I’m Mexican. I can’t get enough of the music, the tea, the food, the geography, learning Irish history. My soul is strangely, but beautifully Irish.
  7. I love rain and snow. I think it comes from a childhood in the desert.

This is hard, as I’ve only been blogging since July 9th. Though these two bloggers below have already received this award, I still want to mention them because they have great talent and heart. Also, Bourbon at Crazy in the Coconut was the very first blogger to follow me! I especially love her for that! And WeeGee at How Do You Eat An Elephant just makes me laugh.

Crazy in the Coconut

How Do You Eat An Elephant?

The nominations:

My nominations are three bloggers that I started following recently. All three blogs are different, but very special. Please check them out.

Curly Miri

Discovering Serenity

defying ptsd

The rules:

  1. Display the award logo somewhere on the blog
  2. Link back to the blog of the person who nominated you.
  3. State 7 things about yourself
  4. Nominate up to 15 other bloggers for the award and provide links to their blogs
  5. Notify those bloggers that they have been nominated and of the award’s requirements

Thank you everyone for all the support thus far. This is a great community of writers. I learn so much every day from all of you.

Much love,

Beatriz

the lesson continues …

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Cover of "The Four Agreements: A Practica...

Amazingly, I actually went to an AA meeting. I parked, got out of the car, opened the door, and stepped right in! Though as soon as I did that I ran to the bathroom. I really did have to use it, but I am guilty of hanging out in there 3 minutes longer than needed. I found a place to sit in the meeting room, and made myself remain seated. A nice woman whom we’ll call Lori came up to me and introduced herself.

Then the meeting chair rang the little bell and the meeting commenced. As she was talking, the heat and haziness in the room started triggering my dissociation. Unfortunately, heat triggers my PTSD. My therapist and I can only conclude that it’s because most of my trauma happened in a desert climate, which is what I grew up in until I left home at 18. As I felt myself start to drift into that parade float feeling I just told myself where I was, and made myself listen intently to whomever was speaking. It worked to a certain extent. The floaty feeling didn’t entirely disappear until I left the meeting, but I was able to be present most of time.

At the end of the meeting Lori came up to me, and asked me if I had been to that meeting in the past. I said I had, but lied and said that Sundays were hard for me. She then said that Sundays used to be hard for her until she relapsed, and after her relapse nothing came between her and her meetings after that.

After a few more minutes of conversation, I then told her it was great meeting her, and left. I got in my car, and started thinking about the interaction as soon as it was over. I cocked my head, and wondered what was different. I knew something was different, but I couldn’t immediately identify it. Then I realized that I wasn’t offended by Lori’s remark about Sundays being hard for her before she relapsed. Previously, I would have been offended by her remark. I would have over thought it, and presumed that she was telling me I needed to attend more meetings, or I was at risk of a relapse.

It dawned on me that perhaps I’m finally starting to soak in what a number of people have been telling me for years about what people and say and do, and that is the fact that what people say and do is not about you, or in this matter, me. It is about them. What people say and do is about them. What Lori shared with me was about her experience, not mine. This is similar to what Cindy was trying to tell me about Cate.

All of this also got me thinking about an old friend I made when I first go into AA. I became friends with an Irish chef, whom we will call Brian. I used to drive Brian nuts talking on and on about how my supervisor at work (this was at a previous job) was insensitive to me. I felt she was very insensitive in her manner towards me.

One day after Brian had enough of my complaining he had me meet him at a cafe before a meeting. On cue I started complaining about my boss. He then pulled out a book, and handed it to me as a gift. The name of the book was The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. As he handed it to me he brought my attention to the second agreement in the book:

“Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.”

This was a revelation to me. Actually, all of the the agreements were a revelation. But it was the second agreement that was immediately applicable to my life. I got what Brian was trying to tell me, and for a few days I was able to follow the second agreement. But it was very hard to carry on long term. I shortly forgot about it, and it wasn’t until today that I realized the second agreement was applicable to my sister Cate, and Lori at the AA meeting. Cindy, my therapist, and Brian, the chef, were all trying to tell me the same thing, but in different ways. Cognitively, it’s easy for me to get the concept, but being as sensitive as I am, it is an altogether different story in applying it on a regular basis. I hope it’s finally sticking in my brain.

Cover via Amazon

Cate called …

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I heard from my sister,Cate, unexpectedly. Previously, I wrote about how we had lost our connection. It turns out that she has been struggling herself with personal issues. All this time, Cindy, my therapist had advised me that Cate not speaking to me was not about me, that it was about the fact that I reminded her of the trauma we went through, and that my PTSD further reminded her of that trauma. She tried to convince me that Cate’s absence in my life was not a reflection of how she felt about me. No matter how hard she tried to convince me of this, I still was left feeling like my sister had had enough of me.

All of this made sense, but I couldn’t buy the entire theory. I just felt hurt, and abandoned by Cate. I thought I was an annoyance in her life. It turns out that Cindy was right. Cindy is usually right. One would think I would have figured this out by now since I’ve been seeing her for a few years.

Cindy has tried to convince me that trauma survivors often think that a sudden absence of a person in our lives is because of us, or something we’ve done. She’s tried to teach me that sometimes people absent themselves from our lives for reasons that have little or nothing to do with us. I think I’m finally starting to get the concept that she’s been talking to me about for a few years. I’m a slow learner. 🙂