two pictures and what they symbolize

I made these collages and then forgot to share them! So three blog posts in one day?!?!!!

🤔🧐🤣

I took these pictures this afternoon.  They're in the hall bathroom.  And yes that would be my makeup table.  

But here's what these pictures symbolize for me. 

HOPE.

I wear makeup when I go to New York City.  I wear it for big Church feasts.  I don't usually wear it in my normal everyday life.  

I wore it for my PT session. Because it was me putting on my best.  It was me feeling like I'm really rebuilding my life.  That I can really heal on many levels.  

My husband often teases me about makeup.  He's not necessarily a fan 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

But it's just fun and it can bring out beauty, simple joys are something that should be appreciated. 

Anyway.  I really wanted to share these collages so here they are! 

May God continue to have mercy on us. 

Tuesday night

The Feast of the Annunciation (new calendar).

I was a bit late to vesper's I confess! Today was a very intense day! 

So PT went really well.  Like night and day difference well.  But it was also exhausting.  Because I had to cover so much ground so quickly.  

I had been to this PT place before. Long story why I couldn't go initially.  Last time I was there was 2023 August. I had forgotten when I sprained my right ankle which now has the fracture.  That alone was kind of like whiplash.  Because that was a few months before I knew I had PTSD.  I had already lost my memory and recovered.  As in recovered my memory.  But that whole summer I was so up and down.  My emotions were way more up and down than normal.  I kept feeling like something was wrong but didn't know what.  I remember so many times googling emotional shock and feeling what I'm going through is not fully described here.  

Then tonight I met a very young lovely priest couple who I had met before. The priest was ordained as a priest after I met him in 2022.  That was before my memory loss. 

If you can't tell my memory loss is like a before/after event in my life.  

Considering I would have died if my husband hadn't been with me because I was no longer eating or drinking, it's very much traumatic event.  

Anyway, that was rather astounding.  Meeting someone who I remembered as a seminary family who were visiting the church in 2022 when they were new to seminary.  And I met them when I would say in my words I was still normal.  Before my memory loss, before the mental illness that began because I was given meds at a severely wrong dose.  Before I was mentally ill with C-PTSD.  

So that was a big deal. 

  

Xenia, thank you so much for your comment! 

Yes I'm growing. But actually I would use a different word. I'm healing.  

I think I've mentioned here before that my memory loss and subsequent Complex PTSD was like a green beautiful field with flowers that experienced a huge devastating fire and the entire field of flowers and grass was utterly destroyed. So destroyed that the very soil had to be replaced. But then when you were replacing the soil and planting the new grass then would come a flood and everything would be washed away. Fix things again. Put new soil and plant again. And then more storms and floods would come and everything would be destroyed again and again and again.  That's what healing from Complex PTSD is like.  

Complex-PTSD is something that lasts a long time.  

I'm basically rebuilding my entire life.  I think I mentioned here that I didn't even remember that when you come in from the cold and you're in a warm room and your glasses that you're wearing steam up.... I didn't remember that was a thing.  I literally went to tea and sympathy this past fall almost 3 years after my memory loss, and told the very kind waitress there. I said to her, I think your heat is too high because my glass are steamed up.  I was so confused and surprised about not being able to see through my glasses.   She was very kind and just said right,  We'll put turn up the AC.  That was very kind because she didn't point out that it was normal for glasses to steam up when you come out from the cold or make me feel bad.  She treated me as if my confusion was normal.  Later I realized what was going on and that it's normal for glasses to steam up when you were in the cold and then in a warm room.  

It's difficult to explain how many things I've had to relearn.  

Stephanie Foo has a great website and on it is this ~  reddit on what complex PTSD is.

I remember someone I admired on Instagram talking about mental illness up front. I didn't yet have mental illness like that, but now that I do, I understand how one can be comfortable writing about it and feel that it's important to do so. 

So not everything exactly in the following screenshot (from the link I just mentioned) fits what I've struggled with as I've healed, but I can relate to so much of this very much.  Of course my complex PTSD is from the two months of descending into an awful hell which was January and February 2023. I lost my memory completely on February 20th 2023.  So I'm mentioning that because it's ironic that this list of what symptoms can be like with complex PTSD includes memory problems. 

I don't know if I'll ever be able to fully describe the hell that I was in for those two weeks of my actual memory loss and initial recovery.  It was extreme pain.  

So I'm still recovering and sometimes I write so that I can eventually understand not only the world better but what I think and experience.  

I've learned so much about myself in the last few years.  I didn't even understand my childhood or any of it being painful like I've described either today or yesterday, because I had no idea that I basically was observing life.  That I was looking at it and not involved in it in ways.

And you wouldn't know that if you knew me in person today.  I'm not like that in person.  I'm actually very good at talking to people.  Especially at church usually.  Because I know that structure well and I feel comfortable. But even at stores I can talk to people who are full out strangers very easily.  

I did a major self-care session for myself after that PT session. I made sure I ate really well and the bath I enjoyed with salts was wonderful. As were the snacks!

I remember how sick I was when I was on those steroids in January 2023.  I remember taking cashews to church and a water bottle.  I think Smart Water.  And right after communion I would go to the back and sit and have some nuts and water right away.  Because I was so shaky and so sick.  And I was totally manic.  And I couldn't get outside it.  It was the most painful thing.  And it only got worse, culminating in my memory loss. 

Just to clarify what that can mean, having the food after communion right away is because I wasn't having anything to eat or drink before Communion.  It's a normal practice in the Orthodox Church. Though I know people because of health reasons can't do that.  And their reasons are utterly legitimate and they have the blessings of their spiritual father and/or parish priest. 

Anyway, if you looked at my blog, In year 2024 I only blogged 11 times.   That was a very difficult year.  The one year anniversary of my memory loss was a time of great pain.  And I was in great internal pain for a long time.

The fact that I can talk about it so freely now is a sign of my healing.  

It's that the poor burnt field has grass growing in it now. The storms of life don't wipe everything out.  Healing is beginning to take hold.  And I pray that I will be able to continue to heal.  

May God have mercy on us!

More thoughts about 2 books

I read this in the Christmas time. That is in January for me.  I looked back and I was blogging about it by January 25th. It's only March 24th now. So that's only 2 months ago. It's funny how it seems so much longer! 

Tell me the dream again, I wrote about my disappointment and how I felt she misunderstood some things especially about my church. Some of that I actually never got to because I took down the one blog post I wrote.  It struck me in a place that was more raw.  In a place that was sad.  

I realize now that somehow I thought this book would make me feel more included. That I would be welcomed into her world. And she as an author I don't think would ever want to do otherwise. But the fact is I didn't feel that welcome. Because I don't belong to her ethnic community or have her experience. And a big part of her healing was just to find people like herself. 

What my bones know can actually give healing to others because they will find in her someone that understands what they went through.  

Yes, I had sadness that she didn't know the love of God. But her book does show growth and healing.  She did learn a lot. She learned not to do what had been done to her. And she gained in her ability to trust another person.  Both of those are really huge wins for someone that went through what she did. 

For me, one of the reasons it wasn't as helpful is because her trauma was so different than mine. I actually don't know anyone that went through what I did. I lost my memory because of the medicine I was on.  You can read about that if you want back of my blog when it happened. Or when it was happening and I had no idea.  I'm not going to go into it more at the moment. 

But I guess what I'm trying to say is that not every book will help every person the same way. I think that was one of the hard things for me with the book Tell me the dream again; there were so many sections that I really loved in this book. But there was also real things that made me feel excluded and misunderstood. Very ironic since that's the topic she's talking about. 

But maybe that's part of just being a human being.  That not all of our experience can be understood by another person.  But it can be understood by God perfectly, with great love.  

But there are ways to do Bridges. I really like Bridges.  That is trying to connect to a person who would either be hard to connect with or who the other person would think you couldn't connect with them.

Once I had a conversation many years ago when I was only Orthodox one year. So this is going back about 20 years. The person didn't think I would understand her.  But she was brave and we went out for Indian food and I think she introduced me to it. Which was a great gift because to this day I love Indian food.  But she was so surprised when I understood that what she was describing had to do with loneliness.  And that I understood that very well.  And while we may have been in different ways on a different trajectory of thought, that experience of loneliness was the same.  And it was a loneliness in the same sort of situation but for different reasons.  So she was really touched. And I began to learn that I could build Bridges with another person. 

I think that's why the first book that I read in January that I mentioned in this post, was painful for me. I didn't feel that a bridge could be built towards me. Because of my mind and because of my own experience, I may not be able to understand hers as easily.  

But I really learned a lot from that book by Tasha Jun and from Stephanie Foo's book.

I think the first book impacted me so strongly and made me sad because of my trauma was actually just the fact that one I endured it alone and shared it with no one; two, I had some great trauma regarding not being understood when I was in deep pain.  

My therapist says that one of the core injuries of a person is not to be seen.  For their pain to be ignored or to be totally misunderstood.  So I think the first book hurt me that way because I wasn't expecting it.  

I didn't think about the fact that her experience would be so different than mine and that her modes of healing and what she needed would be so different.  I wasn't expected to feel excluded. And maybe she wouldn't really want to exclude me.  But I can be very raw in that area because that's something I'm working on personally.  

But I know I'm healing because I'm able to understand all of this.  I'm not just left with the sadness or even the anger which is masking sadness about it. No, I'm able to write about it. I'm able to process it. I'm able to accept it. I'm able to be able to see what was going on for me. I'm able to accept that the book has great worth even though it couldn't hit all the buttons for me. 

And part of it still makes me feel sad. Because I feel like there's a polarization that I don't know how to breach. It feels like when I was a child watching girls play games that I couldn't do because I didn't have the physical ability or coordination. Though I can walk and use all my limbs.  So it feels like a group that I'm not welcome in.  Because I'm not Asian. Because I'm white. Because I don't share their story the same way.  So it makes me feel sad because I wanted to be included.  I wanted to interact with them.  

So obviously this can be a very touchy thing because it deals with the question of race and color.  But maybe we need to ask these questions.  And maybe it's okay to say I want it to be included and I didn't feel it.  

But maybe we can still build Bridges.  Maybe we can learn to listen to each other.  That's one of the biggest things I want to learn.  I can't solve another person's pain.  But maybe I can understand it a little more. 

Maybe I can accept a little more that the author from Korea has a deep wound that makes it hard for her to go beyond the group of people she's been given for her healing.  

I think it all depends on what the person is ready for.  Some wounds go so deep that it's very hard to trust.  And that includes people on both sides. Actually, there's no sides of the race question. Because everyone is from a different family and different countries.  Every Asian country, every African country, every country in general, has its own story and difference.

And I know the feeling and the act of excluding another isn't just about race itself. I know people generations ago in the Netherlands which is where my family is from. Didn't like people from another province in the same country. So the Netherlands is super small. So to me I don't really understand how you could not like someone from a neighboring province.  That would be like saying that people within one of the United States states don't like people from another city within that state. I guess that can happen but it seems a bit silly to me. 

But the point here that I'm making is that sometimes people fall into excluding others in very small little bubbles. There's a phrase somewhere about the battles can be so bitter because little fish bowl was so small.  I'm not saying that exactly right but I'm trying to get at the meaning of the phrase that I can't quite remember. 

Well I guess I would just end with both of these books have merit and I learned a lot from both of them. 

And the second book that I just read but, not all of, and maybe one day I'll read it better, but it really does have a place.  

It's a tragic fact that so many people today grow up in extremely broken homes and that abuse and neglect can be rampant.  

A book that looks at that, shows it by her honesty, talks about complex PTSD and how learning about herself was really difficult because at times she felt like she was just a medical symptom, all that is valuable to understand. 

But yes, this book would not be for everyone. It really can trigger people.  I recently read a story online that I didn't expect to be as it was and it triggered me huge. Actually way more than the book by Stephanie Foo.  

I understood that that story, which was a true story is one I can't be involved in.  Some tragedies are not ones that you're called personally to be involved with in any way. And that's okay. You can just realize that that's way beyond your pay grade as it were and commend them to God and God's mercy.  

I think both books can have benefit also for those who are called to the healing professions and want to understand certain things about how drama would impact people and what it looks like.  

Anyway, I just wanted to record my thoughts here and share them. 

It's still a good day for a good day and I'm doing my best to be ready for it.  May God have mercy on us.

Tuesday ~ Sunshine and Hope

Good morning! I slept well last night thank God.  The night before was a bit more tocky but I slept then too.  

Today is a new day and the next step in my healing! I go to the new PT place. We got it all set up.  I'm definitely healing. I'm only wearing my Ace bandage now as my orthopedic doctor said I could. She suggested it not me.  

My husband is supportive as always.  I'm trying to do more foot bath at night for swelling and for when my foot hurts or is experiencing discomfort which I would say is different than just hurting.  

About the book ~ what my bones know by Stephanie Foo 

I really did skim a lot of it and I read some chapters in full.  I got a good sense of the book.  

What hurt my heart wasn't as much her description her childhood with a mother who was incredibly abusive / controlling in a father who ignored it.  Of course that's awful and horrifying.  

It was her own life. As she tried to make sense of things and realized that she was just replicating her parents and what they did. It was how lost she was. It was how she was outwardly successful but her life was in shambles.  It was how she tried to avoid the pain but I workaholism and drinking whiskey.  It was that she went from various parties with friends and never got beyond the surface of things.  It was how deeply hurt and broke and she was. That's what hurt my heart.

And I think it was the absence of God. And that as a child, her experience of a Protestant church was linked to her mother and not at all to God or God's light and God's love.  Of course God's light is part of God's love.  

So what my heart was most hurt by was how hurt she was and that she had to learn how to be a human being. She says so herself. 

Also, it just hurts to see her deep inward pain and fear. 

Some of this I could relate to but a lot of it I couldn't which I think God that I wasn't given such a cross as a child. 

I don't know how God sees all of this. When a child is born into such a broken situation and is broken by it.  

All I know is God is full of Mercy. And I believe that God weeps over the Lost.  

That's something I really like about Saint Silouan, he wept over those in private who he oversaw in the mill. And he wept for those in hell. And I have to believe that his tears had true impact and still do. 

Nowhere in Stephanie Foo's book is there evidence that she learned that God loves her right now. That God can be ultimately her source of healing. That God sees our brokenness and yet loves us completely. That with God we can bear the hell of our lives and not despair. I can't but think that she could gain even more healing if she truly knew the Lord.  That the Lord went to hell for us. Literally. That Christ suffered deeply as our Holy Bridegroom and He was abused, belittled, taunted, and killed.  

But that unlike all who have experienced any of that, especially those who experienced this as a child, Christ knew and accepted this because He wants to save us. That he went to his death so he could destroy death. That Christ went to hell so he could pull us out. The Orthodox Church teaches that Christ tricked the devil when He went to hell and then broke the gates of hell and people go free from hell like Adam and Eve. 

The two icons above are of Christ, the Bridegroom and of Christ's Resurrection where He's pulling Adam and Eve out of hell. 

******

I am still healing myself of course. And my own relationship with God is my own and I still need to grow. However, I know that God is my Father. My perfect loving patient Father who doesn't hurt me. Not that my biological father hurt me as a child. I am very blessed. I had stable parents. Christian parents who love. I know I'm incredibly blessed. 

It's hard to really grasp and believe that God loves us.  Even when we make mistakes and hurt others and are stupid. That's why I love the church and going to confession. I can literally go to confession and tell the Lord how broken I am and be forgiven.  

Well it's time to get going.  Years ago the priest who retired from our church put in the bulletin. It's a good day to for a good day.  

I love that quote so much that I laminated it! And today is a good day for a good day. 

May God have mercy on us.

Monday

I still can't get over how different the first Miss Read book is from thrush green. 

This book came.  I read the first part. I skimmed the rest.  Ultimately it did not help me.  I think sometimes one must journey alone.  

The citrus I ordered was really good.  We got groceries today. 

Well.  I learned some things from that book.  But it made my heart hurt.  And a lot of it really didn't apply to my life for which I'm grateful.  

May God have mercy on us.

Yet Another Book 🤣🙃📚📖

What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo.

This was recommended to me by someone at church today who had read it! I'm very fortunate that I have not experienced the trauma that this author has.  

My Google search came up with this via the now ubiquitous AI:

I think that this book is going to be very interesting. And very beneficial for helping in terms of understanding PTSD but also understanding what others have gone through. Learning empathy is something that one gains I think through one's whole life. And I can really miss this sometimes in part because of how my brain is made ironically! 

Just wanted to write about books I'm reading here! Or ones I hope to be reading it! ☺️📚📖

A gift of tea 🫖🎁🌸🩷☕

A friend from church gave me this lovely box of tea from Japan! She had gone on business! I was really touched!  

God has given me many songs to bless me in different ways, including ones that are beautiful and quiet.  Here's another one of these, called a million different ways ... Below are the screenshots from the YouTube app that I'm using that have the artist explanation of it. Sorry for a bit of repetition in some of the screenshots.

I had a really good time at church and coffee hour.  Some really good rewarding conversations.  A real blessing!  A friend gave me a gift recently that I'm not sharing a picture of here, but it included tea because Elizabeth and Tea always goes together apparently !!!! 🩷🎁🫖🌷☕☺️ 

Receiving these gifts totally unexpectedly was really a blessing! It's not been easy. Some of this since I fractured my ankle. Losing the caregiver was rather stressful though. I've been fine really overall without the person but it was still confusing and stressful.  And having to switch PT places is also a bit emotionally draining for me.  But I have hope for this place than one I'm going to next and I really pray that it's the better step towards healing for me in general. 

In a lot of ways I would say this great lent has been a deep blessing for me.  I'm figuring out more about my own personal physical depletion and trying to learn what to do about it. That gives me hope for better in the future. 

I've had to relearn so many things! It's quite interesting to realize that you have to learn all over again. So many things. But I am learning and I'm thankful.  

I'm looking forward to the future in ways I haven't been before because I've been so sick. Of course I can struggle with anxiety and no one knows what the future brings in many ways. But the thing is God knows and God will be there in the future just as He's here with us now. 

My husband put the car away and put some things in the garage freezer. Because my purse was a little heavy for me, sometimes with my healing ankle. When I hold things it can put too much weight towards the ankle so he was helping me out. Anyway, my keys for the house were in my purse of course so I sat on the steps for a minute and just enjoyed the warm air.  That's when I took the picture of our now snow-free barren tree.  Spring is coming and soon God willing we will start seeing trees i blossom again.

So a lot of blessings.  May God have mercy on us. 

Saturday Morning ~ Saturday Evening

It's Seven Thirty AM right now.  The sun is rising, I can see sunshine hitting the bottom of the clouds and a deeper yellow is below the lighter blue sky.  My windows are horribly dirty though and some of this is from the outside.  We are two floors above ground level and as horrible as this may be, we've never had the windows washed on the outside.  It would require high ladders or worse (scaffolding) and we've never looked into it. 

I hear birds chirping and trilling; I see the bare branches of the tree to the right of our building (from where I am looking, which is facing towards the road and away from our building if you were standing outside).  

I've made a quick tea that I steeped for a briefer amount of time than the seven minutes suggested because it has immunity support but also licorice and I know what that can do to me: wire me into a manic state that is so painful that I threw my licorice supplement from a ND away years ago when I had mono.  It was horrible.  Not every medicine or supplement is for every person. I had mono at the time so I was very sick and deeply exhausted but that supplement kept me up.  Of course I think I was taking Prednisone too and had no idea at the time what that means or if you stop taking it that you can put your body in shock.  No.  I would NEVER do such a thing.  Live and learn.  Of course NOW I would NEVER take any sort of medicine like that.  I had no idea what was happening to me in January 2023.  I will never, please God, NEVER take steriods again.  Since it contributed to geave mental illness and deeply traumatic memory loss and Complex PTSD.  

The sun rose higher and was suddenly blinding my eyes.  I pulled the blind down.  It's so beautiful, the early sunshine.  I can't wait to walk in the early sunshine in the park.  But there are some renovations going on and I am a bit worried about what I will find (dirt, desecration of all I knew the park to be) but for now, I will just dream of it, those beautiful walks I had... 

So the literary magazine I subscribed to, they were not kidding -- this is not at all a strict one way thing with a few Christian authors or something like that.  No, this magazine is very committed to literature and one of the essays was about various world religions and how each faith impacted the poetry of that culture.  And there was an amazing essay about an Indian (from India to be clear) novelist who published a novel that is very popular in literary circles, so I am learning.  It's Kiran Desai's 2025 novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny and the essay on it shows me that it is a really complex book that shows a lot about the lives of those from India who come to North America... it's fascinating... Portico has a good beginning, with many cultures and voices and some really good writing.  

I missed about a month of writing my new thanksgiving journal.

Trying to get back into it. 

These books need no explanation LOL.  

I am realizing how physically depleted I am. 

I read High Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron when 

it was fairly new; maybe 4 years old. 

***

My memory loss and subsequent PTSD has meant that I had to relearn 

a lot of things, including self-care.  

And so many things were new, like that level of insomnia;

I never had that before.  

So figuring that out and what it means for me physically, 

i.e. significant physical depletion, 

was something that I am, to be honest, just beginning to

really understand now. 

I had some real rest time this afternoon.

A bath with this calming beautiful music: 

Max Richter - The Consolations of Philosophy

I had it on repeat. 

(I linked to the video because I am writing on my chromebook,

I often blog on my phone which has different capabilities) 

I got the official blessing from my Confessor to have a very light

rest of the fast.  Because I have been so sick since October through now

and I need to try to get better.

Sure, I get sick sometimes, like anyone. 

But never like this.

***

Well, it was so good to be at vespers.

And the morning time sunshine was so beautiful.

***

I really want to return to life as a more whole person. 

I have come a long way, it's been 3 years but I have more to go.

We all do.  But God is with us in it.

***

May God have mercy on us!