ianua, by renee altson

stumbling toward faith is going out of print

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 21:39:12 GMT

just a note that I am now journalling over at ... and she was . please please please update your RSS feeds. I want to announce here at Stumbling Toward Faith is going out of print. You can find more info at the new blog. thank you everyone, for everything.

I've moved!!

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:22:34 GMT

hi. I've moved my journal. Please switch your feeds if you wish. It's a very natural progression... I'm actually grateful my comments here are broken. see you there!

broken comments

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 18:07:26 GMT

thanks to all who emailed me about the comments being broken. I'm not sure what I did and can't fix them right now. Because I use pMachine, now known as Expression Engine, I'm dealing with older code and it will take some time to hash out. I'm really not sure what changed. Boo. Hiss. Hopefully they will be up again soon!

sacredness

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:14:55 GMT

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love." (Washington Irving) My therapy session last night was one of the most difficult sessions that I can remember. It was so difficult to talk about what had transpired this past weekend and how vulnerable, angry, aching, frustrated, I felt. I was physically trembling, my whole body was visibly shaking, and I kept crying. I wanted to stop, but something would happen or be said and I would start crying again. Eventually I fogged up my own glasses and had to take them off for a bit. They were deep tears. The kind way down at the bottom of the emotional floor, where the murky, muddy difficult stuff lives. I would feel them come up and realize I was helpless to stop them. After the session I walked out to the car and sobbed- not caring how much noise I made or what I looked like. I was still crying as I drove home, overwhelmed with grief and a heap of other emotions. I was still sniffling when I walked into starbucks to decompress. I know them well enough now that they give me the employee discount whenever I get something, so I got my venti iced passion tea and plopped in one of the coveted four comfy chairs. I knew I looked like crap, but I didn't care. And in spite of the whirlwind of emotions and thoughts, I realized that I really truly did trust my therapist. Not that I hadn't before. But finding myself letting go like that was a sign of trust. "I trust that you will not... hurt me with this vulnerability / tell me a bunch of cliche bullshit / minimize my pain..." My body trusted him, too. Enough to snort and shake and cry. My homework is distraction and acceptance. Almost contradictory instructions. But I get it. I can do both. And I will remember the quote up top whenever I need to cry again.

"falling on my head like a new emoticon"

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:15:20 GMT

please pardon the lame attempt at title humor, it seemed funny when I first wrote it. ironically i started this entry on june 12 - before my world had turned upside down. i wanted to write about the interesting phenomenon of emoticons. you know: :) :( :/ :p i discover more and more that using them diminishes my writing ability. instead of having to actually craft a sentence that works and stands on its own, i can be sloppy and slap an emoticon on it. And it isn't an intentional thing - it's just happening. I find myself writing something and wanting to use an emoticon after a sentence! This doesn't work in professional writing. But I've become reliant on it as a way to express emotions, and all in under 140 characters. as always, there's an interesting parallel to my life. Easier to slap an "emoticon" on my issues than to really dig deeply into them and figure out a real solution. It tends to be that way sometimes with CBT - there's a lot of distraction and reframing stuff that is pretty emoticon-like. So, on my own, (and with a therapist who is willing to be outside the box), I have been trying to "write" fuller sentences. I had a very big scare this past weekend. Part of me wants to just be quiet and cryptic about it (like I've been on facebook, and another part thinks - the more support I have, the stronger I am. Basically I was contacted by a member of my family-of-origin completely unexpectedly. Out of nowhere. The conversation was very strange and clearly the person on the other end of the phone wanted to know a lot about me. They would start to tell me something, pause, wait for me to comment, then clarify. e.g., "I've only seen X about 4 times in the last 10 years..." (pause) "... but I just saw X a few weeks ago." They told me they lived in another state, but then told me they were moving back to my hometown. I think I was close to this person as a child, I have photographs of us together. But I have completely severed all ties from my family-of-origin - all of them - and have been "alone" (except for my chosen family) for many years. My daughter has no safe relatives on my side of the family. Nor do I. I was totally thrown by this. Completely spun around and contorted and panicked and scared. I hardly ate anything for a few days (something I NEVER do), and felt like my body was so far away I could never reach it. I tried to ignore it by focusing on other stuff (the emoticon of "distraction"), but it didn't really help as much as I expected it to. It's funny (?) how much I rely on my friends. Especially my "virtual" ones. In times like this, I realize how desperately I need them, how much they have filled in my family gap. I love it when I get email from all of you. I love that you care about me, and know me, and are willing to share my life with me. thank you for this. I have therapy tomorrow (last session before a few weeks vacation ) so I'm hoping hashing this out will help. I'm doing what I can for myself, and letting Eric help and support. I do feel discombobulated, and definitely "not right" and not sure what to do yet. I'm thinking restraining orders again. I'm also thinking of just continuing to live as best as I can even though I'm scared s***less. I'm not sure of anything. I'm just doing the moment by moment thing (Though I'm often failing). I'm enjoying working on things with a friend, and I love what I'm doing. I'm doing yoga again, and taking my regularly scheduled meds. I'm doing the best I can. As for the emoticons, if you follow me on facebook, look for less of them. It doesn't mean I don't like you, it just means I'm trying to write more effectively. oh, and if you're following the stf book fund, we have $528 of our $600. Zondervan said I could buy them anytime, so I can get them asap. And, I can get more than just 200 of them ($600), which is cool if we go over (< smile emoticon > ). Thanks again to all who have helped, it brings me huge joy to know that this is almost a real tangible thing! I appreciate you so much. You can contact me at renee @ ianua dot org (yep, that link works!) thank you again for being part of my chosen family and for all the good things you have expressed, given and encouraged in me these many years. peace to us all.