Dear Anita,

“I was awake last night, maybe at about 1 am, and your words crossed my mind: “I am glad that insomnia didn’t win” (quote from my memory, not sure these are the exact words), and I thought: maybe I can make it so that insomnia doesn’t win again, and.. I fell asleep again. I woke up at 5 am. Not too bad. How is your sleep these days?”

Insomnia is a though fight, I’m glad you were able to get a few hours of sleep last night, and I hope your sleep will be longer tonight.

My sleep is alright lately, no insomnia. There’s just a bit of an interruption of my routine with my friends’ plans this week. We went to sleep at 2:00 am last night but I slept enough I think.

” I want to reciprocate this: your comfort is important too!” 

Thank you!

“I imagine the pressure you’d feel to reach the outcome by a certain date.. and to show that you are making progress on your way to the outcome (so to make the Exchange worthy for me). Emotional healing is a Process that needs to be taken with no consideration of the Outcome. For a long time, I fell in love with the process itself, curious and interested, engaged.. with no consideration of any outcome, none at all.”

Ah, mental health is a bit like learning a craft then. Even if the attempts have wonky outcomes you can only keep motivation alive if you love the process enough to be alright despite repetitive fails.

“I feel that there is something more to develop from what I quoted right above: first, true; “for some, the world does work that way”. I would say that for many, it does. There are many people who “aren’t good people”.”

Too many, way too many… It makes the world very difficult to navigate. Learning to figure out who is trustworthy, how to stop falling into power games… And how to deal with interactions with dangerous people when they can’t be helped.

“My mother did not perceive me as a person of value, but as a Thing that belongs to her. No wonder I continued, outside her physical presence, to perceive myself to be a Thing that.. does not belong to me… My body did not belong to me, I didn’t like it, just carried it around, like it was really a thing that does not belong to me, a thing I was uncomfortable with. I was almost trying to get rid of it because it was trouble, shameful.”

There’s so much hurt there, I can feel it. She hurt you so much… She deprived you of the comfort you should have felt in your body and the love you should have feel for it, for yourself. It was so wrong of her.

The shame should have been hers. She was so mean to put this feeling inside you, and she did it when you have no mean to fight it. The one who was supposed to love you and protect you. And you had nobody to protect you from her… So it is no wonder you fell into her trap, then traps similar to hers. It takes a lot to undo the beliefs, the thinking patterns. It takes a lot to heal from the negative and hurtful feelings that were put inside us.

“I thought yesterday: I can’t un-feel the shame if I only think about myself, but I can un-feel it when I think of how you wouldn’t deserve to feel that shame if you experienced what I did, and how so many women who did experience what I did, or similar to it- they don’t deserve to feel that shame. Therefore, I don’t.”

So your empathy for others is helping you the most for this, it is interesting.

“It will take getting used to what is now unusual. With time, and with the right attitude (gentleness, patience) you will become comfortable with what now is unusual and uncomfortable.”

I am curious to experience how it feels, to be comfortable with… Feelings.

“(1) you have a wiggle room with me, some room for “making mistakes, not ill-intentioned, but due to ignorance and lack of awareness” without being judged or punished for those, no punishment, no withdrawal”

Thank you. And, same for you with me.

“(2) it is very important that you grow to understand that if you bring me discomfort- it is not going to be a devastating discomfort that I can’t handle, but a small discomfort that will help me learn something new as a result. In this Process of emotional healing, it is moments of discomfort that move us toward more learning= healing.”

I like this view on mistakes and moments of discomfort. It feels better, safer. Unlike my painful past experiences. And since it is mutual, it feels right.

“So you see, your “mistakes” are opportunities for me to learn= heal. Same with my mistakes: they are opportunities for you to learn= heal. We should both relax further: give ourselves the right to be spontaneous, trusting ourselves and each other to not make devastating mistakes.. because we are good people, so devastating mistakes are really not possible for us to make.”

I want to try it. I’ll try to think of this when I worry. I really want to discover and experience healing with you, at least as much as it can happen during our communication.

Linarra