My Journey

Welcome to a brief synopsis of my life.  There are many parts of my journey that I have left unsaid for this blog but the ones I have chosen to share here, I hope empower you in some way.  Maybe you will see your self  in my words… maybe you will laugh….or cry.  I believe that we all have a story and sharing our stories with others is a way to connect together and support each other…..it’s what having community is all about.  We all need hope in our lives and my prayer is that you find a little piece of  that here.  Have you shared your story? If not, I encourage you to do so.  There is no boring life out there!

Fear~

The first time I remember being really afraid was one night while laying in my bed…..I think I must have been about 5 or 6 years old.  It was late at night and I was the only one in the house still awake.   I remember feeling this hot breath on the back of my neck  as if someone was leaning over me….watching me.  Then, I heard a deep, raspy voice speak my name…..I froze.  When I finally got the strength to turn around, there was no one there.  From that day on, fear followed me everywhere.  I had trouble sleeping after that…night time was always the hardest. I would often go into my closet and turn the light on and play with my dolls….just so I could sit in the light.  I hated darkness.

I had my first panic attack at age 16 while cheering at a football game.  I never told anyone.  Wasn’t even sure what had happened.  By age 18 I was having full blown panic attacks several times a day.  I finally told my dad, who was a physician, and he began his search for an answer to my problem.

Addicted~

I remember the first time I took a Xanax…..I hated pills….even before I knew why ….just hated them. …..my dad literally had to force the little purple pill down my throat.  I went off to college with my Xanax in hand, never out of reach.  Sometimes it stopped the panic attacks and other times it just made them tolerable.  People who live with panic disorder often live it alone, fearful that others will think they are crazy……it makes you FEEL crazy!  Attacks happen so random, without warning, often for no reason at all other than to torture the one being attacked and leaving them paralyzed with fear.  Drugs don’t work.  They only convince your brain that you need them.  I was on Xanax for 14 years…..the last two years of which I took only small pieces of a dose convincing my self that I couldn’t go without them.  Even though the small amount was having very little physical affect, the mental addiction demanded it.  I had become a slave to this tiny little pill…..and to my own body.

Pain~

By the time I reached my twenties I was a train wreck.  I was still experiencing anxiety and panic attacks.  My bowels were a complete disaster and I was suffering from terrible headaches….sinus, tension, “cluster headaches”….you name it, I’d been labeled with it.  I was on five meds a day, not including all of the pain killers I popped in an attempt to relieve my constant headaches.  All I knew was that my body did not feel like someone in their twenties should feel.  Not long after being on a new anti-depressant that was being used to treat my headaches, the UTI’s reared their ugly head.  I found out later, from my urologist, that the medication I was on often caused the bladder to “relax”, leaving it unable to fully empty and causing reocurring UTI’s…..nice.   At that point the docs were even considering putting me on the new drug for bladders…..”gotta go gotta go gotta go”…..seriously? I’m only in my twenties!  By this time I had gone through two colon surgeries, an eye injury that had resulted in Cornea Erosion , severe headaches with no relief, relentless panic disorder and a very painful marriage…..I was exhausted….angry…hopeless.

Wrestling with God~

One evening I decided to make a list of all the things that were wrong with me. I literally waved it in the air to God……as if He had no clue…..and began screaming at Him, “WHY WON’T YOU HEAL ME?!”  “Can you HEAR me?” “Do you even CARE?”  Now you must know that I was raised in a very conservative Christian home where anger was not allowed….especially towards our maker.   I didn’t care.  I wanted answers.  I wanted help.  I felt abandoned.  Unloved.  I had been reading about Job and how he wrestled with God.  I knew that this wasn’t an uncommon theme for the human race.  But why ME?  Hadn’t I suffered enough?  Why was there no relief? In fact, it seemed as though every year brought on another pain….another crisis in my body.  I was sick of hurting….I was sick of taking pills….I was sick of being sick. And the worst part of it all was that the God I had believed in……God who can heal all people…..seemed as though He didn’t even care.  I was having a pity party and no one had shown up….but me.   As I fell to my knees in tears, I heard in the silence between my sobbing…. a small, quiet, loving voice say to me……“I can’t heal you because you won’t let me”.

Yes, God….I’m sorry….can you repeat that because I must have misunderstood.” God, I pray every day for you to fix my broken body.  I’m a good person.  I love others.  I do all the right things.  What do you mean I won’t let you? I BELIEVE in You.  I BELIEVE you can heal me.  You know my love for people.  You know my heart.  I teach teenagers…..the most difficult ones in the school…..the ones no one else wants to teach…..remember?  I even pray for them, by name, everyday when I walk into my classroom.  God, You know me, why in the world would I be standing in Your way?  And then, as though someone lifted the veil from my eyes…..I understood.  I was so focused on what was happening TO me that I couldn’t see what was happening INSIDE of me.  You see, my body had not turned against me as I suspected, it was merely trying to get my attention. God was using this pain….all of it….to teach me to listen to my body…..to my heart…..to my soul.   He wanted to reveal to me the pain I was holding inside, pain that I didn’t even know existed.  Pain that I had buried deep inside so that I could appear as though I had it all together.  The pain that only trickled out from time to time when I was all alone……the same pain that I would carefully tuck back into it’s protective little box to hide away again.  It was literally destroying me from the inside out.  It was time to do things differently.  It was time to take out that little box, dust it off and begin sorting through all the pain, the hurt, the anger, the fear. There was a little girl in there who was hurting. I had left her back there in that closet…..alone…..hiding from her fears.  I was the one who had to rescue her.  That day my life began to change….

Therapy~

What can I say?  I began therapy the first month of my marriage, I was a wreck.  The first few years I made little headway, talk therapy has it’s place but I wasn’t getting very far.  It wasn’t until that life changing chat with God that I began to really dig deep and uncover my woundings.

My first experience with experiential therapy was at a retreat hosted by a group called Theotherapy, now a group therapy geared towards prison ministry.  Back then it was hosted by churches for hurting people to have a safe place where they could be real, raw and open before God.  It was an powerful form of group therapy.  There was no need to hold anything back as you were encouraged to dig deep and pull off the masks we collect throughout our lives.  It was like nothing I had ever experienced….especially in the “Christian” world. I usually had a special mask that I wore for that part of my life.  Church had not always been an ideal experience for me. It had been a place of rules and regulations.  A place where I had learned of a God who didn’t always match up with the God I talked with every day. The people there were some times  so unloving, unforgiving, unaccepting……it had always baffled me as a child.  As an adult, I just rationalized it away. We are all humans so I guess there will always be people like that…..even in the church.  Theotherapy was different.  The people were different.  There was no criticism.  No list of do’s and don’ts.  It felt safe.  Safe enough to slowly take off the masks and let others….including my self…..see the person that hid behind them because that is where you find the pain.  It was the place where I learned to be real, with myself, and with my God.  I not only learned the intense connection between mind, body and spirit, I experienced first hand the power of our emotions and how they impact our everyday lives.  It was over the next two years that I discovered my anger.

In Chinese Medicine, the Large Intestines deal with Self-Defense/Self-Protection~

I had no idea how angry I was….I mean, I knew I had things to be angry about……I had lived through some awful experiences in my college days (another important part of my healing journey which I have chose to leave out for this public blog)….my marriage was a disaster…..my body was a mess so no surprise that anger could be an issue.  However, I didn’t “feel” angry.  In fact, I didn’t really “feel” much of anything other than anxiety and sadness. Of course, most saw me as this happy go lucky girl who loved life and loved people…..I had collected some exceptional masks over the years and wore them well.  That is what made it so exhausting……keeping my pain and suffering a secret.  I had been in counseling now for so long and knew that I needed to get to the root of what was holding me back from making more progress.

My experiential group therapy had revealed many broken places but sadness seemed to be the only emotion I could connect to.  I could talk about being angry but I couldn’t feel it……release it. I remember my therapist telling me how important it was to get all of that buried anger out of my body.   So I tried….really hard…..to hold that dang bat and get that anger out. The only thing I had felt was stupid. I looked like a complete idiot swinging some plastic bat around trying to get this rage out that supposedly lived inside of me.

I’ll never forget the day the cork was popped. I was in the middle of my experiential therapy group and all of a sudden…..I blew…..and I mean I BLEW!  The rage that came out of me was impressive!  I’m sure it could have qualified for a small time horror flick.   It was amazingly and surprisingly…. refreshing.  I felt like I had lost 2o pounds.  You know the feeling you get on a roller coaster about midway down the steepest track……I felt weightless…..I felt free.

The next event was one that would lead me to the discovery of that connection between my emotions and my physical body.  As I mentioned earlier, I had experienced some major intestinal issues most of my life. I had endured a couple of painful surgeries.  The reason for this was……well……let me just say that I had a little trouble getting the garbage out of the trash can.  This had been a life long problem for me which my mom had assured me was “a genetic” problem.  Without getting too personal here….let’s just say that shortly after I popped the cork and release this buried anger, I went to the bathroom to release even more.  I’ll never forget that moment. I literally sat in awe as I saw how my body responded each time I released all the anger I had held in so tightly.  I began to look at my body in a whole new way.  I saw it as my teacher.  I began to listen to what it was saying to me.  I realized that all of these physical problems were  a result of my body trying to speak to me…..trying to save my life.

Broken Promises~

How many times have we broken a promise to someone?  How many marriages end in divorce?  I was taught that divorce is never an option.  You work through your problems and make it work…..even if it cost you your happiness. My first marriage lasted 7 years.  It was a disaster from the beginning.  We were both so angry….full of rage. He let his out…..I held mine in…..both are destructive.  The truth is, neither of us was ready for a relationship, much less a marriage commitment.  But there we were……and we’d made a mess of things.

There are no easy divorces.  Ours was no exception.  Many people ask me how I feel about that experience.  While those years were some of the hardest years, they were some of the most important years for me.  I learned so much about my self during that time of my life.  I am who I am today because of those experiences I had …… they were all a necessary part of my journey.  I was forced to take off the masks I had collected through the years.  I had to face my self.   I had to face God.  I had to make the connection between my head and my heart.  I became raw…..broken….changed….  I had to forgive those from my past.  I had to forgive my husband.  And most of all I had to forgive my self…..that took time…. and was by far the hardest person to forgive.

New Beginnings~

The next couple of years I focused on dealing with my pain, inside and out.  My marriage had ended in divorce yet for the first time in many years I felt hopeful.  My body had also begun to change.  And yes, I could poop again!  Anyone reading this who has struggled with this terrible issue shares the excitement of my accomplishment! I had some tough times…..the divorce was difficult….never heard of one that was easy.  My had body suffered from the stress. Igot strep throat seven times that year and I was beginning to suffer from adrenal fatigue but at the time had no idea what that was, I just knew that I was tired and stressed. I was heavily involved with the 12 Step Program and was finishing up my masters degree in Counseling while teaching full time and working part time jobs in the summers.  I never dreamed that I would be single again in my 30′s….it was the first time in my life where I had been on my own….really on my own.

After my divorce I had quickly jumped into another relationship.  It had been so exciting……I felt so alive with him.  He had been water to my dry soul.  And yet….he had his own masks…..masks which I was unsuccessful at removing for him….even though I tried.  Our almost two year relationship ended…..painfully….very painfully.   I felt more alone than ever.  I begged God to never  let me love like that again…..it just hurt too much.   I grieved and I grieved. I had found my self broken and alone again.

I had moved out in a little cabin west of town tucked off the road…..no neighbors….just me, God and nature…..and lots of deer….creepy crawly things …..and field mice (the not so fun part of  living in an old cabin).  There were some weekends that I would wake up and a day would go by and I realized that I had not spoken a word.  There were other days where the only words I spoke were to God….and my old friend Sunnie….my dog who had been by my side during all of my life’s twists and turns.  The nights were always the hardest for me.  That was when I felt most alone. And yet, it was during this time when I felt the closest to God.  We had some amazing nights together…..worshiping, talking, laughing and yes…lots of crying.

Goodbye Xanax~

My journey with Xanax ended the summer after my painful break up.  My best friend and I had decided to go live with our other dear friend for the summer months out in Norfolk….near Virginia Beach.  I needed some time to heal my broken heart.  I also decided that it was time to get rid of this pill I had become so dependent upon.  It wasn’t an easy task.  While I no longer suffered with the panic attacks, I feared letting go of my safety net…..my back up plan….that little pill that I carried every where I went.

I finally found freedom late one summer night as I sat in the arms of my two dear friends who held on tight and encouraged me to embrace the fear….learn from it……sit with it….. instead of run away from it.  The masks were coming off.  I was vulnerable. I was scared.  But I was no longer alone.

Although my old friend, Fear, still knocks on my door from time to time…..it no longer controls me. I haven’t experienced panic attacks for over 8 years now.  That’s freedom!

My favorite person in the whole wide world~

Our first real meeting was under painful circumstances.  I had injured my ankle and was desperate for relief as I was headed for a ski trip just two weeks out. We had met before but I had never really talked to him much.  He was the athletic trainer at the school where I worked.  Seemed like a nice enough guy….not really my type so even though he was one of the only single guys around those parts, I had never set my radar on him for a potential dating candidate.

I hobbled across the gym floor on my cructhes and yelled out “Hey, I want to snow ski in two weeks …can you help me?”  and he said, “Yeh, but you’ll have to ditch the crutches!”   Now being the southern girl that I am, I was hoping for a little sympathy first.  Not from this mid-westerner matter-of-fact kind of guy!  You ask for help and you’ll get it but ya better be ready to do your part in the process.   After a week of painful afternoons involving various exercises to help regain the proper use of my ankle, I was ready to ski… and had made a new friend.  Little did I know that he would become such an important person in my world for many years to come.

~I can breathe and I can run

One of the first things Mike encouraged me to do was begin running small races, 5K’s and such.  With my history of panic attacks, running wasn’t something I had thought of doing as being out of breath was something I had feared….not welcomed.  With the panic attacks now gone, I decided to give it a try as exercise was a huge part of my daily life.  However,   I preferred to get my cardio at the gym in a kick boxing class or walking on the tread mill….running had never been on the top of my list.

We’d been dating quite a while when I decided to try and run my first – and only – half marathon.  Mike had done several marathons and triathalons as he was just a natural born runner.  He had been such a great encourager to me and he assured me that I could do this – it was all mental.  He would be there to help me train and it would be an experience of a life time.

I was able to run a couple of miles a day, but it was such a struggle for me.  I had trouble breathing well.  I think it was from all those years of feeling like I was suffocating to death.  After talking with my nurse practitioner, who had also run many marathon, she suggested I be tested for runner’s asthma – maybe this was my problem.  Of course, the tests were normal……as always, this was a deeper issue for me.  I knew from my past experience that my thoughts play a huge role in how my body reacts.  I knew the power the mind has over the body.  I knew all about positive affirmations.  So, I decided to do a little experiement.  While training for my long run, I would say, out loud, “I can breathe and I can run”….repeatedly.  What I didn’t factor in was how loud I would be when expressing this positive affirmation when running with my head phones on.  I got some very strange looks…..but it worked!!  I was running…..and running…..and breathing too!

~The Break up

About half way through my training, Mike and I decided to break up.  He was wanting more, but I was so afraid.  My previous marriage, among my other relationship horrors, had left me paralyzed – afraid to let another man connect to my soul, afraid to love.  It had not been that many years since I had been alone with God in my cabin in the woods, begging Him never to let me love that deeply again and my heart was hanging on to that moment.   Mike wanted to marry me, and every time he brought it up I disappeared – not on purpose – it just happened.  He said it was like a deer in the headlight reaction….I just froze.  I’d had my years of therapy so just couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t get past this but it had a hold on me for sure.

Sooo…….I was left with a tough decision when it came to the half marathon.  Do I keep training?  How could I do this all alone?  I’d made great strides but Mike had been by my side to encourage me…. to push me along.  This would be a perfect excuse to bow out. Nevertheless, while I was tempted to quit, there was something inside of me that needed to do this…and needed to do it alone.  And some how, like he always does, I think Mike knew this about me…….maybe it wasn’t even a conscious knowledge…..but he knew…..and walked away.

~Race Day

I had made it to the starting line. It was breath taking to see the multitude of runners awaiting the excitement of the race.  I had made it further than most make it…..I had showed up to run…..the rest was icing on the cake for me.  My goal was simple…..to finish the race with the hopes of simply beating my training time. However, just to finish would be more than I had ever dreamed possible. I couldn’t stop smiling.

As I scanned the crowd of on lookers, I saw him.  He’s here!  My heart fluttered with excitement.  It had been many weeks since we had spoken or seen each other.  It was then that I knew he believed in me.  I was now more determined than ever to finish this race.  I wanted him to be proud of me.  My soul missed him.

The race was amazing!  Even though I was running alone, I felt as though each runner there was a long time friend.  They came in all shapes and sizes. Some were serious runners….others were decked out in crazy costumes and goofing off.  At one point, I was passed by a guy pushing a baby stroller!  That’s okay.  I just kept running….and running….and running….over 13 miles I ran that day.  I crossed the finish line and had reached my goal….I had finished the race….and had beaten my training time……WHAT A RUSH!  What a powerful and amazing experience.  Life was good!

As I looked around the crowd of runners and on lookers, I saw him again.  Out of all those thousands of people…..I ran into the most important person in my life.  He gave me a hug  and he  told me he was proud of me…..he knew I could do it!  It was that day that I realized the importance of having someone in your life who believes in you, who encourages you, who pushes you to be the best that you can be, even when you don’t think it’s possible.

Mike and I were married on October 12th, 2006 in the beautiful Florida Keys.  To this day, he is my biggest encourager…..he still believes in me even when I have trouble believing in myself.  He is my best friend, my lover, the one person I can count on to make me laugh.  He is my favorite person in the world.  Thank you babe…..I love you!

~Every day is an opportunity to grow….. to learn….to live

My life continues to bring me opportunities for more growth.  In the past few years I have experienced other health challenges such as systemic yeast, migraines, neuropathy pains, chronic adrenal fatigue and days when I just felt like running away.  In spite of them all, I have learned so much.  In fact, every experience in my life….good and bad….has made me who I am today.  We all have a choice in how we view our lives.  We can be angry about the cards we were dealt…..become bitter, depressed, shake our fist at God…..or we can learn from our experiences and use what we learn to help others.  We can offer hope.  Isn’t that what we are all looking for?

My prayer is that this blog will do that for all those who stumble across these words.  May your journey lead you to places of great discovery.  May each of you show up for your own race.  Most of all…..may each of you embrace life.  We all have much to learn so enjoy the process.

Offering Hope,

Leslie