Month: April 2020

Celebrate · resilient

Inside Job

A Fish Named KarenLeave a comment


The purging hurt so good. The expir-yay-tion of an antiquated pattern, I shed my dumb-suit. My beauty radiating blissfully in all directions North, South, East and Best. Camouflage now turned reflective. Reflecting on how different I am today. It hit me hard. Like my heart was cracking open to love – a long aweighted love for myself. Heavy Go-Found-Me realization. I am here. Voicing this. The badasst thing I’ve ever claimed.

Yes, out loud “I am very intelligent, my brain is astute, clear and perceptive. I have so much to offer. I deeply feel that I’ve always been this way but shrunk into my-cell-f to “fit”. To go unnoticed and be less trouble in my fam-ill-y. Fully realizing how I continued to play small. This really Hertz, renting out my Cadillac potential while I settled for the Hyundai.

Who damm-pens my light, my potenchill? I do! I willingly took the torch and waaa with it. Murdering myself once again. We do it to ourselves. When we’re ready to take responsibility for our own lives, we stop blaming others for screwing them up. An inside job folks. So in-crud-ibly painful, the journey, like peering through a thousand panes of shattered ass. My own. Pain is so often the back asswards crack through which profound personal growth enters us.

Ignore the crack, walk towards the crack and pretend we didn’t see it. Feel the crack with our fingers, wondering all thorts of sings. Flatten our eyeball against the crack in curiosity. Does crack kill? Curiosity killed the cat, the cat’s eyeball and the crack. The blind cat leading the cracked eyeball. Or something like that. All kinds of excuses and distractions conjure up rather than to just aloe pain and truth and light to illuminate our womb-dead parts. You know, those parts that never had the chance to freedom their way from the Geico.

An absolute vodka miracle, with all these choices, that any of us choose to – not only walk through the doorway of pain – but go back uh-gain and again because we know this is the only way to true healing. Despite the pain, despite our suffering, we strive for better lives, a better egg-sistence. The born-again -open up your pocketbooks-, best possible, newest version of ourselves.

Now, a new confine-dents is mine. If ya try an lock my shit up ya might get lumped up. I own that shit. Not borrowed, rented or stolen. Permanent, home, comfort. A new normal. Clearer lens. A calmer presentation of me. No arming or bracing or caring what you think of me.

No apologeez. Your opinion of me filtered through your dysfucktion anyway. Love me. Hate me. None of my business. My emerging self doesn’t give a frog’s fat ass what you think you NO. If my bovine-size self-love makes you uncomfortable that is understandable. My bulls-y-ness has made me squirm for quite some time, too. Looks like I’ve made peace with that. When pain knocks, will you answer? Everytime.

connection · resilient · Trees

Safe Place

A Fish Named KarenLeave a comment

Surrounded, cloaked in decaying matter. Fresh smells of moist, decomposing life. The split center of a giant hickory. The trunk, cracked wide open in invitation, welcoming me home once again. Allowing. Allowing me in, like a generous neighbor, availing it’s wisdom. Without an entrance fee. Because I exist. I enter. Stepping out of my muted, insignificant existence, into this earthly goodness. The slow, methodical, rhythmic heartbeat of the earth echoes in the fresh rot. My exhales slowing to meet the offering.

Mother, I am home. I remove my coat and hang it on the rack. At the base of this Hickory, soft green Cedar fronds, border the huge Hickory in a semi-circle – concealing this sacred world from outsiders. Surely a magical thing. I shine brightly here in this dimly lit ins-tree-tution. I shine brighter. My secret safe palace, holding me sacred. I play. Alone, at peace. At once. Secluded from the jagged edges of life and dreaded doom. Stuffing myself into it’s humid warmth. All is lost in the wind circling, swirling.

Oh the cleansing wind. Blowing fantasy fulfillment. Take away everything, everybody. Dispose of them, I won’t mind. Discharging my death-wish fantasies into the open palms of these two grounded lovelies. Into these trees. Make it happen – I whisper. The howling winds, snow, rain, hail – experienced only as sound and sights. Destruction cannot touch me. I am only an observer. For once. I hunker into the safety of this energetic earth shield.

Hickory and Cedar, the finest bouncers, guard the entry like a rabid wolverine. I am grateful, if just for a moment. I am filled with wonder. What small creatures have also found solace here? I can’t be the only one… Under the watchful eye of Wise Woman. Mother Earth oversees this changing landscape, recording my fears, wonder, cries, rants, whispers. She never tells. She, for sure, can be trusted to hold and transmute all that ails. Offering me anonymity as I unload my bags. A long held fantasy, sleeping in here, energetically bathed in her light and love, protected, invincible. I will never leave.

I emerge so much more. Grown under the watchful eye of the elders.

anger · resilient · shadow

Anger’s Voice

A Fish Named KarenLeave a comment

When I’m angry, my words flood in scritch. Like scribing stone. So they may never disappear. So they may never leave. Writing gets less peak and vallyish and more jagged, bouncing above and below the lines. Words connecting in disconnection. Sorting through hot angry choices – ideas flow like lava into tiny cramped villages. Hear the screams? See the blood? Flowing blood of 14 murdered run-on sentences, double negatives. Just desperate to be heard, stealing your breath – all the while you barely notice you’re in a strange paragraph.

Anger speeds to keep the spotlight, arriving sideways on two wheels, smoking suffocating fumes. Pull up a chair – make room at the table of litter-al disgust, humiliation or just plain carnage. No napkins, no condiments, no apologies. This is straight up bite me. And it usually does. No questions or permission required, Anger spews and spills anyways. Anyways.

Yelling in caps, bold and underline. All or nothing. Live or die. My anger oblivious to pourameters. Taste the personal power, one syllable calorie at a time. The rage growler is full, no worries, just keep pouring. Anger grumbles…”pour yourself a glass of get the fuck to work. My milky words have come in, express me and fortify your inner child baby”. Anger laughs. Cause anger always laughs louder and longer. Longer and louder.

Tumbling out, a force of a thousand word winds. Rushing, gushing, flushing my pink skin once again. Words that stab at the page, armed with darkness to teach the light page a lesson. But Silence, Stuck, and Blank, the Ex-wives of anger arrive to block his best efforts. My writing calms, grounded saccharine sweetness once again ensues. My full power snuffed until the fault lines shift. Unseen, but still the lyrical fire smolders under the so pretty, dry compost. Soon to ignite in a risky rage, on an ink less page. Implode or willingly purge, it builds. Gather the poops, on the shit deck.

Once again Anger is victorious. I reach in and grab it, dirtying my hands with its wretched filth. Words arrive blunt, raw, real. No brakes, no wheels. Better write quick, before the richness fades. Shit, the good ones fade quickest – like breath on a mirror. Evaporation. The best worst thing that’s ever happened. Clearer energy, yet a cluster at the same time. This time it consumes my mind. Shit show. My only weapon, my keyboard.

Uppercase, lowercase, special characters squeezing out between wrinkled fingers. Letters morph into dripping hot metal, keyboard slippery, steaming. Begging, pleading to be used, fondled, tapped and fingered. Keys popping, huddled into one corner, safety in letters. Line the fuck up. Backspace, you too. Fingers purposely pouncing on keys, aching. A desire to rip something open, expose the beautiful guarded truth.

The killing, a channeled energy of precision. I slaughter, shred and shape syntax taking prisoners. It all sucks, it’s all brilliant. Anger doesn’t give a fuck if it doesn’t have a voice. Rage abides by no rules. Needs no direction. Bring it inward or vomit it onto others. Anger is never homeless. The seat of simmering lives in the golden land of swirling belly current. Solar Plexus real estate.

Writing, just a vehicle for my seethe. My ugly. Words dancing on hot coal paper. Jumbled, scratchy and ashy. Fuck punctuation. Use.them.all. Use-them-none. Hyphen-loving head case. I’ll keep writing till there’s none left. Fuck all your rules. Ju,s!t t)r.y and fi?gu!re this Sh(i’t O;u”t. Not listening to your linguistic lalala. Yer haphazzard hipee hooplah.

My angry words burn the coating off a smile. Wicked words, siracha sentences, putrid paragraphs. A remedy in the making. My darling Anger, have I represented your likeness a-cure-late-ly?

compassion

Thoughts On Compassion

A Fish Named Karen2 Comments
Portrait by A Fish Named Karen 2012

Compassion is having the capacity to hold, and the wisdom to allow, deep love to flow from your mature heart space as an energetic offering, to a recipient/situation.

Compassion is not subject to permission, boundaries or reception.
It’s a private, organic offering/agreement between your higher self and ancient, wise mother heart.

I see compassion as two chambers of the same heart. One holding and honoring what WAS and the other holding and honoring what IS. Right and wrong, good and bad don’t exist, there is space and acceptance for all of it.

Compassion is having room for the entirety of an experience and seeing the inherent beauty, anyways.

Compassion is when you realize that caring deeply about others does not mean you have to surrender or negate some part of yourself.

Compassion is our loving acceptance of shades of gray in the human condition.

Compassion is a process by which you gaze, with eyes of softness, on those who could use holding, through their pain and struggle, especially when they can’t/won’t help themselves – regardless of their “deserving it”.

Compassion is standing onshore, looking into the eyes of pain in another, and remaining separate (without jumping in after them/merging with them in their pain) and loving them from dry land.

Compassion is realized, offered and received when the path to heart wisdom has been significantly cleared of the debris of trauma.

resilient

Two sides of the same coin

A Fish Named KarenLeave a comment

Just where tf do you think you’re going?

I can go wherever I want, I answer to no one, I’m grown now.

Who are you kidding? you need a God Damn chaperone, you’re never on time and so incredibly wishy-washy.

I am a grown woman, capable of anything I put my mind to. I’m working on my organization and everyday I make strides.

Smh, mutters under breath, probably don’t even know where the keys are….

What was that? squints eyes…. I heard you, but I’m not listening, your opinion doesn’t matter anymore. There was a time when I listened to you, you kept me out of harm’s way by suggesting I play small. For that, I am thankful but your services will no longer be required.

Oh? Oh? Who thinks she’s the baddest ass around? Aren’t you so special, special little Karen, entitled to everything life has to offer. Needs NO help, isn’t she incredibly special. eye roll.

Well, I am very special, I was born with so much to say and do. I have great wisdom. Every day I retrieve more of what had to be surrendered, what was lost. I have made it out of the depths of hell despite your constant chatter and sharpened teeth at my heels.

Me? Meeeee? I’m not the evil one, my sweetie, you are evil – the way you dismiss people from your life? like flushing the toilet! Good people too, people in your own family who love you so much.

What? now you have completely gone off the tracks! Let me tell you about those “good” people. They do not deserve any piece of me. They wish nothing but to silence me, disown my authentic parts and smile while shoving the knife of betrayal into my aliveness. They fantasize about silencing me and erasing all that has occurred.

I think you are not thinking clearly, they seem nice to me, they have lots of friends and make good money and they are very attractive. Maybe you’ve got it all wrong, they seem pretty normal and like they’re living life freely – seems like they’ve moved on and you’re still wallowing in what was.

Well, let me tell you, it is not my duty to make them “see” like I do. For a long time I was hell bent on getting some well deserved validation for the hurt, invasion, violence, crazy, and damaging ways I was treated. Validation no longer interests me – I know the truth and that is enough. They don’t have to believe me or be sad with me or be angry with me for the injustice and trampling of rights, personal freedom or dignity. They “look” as though they’ve got amazing lives because we all perfected the art of “AS IF”. As if we had a perfect family, as if we were loved, as if we were safe.

Well, that sounds like psycho-babble, who tf gives you the right to interpret how their lives have or have not turned out? You’re not a professional, a therapist, a doctor…you are not them.

Listen here buttercup, I grew up with these birds. I know what each one of my siblings is made up of, the denial, the blame, the betrayal – I don’t have to have a degree in psychology to tell you how crazy it was in that stupid, fucked up house. The old patterns are still alive and well in each of them. The eating disorders, alcohol and drugs, self loathing, gambling, cheating, non-existent boundaries, lack of emotion, loyalty to a narcissistic, crazy Mother…. My eyes are wide open to the old ways of existing. Just existing. I am well schooled in energy healing and have availed myself to wisdom filled Spirit Guides who lavish me with support and encourage me stepping into my aliveness.

But wait one minute, Princess, you had a good childhood, lots of day trips, hand me down toys, clothes, food from the church, a bike to share amongst yourselves, a dog, a cat, one house that you never moved from. Wtf are you complaining for? your childhood was just like everyone else’s. What about all those pictures you’re smiling in? Huh? What about that? Enstein!

Children will do whatever it takes to get love, attention and to have safety. Whatever it takes. If I had to smile, I smiled. If I needed to act appreciative, I did. The last thing I needed was to be abandoned or disowned or starved or ignored. I needed to stay alive. I made the best decisions I could as a small child with a child brain. The same reason I stopped telling about the abuse.

Oh, THAT again, ugh. You’re so dramatic. Nobody hurt you. You were always friends afterward. It was just part of being in the family. When you say “abuse” that’s kind of harsh, I didn’t see anything like that happening. It looked like curiosity and play.

I don’t need your approval or understanding. I know in my body and mind what happened. It was my experience, my history.

Well, you just look crazy. I wouldn’t tell anyone. No-one will ever back you up or support you. You’ll look like a fool, AGAIN.

I have an army of Spirit Guides and Angels who are always with me for support and guidance. They communicate with me in a variety of ways. This team of mine lavishes me with support and encourages me to live into my aliveness.

abuse · resilient

Some Deaths Have a Life of Their Own

A Fish Named KarenLeave a comment

“Shut the door”, “Don’t let her leave” Scurrying. Frantic. Sisters. Tall, dark, blond, petite, squatty, thin, round. All shapes and attitudes. These were my 5 besties. My clothes borrowing, fist fighting, room sharing, pinky swear – sisters. Through bad and worse still, we had a bond. A loose one with frayed strings and dry rotted fabric, but we had one. A bond of secrecy you form when your leader is a bat-shit crazy devouring control freak. In a humid August minute, the fabric unravelled just the way no-one could have predicted. In both a horrifying and glorious purge fest – our fragile lives would never be the same. I purposefully held all the cards, balls and dice. I walked into that house 5ft 3in and needed to watch my head on the way out. Literally, there was soon to be a bounty on it, specifically my mouth.

The power of truth colliding with audible gasps and frantic bickering. mmmmmm. The glorious sounds of human reaction. Just looking for a little validation, that’s all. Crickets. Crickets prob get more validation from their families of origin. Truth didn’t exist. Truth meant that someone might have notice reality. And reality, fully realized, would have you retreating into the safe corner of your psyche and summoning an alter persona to return to the front lines in your place. Our Mother had the corner on ‘Truth” we weren’t allowed to consider our own, or think for ourselves. Bathed in, Clothed in and Fed HER version of truth Fucking our little minds. Pretending to be content and satisfied, hiding our shaking bones. Smiling was always allowed. Perfect smiles, perfect little girl heads, what a great Momma we must have! Beautiful religious family. Beauty queens – couple of pageant winners. UGH

Truth could be held in the corners of a smile. My truth always took a considerable amount of tension to keep it contained in the corners. Today there was no smiling. In Miriam’s living room…I was pregnant with Truth. Water breaking all over, suddenly releasing long held accounts of trauma, in waves of relief. Our brothers sexually abused me. With this “news” (eye roll) each sister fired their own brand of pebbles, stones and boulders. Public stoning style. Yelling in disbelief, anger and terror. Mostly hurtful shit, meant to shut me down. Most protecting our brothers. “You can’t tell anyone”, “They’ll kill themselves”, “They’ll get a divorce”, “You can’t leave”. “Don’t tell Mom”. “You never were into family anyway”… Not one pinch of validation or comfort, support or empathy. Not even a hint of human compassion or solace. Why was I surprised? I felt compelled to add, “but you, and you, and you were abused also” was met with rage and shock. The FACT that each of them was involved was so highly guarded, classified and ultimately denied. (and still is) I probably wouldn’t have gone THERE had there been a speck of connection or a flash of warmth for my road-rash heart, on that August afternoon. I know what I saw, who went with whom. I witnessed and was made to be part of “things”. I’ve been successfully talked out of many things, but this? death seemed more likely.

It was a slow death. A death of a family unit. Scrounging, scraping and slipping their way around what I kept exposing. They wanted me to shut the fuck up. Why was I so angry? Why did I have to keep going? Why did I have to ruin everything? Why do I still have to think about it? If I was such a great healer then why have I not healed them? How long would I stay away from family? How did I know that I was handling my healing correctly and knew what I was doing? Why was I choosing to make such a big deal out of nothing if everyone else is moving on? Too many loaded questions to keep track of. Cheap shots, well placed digs, casting me as unfeeling, cold hearted bitch. Who would walk away from their loving, sweet family, who? Boinging back and forth between shock, self doubt, anguish, depression, grieving over what I don’t and never did have. Grieving. Hard core grieving. Over the years, softening just enough and trusting in some of them. Elated I was, maybe they finally get it. They understand. Yay! validation… just to be tricked and exposed, made a mockery of. All dead.

I’ve been the catalyst, the reaper. Beheading lies and crazy. My shield dented and dinged by assaults wrapped in decorative, unassuming boxes with pretty polka-dot ribbons. My years of battle/defense slaying the army of loyal soldiers, my siblings. Loyal to cover-ups, story telling, eyes closed, stoicism, blankness, bonded together in denial and defense. A solid Bond of Spiritual death. They’ve had to let me go because they couldn’t silence me. My presence, a reminder of a past they refuse to acknowledge. One they’d rather have dead and buried. Pretty disheartening when you fully get – that it’s easier for people to turn their back on you, for exposing the family secret – than it is to have love and compassion for everyone involved and move towards wellness and sanity together. They find me dangerous and unpredictable. They don’t know exactly what to make of me. Truth is, neither do I. One out of 9 fighting to be seen. Horrible odds.

Truth is, over the last 23 years I’ve lost my tribe in order to find myself. Turns out some deaths have a life of their own.

resilient

Your Life Is Calling

A Fish Named Karen4 Comments

I heard the call. The call to run. But first I must stand still. Still enough to know just how far and fast I’d have to run. My boys, 5 and 2. So sweet, so innocent, so loyal. Hanging onto my legs, my every word. Looking deeply into my presence to feel the safety only their momma could muster. They love me, they need me. All of this. Triggering the vision of an engulfing, suffocating beast. Stealing all but a sip of untainted oxygen for itself. From the depths of middle earth this beast, slithering, watching, waiting. Safety was away from my family of origin. My inner child was bathed in muck and lies and deception. Hypervigilance, dissociation was living… this felt safe, ground. I was thawing from THIS freeze. Coming alive, breaking the surface, just the way they wouldn’t want me to. All of my abusers.

My true self attempting to surface, the bubbling wouldn’t stop. The dirty water no longer able to hold my buoyancy down. In dreamland, I was orchestrating this violence, killing for revenge. Long held rage and helplessness thawing from my frozen petite veins. Graphic scenes of stabbing, blood soaked, lifeless bodies, ripping knives through flesh. Ripping, like orgasmic, primal release. Always protecting myself from being wiped out – like I NEVER could. I could fuck you over just like you did to me. Kill or be killed. The delicious, giddy power of a knife, gutting as I was gutted, tearing at my power center. My aliveness gushing out like a shaken soda bottle. And you drank every drop. I felt justified, powerful, alive. You like me now? Does this feel good? just like you’d ask me.

Saving my sanity overnight, everynight. Revenge on those who want to hurt me for their own pleasure. I’ll show you what it’s like to have your guts ripped out. I can show you what it’s like to feel like an object, an option, a toy. Killing people without killing people. The dead I felt inside brought to life one REM cycle after the next.

Years and years titled The Rebirth of Me, Me Taking My Power Back, Who I Came Here To Be, Anyways. No Fucking Apologies. Me speaking my truth to anyone who would 1/2 listen. Me opening up to my experience, reaching, for the first time, for validation. My body thawing from habitual anxiety, chronic muscular tension, sinus infections, sore throats, sciatic, neck pain, gall bladder attacks, anorexia… the list goes on, long. I must be dying. I know I have a tumor. This is what they wanted. Every medical test known to man, negative. My body was trying to express and keep us healthy. Now it was time to listen. Only I could do this for myself. For my first 30 years I ran. I kept busy, I shoved it down. The souls of my children, showing me how it should have been, showing me the pure innocence, trust and love of a child. Just BEing. How it should have been. 23 years now. Standing up. Standing Tall. Standing with. Standing in. In my pain, my anxiety, my reflux, my vertigo -asking the ________ what it’s here for. What’s the message…cause there is ALWAYS a message.

anyways · appreciation · healthy · human condition · old patterns · resilient · Transformation · triggers · worthy

What’s Right With Me

A Fish Named KarenLeave a comment

Everywhere we go, what we see on social media, TV, magazines, pod casts, seminars, etc – is like a billboard showcasing how we are flawed. They are talking to us, right? Or just me? Ugh. At least this is how it feels…How we are doing it all wrong. What we should be doing. What could we be doing better, faster, cheaper, more efficiently, with less effort…How we are not doing enough. How we don’t know enough. That we’re not buying the right products. Not doing, trying, learning, relaxing, or efforting enough to make our lives “right”.

No shortage of messages. They might as well add, “ What the fuck are you doing with your life? You dumb ass. You are ___ years old and look at you, you’re doing it all wrong. You haven’t figured anything out. Where have you fucking been? Here, listen to me and I will FIX you.” Well, at least that’s what I hear.

So what do we do? We buy the supplements, the gadgets, the memberships, the subscriptions – just to terrorize ourselves more. To drive home how idiotic we feel. Perpetuating how ignorant, oblivious, unaware, unconscious, unenlightened, uninformed, unwitting and in-the-dark our existence is. Thanks a bunch. Thanks a fucking bunch. Love you, thank you for helping me to move further away from my true self, into an external, more aesthetically pleasing version of my existence.

Ever stop and think about the billions of dollars we flush down the “I suck at life” toilet? This nonsense has to stop. Such a brilliant business tho. Aren’t we all programmed to get on the self improvement bus? From a very young age 99% of us are told we do not measure up. We’re not someone else’s idea of perfection. Hearing this message loud and clear…Projected onto us by very unhappy adults, older siblings, well meaning aunts, uncles, grandparents, neighbors, coaches, teachers and even religious groups.

All this buy-in to self doubt was never ours to begin with. It was never part of our early fabric. I’ve never met a toddler who said, I’m not going to wear this cause it makes my arms look too fat or dance this way cause it’s weird or draw this picture cause it won’t come out perfectly and someone might laugh at me. Nope.

Before we got the message that we are flawed beyond fucking repair – we were happy-go-lucky beings, living by trial and error, as the wind blows, trying life out, discovering what makes us happy and healthy. We Experimented, made mistakes and got feedback that we JUST MIGHT fit in in our tribes. All without the crushing self judgement, without the feeling of “lack” or self blame if we got ill or came upon some troubles.

Do we really need repair? Or do we just need to fall in love with all our imperfections? All our FU’s? All the ways in which we give up, phone it in? Leave too soon? Stay too long? Take too much? Don’t take any? Don’t try? Try too much? Start many things? Finish nothing? We are the managers of our own programs.

There is nothing wrong with you. Never was. Tell those naysayer head voices to go F themselves. Their time in your life has expired. Feel good about recognizing their lies. All day long. Call them out. You are a beautiful mess. Allow yourself to know this.

appreciation · gratitude

In Love #11

A Fish Named KarenLeave a comment

I’m in love with leaves of orange, yellow and red. Tangerine orange bliss, lemonade sunrise and cherry jubilee.

Gathering at the slightest wind. Carried in circles, lifted high or dragged along the surface, their resting quarters, as uncertain as their beginnings.

Congregating by happenstance, piled, jumped in or bagged. Their colorful haphazard palettes etched in our Autumn minds. Sometimes called upon to spend their last days as insulation for the Spring trophy flowers. They agree, without hesitation. Who would decline such a mission?

To be a part of something larger. Beautiful and selfless in both life and eventual death. Sacrificing their nutrients for the greater good with purpose and on purpose.

Honorable to say the least.

Can WE make such claims? Are we all-in for the greater good?

I’m in love with leaves of red, yellow and orange.