Survive.Live.THRIVE.

INFJ. Critical Care NP. Traveler. Recovering and Discovering.

[thecalminside]

“Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear?

Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?”

Lao Tzu

[lovelyreverie]

bold of you

Appearance:

I’m over 5’5” // I wear glasses/contacts // I have blonde hair // I prefer loose clothing to tight clothing // I have one or more piercings // I have at least one tattoo // I have blue eyes // I have dyed or highlighted my hair // I have gotten plastic surgery // I have or had braces // I sunburn easily // I have freckles // I paint my nails // I typically wear makeup  // I don’t often smile // I am pleased with how I look // I prefer Nike to Adidas // I wear baseball hats backwards

I play a sport // I can play an instrument // I am artistic // I know more than one language // I have won a trophy in some sort of competition // I can cook or bake without a recipe // I know how to swim // I enjoy writing // I can do origami // I prefer movies to TV shows // I can execute a perfect somersault // I enjoy singing // I could survive in the wild on my own // I have read a new book series this year // I enjoy spending time with friends // I travel during school or work breaks // I can do a handstand

Relationships:

I am in a relationship // I have been single for over a year // I have a crush // I have a best friend I have known for ten years // My parents are together // I have dated my best friend // I am adopted // My crush has confessed to me // I have a long distance relationship // I am an only child // I give advice to my friends // I have made an online friend // I met up with someone I have met online

Aesthetics:

I have heard the ocean in a conch shell // I have watched the sunrise // I enjoy rainy days // I have slept under the stars // I meditate outside // The sound of chirping calms me // I enjoy the smell of the beach // I know what snow tastes like // I listen to music to fall asleep // I enjoy thunderstorms // I enjoy cloud watching // I have attended a bonfire // I pay close attention to colors // I find mystery in the ocean // I enjoy hiking on nature paths // autumn is my favorite season

Miscellaneous:

I can fall asleep in a moving vehicle // I am the mom friend // I live by a certain quote // I like the smell of sharpies // I am involved in extracurricular activities // I enjoy Mexican food // I can drive a stick-shift // I believe in true love // I make up scenarios to fall asleep // I sing in the shower // I wish I lived in a video game // I have a canopy above my bed // I am multiracial // I am a redhead // I own at least three dogs

@thecagedbird @pearlsandpeace @healingmags @withoutrival @radiantrecovery @cyntheses @findingmypeace @iamgloing @mystoryismytruth @theaeolianharpist if you feel like it

[pearlsandpeace]

Appearance:

I’m over 5’5” // I wear glasses/contacts // I have blonde hair // I prefer loose clothing to tight clothing // I have one or more piercings // I have at least one tattoo // I have blue eyes // I have dyed or highlighted my hair // I have gotten plastic surgery // I have or had braces // I sunburn easily // I have freckles // I paint my nails // I typically wear makeup  // I don’t often smile // I am pleased with how I look // I prefer Nike to Adidas // I wear baseball hats backwards

I play a sport // I can play an instrument // I am artistic // I know more than one language // I have won a trophy in some sort of competition // I can cook or bake without a recipe // I know how to swim // I enjoy writing // I can do origami // I prefer movies to TV shows // I can execute a perfect somersault // I enjoy singing // I could survive in the wild on my own // I have read a new book series this year // I enjoy spending time with friends // I travel during school or work breaks // I can do a handstand

Relationships:

I am in a relationship // I have been single for over a year // I have a crush // I have a best friend I have known for ten years // My parents are together // I have dated my best friend // I am adopted // My crush has confessed to me // I have a long distance relationship // I am an only child // I give advice to my friends // I have made an online friend // I met up with someone I have met online

Aesthetics:

I have heard the ocean in a conch shell // I have watched the sunrise // I enjoy rainy days // I have slept under the stars // I meditate outside // The sound of chirping calms me // I enjoy the smell of the beach // I know what snow tastes like // I listen to music to fall asleep // I enjoy thunderstorms // I enjoy cloud watching // I have attended a bonfire // I pay close attention to colors // I find mystery in the ocean // I enjoy hiking on nature paths // autumn is my favorite season

Miscellaneous:

I can fall asleep in a moving vehicle // I am the mom friend // I live by a certain quote // I like the smell of sharpies // I am involved in extracurricular activities // I enjoy Mexican food // I can drive a stick-shift // I believe in true love // I make up scenarios to fall asleep // I sing in the shower // I wish I lived in a video game // I have a canopy above my bed // I am multiracial // I am a redhead // I own at least three dogs

tagging @survive-live-thrive @undeniableemotions @hormonesandsass

[survive-live-thrive]

I’m over 5’5” // I wear glasses/contacts // I have blonde hair // I prefer loose clothing to tight clothing // I have one or more piercings // I have at least one tattoo // I have blue eyes // I have dyed or highlighted my hair // I have gotten plastic surgery // I have or had braces // I sunburn easily // I have freckles // I paint my nails // I typically wear makeup  // I don’t often smile // I am pleased with how I look // I prefer Nike to Adidas // I wear baseball hats backwards

I play a sport // I can play an instrument // I am artistic // I know more than one language // I have won a trophy in some sort of competition // I can cook or bake without a recipe // I know how to swim // I enjoy writing // I can do origami // I prefer movies to TV shows // I can execute a perfect somersault// I enjoy singing // I could survive in the wild on my own // I have read a new book series this year // I enjoy spending time with friends // I travel during school or work breaks // I can do a handstand

Relationships:

I am in a relationship // I have been single for over a year // I have a crush // I have a best friend I have known for ten years // My parents are together // I have dated my best friend // I am adopted // My crush has confessed to me // I have a long distance relationship // I am an only child // I give advice to my friends // I have made an online friend // I met up with someone I have met online

Aesthetics:

I have heard the ocean in a conch shell // I have watched the sunrise // I enjoy rainy days // I have slept under the stars // I meditate outside // The sound of chirping calms me // I enjoy the smell of the beach // I know what snow tastes like // I listen to music to fall asleep // I enjoy thunderstorms // I enjoy cloud watching // I have attended a bonfire // I pay close attention to colors // I find mystery in the ocean // I enjoy hiking on nature paths // autumn is my favorite season

Miscellaneous:

I can fall asleep in a moving vehicle // I am the mom friend // I live by a certain quote // I like the smell of sharpies // I am involved in extracurricular activities // I enjoy Mexican food // I can drive a stick-shift // I believe in true love // I make up scenarios to fall asleep // I sing in the shower // I wish I lived in a video game // I have a canopy above my bed // I am multiracial // I am a redhead // I own at least three dogs

Thanks Kelly and LB for the tag :) A welcomed distraction.

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Nelly Sachs, tr. by Eric Plattner, from The Seeker: “Enigmas of Night,”

[purplebuddhaquotes]

There are moments which mark your life. Moments when you realize nothing will ever be the same and time is divided into two parts, before this, and after this. Sometimes you can feel such a moment coming. That’s the test, or so I tell myself. I tell myself that at times like that, strong people keep moving forward anyway, no matter what they’re going to find.

John Hobbes (via purplebuddhaquotes)

I think about this ALL the time.

[c-isnenegro]

[purplebuddhaquotes]

We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as were meant to be. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache … The absence of love and belonging will always lead to suffering.

(via purplebuddhaquotes)

[newyorkcityfeelings]

Happy Halloween from West Village, NYC 📷 Erick Ong @ericknyc_

[heart-of-a-wildflower-deactivat]

Random ED things nobody really talks about

Being jealous of friends or people who have been severely underweight/ hospitalized

Hundreds of awkward angle body checking photos

Looking at the size of your legs/body in every mirror, reflection, shop window

Being disgusted at watching people eat

Comparing people’s body size and weight to yours before noticing anything else about them

Being obsessed with cooking/dieting/food programmes

The pain of hitting your hip bone on a table

Hating yourself for judging anyone who is healthy or overweight

Being proud of your lowest weight once recovered/weight restored

Eye rolls when anyone without an ED discusses their new diet/weight loss

Eating every tiny bit of a specific calorie portioned food because damn if you’ve counted those calories you are gonna enjoy them

Feeling embarrassed for eating ‘unhealthy’ foods because people assume you eat nothing/survive on lettuce

‘Wow you’re actually eating’ kill me

Not enjoying excercise or wanting to work out

Alternating between being scared of all food and wanting to consume everything in sight

Really horrific awful bad breath (like seriously bad)

One day you’re too scared to eat a tomato the next you eat chocolate without worrying about it

Looking in the mirror after eating and feeling like you gained 20lbs

The anxiety and embarrassment of buying laxatives/diet pills

[herchainsaregone]

Pretty sure I’ve heard people talk about every single one of these things in the ED community actually… I think I’m just too old ugh.

[purplebuddhaquotes]

Sometimes I think the loneliness inside of me is going to explode through my skin and sometimes I’m not sure if crying or screaming or laughing through the hysteria will solve anything at all. Sometimes I’m so desperate to touch, to be touched, to feel, that I’m almost certain I’m going to fall off a cliff in an alternate universe where no one will ever be able to find me.

Tahereh Mafi (via purplebuddhaquotes)

exactly.

[survive-live-thrive]

10.23

Trying to hard to be thankful for life despite how hard it has been for me emotionally right now. As an act of self care and survival I have been trading Barry’s Bootcamp in for yoga whenever I can go. I went tonight to my favorite neighborhood yoga studio and I am so grateful I have that place. This yoga instructor is the best hugger. He is so full of love and I love getting a nice hug and greeting at the start and finish of class. He is the best. I tried to dedicate my practice to focusing on being grateful for my body and the fact that its simplest functions work.

Tomorrow I have work and I have been emotionally labile. I always am in the fall but being fall and working hard in therapy and changing meds has left me feeling a little unhinged. We have a patient on our unit that recently became a quadreplegic. He is the same age as me. He just got married. It was a horrific accident. It wasn’t his fault. Although I miss working in Trauma Surgical ICU at times- the one patient population I do NOT miss are the newly diagnostic quadreplegics. Its devastating for them. They are often young...critically injured and require multiple surgeries so remain sedated until initial run of surgeries are done. Once they wake up we have to break the news. We have to explain why they can no longer MOVE or  control any part of their body. A once abled, healthy, resilient and strong body now dependent on machines without sensation to any extremities. Unable to talk, write, hug.....They are  literally healthy with no past medical history one second and fully dependent and unable to move nonetheless breath on your own the next and likely for the rest of your life. Its devastating. As a bedside nurse it was really hard because I had to continuously remind them WHY they couldn't move or continuously tell them they couldn’t move. Unfortunately tomorrow, one of my patient’s is  a newly diagnostic quad. I feel like dealing with all the sad MICU cases enough are hard to deal with. Adding the combo depressing SICU case just seems too much to bare. It doesn’t help that the fellow presenting the case today in conference started crying about it when she presented. I was just telling my coworker those cases were the hardest SICU cases for me and then we went to this meeting where she explained how hard it was to take care of him and how hard it was for all the residents. 

In these scenarios you feel utterly helpless. You can’t fix their injury and you can’t begin to explain their pain. I feel guilty feeling sad or making it seem like I’m having a hard time when IM healthy and can walk out of the hospital but it really does impact you. Anyway, knowing this I made sure I went to yoga tonight instead of Barry’s or another high intensity work out so I could try to maybe ground myself a little for a rough day ahead tomorrow. And that is only one of 3 patient’s I’ll have. All are under the age of 35........and one is also brain dead. Sometimes I wonder how much longer I can work in settings like this. Sometimes it feels like too much.

[survive-live-thrive]

10.20

Going to sound a bit nuts here, but does anyone else obsessively research new kinds of therapy you start? I guess now that I am doing such a different type of therapy- some of which I was not familiar with, I am now you tubing videos of Peter Levine explaining and lecturing on somatic experience therapy. Actually I pretty much dismissed all these other modalities as totally BS so I never even was intrigued to read about them.

 I already found a bunch of videos of some other person- blanking on his name (because now I am on to Peter Levine) talk about IFS/Parts therapy. Listening to them I Guess is oddly soothing? I’m also intrigued because I love psychology. I’m also motivated to find out what it is exactly so I can’t be “tricked” into anything (I know that is definitely a protective part of me). Anyway, I think I’ve watched all youtube videos with Peter Levine at this point. He also kind of reminds me of an older version of M. Anyway....anyone else do this? I stay away from academic journal articles only because then I arm really turned off by the approach because it begins to feel so impersonal. Thats all. Riding struggle bus city here....but going to be social and do a late brunch with a friend. That should help. 

[survive-live-thrive]

10.19

Ugh. I’m so sad.  So so sad. I can’t shake it. On another note, I decided to go to Philadelphia for 24 hours on Friday after much back and forth for my old unit’s 25 year reunion. I’m nervous. I look back at Philadelphia fondly but it reminds me of so many sick years but it is also where I started to be true in my recovery and find that solid recovery ground..... I can’t believe its been almost 3 years since I left. Philly was my first home as an adult. It was my first city after the city I grew up in.  I don’t know, reunions and going back to somewhere I used to live is hard. Because when you leave a place it freezes in time, the place you worked, the restaurants you walked by, the skyline...it stays frozen in your memory. But in reality ALL of it moves on. There are new restaurants, new places, people move on and grow....and it no longer feels like home. I hope I am glad I went. I haven’t been in a year and it so close and super quick so I mean how bad can it be right? I’d regret not going even more. I’d be lying if I said I also wasn’t a little nervous because I was always known as the “small one” on the unit. Everyone used to always tease me that I didn’t eat- yes not the most supportive places to work, but I’m headed back now healthy and different and I hope to god no one says anything negative. I can take you seem happy or healthier but if its any sort of negative comment like they all used to make than I’m not sure I’ll take it well. Ironic how when I worked there I thought I was “so much better than in college” and now I look back and look at it as still part of my sick years....recovery and life is truly a journey and an ever changing target. Don’t mind me, I don’t know what I’m talking about right now. JUST SO SAD, SO so sad. I guess I could go to bed.

[purplebuddhaquotes]

There’s an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It’s when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar.

Chuck Palahniuk

(via

purplebuddhaquotes

)

[survive-live-thrive]

10.18

I was supposed to check in with M the day after my session. Well, actually unlike years past, I told him checking in with him the next day would be helpful. He asked me what would help me after the session. So I wrote him my good old novela. I hadn’t emailed him for over a month since this week. Anyway, in it I included what i really wanted from him- he often asks “what could I do to help myself or what could he do to help me?” after a particularly hard session. From day one I think to myself, “ I want a hug”. But I’m too afraid to ask. With my old therapist in Philadelphia, L, we always ended with a hug. She was super maternal toward me, for better or worse. I missed that. The therapist I saw for 6 mo after I moved to NYC I didn’t like much so didn’t want a hug lol. Anyway, I finally --8 months later told M I wanted a hug. I’ve said I”ve wanted a hug before but never specified from him. I guess he never got the hint. I was explicit in the email that I wanted a hug from him and told him L used to hug me after each session. Yet again to my surprise he responded enthusiastically. Also to my relief. Before L, I saw another therapist K for 5 years, she was great in some ways and helped me a lot with my ED but was not warm and fuzzy in the slightest. I ended up stopping my work with her because she couldn’t help me with the deeper issues. I once asked her for a hug after YEARS of seeing her and trying to be vulnerable and she “thought we should talk about it”. IT DEVASTATED ME. So I’m super cautious about asking and also find it very upsetting to have it declined. Needless to say, I was hugely relieved when the firs sentence in M email back to me was “Yes, I think it would be great of us to hug at the end of our sessions. Thanks for asking”!! 

Sometimes I think he is from another planet. Yet knows me so well that he put that first in response to my email so I wouldn’t freak about the rest. 

Ok I’m off this weekend- I haven’t been off for 2 days in a row since errr....a month? Trying/hoping I don’t go insane. Scheduled yoga x 2 tomorrow to keep me grounded. 

[serialoddities-blog]

autumnal asks

lantern - how did you meet your best friend? What were your first impressions of each other?

frost - if you could give some advice to your younger self, what would you say?

maple - is there a hobby / skill that you’ve always wanted to try but never did?

harvest - what fictional character do you most identify with? Why?

fireside - if you had your dream wardrobe, what would it look like?

cider - a food that you disliked as a child but now enjoy?

amber - share an unpopular opinion that you may have.

fog - how well do you think you’d do in a zombie apocalypse scenario?

jack-o-lantern - if you could look like any celebrity, who would you choose?

spice - have you ever encountered a house that you believed to be haunted?

orchard - share one thing that you’d like to happen this autumn.

crow - which school subject do you wish you had an aptitude for?

bonfire - describe your dream house.

cinnamon - if you had to live in a time period different than the present, which would you choose and where?

cobweb - (if you’ve graduated) do you miss high school?

cranberry - what’s one physical feature that you get complimented on?

maize - share the weirdest encounter you’ve had with a stranger on the street.

quilt - how do you take your tea (or coffee)?

pumpkin - do you think that humans are inherently good or bad?

moonlit - are you a neat or messy person? Is your room / house orderly?

flannel - have you ever gone on a bad date? 

cocoa - if you could have any type of hair, what colour and cut would you have?

ghost - is there someone that you miss having in your life?

[ourjocohome]

[survive-live-thrive]

10.16 Part II

In the midst of revisiting my relationship with my mother I shared with M a letter she sent me when I was in treatment. It is one of the view things I have as “proof” that she was the way she was. I’ve been rereading  M’s response over and over again. Its so nice to feel validated without having to prove anything. 

Your mother's response to you is devastating.  Her narcissism and complete inability to see beyond herself is truly shocking.  I'm deeply sadened and so very sorry you were subjected to that sort of emotional  deprivation and psychological abuse throughout your childhood.  It's amazing to me how much you've already overcome and achieved in your life, and how you've managed to succeed, despite all the trauma you suffered as a child, adolescent and young woman.  You've come so far in your life.  You are so NOT like your mother.  Yours is truly an extraordinary story and journey, and the distance you've traveled both inwardly and outwardly is something to be very proud of.  And I assure you, you will continue to travel even further in your healing, recovery and success in life....