#thrivingmotley

[thrivingwhilemultiple]

Who I was changed regularly, faces coming and going without warning; I was so many, too many, thus I wound up being nobody. Nothing stayed static — I never stayed static — there was no starting point. We were a jumbled, erratic galaxy, a constantly-shifting kaleidoscope of constellations, incapable of being neatly filed into a list.

[thrivingwhilemultiple]

At times, recovering feels even harder than survival. during the surviving, fractions were lived one at a time, while in the remembering, I am both who I was then and who I am now, and sometimes, everybody else in between.

Now, I am the child living through it, and I am the adult who knows better — an adult who could never do the unthinkable. And reliving it in all these simultaneous viewpoints is a heartbreak I can barely describe. It rips apart a soul in ways I wish I didn’t know.

[thrivingwhilemultiple]

Finding the right language saved me. When labeled sick, I was told I could manage and maintain, but that my suffering would be forever. Framing DID as a healthy response to an unhealthy environment gave me the permission to heal.

DID is one of the most natural things a brain can to do survive adversity. The resulting structure is not defective, it’s adaptive. DID is not disease or illness or sickness — it’s a response. It doesn’t make us ill, crazy, or broken; we’ve just come through the unimaginable.

I am not mentally ill. Dissociative Identity Disorder is not controversial or rare, and not a disorder. We're not recovering from DID, we're recovering with it.

[thrivingwhilemultiple]

Hello. You can put these pictures away. You don’t have to live in them anymore. You are here. I am here. We are here. We made it. It’s over and done. It’s over. It’s over. We won.

Hello, I see you, I hear you. Hello, we feel you, we know you, we got you. You’re safe now. Hello, and welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

[thrivingwhilemultiple]

"Why did you get off the bus?" "I don't know. I knew it wasn't my stop."

Life isn't about control. We can't control what it throws at us; we can't control emotions or outcomes; we can't control our recovery timeline. I can't control other Motley members any more than we can just "get over" decades of trauma.

We don't control, we communicate. Cooperate. Become curious and compassionate. We observe, ask questions, listen to understand; we call out for what we need and offer what we can give; we reflect upon past behaviors to unlock the mystery of why.

Why did I say that? Why did I react that way? Why did I avoid that for so long? Why can't I focus? Why do I keep forgetting?

...Why did I get off the bus?

"Why did you get off the bus?"

[thrivingwhilemultiple]

This constant back-and-forth has been my experience for as long as I can remember, all the way back to childhood. It may be different for other survivors, but the majority of our communication is verbal, through the written, thought, or spoken word. Instead of a monologue, I have inner dialogue.

[thrivingwhilemultiple]

There's a misconception that people with DID can't "hang out" with their different parts; it's old, it’s tired, and I'm tired of hearing it. I might even argue DID survivors end up knowing themselves more deeply and intimately than most.

Group activities bridge the chasms between, and better our ability to get out of each other's way. Sharing space can be a wonderful experience, especially during the boring and mundane. Folding laundry. Picking up the mail. Movie nights. Choosing that day's socks.

We survived together, and we heal together. We laugh, we cry, and then we vacuum our floor together.

Group Activities

[thrivingwhilemultiple]

Creating true, lasting change takes effort and time. Forcing us to not only admit but to embrace the ugliest parts of ourselves. Breaking us down to shreds, dredging us through the lowest of our lows so we can rebuild from the bottom up... It’s a grueling process that is both excruciating and immensely rewarding.