18 May 2016

Online Journaling Workshop!


Soul Reclamation Online Journaling Workshop


Coming up on June 3,4, 5 (or download to do when you wish)– I’m excited to be offering a guided journaling workshop!
This is about reclaiming parts of ourselves, long misplaced, buried, forgotten.
This is about inviting ourselves to feel more whole.
This is about mindfulness and presence, awareness, and forgiveness and shame-release.
This is about letting go, even a little, of our fierce grip on some of what keeps us from being able to move forward into who we are becoming.

DETAILS
** 5 guided journaling exercises posted on a private page on my heartwork website over the course of 3 days.
** Each exercise could take as little as 10-minutes
** “ Journaling“ could mean writing or not, art or not, but something “external”, not inside your head, usually works best.
** Participate in real time or download for later.
** A totally optional private, temporary, Facebook group (prompts will be posted there too)
** Sliding scale. 0-$20 via paypal .

This is intimate work, and to make it work as well as we can, we will not be sharing the content of our journals. We can talk about process, feelings, context, but the privacy or our writing or other forms of expression is to allow more complete freedom and unselfconsciousness of both exploration and expression.

This may be for you if you are feeling ready to let go of some old shit, while staying safe, present and mindful.
But this is not for you if you feel at any time it’s not for you. Yes, it is that simple. Trust you. Trust you. Trust you.

+++&+++>      This event has passed and it was awesome.  Interested in learning about upcoming workshops? Sign up for my mailing list on www.kate-johnson.com

04 May 2016

good cry

confession:  today I had a good cry.
confession#2: I am actually not sure if I have ever had one before.

I've cried in a billion different ways, but I never would have categorized any of them as good.
except, maybe, the hope-fueled flying penguin debacle.

I always fight it.
Always.
Today I just let it happen.
And you know what? It felt kind of good to not fight it.

but this time was different. Like I was ready to let something go. Or at least let it rise up and be seen (by me, in the privacy of my own aloneness)


So, this to say, hmmm.
Shifts shifting shiftily...subtle but not.


02 May 2016

ok then

Ok then.  What the hell was that? Apparently it was my usual panic attack hell + a new layer of total hell in the form of a bad medicine reaction.

On the advice of a dear friend and honorary medical professional by experience (thank you A) who recognized a bad reaction when she saw it, I gave myself permission and stopped the new med and felt like myself again by saturday night. Feeling like myself was pure heaven.

Today I saw the psychopharmacologist, and she graciously agreed that the new med was Not For Me.  Whoot.  I do not need more crazy.

So- a new tact-- specifically a trial of inderal, which I took long ago for social anxiety and liked it. So who knows? I have no idea if it will keep me from triggering into crazy land. I can only hope it will and wait for reality to test it (no time soon please).  The fear of the fear is really debilitating. And I wish I could say otherwise, but I would be totally lying.  I have never, and I do mean never, felt so debilitated. Not by colitis. Not by acute grief even. Because in the midst of the colitis. In the midst of the grief, I knew I was still kate.  When taken up with panic, I lose connection with myself. And that, my friends, is some extra scary stuff for me and probably most people.

I am worried, of course, that it will not work. And that I will get triggered and and and and... and then be on that bad ride. But at least it is a bad ride. Not a bad ride covered in an extra coating of crazy. And I know that is better than my 24 hours of sheer hell from friday to saturday night.

I want to thank all of you-- both here and facebook friends-- for being so incredibly understanding, kind, supportive.... and while I do feel vulnerable talking about this, I think it is really important.

Here I am-- dealing with this nearly invisible thing that pulls me down. And while there is nearly nothing as lonely, I know, I KNOW I am not alone.
How many others have their version of this?  Maybe not panic attacks. Maybe more generalized anxiety (oh my heart goes out to you), or depression (oh loves), or mania, or secret eating, or shopping in hopes to get the Thing that will change everything for the better. Make the aching stop. Make the loneliness go away. Make the feeling of otherness vanish. The Thing that arrives on wings of self esteem and gold dust. Or maybe it is secret shame. Regret. Even longing. Whatever pulls us away from our centers and into the big scary land of insufficiency and out of controlness.

We all have secret wounds. Secret battles. And as we move through the world, when we are strong, I invite all of us to send out compassion to the unseen. The unknown and unknowable in all of us.