~ I love you ~

Things on this journal have been pretty heavy lately, but right now, I wanted to take a break to reflect on my inner mothers for a moment.

My moms are really fantastic. They've taught me all that I know about spirituality and connectedness with the earth and the universe through my intuition. I understand that they are parts of me and, in a sense, I think maybe that's part of the point of their existence. They represent the Divine as I have come to understand it by way of me realizing that I work in partnership with the Divine every day of my life, as do other people. There's wise advice they have given me from within before, such as "All is one, and one is all" and "The answers you seek are within you." These are facts I have held to be true throughout my life, and it's really helped me to develop my perspective on everything and everyone that I've interacted with. Also, when my mothers are present, I can even look at the world with different eyes. My consciousness always remains (meaning no "amnesia blackouts") but when I see the world through their eyes, everything just looks and feels so much more different... It's like, I can see things and the colors will be more vibrant, or I'll look at mundane things and be in awe. I could look at the trees around me and just start to contemplate the journey that it took for all the trees to become what they are today. I could even look at a random animal as if I'm seeing it for the very first time and feel very moved by its existence through all of the years of evolution it took for that specific animal to come into existence at this point in time and in this particular location.

Moving on, though, I also get a lot of my spiritual stuff from my inner mothers too. Some of it may have been absorbed into my brain through various interactions I had throughout my life, but I didn't actively look into witchy sorts of information until I was in my mid-twenties. So I guess I find some of it interesting all the same. I knew how to make things like "spirit dolls" in my mid-teens, even though no one in my family did stuff like that, nor did my friends. At first, my intentions when making dolls like that weren't the nicest towards myself, but eventually I learned to use the dolls compassionately and use them to externally comfort myself for what I was going through during those years. I might make another one again one of these days for healing purposes. Hmm...

And then, I also knew of or learned ways that I could cleanse places I was in. I could do things like clap my hands, sing vocalizations without any lyrics (or with lyrics if I chose), burn incense, open windows, sweep rooms, and things of that nature to get negative or dormant energy to disperse. Then at some point I started to use sage too from time to time, so that's helpful too. Finally, I remember my moms helping me to get through difficult life events with gemstones. I remember on a particular family vacation I was suffering from debilitating anxiety because we were staying in a casino hotel (which I later learned was probably a severe trigger at the time), and I had this agate necklace on. Well, even long after the trip, anytime I would hold or touch that particular necklace's stone, I would feel that same anxiety again. I ended up cleansing it by putting it in a bowl of salt for 24 hours, and it definitely worked. So after that, I understood that energy transfer is definitely a real thing to be mindful of, plus it can be used to your advantage! You can get a stone or even a stuffed animal, for example, and just visualize yourself transferring a desired energy into the object of your choice. It's like charging something with your energy. Then it can maybe give you a better benefit when you come into contact with that object again. Sometimes I've done that with my cooking as well. If I'm in a good mood while I cook, the food tastes better and gives me happier vibes even days after I've been eating it for leftovers. Likewise, if I'm in a bad mood when I cook, the food isn't as good and the vibes I get from the food aren't good either.

There's so much more I could say about all of this stuff, but I think the most important thing is that I remember to tap into my magickal practices from time to time, both in good times and in bad. It will really help with attending to my spiritual health to do that.

Also, please enjoy the video I put at the top of the post. It's one of my favorite songs to listen to.

Hello there everyone,

So, I've been thinking a lot lately about something my therapist was trying to tell me in therapy. Basically, she wants all of my parts to join together as one combined personality. While I'm sure that sounds good on paper, things like that are rarely ever that simple. I've been in therapy for ten years and counting, and still I haven't magically unified into one personality. Not only have I not magically done so, but I also am vehemently against the notion of forcibly fusing everyone together and making them into one concrete personality just with the snap of a finger. No... If we're going to be doing anything like that, it would have to be gradual and on our own terms, you know what I mean? Even if it might be considered "standard practice" for that to be the end goal of therapy, I need to be able to empower myself and my system enough to make that decision on our own.

So after this past week's therapy session, what did we do? We started hitting the books and reading up more on what we call "functional multiplicity". While we read about that, the concept of integration, and other words of wisdom regarding healing from trauma in general, we came to the conclusion that we, indeed, need to start slow, but at the same time, I think total healing is going to look different than just fusing everyone together. In the end, I don't think it needs to be a case of doing that, but maybe working with each part and seeing where they want to go or what they want to do after being "unburdened" by their traumas or original roles or whatever. I know some might just want to "rest peacefully" in a dormant state while others will maybe merge with me or each other. And others, still, might just stay the same and practice open communication with any other parts that are still active.

In the end, I imagine everyone in my personality system existing in a room of sorts. When I achieve the furthest level of healing that I can, in my opinion, all of my parts would be able to exist in the same room with there being very minimal conflicts. Some parts would be sleeping in the room, while others would continue to be up and about. But throughout the entire time, we'd all be working together to get things done and achieve some sort of level of inner peace.

I think that's what I'll be telling my therapist at our next session.

Hello Lovelies,

It's been a hot minute since I last posted here on Dreamwidth. Things, for lack of a better term, have been a bit of a mess, but I'm somehow finding a way to keep moving forward.

I said previously in now privated entries that I got back in contact with some family members from my mom's side of the family. That's been an interesting process, but since I decided that maybe Islam wasn't right for me after all (or at least that maybe I jumped back into the religion without taking my time first), I've been kind of avoiding them. I've been afraid of letting them down or being pressured by them to stay in the religion, but I guess avoiding them maybe isn't the best idea, especially considering that my maternal grandmother has moved back into town from out-of-state recently. I haven't seen her in years and I really do want to see her again... but it's going to be difficult once she knows that I don't want to stay Muslim anymore.

Also, I believe that I've found the name to what's causing my parts to be so out-of-whack, causing lots of switches and dysfunction in my life. I'm getting a psychological test soon to see about what the diagnosis will be, but my therapist and I really believe that I have a personality disorder that's causing these rapid switches in beliefs and the feeling of a "lack of sense of self". I'm not self-diagnosing, but I believe that I may very possibly have Borderline Personality Disorder. That would explain why I act like a chameleon all of the time, so to speak, and why my sense of self is horribly unstable. I still think I have an Otherwise-Specified Dissociative Disorder along with that, but now I'm also wondering about that too; if maybe me and previous therapists were wrong about that diagnosis as well... but then, I think that's what the psychological test(s) are going to help me determine.

Finally, I've been doing more thinking about who I am as a person and, well... maybe I was correct in my initial assumption that I am nonbinary. Because of my unstable self image, I think that complicates matters, but I think that maybe calling myself nonbinary wouldn't be such a horrible crime. It's not hurting anyone, really, and it gives me the space that I need to continue exploring the gender aspect of who I am, you know? In any case, I think I'd just really like to take the time to slow down and give myself the space to breathe and continue to explore more about what it means to be a person; What it means to be me.

And I think the first step of getting to know myself is through being honest with both myself and with others. Lies don't do much of anything other than keeping parts of me in the dark. So I'm going to try to be more truthful with myself and others too.


Homework assignment for today: Write a list of secrets that you keep from yourself or others and explore why you keep said secrets. Brief entries are acceptable.