Blog - Page 36 of 37 - Gwynn Raimondi, MA, LMFTA

Bridges

January 10, 2013 By gwynn

“Mama, there’s a big crack in the bridge!” my daughter exclaimed as we were driving this afternoon to the airport. I explained to her that the “crack” was there on purpose – to allow for the materials of the bridge to contract and expand in different weather.

I didn’t go on to explain that it’s there in case of earthquake and allowing the bridge to buckle a bit. She doesn’t need to worry about that just yet.

Bridges are interesting structures – they connect two spaces, making the distance between them traversable.

Bridges are all about Connection.

I’m leaving tonight for my week away from home. My week of in-person time for school where I spend from 9am to 6pm in seminars, workshops and classes. At the end of my days I am worn out and can barely think – completely physically and mentally exhausted. The first two to three days are fun – a little holiday from my full-time mama life, where I’m only in the company of adults and I get to discuss Deep and Important things.

Then Day Four arrives. I start to miss them. My husband. Our girl.

Day Five arrives and I’m questioning why I felt the need to pursue this degree, why I chose this program. Being away from my loved ones and my home, my space, my people, is almost unbearable. I fantasize about leaving the Conference early.

I endure the last two days on a sheer force of will. Knowing that if I want this degree from this program I need to stay the full week. I need to get through it, regardless of how mentally and physically exhausted I am, regardless of how much I miss my Little Family.

I always bridge this time away for my daughter. I leave a special shirt or give extra love to a special lovey for her, give her permission to play dress up in my dress up clothes. She gets a small present every morning I am gone, from me. Some game to play or jewelry or a new nightgown or something, just to let her know I love her, that I am thinking of her, always. I talk to her every night after dinner and she tells me all about her day. I stay on the phone with her until she decides the conversation is over, letting her get her fill of mama, to get her through to the next day.

In the past I haven’t bridged this time for myself. Last semester my daughter insisted I pack Millie, a pink stuffed cat that she got me for Mother’s Day last year. I was actually surprised how much that lovey helped me through the separation. Day 5 came and I wasn’t completely miserable. I was able to be reminded of my family and our love for each other, just by looking at Millie. Millie came with me to class a couple times. Everyone in my cohort has met and held Millie.

Separations from our loved ones can be hard. Many of us are good at keeping our children’s attachments safe, we are good at protecting them and keeping their emotional health in a good and resilient place. Often times we forget about our own emotional health. Many of us as children had our own emotions ignored, disregarded. As a result we in turn disregard our emotional needs.

Millie is with me today. She’s in my arm as I edit this in-flight. She’ll sleep with me and she’ll probably come with me to class at least a couple times. She’ll help me relax into the present moments and be able to absorb the knowledge and wisdom of my instructors and cohort.

She’s my bridge to my family. Keeping our distance apart traversable, even if it is only so in spirit.

A little pink stuffed cat is helping me heal. Helping me connect. Helping me learn to care for myself, to self-regulate.

Another gift from my daughter. Another lesson. Thank you, to my girl. Thank you, Millie.

Traditions

December 26, 2012 By gwynn

Growing up there are a few holiday traditions that I remember and hold dear to my heart: Christmas Eve with the Italian side of my family; eating Chex Mix; playing with the nativity set at my grandma’s.

The traditions of my childhood were set in place before my birth, growing in the childhoods of my parents. Now that I have a family of my own I want my daughter to have traditions that she will hold close to her own heart when she grows up and has a family of her own. I struggled the first couple holiday seasons of her life, trying to make everything happen: baking cookies, making Chex Mix, creating Christmas Eve and Christmas Day feasts that would feed an army. Inviting our chosen family to share our meals. Making sure all the decorations were just right. I focused on detail after detail trying to create perfect holidays filled with magic.

What I didn’t understand those first few years of my daughter’s life is that magic can’t be made by hyper-focusing on every detail. Magic happens when we let go of control and let it flow. Traditions are created over time – they are the beautiful things that occur every year because we want to do them, not out of obligation, rather, out of love and joy.

The last couple years I have been letting go of control and letting our holiday traditions manifest and grow. After years of creating the “perfect” Christmas Feast with friends, last year Nick requested we have a quiet Christmas Dinner, just the three of us. We compromised – Christmas Dinner just the three of us and a Boxing Day Feast with our friends. As fate would have it, we lost power at our house on Christmas Day and couldn’t cook at home. So, ala a Christmas Story, we went out to Chinese food. It was packed, and it took forever for the food to come. Still, it was fun and nice and something totally different from what we had done for years (including the years we were together before our daughter was born).

This year we asked our daughter what she wanted for Christmas Dinner. I had let go of controlling the Holiday Feast, having the same thing year in and year out. Our daughter said she wanted Chinese food. And so, we went to Chinese food again this year. It wasn’t as crowded as last year, we got our food in a timely manner. It was beautiful spending the time with my family, sharing our entrees, talking and laughing.

I don’t know if we’ll go to Chinese food next Christmas. I’m letting this tradition grow as it will. I’m opening our life to the possibilities that life has to offer, letting go of control and letting beauty and joy manifest into my life. It’s both freeing and scary, exhilarating and terrifying and I can’t wait to watch our family traditions grow over the year to come.

Beginnings

November 30, 2012 By gwynn

I’m sitting in my living room, tree lit, winter village up with twinkle lights all around it, candles glowing softly throughout the house. Music is playing quietly on the ipod and our daughter is at the family laptop typing up a letter to her Gram while my husband is upstairs working.

Our new Advent calendar is up on the wall. I made the calendar this year and each day has a special activity for us. Traditionally, since our daughter’s second Christmas season when she was a little over 18 months, I make a countdown chain and each night she gets to tear off a link of the chain to see how much closer to Christmas we are. I didn’t intend on doing that this year, thinking this new calendar tradition would replace the old countdown chain.

I never intended the countdown chain to be a tradition. I did it last minute that first year because the felt advent calendar kit I had purchased sat unmade in it’s box. The same happened the next year and the next. Last year we bought a Lego City advent calendar and did the chain too. (The felt calendar kit still sits in a box, in our closet, taunting me, daring me to make it.)

When I told our daughter that the experiential calendar I made was going to be our Advent calendar, that we wouldn’t have the countdown chain, she got so upset. She wanted the countdown chain. I hadn’t taken into consideration the fact that the chain IS a family tradition, whether it was my intention or not. While I was thinking it’s just some construction paper and glitter glue, my daughter is thinking this is family ritual, holiday tradition.

We made the countdown chain together this year. She helped cut the strips and helped me glue some of the chain links. After a lot of consideration, she decided she wanted it to hang across the bookcases that also holds our stockings and the winter village, where it traditionally lives.

While the countdown chain is an “old” tradition for our family, having our daughter help me make it is new this year. It marks the beginning of a new stage in our family, as she grows older and more independent. As she wields scissors and helps make decisions about where some of the holiday decorations should go we continue our quiet traditions with love and anticipation. We stay cozy in the old–decorating our tree on Thanksgiving Day, hanging our stockings from the JOY mantle hangers–as we bravely go into the unknown of a holiday without shopping, seeing the magic and abundance in the quiet moments instead of creating large moments filled with excess.

As our home transforms to welcome the holiday season and the countdown to days filled with more light begins, I also bravely embark on a new adventure. This new site marks the launch of my new business, the quiet beginning of acknowledging my special gifts and offering them to you.

I look forward to our journey together, through this beautiful holiday season and beyond. May we all find Joy, Connection and Light in the quiet–and not so quiet–moments this time of year brings.

joy connection light — Joy, Connection and Light

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Healing in Community

November 2, 2012 By gwynn

Community is such a large concept. Often we hear people talk about the lack of community; the lack of communal support he or she feels. Looking at society I can see this lack of support as families have pared down to the “nuclear family,” losing the beauty of multiple generations and extended family under one roof or at least within close proximity. Neighbors no longer knowing each other’s names. There is a great tragic loss in this lack of community. Honestly I see this loss of community as a trauma in itself – isolating us more and more, having us burrow further into our own pain and not being able to look out at others and notice theirs. Not being able to reach out for support, love and healing.

Peter Levine writes about how healing trauma must always happen in community, with at least one other person present to bear witness to the traumatized person. The reasoning for this is simple: trauma happens when we are alone. This is not to say there are not other people physically present, or there is not another person or persons actually creating the trauma event in our presence. It is to say that we are alone – the only witness to ourselves in the trauma. Our bodies absorb the trauma and we tend to isolate after – either by choice as a survival mechanism or because we are manipulated to by an abuser. Trauma equals isolation. In order to come out of the trauma, to come out of the isolation we need a safe community.

This community can be one person. It could be a hundred people. It could be a therapist or counselor. It could be a spouse or partner or close friend or other family member. It could be a teacher, a mentor. It could be a stranger. It could be anyone. However that other person or persons, the one who is to bear witness to our trauma, needs to be firmly grounded or else he or she will do us no good. James Finely describes bearing witness to a traumatized person as keeping one foot firmly grounded outside the circle the trauma, and the other foot firmly yet gently steps inside the circle. The traumatized person needs the other to be grounded, this is possibly the only way the traumatized person can find her or his own grounding, perhaps the only way he or she can get back into her or his own body. The traumatized person also needs to feel the other person within her or his trauma, to feel truly heard and seen and understood.

We need community. However we need that community to be grounded. Knowing the extent of trauma in our world, finding these people who are firmly grounded can be a challenging task. So what do we do?

We seek. We look for those who have gifts to offer to help us in our own grounding process. To help us get back into our own body. To help us heal. Then we pass these gifts on. The beauty of these gifts, of learning how to become mindful, how to ground and stabilize our body, mind and soul, is that we can pass the gifts on AND keep them forever. It is the non-dual beauty of healing – realizing life isn’t about either or, rather it is about and. It is raining and cold and I can be warm and cozy. It is dark and I can see light. I can be angry at you and love you with all my soul.

We can heal ourselves and heal within community. As we shift, as the trauma releases from our body we will be able to see more and more community available. In the beginning though we have to be vulnerable and risk further hurt. Not further trauma, but potential pain. And in being vulnerable and open, we can see the pain in others and perhaps give them some community to heal.

Bearing witness to our own pain. Becoming and remaining grounded. Healing ourselves. Being healed by our community. Healing our community. Finding strength and grounding. Offering strength and grounding. Offering and receiving in the same breath.

I’m thankful for my ever-expanding community. Many of the people in my community are strangers. Strangers who probably don’t know how much they have impacted me, how much their existence has helped me heal. Others are close friends, my husband, my daughter. And a wide range of friendships and acquaintances in-between. Each person giving light to my darkness, whether he or she knows it or not. And hopefully, prayerfully, I give a little light to their darkness too.

759880261bc911e2b60722000a9f09f0_7 — Fall Sun, photo by me

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Entering a place of Abundance

March 13, 2012 By gwynn

One of the things I’ve been working toward is leaving this sense of lack I seem to have. The clearing I’m doing in our home is a piece of that. There’s this odd sense of anxiety that was once very prominent in me, and slowly, with time, is becoming almost non-existent. The anxiety is completely lack related: we don’t have enough of this or nice enough of that. Our home isn’t fancy enough. Our clothes aren’t nice enough. Our car isn’t expensive enough. On and on the list once went. I have come to the place with many things of being good with what we have. No, we don’t have a new or big or fancy car. We have a little eleven year old honda civic, that is often dirty both inside and out. Our little car gets us from point A to point B. She’s a good car. She’s what our family needs. More importantly, she’s what our family WANTS. She fits us as we fit her. This is true of many of our things: they may not be the biggest/best/fanciest, but they fit us, as we fit them.

On the road to unschooling I’ve had my share of bumps. I recently started hyperventilating a bit because my daughter is turning five this spring. You know, kindergarten age. And I see friends, both near and far, struggle with figuring out all the schooling options out there for kindergarten. Because, as society tells us, if we don’t get our kids into the right kindergarten we are dooming them for a life of homelessness and or a career at McDonald’s. Hell, if we didn’t get them into the right preschool, that is what we have set them up for.

That’s the thing. Why, would a decision made when a child is FIVE YEARS OLD ruin opportunities for them more than a decade down the road? Opportunities, mind you, that we cannot even begin to fathom because of the rapid pace technology and science are moving at. [Read more…]

Bridges are all about Connection.

Gather around the table