All I do is try, try try

Happy Sunday, Soothers. September was a month, personally. The first-ever cohort for my mastermind for highly sensitive women, Soothe, ended, and we spent the month in mourning and love, saying emotional goodbyes and thank yous. I also, at the start of the month, out of what seemed like nowhere, found and made an offer on a home out in a tiny hamlet in western Virginia. I've never owned a house before and all the attendant stuff was coming up: scarcity, fear, the identity shift and strangeness of having lived in Washington, D.C. for most of my life and preparing to now live in a 250+ year old log cabin in a town of 100 people????, the overwhelming process, documentation, insanely large sums of money being wired back and forth, etc etc. To be sure, an insane and wonderful privilege (and I'm going to record a podcast soon on the entire house process, including transparency of the finances around it and where and how I was able to afford it, because we never talk about this shit and it's infuriating because it makes people feel like they should be further along when we keep the finances and generational wealth privilege part around it silent).

Meanwhile, in order to be able to afford the house, I put my condo on the market and we had to stage it and show it while we have still been living in it. This is fine and I'm glad we have been able to do this but at the same time it's inevitably stressful to get an alert that somebody is coming to see your house in two hours and you have to put away everything that makes it look like people, you know, actually live there (like, shampoo. Or dish soap. Or my knife block and electric tea kettle?? Okay... fine. And also the bed has to be made just so and you have to leave all the lights turned on and also you should probably vacuum and wipe down everything). So you're kind of trying your best to live there while also removing all traces that you actually.... still live there. It's like living in an Airbnb but at any time with very little notice the actual owners might come home at any time and expect it to be in pristine condition.

Anyways, all this to say. Last week my partner AJ and I were enjoying a slow Friday morning. I'd slept in late for me, after a week of saying goodbye to all my Soothers, I was emotionally drained and very tired. We were drinking our coffees or teas and futzing around on our computers while we also watched the morning news.

Then AJ said the words that started it all: "Can I talk to you about something?"

My entire body froze up. I have an "I'm in trouble" stress/trauma response, that inevitably when anybody says anything along the lines of "We need to talk," I go into immediate terror, still. My stomach drops, everything in my senses goes on high alert, and I immediately start thinking all of the worst case scenarios and reviewing anything I have done in the past 24 hours that could possibly have been an affront. Even with AJ, who has been by my side for over 3 years and is a very loving and gentle partner.

Turns out, all AJ wanted to talk to me was about figuring out a solution for trying to... make my typing quieter. He has strong sensitivities to both smell and sound (I do too) and apparently — and I have heard this before! — I am a very loud typer and it was bothering him. He came over and showed me a cover for my laptop keyboard he thought we could try that he would purchase and would I be willing to try that?

Reader, I then proceeded to burst into heaving sobs for the next 20 minutes, while AJ sat, deeply confused and alarmed, by my side.

When I was finally able to talk everything came out in stream of babble: the stress about the house purchase, the sale of my condo, the end of Soothe, some other biz/financial issues I've been struggling to figure out, how much I hated having to keep the house "presentable" for staging, and while I talked it out, literal just, like, strings of snot flinging around everywhere (sorry but true), I realized the exhaustion and grief was all stemming from a very old belief of my sweet, dear inner child:

"Even when I work so hard to be perfect, it's never good enough."

Spending the month wondering if my business finances — the money I earned from my soul work — were good enough to be qualified for a mortgage. If my offer on the house was good enough to be accepted. If my coaching and programs were good enough, worthy enough, helped enough. If my condo was going to be deemed good and pretty enough by potential buyers to want to buy it at the price I needed to then afford the house. I had been scrambling, panicked under the surface but not really realizing it, trying to make everything perfect so everybody would accept me, so I could get the things I wanted, so I wouldn't be judged, so I could try to be safe and loved and okay.

My oldest wound of all.

Polishing up to my shiniest penny self, putting all my effort into scrubbing away my smudges, waiting, wanting somebody to pick me, to decide I'm good enough, while I wait, hopeful (but not too hopeful, because that's desperate, and desperate doesn't match shiny penny energy).

And then my boyfriend, the person who I generally have felt most accepted by in my life as I am, not realizing that all this had been roiling underneath the surface for weeks, asks me if I can figure out a way to type quieter and... I lose it.

In a way it was great. I obviously needed that release valve to cry this all out, because I'll be totally transparent: I had no idea I was dealing with this or that this was feeling bad and stressful to my heart and body. I so often still do not realize my own emotions. I am SO much better at tuning in emotionally, at emotional regulation and emotional processing. I have done a lot of work in my life to be better in touch with what's going on with me, and even still, even so, a lot of the time, it's a total wildcard! And this is natural and okay and it doesn't make me a bad person! The plight of the highly sensitive person and codependent is that we're deeply in touch with the world and people around us and their needs and emotions and us... it often feels like a blank slate inside until something minor may tip it over and we find ourselves an exploding volcano. If this is you too, give yourself grace around it.

So what did I do from there? Well, I realized I needed some more help from AJ on a few things so I asked for it then. Him, terrified of my tears and feeling extremely guilty he had sparked them, quickly agreed to literally everything, lol. (I should have asked for a puppy.) I needed help hosting a dinner we were hosting that night so he agreed to take over most of the duties and the total clean up the next day. I also said I wanted him to watch Hocus Pocus 2 with me on Saturday night. Look, our needs are our needs. This movie is very important to 2022 Spooky Season.

Then I drank a Gatorade and some water (emotional processing takes a lot out of you physically!) and ate breakfast.

Then I took a long walk. And then, I'm going to be honest: I took myself to Target and bought myself a new sweater and candle. Is shopping always the best answer to make yourself feel better? Not always, no, but is it sometimes the answer... yes. Yes it is. At least for me. And for little Catherine, my sweet, tender inner child, who really is the one crying out from the pain of trying to be perfect and still not feeling good enough. She deserves treats.

And now I'm having a tasty beverage and writing this essay at a coffee shop, because writing to understand myself, my feelings, my processes, my inner world, that is something that has always, always made me feel better.

And next? This spiralic healing will continue. I will lead myself and my sweet inner child to the edge of burn out and exhaustion around trying to be perfect and picked again, and again in the future. Maybe 5% less next time, maybe 2%. I have accepted this and I think it is true, our core wounds — and this is a deep, old, huge one of mine — will not be resolved in one moment or one year or even in a lifetime. They will be the growth edges and portals we play with and get triggered by again and again, and this is okay.

But really, what I want to do next is tend to my inner child on a new, more tender level. "Even when I try so hard to be perfect it's never good enough" is the plaintive cry of a young inner part of me who needs ME, and ME alone, to let her know that she can relax. That she can make mistakes. That I will always have her back. That we don't need to be perfect. That she can stop working so hard.

And as I have written about many times before... the reality is that I don't always let her know this. And I often don't believe it myself. I do still often, even if it's subconscious, think we have to be perfect to be accepted, and I drag her behind me by the hand, taking her away from her play, her rest, and convincing the both of us that we must effort and perfect our way into love, into safety.

And in small ways, I also have made progress. I let the ugly cry flow freely, in front of another person, and didn't judge myself for it. I rested afterwards and asked for some needs to be met (honestly, I still don't always know what my needs ARE and you may not either and that's okay too, I have had to do a lot of work on this).

And I worked to accept myself. And I will, over and over again. That I am a soft, messy, needy, squishy, sometimes sad, often fearful, incredibly loving person, and so is little Catherine.

And I continue to work to validate my needs, even when my needs can seem so utterly ridiculous and privileged and fly in the face of all the horrors and destruction that continues in this world. The irony of me bursting into tears around the privilege of embarking on the home-buying process happening while others' homes are completely destroyed by climate disasters, or while a feminist revolution is taking place in the face of a brutal dictatorship that is killing people, is not lost on me. For me, navigating my own needs as a privileged person while also opening my eyes to the needs of the world around me and doing what I can to help, continues to be a path I navigate imperfectly. I do know this though: Shame is not and never has been a useful tool, especially for those of us who are neurodivergent, whether you identify as ADHD, ASD, or highly sensitive. And while not a useful tool, it is the main tool that we have used against ourselves and that was used against us by others, too, especially in childhood.

I ask you to embrace the both/and around your needs and struggles and those of people in the world around us. Your needs still matter, AND you can learn to validate and tend to them and have compassion and space around them while also helping other communities who need what we can offer, too. This podcast from Brene Brown helped me understand my thinking around shame and social change.

As for what's happening in Iran, this podcast by a spiritual teacher I follow, Sahara Rose, whose parents fled Iran during the Islamic Revolution, helped me understand the situation better and the best ways to amplify the message. In Florida, I am donating to Global Empowerment Mission.

Shame of all sorts erodes humanity, and we need our humanity, your humanity now. Allow your humanity, allow yourself to rest, and allow yourself to have your needs, whatever they may be.

You are worthy to do that. You always have been.