It is more than Ironic………

Learning to F.L.Y.  (First Love Myself)

Living by Proverbs 3:5-6

Saturday March 26, 2016

The following is my Angela Shelton workbook Week 5, March 11, 2015.

What health problems can being wounded by the sword cause?

                Some problems that I know of without doing further research are; depression, migraines, stomach aches and issues, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, weight issues (over and under), nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia, numbness in joints, aching joints, mental health issues such as depression and Bi-Polar…..

How do the effects of trauma show up in my body? 

·         Being over-weight – tired – achy

·         Nightmares, especially when I have tried to recover memories

·         Always feeling tired – never enough sleep

o   Where in my body have I had consistent issues:

·         Lower back spasms

·         Lack of sex drive (even with an amazingly beautiful man – who really loves me)

·         Heart burn

·         Being overweight has affected my knees and hips

·         Extremely sensitive gag/choke reflex

·         Self-esteem issues

·         Sometimes hard to focus and stay in the game

My body issues are:

·         Fat, ugly, unattractive

·         No focus, no drive

·         Lack of determination to do something about it

·         I always quit, I am a loser, unmotivated – I just can’t

·         I allow my weight to determine my self-worth

I feel uncomfortable in my body when:

·         I look in the mirror

·         I undress in front of my husband

·         When I am round men

·         When I am round thin and fit women and men

·         When it is obvious to me and to others that my weight affects me and what I can or cannot do

·         When it is obvious to me that others judge me as less than because of my weight – (they wouldn’t do that if I was thin). 

It is more than ironic to me that it was just a year ago that I felt the need, with encouragement, to do this workbook. (It was an amazing year for me). Now that the workbook is finished, the difference from where I was just a year ago to where I am now is miraculous. I have so many ideas, goals and thoughts in my head and written in my journal’s--------and here I am blogging about how I got here – exactly a year later. So many amazing things “fell” into my lap as a result of listening – and doing this workbook. I am scared to death to continue with this “revealing” journey – yet so excited to share the parallel “fun” journey that was introduced to me along the way. A unique balancing act – with a sharp turn right into my heart.  More to come…………….

Hugs and Blessings!

Kim Mayer

Time for me to get real...........

Learning to F.L.Y.  (First Love Myself)

Living by Proverbs 3:5-6

The following is my Angela Shelton workbook week 4, March 4, 2015

How Can the Sword Affect someone’s life? 

                The sword represents trauma and everyone has experienced trauma. It can affect someone’s life in many different ways, spiritual, emotional, physical and mental.  Trauma often causes us to question the reality of God, if He is real why does He allow bad things to happen. If we do believe He is real many respond to trauma by being angry at God, how could He allow this to happen.  Trauma can and often does wreak havoc on our spiritual lives.  Trauma affects us emotionally because so often we do not know how to deal with or heal from the trauma so many people shut down emotionally.  Migraines, digestive issues, cancer and many other diseases can be traced to trauma that is stuffed down and ignored. And often times our mental capacity is diminished, leaving us unable to focus, concentrate and follow through with many of our daily jobs and activities.  Being wounded by the sword of trauma can make you quick to anger, depressed or isolated. 

How can the sword affect relationships?

·         I was OK to give love that I felt I had, I was not OK to accept love completely. I wasn’t worthy to love myself, how could I allow anyone close enough to really love me? 

·         As a teen (HS) and young adult I didn’t care if love was real or fake – I just took whatever because I didn’t deserve anything good.  Fake love was better than no love at all. 

·         Even when I was with people, I felt lonely. I was a bad person and no one could know the real me, especially at church.

·         I stayed angry at my parents.

·         I built walls to protect myself and would not allow anyone to get too close.  

I have been kept from intimacy because:

·         I felt unworthy and didn’t deserve it

·         I didn’t know what intimacy was – other than sex

·         I had deep self-loathing and hatred – very deep and primal in my gut

·         This left me feeling ugly and unworthy of accepting real intimate love

When I think about intimacy I feel:

·         Well – I used to think intimacy was dirty and it made me dirty. I used to think that was all I was good for because intimacy equaled sex and that was pretty much it. I feel quite differently now. Intimacy has really little or nothing to do with sex. Intimacy is being honest, open, forth coming with your feelings and emotions. Intimacy is about feeling safe, secure and significant with someone and allowing them to know your deepest darkest secrets. Intimacy is telling the person I love the most how much I have hated myself.

·         Trust is the biggest thing – you cannot have intimacy with anyone without trust. 

·         Intimacy with myself is even harder. I have to learn to love and accept myself before I can go any further. Today looking at myself in the mirror was a great start and a really good and intimate experience. 

I am scared of:

·         What people will think of me if I tell anyone what I have remembered.

·         I am afraid I may never be able to get over my self-hatred, at least completely. I don’t know how.

·         I am afraid my kids and I will never have a real relationship. That I will never be able to show them who I am, so they know the real me. Or that I may never really know who they are. For real. The relationship I have with my children is far better than the relationship I had with my own parents and that is good. I know it could be better if we could get past the walls I taught them to put up and the wall I had up as I raised them. I never considered that wall would also keep the ones I love from getting too close.  

Feeling Vulnerable

Learning to F.L.Y.  (First Love Myself)

Living by Proverbs 3:5-6

The following is my Angela Shelton workbook page, week 2, February 25, 2015

Experiencing trauma is like being pierced with a  sword. 

WHAT ARE SOME TYPES OF TRAUMA?  Rape, domestic violence, incest, PTSD, witnessing someone dying, a loved one incarcerated, being an addict, witnessing violence, neglect, parent or spouse who is emotionally unavailable, bullying, death of a parent, death of a child, little to no childhood memories, betrayal, being lied to, denial, lack of self-worth, not feeling loved, abortion,  giving up a child for adoption, being adopted,  poor self-image, self-hatred/loathing, childbirth alone, miscarriage.

Week 3, February 25, 2015

WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP SECRETS ABOUT THEIR PASTS AND THEIR PAINS?  Trauma can leave you silent, frozen in fear, stuck and in too much pain to even consider talking about it.  Better to either push it down, or put it in a box and shelf it. 

WHY DO PEOPLE SOMETIMES FEEL SAFER BY REMAINING SILENT? 

·         Maybe I can convince myself nothing happened if I am silent

·         It is too painful to talk about it and if I do, it will hurt even more

·         I will NEVER stop crying

·         People will know I am a bad person

·         People will judge me

·         I want everyone to believe I have it all together

·         People will think I am stupid

·         People will think I have no heart

·         I can’t talk about it. I only have flashbacks to go on. I don’t know who, how old, where, I do not remember anything.

I EXPERIENCED PAIN WHEN:

·         I witnessed violence as a child

·         Every time I was promiscuous – I remember I hated myself every time, but I was silent and never said no. 

·         Became pregnant at age 18 from a one night stand

·         My parents words; no man will ever love you if you keep that child. It is proof you are used.

·         My parents sending me away to a strange home to give birth. I was all alone

·         The birth of my first child was very traumatic.

·         The nurse immediately taking her away from me, saying I couldn’t hold her because I was giving her away.

·         Returning home after her birth

·         Bearing the silence

·         Ignoring who I am

·         Ignoring God and the blessing I received when I was pregnant, I believed the lies instead.

·         Ignoring why God gave me this mission

·         Not asking why……………asking questions to the Red Flags

·         More Silence

·         Sudden deaths of 3 close friends

·         Trauma from lies, gossip, betrayal, scapegoated at church

·         Being silent about Lauren

·         Gabe’s death

·         Betrayal of the Morris’

·         Nelson Incarcerated

·         Rachel’s death / telling Nelson behind the glass in jail

·         The girl’s home

·         Hating myself

·         Looking in the mirror

·         Believing I am dumb

·         Believing I am ugly

·         Not being good enough

I FEEL ANXIETY WHEN:

·         I have to confront my lack of memories / confront my family

·         I know I have to work on myself

·         When I think about not being with my church

·         Being in the truth / not being in truth

·         Friends not liking me or judging me because of my faith so I don’t share my truth, my faith, the experiences I have had with my relationship with God and personal revelation. I get very anxious when it gets brought up, my feeling and sense is my friends believe I have been deceived. Which is partly true, man has tried to deceive me, God has told me the truth. 

I SUFFERED WHEN:

·         All of the above – and being silent as a child as far back as I can remember. I do not remember my childhood, but I do remember at age 3 making the decision that we would be safe as long as I tried to fix things.

·         Being silent about my first born until my early 40’s.

·         Not having a voice

·         Being afraid to talk or confront

·         Not being able to express what was best for me

·         Ignoring the Holy Spirit

I just want to add here, that typing this all out on this blog is very empowering, and cathartic. I am extremely humbled and grateful for where I have been and where I am going. “I Stand all Amazed at the Love Jesus Offers me, confused at the Grace that so fully He proffers me.”  and ...“Why me Lord what have I ever done to deserve even one of the pleasures I've known. Tell me Lord what did I ever do, That was worth loving you or the kindness you've shown. Lord help me Jesus I've wasted it so help me Jesus I know what I am…….But now that I know that I've needed you so Help me, Jesus, my soul's in your hand.”

Hugs and Blessings,

Kim Mayer                                                                                                               

Where do I begin?

 https://youtu.be/AzqSZdYHyRI

Learning to F.L.Y.  (First Love Myself)

Living by Proverbs 3:5-6

On my journey of surrendering to join the community of bloggers the question was posed to me; What will you blog about?’  I was completely overwhelmed. I literally felt like I had so much “stuff” in my life the thought of where to begin was too much.  Do I start with my childhood and the violence I witnessed? Do I start with the traumatic experience of giving my firstborn daughter up for adoption at age 19? Do I start with the deaths of very close loved ones I have lived through………….too many to write about. Do I start with betrayal, lies, gossip, stolen identity, shrinking my world to only include my husband and my children. Do I begin with all the years I tried to run and hide from who I am, my mission and destiny and the destruction that was left in the wake of those years?  Where do I begin – and who could possibly be interested????  

I pondered that question further, BAM, my Angela Shelton workbook fell out of my bag. As I picked it up off of the floor, I knew immediately this was where I was to begin. My word for 2015 was Listen…….. As I listened, I was led to begin Angela Shelton’s Be Your Own Hero Warrior Workbook.  A 52 week journey used by thousands of therapists, support groups and survivors of abuse worldwide. I was in the middle of this workbook course, it was already written and ready for me to blog.  Really – this is where I begin?

In January of 2015 I sat in a chair across from my husband, knee to knee in what we call at Discovery Training a “dyad.”  We were getting ready to do an exercise we both had done many times in our years of volunteering as TA’s for this training. The exercise is called; “Things left unsaid,” and you are to visualize the person sitting across from you as someone you need to speak to. A broken relationship, saying good-bye to a loved one….you get the idea. I looked at Carl and went through the list of people I had already used in the exercise and could not at that moment come up with anyone else.  At the last moment I realized I needed to speak to myself and confront  my deep dark hidden secret……..I had to admit to myself, out loud, say the words and stop lying…….How much I hated myself. The self-loathing of allowing my weight to get so out of control. I felt ugly, ashamed and disgusted with myself. I thought about all of the years Carl had been building me up, never once making me feel unattractive, quite the opposite. I felt ashamed for not believing him. All of a sudden I realized I had really cheated him. I realized the lie at  that moment-----“You can’t love anyone unless you love yourself first.” As I looked at my beloved I was ashamed. I loved him so much – and our children too. But because I did not love myself, I could not allow them to love me either. How could I? I wasn’t worthy of being loved. Yes, I could love them, pour everything I could into serving them, and everyone else.  This was the perfect way to hide my self-hatred. How completely devastating to now realize that as much as I loved my husband and my children, I never allowed them close enough into my life for me to accept their love.   Boy – did I ever have a lot of wreckage behind me – a lot to make up for. My husband deserved for me to learn to love myself – so I could accept his love for me. I now realized how truly perfect he has been for me all of these years. Allowing me to be me, loving me, encouraging me to do whatever I needed to do, standing up for me, fighting for my heart.  Wow – how is it that I allowed so many years to go by before seeing this.

I now know that everyone over probably the age of 45 knows that if we could go back and raise our kids with all that we have learned from life – most of us would likely do things different.  As a young adult and young parent, it would have been wise for me to ask for older women as a mentor with life experience, I didn’t and I do not know many young parents who do. Instead, in our less experienced youth, we make the mistake of thinking  we are doing things right and do not need the “old-fashioned” advice from our elders. I know I did. In my youth I didn’t know that I had a lot of wounds that needed healing much less what those wounds were. I didn’t want to face anything that might have hurt me. That was in my past, something I couldn’t change anyway – so why even go there?  Now I realize all that did was build the self-hatred wall taller and taller.

So – In February of 2015, I was led to this Angela Shelton workbook. I start a small group in my home and we meet every Thursday night for the entire year……What comes my way during this year is worthy of my time to write this blog. Once I stopped lying to everyone, especially myself, I was now at a place to allow God to teach me how to F.L.Y. -  First Love Myself so I could love Him with all of my heart, and then love my husband and my children, and most importantly feel worthy of and accept their love. Who wouldn’t want to go down this path? I hope anyone who is reading this and can relate to self-hatred will ask God to put you on a path to learn how to F.L.Y.

My first workbook lesson on February 18, 2015 asked me to think about what I was ready for and to  make a commitment to myself. The Question: What are you willing to receive and what are you willing to give up? (Ex: If you are ready to receive being a warrior, then you must give up the role of victim).

This is what I wrote on my workbook pages: 

I AM READY TO RECEIVE:

·         Acceptance

·         Self-Love

·         Health – Spiritual-Physical-Emotional

·         Wholeness

·         Vision

I AM WILLING TO LET GO OF:

·         Self-Doubt

·         Denial; refusal to look at myself/behavior/rejection of self and others/disapproval/insecurity/ neediness/abandonment of self

·         Ego, selfishness, poor self-image, negative tapes, negative language toward self

·         Laziness, self-doubt

·         My broken parts, mainly my self-image. (I am fat, ugly, bad hair, ugly legs, not smart. All of these things make me feel ugly. They are lies and I have to let them go, stop believing them, to be whole.)

·         Judgement, insensitivity, comparing myself to others…  I am not as good as……… 

As you can see I have a lot of work to do at age 57. I hope and pray there are many younger women reading this blog who will stop and consider the trauma in your life and how it has affected you and your relationships that matter the most and not wait to face it. It is only by facing it that we can attempt to heal from it.  Children deserve to grow up with whole and healed parents. 

Hugs and Blessings,

Kim Mayer

Dove's 'One Beautiful Thought' Shows What It Would Sound Like If Your In...

My First Blog

First Blog post - Friday March 4, 2016

Learning to F.L.Y.  (First Love Myself)

Living by Proverbs 3:5-6

(Spring 2015) God: You need to start a blog……..

 Me: No I don’t, I am not a writer.

(Summer 2015) God: If you launch a blog you will find more women who desire healing from our retreat…….

 Me: I wouldn’t even know where to begin and besides, I am not a writer.

(Fall 2015) Sara: I will help you if you need help. What would you put in your Blog?.......

Me: that’s the problem, I don’t know where to even begin, and I’m not a writer. 

(Jan 2016) Cindy: I have one more thing to tell you before we go. You need to start a blog. …. 

 Me: I am NOT a writer......OK, OK, OK, I will start a blog. I think I know where I am supposed to start, it doesn’t matter if  I believe I am not a writer, I can’t deny anymore this is what I am supposed to do. Oh, how badly I  need Rachel right now.  She would know what to do and how to help me – and she would make me  do this, she would push me!  And she would proof-read everything for me.  I have so much inside  turmoil over this, it pushes so many of my emotional  buttons. Loss, betrayal, denial, abuse, hurt,  pain, anxiety.  Oh boy, here I go…….Today I write my first blog:  

In the 1^st quarter of 2014 I was encouraged by a friend to start a retreat for women who have survived childhood sexual abuse, rape, any kind of sexual trauma. I took that challenge, and dropped the ball for a bit, I really didn’t know where to begin. Where do I start – writing a retreat?  The lies in my head were; who do you think you are; you can’t write a retreat, you are not even a good writer, you have no unique ideas, you have no education; who do you think you are – Really? Writing this now, this sounds familiar. A pattern of my life.

The truth: God knows who I am and He has told me, shown me, who I am. He has spoken to me in my mind and heart through the Holy Spirit. He has revealed many remarkable truths to me, about His plan for my life, about who I am, who I have always been – willing to stand up – outspoken – able to convince many of my brothers and sisters of the truth.  He once whispered to me; your sins have been forgiven, and during a time when lies once again were bring spread to steal my identity, I felt His arms around me and the Holy Spirit whispered; you are so good. I wept.  He said I was so good. 

So in the summer of 2014 I took the ball back, asked two friends to join me, help me, encourage me and hold me accountable. That summer the 3 of us met around the dining table of my home each and every week to write a retreat  to help women start or continue healing from sexual trauma. All three of us women will confirm the fact that God showed up BIG and He wrote this retreat for us. Every single idea, exercise, song, video – every detail was literally handed to us.  During that summer we were all put in places where we needed to be for us to learn what God Himself wanted in this retreat. We were all in 100% agreement over every little detail – no disagreements, arguments, no one saying; I think this idea is better – let’s consider this. We couldn’t – because we all knew everything that was put on that table, that summer was exactly what our loving Heavenly Father wanted for His daughters who had been hurt. He was allowing us to show His daughters a weekend of His love for them. Amazing……..

We launched our retreat in October of 2014 with a “mock retreat” in my home. We invited women we had previously served with at a different retreat and hoped they would serve with us as well. Our mock retreat was a “weeding” process of sorts and when it was over the 3 of us knew 2 things. 1. It was really, really good, and 2. who He wanted our on team. We boldly took another step forward, stepped out on our own and held our first real retreat November 2014. Absolutely everything fell into place for us.  Yes, we ran into obstacles, and He moved them all out of our way.

Once the retreat was off the ground, one of us felt as if we needed to learn more and on her own went to a ministry training. We all knew there would always be more learning, growing, sharing of things God wanted us to share. We just kind of assumed we would continue doing so together, just like we did that summer.  Our dear friend learned a new ministry technique that we did not know about nor did we feel comfortable with. She asked us both to take this training, and I answered that I would pray about it. I did pray about it, and was immediately scolded, with the answer; what makes you think you need to take another training when you have not even started the one you have already signed up and paid for? Ohhhh, He was right. During that magical summer, the 3 of us together sat at my computer and looked up Angela Shelton. We were using her documentary movie, Searching for Angela Shelton, about childhood sexual abuse, maybe she would have something else to inspire us. We found her website, a few videos, and then her “Sword of Trauma” healing workbook. We were all so impressed and inspired, we signed up and ordered the workbook right then and there.  We also decided to use “The Sword or Trauma” as an exercise at our retreat.  We got the workbook, I looked through every page and thought – wow – this would be great to do, hard to do, and intense. I did the first week, closed the book and never looked at it again – until this little reminder from God. I decided to be obedient and I put together a small group to do the workbook. This was a yearlong program with a weekly lesson and meeting in small group.  I started this workbook on February 18, 2015 with two other women, neither of them being the women who helped to get our retreat started. One of the women would drop out of the retreat and the other would join our small group a couple of months later.  This is where my blog journey begins, now that you have the “back-story.” 

Thank you for reading.

Hugs and Blessings,

Kim Mayer

 (Thanks Mere).....