Strong as a mother.

This is throwback from when I owned my little shop, we were at a vintage car show. With all our fun pinup style clothing and accessories we did really well.

I wanted to write about how my meeting went last Friday with my friend, the psychotherapist who I met at Burning Man.

I’m reading the book “Heartbreak – A Personal and Scientific Journey.” It’s good. I feel less crazy, which honestly, I was feeling almost just as down about as being rejected by him. The book describes how the brain’s centers actually light up differently after being dumped. How you can experience real pain, and how a person can become “uncharacteristically histrionic”. Ugh. Yeah…

Strength is not a quality I would associate with myself in the last 8 months.

But Florence Williams, the author, has been reminding me that I am not crazy and quite normal. No matter the length of the connection, your age, or your experience, no one gets out of love unscathed. That the love emotional pathways are as hardwired as those of fear.

The book talks about the 2 basic stages of the rejection of love – Protest and Resignation. I think I am slowly moving out of my protest stage. We tried being friends (I sucked at it), I’ve tried getting his attention (he is ignoring me completely), and so I have sat and repeated, a mantra of trying to let go: He’s not interested in you at all. He finds you unattractive (mind and body), over-the-top, and absurd.

When I think of it like that, I realize there is nothing to protest. There is no him changing his mind. He knows where I am, how I feel and he wants nothing to do with me. His ambivalence is a response, it’s telling me to fuck off.

I told my friend where I was at emotionally, the things I was doing to try to move through these feelings and how I want to try anything to get to the kind of ambivalence that he’s shown me. She was sympathetic. She approved of the reading material and we started talking about why I had contacted her – mdma assisted psychotherapy. I was reading about it in the book. I was excited to hear she is taking the training for that while it is still in trials.

“It’s not legal yet, and it’s hard to get into a trial program.” she said “Buuuuuut, there are ways you can do it.” She smiled, it was great to see her and connect on the video call. She’s at least 15 years younger than me, but I admire her gentle wisdom and obvious joy she has for life.

She gave me the low down on an underground movement on treating this kind of pain in this unique way, and how the trials were showing fantastic results. She answered my questions about how the treatment sessions were structured and what to expect.

“You can also do self guided therapy this way too. I recommend you write down some questions, so you can set your intention for your time. You could have Misty sit with you and remind you of these as you go through the process.” she explained, this seemed the best to me. She asked if I had ever done it before.

“I’ve never done molly, which I know is kind of crazy since we’ve been in the festival and fetish night club scene. It’s just been something I haven’t felt the pull to do. I’ve been high on the experiences. So this is going to be a whole new adventure.”

My friend told me to text any time, that she is there for questions, which I really appreciated.

So that’s where I am, getting set up for this self guided therapy session for myself. It will likely not be for a few weeks, but I will let you know how it goes.