On Thanksgiving by TWLOHA

This hit me hard. I was feeling super  thankful on Thanksgiving (and I'm also pretty thankful other days), but I also felt pretty down. It's amazing how TWLOHA can always hit me in the heart.
------------------------------------------------------------------
We hope that today is a good day, a day spent with family and friends and a day to pause with thanks. We know for some it’s not, or it’s simply not that simple.

To everyone heavy with the weight of things missing or fractured today,

It doesn’t mean you’re ungrateful or unthankful.

It only means you’re human. 

And you’re not alone in that.

We lose things in this life. We all do.

Things are taken. Things break and leave and we are kept from what we love. We are kept from peace.

If today finds you more aware of what you’ve lost than what you have, this is for you, a note to say you’re not alone. A lot of people feel what you feel today.

Perhaps today finds you with the same faces as one year ago today. And when they ask how you are or if anything is new, perhaps you wish you had some different answers. Answers that sound like change or pride or progress.  Maybe you wanted this year to be about change but not a lot has changed. Or maybe changes came but they were not the ones you hoped for.

It’s okay. Where you are and what you feel and what you wish was different. It’s okay.

You’re still here and this day will pass and tomorrow has never happened before. The same is even true for the rest of today. Things can still be new. There is room for healing and surprise and even room for change.

This life is not a race. It’s not a contest or a competition. It’s a patient broken story breaking more and healing more with all our different days, rich with winning as well as losing. The beauty is that we get to go together.

The highlight of my 2011 has been to get to know someone walking through the hardest year that they have ever known. For them, it's been a year of loss and losing. To get to know this person in this time, it’s been nothing like a burden. It’s been a privilege and a blessing and a surprise. It’s caused me to believe in better things, reminded me of dreams I used to dream and how i hope to live. 

We’re meant to win and lose together. We’re meant to know some people on this journey, to walk it together, to mourn and cry one day, to laugh and dance the next. We get to carry each other and we get to remind each other all that’s true, of everything not lost. We get to remind each other that we absolutely positively can't give up, can't settle. We get to say that these terrible wonderful journeys are priceless and we must keep going. Not because we have to but because our stories our bigger than ourselves and because we just might be surprised.

On behalf of our entire team, please know that we’re grateful beyond words for you and your support. We could not have dreamed this thing up, this story that you let us live, the chance to do these jobs that we believe in, this work of bringing hope and help to people all across the planet. We’re thankful and we say thank you.

Peace to you today.

And Happy Thanksgiving.

jamie

Addiction: Suffering, Hope, and Healing

For my Theology of Healing class, I recently wrote a paper called Addiction: Suffering, Hope, and Healing. It's basically about how addictions are the result of some type of suffering and that a person must have hope if they are to ever find healing. My first hand experience from my intense struggle with cutting helped me A LOT when writing this paper.

To be honest, I never thought I'd end up getting the response I did; to me, it was just another paper. But, I was standing in the hallway outside one of my classrooms when my Healing professor walked by. She stopped and told me how much she loved my paper. I was floored. I've never had a professor come up to me and tell me how good something I did was. I got an A on the paper and after class, my professor pulled me aside and told me that she recommended my paper be published. I couldn't believe it. It never would have even crossed my mind to ever try to get a paper published.

One of my household sisters who has struggled with addictions herself asked me to send it to her, so I did. She texted me after she was finished reading it telling me that she LOVED it and that her new favorite quote was from my paper. I asked her which one (I assumed it was something I had quoted and not actually something I'd written, but I was wrong. It was something I'd written) and this was it:

"When someone is seriously addicted to something, it is only the addiction that speaks. When the man in Mark 5 is possessed, only the demons can speak. The person who is addicted loses themselves. The person who has taken over cannot speak anymore. It is only when Christ comes into the life of the person that the shackles can be broken and the person can be liberated." I was honored when she told me that.

I wrote this paper for myself as well as other people who struggle with addictions. I know first hand what it's like and all I wanted to do was be able to share with others that the way to true healing is Christ. My household sister confirmed for me that I'd succeeded in what I was trying to do.

If you're interested in reading it, please let me know. Feel free to comment and let me know. I ask that if you do ask me to send it to you and you do read it, please do not share it with anyone else without first asking my permission. Gotta protect my hard work, ya know?

Jeremiah 30:17

A Lot To Be Thankful For

Today is Thanksgiving in the U.S. (for my non-American readers. I know you're out there. Hahaha) and I have a lot to be thankful for:
I am SO SO thankful for my Catholic faith, Franciscan Universtiy, my semester in Austria, the gift of laughter, my family, my absolutely incredible friends (my second family), Fr. Brad, Fr. Rick, Fr. Greg, and all the friars at school, my household, my house off campus and my crazy housemates, the ability to go back to Romania after graduation, my best friend and her new baby, and the fact that I'm not who I used to be.

My best friend had a baby a little over 2 weeks ago. Her name is Ashlynn Sophia and I had no idea I could love a little baby so much. I met her for the first time on Tuesday night and cried the second I saw her. She is so beautiful and I'm not just saying that because she's my best friend's daughter. She is genuinely a beautiful baby :) She has brought so much joy to my life the last few days.

I was really thinking today about how I'm not who I used to be and thank God for that. I used to be such a horrible person. I'm not even kidding. While I was at Xavier, I was a bitch. Praise the Lord for the way he changed me. I recently re-read some messages I'd received and sent on Facebook while I was there and holy crap...I don't even know the person who sent those messages. I just can't even believe I was ever that person or that I ever even had any friends. I was floored. I really can't even put it into words...

This is short, sweet, and to the point. With the cutting, 2 1/2 weeks clean. I'm talking to my counselor again. I talked to Fr. Brad the other day and went to Confession with Fr. Rick. My prayer life's getting better and I'm starting to get my shit together. So, I ask for your prayers that I can stay on the right track.

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. -Galatians 2:20

Brutal Honesty

I'm not really sure how to feel right now. This is one of those posts about just kinda where I'm at and the insanity currently going through my head. Please, don't judge me based on this.

I received PHENOMENAL news yesterday: as long as I can fundraise enough, I'm going to Romania as a missionary after graduation! I'm so excited about that, but also nervous. I'm afraid I won't be able to raise enough money to be able to live over there for a while. I guess I'll just have to trust that the Lord will provide.

But, I'm feeling kinda down. Some shit went on last week and I relapsed. I would have been 4 weeks clean that day, but no...I had to go mess it up. I slashed up my legs pretty good. I was in so much pain that night I didn't sleep and then all that next day, I could barely walk. People can't see my upper legs. If they could, they'd be HORRIFIED. I'm at the point where I really just don't want to keep trying to stop anymore. When things start to be okay, I just give in. I don't even have any fight left in me. I get an impulse and I just do it. It's so frustrating. Like right now, I want to do it. It's all for a really stupid reason, but I do. I'm starting to withdraw myself from everything. I don't hang out with my friends much anymore. I just go to class and then go back to my house off campus. I haven't talked to Fr. Rick in forever. I texted him the other day telling him I was done and that I was sorry I'd wasted so much of his time over the last almost 2 years. I saw him once in the student center and he patted my head as he walked by and I gave him a half-ass smile. I know he knew that's when I meant what I said. He looked kinda sad. I haven't talked to Fr. Greg since I saw him and I'm not in the mood to deal with it. My counselor's back and he sent me an e-mail letting me know he was back. I responded telling him that I couldn't do the whole counseling thing right now. I'm just too emotionally fucked up right now. Right now, it's not gonna help. I just can't right now. I'm too emotionally shut off.

God, why does this always happen? It's so fucking screwed up. I've realized that the fake face I put on works pretty damn good. I know a Benedictine monk in DC and I saw him when we were there for fall break. He said that I just radiate joy. That's the moment I realized how good my facade really is. I'm good enough to cut myself and instantly pull myself back together and put a fake smile on.

I just want to be okay. I don't want to deal with this anymore. I haven't gone to daily Mass in forever. This is the problem: I've shut off from God. I don't want to pray. It's all just weird. I hate feeling like this. I hate feeling at all. That's one reason I cut.

You can tell me all you want that I'm beautiful and loved, but it's not gonna change my thinking. In my 21 years of life, I've never TRULY believed it. Nothing's gonna change it now...

.

Telling Ghosts to Go by TWLOHA

This was posted by Jamie Tworkowski, the founder of To Write Love On Her Arms, on Halloween. It really hit my heart. 


What does it mean when something is haunted? What exactly is a ghost? 

Is it when something from the past refuses to leave? Is it when something dies but doesn't go?

It's easy to talk about haunted places. A haunted house. A haunted building. We smile at those stories. We get excited. There is no stigma, no shame. But what about haunted people? Isn't it true that, as people, our lives can become haunted things as well? The past can haunt the present. The past can steal the future. 

Isn't that what most of this is about? Something painful in our past? Something breaks or something dies and in living with the pain, we begin to live with ghosts. And  by our choices, we either ask the ghosts to leave or we help them make a home. 

If we can talk about haunted buildings, then we should be able to talk about haunted people. We should be able to put a hand up and say, "I'm not doing well" or "I need some help" or "Can we talk?" 

Maybe we begin to ask the ghosts to leave when we begin to ask some other folks to join us in our haunted places. In the broken parts of stories. Our messes and our questions. To meet us, to know us, to help, to care, to listen. 

Maybe we begin to help our friends become unhaunted when we let them know we're not afraid of their pain. When we ask to really know them. When we ask to see inside. When we do our part to go beyond the distance and the smile, deeper to "who are you?" and "how are you?" and "are you okay?" 

i have been a haunted house. i have had things die but stay and i didn't know how to make them leave. And there were certainly times i didn't want them to leave because they were beautiful. They were no longer real but they were beautiful. They were bridges to brighter days. i thought they were my dreams. 

But reality is the best place to live. Reality is where healing happens. In the honest light and by the voices of our friends. 

We all have our past. We all have our pain. We will all know ghosts from time to time. But if our life is like a building, then we should open our doors to let some people see inside. And into our darkest places - into those rooms that hold our fears and dreams - we will begin to walk together. Friends with hope like candles, telling ghosts to go.


---------


Having friends who support me through my hardest times means the world to me. When I can text a few people and just say, "Hey. Toss up a prayer for me?" and for them to be like "For sure" means the world to me. I'm so blessed. 

Fall Break in DC

Erinn, Kevin, and I just got back from DC, and dang...it was blessed. Fr. James, a Dominican priest that Erinn knows, agreed to do their wedding, which is SUPER awesome :)

I got to see Fr. Greg on Saturday. He started off with the thing he always does. He hugged me and just held me. He does this thing where he puts his hand on the back of my head and just holds me with his arms wrapped around me. Fr. Greg is the person who loved me when no one else did. He's always been by my side since I met him almost 3 years ago. My relationship with him is somewhere between best friend and father. It's weird, but Fr. Greg's friendship is one of the things I cherish most in my life. He's the only reason I'm still alive. His words are what has gotten me through some of the roughest nights of my life.

We sat down and had our normal talk and prayer time. I wasn't really in the mood to get too deep, so he asked me how I was and I tried to bullshit him right off the back. He caught it. Part of me was hoping he wouldn't, but he's known me long enough that before I was even done saying the sentence. He asked me how I was and I said I wasn't too bad. I said I was tired because I'm always so busy with school, but hey, welcome to college. He said, "No. You know what I mean. How are you?" I knew right then I was going to have to do what I was hoping I wouldn't. So, we talked. He asked me about everything going on and then he randomly stopped me and said, "You have to stop thinking I'm going to quit on you. I'm a priest. I'm supposed to be Christ to you. If I quit on you, then I'm not doing my job. And I'd also be doing a shitty job of being your friend. You can try to get me to quit on you, but it ain't happenin, kid." Trust me, I've tried to push him away and get him to quit on me MANY times over the last few years. He'll even tell you I do a good job of trying to push him away, but that I never will be able to.

After we talked for a while, he and I went to the chapel and he prayed over me. He first anointed my head and began praying. He placed his hands on my head and prayed in silence. He was shaking. Then he sat down next to me and anointed my hands and prayed that my hands would no longer hurt, but heal. He prayed that I would know and truly believe that I am loved, and know that I am a woman of God for whom He has great things planned. He knelt down in front of me, pulled my sleeve up. I stopped him. I wouldn't let him see the scars left from the cutting a few weeks ago. He took my face in his hands, looked me in the eye, and said "I don't care. Please. You need this." I hesitated for a second then pulled up my sleeve for him. I watched his face to see if I could tell what he was thinking. I wasn't prepared for what I saw. He looked at my arm, looked at me, and he started to tear up.and a tear came down his left cheek That's when I lost it. I couldn't handle it. I tried to get up and leave the chapel, but he stopped me. He asked me to stay for him, so I agreed. I sat back down and he continued praying over me. All I could do was look at my hands and think about all the damage I'd done to myself with them. He finished praying over me and sat back down next to me. He said, "What are you thinking?" I told him that my hands had done so much damage that I wonder how they'll ever be able to do any good. He just sat there. Then, a minute later, I said, "The scars." He looked at me and told me that they don't matter. I fought him on that one. I told him that they matter to me. I asked him how the heck am I ever supposed to heal from all this when ever single day, multiple times a day, I have to see the damage I've done to myself. He said I'd get there.

Then, I stood up and he hugged me again. He said, "I love you, Catherine. I'm glad you're still here." He hugged me tighter and I told him that he was the only reason I'm still here. Then, he just held on. He put his hand on the back of my head again and then the tears started flowing again. I know I've said it before, but when he hugs me, it's like God's got His arms wrapped around me. I literally could stay in Fr. Greg's hugs all day.

I have never felt as loved as I have when I'm with Fr. Greg. Like I've said a million times before, he's the truest example of Christ in my life and he is one of my best friends. He's such a gift to me. I needed Christ in my life, so God gave me Fr. Greg.