Past Tense, Present Progressive

I still remember the person I used to be.  Dedicated, sincere, very securely walled-in behind my black and white beliefs: an entanglement of Republicanism and Fundamentalist Christianity that was all I knew. I was that person, listening to the sermon at church, who heard that President Bill Clinton had covertly sold our country to "Red China", and that increased persecution of American Christians was in our future...The threat of this persecution seeming more vivid and horrifying due to publications at my church like Voice of the Martyrs , with its photos of tortured Christians in China. I was that person who prayerfully voted for George W. Bush as a newly-registered voter, affectionately framing a newspaper photo of him so I could remember to pray for him to do God's will as president. I was that person who volunteered her time for pro-family activism, convinced that homosexuality was inherently wrong and destructive to society... lobbying at the State Capitol in Califor...

I'm an introvert and a bit of a homebody .  So during the early months of the pandemic, why did I frequently find myself pacing the perimeter of my home like an agitated and caged wild animal, feeling trapped and intensely desperate... as if I had suddenly been transported back into the severe social isolation of my teenaged years as a fundamentalist homeschooler ? As a mom of two high-maintenance kids with dramatically different needs from each other, I provide emotional support on a daily basis, for problems of all sizes... so why did my nervous system frequently react to their big emotions as if there were a true crisis, leaving me continuously drained with nothing left for myself? It turns out that these types of experiences are called emotional flashbacks, and they are a common symptom of Complex-PTSD.  Through some recent therapy, I found my way to a book that has been incredibly important to my childhood trauma healing process.  In fact, from my reading, I ended up...

 As someone with a lifelong history of anxiety, also affected by the profound sleep loss that often accompanies new parenthood, it took years for me to realize that I was increasingly unwell and needed professional help.  I told myself: it's just that I have a very difficult baby who won't sleep (and who was diagnosed with autism years later).  That seamlessly transitioned to our second baby, two nighttime wakers, two in diapers, and two who needed constant supervision and exhausting emotional management.  Nothing on earth was more important to me than their well-being, and I was lucky to have a caring husband actively sharing that load with me.  But my sanity was cracking more and more, and I was stuck in a hyper-vigilant obsession, micromanaging the kids' environment, demanding the kind of impossible perfection from myself and my husband that doesn't just solve problems but somehow prevents them instead. Even then, an awareness in the back of m...