Mid-Year Healing Update (A Quarter Year Late)

Oct 24

By: Renee Brush, Ph.D.

These days, my business coach, Tara, is helping me with my video content on Instagram. Last week, she reminded me that things come in threes… And that has certainly been true for me this year. In January, when I posted on my New Year’s Resolution, I had plans to post how I was doing around the beginning of July. And then life happened. And so now, here we are, at the beginning of October, and I am finally getting around to writing this. Talking to her really helped motivate me to sit down and actually write this. [Note: and now it’s near the end of October and I’m finally about to publish it. Good things sometimes take time to happen!]

Things Happen in Threes

I know this is an old wive's tale or a metaphor or something we just tell ourselves to explain why so many bad things happen at one time. Like that is the explanation. Maybe it is designed to help people prepare for unfortunate events. Well, it did not do that for me. It didn’t even dawn on me until she and I were catching up.

Well, none of that is even mentioning my mid-year update! So, bear with my ADHD brain - these three events are actually why this update is coming to you three months late. I’m writing this mid-September and this is the first time since July that I have felt like I could sit down and actually be back to writing blog posts. So… where do I start? The update or the crises?

Decisions are incredibly difficult for me. We’re going to move straight to the updates. The crises have affected my work this week - this whole summer, honestly - so they will come out as I share how this year has gone.

How am I Doing on My New Year’s Goals?

If you haven’t read my post on setting New Year’s goals, you may want to start by reading that (at this link). I basically built my version of a vision board for the year, with focuses on my businesses, relationships, continued healing, travel, and a financial focus to better manage my money. The overarching main theme was “Living in Courage.” Now that I look back at it, it feels like a lot! But also, with so much, I must have done well in some areas, right?!

“Why am I even writing this?” you may ask. I’ve been asking myself this as well. Who cares what I have been up to. But, when I was researching how people succeed with their annual goals it had become clear that checking up on progress was helpful. Also, an idea had come to me to look at my vision board monthly as a motivator - and that idea turned into a mid-year check-in as a way to motivate others as well.

Let’s start with my business. One of the main goals for my business was to be seen more. I wanted to grow the number of people reading my blog as well as the number of followers I have on Instagram - and it made sense to me that if I had more followers on IG that I might also get more readers here on the blog. I was very consistent with weekly posts here and also on IG - up until March. This website was inspired by my own spiritual growth. I had felt it was a spiritual calling and I even wrote on it as I found my way within the New Age. In March, I experienced my first crisis, within the spiritual realm, which I will fully explain in its own post. But I began to learn of the fallacy of the New Age and I began reading the Bible and learning about God and His Son, Jesus (not the Christ Consciousness, Jesus). Because the inspiration for this blog came from within the time I was in the New Age, I was frozen in my tracks as I figured out how to move forward. I’m still here and the blog is still here, so that tells you I decided it was still relevant. And I’m ready to start producing material for it again.

But that crisis kept me stuck until around April, when I joined my business coach and friend, Tara, in a mini-mind. Her goal in that program was to launch whatever project I wanted to launch. I used that time to make videos and to grow my audience. I was engaged with her and posted several videos each week, even though I wasn’t writing or posting blog posts. So I was being seen more and feeling comfortable with it. And then I went on vacation the first of July. That vacation will also get its own blog, but I returned from it retraumatized and shut down. So pretty much all work that was not essential was not happening. I did hire Tara to continue to work with me developing my video content, so I did not scrap it all together, but I did ask for help! When I hired her, she sent me a couple of questionnaires to complete in our new partnership, but I had trouble filling it out. The stress from the vacation eventually resulted in tearing down my immune system and then I had COVID at the beginning of August and I’m still feeling the effects of that, including brain fog. So filling out Tara’s forms was difficult! Luckily, I have surrounded myself with good people who are caring and supportive. She was able to help me through that.

Interestingly, I actually grew my private practice more than I have this business and that was actually not really planned. I had planned on taking on an intern who would be helping me do psychological testing, but I did not know that I would end up taking on a third person to do testing that really wanted to do it. This person has been helping me with writing in other ways in my private practice, but she expressed a serious interest in learning more about testing. The increased testing - and then an increased need to write reports - has added to the difficulty to get back to writing these posts.

One of my goals this year was to try to travel more. As I’ve already mentioned, I did go on a 10-day vacation over the Fourth of July. That was a family thing, so the highlight was I was able to spend that time with my daughter and spend several days with my dad. I was also able to see the Badlands and some of the Black Hills in South Dakota with my daughter, which was beautiful! The downside was the retraumatizing. My daughter and I also have plans to go to the mountains over Thanksgiving break. That was actually one of the trips we were planning and we have solidified the plans. It’s not all of the trips I was thinking of, but that is fine. I also did not get into the financial planning like I had wanted, so I don’t have all the money figured out as I would have liked. But, I still have time to work on that. In fact, the South Dakota trip was only able to happen because I am blessed with a good father who wanted his children and grandchildren to be with him so he paid for the trip.

That leaves my personal and spiritual growth for this year’s goal. I wanted to keep healing and keep walking on the spiritual path. The spiritual growth has happened in a brand new way - as I alluded to earlier - and that was a path I was not expecting to go down. I will discuss that more in its own series of blog posts. But, as for my personal growth, the healing has been happening. I figured I had been doing a great job at healing prior to the July trip - I had even reduced the number of counseling visits each month from four to two. Being retraumatized on my trip revealed to me how quickly one can be set backwards.

But also, being set backwards does not have to mean regression. Sometimes what feels like regression might mean more growth. Even though I shut down for a good 6-8 weeks, I handled things in a much different way. I was disconnected from my emotions and I was not talking to people, sharing what was going on with me. But I was getting things accomplished. In part, I didn’t realize that I had been retraumatized as deeply as I was, but also, I was on auto-pilot and managing what needed to be managed. Was I stressed and overwhelmed? Hell, yes. But I still did what needed to be done.

But, with all of that stress, for the first time since the pandemic started, I got COVID. I have not been so sick in years. It knocked me out - and, if I’m being honest, I’m still a bit knocked out by it. I really experienced the fatigue, the brain fog, and the shortness of breath and I’m still dealing with these things, although they have greatly improved. When I’m tired, it’s worse. This kept me stuck for even longer. Because now, in addition to being shut down, I was unable to write in the same way I had before. The frustration was high!

So, to sum it all up, I am taking more action and I have put myself in a place to be seen more. However, there is significant time when I am still dissociated and there is still something holding me back and keeping me from doing the things like exercise or hiking. I feel like my ToDo list just keeps getting longer and longer and I’m not marking off as many tasks as I would like to.

Prospects for the Remainder of the Year

As we are nearing the end of October, I still have a bit over 2 months to keep working on these things. And I will. BUT… I’m still struggling with writing my posts for the blog but I also have never been busier at work. I’m working with Tara on producing more IG content so I will be visible there, but I’m having trouble taking the time to record the content.

I realized at some point that perhaps the real reason behind this blog is to remind myself that I need to see what IS happening in my life because I can be too focused on what is NOT happening. And then I get down on myself and beat myself up for what I’m not doing. That is how childhood trauma will affect you when you are not looking. You may have been doing well and then, bam!, you get off your game and can’t get back to it. And the longer you don’t get back to it, the worse you feel. And then it’s even harder to get back on track. It’s a downward spiral.

Waterfalls in Spearfish Canyon, Black Hills, South Dakota

But I will not let it win.

So, I think that, despite our plans, the universe (God) has other plans for us. I think where my healing is truly happening is with me giving myself grace for not doing things the way I imagined they would go and also space to be ok with doing things differently. I may not be doing things the way I want to or as quickly as I want to do them, but I’m being flexible and doing them in the way that allows me to be authentically me. Maybe I need to take longer to write reports or blog posts. Maybe I need extra help in some way that I have not yet figured out. I’m not sure. Maybe I need to let something go (though I don’t know what). I don’t know the answer to any of this.

What I do know is that the things that happened this year - the things that knocked me down - were out of my control. And I know for certain that I handled all of the things the best that I could. These events did not win in breaking me. I was flexible enough to get back up again. Like a “Weeble Wobble,” if any of you remember those. “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down!” They get back up again.

And I am back up again. Steadier, I think. Giving myself the space and grace to allow things to unfold in my life exactly as they need to. I’m not always patient about this, but it’s going to happen this way even if I don’t like it. Maybe that is exactly where my growth is supposed to happen this year.

So, if you are not where you would like to be with your annual goals, then I hope that you can also give yourself grace for not being where you want to be and the space to allow what is happening to unfold in the way it needs to. Because the truth is - we are exactly where we need to be, even if it is not where we planned to be. And that is where healing comes in.