Brokenly Spiritual

16/10/2024

I have felt a ton of shame for years about my journey of accepting everything about what it meant for me to be Martin’s mom.
I didn’t start this journey of motherhood to hang up the title of mom and pick up the title of special needs parent/ caregiver.
I understand that might make some people uncomfortable. It doesn’t change the reality of what has happened.
I traded baseball and soccer games for endless therapy.
I traded a conversation I have never, not once, had with my little boy, for broken language and that broken language either only parroting what I have said or just telling me about the toy truck he loves most at the time. Then that being spoken in approximations, very broken language.
I traded trips with my husband after we retire, for a life where I take care of and have to worry about the safety of the child I dreamed about growing up and getting married and having a family of his own.
I have spent the better part of over ten years feeling fearful of sharing how deep and desperate my sadness has been. I am fearful because of how many times people have felt the need to remind me of my blessing, while in the same breath ignoring the very heavy parts of being my son’s parent.
This isn’t a criticism or a retraction of love for my son.
It is actually a release. Do you know why?
Because I spent the first six years of Martin’s life praying that he would be anything other than what he is. I exsisted in a space where I had to separate my special needs son from my son. I had to view him as two different people, just to survive. Then I realized how much I resented the child I spent every single day with.
Oof. Hard reality, right?
It would be, if I didn’t hear this story over and over again from my fellow special needs parents.
This is such a common feeling that society as a whole gets so squirmy that they either disappear or accuse you of abusing the child you loved so much that you admitted the very painful truth because you didn’t want to have to experience that truth to begin with and you definitely never wanted the truth to bleed onto the child you loved so much, even if it was super complicated.
No one wakes up one day with a goal to resent their special needs child.
It just. Fu***ng. Happens!
The weight we carry isn’t light.
We have to force a space in society for our children.
Because another hard reality is, there are very few places where children like mine BELONG, but there are a ton of places where our kids are ALLOWED to exist, not thrive.
Imagine being that parent. The one who is told repeatedly that their “normal” looking child needs to walk and not use the seat in a cart to contain the child who is impulsive or who can’t walk distances well.
That has been my journey.
I had to fight corporations in my county just to get special needs carts for the grocery store because lifting my eight year old over my head to get him in the cart, that so many felt empowered to say something to me about, that was becoming too cumbersome with a child half my size and not one corporation thought hey, we can afford to make her life easier. I hold a lot of resentment for the years I fought Walmart.
Special needs parents need a space to openly discuss their discouragement.
We need a release!
We sit in spaces that feel like vice grips!
Please, if you can’t set your own feelings about a conversation aside, just sit and listen.
Learn to be uncomfortable.
This has been the loneliest life I could have ever dreamed of.
Most of that is because I suffered in silence because so many were afraid of what they might feel about how they would feel if my shoes were on their own feet, that they would try to force me into the box they needed me to be in so they could be more comfortable in their denial.
It’s really hard to be the best you can be when the world is telling you your only option is to be super human in a world that wasn’t built for families like mine.
That’s why I share my journey.
Not for the people NOT living a life like this.
But for the mom who cries in the night so no one can hear her.
Or for the dad who drinks his sadness away because he can’t share how much he misses the child he thought he would have.
My heart goes out to the parents who mourn the life they dreamed of, for a life that no one could ever prepare for.
I share my journey in hopes to reach the young mom in me who suffered alone for such a long time.

16/09/2024

It’s ok to heal out loud.

It’s ok to take up space.

It’s ok to tell your story.

Remember, if they wanted you to tell a different story then they should have given you different words to write.

You don’t have to protect the people who hurt you during your healing era.

Release that responsibility.

It was never your’s to begin with.

15/09/2024

14/09/2024

I am a lover of the darkness, so shadow work is my JAM!! I learned how to do shadow work through prayer. It all started with a simple nudge from God to tell me to focus on my default emotion. The number one thing you need to remember is, you have carried this pain for a very long time, this doesn’t have to be a race. We are in this for the long haul. Don’t rush it, you will do more damage than good.

In 2019 I admitted for the first time that I was the angriest person I knew. From there I started praying for guidance. The direction I received was simple. I just had to focus on my default emotion. The emotion I was most prone to fall into, as mentioned before, was anger. All variations of anger. The reason why I was guided to just recognize my most utilized emotion was because I had to be able to recognize it every time it showed up. Prior to this, I knew I was angry, I just didn’t realize how often I was angry.

Second tool I was showed to use was just allowing the emotion the acknowledgment of existence. That meant I let it show up without berating myself. I didn’t shame myself for feeling the emotion, I just acknowledge it, oop I’m angry, and moved on with my life. Acknowledging how I was really feeling also helped to defuse my anger quicker than when I wasn’t even recognizing it’s presence.
After giving my anger space for a few weeks, by just the simple acknowledgement, eventually anger moved over and showed me all the things I was really feeling, like fear, and sadness. I continued to acknowledge anger but added an additional step of, “Is this what I am really feeling, or am I feeling something else and anger is protecting me from that emotion?

Through this entire journey the theme was loosening my grip and allowing my emotion to tell me what it needed to tell me. When we approach healing with a loosened grip, we can move mountains because it is in having expectations of what the outcome will be that we can sabotage ourselves. Don't let your mind run away with the first thought or memory that pops into your head. I gave myself boundaries. Reality is, as a special needs parent, I don’t get to do things super w***y nilly and in this case, that meant telling myself no a lot. “No, you can’t get lost in the thought, or memory”. You have to let it wash over you and through you, like a gust of wind, until you have the ability to look at the bigger issues with intention for healing. It is almost like a desensitization of what has happened that created the pattern. But it isn’t. Why isn’t it? Because, stick with me here, this navigation isn’t about you in the present moment. It is about a version of you that is trapped in the memories or thoughts that hold the pain. Boundaries are an incredible tool to go deeper with parts of you that were stunted by the severity of the trauma you experienced. The whole point is to allow this broken part of you to be seen in their full rawness. That happens over time because many events make us also not trust ourselves. So, the young versions of us will also hide parts of them from us thinking that they are protecting you. And that’s ok. That is why we approach this with a gentle touch and a loose grip. We can’t handle those versions of ourselves with the same aggressive and deprecating ideas that trapped us there in the first place. Remember, you are meeting a child, teen, or young adult. Think of the way you would have wanted someone to make you feel safe and heard and seen in all your painful glory. Think about what would have been the key that would have allowed you to release this pain all those years ago.

Number one rule to shadow work is to do it with a gentle hand. This is an opportunity for you to love yourself in a way you have never been loved before. This is an opportunity to reparent yourself and be the mom or dad that you needed to love and protect you.

I love you fiercely and profusely!!!! And if you take nothing else from this article, I want you to know how truly and profoundly proud of you I am. You are an amazingly brave person. Someone DESTINED to change the world around them!!

11/09/2024

Growing up I can point so many incidents where who I am, was ridiculed. These moments have tormented me for such a long time.

The most impactful moment from my childhood was when the pastor’s wife, of the church I grew up in, asked me one day if there was something wrong with me mentally. I say this, but want to clarify, I am almost certain what she actually asked me was if I was mentally re****ed. I find so much irony in this question. I was a young child STARVED for attention. A child who wanted someone to find me worthy of loving.

Another segment of my past that has recently reappeared. I almost sent my ex husband a message clarifying the damage he had done. He had reached out in 2021 to “make amends” for his sobriety program. The part that continues to stand out to me is when he said something to the effect of, I don’t remember the bad times I only remember the good times, after I told him he almost broke me. In this letter I wanted to remind him of the EXACT pain he left. How he is a huge reason why I still carry so much shame about my body. The way it works, looks, smells. A torment so profuse that it would lead me to have five mental break downs. I continued to be the child who just wanted to be worthy of being loved.

It is classic when the planets align to aide in the energetic clearing of pain. Pluto went retrograde in Capricorn on September 1st. This will be the last time Pluto goes retrograde in Capricorn for the rest of my life. This is important because there has been a karmatic cycle going on for the last 16 years. This will be the last time I will have the planets on my side to move through this, as a Capricorn rising. I intend on removing a huge chunk, if not the whole wound of unlovability and worthlessness.

When I reflect on the last 16 years of my life, there is a NOTEABLE difference. In 2011 I would take my first step in loving myself. I would leave my ex husband and file for divorce. Something I wish I had demonstrated to me prior.

The most impactful event has been on this journey I wasn’t even conscious for the most part, was creating a family of my own. My own little family has rocked my world. The largest shift being the day I found out for certain, something was wrong with my son. From that moment on, my entire personhood changed. I moved as quickly as my terrified body could, from a mousey and manipulative girl, to who I am today.

Every time I advocated for my own child, I advocated for the little girl in me who was desperate for love. That means, even when I struggled greatly with the reality of his diagnosis that would affect the rest of my life.

In 2020, two years after my spiritual awakening and healing journey started, I would find myself sitting across from myself and she would tell me things so profound to my self realization. She would reveal that she was my driving force. This little naked two year old version of me, laying on the floor of my mind, she was why so many things that happened to me wouldn’t happen to my son.

My severely intellectually delayed child, by proxy, has been a huge leader in my own self love journey. Much of why is because my first experience with unconditional love was with him. An unconditional love so profound that when I became glaringly aware of my own struggle with him, I removed the pressure and weight I put on him and started my healing journey FOR HIM! If I didn’t start this journey to protect him from all of MY very broken parts, I would have never sat with those broken parts.

In 2020 when I sat with myself, I didn’t realize that a few months later I would be at my lowest valuelessness in many many years. Even fanticizing about what it would be like to die. That’s when my beautiful husband said the most impactful thing to me in my adulthood. He told me about how my value isn’t connected to what anyone thinks about me. I was born with value. I was given an inherent value that no one can give me OR TAKE AWAY!!!
I would spend the next few years learning to accept myself. Learning to accept my quirks and loudness. Learning to accept my intensity with grace. Smiling when I think about the times I acted “strangely”, rather than cringing.

September first started the remainder of my journey. Loving my body as much as I love the person inside of my body. Reconnecting my body to my personhood and not treating it like we are two separate entities. I saw what I needed when I was doing the shadow work. My body shows up every single day. It never abandons me, but I abandon it. It never hates me, but I hate it. It always believes in me, even though I don’t believe in it.

I don’t know where I will land with this journey, but I will tell you where I hope I will land. I want to land in a space where what I look like isn’t in the forefront of my mind. A space where I respect the strength this body has to have survived all of the violence and abuse I have experienced. One where when someone makes a comment about what I look like, my heart doesn’t hurt, but it is neutral because I love my body as much as I love myself. Because when someone doesn’t like how I act, I don’t tell Myself that it is my job to make them more comfortable by being smaller. I now tell myself it is their problem to deal with because I can’t fix their self rejection. I want to land in the same space with my own body. A space where ALL of me KNOWS I am worthy of love.

29/08/2024

new post on my new Brokenly Spiritual substack!! Go check it out. I promise you won't regret it!!

When you stop over thinking the piece will fall into place

26/06/2024

I am a spiritual leader that openly discusses my navigation with what it meant for me to have a disabled child. I advocate for special needs children, by advocating for their parents.

26/06/2024

15/06/2024

15/06/2024

04/06/2024

I have to remind myself all the time to take a break.

It’s ok to be tired AND take a break.

It doesn’t say anything about me other then I am tired.

What others think it says, that is a reflection of them, not me.

This goes for everyone.

03/06/2024

Our emotions are simple tools.

When we stop allowing our emotions to control our world, they can be used as a tool to guide us to the truth they are trying to make us see.

THIS is why it’s important to sit with the broken parts of yourself.

P.S. after a much needed long break from energy work, I am stepping back in. I am excited to announce I am accepting clients again!!! There are limited spots each week! If you’re interested, reach out and let’s see if we are a match.

03/06/2024

There is a group of people that will benefit most from shadow work.

Those people are people like me, who live with hard situations that can not be meditated away.

Shadow work has been a life line for me.

It has made me dig deep to free not only myself, but my non verbal 10 year old.

I navigate letting go and grieving regularly.

When life gives a situation that is difficult, especially emotionally, you have to process it by sitting in the pain the situation wells up inside of you.

Don’t be afraid of your big “bad” emotions surrounding hard situations.

If you avoid them, you just might put unfair expectations onto someone you would never dream of hurting intentionally.

02/06/2024

I used to struggle a lot with what normal was.

I wrote something a few years back that celebrated what our normal looked like.

I wrote it because I was processing what it meant to be a mom who doesn’t get words or the many other layers of what it means to be the mom of a cognitively impaired child.

I remember writing it thinking how beautiful this piece was, but my heart was breaking into a million pieces.

This was in the very beginning of my realization that this life would be forever.

This is why I share when I have waves of grief.

So many newer parents that are going through what we have been through, they are trying to convince themselves that everything is ok too.

But convincing yourself won’t ever truly shift the longing for the person that you always wanted to hear the jokes from.

It won’t convince you to not miss the child who wouldn’t have to work the equivalent to a full time job, so society would deem them more acceptable.

It won’t convince you to not miss a human that never existed.

One of the greatest steps you can take in accepting your child and the life your child brings with them, will be grieving the person you thought they would be.

This will help you to put down your unmeetable expectations.

When you put down those expectations, you’ll be able to see the wonder of the life you have now, instead of resenting the person who didn’t ask for this either.

My greatest accountability in my healing drive has been never wanting my child to be trapped in the pain I caused him, because he may never be able to process his trauma.

P.S. after a much needed long break from energy work, I am stepping back in. I am excited to announce I am accepting clients again!!! There are limited spots each week! If you’re interested, reach out and let’s see if we are a match.

01/06/2024

Healing work comes in waves and it starts with trusting yourself enough to know when to move forward on what you’re trying to heal through.

You shouldn’t be constantly healing.

We need to learn that knowing that we are good enough, in spite of all our own imperfections, is ALSO healing.

As someone who struggles often with not feeling like I am good enough, exactly as I am, I have had to learn that there is no shame in the moments that I sit back and accept the parts of me that are less than perfect.

Everyone deserves to know they are good enough, no matter what.

P.S. after a much needed long break from energy work, I am stepping back in. I am excited to announce I am accepting clients again!!! There are limited spots each week! If you’re interested, reach out and let’s see if we are a match.

30/05/2024

Hello.

My name is Kelsey, and I have a savior complex.

Well, kind of.

Definitely used to though.

That was until I got really comfortable being uncomfortable with myself.

When I was “saving” others, it was all a way to avoid the parts of myself that needed saving, but were too painful for me to sit in.

Then one day, life happened, and I had no choice.

I faced my anger.

Then with help through Bhava, I navigated through the parts of me that were too afraid to fully put myself out there consistently.

I worked through the layers of valuelessness and worthlessness.

Soon after I worked through these, I started to notice a much larger release of the need to save other people.

By doing this, it also allows a space of empowerment for people to learn to heal and save themself.

I still sometimes struggle, but more often than not, the release has been profound.

P.S. after a much needed long break from energy work, I am stepping back in. I am excited to announce I am accepting clients again!!! There are limited spots each week! If you’re interested, reach out and let’s see if we are a match.

29/05/2024

I prayed a prayer just a few months after I found out I was pregnant with my now son.

Life was on fire and I was sitting on the edge of my bed crying.

Thats when I told God,” you better not be giving me this baby unless they are going to change the world.”

Little did I realize that this would be an answered prayer.

He came into our life like a whirlwind and deconstructed all of my brokenness by proxy.

After it has all been said and done now, I advocate for children like mine by advocating for their parents to feel safe enough to admit all of the feelings they hold surrounding these situations.

The end game goal?

To help parents of disabled children heal so we can change the 1 in 3 statistic for abuse surrounding children like mine.

I am a person who overcame my own 1 in 3 statistic because I had experienced violence as a child, and I hope to help other parents like me be brave enough so they can change their disabled child’s 1 in 3 statistic.

P.S. after a much needed long break from energy work, I am stepping back in. I am excited to announce I am accepting clients again!!! There are limited spots each week! If you’re interested, reach out and let’s see if we are a match.

28/05/2024

Focus.

Focus is a tricky thing when it comes to healing wounds that are so hard to touch.

If we focus too hard, we can become tormented by moments from our past.

But if we don’t focus at all, we become stuck in a never ending loop of bad behaviors.

What I learned to do was allow the task I was wanting to achieve to wash over me.

When I pin pointed emotions, I would acknowledge it and move on with my life.

When I would remember something, I would quickly run through a memory how I remembered it and then how I would have wanted it to have happened, and then I would move on with my life.

I managed to learn to briefly touch my wounds.

This is why I tell people to focus on their default emotion.

This is because learning to acknowledge the emotion you’re most prone to fall into, without the need to shame and belittle yourself for being human enough to feel it, that is where you learn to allow other parts of your healing journey to wash over and through you.

When you hold your intention of healing so hard, movement can be chocked out by your grip.

Loosen your grip and you’ll move through effortlessly.

P.S. after a much needed long break from energy work, I am stepping back in. I am excited to announce I am accepting clients again!!! There are limited spots each week! If you’re interested, reach out and let’s see if we are a match.