**Trigger Warning. This blog talks about childhood trauma and abuse.

Waking up to what’s happening in your sub-concious is truly like the Matrix movie, once you take the red pill you can’t go back.

Being aware of my own sub-concious, has been enlightening and lousy. My biggest motivator is never wanting to purposely hurt people as a result of my actions stemmed from trauma. It’s hard to turn deeply into yourself, making sense of habits that are long standing. For one, facing self-sabotaging habits is uncomfortable. It takes a lot of brain power and once I can finally get close enough to start understanding a self-sabatoging habit, my brain kicks into survival-mode. It distracts itself to avoid reliving the past, so it comes up with creative ways to avoid it.

I had enough with the repeative cycle, so I sit down to journal it out. This one in particular being triggered continuously was overdue to be examined. So I start off by writing…

‘I have a fear of wasting time and I dont know why…’

I write down how it makes me feel, giving the journal my two-cents, that I’m sick of this pattern repeating itself. Then…

A question pops up

“What is the first memory associated with this fear and feeling? What’s the earliest you can remember?”

I start writing. ‘That time I made the chocolate chip cookies…’

My childhood was to put it frankly, miserable after about age 8. Thats when the physical abuse started. I had more responsibilities and was forced to grow up, fast! Something I think a lot of eldest daughters in religious and strong cultural backgrounds can relate to. I didn’t get to do what a lot of other kids my age could do, especially alone. So when my parents left to run errands my cinderella cleaning duties were handed to me. One of those weekend days I committed to the idea to rush through my cleaning list to bake some cookies all on my own. Something I had been wanting to do for a while, but was told not to.

I knew it was a risk, there was absolutely no room for mistakes, I had to get this right or else it was my ass on the line. Growing up poor and with emotionally unstable parents, there was no room for error or else, ‘punishment’. Luckily my mother has a sweet tooth, so long as they came out good, I knew I’d be alright.

I cleaned the entire 3 bedroom house alone. Scrub the tubs, sinks, mirrors, sweep, mop twice, always mop twice. Dust surfaces, remove EVERYTHING first, vacuum the house, polish the chairs with Pledge, if your ass doesn’t slip off, polish more … I’d always be sweating by the end of it all, but committing to making cookies if enough time was left over gave me something to look forward to.

I had some time leftover after finishing up with the last task of dusting and polishing! I grabbed the chocolate chip bag out of the pantry and got started. I followed the recipe on the back of the package to the T! I made sure all the measurements were perfect and the baking time was set. I put them in the oven to bake, so it was just a matter of waiting patiently. My anxiety starts growing, I knew my mom would be home any minute, it had been just over 3 hours, their usual errand run time. Then the universal sign to panic switched on, the garage door was opening.

I took my breathes, panicked and took the cookies out so she could see them. She can’t get mad using ‘her’ ingredients if the cookies are freshly assaulting her nose. I set them ontop the stove and my eyes are beaming. They looked fantastic, better than the picture! Slightly underdone, like I like them. I take a piece as a reward before meeting mom at the door, but...

I simply wanted to die when that warm cookie hit my taste buds.

They were so salty! Like, you spit it out because they’re uneditable salty! Unholy amount of salt! I knew right away there was no possible way of fixing them. ‘You are so fucked!’, I thought.

I start running my memory, figuring out what went wrong, it was obvious the mistake, I measured the salt as sugar, but how?! I drag my feet to the door, my stomach turning into itself, and help bring in her grocery haul. The moment her eyes meet that stove, it will be over. I’m under heat. I make my way with the bags to the kitchen, mother followed behind me and spots them.

The interrogation begins. Then the usual consequences. Mom lectures, 10 minutes turn to 30, to an hour and so on. I am forced to mutate into a statue and not make any sudden moves. When she is like this, anything, and I mean anything sets her off. Scratching my legs from standing still for so long extends the yelling into a 2 hour session, other-times more. Anything to indicate I was dissociating she would attack me. “AM I BORING YOU?!” as she lunges towards me, often times pinning me and my arms to the ground, slapping and hitting me so I can’t defend myself. This would always result in me isolating in my room to cry silently behind my bed or inside my closet. Depending on how bad things got, it could be several days until she could look at me again. When it got that bad, I would be completely exiled from the family, feeling like a criminal. My mother even telling my siblings not to talk or look at me.

Doing something as simple as messing up cookies, or cleaning something ‘wrong’ would feel like life or death. It could be a few slaps across the face, or my presence not to be seen in the house. (Can’t call it home, you’re supposed to feel safe in your home.) Eating dinner alone, head down while my back faces the living room where they have family time, laughing and conversing as if I am not behind them. My mother even putting empty aluminum cans outside my door when they’d leave to have outings, to ensure I didn’t leave my room. I felt like a prisoner most of the time growing up.

It’s not fun to talk about. But as I write this all down in my journal, I realize this is where it started. This feeling of no matter how hard I work, how fast I get that work done and how perfect I try to make it, it’ll never work out and I can risk total rejection. ‘You will have wasted time, energy, money and resources, and it’s just not worth the risk.’ I close my journal and stare off in thought. ‘I have to make this into a shoot.’ It’s the only way I know to take back some of my power or at least start to.

With nearly 2 years of EMDR therapy sessions under my belt, paired with my creative brain, turning the cookie incident into a photo visual could be the start of healing it. Healing the narrative around it, and healing my child self from the punishments she had to go through when she was too scared to stick up for herself.

I asked myself what do I want my younger self to know with these images?

‘You’re safe to work towards goals and creative ideas…

You’re allowed to make mistakes and still be worthy of love and compassion.’

That’s what young Amanda needed at the time. To know she was allowed to explore, be creative, make mistakes and still be worthy of love and compassion even if it meant stepping outside of the box. No matter if it is all salty. She is simply worthy. Young A was scared and fearful of getting punished for doing something as small as tap into her creativity, it was scary for her to take risks. It was scary to EXIST! I have scars today to validate her fears. Her feeling like she was not allowed to simply live is all changing. We will bake our little hearts out, take as many pictures we want, we will be creative, we will be risk takers and I will protect her fiercely while we do it.

Transmutation of that energy, with photos to show for it. A reminder that our power is back where it belongs, and there is no one that can tell us different. There are so many ways to heal, why not try them all, if it means she feels safe and loved. Heal the inside and make our way out. To close the chapter of my life dictated by triggers, surviving then coping with them. I’m not sure what the space beyond this chapter looks like, the only thing I really want is inner peace. Everything in life around me will energetically shift to that level of frequency or at least that’s the goal.

Sugar & Salt