Who am I?

"You can't do that!" I was told.  "That's not the right way to do it!" she said.  "You're not like everyone else!"  he said again and again.  Clearly I am not like everyone else in many ways, least of which is naming my blog "Platypus Expressions".  Let me give you some insight into the way my mind works.  Over the course of my life I have had many challenges to include: having a circulation issue in my brain which affects the way I process what I see and spatially what is around me.  I often get very frustrated with this challenge but it's in my life, I like to think, for a reason so quite literally I don't see and process what others do.

Even though I have had several accidents which involved hitting my head, I am not as impaired as some people and seriously more impaired than others.  I am fortunate to have great executive function and also to be quite intuitive.  These are characteristics that many people with dyslexia and traumatic brain injury (TBI) don't possess.  So even though I am disabled, I don't seem to fit what many people think is a description of what disability looks like.  Like millions of people, I fall into the group of those with invisible disabilities.

My life has been filled with lots of emotional trauma, loss, abandonment, violence, shame, criticism, judgment and heartache.  In many ways I am like most of us who have taken risks in love, career, and friendships.  I have chosen to acknowledge my pain, and have worked very hard to make peace with what has felt like deeply broken moments of my heart and soul.

I find a kinship with the platypus because, like them, I feel quite unique in some ways. Neither of us fit nicely into a single box of description.  The platypus has a beaver like tail, an otter like body, a duck like bill and duck like feet.  He is like several animals yet he is uniquely his own being.

I have been working to come to a deeper appreciation of myself as my own unique being.  I feel that even with my share of challenges, I am deeply blessed.  There have been many people in my life who have been cherished friends, gentle lovers, and amazing teachers.  The animals who have made up a large part of my life were some of the greatest gifts I could have ever imagined.  Humility is something that those of us with lots of opportunities for growth get to experience, again and again.  Just when we think we've kicked out the oppressive thoughts and feelings, back they come again.

Depression is definitely an experience I know well.  I call it that because for me it is and has been a process of development.  Grief, resentment, confusion and fear have entangled themselves together in what can be a deep, heavy, isolating creation.  Many of my spiritual teachers have spoken of "the long dark night of the soul" which for me weaves its way in and out of my life.

This blog will be about challenge, opportunity, hope, confusion, joy and peace.  It will be about life in all of its miserable and amazing components.  Thank you for taking time to share my journey.