Gaslighting is insidious. It makes you feel like your standing on quicksand, or waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s confusing. It’s the opposite of feeling centered and grounded. Gaslighting is the uncertainty of the very things you know to be true.

Gaslighting showed up early my life. Things were anything but normal in my life. My father was an alcoholic. In the early years no one used that word, and if they did I probably wouldn’t have known what it meant anyway. I lived with an uncertainty looming in the air-a fragility, a not knowing. While it wasn’t acknowledged, it was right there in plain site. I would pull on my knee socks and shiny Mary Janes, my homemade polyester pullover dresses with matching buttons, and a wide smile. I would put on the uniform and become someone else. I think in many ways if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know. I learned early to pretend-to literally and figuratively step over the preverbal elephant in the middle of the room. In my case, the elephant was my father who laid passed out on the couch (belly exposed), face down on the shaggy green carpet, or across the street in his car outside the apartments. In a way I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I mean maybe other friends fathers did this too. But the feeling of dis-ease hung round my neck on a pale green ribbon, taking its place next to the oversized house key. It took root early and has become a permanent appendage ever since. Uncertainty left an indelible impression on my lens. Decades later it is still there. This nagging uncertainty. The constant questioning of myself.

Is it real?

Do I have it right?

Am I confused?

Am I making too much of something?

Am I too sensitive?

Is it just me?

Is it my fault?

Do I see what I see?

Things are still pretty on the outside. I live in a big house and drive fancy cars. We take extravagant vacations, and I have people I call friends in this planned community; But underneath things still feel amiss-The uncertainty, the fragility, the vulnerability, the oscillation…

So I follow my breath

one-exhale, two, three, four

two-exhale, three, four, five

three-exhale, four, five, six

I feel the tightness in my chest loosen. My shoulders soften. I quiet my mind. I arrive in stillness. I find peace.

Peace in not knowing.

Peace in letting go.

Courage in leaning in.

Faith that the knowing will come….