The Universe Provides
One of the most common notions we share as survivors of trauma is that life isn’t fair. Coming out of our childhood, it is not only understandable. It is true. Life isn’t fair. We had horrific childhoods. We didn’t get the love we deserved as children. We were forced to live in a state of fear. Our bodies and minds were damaged to meet the needs of others. And it is not self-pity to acknowledge that. It is a fact and we need to validate our experiences as unfair. Honestly, the only way we can heal is to allow ourselves to understand the extent of our emotional pain.
But there is a problem. It gets worse. When we get to adulthood, life continues to be unfair. It continues to hit us with the same crap we spent an entire childhood trying to escape. It feels like we are in a constant state of punishment and retaliation from the universe. We keep attracting people who trigger us. Bad things seem to inundate us at every turn. No matter how hard we try, we can’t seem to create the life we always wanted. And it is completely unfair.
Not surprisingly, our reactions to these experiences are not pretty. Our controllers blow a gasket because they are trying to be perfect. And life keeps interrupting their completely unrealistic goals. Our love seekers get more triggered and desperate, making worse and worse choices with every move. Our isolators get more convinced that hiding is the only option. Our self hate is continually fueled. And our freedom fighters give up. The futility and hopelessness can feel overwhelming.
But believe it or not, there is a different side to these patterns of the past that won’t seem to quit. While our controllers’ approach to the world is to plow through life with all our buried trauma, that is not what we are here to do. We are here to process our experiences and heal ourselves on a deep level. Why? Our dreams lie on the other side of this healing and the universe doesn’t want us to miss out. So while our controllers are telling us to go through the motions and get through life, the universe is saying, “Don’t forget about this stuff over here.”
For every pattern that repeats in our lives, we are being called to wake up. Maybe we need to remember repressed memories. Maybe we need to process the futility and grief of this lifetime we never wanted. Maybe we need to see how an inner part is running the show instead of our adult self. But ultimately, there is something that needs to change. It could be our awareness, actions or thought processes. But we have to do, say or think in a different way so we can move toward the life we want. When our patterns are repeating and our pain is unbearable, it is time to ask ourselves some important questions.
What is the pattern coming from childhood? Even the most random events in our adult lives can be sourced from our childhood. The patterns are almost never obvious. Our dissociation can keep us from seeing them. And some childhood patterns are subtle in nature. We may even be dealing with repressed childhood memories. But if we look hard enough, if we pay attention to the clues from the universe, we can figure out how we are repeating our childhood patterns. And once we see them, we can begin to shift out of them.
What am I supposed to be learning from this? When our pattern repeats, there are traumatic beliefs affecting how we view life. These beliefs might tell us we aren’t good enough for anything better. They might inform us that we are meant to be punished. But no matter what, they are lies from our abusers. If we can build awareness of these beliefs, we can begin to see how they are attracting our patterns into our lives. We can also see how we are rejecting better patterns. As we express these beliefs through writing from our inner parts, our patterns can begin to shift.
What can I do differently this time? To break a cycle, we will need to take new actions in our lives. Taking new action requires us to face fears. We have to do scary things like set boundaries with people who are asking too much or express ourselves authentically at the right moment. We will almost always feel fear when we take a new action. But it is important to drive through the action while honoring the need to express the fear. There is nothing that makes more positive change happen than a series of small actions we have never taken before.
The next time you feel like you have been hit upside the head with a baseball bat from the universe, take a minute to consider how this might have been what you needed to wake up. This is communication from the universe saying, “I want you to have more than this. Go and get it.” How can you take your life in a new direction, make a new decision or think a new way? You deserve to have a life without your traumatic patterns. You deserve what lives on the other side of those patterns. But you will have to purposefully redirect those patterns. It can’t happen any other way.
Freedom for All
It’s summertime again. Some people love summer, but it really isn’t my thing. I don’t do heat. My skin is translucent. And since becoming a mother, the added stress of having children home from school is another tick against the summer season. I have been known to say that the only thing good about summer is my birthday. But honestly, as I get older, that’s not a huge positive either. Summer has become a season of hiding for me. I hide from the heat. I hide from the sun. But there is more to my hiding than that. There always has been more to it even if I haven’t allowed myself to see it.
The summer was a horrible time in my childhood. I didn’t have the safety of school to run to. I had to fight like hell to swim (which I loved more than anything). Most of the time, I had to find a way to get to practices on my own. But there was a darker side. Summers were the time when my father thought I needed to earn my keep. I wasn’t doing anything else, so I might as well provide some income for the family. So most of the trafficking happened during the summer. But this connection alluded my awareness until recently. Knowing this gives me more compassion for my summers of hiding. And that is why I do this work.
On this July 4th, which is Independence Day in the United States, I can’t help but think about the freedom I never had. As a trafficking victim, I spent my life as a slave. My body was used to make money for my family. My needs and wants were of no concern to them. Food, clothing, shelter and even air were not always made available to me. I knew no freedom as a child. And honestly, nobody cared. I searched for adults who would care, but never found any. I asked for help and there was no response. I learned quickly that children could not ask for freedom. It was unattainable for us. In my adulthood, I have come to understand children as the most oppressed population in the world. And believe me, that is saying something.
Over the years, I have heard all the arguments against this understanding. “Children don’t have the same understanding of the world. We need to protect children from themselves. The world is a dangerous place for children so we need to keep them safe. They don’t know what they don’t know.” And on some level, this is true. I do feel like children are born with a fearlessness that can get them hurt. I have seen it in action. But that same fearlessness says that anything is possible. And it is controlled out of them by the time they are young adults. Their autonomy is thwarted and they lose their individuality and authenticity. They lose their ability to see the possibilities especially when they are unique and non-conforming.
So today I am asking the world for balance. We need to protect them, but we need to let them explore and grow. We need to teach them, but we need to respect their talents, abilities and opinions too. And if a child asks for help or indicates something is wrong, we need to listen to them and help them despite our fears of the adults involved. We have to find balance between protection and freedom. We have to find a middle ground between teaching them how the world works and listening to their unique perspectives on how it could work. We need to understand how our children are people who have rights and not beings to be ignored, pushed away or invalidated. And we need to drop the following perspectives:
What happens in someone’s home is not my business.
Children are to be seen and not heard.
Children make things up for attention.
Children are lucky to have (insert basic need here).
Children’s emotions need to be contained.
Children aren’t as smart as adults.
All of these messages keep children oppressed. And yet all of these messages are largely accepted by society. We have to do a better job at protecting our children’s freedom. If they don’t feel free in childhood, they will grow up to feel trapped in adulthood. It won’t be obvious. It will live in the unconscious. But it will impact their perspective and choices every single day. It will inundate them with futility and hopelessness (manifesting as depression). And it will keep them small.
This is the pattern that gives the oppressors the upper hand. They win because deep down inside, the hopelessness of childhood tells us it is just like the past. It tells us oppressors always win because it happened in childhood. So we let it be true. And this is how the oppressors want it to be. So if you want to change the world, empower a child. Let them know their ideas and dreams matter and will make a difference. Listen to them when they ask you for help. Ensure they are safe from abusers. The oppressors want us to raise children with no hope. Don’t let them win. Give children freedom. Give them hope. Change the world.
7 Reasons the Love You Want is Hard to Find
After a childhood of relational trauma, finding love can feel like an impossible feat. As our patterns of rejection, abandonment and abuse repeat, we can reach a level of hopelessness that feels insurmountable. We can resolve ourselves to the impossibility of love. We give up. But when we can allow ourselves to consider how we are holding ourselves back from love, how we are perpetuating our traumatic patterns, we can empower ourselves to make change happen. We can slowly turn the tides on our relational life. But we must be open and flexible to how we are contributing to our patterns. And this is not easy. It requires an honest look at the survival skills we developed in childhood. Those survival skills are based in our childhood reality. And while they got us through some horrific experiences, they aren’t serving us now. To change these survival skills, we have to look deep into our unconscious to find out why they exist. Here are some common beliefs and patterns we might find.
- We want resolution to the past. When we grow up with an abuser, we do everything within our power to make them love us. It never occurs to us that they can’t love us. It never dawns on us that they are the problem. We blame ourselves and work hard to fix whatever is wrong with us in the hopes that love will finally become available. But we never figure it out. We never discover the problem is unsolvable. As we grow to adulthood, the love seeker within us still searches for resolution, any answer to the inconsolable grief they feel. They seek out people with the same behaviors and energy as our abusers, and they attempt to resolve the problem one more time. And each time, they are left without answers.
- We don’t believe the love that shows up. While we all have that part who resiliently seeks out love, our traumatic childhoods create another part who knows love is not possible for us. We are sure that love will not be made available to us under any circumstances. This may be caused by our own deficiencies or a general lack of love in the world, but either way, love will never be real for us. So when something resembling love appears on the horizon, this part rejects it. They will assume this person must be lying. There cannot be love for us so this person must be fooling us. And we reject it.
- We don’t prioritize love. We are too busy surviving. Love is a distraction. Love means we aren’t focusing on the things that could go wrong. We might miss something important. We have to put love on the back burner so we can get things done. We have to check off the items on the list. We have to prepare for the bad things. We have to maintain order. And love is not going to help us do any of these things. It keeps us from our ultimate goal: survival. And survival matters much more than connecting with others.
- We hate ourselves. A childhood of trauma can bring a lifetime of self hate. It can impact everything we do in life. It can sit in our unconscious mind and nag us with doubts at every turn. It is a brutal self critic. With these beliefs, it will be almost impossible to bring real love into our lives. We cannot find love when we hate ourselves. The external world mirrors our internal world. So to find real love, we must express and release the self hate.
- We stereotype others. In a childhood of chaos, we created rules to survive. While some of those rules made perfect sense, some did not. Some rules made sense in childhood, but don’t anymore. But some of our rules can stop the love in our lives. These rules can make us stereotype others and reject them before they have a chance to show us real love. What do these rules look like? Here are some examples of rules that might stop love: All abusers look like my father. All women are out to manipulate me. All men are interested in one thing.
- We want someone to save us. As children, we spent so much time trying to find someone who would save us. We weren’t able to save ourselves. We needed an adult to help us. But for most of us, nobody showed up. We were left to navigate our trauma on our own. And when we reach adulthood, that unconscious desire is still there. But real love doesn’t look like being saved. Real love doesn’t come from a desperate place of need. We often end up in relationships that are controlling because they feel more like saving.
- We run from commitment. We have been searching for freedom our entire lives. While we may have parts who are very interested in finding someone to save us, we also have parts who want to stay far away from the control of others. We can see interest from others as dangerous, as a sign they are trying to have some power or control over us. And the more a relationship asks of us, even if it is healthy, the more likely we are to look for a way out. We refuse to be trapped again.
These unconscious beliefs can lead to so much frustration and pain. We desperately want to feel loved by others, but we cannot make it happen. It seems we are destined to a life of rejection, abandonment and isolation. But we can have more love in our lives. We do have the capacity to change our unconscious obstacles and get more of what we want. It takes awareness and knowledge to make that happen. This is why I am devoting the month of July to making that happen. Come join me on the Survivor’s Guide for Life as we explore our unconscious obstacles to love. Click on this link so you can find out How to Get More Love in Your Life.
The Inconvenient Truth
In my life, I have searched for many things. I have sought out love. I have tried to find peace. But more than anything, it seems like my life has been one constant search for clarity. Who am I? What do I want? What happened to me? What have I forgotten? My mind has been constantly spinning in my attempts to make sense of my childhood and the after effects. I have researched abuse. I have researched the details of my past. I have looked into laws. I have called people from my past to get information. I have read article after article about my health and how it is tied to trauma. I even completed a Master’s degree in my search for answers.
I see it all around the world. Everyone is seeking the answers. Everyone wants clarity. They read and discuss and research and debate. They desperately search for a way to complete their story. They need a story and it needs to make sense. They need clarity. But they are missing something important. They don’t realize they already have the story. They don’t understand the clarity is already there. Why? They don’t want that clarity. That clarity makes them dive deep into their past trauma and address the pain of the past. Real clarity accesses their wisdom, their intuition. It doesn’t come from the mind.
But as a society, we are confused. We are looking for the wrong clarity. We are desperately searching for a story that allows us to fit with our surroundings. We want a convenient narrative that will help us to fit in. We want to fit in to a community, a set of rules, a pre-drawn box of what is expected from a human being on this planet. This is a story that lives in the mind. It doesn’t live in the body. It doesn’t live in the heart. It isn’t who we are. And we know that. It gives us that feeling of unease, a lack of peace, an inability to truly rest. We know something isn’t right. The convenient narrative is at odds with our clarity. We can’t have both.
But society has told us we must make our story fit. The human need for community has been redefined as the need to be like others. The human need for truth has been redefined as a convenient story, a story that makes others comfortable, that makes others accept us. So we walk a line between the desperate need for clarity and the need to find out where we belong. And here’s the inconvenient truth. We belong nowhere. And we belong everywhere. We will never match our story to one other person on this planet. We will never check all the boxes to make others accept us and be happy with us entirely. And that doesn’t matter. That isn’t what allows us to belong. We just do. We belong because we are human. We belong because we are different. So why don’t we get it? What stops us from finding the real clarity, the clarity that brings peace and stops our desperate seeking?
We fell for the conditional love lie in childhood. We grew up with people who were not capable of accepting our inconvenient truth. They didn’t want us to be who we were. They let us know we were not acceptable. But they also let us know that we were teetering on the edge of rejection. And for a child, that is terrifying. They told us to give them a convenient truth or we would be rejected. And rejection is the equivalent to death. This lie stayed with us in adulthood. It lives in our unconscious and tells us we cannot seek real clarity. Our only acceptable clarity comes by checking off the requirements of whatever box we want to fit. We believe authenticity will only result in death.
We are terrified of our inconvenient truth and what it means for us. Our clarity can only come when we let go of the past. And to let go of anything, we must feel. We must feel the grief and shame and fear and anger and futility of living a painful childhood. Why? Until we let go of the traumatic emotions we have stored in our systems, we can’t reach our truth. We can’t find out clarity. And that scares the hell out of us (or at least our defenders). These emotions were put away because they were impossible to process as a kid. And in adulthood, that still feels true. We believe our emotions will only result in death.
We are scared of what doesn’t make sense. To find our clarity, we must first trudge through the confusion. The path to our truth is lined with the muddy waters of our past. Our clarity requires us to prove ourselves wrong over and over and over again. We will sit in confusion as we try to re-wire our brains from years of brainwashing. We will struggle to know which thoughts are true only to discover most aren’t. This seems like a very bad idea after a childhood of confusion and unpredictability. We have spent years trying to create a list of rules we could live by. We had to create our rules to survive. And we believe throwing out the rules will only result in death.
So the next time you feel confusion, don’t choose the convenient tweak to your narrative. Don’t make everyone comfortable by checking the boxes off and fitting in to one of the appropriate societal categories. Sit with it. Let yourself be who you are. Look inward to find your truth, a truth that doesn’t conform to what society says it must. Let yourself reject the pressure to be convenient. What makes you inconvenient will make the difference in this convenient world.
Dear Dad
I thought about writing Jim instead. That is your name. It has been a while since I have thought of you as more than the person who spread his seed. That certainly doesn’t make you a father. You were never a father. Sure. You spent some of your precious money on me. You used my successes to brag. You were even a little proud when I blew up at your parents. But you were never a father. I know that now and I have stopped expecting to have a father in this lifetime. This may sadden you to know (or maybe not) that I rarely ever think about it anymore. It feels like many lifetimes ago when we shared the same space. I don’t really feel like anything is missing at this point. But that’s not true.
Something is missing. I am not concerned about the lack of positive memories as a father and daughter. I don’t really need those now. I am not concerned with the loss of your entire extended family who rejected me the minute I confronted you. I don’t miss those incredibly awkward family gatherings with a bunch of pedophiles and their victims. I am not concerned with the heritage or the name sake or other crap that society tells me I should care about. I can be Irish without your help. And I long since parted with your last name and have not considered it a loss.
But something is missing. Something is missing from my current life and it is mostly because of you. It is not that I don’t take responsibility for my healing, but you are the reason I have to heal. And on the really bad days, I hate you for it. I hate that I can’t have the life I want after living in hell with you for all those years. And while I don’t miss you one iota, I do miss what is missing. You took it from me. And while I work hard every single day to get it back, it is a slow process for which I don’t always have the patience. I want a new life and I want it now.
Don’t get me wrong, I know you weren’t trying to take them from me. You were trying to find a release for your pain at my expense. You were trying to feel okay by having power over me for a few minutes. And I understand where it came from. Your mother sexually abused you horribly. Your father disappeared. I know he was still at home, but he was gone emotionally and he was working all the time. You went through hell at the hands of that horrific woman while your father looked the other way. I get it. But you never made an effort to stop that cycle with you. You rained your pain down upon everyone else. You unleashed your hatred of your mother on to all the women in your life. And I was at the forefront.
What did you take from me?
You took love from me. I don’t mean that I loved you. I actually never really felt that for you. I know. I know. I was your daughter. I must have felt it. But you were so incredibly nasty that even my most loving inner child likened you to a dragon in my unconscious … and not the friendly kind. You were the devil to even my youngest inner parts. There was no love there. There was only fear. There was terror. But there was no love. Maybe that is why I never grieved your loss. I grieved mother (and she was no saint). I grieved others who I had to leave behind. But it has never been there for you. I mean something different when I say you took love from me. I mean you took away my ability to access my own love. I had to shut it all down. Love was too dangerous. Love wasn’t vigilant enough. Love was rest. And I could not risk that.
You took connection from me. My isolator exists because you are a human being who walks this earth (unfortunately still). I struggle to allow anyone close. I connect on some level and then my isolator starts to scream. Don’t get me wrong, this is getting better all the time. But the resistance to connecting with others is incredibly strong. And this is 100 times worse when that other is a potential intimate partner. How can I trust another man in that way? How can I see other men as reasonable after all the betrayal, the pain, the violence, the rape, the trafficking, the suffocation, the head injuries, the lies, the intimidation from the man who biologically created me? I’ll tell you what. It’s really freaking hard. I work at it. But you have made it hard.
You took away my peace. I remember that day you sat down at the restaurant table, looked me straight in the eye without one ounce of shame, and had the nerve to tell me I was too anxious. You actually told me I needed to calm down. I may have repressed all memory of our time together, but I still knew that was the most hypocritical thing you could say. I needed to calm down after years of questioning if I would survive the night. Seriously? Even now, I am not sure if you will hire someone to intimidate me like you did when I was a child … twice. Worse, I do not know if you will hire someone to kill me. Even worse, I am not sure you will stay away from my kids. But so far, you have. You have disappeared off the face of the earth because you know I speak the truth. But can I ever really know you will stay gone? No. I can’t know that. But I do check the obits every few months.
So as Father’s Day approaches, I have nothing to give you. I have no gifts, no love, no grief, no apologies, no nothing. You proved there are monsters in the world. You showed me this world was not safe. You taught me not to trust. You taught me I wasn’t worth anything to the person who was supposed to be the most important man in my childhood. And now I work hard to put those missing pieces back into my heart so I can live a real life without you. I will have the things you took. I am determined. But in the end, it will be no thanks to you.
Elisabeth
5 Reasons You Might be Waiting for Your Life to Start
I was watching a movie last night and the actors had a conversation that stuck with me. They were talking about the external milestones of life. They were discussing buying houses and having babies.
She said, “When is our life going to start?”
He said, “This is our life. We are living it.”
This may seem like an obvious concept. And while I have been aware for quite some time that I am living my life, some of my inner parts were really affected by these statements. I have taken many empowered steps to change my life patterns, but I realized I have been waiting for something. I realized I have always been waiting to officially start my life. This is not a new concept, but it seems to have hit me at a deeper level. So I asked myself what I am waiting for. What is it we are all waiting for? And honestly, there are quite a few things.
- We are waiting for an apology. I know. I know. This is completely futile. But while our adult selves can understand this intellectually, it is an entirely different matter for our inner children. They want our abusers to say they are sorry. They want our original relationships to become something they will never be. They want the love and attention they never received from our abusers or from someone just like our abusers. They want resolution. They want their relationship patterns to be resolved without having to let it all go. And it isn’t coming.
- We are waiting to be released. We have parts who hold contracts. And while I originally thought these parts only held contracts with our abusers in a trauma-bonded way, I now realize that our abuser contracts primed us to take on other contracts. These contracts are disturbingly random. Anyone who ever told us we owe them something is likely to be sitting in our unconscious holding us back. Wow! What a realization that is! I have discovered I am holding contracts with people and I don’t even remember their name. I am waiting for resolution from strangers who don’t remember me. And I know I am not alone.
- We are waiting for permission. We have parts who believe we cannot live life without others. We have parts who don’t understand we are empowered adults who can take whatever action necessary to move our lives forward, to stop our traumatic patterns. We have parts who are waiting for somebody to come along and tell us we can start living. We want another person to give us their approval, to give us the green light. But there is no such person. They aren’t there. Our lives start when we give ourselves permission to start it, to take those empowered steps forward.
- We are waiting for perfection. We have parts who are waiting to be good enough. By good enough, I mean perfect. We have spent our lives being told we are worthless and the people who succeed in life are perfect. Even our abusers were perfect. We were always the problem. We can never have a good life because we are the problem. And so many of our experiences have confirmed this. We have consistently brought people and situations into our lives who continue our childhood patterns. But we have never been the problem. Our abusers were the problem. And now our unconscious beliefs are manifesting and we have to break that pattern. Until we can begin to see ourselves as worthy of a good life, we can’t get started.
- We are waiting for peace. Peace means a lot of things to a lot of parts. It could mean isolation. It could mean internal calm. It could be meeting our goals, finding our calling or seeing our purpose manifest in our lives. It could mean winning a million dollars in the lottery or not having a care in the world. It could be going off grid or living on an island. But when we consider these things to be a predecessor to starting life, it will become another reason we are waiting to take the next step. We might be stuck waiting for that miraculous manifestation to bring peace to our world. But life doesn’t work like that. We have to seek it out. We have to take steps toward it. And it will take time to get there.
We are all getting older as we wait to start life. But on the other side of the two-way mirror, our life is waiting for us to join. We have to take the time to examine what we are waiting for. We have to explore how our unconscious patterns are keeping us stuck through old beliefs and understandings of the world. So ask yourself what you are waiting for. What must happen before you will take an empowered step toward what you want? And why are you giving your power over to it? Ask these questions because it is time to stop waiting.
The Controller’s Power
I have been on this recovery journey for a while now. I have tried many approaches over the years. But for the past 10 years, I have taken myself to new unconscious depths and traveled through a world I had no idea existed. It has been painful and educational and scary and amazing. I have discovered so much about who I am. I am helping others discover who they are. Even with all this work, I found myself in a very familiar place during the past two weeks. But I forgot it was familiar … again. I decided to bring you my story so you don’t miss the signs when it happens to you. But let’s be honest. You probably will because we all miss the signs. And that’s okay.
Two weeks ago, I experienced a physical and energetic shift. This happens often with this work. Our memories are stored in the body. The body must let them go if they are to be released. Most of these releases are minor. Many are barely noticeable. These shifts can happen almost anywhere in my body from my hip to my arm. They feel like a muscle is slightly letting go with some energetic movement afterwards. I usually brace myself for the emotions and flashbacks that follow. But I knew I was in trouble the minute I felt this one. Why? It was in my heart.
I was not wrong to be concerned. The following day was okay, but by the weekend it was ugly. I was hit with one of the most intense bouts with futility I have had in a long time. I knew what caused it. I knew there was probably a memory associated with it. I knew it was not about right now, but I could barely function. I wrote and wrote and wrote and somehow pulled myself through. But none of my plans came to fruition. My controller was not happy. So they took over. This is where things got really ugly.
The controller started in their normal way. They numbed me out, but not too much because they know I notice these things. They turned up my mind to manic level, making lists and planning for the worse. They increased the worrying and self criticism, making sure my focus was on nonexistent financial problems and what-if scenarios. They shifted my sleeping patterns so I was getting about half of my normal sleep. And they stopped me from going to the gym. They knew better than to let my body move. They played their recovery mind games too. Suddenly I was convinced I was done with memory recovery. I thought the end of recovery was upon me. By the end of the week, my productivity was at about 50% of its normal level.
And I didn’t see it … until I saw it.
This weekend, I saw the patterns. I pulled back hard on the thinking and took some time to rest. I realized I had been completely inundated with defenses without knowing it. Yes. Me. The coach who teaches others how to recognize their defenses was completely blindsided. My controller got me. And they stole a week I won’t get back. So I want to bring these key signs to you today. Here is what to look for in your journey to find your defenses. Here is what the controller will do to avoid recovery.
- They will numb you and convince you it is so much better this way. Why feel when you can be numb?
- They will turn your mind into a chaotic, manic mess. They will inundate you with lists, hyper-vigilant planning and obsessive thinking about the past.
- They will remove sleep, rest and free time by overwhelming you with all the things that must be done instead.
- They will ensure you do not move your body in any significant way. If you exercise regularly, it will suddenly be reduced without explanation.
- They will convince you there is nothing to see in your recovery even when you are pretty sure that can’t be true.
Take it from me. These are signs that your system is locking down, putting up walls and preparing for a nuclear winter. There is something below the surface. There is something brewing. I am sure your controller has kept you from taking in this information, but read it several times, print it and watch for the signs. Will you still fall for it? Yes. You absolutely will. But armed with this bit of conscious information, you will lose less time wrapped up in your defenses. And knowing I can help you with that makes me feel better about my lost week.
Family First
This weekend I joined the billions who obsessed over the royal wedding. Maybe I didn’t obsess, but I definitely watched it. And I am not ashamed of that. My love seeker was a little disappointed that she won’t be marrying Harry. But otherwise, I could not have been more happy with the event and the changes it implies. Honestly, it was a nice distraction from the chaotic and unstable world around us right now. It was nice to see a bit of fairy tale amidst the yuck.
My interest in the wedding did not get past Facebook. My feed did what it normally does. All I had to do was click on one article about the wedding and suddenly, EVERYTHING in my feed was about the wedding. I have to admit, it was overkill. But this is Facebook. This is how it works. As I scrolled through hundreds of wedding posts, I did get drawn in to one article. It was an article about Meghan’s half brother and his attacks. It included a letter he wrote to Prince Harry warning him not to marry her. I guess you have to be pretty bold or stupid to write a letter to the royal family attempting to educate them about their romantic choices. And I am sure the royal family is used to that kind of nonsense. I only read the first paragraph before I had enough. I really don’t have any interest in that kind of betrayal. But for some reason, I skipped to the end. That is when the trigger came. I felt the anger build as I saw two words.
Family First
I immediately closed the site. I was furious. This phrase is the basis for the majority of the familial abuse on the planet. Abusers rely on the pressures behind “family first” to justify all of their mistreatment and transgressions. Let’s talk about what these two small words do to our psyches, society and the planet as a whole.
“Family first” invalidates anger. When society uses “family first” as a mantra, it teaches everyone that being angry at family members for their treatment is not acceptable. We learn that all family wrongdoing is to be ignored or forgiven for the sake of family. This encourages the acceptance of poor treatment, even abuse. It also negates our ability to be angry at other poor treatment. If it is acceptable within the family, it becomes acceptable in the rest of the world. This is how our trauma patterns are formed. And with our anger held at bay, there is not a catalyst to change those patterns.
“Family first” traps us in a small life. Society teaches us that family matters more than anything else. And this gets translated to mean our dreams and ultimate purpose matter less. We might understand that our life needs to stay small in support of our family. It might even mean that our life can be no bigger or bolder than our other family members. We can’t become who we are meant to be. This traps us in a small life and builds inner resentment over all the amazing things we had hoped to accomplish. And when this happens on a global scale, it makes the world a less amazing place.
“Family first” keeps us in the past. If we have to honor our family patterns, this means we can’t let go of them. We have to perpetuate them in our daily lives. This means we cannot grow out of patterns that don’t suit us in adulthood. We might feel destined to be people-pleasers. We might feel destined to be bullied and abused. We can’t live life from an empowered perspective because we have to honor the disempowered role we served in the family. To break free of this role in society, we have to recognize how wrong it was in our families. We have to put the blame where it belongs. And “family first” tells us that’s not allowed.
The next time you hear someone shouting about “family first”, look for the abuses they are trying to justify. It probably won’t be hard to spot. They may be using it to invalidate emotions or expression. They might be using it to keep another from realizing their dreams. But I guarantee it isn’t meant in a loving way. Loving families don’t need to remind each other to put family first. If family is loving and respectful, we would gladly elevate them to the role they are worthy of. And they would never try to hold us back. Those are families who are meant to be first.
Bringing in the New
Most of us have been on this journey for a long time. We have been searching for peace and healing for years. We have sought out the answers to our pain for years. We would most certainly call ourselves seekers. We are driven by something deep inside that won’t leave us alone. Even when we spend time in denial, we always come back. But the resistance to our journey is strong and coming from all directions. Society tells us to plan for the future, to ignore the past, to be as productive as possible, and to pretend we are fine, even perfect. Our family wants us to stay in denial and keep the secrets. Our friends wonder why we won’t stop thinking and talking about the past. All of these pressures can set us back on our journey.
But society has the wrong idea. We think we can leave the past behind by ignoring it, denying it and focusing on the future. But we cannot create what we want this way. It is like building a house of cards in an earthquake zone. It is only a matter of time before our past patterns, cycles, beliefs and emotions come rising up and shake everything to the ground. We cannot build a new life on this shaky foundation. We must dig deep and unearth the unconscious residue from our traumatic past. We must pull it up and out. Until that happens, we are not making a new life for ourselves. There is no room for it. The space to manifest is already full. And it is manifesting what we don’t want. To bring in the new, we must let go of the old. But what does it mean to let go of the old? Here are some examples I have found in my own life.
Letting Go of the Savior. If we grew up with childhood trauma, we almost always have inner children hoping for a savior. This savior might be modeled after someone who existed in real life or an imaginary person. But these hopes sit in our unconscious and drive most of what we do. They tell us things like, “Don’t be too successful or our savior might not feel the need to come.” Inner children are very opposed to the idea that we can save ourselves. They don’t understand we have an adult self now and can actually make empowered change in our lives. And if they are too strong in our unconscious, they might have us convinced we cannot save ourselves. They live in a state of helplessness and hopelessness. We must come to understand this as an emotional flashback so we can live our lives without the constant search for a savior.
Letting Go of the Parental Relationship. I am going to start by saying this isn’t always necessary in the most literal sense. We might not need to completely let go of the parental relationship to bring in the new. But I will guarantee we need to let go of the dysfunction and lack of boundaries. Parents will likely fight us on this, but this needs to be done for us to manifest our best life. These parental relationships in their current form are clouding our energy. We have contracts with them left over from childhood. These contracts might obligate us to take care of our parents’ emotional or physical needs. These contracts might obligate us to take part in their traditions. They may even obligate us to financially support our parents. These contracts are upheld by guilt and societal duty, but they are not in our best interest. These contracts mean we are not free. We are slaves to our past relationships. And new, more fulfilling relationships cannot enter our space while we uphold these contracts with our parents.
Letting Go of Dead People. This concept might be a stretch for you. I get that. Depending on your beliefs, this may or may not resonate with you. And feel free to take it or leave it. But for me, I have sensed some aspects of my energy being held up by dead people. My ancestors are most certainly hanging around and I used to think this was a good thing. I do believe we transmute and transform energy for the generations before us as we heal ourselves. And when we are on a deep healing path, this might give us quite a bit of spiritual company. It might feel comforting for a while. But I am starting to realize there is a point in this journey where I have to send them away. As long as my traumatic past is living in my energy, I am not completely free to bring in the new. But there is one significant dead person who I am particularly focused on at the moment: my ex-husband and children’s father. He needs to go. I have recently realized I have spent the past 7 years married to a ghost. He is deeply and energetically tied into my needs for a savior. And on some very unconscious level, my inner children were still expecting a return. But a return would only give me a heart attack. My adult self sincerely doesn’t want that for a couple of reasons. 1) He’s dead. 2) He’s deeply traumatized. So I have to let go of that relationship in my conscious mind, my unconscious mind and on a cellular level. There is nothing left to gain from continuing to hold on. It is time to bring in the new.
So in this time of bringing in the new (yes this is the time), check in with what you are holding on to from the past. It might be something glaring and obvious. It might make logical sense and it might not. It might be something so obscure you have to search through the depths of your unconscious. But if you aren’t manifesting what you want in life, there is something blocking it. Find it. It is your life and you get to remove anything that is not serving you. You get to say what stays and what goes. This is your time to grieve and let go of the past. This is your time to live your new life.
Dear Mother
Mother’s Day is here again. This will be my 7th Mother’s Day without a mother. That isn’t true, is it? It has been 7 years since I cut you off. But I never really had a mother. This year, I want to do something for you. I’m not giving you a gift. I haven’t done that in ages. And I am sure you will use this Mother’s Day to play the victim to the world, telling everyone how your mean daughter cut you off from your grandchildren. Maybe this opportunity is a gift from me. You get another reason to play the victim. Lucky you!
This year, I want to give you something practical. I want to help you with your unconscious narrative. I know it has been so hard to keep that story going when you have a daughter who blasts your behavior all over the internet. I know that must be so hard for you. But I am sure you are managing. Honestly, I know you don’t read this stuff. Your defenses would never be able to withstand it. But you have an extra hard job covering up your abuses. And your story must be feeling a bit like Swiss cheese these days. So here goes:
I know it’s hard to justify the times you traded me to those babysitters and swim coaches. But you can let people know that you were just trying to give me the life you never had. It wasn’t the same as when my dad trafficked me. He made real money. You can tell folks that it was much more important that I get the opportunity to swim than to feel safe in my own body. You can let them know that swimming mattered so much to me and you couldn’t find the money to pay for it. There were just too many of your own shopping trips adding up on the credit cards. So you let me have my dream. Isn’t that a great thing?
It must be so difficult to explain how you held me down while I was raped by my stepfather. I know you wanted that pristine reputation that so many abusive mothers want. You know the one: that you had no idea what was happening behind those closed doors? You blew your cover that day because I fought back and you had to get involved. You were pissed too. I could tell. But there’s always a way to justify it. You could just let people know you were forced. You could just let them know you had to do it or your husband would have raped or beat you. It was a sacrifice you had to make to keep yourself safe. You were the victim. It doesn’t matter if it’s the truth right? What matters is your story. You really need that story to be believable, right?
It must be so difficult for you to deal with the sexual abuse. I mean really. That’s supposed to be what men do to little girls. Women are innocent. Women never hurt children. Women would never sexually abuse their children. But you can just tell people you were trying to teach me. You were just a woman teaching her daughter how the female body works. Isn’t that what you told me? That should work for everyone else, right?
I know it is complicated to explain why you stayed married to a violent pedophile for all those years. He beat us. He raped us. But you stayed. You kept us in the direct line of fire while encouraging and enabling his behavior. But you could say society gave you no choice. You could tell people you could not have financially survived on your own. You could just say that this is what women and children have to put up with from men. It is just how life works. That is what you told me, so that should work, right? Just blame it on society. That way, you don’t have to make any difficult choices. You don’t have to be responsible for your actions.
I am sure it is so challenging to face your physical and emotional abuse of your own daughter. Coming to terms with how you manipulated and neglected me must be so difficult for you. When you used to hit me so hard with the hairbrush that it left marks, it was just spanking, right? When you destroyed and threw away my most beloved toy, that was just a normal punishment for a young child. I am sure it was. When you left me for the entire day with no food so you could go to the mall, it was something all mothers do when they need a break. Right? How could these things really be that bad? I was just a rotten kid. Maybe you can just tell them I was a rotten kid. Who am I kidding? You already have.
I know these things are tough to explain away. It is hard to keep up the lies in your own head, let alone with others. And I know it is so hard to keep track of what you tell each person. It must be so confusing. So I hope these suggestions will help you get back on track with your narrative. I am sure you will continue to perfect it. I know your stories about the horrible child I was will get better and more elaborate. And the more your grandchildren thrive without you, the more your story of victimization will grow amongst all your acquaintances. Who am I kidding? You will be just fine.
