Don't Look Back

"Don't look back, you are not going that way!" - Lucretia, when I left Maine, after Richard's Death

Somewhere in our very soul are scars, scabs, open wounds.  We all have them.  They belong to us.  They are as unique as we are.  We cannot compare them for what would break one may not be as deep a wounding to another.  Some, we have forgotten/denied.  Some we have kept picking at.  Some burst forth when we least expect it and becomes a scar upon a scar.  Some open again when we least expect it.  None of them, however, belong in our today, as gushing fresh wounds.  Most, if followed by, by forensic-type examination, lead us back to an original wound that was dealt in our childhood.  

As well, what hurts us, beyond the original wound, is like a weak bone in our body.  Each new situation, that might bring back the original pain, can recreate itself, layering the scar tissue, covering over the first situation, and giving it a new identity as we deal with 'another dang time'.  It is like having stubbed a toe and we limp along until it is almost better, then, sure enough, we bang that same danged toe and it hurts, we think, as bad as the first time.  We have a weak spot, that toe, and it is vulnerable and most likely to happen again, unless we take care, wrap it, cover it, keep a shoe on, do whatever we can to protect it so we can heal.  It might not ever be a perfect toe again, but it should get to where it is not 'sticking out like a sore thumb'.  We stop blaming the chair leg, the bed frame, the uneven sidewalk, the...well, you get it.  It heals.

How many of us cannot keep a tongue from checking out a hole where a tooth once was?  How many of us pick at scabs, dig at blackheads, squeeze pimples to get relief?  How many of us do the same of emotional wounds?  Memories, as you know, can either be remembered in a positive light, or a negative one.  We choose how to remember an event, any event.  We either put a wound in a shrine, or we heal it through learning a lesson, through coming to know how it matured us, by loving oneself better.  Some, as I said, immortalize a wound, until our very identity is encapsulated in that original hurt.  We can use it as an excuse, as a reason not to mature.  We are like a child with a security blanket, dragging those wounds on up into our adulthood, our elderhood.  We care for it and keep it alive and bleeding all over every new event that might happen, even though following events are no longer similar to the original.  It is a raggedy old thing but we have not given it up.  How then, do we stop such?

At some point, perhaps, an epiphany!  Perhaps we realize what we are doing to ourselves.  The people, place, thing becomes disempowered.  We create new boundaries for ourselves.  (I am not going there, again!)  WE take hold of our psyche/Ego/Lizard brain and stand up for ourselves in positive ways and work through that original wound, with its childhood perspectives and refuse to allow past things to have that power over us.

It is a cliché, but, one way to explain how we heal our 'Inner Child'.  Bit by bit, we look at those wounds, the new woundings that might be similar, or have similar outcomes, and we dig deep and look a long way back ( perhaps even doing a time line of woundings, and we begin to see how we drug that wound open time and time again, so that it has festered and we realize, we are doing it to ourselves, not a table leg, a bed frame...).  We learn to love ourselves better.  We love our soul.  We become tender towards it rather than tender to the wound(s).  We grieve for the original, we let it be at rest.

We might do that time line of hurts and then, cross the wounding out and replace it with whom we blamed, whom we resented, whom we criticized.  Whom, or whatever or wherever is, then, added, belongs in the past.  That person, place, or thing, is no longer who it wad, where it was, what it was back then.  Neither are we.  We are the ones keep them, there, that fresh.  We are not the vulnerability of that child.  We were hurt.  We were crucified.  We were sorrowful.  We were angry.  That is a given and we, if we are holding it like a dead child, need to let it be back in the time it belonged.  We mature.  We realize we rise in spite of it.  We give that Inner Child the right to heal.

When we realize we are reverting to a childhood reaction to new events, we stop battling the war that has been waged and waged and wounded us over and over again.  We begin to authenticate our emotional responses to new events.  We do the work to heal ourselves all along that timeline.  When you heal the first wound, we learn to take care and it begins to heal the following wounds.  Eventually, like mended bones, there is no longer a weakness there and we can react in Present ways.  We begin to recognize that we are healing.

We will begin to sleep better, to sleep more deeply, our midnight nightmares will dissipate.  We begin to recognize peace we may not have had for a long long time.  We are less moody.  We are less frantic.  We are less prone to making decisions that will lead us back to that wound.  We become aware of alternatives and consequences.  We will do anything not to go back there again.  

Suddenly, we feel empowered and things that used to frighten you, things you are resistant to try, people, places, things do not have power over you like they did.  You are no longer have childhood reactions to things.  You have better boundaries.  You do not let people, places, things, intimidate you because you are 'on a mission' to continue finding your authentic self.  You see adventure.  Your authentic passions for life and its mysteries returns.  You notice you have gained an inner strength that your soul has longed for.

Suddenly, you become aware that you are not disappointed in self or life.  You handle them better.  You even stop the fear of the new.  You are more positive than negative.  You stop needing others to validate this new you.  You no longer feel the Ego.  You stop worrying so much and use your energy to make your life the best it can be without worrying it too death.

Oh, you may have 'bad' days, but they will not be stuck on a wall of failures.  You will allow yourself to feel what you feel and you will know that relapse might be just a moment away and you refuse it to last.  You treat it differently than you might have before.  You are healing and you recognize it in the many areas of your life.  Fell it.  Deal with it, as it is not that original wound.  Let it go.

You will stop whatever you used for denial, for pain, for blocking.  You will become authentically YOU!  You will have a song in your heart rather than an old weary voice of the past nagging at you (Lizard Brain talk).   You (albeit slowly) will notice you are changing.  You will notice the grass is green. (Low level depression and on up, takes away the sense of surroundings and suddenly you are aware you have not been noticing it and you desire colors again.)  You begin to hold on to positives rather than negatives.  You could even make another timeline with all the wonderful, positive, emotional things on that time line.

Did I say it would be easy?  No, we might be used to the same old, same old, patterns in our lives.  But, I swear, by all that is holy, if you give it a try, your life will open up into a wonderful place (not a place without hurts, without sorrows, without losses, but you will handle them differently, this time).  You will have new purpose, new resiliency, new adventures you never thought you would be able to have.  You will step out into each new day with a new radiance of peace, of grace, of dignity.  

Be that sister-friends.  Let us be that!  Don't look back, you are not going that way!

©Carol Desjarlais 3.23.19