Journaling Perspectives

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.” ― Alphonse Karr, A Tour Round My Garden

Suddenly there was bright light and air and we knew pain and we knew breath.  That is how we arrived; naked and mewling.  We learned, we; lived, we loved, we lost, and somewhere in there we became ourselves as we are this moment.  Some simply step by step became.  Some of us tripped and stumbled our way to here.  Some of us took detours.  Some of us came to dead ends.  Some of us turned around and tried another way.  All of us made mistakes, have flaws, have experiences that shaped us both negatively and positively, and some of us changed what needed changing.  Most of us got lost along the way, surely; those moments when we gave our heads a shake and wondered who we really were/are.  Some of us rushed through life; some plodded.  But we all either let life pass us by while we were picking at prickles we got along the way, or we plucked them out immediately and continued on our way.  Some stopped and waited for someone else to fix us.  Some stopped and let things fester so we had a scar and limped onward in spite of ourselves.  But here we are!

How I see you, how you see yourself;  how I see myself, how you see me...ah, such different perspectives.  I have lived a lot of life as if I had a deep dark secret, a dark shadow side that no one should know about; I have hidden wounds and scars that I might hint at, that my actions might hint at, but I have shown few.  Not many people know me right to the core.  I am very selective because what I dislike about myself, I cannot let most know about.  No, I have not murdered anyone...anyone but my authentic self.  I have committed such crimes upon myself.  I spent many years looking at myself through other people's eyes ( yes, mother said, "What will others think?")
We all accomplished great things, at times were half-drown in our tears, were so angry we could spit nails, were so loving that we have had love returning tenfold.  We have all achieve miracles, betimes.  After all, we ARE miracles.  We all have had confidence when confidence was easy.  We have all lost our confidence, betimes.  We all began with great potential and our childhood was fraught with all kinds of hard things that we either overcame, or not.  We all went through puberty bursting at the seams with hormones.  We all mothered, if not our own, others, and some of us our own AND others.    We had goals and changed our goals.  We were assertive and passive.  No matter what, we are still here; surviving, most of us overcoming and most of us, thriving. We have looked at life from both sides now.  

Sometimes our judgments were colored by people around us, who meant well, perhaps, but nonetheless, we became what they supposed we should...and then we changed again, back to what we wanted to be.  We lost trust in ourselves and then we gained it again and again and again.  We always had something to prove.  Some of us merely went through the motions and then knew what motions to make and changed again.  Every year, we can look back, with new eyes, and see where we have been compared to where we are.  This then, is the ideal to finding a future.

Our challenge is to truly SEE, without rose colored glasses and without prejudice.  This is when our Inner Hero comes in.  These past few days I have been sorting through some past stuff that had nothing to do with me, but had everything to do with me.  I was hidden in a closer under a blanket, in the dark, to hide me from my father who was there to take me and my bother away from our mother.  That is why she sent me to live with others.  She wanted to keep me away from him.  As I sort, I realize being with either one of them would have been gruesome for me.  We know, now, that he became a drunk because of that incident.  He had walked away from his wife and his family of three sons and a daughter.  My mother left him to go back to an abusive husband.  It never worked either.  Our half siblings knew about my brother and I but had no wish to find us since they were so lost themselves.  This has been something huge I am working on, from my own past, but really, from theirs.  It, in no way, diminishes how I see myself today, how I feel about not having blood and bone in my life until this last decade and a half.  It does multiply my gratitude at being adopted by such a wonderful family to call my own.  Many of us, throw-away children, babies, youth, would go through this same self-identifying sorting, upon being found, or finding.  My perspective changes, in subtle ways, about them as I seek to find an even balance between the stories I am hearing from all sides of the families.  Sense of Identity has to do with pre-birth (in my case, pre-adoption) methinks.  I am finding it easier and easier to have a more wh9ole view of life, my life, as the stories come.  I am still here.  I am still me, today, right now, in this present moment.

I got to be someone other than I was born to be.  As new information comes, I sort through it and still find, here I am and I am here.  Somehow I got a new life, new purpose, new potentials, and new futures.  

Have you ever gone through something that deep and personal, that caused you to look, objectively, not emotionally, necessarily, at why you are who you are and who yo9u are because of something from the past?  There is some kind of peace at getting answers, even those you do not think might have been best?  Have you gone through an identification crises?  Those early moments of yours, did information come, stories be told, and you have seen yourself through different eyes?  Can you journal this ideology?  You can.  I know you can!

©Carol Desjarlais 9.17.19

P.S., my illustration seems to hold nothing of this to it, and yet, wait, it does.  Let me tell you, I wanted all the new DNA family stories to be good ones.  I was aware of many who have had very negative ones.  Until I connected the woman who is my half-niece and the negatives came pouring out.  I wanted something glamorous, some hero's tale, something beautiful.  I had to sort it out and this is what came through.  You simply cannot have everything you want.