There is not one soul on earth that does not carry some baggage from their past. It seems to be part of our make-up that we go over past events where we feel shame, guilt, powerless. The more we simply do not go back and take a good look at some carcases, the more pain, gult, shame we will feel. Bottom line. We have to go back and figure out the why of it all. When we do, we have to keep in mind that we do what we do with the knowledge we have, at that time, for doing it. And, for a fact, nothing on earth that you do can undo it. The only thing you can do is name the why and let it go.
When I hit puberty, I hit a real snag in my life. I had spent my whole life, up until then, trying to be the best replacement child for the chid my mother lost, and the reason I was given to her. That was one heavy load I carried for a small child and on into my preteens. There was a great deal going on in the family, to say the least. An older man married a single near-middle-aged school marm. She wanted children. He had already had ten children. She married because she wanted children. He was 58 and she was 46. The older children of my father’s was as old as my mother. She got me when she was 46… and happens there was a surprise two and a half years later; a little boy born on her 48th birthday. The older step-siblings never called us their brother and sister; we were ‘Norma’s kids”. I was an ultimate people pleaser, mother pleaser. I tried my little heart out to be perfect, angel-perfect, and failed time and time again. Eventually, I gave up trying to please, about the time teenaged rebellion hit, and I simply , in a strange way, raised myself. I set my own curfews. I set my own boundaries. I separated from my parents (never caused them any trouble and was no bother) and neither leaned on them nor tried to win their love any more. I felt I could never be what they wanted so I was what I wanted. I was a good girl, don’t get me wrong. I was very strict with myself. And I spent a great deal of time trying to make up for my ‘imperfect-self’. I made a great many decisions I could have used a mother’s wisdom with. And, once I was married and away, I did exactly as my father said, “She made her bed bow let her lay in it!” And, lay in it I did until it was no longer bearable. It was when I left the kids dad and went to university, that my mother came to really know who I was and, finally, after all these years, told me how proud she was of me. I had not allowed her to say such before that. But I carried so much guilt that I spent years trying to understand myself and why I could not cry like most people, and why I was, still, at heart, a people pleaser.
But, through it all, came a strength, a courage, a sense of authentic self, and I give thanks for that blessed other and her love for me, that I nearly missed, all my life. I robbed us both of a close relationship. Our relationship became what it should have been all along.
But, there were those other decisions, and events and happenings, that could haunt my night and days, if I let them. I had to dig in and unearth a few and figure out the why of them. Once I did, I could let it go. Then I became the person I was always meant to be. And, I learned how courageous, how brave, I had always been. I learned about the Primal Wound. I learned where it showed up in my life, and how. I learned to forgive myself for not knowing. I learned to love myself enough to stay Present and keep things real.
3.9.22
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