As a parent, I wanted to believe that I could protect my child. I wanted to believe that I could make her life better, happier and safer than mine. I wanted to believe that I could give her everything I felt I had missed out on in my own life. I wanted to believe I could do all of these things so I didn't have to be scared of all the bad and terrible and awful things that could potentially happen to her.
I wanted to believe that I had control.
And therein lies the problem. Because I hadn't faced my own pain, I couldn't bear the thought of hers, and in that way, I did the opposite of everything I dreamed of for her. I didn't arm her for the reality of life which includes potential pain because life...is...hard.
I didn't raise her to live a healthy life mentally, I subconsciously raised her to fear and avoid pain. And for that I am truly sorry. However, I also recognize that I was a hurting human and will always be a healing and imperfect human, and, in that way, I can show myself compassion for having endured 50 years of pain and yet having survived, by the grace of God and the support of an army of people He sent to keep me alive until I could rescue myself.
And my daughter, Kylee, not only was one of the army of people, she was the general. And while it would take me six years longer than her...
I have surrendered.
I surrendered to what is, not what the voices in my head tell me will keep me safe as they are only based on past pain, not healing and the acceptance I now have that bad things can and will happen in this life, and that's OK. Because no matter what bad and sad things happen, there are people who can help me through those times if only I will allow myself to receive their help and love and better yet, ask for it.
I no longer want to live within the safe confines that my brain makes me think I can have, but rather I want to live fully within my heart where I am able to experience love at its fullest, riskiest, and finest. Where I can see all the potential and the very best in others, and now also see all the potential and the best in myself.
I want to walk on the wild side of living and loving sharing my greatest fears and my deepest desires.
I want to walk bravely into an unknown future having no assurance whatsoever other than to know when I live with abandon is when I am authentically living as the me as I was created to be.
Last weekend, I was listening to a friend's playlist and heard the following song while I was on the treadmill and if I hadn't been, it would have stopped me in my tracks. When Nathan John Feuerstein, known by his initials NF, sings the words 30 years, instead use 50 years and it feels like it could be my song too.
The other day I was sharing a story with a friend, and she said, "You're so lucky." It didn't sit right with me, but at first, I wasn't sure why. I have nothing against luck, but this story I was sharing didn't come about because of luck.
I was raised to believe and wanted to believe that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. That was the easy way to think because if I considered myself good, I could believe that good things would happen to me. However, when bad things happened to me, I was left only to believe that I must be a bad person, and it was devastating, and almost deadly.
My memoir, Brave Enough To Be Bliss, shares the whole good, bad and very ugly story of my life. I invested my whole heart, soul and life's savings into it because there are so many hurting people in this world and I want them to know it simply doesn't have to be that way. But first it takes the acceptance of these facts and I have followed each with an excerpt from the book.
Life...is...hard. And yet, it doesn't have to be as hard as we make it.
"What if we lived in the present moment and experienced the joy, the mundane, and yes even the pain, as it came? One present moment at a time. And what if when the pain came, we didn’t try to dull it by doing things that hurt us even further, and instead we simply put that much time and energy into helping ourselves and each other through the pain by extending the understanding, care and physical presence that all humans long for? What if we took a step back from interacting with each other and made connecting with each other our life’s purpose? GB
Bad things will happen. And good things will happen too when we heal from the pain of the bad by being brave enough to face it and fully feel all of it.
"My name may still be Ginger Lee, but no longer will I live this life gingerly. I will not be offensive to God by playing small and silencing myself any longer. Instead, I am attempting to honor Him by having joy, sharing my dreams for the future, fully utilizing the talents bestowed upon me, listening to the nudges of the Holy Spirit, and writing this imperfectly human story of my life whether anyone chooses to read it or not." GB
Taking personal responsibility for our lives and the condition they are in is a must for healing along with self-compassion, self-awareness, self-reflection and a willingness to apologize as needed no matter how overdue. It is through this vulnerable exploration and acknowledgement that real and lasting change can happen.
"As much as I wanted to disbelieve the experts when it was something I feared, didn’t want to face, or thought I was some sort of exception to, there truly was nothing and no one outside of myself who could ever make me feel fully loved, whole and purposeful enough if I did not feel that way about myself. And the time I spent fruitlessly searching for an external source to give me the answer was generally wasted time, and often led to even more pain. Searching anywhere but within did not ultimately bring me what I was seeking. It sucked, as you will learn in the following pages, and I fought it for years. Knowingly and unknowingly, life and people did terrible things to me, and it was up to me to reverse the damage. It’s not fair, it’s just life." GB
Fear of pain leads to controlling behaviors and if left unchecked it will ruin or greatly limit the quality of all our relationships. Healing oneself is the greatest gift we can give our children regardless of their age. Apologies and forgiveness have no expiration dates.
"Certainly, if I had known then what I know now, I would have begun the healing journey BEFORE I had a child, not waited until she was so sad she wanted to die to finally figure myself out only in an effort to keep her alive. But instead of wanting her to have the healthiest mom, I wanted to try to be a perfect mom. As someone who was trying to be perfect, I could not self-reflect enough to even know how to be a better one. If I had instead wanted her to have the healthiest mom, even though I didn’t remember the rape, that was only one of the things I needed to heal from. I remembered the others; I was just too scared to face them because they were imperfect parts of me. If I had begun that healing work alone, I may have remembered the other earlier and given her the best chance for her parents to be happily married, providing her with a stable home. I would have exposed her to healthy extended family relationships even if that meant some of them couldn’t be present in her life if they were unwilling to become healthy. I would have been a better role model of a professional working mom. I would have felt confident enough to introduce her to spirituality which could have provided a firmer foundation for her to get through this hard life, and the list could go on and on.
"Certainly, I provided all of these things to some degree, but in my desire to be a nearly perfect parent focused on giving her everything and trying to protect her from any pain in life, I allowed fear to win and was only a fraction of what I could have been. And while I’m very glad she now has had six years with a healthier mom than she might have ever had if I hadn’t gotten brave enough to face the pain, she and I both deserved much more than that.
"This is not coming from a place of self-hatred, in fact it’s the opposite. If reading that makes you uncomfortable, that’s an opportunity for you to self-reflect on why that is. I was the best mom I could be at the time with what I knew, but that doesn’t change the fact that there were consequences to not knowing what I didn’t know. This is healthy self-reflection, and I am simply brave enough to be completely honest about it.
"I can see what I did well, and I can see what I didn’t, and look back with equal amounts of compassion and honesty about my behavior. I want to do that because without that ability to be honest with myself, I wouldn’t be able to learn and instead would continue to negatively impact my relationship with my daughter and others. There is no shame in acknowledging mistakes, the shame is when we try to hide them from ourselves or others." GB
A life lived only for and through other people, even one's children, will subconsciously pass along pain and keep a person stuck right where they are...in pain. Healing moves to a whole other level when you take full control of your own life and behavior.
"My life was spent fully enmeshed in other people’s lives so I could stay the hell away from my own. It was safer and nicer to be in their lives anyway. Mine felt anything but safe and nice, it was really quite a hateful place to be." GB
You cannot control anyone else, only yourself.
"Someone else’s behavior toward you or their lack of love and care for you is always about their unhealed hurts…yours is about what leads you to believe their behavior is about you." GB
I've never been strong at anything math related, so I said to a friend this morning that my life feels like it has come full circle. But in actuality, it has only moved 180 degrees which is the healthy place for it to be as 360 degrees would be right back where I started which was extremely unhealthy and I have no desire ever to return there. In this moment, I can truly say I am an imperfect human being and see that as a strength, not a weakness because it is real and honest. I don't need to try to be perfect to be loved, in fact, lived experience has now taught me that being authentically and vulnerably who I am is the only way I can actually be loved (for me, not the fake me) and ever truly receive love.
But all of this has happened, not because of luck, or friends or family or even God, although I did appreciate their love and support through the process. It all happened because I made the conscious and brave decision to fully surrender and take the reins of my own life. And therein lies HOPE.
Comentários