My father-in-law, Carl, is an interesting oppositional teacher. As you read in my last email about his passing, he could be abusive and challenging. In fact, as my husband met with the funeral home director, attorney, financial advisor, other family members, etc., he heard even more stories from everyone about what a pain-in-the-ass Carl was. It’s been such an outrageous experience that I had to joke, and I started calling it Carl’s “trail of asshole.”
I’m am sure you have known someone like Carl. Someone who didn’t heal (maybe didn’t know they could heal, didn’t have the resources, or just stubbornly refused to heal). Someone who took out all their unresolved hurt, anger, and fear on others around them.
As I also mentioned in that last email, I have a lot of empathy and compassion for why Carl didn’t heal. Carl had zero practical or cultural resources to heal when he was in his teens and twenties. But 90 years makes a big difference. We live in a radically different reality than Carl did growing up in the 1920s and 1930s.
Today we have an explosion of self-help resources, coaches, healers, mentors, therapists, therapeutic teachings, and methods for healing trauma.
Plus, we are better and smarter about the mind-body connection than we have ever been; we know that healing the body helps the mind and emotions, and healing thought and emotions helps the body.
Anything you want help with, you can have that help. You might get it on YouTube, through a book, an audio download or via a skype or phone session with a professional, but you can get it. It doesn’t mean it’s easy. Healing can be incredibly challenging. But it’s possible.
This means…
You can heal, it is possible for you to heal, you are supported to heal, and everyone and everything benefits if you heal.
We don’t have to continue the legacy of abuse. We are blessed to have the opportunity to heal and create a new legacy of love.
However, I’ve learned from my and my clients’ lives that knowing you can heal and having access to resources is not enough.The number one, most potent catalyst for healing is clarity and determination.
Everyone I know who has done powerful (and thorough) healing started with clarity and determination. I remember when a college friend told me that I would live with the curse of being raped for the rest of my life. Immediately, a voice within powerfully declared, “No, I won’t.” I was determined to heal.
One moment of clarity wasn’t enough. Later, I was reading about the cycle of physical and emotional abuse that gets perpetuated in families. A fierce voice spoke up and said, “I am the end of that cycle of abuse.”
As I watched my father self-destruct and try to take us with him, I had the clear realization that I never wanted my past to slowly poison me from the inside and corrupt my relationships. I knew that healing was an act of love for my friends and family.
And finally when I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel of my healing, I discovered spiritual awakening and realized that there was yet another phase of healing – freedom. In this phase of healing, I gave up the identity of someone who was wounded or abused, and embraced love and freedom in my body. I said YES to that. I have not looked back.
When you have clarity, the right resources and support can come to you – often in a magical way. You might type in the right search keywords, or you get a recommendation from a friend. The key is that when you have clarity you can recognize and receive the help that’s available to you. Then your clarity and determination will help you through the hard valleys of the healing process.
There’s nothing from your past that has to plague you, haunt you, influence you. Wounds become the filter through which most people, like Carl, view life, but it doesn’t have to be that way. When you have the courage to face the hurts inside and heal them, you claim power that you didn’t get to have in your past. You claim your life, your body, your relationships. You can experience a quality of love and freedom that neither Carl nor my own father could experience in their lifetimes.
So, get fierce; know you can do it; and know the support is out there. Even if you feel “fine enough,” I invite you into the next frontier of light, freedom, and love.
What is the next step in your healing journey? What old patterns and beliefs are you ready to liberate and surrender? How can you give yourself greater love and freedom? I’d love to hear your insights and reflections.
I support you unconditionally to embrace your full potential of love and freedom in this body, in this lifetime.
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