I guess I am not your typical abuse survivor. I still hurt from the turmoil that I have gone through, but I will not ever allow it to control me or change how I feel about me. Healing myself was ugly, hard work, but I did it.
I thought a long time about no longer allowing myself to be angry with this person. I still have an emotional response to the memory, but I chose to learn from where I had been in life. I understood both sides of the coin. The first step was learning and accepting that I did not have to allow those things to make me feel like I was the worst person on the planet. It is not easy to let these things go, by the way. Healing the wounds of the Soul is very dirty, very ugly, very personal, and of course, very hard work.
Yet, it is work that is well worth the effort because it helps us to grow into who we are meant to be. It takes time, patience and lots of acceptance of ourselves with all of our flaws. It is not for the faint of heart. Judging from the things that I have learned, I find that the only thing that is missing for a whole lot of people on this planet is NOT the balls to do anything, but rather the permission.
It seems kind of weird to think that we would need to permit ourselves to feel one way or another. We have been taught to turn the other cheek and “take it like a man,” and when we did, we just ended up getting hurt.
I was not meant to be someone’s target, but that is how they win – by our being so damned down on ourselves that eventually, the control that they have wielded for so long finally makes us sick enough in the soul to end our own pain. If I did not choose to let my abuser’s own sickness of the soul further permeate my soul, I would have probably done something very bad to myself, and would not have even tried to start my own healing practice (which, that is what I am in this lifetime – a Medicine Woman. My first client was me). Had I not decided to stop the ongoing recording that was his voice, and then eventually my own voice agreeing with him, I would not be here to tell anyone that there is another way of looking at what you have gone through.
I am not saying that you have to literally make amends with whoever it was who hurt you, but you can make amends with you, over what they did to you. You can heal yourself through meditation, art, journaling, through a whole lot of different things. You can go on to be everything you want to be, in your own life.
The reality is that we have all been through a whole lot. The thing about verbal or emotional abuse is that, whatever is being said, is not the truth.
This is the beauty of the other side of things, the part that, when we are in the throes of all the things that we need to escape, is that WE are who create ourselves. We are lucky when we are afforded with the chance to recreate ourselves after we have been what seems as though an eternal wounding. It only stays that way if you let it stay that way. This is one of those things that we are not taught. The sting from it all is not forever. You can create a new thought about it.
Creating new thoughts about anything at all is how this consciousness was created. We were all and each created in the image that is that of Love, not division. What abusers like to do is divide us from all that we know, and then eventually, from all that we are. They do not want us to be who we are – they need to create something that they can call their own. We, on the other hand, have the chance to create beauty from the excrement left by the abuse. It is the other side of the coin, really.
Sure, we can choose to think about our abusers as the pinata at a birthday party, but that just creates within us a negative energy like them. It is our downfall that we feel the need to convince our abusers that we are not the bad person that they have told us we are. It is not up to us to convince anyone else about who we are. We only need to be able to see ourselves as lovable and worthwhile.
Think about it. The thing that makes us all want to cry are the things that are said that hurt us. Okay fine. BUT, the thing that makes us crazy is our trying to convince anyone else who we are. If it is not the truth, it is not the truth, and no one can change that. Truth is truth, no matter what, no matter what anyone else has to say about you.
You went through what you went through for no other reason than that you loved someone else. It is okay to accept that you have come a very long way. You are no longer required to believe what you were told. You alone have walked the fire, barefoot and without anyone there to teach you how to not get burned.
The grass is not greener anywhere else. No one tells us about the messes that they make. They only point out the messes that we have had a hand in helping to create. When we stop thinking that the grass might be greener, that we could have done something different, this is when you would do well to remind yourself that grass does not grow in cement, but only up through the cracks which reveal the truth of the ground beneath it.
There are a lot of ways to think about being abused. One day, the only thought in your head will be that you survived it, and that the rest of the world can kiss your sweet okole.
Aloha!