Making Peace with the Past

At Peace

I'd spent 17 years in America's mental health system, my history of trauma and abuse neglected and dismissed as unimportant. Yet it was only upon leaving this system that had denied my life experiences as having any impact on my life that I began to find healing and make peace with the past. I began to explore and understand the role of emotions in healing from the pain of the past and all that goes with it in human emotional pain and the physical response to cognitive distress. 


I knew I was making progress in my healing journey as I began to move from wanting and needing the  comfort of another and became able to finally sit with my own pain instead of striving to avoid it. 


Was this an easy thing to do?


Very simply...


Hell no. 


I was taught early on that my thoughts, feelings and choices were wrong and that to have an original thought or feeling of my own, to take any self initiated action would result in somehow being minimized and discredited, abused and left to understand that I was


unimportant.


So no; it was not easy to learn to sit with and face my past and the reality of what was my truth.


It was not easy to realize that no matter how hard I tried I could not create the perfect world today for myself where I was valuable and honored by striving to finally be accepted as good enough or that I had finally done something...anything...right enough.


It was not easy to fully face the reality that there was no 


quick fix


no magic pill 


to take away my pain


but that 

to heal from the loss of all that should have been and

that which will never be

is to embrace that which was

and is.

~


Today I Cried

~

Peace on Earth, Goodwill To All

When we as individuals are able to shift from holding the anger and hate of those who were the cause of our wounds is when we will begin to live in a world where there is truly peace on earth and goodwill toward all.

We will begin to heal the world as we learn to heal ourselves. 

Somewhere along the way I began to understand that there is a difference between holding those responsible for the way they have hurt me and continuing to blame them for the distress I experience today.

What happened is the past and there was a day I had a thunderbolt...

lightening

bells and

whistles moment....

where I realized that by hanging onto my anger instead of going through the pain

the sadness

the disbelief

the grief

the tears

of what I'd survived...

I was still giving my today 

to the those who took my yesterdays.

By continuing to perpetuate the anger

the blaming

the hatred

of those from my past

I was still giving them

my todays.

By continuing to tell the story about what happened to me....

I was avoiding the story about how what happened to me....

affected me.

It was in learning to recognize that in holding onto my justified anger about what happened to me in the past that I became stuck in it. 

It was in learning to experience my anger 

that I found freedom from it.

And this was the beginning of my learning to live in compassion 

for both them

and me.

Keep in mind that forgiving does not mean extending the same credit or opportunity to those who hurt me without remorse. 

But - this is where I set myself free from carrying the burden of the past that I carried...

day after day.

Year after year.

And this was the place where I began to understand that as we begin to become the change we want to see in the world 

that the world will begin to change.

Healing ourselves 

is how the world will heal. 

Namaste.

Happy holidays

May today we each understand that forgiveness is a gift that we give ourselves and is...

the beginning of peace on earth and goodwill to all. 

Always in compassion for your pain - and admiration of your courage.

Susan

Related....

Fighting Forgiveness Is a post about how I made forgiveness make sense in regards to some really senseless experiences.

A Walk in Compassion  This is a poem I wrote as I realized the power of compassion for myself and that in choosing to let go of the past - I was creating my future.

Making Peace with My Past A post about how I shifted from denying my past affected me to understanding what it took to heal from it.

Accepting Peace This was part of how I came to understand that in order to heal the world - I had to learn to heal myself. There are several links to other posts about the how behind my journey.


Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

   

I Will Never "Get Over It"

Peace is Possible

Along the path I have followed in my journey through to get out of the pain of a past complicated by trauma, I struggled to understand the how behind "making peace" with the past....

"Let go"

"Acceptance"

"Live in the now"

and my favorite (not)

"get over it".

Are all phrases that in the past had no meaning to me - other than to tell me that I was somehow doing this "recovery" thing

wrong.

Those who shared these pearls of wisdom did so with the best of intentions, I'm sure. But I had no internal understanding of "how" to "do" this.

Until I learned that to live in acceptance was very different than

"stuffing"

and

"avoiding"

the pain of the past that was stealing my "now" as I focussed on the resentments because I did not have the understanding of the role that

"grief"

played in this journey as I travelled that road to get from "there"

that "dark place"

to "here"

where I "live in the light"

and create the life I choose for myself each day.

And this, I have found, is the crux of finding "acceptance" in this healing journey...

To grieve 


what was


and that which will never be


to accept 


what is


and is not.

I will never "get over it"

in the sense that it will never affect me again.

But rather that it will no longer

consume me

the way it did when my entire purpose in life was to live in

"avoidance" of the pain.

Learning to Live Beyond "It"

Photo Credit

 

By learning to make peace with the past vs wishing I could change the past I found I could accept it as the past and learn to live beyond it. 


Paying Homage to the Past


Making Peace with the Past


I Will Never "Get Over It"







 Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

A Tale of Two Wolves

Photo Credit

Recently a friend on Facebook (thank you Sara! :)) shared this ancient tale of wisdom and I wanted to share it with you today...

An old Cherokee told his grandson, "My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, and truth." The boy thought about it, and asked, "Grandfather, which wolf wins?" The old man quietly replied, "The one you feed."

What we focus on is what we are experiencing in our lives.

What are you focused on today?

Reliving your pain?

Or fueling your future?

It is possible to shift from the telling and retelling of the story...

To using the story to find healing...

And make peace with the past.

From the archives...

"story"? Or "Story"?

And here's the Empowering Solutions radio program on "story" and using it to shift from the pain and prison of rumination to the peace and freedom of resolution. Click here to go there:)

I Held the Keys to My Freedom 

Anger and Acceptance 

Making Peace With the Past

Photo Credit

The Keys to the Magic Kingdom

The keys to the magic kingdom.

Thats what I thought I was looking for all those years that I struggled with "managing" the symptoms of post trauma stress like the unexpected anger or feelings of rage, the depression and mania as I swung from one extreme on the range of emotions to the other. There was no middle for me; it was all or nothing.

The social angst that I experienced if I left the safe cocoon of the little world I had created in my head and my home became incapacitating. The most basic of human interactions became unbearable. The nightmares required medication to sleep but did not provide relief or peace, only a chronic state of lethargy.

The noise in my head was at times unbearable to the point of not wanting to die but not knowing how to live beyond this. Dissociation once again became my saving grace and my best friend as I floated through life day after day, year after year.

Emotional swings became my common ground as I fluctuated from the depths of depression to the highs of rage or overexcitement. Guilt and shame permeated my being for not being able to control my behavior as I swung from one extreme to another.

The hyper-vigilance was "paranoia" and what others might have termed irrational fears or psychosis was the reality I lived in every day as I battled a war long ago over yet still raging in my head although forgotten and buried amidst the chaos of my mind.

I existed solely to orchestrate and control my life and my environment in a vain attempt to avoid further emotional or cognitive distress that would surely come if I didn't. My life was consumed with getting away from the past - at the expense of my future.

I didn't know what was "wrong" with me - yet ultimately what I discovered was there was nothing wrong with me at all but that I was experiencing a normal human reaction to "trauma".

I simply did not have enough information to make the choice to move beyond being a perpetual victim or to get past living in "survival" mode where symptoms are managed instead of the freedom to create the life of my choosing outside of the nightmare of "mental illness" aka PTS.

The keys to the magic kingdom.

Do not exist.

What I found is that the solution to healing from the past is first, not easy. In making this decision to begin to face my past, to grieve what was my truth...well, I knew there would be times that it was going to feel like a dark and lonely road.

I accepted that no one else could walk this part of my journey for me. That I would face the demons of the past one by one, standing my ground as I determined to come out of this battle a whole person no longer fragmented or tormented.

Second, this journey is not a "quick fix". There is no pill, no book, no therapist or doctor that could "fix" me. I spent years depending on others to provide me with the answers, believing that if we could tweak my prescriptions a bit here and a tad there that in time I would be "better". That if I could only get my therapist to "understand" then he/she would be able to provide me with the magic map that would lead me out of this dark place.

Yet by becoming dependent on things, circumstances and people (regardless of the certificate on the wall) outside of myself to provide me with my answers and offer my life direction and purpose, that I was forfeiting my own power and sacrificing my own potential in the quest to have someone or find some answer outside of myself that I knew would be "the answer".

As I depleted all other resources about me - my family, there were no friends to speak of as I could not tolerate the most common of social interactions, doctors, therapists, the emergency admissions to the psychiatric ward of the hospital that would give me only respite for a moment - but no relief - ...I came to the conclusion that I was down to one thing; one resource. Me.

I accepted that there was no-one that could put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

There was no pill that would make the nightmares and the noise in my head stop.

There was...me.

And I determined as I looked back on my journey to this place where I now stood and accepted that I was my resource. I was my solution.

I stopped fighting.

I stopped resisting.

I started learning how to walk this walk and knew deep within myself that I was going to make it. I didn't know how exactly but I knew there was more to life that what I had been living.

Within my own self, I slowly walked up to the edge of the mountain, tears running down my face. I spread my arms as I stepped to the edge and knew deep within my being that there would either be something there for me to stand on - or I would learn how to fly.

And I haven't looked back.

Thank you for dropping by and reading a bit of my story and the steps I took to begin to reclaim my life. Read more about me here and what this blog is about here.

Next post: Like the little engine that could...finding self empowered healing through the awareness that I could choose to change my thoughts and how this was the beginning of changing my life.

Photo credit/source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rammorrison/481677631/

There is no one to blame

A sobering thought I was contemplating....

Trauma/drama and dysfunction does not discriminate. There are no particular demographics. This is not a "boy" thing or a "girl" thing. Its not a thing where there is fault or blame although until a generation learns to change the way they view and engage with life we will pass this way of surviving/experiencing life to our children. It is by ending the desire to "blame" that perhaps we will end the perpetuating of the pain. Men blame women. Women blame men. Children blame parents. Parents blame children. When we all stop blaming and start doing our own work to heal our own pain  is perhaps when we will have healed enough to have healed the world. 

In others words...

Be the change.


When we stop blaming and start making others responsible for the things they do and say, establishing healthy boundaries and begin  communicating how their actions affected us instead of shaming and blaming them for how awful our life is today...


That, my friends....

Was a hard change to make.

I wanted revenge.

Justice.

I wanted to make them suffer the way they made me suffer.

The only thing with that?

Is that made me like them.

I know. 

It sucks.

Its hard.

It hurts.

And...

We are more powerful than we know....

The first step to tapping that power is letting go of believing we are still powerless. 

Letting go of the blame?

Meant I'd have no one to blame.

Get it?

To say it another way....

When I let go of the idea that something was "wrong" with me....

I had to  look at "ok then - well why am I so f*****d up?"

Of course!

Its my parents/husband/wife/kids/job/boss/therapist/the mailman, the milkman....I got fired, I was mugged, I was....

When there was no one to blame for why I was in such pain...

I had to go through the pain.

I could no longer avoid it. 

When I had no one else to blame...

I had to also become responsible.

What?

No - not responsible for what others have done that hurt me.

Responsible to learn how to deal with that hurt in a new way.

Learning how to let go of the childlike way of blame and hoping someone would rescue me, pay attention to me, understand me....

It became a truth that set me free...

Learning how to be responsible for myself to go through the pain instead of hanging onto it. 

(Deep breath here...)

I had to learn how to let go of the past...

that I could enjoy my today

and create my tomorrow. 



And the miracle?

Was that in learning to heal myself and "be the change" I wanted to see in the world?

I began to see things change in the world around me. 

Hard work; I get that and I'm feelin' it.

I'm right there with ya. 

You can do this. 

Be-come the creator of your own "best life". 

It is never too late. 

Always,

Susan:) 


Here are some other posts from the archives that talk a bit more about the how behind finding my healing and making it ok to let go of the past in order to begin creating my future. 

Fighting Forgiveness - the how behind finding the path to forgiveness and my new understanding that forgiveness was about me - not them. 

No Longer a Victim and Much More than a Survivor - an excerpt: This is the place where I give responsibility to those who let me down...and take responsibility for becoming the creator of my own "best" life.

Peace on Earth, Goodwill Toward Men an excerpt: And this was the place where I began to understand that as we begin to become the change we want to see in the world - that the world will begin to change.

It Wasn't Me. An excerpt: I was able to understand the difference between understanding that my past life experiences were the reason my life was f***ed up and...using my past as a reason why it is still f***ed up.

"story"? Or "Story"?  An excerpt: It was in shifting my Story to be about me, my anger at being violated, my power and my choice taken from me, to feel both the anger and the grief, to tell why this was important to me that I was able to move myself into, through and out of the healing process and give meaning to the backstory by telling MY story.


Leave your comments below ...

thanks for reading; please consider sharing:) 

 Go here to pre register for our first "empowerment bootcamp" this fall...then send me an email and tell me what it is that you are struggling with? What do you want to learn more about? You can email me at info@empowermentbootcamp.com


Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

  

Whoops! I did it again! Using Creativity...

Whoops! I did it again!

Well - sort of!

Finding creativity after a lifetime of "stuffing" anything about me that expressed my individuality or and sense of “self” has not been the easiest part of this journey (you can see my bio here). But - I have taken some steps to do that through a variety of mediums throughout my journey.

One of the first that I posted online was my storyboard. There are 5 collage cards and the interesting thing is that when I set out to do this activity, I had no plan in mind. Yet - when it was finished, I realized that I had told my story in this series. The first I titled "Disconnected".

The second in this series portrays how I felt in the midst of the worst of this part of my journey. "A Shadow" of who I might have been - but in hindsight...I see that also was only a shadow of all that I could - and will - become.

"Fragmented" is an expression of how I felt I had no defined sense of self; no "me" to speak of. This is during the time when I made the choice to take my journey into my own hands as I stepped to the top of the mountain, my arms open to what may come, trusting the process as I stepped off the edge. I was ready to do the "hard work"...the emotionally wrenching grieving of a life I would never know. Little did I know that this healing process would take me to the life I never knew that I could have.

Grieving...what was...and wasn't is the process that I have followed to find my way out of the legacy of hopeless and helplessness that comes so often with trauma of any kind. It was a time of finding the "how" behind learning to "let go" of all that I could not change in my past or control in my future. It was where I began to find the peace that passed all of my understanding. The joy of living that comes with living in the truth that set me free.

"I Am Free" exhibits the freedom I have found as I have followed this simple although not easy process to claim my right to exist, to breath, to stand tall. And it all began because I believed that I would "find something to stand on...or learn how to fly" ...I am now in flight:).

My post, "Was it worth it?" is where I posted one of my first "self portraits" as I began to use charcoal drawing to begin to learn how to express what I was feeling. I drew this portrait near the beginning of a new leg of my journey as I entered that place of willingness to step out of my shame and begin to claim my world, my life...as my own. This was that place within the process of my storyboard where I learned that it was safe...and I learned how to grieve the past and embrace rather than avoid the pain as my path to freedom from the darkness. This is what the "hard work" looked like for me...Today I cried...and was set free. This drawing is now in a frame on my wall where I am reminded each day of that sacred place where I found - and took - my freedom.

"Haiku" is my journey into poetry. This poem is the simplest and most beautiful description of the healing path that I have followed. Tears...wash the soul free.


I Believed is my version of the wonderful Patrick Overton poem that inspired me to keep moving forward when I thought I could not take one more step or endure one more moment of pain.


I have also done some writing of fiction based on my experiences as well as I have some non fiction things on the stove that are not quite ready to be served just yet:) And today...I wanted to post/share what I did yesterday with my iphone camara and the photo editing software on my mac. Nothing fancy schmancy - but it just goes to show that we all have some sort of creativity within us and it doesn’t have to be museum quality to qualify as “expressive”.

And, for me anyway, my creative expressions will typically connect me to whatever it is that I am focused on at the moment; whether I am consciously aware of it – or not. I can use my creative forms of expression to identify how I am feeling when I do not understand why I am being sullen, sad, irritable or even ecstatically happy. I can use my creative work to indicate and learn to identify an emotion or resolve a triggered situation that I cannot yet name.

So - yes; I guess I "did it again" as the story goes:) I used photo's to live in my now and build a bridge from my past pain to my present awareness and acceptance. 


What's the story behind these pics?

I have my story but you may have one too; what do you see when you look at these photos? What story from your own journey comes to your mind?

This is where your beginning may be. This is the story you might find a way to express today that will be your catalyst to finding your own freedom and creating your own new story.

And while we might hope and wish that doing this once or even twice might be the “end”…oftentimes each story takes us to the next and the next.

So how do I know I am done – or at least making some progress?

When my expression became less of pain and more of joy and peace and acceptance of what is instead of rumination over what never was or what “could” have been. When I could begin to sit with mine or another’s anguish instead of trying to “fix” things that are not broken but need only to be experienced and expressed. When my energy became my own, when I could claim my life power and create with intention my best day each day, even when it’s raining or storming around me. When I could think of the past…yet stay in the present.

It will be the truth that sets you free.

visit my photo album on facebook here...