Tuesday, September 24, 2013
I had an experience equivalent to being struck by lightning today. It was fitting I was wearing my lightning bolt wristband. I wear it many days as a way of honoring the story of Thor.
Many times throughout my life I have noticed how some amazing gifts can ironically come to us through some of our deepest and darkest moments. Today it was as if that awareness was magnified a hundred fold.
I have been attending a class on forgiveness throughout this month. The class is offered at Pathways Health Crisis Resource Center here in Minneapolis. The class generally consists of approximately a dozen people. Today one of the participants had a persistent cough. It was so persistent in fact that many of the participants in the room gradually became more and more uncomfortable. Yet not a single person spoke up initially. Eventually the participant struggling with the cough left early. She was not asked to leave nor does it seem she intentionally left early due to any discomfort she may have perceived in others in attendance. As soon as she left the discomfort people were silently sitting with took center stage. Several people spoke of the discomfort and fear they felt not knowing if they were being perhaps exposed to something more serious that might ultimately impact their own health. Fear was in the room with us.
Something remarkable happened once the silence was broken and the pink elephant in the room was acknowledged. I began to realize just how much fear, anxiety and trepidation I had felt in the earliest years of my life when my mother began to suffer her schizophrenic breakdown. Sitting in a room with someone whose coughing left me wondering if something more serious were actually going on was a perfect trigger for this ancient anxiety I felt so early in my life. It is no wonder I spoke of being held hostage yesterday. Speaking in such terms is the best way to convey how I felt in my first years.
As my fellow participants shared their own internal state of being they felt earlier in the class I sat and did my best to simply breathe. I could do little else because the immensity of my realization was washing over me like a massive wave. I was appreciating just how deeply those early years of my life affected me. I was realizing how I felt like a hostage trapped in a scenario I could not have escaped even if I had wanted to because I was a mere very small child and thus did not have the resources or maturity to launch an escape. I was remembering in my body how energetically draining it felt to be present to my mother's breakdown as it began to unfold day after day, week after week, month after month. It is no wonder my life has been so out of balance for so long. This earliest and deepest trauma proved so energetically demanding to deal with that it devastated me inside. And throughout that unfolding drama developed the primary thought that has played out in my life for far too long: "I don't have enough".
I left the class today profoundly shaken but profoundly enlightened. In allowing myself to sit in the class and draw my complete attention to the depth of my discomfort and then also asking myself in a spirit of innocent curiosity just why I was having such an intense feeling of aversion I was able to pull open a window to the past and feel in my body just how anxiety provoking it felt to be me as a very small child. The memory of those many days of anxiety embedded in my own body came into my conscious awareness in a way it never previously had.
In the early days of writing my blog I disclosed my growing awareness of these feelings from the first years of my life. I expressed the thoughts and feelings in different ways including verbally with such expressions as "I wanted to run away many times". Looking back now with a greater ability to recover my memory of those first years I can articulate that my primary feelings were anxiety, dread and even sadness. Somehow at a very early age before I could easily form words I seem to have sensed my mother's health was beginning to spiral downward. And yet I could not even express my anxiety and fear in words. I was that young. And my psyche was that impressionable.
I still feel quite altered this evening as I compose this. I wanted to ensure I recounted the events of this morning soon thereafter while they remain crisp in my memory. The question that lies before me now is this: How do I proceed forward knowing and remembering what I have?
My ancient grief, sadness, anxiety and dread is now fully within my conscious awareness. I am doing my best to burn away the psychic dreck of the past. I am shedding a body armoring and interior pain I have carried for so long. Where it shall lead me I do not know.
Sweet dreams!
I had an experience equivalent to being struck by lightning today. It was fitting I was wearing my lightning bolt wristband. I wear it many days as a way of honoring the story of Thor.
Many times throughout my life I have noticed how some amazing gifts can ironically come to us through some of our deepest and darkest moments. Today it was as if that awareness was magnified a hundred fold.
I have been attending a class on forgiveness throughout this month. The class is offered at Pathways Health Crisis Resource Center here in Minneapolis. The class generally consists of approximately a dozen people. Today one of the participants had a persistent cough. It was so persistent in fact that many of the participants in the room gradually became more and more uncomfortable. Yet not a single person spoke up initially. Eventually the participant struggling with the cough left early. She was not asked to leave nor does it seem she intentionally left early due to any discomfort she may have perceived in others in attendance. As soon as she left the discomfort people were silently sitting with took center stage. Several people spoke of the discomfort and fear they felt not knowing if they were being perhaps exposed to something more serious that might ultimately impact their own health. Fear was in the room with us.
Something remarkable happened once the silence was broken and the pink elephant in the room was acknowledged. I began to realize just how much fear, anxiety and trepidation I had felt in the earliest years of my life when my mother began to suffer her schizophrenic breakdown. Sitting in a room with someone whose coughing left me wondering if something more serious were actually going on was a perfect trigger for this ancient anxiety I felt so early in my life. It is no wonder I spoke of being held hostage yesterday. Speaking in such terms is the best way to convey how I felt in my first years.
As my fellow participants shared their own internal state of being they felt earlier in the class I sat and did my best to simply breathe. I could do little else because the immensity of my realization was washing over me like a massive wave. I was appreciating just how deeply those early years of my life affected me. I was realizing how I felt like a hostage trapped in a scenario I could not have escaped even if I had wanted to because I was a mere very small child and thus did not have the resources or maturity to launch an escape. I was remembering in my body how energetically draining it felt to be present to my mother's breakdown as it began to unfold day after day, week after week, month after month. It is no wonder my life has been so out of balance for so long. This earliest and deepest trauma proved so energetically demanding to deal with that it devastated me inside. And throughout that unfolding drama developed the primary thought that has played out in my life for far too long: "I don't have enough".
I left the class today profoundly shaken but profoundly enlightened. In allowing myself to sit in the class and draw my complete attention to the depth of my discomfort and then also asking myself in a spirit of innocent curiosity just why I was having such an intense feeling of aversion I was able to pull open a window to the past and feel in my body just how anxiety provoking it felt to be me as a very small child. The memory of those many days of anxiety embedded in my own body came into my conscious awareness in a way it never previously had.
In the early days of writing my blog I disclosed my growing awareness of these feelings from the first years of my life. I expressed the thoughts and feelings in different ways including verbally with such expressions as "I wanted to run away many times". Looking back now with a greater ability to recover my memory of those first years I can articulate that my primary feelings were anxiety, dread and even sadness. Somehow at a very early age before I could easily form words I seem to have sensed my mother's health was beginning to spiral downward. And yet I could not even express my anxiety and fear in words. I was that young. And my psyche was that impressionable.
I still feel quite altered this evening as I compose this. I wanted to ensure I recounted the events of this morning soon thereafter while they remain crisp in my memory. The question that lies before me now is this: How do I proceed forward knowing and remembering what I have?
My ancient grief, sadness, anxiety and dread is now fully within my conscious awareness. I am doing my best to burn away the psychic dreck of the past. I am shedding a body armoring and interior pain I have carried for so long. Where it shall lead me I do not know.
Sweet dreams!
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