The following lines came into my mind a moment ago :
Slowly I turned away from the hurting place and sought the warmth of life and light and love..
It seemed to me, as I said them, that I felt my heart open with a longing to make the very best of things and let the past pain go as much a possible, no longer allowing it to filter out into new relationships… I had a week where someone confronted me with my capacity to hurt them with my hurt.. It made me do a double take.. I thought of the sense of injury that some of us can carry and even discussed the issue with my spiritual friend, Philippa this week… when we have been hurt by life its hard not to live subsumed inside the wound or the hurt, or a negative projected world view, and we can then forget that the wound is not the whole of us and injury is not always inevitable, that there really is goodness, light, love and warmth in the world.
Someone recently commented on a post of mine that they saw deeply my brokenness, a brokenness that could be healed by God. But if God lives anywhere inside of our hearts it is as an active open warmth of love and healing is found within through a tender relationship with our selves. The healing is the empathy and self compassion show to ourselves through holding what ever wounds we do have in love and realising too, at depth, that it was the ability to hope and long for love which means we can at some level not be completely eclipsed destroyed or shattered by the wounds we carry.
However there is also, for some of us, the deepest of deep alone place we travelled to or experienced in our families, in the world, or in our experience with a partner who wounded us more and in those later relationship attempts our ghosts, and injuries and hurting places sometimes dog us…by bringing to us repeats that we must learn to master, gain insight into and overcome in order to turn our lives more towards the light.
I have a lovely book called Dont Sweat The Small Stuff : And It’s All Small Stuff that I was reading this week and in it he discusses how to grow love through expressing appreciation, looking for the good in others, rather than the flaw, and most of all focusing on what we DO have, rather than longing for what we don’t. It seems especially good advice in this driven ‘never enough’ culture.
I am remembering as I write this that one thing people with avoidant attachment do is look for the ‘worm in the apple’, the book I am referring back to was one recommended by a fellow blogger on attachment styles and relationships and I just went to look for it but cannot find it.. In it, the authors help those of us with attachment wounds to recognise when avoidance may keep us pushing away healthy love. That said, the capacity to truly know and love ourselves at depth and to have and feel safe setting good boundaries really are the core blessings coming out of past woundedness that enable us to live with more happiness and joy, more grounded in our present than swirled about in our past.
Today I am happy I was able to set a boundary with someone this week and even when they got angry about it hold my ground.. My therapist said she was impressed that I was no longer negating myself as much and giving myself away.. I often collapse under pressure from more aggressive people, because as the youngest I was so often over ridden and over powered by those with strong wills. So often I was JUST NOT SEEN AND MY WANTS DID NOT MATTER, so that is how I learned to treat myself..so so sad that I ended up thinking I was of so little value and that I didn’t deserve good things in my life and could not trust my instincts…
Today I was sharing with Kat (my therapist) how lately I am trusting and getting much stronger signals from my gut as to the way to go or what is hurting me.. when I do something that causes discomfort or am asked to do something that makes me feel uncomfortable or does not sit right I am learning not to over ride that gut impulse… for it is usually spot on…. and when I deny it, things only end up coming badly unstuck and I lose power and energy…God how long has it taken me in life to learn this lesson and that my feelings needs, wants and instincts make sense and have value.. so so many years.
Light seems to come when I know myself and trust myself and allow myself to live, aware of the wounds but seeing them as a source of insight that allowed me to become more compassionate, aware, non dualistic and conscious in my life..
Emerging From The Dark Night 