It all brought you to here

We make so many different choices in life on any day.. Sometimes we think its the big choices that are important, like a change of lifestyle or career but I believe its the hundreds of little choices we make on any day that add to its quality.. Do we take that call? Do we choose to engage with that person? Do we react or detach? Do we hope or just allow? Do we take action and then let go, learning not to force a result and instead listen to the universe? And on top of this : How do we talk to ourselves and each other? Are we encouraging or disparaging, do we seek to build up or tear down? Can we look for the power we have in a given situation or do we choose to collapse?

Those of us raised to think we were not worthy or capable soon come to believe that.. we can allow the voices planted inside of us to rule us not knowing where they came from… Intergenerational stuff I believe is carried in this way.. I know my own Mum had to push push push to achieve what she did, at times she pushed things she needed to, at other times she pushed things that were better off left alone.. One of the reasons I detach or so often withdraw from others is when I sense this push, push, push energy.. I had so much pushed on me and downloaded into me in childhood I am still working to throw off.

This book by Henri Nouwen I am reading makes me realise how much a sense of value can be built up by the voices we hear and torn down in the same way… In the book he addresses how we many of us learn to deal with a lack of self value but looking outside of ourselves to others. It is only natural to do this as we are social animals… and maybe some of us carry a deeper need to be approved of and liked not only due to upbringing but to temperament as well.

Henri found it revelatory to read a portion of the bible in which God spoke to Jesus and told him how precious and beloved he was.. that voice of affirmation is something so many of us who struggle with self esteem need to work on.. I noticed lately my sense of energy increases with the degree of esteem I feel not only from within but by acting on my own values instead of staying in a more powerless victim position. With Pluto currently transiting my house of self value, the 5th this makes sense to me..

I heard internally the other day all the voices of devaluing imposed by my family when they chose to laugh at me and call me too sensitive and too dramatic chattering away inside of me… and I answered them with love… I know I had a willful energy as a child as that energy was sometimes squashed in my parents… I see the lion part of me that is related to courage and knowing and trusting my own heart, even as it was stomped on by others and I was told I was ‘too much’ of one thing and not enough of another..

That said I remember many years ago when I was foundering at the depth of my addiction and quit my secretarial job to find my way to my real self, my Mum giving me a book entitled You’ve Got What it Takes..I think at that point my Mum saw me struggling to believe in myself and have good self esteem and she tried her hardest to support me, sadly I was often pushing her off because in the past she had controlled me in other ways. I look on it all with more compassion now knowing that she did the best she could with her own blind spots and in later years she recognised how she scarred me by not being present so often due to her own history.. I am sure she would have changed it all if she could at that point and thankfully when I got sober she and I could talk about a lot… and she opened up to me about her own childhood which helped.

At times I was tough on her and I see that now especially in the final few weeks when my nephew wanted to come to visit and could not afford the airfare and she didn’t want to help… eventually he came and she got to meet his daughter but then Lyra had a seizure and everything escalated to the point of Mum falling… It took a lot of sessions in therapy to see that was not my fault, just the way our past collective familial trauma came to head.

Today I can speak to myself in love and also recognise the hosts of choices that have brought me to here.. Some were very unconscious, some were made in haste, some were the result of buried emotions, longings and fears I did not fully understand, some I regret but accept I cannot change..all of those brought me to here.. not entirely sure where I am going with this except to say that it give me more compassion for everyone.. we all stumble and fall, we all judge, we all make guesses, we all project, life when it comes down to it is complex.

I can only say that today I am glad to be alive for it… Being human I know I will fail and yet I wont, In other ways I may succeed according to another frame of reference.. its all perceptual really for now I just have to follow my heart and keep opening to life.. there is so much not under my control and so much that is…. for God knows life is complex and as long as we live, if we stay open to learn we will.