Releasing & Building From The Past

When I was six years old I wanted to run away. I remember feeling isolated, cut off from the world I knew. When I was six years old I ran away from myself. I abandoned who I was and became what others wanted me to be. I remember feeling completely rejected by my family, they couldn’t see me. I grew blind to who I was and turned into the projections of who they “thought” I was supposed to be. It was then a cycle began; me not ever feeling good enough and endlessly trying to prove myself. “Can’t you see how amazing I am” “Can’t you see how brilliant I am?” Still I felt I was doing something “wrong”, “I must do more.” Never being validated as a child made me search for validation outside of myself. Smaller and smaller I began to feel. One day I faded completely. I was the “good little girl that didn’t back talk, who didn’t speak unless spoken to and wasn’t allowed to feel her emotions.” and still I wasn’t “good enough”. I ran away from all the things that make me who I am. I abandoned the qualities that I loved about myself and in return I began to nurture the qualities that I hated about myself. The voices telling me I wasn’t worthy, that I didn’t deserve to love or be loved grew louder with each passing day. The older I got, the more I was exposed to society and its standards of what a girl or a woman “should” be and the longer the list became. The more things I found in myself to hate. Endless comparing and consuming ensued, numbing the sadness and lack of love I felt for myself.

Trying to make others happy was how I felt loved, needed and useful. I thought that if I could make others happy then it would be reciprocated and maybe I would feel the joy I was giving and was craving to feel from another. I was the girl in high school making other people laugh. No one knew that inside I was suffering. I got good at pretending to hide how I was feeling, because I was made to believe that my feelings didn't matter, to ignore them. I used food and others company to fulfill the emptiness I felt inside from not being able to express my emotions in a healthy and direct manner. I became codependent on making others feel joy while neglecting myself. And while I was alone I ate and drank to numb and distract me from the excruciating loneliness I felt. It wasn’t until I began to search for myself, my joy and started producing my own happiness that I could feel the joy I was so desperately seeking from outside of myself.

Self love is so much more than getting massages, taking baths, exercising and eating healthy. It’s about going in search of who you were before the world told you who to be. It is not an easy path, it requires you to get radically honest with yourself and it makes you extremely uncomfortable. It makes you forgo your ego and to listen to the calling of your heart. When you’ve hidden from your heart for a majority of your life, it’s a lot like traveling a foreign land. It can be intimidating, but the experience alone will open your eyes to a whole new world. It will bring you back to the world that exists within you and from there you’re able to turn your inner world into your outer world. Your life becomes what you make of it. We can choose to allow our past to dictate our future and allow it to take the driver's seat or we can choose to use our past and build from it. When we build upon our roots we build a much sturdier foundation to grow from then if we neglect them and pretend they don't exist. Just as we want to nurture our future we must accept and love our past. Even when we do things we’re not proud of. When we look at our mistakes as a way to grow they become useful to create our future.

Moving on from our past can be uncomfortable. Our past is what is familiar, it’s comforting. There comes a point when we have to release the past in order for us to move forward. When we carry baggage from the past into the future it will enable our progress, we will constantly be referring to a time when we felt rejected or abandoned or not good enough and that could stop us from moving forward with a project or from following our hearts desires. We have to stop referring to our past and allowing it to dictate our decisions in the present moment. Life is a series of choices. We are always in between choices. The choices we decide to make either bring us closer to who we want to be, to the calling of our heart or they divert us by reminding us of the past. It is up to us to choose if we will listen to the fear of the past or if we will listen to the love of the present moment. We begin to release the fears of the past as we make choices in the present that align with love.