• Home Run

    • June 6, 2011 10:31 am

    Dearest Readers,

    A cousin of mine recently dug up some old home movies and sent a DVD copy my way. My immediate family didn’t have a video camera so I haven’t ever seen any live footage of myself from my childhood. Pictures, yes. Moving pictures, no.

    So there I was, no longer a child but not yet a teenager, captured on video and suddenly brought to life on the computer screen. All I’ve ever had of those days are memories that play out in the recesses of my mind. Now they were before me, vivid and tangible. The year was 1983.

    The clip I saw was a family baseball game at my grandparents farm.  After the novelty wore off (seeing the past come to life is pretty cool) I found the footage difficult to watch. There before me was the girl I used to be. And it wasn’t pretty.

    I pushed my youngest sister aside when she tried to help me play catcher. I refused my other young sister’s pitches because they weren’t up to my standards. I yelled at the other players to run faster. I vied for attention when hit by a ball. All in all, it was rather excruciating.

    My immediate response was to go into shame. What a bad kid I was. What a bully. What a bossy pants. What a self-absorbed sore-loser. Look how I ruined the game for everyone!

    This has been a pattern in my life. Beating myself up. The sick pleasure it provides is quite baffling but it makes some sense. The inner perfectionist gets to say, “See? You are no good after all.” Painful but understandable. The wounded wound. The hurt hurt.

    Being on the Healing Path means I must be willing to change that pattern of thinking. I don’t get to indulge in self-brutality. I need to flip it. I need to change the behaviour.

    That night I wrote in my journal: “Could I have mercy on that little girl? Could I love her with all of my heart? She was doing her best. She didn’t have emotional tools. She didn’t have real living skills. She’d experienced sexual trauma only a few short years before. It was not her fault she behaved that way. Those were her survival mechanisms. She was who she was at that time. Love her. Forgive her. Accept her. Be gentle with her.”

    And this is what I must do.

    The most amazing part about the healing process is finding out that there is still more to heal. This amazes me! I’ve done so much work! How can I still be holding myself hostage for my past behaviour?

    I believe it is because we, as humans, are the walking wounded. No matter what our individual wounding is we carry it with us all our lives. And we heal by degrees. We heal in layers. One comes off and another one lies beneath.

    This can feel discouraging but, in fact, it is the opposite. It encourages me to remember I am not perfect and I’m not expected to do any of this perfectly. I simply have to do it degree by degree, layer by layer, one step at a time.

    Now that’s worth watching.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: I will continue to forgive myself. For who I am today, for who I was yesterday and for who I will become tomorrow. I will say it now, “I forgive you for being human.”

    A Clean Page

    • August 17, 2010 11:09 am

    Dearest Readers,

    The other day I heard someone use a great metaphor for the trap of negative thinking. Imagine a clean, white piece of paper. Imagine a black dot is then printed on the page. What do you stare at?

    Sometimes I find myself staring at that black dot when all around me is purity and light. I just can’t take my focus off the blemish.

    Recently I did a performance of a spoken-word piece for a public audience and I asked a friend to record it for me so I could either post it on the website or on YouTube. A couple of days later I showed it to some friends who had been unable to see the piece live.

    After watching the clip I said, “Now that I hear it played back I realize that my delivery was too slow. When I’ve done it in the past it’s been much faster.”

    One friend agreed. “It needs to move along,” he said. The other friend didn’t think so. “I liked it,” she said. “I need to hear the words so I can process what I’m listening to.”

    Aside from the fact that this proves we performers can never please everyone, I became suddenly aware that I was again focusing on the black dot. I didn’t see what I had done, only what I hadn’t.

    This was not a profound revelation. I’ve been working on this for some time. The good news is that even though I focused on the black dot I didn’t beat the living daylights out of myself for what I’d done “wrong”. I simply observed it and committed to doing it differently next time.

    This is progress and progress is something to celebrate. It is vital to recognize these little victories in our lives as we move more and more into the White Space of self-forgiveness.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: Am I too focused on the “black dots” in my life? Today I will shift my vision away from the blemishes and concentrate instead on Progress and Positivity.