Reflections during my Woman Within training:
When I started the day, I totally thought the exercise had produced nothing of value for me. Likewise, immediately after my healing experience, I wasn’t sure if I had really gained anything. But as I integrated and reflected, I had a significant realization: the blocks I’d been fighting were self-created. That morning, I could not even visualize my “dungeon”–my blocks–and before I even had my chance to work on myself, I could envision not only my dungeon, but what’s in it: the abuse, the painful relationships, the losses, all the pain, locked inside and forgotten. Just remembering this started chipping away at the blocks, the self-imposed blocks, initially put in place to protect me, but eventually to keep me in my story. Those blocks protected me at one time, but only hinder me now.
Most people, at some point in their lives, are abused by another. Physical, sexual, emotional, or all 3–we all have our stories. The problem lies in the fact that many of us, then, never stop abusing ourselves. We carry on that abuse, long after the initial trauma is over. We remind ourselves how ugly we are, how our feelings don’t matter, how we are not worthy of love. We keep ourselves locked in our story and then wonder why we can’t escape, how to break up the blocks. Awareness is key.
We have so many choices in life and sadly we focus on the ones that don’t mean that much: what clothes to wear, what to make for dinner, what products to buy. We have so many trivial choices that we’re numbed by them, overwhelmed. What we often don’t realize is that we have the power to make bigger choices in life. Choices about the kind of life we want to have, the blocks that stand in our way, the story in which we reside. Often it seems as if these choices are made for us, by fate perhaps, or unkind others. But our story is told only by us. Others may influence our lives, but we control the story that guides us. When we give up our personal power to a story we don’t want, we create our own failures.
(10-13-12)