God, Love, Gratitude, and My Own Soul

My therapist told me that the reason I never stop trying to help people is that I keep hoping someone will help me. While she is absolutely right, there is more to the story, and it’s a funny thing, but not a laugh-out-loud sort of funny. My life has actually been filled with people who have helped me, but the help they each gave me was always accompanied by a great deal of pain. Here are some examples of who these folk were:

• The parents who were too deeply involved in their own pain to pay much attention to their children;
• The girl in first grade who kicked me in the shin and the sister who turned her back on me when I ran across the schoolyard to her, hoping for a hug and the drying of my tears;
• The brother who sometimes tells me that I am “always the smartest person in the room” but seldom takes seriously anything I say;
• The guy (a friend of my brother) who raped me when I was 15 and ALL the people in my life at that time who never made me feel safe enough to confide in any of them;
• The teachers and coworkers, friends, relatives, and husband who ogled me, sexually harassed me, or talked to others about my body as if it were any of their business to do so;
• The friends who abandoned me when I didn’t work hard enough to be who they wanted me to be;
• The church/religion that told me over and over and over that I was created not good enough and that every little mistake I made would be judged and likely have eternal consequences;
• The husband who almost always had more important things to do;
• The children who rightfully blame me for not meeting their emotional needs when I should have;
• And the in-laws, who—too afraid to have an honest conversation—could not reach out to me.

All of these people have helped me get to this moment in which I am better than I have ever been, and while it’s hard to read or hear things like: “You are responsible for everything that happens to you;” “You attract people and things that somehow fulfill a need;” “You get what you believe you deserve,”* I understand the truth in them. How? Because I bristle when I hear them. I try to find ways to make them not true. I hope that if I just forget about them they’ll never bother me again. But I cannot forget about them. In fact, these statements and others like them are the treasure I’ve worked my whole life to find, because they force me sit in the pain and discomfort of my emotions, to revisit the past, to figure out how I reached such a low point that I was afraid to leave the house by myself.**

So while I know that letting myself re-visit the pain and confusion necessarily involves allowing myself to express the anger and grief and sadness; I also know that I cannot stay in the anger and grief and sadness. That’s what I was doing before I got desperate enough to work at the healing. Back then, even though my body was trying hard to keep me from feeling my emotions—through health problems, allergies and food sensitivities, fears, anxiety, and depression—they were still controlling me.

So, life here and now is light years better than it ever was, and I will not compromise, capitulate, or kowtow to anybody who wants me to be someone I am not and was never meant to be. I don’t think that means I will end up alone. I have sufficient amounts of real hope, not trauma hope***, to believe that I will someday find the swan family**** I was always meant to be a part of, and I sincerely hope that includes most of those who people my life now—but that, ultimately, has more to do with them than with me.

I choose God. I choose Love. I choose Gratitude. I choose my own Soul. I hope you do the same.

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*Thank you, Louise Hay, for helping me heal my life.

**Thank you, Alice Miller, for allowing me to question what I was programmed to believe.

***Thank you, Gretchen Schmelzer for helping me understand the difference.

****Thank you, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, for giving me the stories.