I spent the better part of 25 years searching for a resolution. I truly did not like investing so much of my time mulling over the past.
Many years ago, I was in a training program in Los Angeles when one of the instructors said “It’s okay to look at your past, just don’t stare.”
The simplicity of that statement is very impactful. It hit home, yet it still didn’t resolve they discord I felt. Intellectually I understood, I had dysfunctional parents who continued to exhibit their abuses even after I became an adult and three siblings who were suffering from the effects as much as I was.
The difference was my brothers and sister ignored how they felt. They drank too much and got high too much and got angry and the little things in life to exhibit their frustration, but they would never talk about how they felt. In fact if you heard my sister talk about our upbringing her story is polar opposite of mine. You’d never believe we were raised in the same household or had the same parents.
Both of my brothers would literally shrug it off. “What’s done is done.” one would declare. The other would laugh and say “I’m okay with it.” The real problem was they passed their discord on to their children and their spouses.
I knew everyone had to process it in their own way, but I never understood why I literally could not let it go or shake it off or just move on with my life.
In hindsight, I can say it is because once I found resolution and discovered a peaceful centeredness within myself; I realized what I had been chasing all those years. It was through my healing I discovered the process of how to help others learn to let go of their past gracefully, while finding their own peace.
