Letting Go – Part 4 – Getting the Lesson
It's fascinating to me how unfinished business seems to come out of the ethers, demanding to be dealt with. I was chatting with Anita Cagle the other day about her son going off to college and her unreasonable angst around that. Tracking her feelings took her back to the same age as her son is now, to an incident that was loaded with anxiety that she thought she had squared away.
I've seen that phenomenon many times, as well as experienced it personally. When Rebecca was a teenager, I was hyper-alert for any signs of molestation. I knew I was over the top, but couldn't figure
out why. So I backtracked the feeling to a time as a teenager, when I was in the hospital having my tonsils removed. After my father left me for the night, a man with a lab coat came and said he had some pre-op tests to do, which required taking off my nightgown. It got worse from there. Back then, I went into mute-and-freeze mode, shoving the whole incident into a dark space in my mind.
The healing part of all this is going back, seeing how we made sense of an undesirable situation at that age, letting go of all the entangled mental junk that made the situation even worse – then looking at it from our current age, with compassion, and deciding how to go forward from this vantage point.
You can bet it was a life lesson.
Dear Ann, so brave of you to share your story. I have similar baggage that keeps appearing in my closet, after I thought I had packed it away so neatly. (Exhalation). I wish you peace of mind as you put the pieces together. Bless you. Love, Shannon
This is so so true, Ann. It is a great reminder for me as I notice how often I skirt over those feelings that if I gave them full attention would remind me of something ‘way back’. A new piece of Mind talk cropped up this week.
“He is challenging my intelligence”. HE wasn’t, I was reminded of something. I am still aiming to visit the past on this. The huge relief is that I can do it, and I know so well, the experience of coming to a peaceful, informed,loving and understanding place with an incident from my past.
Gratitude Ann for this opportunity you create for me to share your journey and share this support especially as I do not see you any more. Love, June
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