How Important are you?
When looking around your world, where do you rate? Are you at the top of your list? If not, have you asked yourself why you are not important?
When looking at the world around you, are you like many who put everyone and everything before you consider yourself.
If you are, take a moment and ask yourself or better yet, look back over your life to see where and when you stopped being important. The answers may surprise you.
For a long time, I thought I became less important when I became ill. In looking back, I was able to observe it happened way before that. In observing my childhood, I saw so many instances where words and actions were used by those who I thought loved me, cared for me or were there to take care of me. Yet, as the adult observing those times, I can see where none of that was true. Truthfully, just being a girl in my family was looked down upon. Today, I see how all words, the categories and labels put me in a box, one I let fill up quickly with all the different categories they put me in, telling me, the child, who I was, which was a lot different than who I thought I was. It was then, I began to believe, I wasn't really important.
They had to be right, though…. they were the adults. At least that is what I told myself. Today, I know that to be incorrect.
As a child, a teen, I didn’t have the understanding, that I am not what others think of me.
Have you ever stopped to look at all the categories you have been labeled and how they have affected your life? In looking back, I was able to see where damage to my psyche began.
Here are just a few of my word that affected me:
Girl
Short
Vocal
Smart
Determined
While being a girl and being short, never changed, I saw and lived with them daily, not realizing how much they have affected choices made along the way. The other three characteristics slowly began to affect me, as the little girl didn’t see them as positives in her life and so much began to change. Her voice that started out speaking about what she saw as ‘wrongs’ in her family, shifted to her constantly talking about anything and everything, just wanting someone to hear her and validate her. Memories are still vivid of being told that being smart was not a ‘good’ thing for a girl to be and that message began very early. The incident that stand our most and stayed with me for way longer than I care to admit happened in 8th grade when the nun teaching me took great pride in telling me striving to be smart wasn’t my role. My role was to learn how to be a good housewife and mother, neither of which were exciting or very important to me at the time. All I know, is those words stuck and until I was graduating with a doctorate degree at age 57 did I even begin to think I might be smart. I am certain, being a girl and being short, led to being determined early in my life. I would attempt to do things way out of my comfort zone, just to prove I could. Believe me, many of the things I tried, while accomplished, were not always the best choice and then one day, I realized that I still wasn’t getting what I really wanted, which was to be noticed, validated and acknowledged and so I just stopped being so determined.
I sort of floated in and out of life for way more years than I have wanted to acknowledge. I would tell myself, my life is good, it is better than what I see over here or over there, when the reality was, my life was not at all what I wanted it to be, and rose-colored glasses are not the best for looking at anything.
Somewhere along the way, I began to believe what I heard and just decided I wasn’t important.
In my teen years, I began making choices that were not the best, causing a lot of pain, suffering and sickness. This continued through my 20’s, 30’s, 40’s and well into my 50’s. I went to grad school in my early 50’s, studying mental health counseling. A professor had introduced me to the idea that in listening to me, the amount of grief I had in my life, had her questioning if I had really looked at my childhood for trauma. She believed, I had neutralized a lot of what I had been through, stuffing it in to my body and a lot of the health issues I was experiencing were the result of unhealed trauma, grief and loss. Hmm. I had always thought my childhood was ‘normal’. Whatever that is.
That began my quest. As I looked back at my childhood, I kept hitting roadblocks of what I could remember. I had always thought my memory was pretty good, yet, so much was vague or just not there. Yes, I could remember the big things in childhood. Those stories told over and over, yet there were so many blank spaces.
Deep inside me, I could feel the churning. I knew there was more to this and that for me to be happy, to feel important to myself, I was going to keep digging.
My way of digging led, me to finish my masters in mental health counseling and move into the doctorate program. I am grateful to both as they began to open my eyes and I had a solid foundation of how the cognitive brain worked. I also began to see the limitations. I still wasn’t accessing what was needed for me. I began to pray for guidance. It wasn’t long before my prayers were answered.
While I was addressing my health (I had lived with autoimmune and chronic health issues since I was in my late teens) for a huge change in eating and nutrition, I stumbled upon Liana Shanti. While she is a clinical nutritionist, I soon learned she is so much more. She is also a Shaman and for me was the answer to my prayers. I now had a way if I was willing to venture deep into my soul to have all the answers to my questions.
Shamanism is a way of life that has been around for tens of thousands of years. It is a way of life that recognizes and acknowledges that ‘All LIFE’ has consciousness and spirit. I became a student again. My connection to all living things and the Creator deepened, I began to see clearly how so much of what I had learned, needed to be unlearned. All the categories of my past needed to be buried, all the wounds looked at, and it was time for me to find me and come alive.
As I began my journey deep within me, I had choices to make. I could keep telling the stories I had for many years, or I could get honest, and look at all the experiences and choices that were slowly becoming clear. I chose the latter. I began opening the doors, some on my own, many more with journeying deep with guidance from Liana and with each step, began to make changes. The life I have today is radically different than what it was when I began 3 years ago. This week I have been reflecting on where I was a year ago and have sat in total amazement of all that has changed in the last year and fills me with hope for the next year.
As I look back, I see so many experiences that I buried to protect me, some I was unaware of until journeying back into my past to see them and others that just evolved out of all the trauma, I experienced. At one time, I was filled with so many emotions (anger, sadness, frustration, to name a few) and I knew the only way, for me to live the full realization of who I came here to be was to heal those wounds. I had to get out of the cognitive way of healing and go to the emotional/feeling way as that is what must happen first for healing to be long lasting. Once felt, there is a process of moving it out of your energetic body and then you bring the cognition back in. As I did all of this, with each trauma, the anger, fury, sadness, self-pity and lack of self-worth began to melt away.
I began to feel important again, slowly.
So many lessons have come to the surface as I have dived inward. I have learned so much about surrendering, letting go and compassion. While I wouldn’t’ care to experience all that I have been through again, today, I understand this is all part of my path to healing me and uncovering just how important I am, how important everyone is to the collective. We all have the choice to go inward to heal ourselves and the world or stay external.
Today, I am blessed, grateful and thankful for diving in.
I am important.