Good morning!

anita, thank you so much for your beautiful comments.

The best way that I can currently explain my existence is one of definite awakening. I am 36 years young and up until about a year ago, I was blind like so many around me. Forced into judgmental thinking and beliefs for my entire life about myself and others due to my abusive childhood and the death of my father at the age of 7. It is just within the last few months that I have realized that people were not judging me for my looks, job, intelligence, personality, or sheer being, but it was me judging myself and other people my entire life. What I am experiencing now is the realization that our thoughts and beliefs do change our experience.

In May, I will have been in therapy for two years which has helped me to get to this place of awakening to what and who I am. I am still learning and growing which I assume will continue to happen. Right now, one struggle in finding a “place I call home” is in general, finding myself. What I find is a struggle to stay conscious and aware of thoughts and to stay in a place of bliss. The reason I say bliss is that a few months ago I had an experience where it was like I had two minds.

I was doing some household chores and all the sudden I realized I was in my head and I was paying attention to my thoughts and I got confused because I could not figure out which thoughts were real,, or paranoid, or what I “should” be thinking, so I stopped what I was doing and I wrote down all of the thoughts I was having. When I saw them written on paper, I immediately realized that none of the fear based, extremely negative thoughts were actually true. I then realized that I could choose to believe the thought or not. Like Byron Katie’s “The Work”.

For two weeks, it was like I was in heaven! For example, I was in line at a restaurant and the lady that was preparing food was moving pretty slow. In my previous judgments I would have thought to myself, “she needs to hurry up”, “she’s just another lazy employee”, etc. In that moment, I thought “look at her taking her time and preparing this food with such care.” I couldn’t believe what peace I was in and how patient I was. Of course, looking back on it, I see that the thought “she needs to hurry up” is something that I would have told myself a thousand times, whether I was at work, taking out the trash, moving my car in the driveway, so it makes perfect sense that I would project the thoughts about myself onto everyone else. I wish it were easy to stay so aware all of the time.

For me, I believe a “place I call home” will be when I figure out what I enjoy, what makes my soul light up, what my real beliefs are (instead of how I was raised-Southern Baptist-“you’re going to hell if you do these 20 things”). It will also be when I learn how to love myself. I am working on that as well. For instance, not saying “yes”, when I want to say “no”, finding hobbies I enjoy, being more forgiving and easy on myself, and losing perfectionism.

In my writing (first post), I wanted to honor my inner-self and thank her for helping me get to this awakening place as well. I ultimately thank God and my therapist, but without the deepest parts of me wanting to heal and spread love, I know I wouldn’t be where I am today.

anita, I would love to know more about you and your life’s existence as well!

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by FindingSydney.