Tiny Buddha

Tag: abandonment

  • Sometimes Not Forgiving Is a Powerful Step Toward Healing

    Sometimes Not Forgiving Is a Powerful Step Toward Healing

    “You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.” ~Maya Angelou

    My mother left when I was five. Dad told me that for a little while I stopped talking, which is hard to imagine because now I never shut up.

    Apparently, I disappeared into myself. The doctors called it selective mutism. Two years later, my father’s second wife, Trish, would try to hug me, but I froze, arms pinned to my side, rigid against her affection.

    When I was older and I asked Dad what happened, he said he and Mom had been having problems, so she went on a bird-watching cruise to the Seychelles. During a stopover, she met a rugged, bearded, successful world wildlife photographer in the lobby of an African hotel. Frank and Patricia fell in love and immediately left their spouses and kids.

    In time, my mother became a talented photographer in her own right. She and Frank traveled continents to capture award-winning photos of animals for National Geographic and the like. Together, they published beautiful coffee table books.

    In 2004, both Patricia and Frank died within a month of each other. Frank from cancer, Patricia in a fiery car crash. My sister told me state troopers found a blood-stained snapshot of all five kids inside Patricia’s wallet. The picture was of my three brothers she’d had with my father and my sister and me, who she adopted as babies from two different moms, years after she got her tubes tied.

    “Girls,” she told my father. “I need two girls.”

    Years ago, I looked up Patricia’s obituary online. I found one attached to a blog written by a fan. At the end of a glowing description of her renowned career was a mention of Frank and that she was “mother to three boys.”

    No mention of me or my sister. Whoever wrote the obituary decided we didn’t exist, or maybe they never knew we existed. My sister, who’d stayed in touch with Patricia, seemed okay with the omission. She insisted the picture in Patricia’s wallet proved she thought about us.

    “And your comment on the blog was mean,” she told me.

    “With all due respect,” I wrote in the blog comments, “Patricia left her five kids” (I’m her youngest daughter) “to go sow her wildlife photographer oats. So yes, she was a talented photographer, but she wasn’t a mother.”

    In one picture I found of Patricia and Frank online after they died, Frank had his arm around her in front of a small white tent in Africa.

    She was leaning her head against his shoulder, smiling and content. Her face was plump and ruddy and naturally beautiful. Her short, dark, curly hair was windblown, and she was wearing a tan photo vest, khaki shorts, and chunky hiking boots.

    In her former life, Patricia was a full-fledged Audrey Hepburn type. An upper-middle-class, small-town New Jersey suburbanite with cinch-waisted elegant dresses, black heels, and pearls. In one Polaroid, my mother smiled for the camera as she carried a paper-footed crown roast to the perfect holiday table set for her husband and five kids.

    I was two months old when my parents adopted me. I never once resented my birth mom for giving me up (I found her in 2016, and we’re close).

    When I was old enough to understand how hard it must be for a woman to give up a child, I felt sorry for my birth mother. I knew women who gave up their baby did it out of love and desperation. And that it probably ripped their heart out forever. I knew long before I knew anything about my birth mom that giving me away wasn’t personal.

    It was selfless.

    But mothers who roam the globe with a lover, who give birth to three boys, get their tubes tied, and then adopt two girls to complete the set don’t leave their children for selfless reasons.

    They leave because motherhood was a mistake. Because domesticity felt like prison.

    “The ugly ducklings” Patricia once told my father about me and my middle brother. Mike stuttered and, like me, wore thick glasses.

    When I was older, I’d drag information out of my dad about Patricia.  He never wanted us to know Mike and I were her least favorites. That we weren’t perfect enough.

    During my sophomore year in college, I sent my mother a short letter. “I never understood why you left the family. Please help me understand.” Then I told her what was going on in my life.

    “It was your father’s lifestyle,” she wrote back. “The drinking and fancy parties and spending too much money. It wasn’t you. We were fighting all the time. It wasn’t about you kids.”

    Except that when you leave your kids, it is about the kids.

    That was our only contact until my late twenties during my youngest brother Chris’s wedding. Patricia smiled awkwardly as we walked toward each other in the hotel reception hall.

    We stood in front of each other but didn’t hug. She smiled, looked nervous, and told me, “Look how beautiful you are!” For the next few hours, we chatted about the wedding, my job, and my husband, who sat next to me.

    Frank sat between us at our table. Polite but protective. Privately, I was furious at how nonchalant my once-mother seemed. Of course there was too much to unpack, and a wedding wasn’t the place. But Patricia acted like we’d simply lost touch.

    A few years ago, when my husband and I were talking about that day, he told me that at some point I whispered to Frank, “Tell Patricia I want nothing to do with her.” I couldn’t stand the façade for one more second. So I went silent.

    I don’t remember saying that. But I’m sure I did. Because if my mother had wanted to be in my life, when she got my letter during college, she would have said so.

    In 1998, when I became a mom, the resentment for Patricia I’d managed to mostly bury resurfaced with a vengeance.

    I was horrified that a mother would leave her children. I felt a maternal protectiveness with my own daughter so visceral and overwhelming that rage bubbled up for my own mother.

    I pictured my five-year-old daughter coming home from kindergarten. Getting off the bus and running to hug her dad. I pictured her giggling and holding her vinyl Blue’s Clues lunch box. My husband handing her gummy snacks and a juice box in the kitchen. I pictured him scooping her up and sitting her on the couch next to him. My daughter’s happy feet swinging.

    “Where’s Mommy?” she asks as she sips her juice box and her blueberry eyes sparkle.

    “Honey, Daddy needs to tell you something. Mommy is um, gone, and she’s not coming back. It’s not your fault, honey, really, it isn’t. You didn’t do anything wrong. But Mommy is, well, Mommy is confused even though she really, really loves you.”

    Years ago, I decided that I can’t do with my mother what therapists and clergy suggest when someone hurts us.

    “Work to forgive. It’s not about saying what they did was okay. It’s about letting go of anger and resentment. When you do, you’ll feel better. Stop giving over your power to bitterness.”

    But the abandoned five-year-old child in me refuses to forgive my mother. I could, but I won’t. Not because I’m consumed with anger. I’m not. Because forgiving, however that looks (journaling, prayers, letters to Patricia I never send), feels disingenuous.

    “I forgive you” feels like a lie.

    Over the years my hurt and anger toward my mother have shifted. Not to forgiveness exactly, but to a new understanding that only ambitious woman-turned-mothers understand.

    Because I was that mother.

    After I had my daughter, I left the workforce as a career professional, ambitious but constantly told daily during my pregnancy, “Once you see that baby, nothing, I mean nothing else will matter.”

    Three months after maternity leave, I went back to work part time. Six months later, I left for good.

    I’d been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and was racked with chronic body aches and brain fog. My babysitter and I were at odds, but mostly I left because I “should” be at home. My husband never pressured me. I pressured me. Judgmental parents didn’t help.

    During my mother’s era (the 1950s), after women graduated college, they got married and had kids. They never talked about their own needs. There were no mom group confessionals. Ambition and having an identity crisis weren’t things. Taboo.

    Women sucked up their angst and exhaustion with coffee and uppers, with martinis and Valium (“Mommy’s little helper”). Smile. Nod. Suffer.

    It wasn’t until the nineties that books came out about motherhood and ambivalence. About loving your kid but hating x, y, z. Suddenly the floodgates opened, and mothers got raw and honest. (Remember the book The Three Martini Playdate?)

    I struggled with being grateful but bored at home. With craving an identity outside of motherhood. Of course I loved my daughter. I went through surgery and months of infertility procedures to get her.

    My child was everything to me, but not everything for me. When I became a parent, gradually, a tiny part of me understood why my mother left.

    And in that, accepting my mixed bag of emotions softened my pain and rage.

    Unlike my mother, I’d had a thriving career and my own identity for over twenty years. But Patricia went from college to marriage to motherhood. She’d skipped over herself and who, it turned out, she wanted to be. Unburdened by domesticity, free to roam the world.

    I realized that if my mother had stayed, she would have resented her kids and the life she felt called to embrace. Her resentment might have been more damaging than the abandonment.  

    Still, forgiveness isn’t always the answer. Saying “I forgive you” has to feel sincere. It has to come from a place of genuine release. A willingness to see the harm and accept its wrongness, then fully let it go. Into the ethers, washed from our heart and psyche.

    My vision of my mother is less villain now and more a woman who should never have given in to society’s pressure to have kids. As soon as she got married, she pushed my dad to start a family, even after he told her over and over they weren’t ready financially.

    It’s ironic that after she died, she left a chunk of money to Planned Parenthood. She knew. Motherhood isn’t for everyone.

    Forgiveness is nuanced, yet it’s been taught throughout the ages as magical in its transformative powers. “Forgive, let go, and you’ll be free.” And more often than not, that’s true.

    But for me, I owe it to my five-year-old self not to completely forgive my mother. Gentle non-forgiveness is what I call it.

    Most of my destructive bitterness is gone. But if I’m honest, some anger still sits in me. Because I want it there. Protective. Righteous. But no longer seething. Anger wrapped in necessary truth. That my mother was selfish. That my mother did real damage.

    I guess holding on to some anger feels like I’m choosing to be an advocate for my five-year-old self. But mostly I think it’s to avoid the harder emotions of pain and rejection. And because letting go of all my anger feels fake.

    For me, being authentic sometimes means accepting that not all anger fades. And that it’s okay. (In fact, allowing anger instead of repressing it can actually be beneficial for our health, according to psychologist Jade Wu, so long as we don’t act aggressively.)

    In the wake of my mother abandoning our family, she left behind five broken kids, all of whom bear emotional scars. Scars that showed up in devastating ways. Addiction, cruelty, despair, loneliness, low self-esteem, hoarding, attachment issues.

    I know ultimately my mother needed to be free. That staying would have done more harm than good. But children aren’t puppies to surrender when caregiving gets too hard.

    There were dire consequences to my mother leaving to find happiness. Irreparable damage. I saw it. I felt it. Trust destroyed. And because of that, I can never fully forgive.

    “I pray you heal from things no one ever apologized for.” ~Nakeia Homer

  • 4 Fears That Create People-Pleasers and How to Ease Them

    4 Fears That Create People-Pleasers and How to Ease Them

    “It feels good to be accepted, loved, and approved of by others, but often the membership fee to belong to that club is far too high of a price to pay.” ~Dennis Merritt Jones

    Like a lot of people, I grew up putting others’ needs and wants first. I learned early that doing things for other people and accommodating their wishes gained me attention and approval. It was only in those moments that I felt good enough and deserving of love.

    As a child, I liked nothing more than feeling indispensable and being told I was a good and nice girl. This praise was incredibly important to me, as was making others happy. My own happiness did not come into the equation; I was happy because they were happy. I felt loved, safe, and appreciated, in the short term at least.

    As I got older, my people-pleasing went into overdrive. I continually tried to gain people’s approval, make them happy, and help them whenever needed.

    I hated to see loved ones hurt or upset and felt it was my responsibility to come to their rescue and ease their problems and pain. Before long, I became so hyper-aware of others’ feelings that I lost sight of where I ended and where other people began.

    For many years, I didn’t question why I felt I didn’t have the right to say no to people’s demands. I just assumed this was how my relationships were meant to be. By the time I was in my late teens, however, I often felt lost, drained, and empty.

    After a terrifying anxiety attack, I realized I’d been unhappy for years. Trying to please everyone had made me miserable and ill, and my relationships felt draining and one-sided.

    I took a long, hard look at myself and realized I’d become a people-pleaser not simply because I wanted to be a nice person or help others, but due to a specific emotion, an emotion I’d felt since early childhood: fear.

    I realized I’d given control over my life to other people out of fear. I’d let an emotion steal my life and well-being.

    When I examined my past behavior, it was obvious I’d been compelled to people-please due to a fear of certain situations stemming from my childhood. I believe these specific fears are the reason why many of us become people-pleasers.

    Fear of Rejection and Abandonment

    Inside every people-pleaser is a little child who never felt worthy of love and was afraid of being rejected and abandoned by his or her loved ones. Being good and nice and striving for approval is a way to try to suppress the fear.

    Children know instinctively that their survival depends on other people. As a child, I felt I had to be good all the time—one misdemeanor would be enough to make my loved ones reject me.

    That’s not to say my family didn’t love me; they absolutely did. But they were often emotionally distant, worried, stressed out, and very busy with other things. My strategy was to do my best to please them so I wouldn’t feel even more rejected than I already did.

    Many of us take this fear into our adult relationships too. People-pleasers usually believe they cannot disagree, not do as their loved ones want, or displease them in some way because their family or partner will stop loving them and leave. They don’t feel emotionally secure in their relationships.

    Yet how realistic is this belief? Would our loved ones really reject and abandon us if we displeased them? Is our position in their lives so uncertain and fragile that they would do this?

    People-pleasers tend to overestimate other people’s imagined negative reactions to what they do or say. They work hard to gain and keep love and friendship, but assume those ties are easily broken.

    Realistically, it’s highly unlikely your loved ones will reject you if you don’t do what they want. They might be disappointed or upset, but ultimately they’ll be able to cope with their expectations not being met. Regardless of their response, you aren’t responsible for their emotions or actions.

    When we know this, we can feel more secure about saying no to others. And that in turn helps them to respect our boundaries.

    Fear of Conflict and Anger

    People-pleasers try to avoid conflict and others’ anger at all costs and will do anything to defuse a confrontation or argument. This usually means backing down or not disagreeing, even if the other person is in the wrong. It means saying yes when we really want to say no.

    When you fear upsetting someone and causing an argument, you don’t speak up about what’s bothering or hurting you, and you don’t reveal your true feelings. You do all you can to keep the peace, believing mistakenly that conflict of any kind is bad for relationships.

    The truth is, our peacekeeping behavior builds a barrier to intimacy. It stops our relationships from growing and maturing. As a child I feared doing something wrong and being told off and punished, and as I got older I often felt lonely in many of my relationships. I also found trying to keep the peace exhausting.

    The harmony I worked so hard to maintain was nothing more than a false harmony; there was often an undercurrent of anxiety and frustration.

    Healthy relationships aren’t without disagreements because conflict and problems are inevitable in life. But the difference is that good, balanced relationships are able to handle conflict and problems constructively and use them as a way to deepen learning and understanding.

    As a people-pleaser, I wanted to find instant solutions to problems in order to minimize any potential conflict, regain harmony, and soothe any negative feelings. I rarely took my time to find an effective solution, and as a result, the problems were never fully resolved.

    I was also afraid of my own anger and repressed it or directed it at myself, and this no doubt contributed to my anxiety disorder. I mistakenly believed nice people didn’t get angry, not realizing that we cannot change our behavior for the better or improve our well-being unless we feel and recognize all our emotions.

    Fear of Criticism and Being Disliked

    No one likes to be criticized or disliked, especially a people-pleaser. We hold in high regard other people’s good opinions of us. We crave approval and think that accommodating everyone else will somehow protect us, but that’s rarely the case.

    I used to feel a sense of betrayal whenever someone criticized me. Didn’t they know how hard I tried to please them? How hard I tried to be good and nice all the time? Their criticism was like an arrow in the heart.

    When we fear others’ lack of approval and acceptance, we rarely show them who we really are and often live a life that does not feel authentic. We hide ourselves behind a mask of niceness and find it near impossible to separate our self-worth from our actions.

    Fearing others’ bad opinions of you makes you feel you cannot show you are fallible and flawed—basically, a normal human being.

    People-pleasers judge themselves very harshly and often set themselves unrealistic expectations. They feel they need to be perfect in order to be accepted or loved. They feel they cannot make mistakes or risk upsetting or disappointing people.

    If you don’t voice your opinions or needs, people will assume you’re happy to go along with what they want. They’ll also assume you’ll accept disrespectful behavior. Like many people-pleasers, I became an easy target for others’ dissatisfaction and nastiness.

    When we hand so much control over to other people, their criticism can be devastating, but this is only because we vastly overestimate the importance of what they think.

    In time, I realized that someone’s opinion of me is none of my business, and it’s impossible to control their thoughts about me, no matter what I do. It seemed crazy to let their opinions dictate how I lived my life because the only person I needed to seek approval from was myself.

    Fear of Losing Control and Not Being Needed

    People-pleasers need to be needed. It’s their automatic response to help others and try to make others happy, and they very often take other people’s actions, behavior, and emotions personally, believing they’re responsible for making others feel better.

    I grew up in an environment that was often anxious. Many of my loved ones did not handle their anxiety very well, due to their own upbringing. I became a confidante at a young age, before I had the maturity to handle certain problems or others’ anxiety. It was simply too burdensome for my young shoulders, but it didn’t stop me from trying to make things better.

    Because my sense of self was closely tied to how other people felt, I couldn’t bear to see loved ones hurting, and so I tried my hardest to ease any upset. Each time I succeeded, I felt needed and in control, but when I failed, I felt like I had let everyone down.

    I would become anxious if I couldn’t soothe or help someone else. I readily soaked up their negative emotions because I’d become so attuned to how they felt, placing their emotional well-being before my own. Because people-pleasers believe it’s their job to make others happy, they feel they need to control others’ anxiety and pain.

    But it’s not our role to make others happy or their lives problem-free; that’s their job. The sky won’t fall in if you cannot help someone. You can still be there for the people you love and empathize with them, but you don’t need to rush in and rescue them or lose yourself in their business. You don’t have to make their problems your own; you can instead trust them to solve their own issues.

    When I stopped hyper-focusing on other people, I saw that the only thing I needed to control was my half of my relationships. There’s no need to try to control others’ reactions because I’m not responsible for their thoughts or emotions.

    Many of our interactions with people don’t need to have the sort of emotional judgments people-pleasers attach to them. It’s okay to say no and not feel guilty. You aren’t betraying someone if you don’t do what they want or disagree with them. Just because someone doesn’t like you doesn’t mean you’re unlikeable. Just because you sometimes want to focus on yourself, it doesn’t mean you’re selfish.

    You gain this self-empowerment by easing the fear that’s caused your people-pleasing. While much of the fear comes from your childhood, as an adult you now have control over changing aspects of your behavior that don’t serve you.

    This doesn’t involve any self-blame, nor is it about blaming our loved ones. We’re all the products of our upbringing, and we all have scars. Most people try to do the best they can with what they have and know. By changing our behavior, we can often encourage positive change in others too.

    People-pleasing is always linked to self-worth. When you create a strong sense of self, you realize that you aren’t your past, your thoughts, or your emotions. You know your self-worth isn’t linked to another person.

    How to Ease the Fear

    Instead of looking for validation from other people and the outside world, we need to search inward. In order to ease our fear, it’s important to face it, no matter how painful it feels. Understanding our fear helps us to move forward.

    Because our people-pleasing and our fears usually stem from childhood, we need to revisit our child selves. Try this exercise:

    Find somewhere quiet to sit and relax. Close your eyes and take slow, deep, even breaths, and imagine in your mind a time when you felt rejected as a child. Replay the events as you remember them and feel the feelings you experienced at that time.

    Then imagine your present self holding your child self’s hand as they go through that moment of feeling rejected. Tell your child self how much you love them and care for them, and that there’s nothing to fear. Each time your younger self feels afraid or rejected, soothe them and let them know they’re in a safe place.

    Think about what you’d like to say to your child self and what advice you’d like to give them, knowing what you know now. You are now able to protect, support, and encourage your child self. Think about how you want to feel and be treated rather than focus on any negativity.

    When I did this exercise, I told my child self that she was worthy, valuable, and precious. I advised her that what she wanted and needed was valid and important, and she had the right to speak up and say no.

    I told her she would never be rejected because she had my unconditional love and support, and she didn’t need to strive for love from anyone because she was already lovable. I encouraged her to think about her dreams and goals and not stifle them because of others’ opinions. Most of all, I kept repeating that I loved her.

    When you feel ready to end the exercise, bring yourself back to the present moment and think about what the exercise has taught you. Do you understand your child self more and your reasons for people-pleasing? Do you think about those past events in a different way?

    You can do the exercise as many times as you wish. It gives you the time to focus on how you feel about past experiences, and as a result, it also helps you come to terms with what happened and to heal.

    When I stopped basing my identity on my relationships and the past, I stopped hiding myself behind people-pleasing behavior. I started to set boundaries, and as my self-love, self-acceptance, and self-respect grew, my relationships improved too. People soon adapted to my new behavior because I showed them how I wanted to be treated—with respect and consideration.

    Self-love is essential. It isn’t selfish to think about what you want and need. It isn’t selfish to make decisions about your life based on what you want and need rather than to merely please others.

    You owe it to yourself to put your people-pleasing ways behind you. You owe it to yourself to take care of yourself first, because that is the only real way you can truly help other people.

  • How I Found My Worth in Spite of My Father’s Abandonment

    How I Found My Worth in Spite of My Father’s Abandonment

    “Because if I myself saw my worth, I wouldn’t base my worthiness on someone else’s seeing it.” ~Unknown

    I can’t be sure which title I would have preferred. Daddy, Poppa, Pa, Dad. Aren’t these the endearing titles one earns when they live up to all that it means in the role of the first and most important man in a little girl’s life?

    The one who she can count on for love, guidance, comfort, and safety. The one who she adores. The one who teaches her how to play soccer or baseball because she is a tomboy through and through. The one who allows her to put makeup on his face or to have tea parties with him at a table entirely too small for his stature. The one who tells her the best bedtime stories that leave her feeling safe from the boogeyman living under her bed.

    The one who sets the standard when she finds the love of her life.

    From all that I have heard, they are the ones who are something special and to be treasured.

    Mine, on the other hand, not so much. Let us then call him the sperm donor. Fitting since it’s the only role he’s played in my life. When one walks out on his wife and two little girls, the older, age three and the younger, age one (that’s me), offering no support, financial, emotional, or otherwise, he’s earned that title.

    Bless your black little heart.

    Maybe this all makes me sound harsh or bitter. That’s because I was, for a really long time.

    And with that came all the issues: abandonment, people-pleasing, anxiety, lack of confidence and self-esteem. Choosing partners who didn’t respect me because I didn’t respect myself. Drinking and feeling regret over things I may have said or done that could have hurt other people. Always second-guessing myself and my choices because I didn’t trust myself to make my own decisions.

    I became my own worst enemy, consistently and constantly beating myself up for anything and everything, and I filled my head with toxic thoughts about my worth that I believed were truths. Truths I lacked any ability to refute.

    I needed constant validation and approval, and a steady stream of input from others dictating my life. I did not know who the heck I was or how to be true to myself. I spent many years trying to make sense of it all, and the more I tried, the more I suffered.

    I hated the fact that I grew up without a father. I hated everything about it. And for so long, I let it define who I was.

    Fast-forward to the second half of my life. After a series of difficult events, including a devastating breakup around my fiftieth birthday and the more recent unexpected death of my mother, the only parent I had ever known (with whom I shared a tumultuous, roller coaster relationship), I became sick of myself and who I had allowed myself to become.

    How could I expect my own kids to grow into confident, kind, respectful adults if I was not setting the example? “Get it together, Charlene. Do it for them, and once and for all, do it for yourself!”

    That was the pivotal time in my life that triggered the light switch for me. It was as if I was given a second chance and an opportunity to gain the clarity I needed to become exactly who I wanted to be as a person and as a mom.

    I knew three things: it would take work, it would not happen overnight, and it would not feel good. It didn’t matter. I had made up my mind. I knew, first and foremost, I needed to find a way to forgive myself—for allowing my past to define my life, for my holding so much resentment toward my mother, and my own struggles as a mother after my divorce.

    I spent time initially with my three amigos. Me, myself, and I. We got to know each other very well before shortly meeting up with my baggage. We all sat together most days in our group therapy sessions, and we went back. Way back. We rehashed our lives and all the unpleasant and unflattering times. We sat often, in silence and in our stench. We did this for as long as it took until we could look in the mirror and see the person we could love and be proud of. 

    It was not pleasant. It was not easy. And it was most definitely not fun. But it was worth it.

    We, the four amigos (baggage included), were worth it.

    I slowly allowed myself some grace and became kinder and gentler to myself.

    Each day, I drove the short distance home from work on my lunch hour, hopping on my bike and looking for something, anything, to be grateful for… a bird or a butterfly in flight, the sunlight glistening on the water, a stone on the pavement in the shape of a heart, the sound of children laughing in the playground.

    I flooded my email inbox and social media feeds with daily happiness reminders (Tiny Buddha being one of them), and I devoured anything resembling positivity. I committed myself to healing my broken heart and rewiring my broken brain. Rather than focusing on my flaws and perceived imperfections, I uncovered everything wonderful and unique about myself—my courage, my passion, my honesty, my empathy, and my own role as a mother.

    I took my days minute by minute and inched my way forward.

    Baby steps.

    I will turn fifty-nine this year. Far closer to sixty than I am to fifty, back when the “you know what” started hitting the fan for me. When I think back to what my life looked like back then and all the worries and fears I had about what direction I was heading, I feel a sense of sadness.

    Time is this funny thing when you are in the second half of the game (of life). While I don’t dwell too much on regrets, my age, or how much time I have left, I would be lying if I said I have not thought about the time I wasted anguishing over my bruised ego and the hell I put myself through for so long.

    It is time I cannot get back.

    But today, I can say that I am proud of myself, and I give myself some credit…

    For overcoming my feelings of inadequacy and not being enough.

    For realizing that I am not lesser because of my flaws and imperfections, or because I grew up fatherless, in a trailer park, and do not have a four-year college degree.

    For having the courage and strength to walk my own path, even when the steps were terrifying and uncertain.

    Today, I am good.

    Good as in I can wake up and look in the mirror and like who I see. I could use a few less lines on my face, but I continue to learn how to embrace the whole package that is me. I can beat myself up and throw a good pity party once in a while, but I usually catch myself in the process.

    Sometimes it takes a few minutes, sometimes a day or two. Just depends.

    Either way, I have to sit the little girl inside me down and give her a reminder… to relax her shoulders, close her eyes, take a few deep breaths, and remember who the hell she is and just how far she has come.

    Today, I am still under construction, and I have been single and on my own for eight years. I was broken for a very long time, and I knew I needed to work on my inability to love and respect myself and rebuild the shattered parts of myself before I could entertain a relationship again. But I believe there are no mistakes. I think the stars aligned exactly as they needed to for me.

    If you can relate to any part of my story, I hope you find the strength and courage to dig deep and recognize where your lack of self-worth originated and discover all that is so wonderful and valuable about you.

    Regardless of your circumstances or how anyone might have treated you in the past, you are worthy of your own love, just as I am.

  • 6 Things to Remember When You Feel Anxious in Your Relationships

    6 Things to Remember When You Feel Anxious in Your Relationships

    “Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it.” ~Kahlil Gibran

    Relationships have always been anxiety-inducing for me, and I know it stems from my childhood.

    As a kid I would often silently mouth words I’d just said, hearing them in my mind and evaluating whether I’d said something stupid or wrong. I was always afraid of saying something that might make someone upset.

    Junior high was a particularly rough time in my life. I was insecure and had low self-esteem, and I was desperate for approval from other kids, which made me an easy target for bullying.

    To make matters worse, an authority figure in my life told me, “If I was your age, I wouldn’t be your friend.”

    I had always believed there was something wrong with me, but at that point I was certain that no one would like me, let alone love me, if they really knew me. But I also felt deeply lonely in my little bubble of self-loathing and envied the popular kids. The likable kids. The kids who didn’t seem so clingy and awkward, who seemed to easily fit in.

    Thus began an internal battle I’m guessing many of you know all too well: the deep desire to feel seen and secure juxtaposed with the feared being judged and rejected.

    As I got older, I found myself in all kinds of unhealthy relationships, making friends with other emotionally damaged, self-destructive women, thinking they’d be less likely to judge me, and dating emotionally unavailable men, whose behavior reinforced that I didn’t deserve love.

    I was always afraid they were mad at me. That I did something wrong. That they might realize I was too needy and eventually walk away.

    And it wasn’t just in my closest relationships that I felt insecure. I also felt a deep sense of unease around their friends—when we all went to a party or bar, for example. It all felt like a performance or a test, and I was afraid of failing.

    Constantly in fight-or-flight mode, I tried to numb my anxiety in social situations with alcohol. Far more times than I care to admit, I ended a night black-out drunk, only to wake up the next morning to mortifying stories of things I’d done that I didn’t recall.

    The irony is that this jeopardized my relationships—because people had to babysit and take care of me—when I was binge-drinking mainly because I was scared of being rejected.

    Maybe you can relate to the extreme anxiety I felt in relationships. Or maybe for you, it’s less debilitating, but you worry, nonetheless.

    Whatever your personal experience, perhaps it will help to read these six things—things I wish I understood sooner.

    1. Your anxiety is likely about more than just this one relationship.

    Even if the other person has said or done things that have left you feeling insecure, odds are, your anxiety stems from your past, as was true for me.

    We all form attachment styles as children; many of us become anxiously attached as a result of growing up with abusive, neglectful, or unreliable caregivers who aren’t responsive to our needs. If you often feel anxious in relationships, you might be stuck in a pattern you formed as a kid.

    2. If the other person is emotionally unavailable, it’s not your fault, and not within your power to change them.

    It’s tempting to think that your behavior is responsible for theirs, and if you do everything right, they’ll give you the love you crave. On the flipside, you might constantly blame yourself when they withdraw. You said something wrong. Or did something wrong. Or it’s just you being you—because you are wrong.

    But emotionally unavailable people have their own painful pasts that make them act the way they do. It started way before you, and it will likely continue when your relationship inevitably breaks under the strain of too much tension.

    Instead of trying to earn their love and prove you’re worthy, remind yourself that you deserve love you don’t have to work for. And that it’s worth the wait to find someone who is willing and able to give you their all.

    3. Things might not be as they seem.

    While some people truly are pulling away and looking for an easy exit, other times we just think they are.

    When we fear abandonment, we often read into little things and assume the worst. We over-analyze text messages, worry about a change in tone or facial expressions, and generally look for signs that we might have upset someone. But there’s a good chance that thing you’re worrying about has nothing to do with you.

    Maybe they’re not texting back right away because they’re afraid of writing the ‘wrong’ thing to you. Maybe they haven’t called recently because they’re going through something hard. Whatever you’re interpreting as proof of imminent rejection, consider that you might have it all wrong.

    4. Sometimes anxious behavior creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    When you’re feeling anxious, you might cling, act controlling, or argue over minor issues that make you feel neglected or rejected—all behaviors that can cause someone to withdraw. I can’t even count the number of times I caused unnecessary drama because I assumed that because I felt insecure, someone else had done something to make me feel that way.

    Everything changed when I recognized I could pause, recognize how I was feeling (and why), and then choose to respond from a place of calm awareness.

    If you can learn to recognize when you’re feeling triggered, you can practice regulating your own nervous system—through deep breathing, for example—instead of inadvertently pushing the other person away.

    5. Often, the best thing you can do is sit with your anxiety.

    This one has been hard for me. When I feel anxious, my instinct is often to seek reassurance from someone else to make it go away. But that means my peace is dependent on what someone else says or does.

    Ultimately, we need to believe that our relationships are strong enough to handle a little conflict if there truly is a problem–and that if our relationship isn’t strong enough to last, we’re strong enough to handle that.

    6. Sometimes when someone is pulling away, it’s actually in your best interest.

    People with an anxious attachment style will often try to do everything in their power to hold onto a relationship, even if someone isn’t good for them.

    In my twenties I spent many nights crying over emotionally abusive men, some of them friends with benefits who I hoped would eventually want more; others, men I was dating who thought even less of me than I thought of myself.

    The wrong men always left me because I didn’t see my worth and wasn’t strong enough to leave them first. And the pain was always unbearable because it reinforced that I wasn’t lovable—just as I’d feared all along.

    Though it can be agonizing when someone triggers an old abandonment wound, letting the wrong person walk away is the first step to believing you deserve more.

    —

    As someone with deep core wounds, I still struggle with relationship anxiety at times. I don’t know if it will ever go away completely. But I know I’ve come a long way and that I’m a lot stronger now.

    I also know that when I inevitably feel that familiar fear—the racing heart, the sense of dread, the triggered shame coursing through my trembling veins—I will love myself through it. I won’t judge myself or put myself down or tell myself I deserve to be hurt. I may fear that someone might abandon me, but no matter what happens, I won’t abandon myself.

  • Abandonment Wounds: How to Heal Them and Feel More at Ease in Relationships

    Abandonment Wounds: How to Heal Them and Feel More at Ease in Relationships

    “I always wondered why it was so easy for people to leave. What I should have questioned was why I wanted so badly for them to stay.” ~Samantha King

    Do you feel afraid to speak your truth or ask for what you want?

    Do you tend to neglect your needs and people-please?

    Do you have a hard time being alone?

    Have you ever felt panic and/or anxiety when someone significant to you left your life or you felt like they were going to?

    If so, please don’t blame yourself for being this way. Most likely it’s coming from an abandonment wound—some type of trauma that happened when you were a child.

    Even though relationships can be painful and challenging at times, your difficult feelings likely stem from something deeper; it’s like a part of you got “frozen in time” when you were first wounded and still feels and acts the same way.

    When we have abandonment wounds, we may have consistent challenges in relationships, especially significant ones. We may be afraid of conflict, rejection, or being unwanted; because of this, we people-please and self-abandon as a survival strategy.

    When we’re in a situation that activates an abandonment wound, we’re not able to think clearly; our fearful and painful emotions flood our system and filter our perceptions, and our old narratives start playing and dictate how we act. We may feel panic, or we may kick, cry, or scream or hold in our feelings like we needed to do when we were children.

    When our abandonment wound gets triggered, we automatically fall into a regression, back to the original hurt/wound and ways of reacting, thinking, and feeling. We also default to the meanings we created at the time, when we formed a belief that we weren’t safe if love was taken away.

    Abandonment wounds from childhood can stem from physical or emotional abandonment, being ignored or given the silent treatment, having emotionally unavailable parents, or being screamed at or punished for no reason.

    When we have abandonment wounds, we may feel that we need to earn love and approval; we may not feel good enough; and we may have our walls up and be unable to receive love because we don’t trust it, which keeps us from being intimate.

    We may try to numb our hurt and pain with drugs, alcohol, overeating, or workaholism. We may also hide certain aspects of ourselves that weren’t acceptable when we were young, which creates inner conflict.

    So how do our abandonment wounds get started? Let me paint a picture from my personal experience.

    When I was in third grade a lady came into our classroom to check our hair for lice. When she entered, my heart raced, and I went into a panic because I was afraid that if I had it and I got sent home, I would be screamed at and punished.

    Where did this fear come from? My father would get mad at me if I cried, got angry, got hurt and needed to go to the doctor, or if I accidentally broke anything in the house. Did I do it purposely? No, but I was punished, screamed at, and sent to my room many times, which made me feel abandoned, hurt, and unloved.

    When I was ten years old, my parents sent me away to summer camp. I kicked and screamed and told them I didn’t want to go. I was terrified of being away from them.

    When I got there, I cried all night and got into fights with the other girls. My third day there, I woke up early and ran away. My counselor found me and tried to hold me, but I kicked, hit her, and tried to get away from her.

    I was sent to the director’s office, and he got mad at me. He picked me up, took me out of his office, and put me in front of a flagpole, where I had to stay for six hours until my parents came to get me. When they got there, they put me in the car, screamed at me, and punished me for the rest of the week.

    When I was fifteen, I was diagnosed with anorexia, depression, and anxiety and put in my first treatment center.

    When my parents dropped me off, I was in a panic. I was so afraid, and I cried for days. Then, my worst nightmare came true—my doctor told me he was putting me on separation from my parents. I wasn’t allowed to talk to them or see them for a month. All I could think about was how I could get out of there and get home to be with them.

    I didn’t understand what was happening. I just wanted my parents to love me, to want to be with me, to treat me like I mattered, but instead I was sent away and locked up.

    I started to believe there was something wrong with me, that I was a worthless human being, and I felt a lot of shame. These experiences and many others created a negative self-image and fears of being abandoned.

    For over twenty-three years I was in and out of hospitals and treatment centers. I was acting in self-destructive ways and living in a hypervigilant, anxious state. I was constantly focused on what other people thought about me. I replayed conversations in my mind and noticed when someone’s emotional state changed, which made me afraid.

    It was a very exhausting way to be. I was depressed, lonely, confused, and suicidal.

    There are many experiences that trigger our abandonment wounds, but the one that I’ve found to be the most activating is a breakup.

    When we’re in a relationship with someone, we invest part of ourselves in them. When they leave, we feel like that part of ourselves is gone/abandoned. So the real pain is a part of us that’s “missing.” We may believe they’re the source of our love, and when they’re gone, we feel that we lost it.

    So the real abandonment wound stems from a disconnection from the love within, which most likely happened when we abandoned ourselves as children attempting to get love and attention from our parents and/or when our parents abandoned us.

    When I went through a breakup with someone I was really in love with, it was intense. I went into a panic. I was emotionally attached, and I did everything I could to try to get her back. When she left, I was devastated. I cried for weeks. There were days when I didn’t even get out of bed.

    Instead of trying to change how I was feeling, I allowed myself to feel it. I recognized that the feelings were intense not because of the situation only, but because it activated my deeper wounding from childhood. Even though I’ve done years of healing, there were more layers and more parts of me to be seen, heard, cared for, and loved.

    The “triggering event” of the breakup wasn’t easy, but it was necessary for me to experience a deeper healing and a deeper and more loving connection with myself.

    When we’re caught in a trauma response, like I was, there is no logic. We’re flooded with intense emotions. Sure, we can do deep breathing, and that may help us feel better and relax our nervous system in the moment. But we need to address the original source of our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs in order to experience a sense of ease internally and a new way of seeing and being.

    Healing our abandonment wound is noticing how the past may still be playing in our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It’s noticing the narratives and patterns that make us want to protect, defend, or run away. It’s helping our inner child feel acknowledged, seen, heard, safe, and loved.

    Healing the abandonment wound is not a quick fix; it does take self-awareness and lots of compassion and love. It’s a process of finding and embracing our authenticity, experiencing a sense of ease, and coming home.

    Healing doesn’t mean we’ll never be triggered. In fact, our triggers help us see what inside is asking for our love and attention. When we’re triggered, we need to take the focus off the other person or situation and notice what’s going on internally. This helps us understand the beliefs that are creating our feelings.

    Beliefs like: I don’t matter, I’m unlovable, I’m afraid, I don’t feel important. These underlying beliefs get masked when we focus on our anger toward the person or what’s happening. By bringing to the light how we’re truly feeling, we can then start working with these parts and help them feel loved and safe.

    Those of us with abandonment wounds often become people-pleasers, and some people may say people-pleasing is manipulation. Can we have a little more compassion? People-pleasing is a survival mechanism; it’s something we felt we needed to do as children in order to be loved and safe, and it’s not such an easy pattern to break.

    Our system gets “trained,” and when we try to do something new, like honoring our needs or speaking our truth, that fearful part inside gets afraid and puts on the brakes.

    Healing is a process of kindness and compassion. Our parts that have been hurt and traumatized, they’re fragile; they need to be cared for, loved, and nurtured.

    Healing is also about allowing ourselves to have fun, create from our authentic expression, follow what feels right to us, honor our heartfelt desires and needs, and find and do what makes us happy.

    There are many paths to healing. Find what works for you. For me, talk therapy and cognitive work never helped because the energy of anxiety and abandonment was held in my body.

    I was only able to heal my deepest wound when I began working with my inner child and helping the parts of myself that were in conflict for survival reasons make peace with each other. As a result, I became more kind, compassionate, and loving and started to feel at peace internally.

    Healing takes time, and you are so worth it, but please know that you are beautiful, valuable, and lovable as you are, even with your wounds and scars.

  • How I Started Appreciating My Life Instead of Wanting to End It

    How I Started Appreciating My Life Instead of Wanting to End It

    “When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” ~Willie Nelson

    Few things have the power to totally transform one’s life as gratitude. Gratitude is the wellspring of happiness and the foundation of love. It is also the anchor of true faith and genuine humility. Without gratitude, the toxic stew of bitterness, jealousy, and regret boils over inside each of us.

    I would know. As a teenager and as a young man, I lived life without gratitude and experienced the terrible pain of doing so.

    Outwardly, I appeared to be a friendly, happy, and gracious person. I could make any person laugh and I was loyal to my friends through thick and thin. However, beneath the surface an intense fire raged within me.

    Despite receiving boundless love and attention from my wonderful family, I was inwardly resentful about my adoption as a child. For many years, three bitter questions ran on repeat in my mind:

    • Why did my birth mother give me up for adoption when I was only months old?
    • Why did I try so desperately hard to win acceptance from others when it was clear that I just didn’t fit in anywhere?
    • Why did I have to experience the pain and confusion of not truly belonging?

    As I allowed these questions to dominate my thoughts, I began to experience a range of negative and unpleasant emotions as a result. Among the worst of these feelings was that I came to see myself as a victim of circumstance. Of course, as I would later realize, this couldn’t have been further from the truth. Far from being a victim of circumstance, I was a blessed recipient of grace. But at the time I couldn’t see that.

    Eventually, my sense of resentment at being adopted contributed to destructive behaviors like heavy drinking.

    Throughout the entirety of my early adulthood, I filled my desperate need for belonging with endless partying and a hedonistic lifestyle. During those years, I found myself in many unhealthy romantic relationships with women, partook in too many destructive nights of drinking to count, and frequently got into brushes with police.

    During that difficult time in my life, I also seriously contemplated suicide. I even got to the point where I meticulously planned how I would carry it out: through overdosing on pills and alcohol. And I even purchased both the bottle of booze and pills for the act.

    Had it not been for the last-second torturous thoughts of inflicting such an emotional toll on my family, I am quite certain that I would have followed through on taking my own life. 

    On into adulthood, my own refusal to put in the long hours on myself and address my adoption led me in a downward spiral. I was fired from several full-time teaching jobs, continued to battle with alcohol abuse, frequently lashed out in fits of anger at others, and I restlessly moved from one place or another every year or two believing that a change in location would somehow translate into my finally finding a semblance of inner peace.

    For the better part of my twenties and early thirties, my mind’s demons continued to get the best of me. This cycle of discontent persisted until a dramatic turning point happened in my life. While on a trip to Maui, Hawaii, with family, I experienced an unforgettable moment of healing while hiking in the transcendent beauty of that mystical island.

    On the third or fourth day of the trip, I found myself wandering alone on a little trail that unexpectedly led to the edge of a breathtaking cliff overlooking the crystal blue ocean. While standing there, I felt so overwhelmed with joy that I instantly tore off all my clothes and let out a great big primal yell! For the first time since childhood, I felt undulating waves of peace wash over me.

    Today, when I reflect on what I truly felt in that moment, I recognize it was gratitude. I felt pure gratitude to be alive. And I felt pure gratitude to finally know that I was a part of something infinitely greater than my mind could ever comprehend. While standing there in awe of the Earth’s glorious wonder, I also experienced overflowing feelings of gratitude for my adoption.

    Suddenly, everything about my adoption made perfect sense.

    It was my destiny to be adopted into the family I was. It was also an incomprehensibly high and selfless act of love for my birth mother to give me up for adoption, knowing that I would have more doors opened to me in America. And of course, it was also an incomprehensibly high and selfless act of love for my adoptive mother to endure horrific physical abuse and an exhausting legal battle just to get me out of Greece.

    In that moment, I feel like I was catapulted into a higher realm of consciousness, where the boundary dissolved between who it was that thought they were the knower and the subject they thought was being known. In that moment, there was no me. There was no birth mother. There was no adoptive mother and father. We were all just one perfect expression of love.

    The point of this somewhat long-winded story is that no spiritual breakthrough for me would have even been possible without the power of gratitude. For it was at the root of that profound glimpse of reality I experienced in that indescribably perfect moment. Since that life-altering day, I have tried to make gratitude the cornerstone of the inner walk that I do on myself.

    Each evening just before going to bed I make it a point to write down at least two things that I was grateful for from that day. The idea of starting a gratitude journal may sound cliché to some, but it has helped me navigate life with more gratitude. Since starting the journal, I also feel like I am starting to have greater appreciation for those blessings that I used to take for granted, like good health and access to clean water, air, and food.

    From my own experience with the adoption, I have come to believe that one of the greatest benefits from starting a gratitude journal is that it helps pull us out of our own egoic way of thinking that sees ourselves as victims of circumstance.

    When we consciously set out to cultivate gratitude in our day-to-day lives, we come to see the ample opportunities for personal growth that emerge out of our trying life experiences.

    Now, whenever I hear someone complain that they are a victim of this or that circumstance, I listen quietly with an open heart to their predicament. But when they finish telling their story and ask me for my thoughts and advice, I reply with the following questions:

    But what are you grateful for? And what are the lessons that you learned through your adversity?

    Gratitude profoundly transforms our relationship with suffering. When we acknowledge the feelings of gratitude within us, we come to re-perceive even the worst events in our lives as grist for the mill.

    It is not at all necessary for you to travel to some faraway paradise like Hawaii to cultivate gratitude. We all have the innate capacity to experience this same profound sense of gratitude where we are now in this moment.

  • Healing from Abandonment Trauma: 3 Things I Learned from Being Cheated On

    Healing from Abandonment Trauma: 3 Things I Learned from Being Cheated On

    “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” ~Rumi

    I want to share an experience I went through that hurt like hell, but that helped me so much in the long run.

    The experience was being “cheated on,” though the woman wasn’t my girlfriend. Nevertheless, I was very attached and it felt awful.

    So, let me start with the backstory.

    I met Diana through mutual friends in late 2021. I thought she was cute, and a little anxious, which I seem to gravitate toward. That’s just my savior complex coming out, which is another story for another day.

    Eventually we hooked up after a holiday party and continued hooking up regularly. I began to have stronger feelings for Diana than I anticipated, though I tried to play it cool and not cause any awkwardness in the group.

    Things started deteriorating between us at one point, and it culminated in Diana going home with another guy basically in front of me.

    Needless to say, I was devastated.

    My friend who introduced me to Diana was there, and he asked me, “Are you catching feelings?” I was so angry that he would try to shame me into not feeling what I was feeling. I said, “Yes, I am” and left immediately.

    On the way home, I was screaming in my car, and I even punched my steering wheel, which I had never done before. I was so triggered and mad. There was a tornado of emotion ripping through my chest—anger, grief, worthlessness, desperation.

    The next day, I woke up and left the house to get a smoothie. I didn’t want to be by myself as I was going through this.

    Initially I didn’t feel so bad, but I knew that the wave was going to hit me sooner or later. I started rereading books on relationships that I had read before. Books like Fear of Intimacy by Robert Firestone and Facing Love Addiction by Pia Mellody. Luckily, I had these books to turn to for guidance.

    Over the next two weeks I cried multiple times on my way to work, or on the way home from running errands. I even pulled over a few times to bawl my eyes out and wail alone in my car before continuing.

    Over the next couple of months, I worked on processing the grief and pain. Occasionally I would dive deep and get a memory of childhood abandonment, the real source of the pain. I’d get a memory of my mom not being there for me…

    While I was growing up, my mom worked all the time to support our family. And we had such a big family that one-on-one time was basically nonexistent.

    That meant there were countless times when I felt lost, abandoned, and overlooked.

    Being deeply hurt by Diana gave me the opportunity to go right to the source of the pain, my original abandonment experiences. Daily meditation and journaling helped whittle away the pain.

    It was slow progress for a while. I even stopped writing for a few weeks because I was overwhelmed with emotion. But eventually I began to feel like myself again.

    The first two months were rough, the next two were a little better, and after six months I was finally out of the weeds. But more than that, I feel better than I did before I met Diana.

    I feel as if my baseline level of security and happiness is higher. The way I think about it is that my abandonment experiences were heavy boulders weighing down my soul. Not carrying them around feels so much lighter.

    I must have spent over 100 hours meditating to let go of these emotions, and I’ve learned a few things in the process…

    1. Present pain is compounded by pain from the past. If you want to be free, heal the original wound.

    2. We seek what is familiar in relationships, even at the expense of our safety and happiness. And what is familiar is the love we received from our parents. If we want to have better relationships, we need to heal our past or we will repeat what we know endlessly.

    3. We get what we need to heal in relationships. And I think that’s beautiful. While things might suck in the short-term, you’ll come to know that life has your best interests at heart. Now that this episode is over, I’m glad life gave me the experience I needed to heal.

    Now it’s time for a counterintuitive move that helped me close this chapter in my life.

    I used to think “being left by Diana like that hurt so bad and I wouldn’t want to experience it again, but I am glad that I was able to learn and grow from it.”

    But that thought reveals that there is more work for me. To get closure from this experience, I had to open myself up to going through it again (but trusting life to not be so cruel).

    It’s not what you would think would help, but when you run from an experience you are still controlled by it.

    And if your goal is genuine freedom, you need to open yourself up to it. Of course, I will still be cautious going forward, just not fearful.

    Once I opened myself up to experiencing that same pain and hurt, I became freer. I took off the armor I was wearing, and I know that life can be trusted to have my back.

    I’d rather live with an open heart and get hurt than live closed off. That’s the way of freedom.

    “You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.” ~Rumi

  • How Not Setting Boundaries Serves Our Primal Need for Acceptance

    How Not Setting Boundaries Serves Our Primal Need for Acceptance

    “When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated.” ~Brené Brown

    I used to believe that others didn’t have healthy boundaries. They didn’t know where to draw the line, and I was the victim of overbearing people. People that would always cross the invisible line.

    When people crossed that line, it left me feeling uncomfortable, exhausted, and resentful. It felt wrong in my gut, but I never knew how to communicate it or change it until later in life. Lack of boundaries seeped into every part of my life, personal, professional, and everything in between.

    For example, an ex-boyfriend assumed it was okay to borrow my car. I wanted to be nice and easygoing, so I let it slide until I found myself walking home in the middle of the day from a long work shift. The same ex-boyfriend also moved in with me during a difficult life transition for him, and I thought being supportive meant letting him stay.

    I struggled with staying up late to talk a friend through her troubles night after night, even though I knew I needed to rest and felt depleted. In many cases, she wasn’t listening and was unaware of how long we had been speaking. I wanted to be helpful and caring and thought that it was the right thing to do.

    I also felt afraid to speak up with friends on subjects I was passionate about and would keep quiet when a friend said something that I didn’t agree with because I didn’t want to rock the boat or receive her judgment of my different opinion.

    In work situations, not setting boundaries meant I made myself overly available and overly responsible.

    I had a boss that would call me during off hours to complete a task he wasn’t able to do during the day. My instinct was to ignore, yet the people-pleaser in me wanted to be a “good” employee. I also went above and beyond finding my own replacements when I left jobs so that the transition would be smooth, and my co-workers wouldn’t have to bear any extra weight with my leaving.

    I’d continuously find myself offering and accepting situations that left me stressed out and resentful and would wonder why other people didn’t notice.

    I blamed others until I realized that it wasn’t anyone else’s job to guess what I was thinking or feeling. It wasn’t their responsibility to change to suit me; it was my responsibility to change to suit myself—my truest self, the part of me that felt confident enough to be honest, communicate, and trust that it was okay to do what was best for me.

    My problem with boundaries wasn’t that other people kept crossing the invisible line. It was that the line was invisible. I needed to start setting boundaries with myself. That meant recognizing that I struggled with setting boundaries because I felt safe and secure when I over-gave. I felt loved and worthy.

    After realizing why I struggled with boundaries and empowering myself to learn more about my unhealthy pattern of people-pleasing, setting boundaries became about facing my fears around others’ approval or disapproval.

    Being able to say no to people I loved or jobs I cared about might come at a cost to me. Would they ultimately love and accept me even if I didn’t meet their needs, or would they abandon me?

    In most cases, the communication or conversation wasn’t so dire; however, the fear I felt was big. After years of habitually putting others first and pleasing, I had to have the courage to disappoint others and even lose relationships that no longer fit.

    Thankfully, when I faced my fear of speaking up and potentially being abandoned, I was mostly met with unconditional love and support. In fact, most of the judgment came from myself and not from others. The pain I felt wasn’t about them, it was about me.

    To overcome my fear, I spent time journaling and listening to my heart. I spent time getting to know myself and accepting myself. I realized it was safe to be myself and that the relationship that mattered most was the relationship with myself. When I started to love and accept myself, I no longer searched for love acceptance through approval of others.

    I had to reach a point when honesty with myself and honoring my deepest desires became non-negotiable. Continuously going above and beyond for others left me angry and lonely. I wasn’t able to be authentic, so even if I was accepted by others, it was impossible for me to feel good.

    If you struggle with setting boundaries, speaking up for yourself, or saying no, begin by asking yourself why. What part of you desires to put others first? What are you truly afraid of? And are you willing to face your fears in order to meet your needs and create more reciprocal relationships?

    In order to communicate our needs to others we need to be clear with what they are first. That means taking the time to understand what is most important to you and what helps you feel your best.

    If, like me, you’re afraid of being abandoned, you can overcome your fear of rejection by understanding where it stems from and taking the time to nurture and soothe it. Then taking initiative and getting clear with what you want (and don’t want) won’t be a problem any longer.

  • How to Get Comfortable Being Alone and Get the Most Out of Solitude

    How to Get Comfortable Being Alone and Get the Most Out of Solitude

    “The act of sitting down is an act of revolution. By sitting down, you stop that state of being: losing yourself, not being yourself. And when you sit down, you connect to yourself. And you don’t need an iPhone or a computer to do that. You just need to sit down mindfully and breathe in mindfully.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    The day my ex-wife moved out was also the day when our dog moved out and when I was laid off from my bankrupt ex-company. It felt like everything around me had suddenly died. Many of our common friends and loved ones distanced themselves from me, and I felt abandoned.

    As I took my first few steps through the rubble, I felt the full force of this new solitude that was now forced upon me. And it wasn’t going anywhere soon.

    I immediately lost my appetite and my desire to cook. I started taking irresponsibly long hot showers and baths till my skin burned. I decluttered. I threw away pictures and memorabilia, love notes and cutlery, teabags and cushion covers. I stopped vacuuming.

    But I continued running. I started reading. I read anything that looked like it held a secret to end my suffering.

    I lost interest in my job. I’d wake up every morning with dread, sometimes not sleeping entire nights.

    I kept running. I got faster and stronger. I also got injured and had to stop. The darkness stayed even as the days started to get longer. While I lived abroad, the second wave of covid had just hit back home. One of my best friends from childhood died. Also a cousin. A friend lost his father and never saw the body. My dad got very sick and almost died. I sank further.

    But I kept meditating in solitude. Every time the void of existence hit me with boredom, anxiety, and restlessness, something deep within forced me to continue sitting through it. It started feeling familiar. And I slowly started to come back to life. My sense of taste returned. I started cooking again. I started having friends over.

    Still, some days I would collapse on the floor and cry till I got thirsty. Then I’d hydrate and go back to my laptop to run the next zoom meeting, smiling through it.

    I realized what a shell of a person I was now that my ex-wife had left me. At the same time, I continued to befriend the solitude and get comfortable with my aching heart—to sit with it, have a conversation with it, and see what it had to say and what it had learned.

    I was starting to get to know myself from a brand new perspective. It was almost like getting to know this new person who had been living in the basement all these years and I had no idea! And this person sure was interesting!

    The solitude soaked in all my tears so I could laugh again with people. It became my duvet in the winters, my picnic blanket in the summer. The solitude and I would often do karaoke at 7:00 on a Sunday morning till the neighbors started complaining. We went on bike trips together, dipped in cold lakes, went to eat at buffets, and sat through boring dates.

    It became my best friend when there was no one around. It taught me to write, to read, to think, to philosophize, to know what’s good for me, to love everyone unconditionally, and to be kind.

    It showed me things as they truly are and caught me when I was being judgmental. It took away my anger and my desperation. It carried my dreams and filled me with hope.

    Solitude has the power to teach us about ourselves. It is the gym where we must go to train.

    A century ago, people would look forward to solitary periods of relaxation on their porch after a long day of work. But today, we devote most of our conscious time to the pursuit of feeling connected with other people, either offline or online. A simple notification instantly pulls us away from the present moment. We are constantly everywhere but here and now. But our true self lives in the here and now, though we seem to spend less and less time with it.

    In the raw moments of loneliness that succeed a breakup or a bereavement, when we have nowhere to run, we encounter our true self. Like I did. And it was scary. It felt like sitting in the corner of a dungeon with a chain locked around my ankle as a stranger towered over me. I wanted to run away, but there was nowhere good enough to run to. I went scuba diving in the tropics, but my broken, ghost-of-a-self found me under water too.

    The key to cultivating fearlessness in these moments is getting to know yourself through solitude. It means deliberately taking time out to sit alone so you feel comfortable with yourself, connected to yourself, and at peace with yourself.

    To practice solitude, try this.

    1. Think of your favorite meditative activity.

    Ideally, it should involve interaction with physical objects, not digital ones. And definitely not a phone or something with a screen. It should be mundane and not involve rational thinking. This provides the ideal setting for your true self to emerge. An example is doing the dishes, focusing on your breath, or just sitting out in the garden, hearing and seeing what’s around you.

    2. Set aside a fixed time during the day.

    This is especially important if you are just starting out, because a strict regime is helpful to cultivate a habit. A good time is early in the morning. A recent study showed that early morning is the ideal time for alpha wave activity in the brain, which is associated with restful attentiveness. But depending on your schedule or your routine, any other time of the day is good enough to start with. Start with ten minutes and slowly make your way up to an hour. There’s no right or wrong duration, but the more the better.

    3. Start with an intention.

    Make a decision to consciously choose solitude. Embrace it like it’s your best friend. Know that it is good for you, that it is the right thing for you. That there is nothing better you’d rather do right now, and no one more important to talk to than yourself.

    Most importantly, don’t get too serious. Develop a sense of joy, a sense of humor about the whole thing.

    Sometimes it all may seem impossible, especially when painful memories and a sense of loss come back with profound pain. It may feel hopeless as the thoughts and feelings overwhelm you. But believe that those thoughts and feelings are like a movie playing in your head. They do not define your reality in the present moment. Do not let them consume you.

    Believe you are the mountain in the storm. And when the thoughts and feelings eventually pass, which they will, come back to your practice. Develop almost a blind devotion to it in the beginning, because it may take many sittings to feel the first signs of solidity and bliss coming back.

    If you are finding it tough to start by yourself, go to a local yoga or meditation class and work on your basic form. Then come back and try it again.

    4. Start enjoying your company whenever the opportunity arises.

    As you start building a regiment for solitude, you will start to appreciate moments to yourself. While you wait for your friend at the subway before you head to that party together. While you wait for your favorite burger to arrive after deciding to eat out by yourself.

    Think of those fleeting minutes as a gift, as an opportunity to see if you can appreciate the world around you. Wait before you flip out your phone or put on your music. Can you see how solid and calm you feel now, compared to before? How rich the world around you is? Give yourself a high-five for putting in all those hours of solitude practice.

    And if by chance that solitude is forced upon you by a tragedy or unforeseen event, even better! Because when your heart is broken it’s the most open, and ripe for new wisdom and the richness of the world to take root. Acclaimed author and Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön says, “To stay with that shakiness—to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening,”

    Be deliberate. Be disciplined. And you will soon get to know the most interesting person you have ever met! One who will always be with you, no matter what else you lose.

  • The Surprising Lesson I Learned About Why People Leave Us

    The Surprising Lesson I Learned About Why People Leave Us

    “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” ~Lao Tzu

    While this Lao Tzu quote may sound familiar, I recently learned there is a second portion of that quote that often gets omitted.

    “When the student is truly ready…the teacher will disappear.”

    The first part of this quote was a healing anchor for me as I went through what I call a thirteen, or a divine storm.

    In one year’s time, I went through a devastating divorce, was robbed, got in two car accidents, and lost a dear friend to a heart attack. I felt like I was watching everything in my life burn to ash, including my deepest desire of having a family, and found myself on my knees doing something I had never done before: asking for help.

    I realized the way I had been living my life wasn’t working anymore and I needed to learn, so I became the student and opened my palms to the sky asking for guidance.

    So many teachers came. I found a therapist who helped me heal from my divorce, I found spiritual guidance after being lost, I met other divorcees, and found meditation, which was a loving balm to my broken heart. I was ready, so the teachers appeared.

    Each teacher that came forward instilled in me the importance and effectiveness of the right support, and as I faced all the challenges of building a new life, I continued to seek help. What I learned allowed me to find my life partner, one who desired creating a family as much as I did.

    As my life transformed and I opened my heart to love again, I thought the first part of this quote was the full lesson.

    Until recently, when I encountered the second part on a quote website.

    Staring at the words on my screen, my whole body stopped. Tears fell down my face as I realized all these years I’ve spoken about the teachers that arrived in the face of my divorce, but hadn’t really spoken about the teachers that left.

    Specifically, the biggest teacher, my ex. For the purpose of this post, we will call him Jon.

    When Jon dropped the bomb on Thanksgiving Day of 2012, and said he didn’t love me anymore, I honestly thought I could stop it. I thought I could save the marriage. But nothing worked. Not couple’s counseling, not locking myself in the bedroom and refusing to eat, or crawling under the hide-a-bed he was sleeping on in the living room, pleading for him to stay.

    Jon’s refusal to work on the marriage left me with something I hadn’t spent real time with in my thirty-seven years. His refusal left me with myself.

    And the truth was, I had been lying to everyone around me for years. I had been in an on and off again affair and swayed violently between immense shame for my actions and complete confusion as to why I kept going back to a man I didn’t really love.

    I didn’t understand what I was doing or why.

    I would cover up the shame and confusion with overdrinking, lots of TV, and listening to constant music. I would cry in the shower, so afraid I would be found out. I was convinced my friends and family would all stop loving me.

    But something had been alive for a long time. In fact, it was alive when Jon and I were engaged in college.

    I was a musical theater major, and in my last year of school, when I was planning my wedding, I threw myself at two men I was in shows with. Nothing happened with the first guy, but with the second, we kissed, and I immediately felt ashamed and appalled. What was I doing?

    So I told Jon, and he asked me a powerful question, “Do you want to postpone the wedding?” I told him no. I told him I loved him. I apologized and promised this would never happen again.

    So the wedding went forward, except a week before I walked down the aisle, I felt scared again and asked my mom if this was a good idea. She thought it was just nerves and talked me back into getting married.

    Our first year of marriage was both exciting and tumultuous. We were both actors, and very passionate, and many times would have escalating fights filling our small Queens apartment with our voices. My parents came to visit, and my mother pulled me aside, concerned about how we were speaking to each other.

    I told her this was what actual communication was like, not just staying silent like she did with my father.

    So the yelling continued, as did all the excitement of our careers, and we spent a lot of time apart as we worked at different theaters. Even though I thought we were on the same page about having a family eventually, the years went on and on.

    Until my thirty-sixth birthday, when I finally got off the pill. I was terrified. I never thought I would wait this long to have a family, and as the months went on and my period continued to come, I heard again and again how scared Jon was too. Nothing I said would make any difference, and the fights were getting uglier and uglier.

    I felt so alone.

    And a panic was rising in me. A panic that he didn’t want to have a family. That I was married to a man who didn’t want to be a father.

    Then he kneeled in front of me a year later and confirmed my panic. Turns out, everything I felt was actually true.

    “When the student is truly ready…the teacher disappears.”

    Jon was my teacher for nineteen years. I met him when I was eighteen, wide eyed and madly in love. But now it was time. Time for me to learn what it looked and felt like to be with a partner who shared my deepest desire.

    Time to learn what a healthy relationship is, and what healthy and loving communication sounds like.

    Time to learn how to honor my instincts and process strong emotions, and especially my anger at being in my late thirties with no children.

    He didn’t need to be there anymore, because I was finally waking up and ready to learn the lesson he was in my life to teach me.

    He could leave, and actually had to leave in order for me to grow.

    Lao Tzu was speaking to one of the most profound teachings we have, that change is constant. People come in and out of our lives for different purposes, and our deepest suffering arises when we try to control every outcome. We try to control our relationships, our friendships, and the people we believe have to always be there.

    But what if each teacher is here for the time needed, and when they leave, it’s actually a reflection of what you are ready for?

    What if people leaving, relationships ending, is actually a reflection of your readiness for transformation?

    What if your heartbreak of any kind, romantic or personal, is a moment of sacred alchemy?

    Take a moment today to honor the teachers who have left. Perhaps write in your journal around this question: What did you learn when they were gone?

    For me, I sat down on the floor and cried. I felt a great wave of relief recognizing Jon left because I was ready.

    And I would not have known otherwise.

    You are so much stronger than you know, and your greatest learning comes when you claim the wisdom of those teachers who have left.

  • How I Healed from the Trauma of My Father’s Abandonment

    How I Healed from the Trauma of My Father’s Abandonment

    “When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    When I was fifteen years old, my dad abandoned my mother, younger sister, and me after a bankruptcy. My mother sat me down at the kitchen table to show me our financial situation scribbled on a yellow legal pad.

    Dad left us with six months of unpaid rent. The landlord threatened us with eviction until mom made a deal to pay extra rent every month to pay off the balance. He agreed to let us live there under those terms.

    Dad’s abandonment included disappearing with everything we had of any value. He took our music, art, records—everything that made the place a home. He even took the blender.

    My mother’s secretarial job covered our housing, car payment, and other bills, but we would run out of money the last week of the month. I would need to find a way to make up the difference.

    My father’s larger-than-life personality made him the center of our universe. With no education, training, or experience, he produced movies, invented a tripod, opened a furniture store, and made a training video for golfers.

    Every few months, a new business occupied his passion. The three of us were lightless planets revolving around his flaming sun. After he left, the absence of his gravity left us spinning.

    My little sister and I walked the neighborhood looking for babysitting, house cleaning, lawn mowing, and car washing jobs. Nobody has money to pay kids to do odd jobs in poor communities. We each picked up one babysitting job for one night—nothing regular.

    One day I answered an ad for a telephone solicitor job a mile and a half from our home. If I made seven sales in two four-hour shifts, they would hire me for a salary plus commission job. At fifteen, I looked thirteen but said I was sixteen.

    I made my seventh sale and felt victorious. We were going to be okay. Instead, the manager told me that one of my sales canceled, so I would not get the job. I had worked from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. for two days and didn’t get paid a dime. (I would later learn that the company owners stood trial for profiting from unpaid underage labor).

    I walked home crying in the dark. A man in a black car pulled over and offered me a ride. He looked me up and down with a glazed-eyed hunger. I ran across the street and the rest of the way home. The walls of my interior crumbled. I felt my first awareness of the impermanence of all things. I had become a refugee in my hometown.

    Our family of three survived the poverty of financial limits. We made it out. However, the deprivation of abandonment cut more deeply.

    Abandonment, at any age, leaves one gobsmacked by the cold awareness that someone you love no longer cares if you’re dead or alive. You’ve been rendered irrelevant to someone who once benefited from your loving affection. You feel discarded like yesterday’s trash.

    You’re never the same person once you know that someone you love can walk away and not look back. You have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is a knowing that lives in your bones forever. The poverty of an abandoned heart is hard to shake.

    Therapists talk about “fear of abandonment” as if it were a form of phobic anxiety, like arachnophobia, the irrational fear of spiders. My mother, sister, and I were not left with a fear of abandonment. We were left abandoned.

    When someone is shot with a gun and survives, we don’t tell them they have a “fear of guns.” We call it trauma. The pain lives in the wound. The scars tangible.

    Abandonment by someone we love is relational injury, like being shot to pieces but with no visible scars. Neuropsychologists found that losing someone we love activates pain receptors in the brain. It physically hurts. We suffer symptoms akin to opiate withdrawal.

    Like opiate recovery, eventually, the pain subsides. New experiences offer us hope for relational healing. We learn to love again. Like a soothing balm over a burn wound, love can ease that pain. The nerve endings calm down. Happiness reappears.

    Relational trauma changes the brain. We can experience a thinning in two parts of the brain. One part processes self-awareness (the prefrontal cortex), and the other helps us process and cope with our emotions (the medial temporal lobe). These changes can make us prone to anxiety and depression.

    Both of my parents were abandoned by their fathers as toddlers. My father displayed extreme polarities of emotion, manic bursts of enterprising energy, followed by depressed inactivity. My mother periodically experienced depression, followed by long periods of recovery.

    Trauma changes us on a cellular level and can linger like a ghost memory for generations. The ghosts of intergenerational suffering haunt many families. If you endure, suffering leads to wisdom. Wisdom leads to the alleviation of suffering.

    From suffering we gain: The wisdom of resourcefulness. The confident armor of a survivor. The cellular knowledge that security is an illusion. The ability to bring our own peace to the potluck. The instinct to protect our precious hearts. 

    I had to attempt new things after each failure on my road to healing. Children are naturally self-centered and feel responsible for the bad things that happen to them. The child believes “If I feel bad, I am bad.” With maturity, we learn to differentiate between what our parents bear responsibility for and our own adult responsibilities. I began to recognize that my father’s decision to leave us had nothing to do with us. He chose to abandon responsibility for his family due to his own failures and weaknesses, not ours.

    As I matured emotionally, it became clear that if I wanted a better life I had to make better choices. After several relationships with men who feared commitment and didn’t love me, I made the healthy decision to no longer find that type of man attractive.

    Necessity made me a seeker of opportunity. I sought out tools to help me cope. Here’s what I found helpful:

    • Meditation: At sixteen, I learned how to meditate. I believe that saved me from clinical depression and crippling anxiety. Meditation can repair the damage to the brain stemming from trauma. It provides the experience of non-judging, calm awareness.
    • Friendships: Friendships opened new worlds to me. Friends acted as lateral mentors and taught me how to play guitar, drive, write a resume, and apply to college.
    • Love: Finding loving relationships helped heal the sting of worthlessness. Watching other loving couples served as models for what was possible.
    • Meaning and purpose: Volunteer work, a life of service as a psychotherapist, raising a family, and commitment to a purpose beyond personal ambition increased my happiness and resilience.
    • Compassion: My parents had children at a very young age. They, too, suffered abandonment and loss. I feel compassion for my father’s loss and for what he lost in leaving us. Compassion heals.
    • Gratitude: I’m grateful for my small family and what we built from the rubble. My sister and I raised healthy children who feel secure, having never endured poverty of resources, or abandonment. We broke the transgenerational pattern.

    Today, when our family gathers, I watch our two grandsons play with their pups in the grassy garden. Their father, our oldest, watches the toddlers with alert protectiveness. My husband gives the boys horsey rides on his back to squeals of delight. Our daughter-in-law prepares a lovely meal with fresh produce from their abundant garden. Our other son performs a funny dance eliciting giggles from his nephews. Our daughter and her husband join in an improvised comedy routine to keep the fun going. We savor the meal as the sun slowly sets.

    Love wins.

  • If You’re Afraid to Ask for Help Because You Don’t Trust People

    If You’re Afraid to Ask for Help Because You Don’t Trust People

    “Ask for help. Not because you are weak. But because you want to remain strong.” ~Les Brown

    I sat in the doctor’s office, waiting—linen gown hanging off me, half exposed—while going through the checklist in my mind of what I needed help with. I felt my breathing go shallow as I mentally sorted through the aches and pains I couldn’t seem to control.

    Fierce independence and learning to not rely on others are two of the side effects of my particular trauma wounds, stemming from early childhood neglect and abandonment. During times of heightened stress, my default state is one of significant distrust.

    Letting people in and asking for help has never been my strong suit.

    Not only did it prove painful at times, asking for help has also proven to be unsafe. I’ve been given poor and damaging advice from people I assumed knew more than me. I’ve emotionally attached to people who disappeared when I least expected it. I’ve been lied to, betrayed, and left behind when my help was no longer useful.

    I’ve been injured both physically and emotionally when relying on others to care for me and have been let down more times than I can possibly recall.

    I have plenty of reasons to convince myself that no one can help me. That I’m in this life all alone. Some days I feel just that.

    Other days, I sit in my doctor’s office ready to make myself vulnerable one more time looking for support that I’ve been unable to give myself. Hoping, fingers crossed, that maybe this time I’ll be seen, heard, and cared for.

    When the doctor walked in, I was writing a note on the depression screening form justifying why I feel sad some days. I know it’s normal to feel sad doing the work I do as a mental health therapist. Working with people’s sad can be sad. I wanted to be upfront.

    And also, I’ve been focusing on healing the trauma in my body that injured my nervous system starting in infancy. Actively inviting my body to retrieve its pain to set it free and regulate my system to a state that is considered normal. Except I don’t know what normal feels like.

    Her very first questions to me: “Are you getting back what you put into your work? Is it worth it?”

    I blink, unsure if I heard her correctly.

    “Are you asking me if the work I’m doing is more depleting than rewarding? Am I receiving as much as I’m giving?” I ask.

    “Yes,” she responds assuredly.

    I exhale.

    She sees me. She actually sees me. I ask myself this very question every day.

    This one question cracks me wide open. I know I can trust her.

    I hear words pouring out of my mouth explaining the work I’ve been doing with myself. My intention to heal my nervous system and my body, how hard it’s been to feel all the emotional pain that’s come up and the subsequent physical pain that comes and goes to remind me just how deep all this stuff runs.

    I shared with her my most recent discovery—my earliest known physical trauma at nine months old, when my mother gagged me to make me throw up to “protect” me.

    When her behavior was discovered, she was admitted to a hospital for psychiatric services for over a month. My brother and I were placed in the care of anyone who was available to watch us.

    At the most important time for healthy attachment and trust to form, I was taught that survival meant staying clear of those who are assigned to protect you. They can hurt you. And the world was not a safe place.

    This was the first of many experiences in my life that would drill in the same belief. My body spent years trying to protect me by tensing up, shaking, or wanting to flee when I sensed any kind of danger—being trapped, pressured, controlled, or trusting authority figures was high on my list of subconscious nos.

    To me, there was no logic to the way my body reacted to what seemed the smallest threat, so I shamed myself for it.

    I couldn’t understand why driving on the highway put me in an instant state of hypervigilance. Why I would wake up in the middle of the night unable to breathe. Why the bright lights and enormous amount of stimuli in the grocery store made me freeze the moment I walked in. Why perceived conflict made me want to curl up into myself or attack and bail.

    All I knew was I was not “normal,” and I felt like I had no control over it.

    I recall the first infomercial that serendipitously came across the screen during a sleepless night while I was traveling in my early twenties. At the time I always slept with the television on to drown out the noise of my thoughts in the silence of night. A woman talked about her struggle with anxiety and the way it internally took over her life. I immediately tuned in.

    She was talking about me. She was talking about so many of us. I couldn’t believe someone understood what I desperately tried to hide and despised about myself.

    It was the first of many books, programs, methodologies, and practices I would try. It was the first time I felt seen and sought help.

    It wasn’t that I didn’t want help. I just didn’t trust it, nor was I comfortable with being vulnerable enough to ask for it. Particularly because I had proof that when I did rely on people, they could turn on me, or even worse, leave.

    And then there was the cultural push to just “suck it up” or accept that “it is what it is.” Key words to encourage us to abandon ourselves.

    Sucking it up is exhausting, and it doesn’t help. It doesn’t change what’s hard, and from what I can tell, years of sucking it up never made me stronger. Just more certain I was stuck in this mess of myself alone.

    Even though I help people for a living, and fully understand that I am the help I encourage people to seek, I forgot that I, too, was able to ask for help.

    This meant I had to have the courage to let my guard down. To let go of the feeling of burden I was afraid to put on another. To remember that every single one of us has our hardships, and we actually want to be needed and helpful to another when we have the space.

    It’s why we are here as humans. To give love and receive it. When I give someone the opportunity to love or support me, it gives them the chance to feel the fullness of my gratitude. To receive love back from me in return and feel needed and wanted as well. It is also the most solid reminder for both of us that we are never actually alone.

    We need each other.

    It is a practice for me to remember this. It’s also a practice to remind myself that I have been cared for far more often than I’ve been hurt. That those who have harmed me or left me had their own burdens to bear that I was not meant to be a part of. And that every time I do ask for help, like in my doctor’s office, and receive it wholeheartedly, I am able to keep myself filled and balanced to be able to help the people I care about even more.

    I exhaled when my doctor acknowledged me. I knew it was safe to let her in, yet I still swallowed tears while I did so. Her validation of my challenge felt comforting; her support, the extra oxygen I needed. Knowing the value of support has never made it easy for me to ask, but it has made it easier.

    As humans we are regularly encouraged to give, yet it is equally important to learn to receive. We need both to keep ourselves balanced and in flow so we can be the love we want to feel. To give is a powerful feeling, while receiving can make us feel a little vulnerable. That’s okay. The more courage we use to ask for help, the more strength we have to give out in return.

    If you are feeling resistance to seeking help, ask yourself where your fear lies. Is it a current concern or is it one from the past? Does vulnerability make you uneasy or bring up insecurities you have around being judged or feeling like a burden? Or do you feel it’s hard for you to let your guard down and trust another?

    When resistance lingers, choose people who’ve been loyal and consistently supportive in the past. If you don’t have any relationships like that, or if involving your personal relationships feels too uncomfortable, consider professional support. There are affordable and even free resources available, if money is an issue.

    The key is to remember that you, too, deserve a place to be you and invite in the help that everyone needs at times. To release your burdens so you can stand back up and move forward with more ease and a lighter load. So you have the strength to be a support for others and also for yourself.

    When feeling weighed down, ask for help—whatever that looks or feels like for you. The past may have taught you what you don’t want, but you have the power to choose what you do want in the present. There are people out there who you can rely on and who want to be there for you. They are simply waiting for you to ask.

    So go ahead and let someone in. No one needs to or is expected to navigate this wild life alone. Not even you.

  • How I Stopped Putting Everyone Else’s Needs Above My Own

    How I Stopped Putting Everyone Else’s Needs Above My Own

    “Never feel sorry for choosing yourself.” ~Unknown

    I was eleven years old, possibly twelve, the day I first discovered my mother’s betrayal. I assume she didn’t hear me when I walked in the door after school. The distant voices in the finished basement room of our home drew me in. My mother’s voice was soft as she spoke to her friend. What was she hiding that she didn’t want me to hear?

    I leaned in a little bit closer to the opening of the stairs… She was talking about a man she’d met. Her voice changed when she spoke of him. The tone of dreamy wonder when you discover something that makes your heart race. She talked about the way they touched and how she felt being with him.

    I felt my body go weak. I could not tell if it was sorrow or rage. All I knew was, she had lied to me.

    Several months prior, my parents had announced their divorce. My mother told me the decision was my father’s choice. She told me he was the one breaking up our family. She told me she wanted nothing more than to stay with us and be together.

    And now I heard her revealing that was not true. She wanted to leave. She was not choosing me. She was choosing him.

    Since I was nine months old, my mother had been in and out of doctor’s offices, hospitals, psychiatrist’s and therapist’s offices trying to find the cure of her mental and emotional instability.

    When I was a young child, she began to share her frustrations and sorrows with me. I became her support and the keeper of her pain. She had nicknamed me her “little psychiatrist.” It was my job to help her. I had to. I needed her stable so I could survive.

    I don’t remember when or if she told us that she was seeing someone. I just remember she was gone a lot after that day. She spent her time with her new boyfriend out of the house. As the parentified child who she had inadvertently made her caretaker, it felt like she was betraying me. She left me for him.

    I was no longer the chosen one—he was.

    I hated him for it. When my mother moved in with him, I refused to meet him. I didn’t want to get to know or like this man she left me for.

    I saw them one day in the parking lot outside of a shopping plaza. I watched them walking together and hid behind a large concrete pillar so they wouldn’t see me. The friend I was with asked if I wanted to say hello. I scowled at the thought. I despised him.

    Within the same year, his own compromised mental health spiraled, and they broke up. He moved out of their apartment. I didn’t know why or what happened. I only knew my mother was sad. Shortly after their breakup, he took his own life. From what we heard, he had done so in a disturbingly torturous way. It was clear his self-loathing and pain was deep.

    My mother was devastated. She mourned the loss of her love and the traumatic way he exited. She stopped taking her medication, and her own mental health began to spiral. My father received a phone call that her car had been abandoned several states away. I’m unsure what she was doing there, but she had some issues and took a taxi back home.

    He later received a call stating that my mother had been arrested for playing her music too loud in her apartment. Perhaps to drown out the voices in her head. She was later taken to the hospital without her consent and was admitted due to her mental instability.

    After several days of attempting to rebalance her brain chemistry with medication, my mother began to sound grounded again. The family decided she would move in with her parents a few states away from us and live with them until she was stable again.

    A few days after Christmas she called me to tell me how sad she was. She grieved her dead boyfriend. I was short with her. I was still angry for her betrayal. I didn’t want to continue being used as her therapist. The imbalance in our relationship was significant, and my resentment was huge.

    I loved her, but I could not fall back into the role of being her support without any support back. It was life-sucking. And I didn’t care that he was dead. She chose him over me. I was fine with him being gone.

    I don’t recall feeling any guilt when I got off the phone that day. I felt good that I had chosen myself and put a boundary in place to not get sucked into her sorrow. I was fourteen years old, less than a week shy of fifteen. I just wanted to be a kid.

    The next day, my mother chose to make more decisions for me and for herself. These were more final. She told her parents she was taking a nap and intentionally overdosed on the medication meant to save her. She died quietly to relieve herself from her pain and left me forever.

    That choice—my own and hers—would change the course of my life.

    The day my mother freed herself from this world was the same day I learned to become imprisoned in mine. I was imprinted with a fear that would dictate my life. I became quietly terrified of hurting other people. I feared their discomfort and feeling it was my fault. From that day forward I would live with the silent fear of choosing myself.

    My rational mind told me it was not my fault. I did not open the bottle. I did not force her to swallow the pills. I did not end her life. But I also did not save it.

    I learned that day that creating a boundary to preserve myself not only was unsafe, it was dangerous. When I chose me, people not only could or would abandon me, they could die.

    Of course, I never saw this in my teenage mind. Nor did I see it in my twenties, thirties or the beginning of my forties. I only saw my big, loving heart give myself away over and over again at the cost of myself.

    I felt my body tighten up when I feared someone would be mad at me. I heard myself use words to make things okay in situations that were not okay. I said yes far too many times when my heart screamed no. All because I was afraid to choose myself.

    The pattern and fear only strengthened with time. I learned to squirm my way out of hurting others and discovered passive-aggressive and deceptive approaches to get my needs met. My body shook in situations where conflict seemed imminent, and I learned to avoid that too.

    What I didn’t see was that this avoidance had a high price. I was living a life where I was scared to be myself.

    On the outside I played the part. The woman who had it all together. Vocal, passionate, confident, and ambitious. But on the inside, I held in more secrets than I knew what to do with. I wasn’t living as me. My fear of being judged and rejected or not having my needs met was silently ruling my life.

    So many have developed this fear over time. Starting with our own insecurities of not feeling good enough and then having multiple experiences that solidified this belief. The experiences and memories differ, but the feelings accompanying them are very much the same.

    The fear of choosing ourselves, our desires, our truths, all deeply hidden under the masks of “I’m fine. It’s fine.” When in reality, we learn to give way more than we receive and wonder why we live unsatisfied, resentful, and with chronic disappointment. Nothing ever feels enough, and if it does, it’s short-lived.

    The memories and feelings become imprints in our bodies and in our minds that convince us we can’t trust ourselves. That we can’t trust others. That we must stay in control in order to keep us safe. We learn to manipulate situations and people to save ourselves from the opinions and judgments outside of us. We learn to protect ourselves by giving in, in order to not feel the pain of being left out.

    We shelter ourselves with lies that we are indifferent or it’s not a big deal in order to shield ourselves from the truth that we want more. We crave more, but we are too scared to ask for it. The repercussions feel too risky. The fear of loneliness too great.

    In the end, our fear of choosing ourselves even convinces us we can live with less. That we are meant to live with less, and we need to be grateful for whatever that is.

    Do we? Why?

    What if we learned to own our fear? What if we accepted that we were scared, and it was reasonable? What would happen if we acknowledged to our partners, families, friends, and even strangers that we, too, were scared of not being good enough? Of being discarded, rejected, and left behind.

    What would it be like if we shared our stories and exposed our insecurities to free them instead of locking them up to be hidden in the dark shadows of ourselves?

    I’m so curious.

    Where in your past can you see that choosing yourself left a mark? What silenced you, shamed you, discouraged you from choosing your needs over another’s? When were you rejected for not doing what someone else wanted you to do? And how has that fear dictated your life?

    Choosing ourselves starts with awareness. Looking at the ways you keep quiet out of fear or don’t make choices that include your needs. Seeing where this fear shows up in your life gives you the opportunity to change it. The more you see it, the more you can make another choice.

    Start with looking at the areas of life where you hold on to the most resentment and anger. Who or what situations frustrate you? Anger often indicates where imbalances lie or when a boundary has been crossed. It shows us where we feel powerless.

    Make a list of the situations that annoy you and then ask yourself, what’s in your control and what’s not? What can you directly address or ask for help with?

    Note the ways you may be manipulating others to get your needs met in those situations and how that feels. Note also what you may be avoiding and why.

    How would it feel to be more direct and assertive? What feelings or fears come up for you?

    Then start with one small thing you could do differently. Include who you could ask for help with this step, if anyone.

    As for me, I have found myself in situations where I lied or remained silent to avoid being judged, in an attempt to manipulate how others see me. I have felt my body cringe with sadness and shame each time. It doesn’t matter how big or small the lie, it assaults my body the same.

    I have learned that speaking my truth, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant, saves my body from feeling abused by the secrets it must keep. Choosing me is choosing self-honesty; identifying what is true for me and what is not based on the way my body responds. I am not in control of others’ judgments of me, but I am in control of the way I continue to set myself up to judge myself.

    I have also found myself agreeing to do things I didn’t want to do in order to win the approval of others, then becoming resentful toward them because I refused to speak up for myself.

    Choosing me in these scenarios is honoring the fact that I will still be scared to ask for what I need, as my fears are real and valid, but asking anyway, even when the stakes feel high. It’s scary to feel that someone may abandon us if we choose ourselves, but it’s scarier to lose ourselves to earn a love built on a brittle foundation of fear.

    l cannot control the past where I have left myself behind, but I can control today, the way I forgive myself for falling victim to my human fear, and the way I choose to love myself moving forward. When I choose me, I have more love to give to others. Today I can take a small step toward change.

    Taking these small steps and building on them will help us to show ourselves that we can make progress in bite size amounts and prove to ourselves we are going to be okay. The small bites are digestible and give us proof that we can do it. This helps us build our ability to do more over time, while also decreasing our fear.

    If we look at our past, we will see the majority of our big fears do not come to fruition, and if they did, we survived them and gained knowledge or strength in the process.

    It’s not the action holding us back, but the memory of the discomfort we still live with. The more we move through these fears, the more that discomfort will decrease, and the more we will trust that we will be okay no matter what.

  • How I Stopped Feeling Unworthy of Love (And Finally Learned to Receive It)

    How I Stopped Feeling Unworthy of Love (And Finally Learned to Receive It)

    “I hope you find love, but more importantly, I hope you’re strong enough to walk away from what love isn’t.” ~Tiffany Tomiko

    When I was in my early thirties, I briefly dated someone right after my divorce.

    It was one of those fast and furious things that had no label and left me wondering if I made most of it up in my head.

    It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last. How many times had I ended up feeling rejected and abandoned? I was trying so hard to impress a partner, but no matter what I did, I only seemed to push them away.

    Tearfully, I shared my pain with a spiritual advisor and psychic and asked for her guidance.

    She suggested I consider the joy that might come out of pleasurable and easeful partnerships. She asked me, “Briana, why don’t you shift your energy and focus to that aim?”

    But it wasn’t so easy. I was attached and hung up on this guy. Why didn’t he love me like I loved him?

    Another thought popped into my head, which I hadn’t realized was there before.

    Before I could voice it out loud, she said, “Oooohhhh, Briana. I can hear you already. You think if you’re not in pain, then your art and other creative works won’t be any good.”

    I burst out into another round of sobs.

    Because it was true. I did think that way.

    I thought I performed at my best when I was at my most miserable, and if you took away my misery, I would not only be common, but worse yet… mediocre. I would truly be the bad artist I always thought I was.

    Every aspect of creative expression would become cliched, trite, and uninteresting. There wouldn’t be anything special about me.

    And so I would become unlovable.

    The drama proved my worth, one way or the other; the drama of performing well enough to earn love. 

    It wasn’t until four years after that conversation that I finally stopped clinging to my pain.

    Because I realized that pain didn’t make something (love) more authentic—it just made it more difficult.

    Maybe you know where I’m coming from. Maybe you feel that you, too, need to “chase” a relationship and suffer for it to really matter. For you to really matter.

    That’s just not true. There is a far better way to build relationships, and that’s what I would previously have called “boring” and “too easy,” but actually is about respecting your own, authentic self and opening up to love.

    Here’s what I’ve learned about letting go of feeling unworthy of love and finally learning how to receive it.

    1. Take off your mask.

    Like me, you might believe that to attract a lover and be worthy of love, you have to pretend to be a perfect partner, through things like making them feel wanted and desired, looking beautiful, and being funny, witty, smart, and interesting all the time.

    All of these tactics might very well appeal to a potential partner. Certainly, it might make them interested enough to get to know you better, and maybe even date you for a while.

    But none of that means it will soften their heart and make them fall into a soul-shaking relationship with you.

    In fact, while I used to think that I needed to pretend that I was something I wasn’t so that I’d be worthy of love, I just kept deterring the other person.

    Why?

    Because while the glitz and glamour are appealing, it also, on a deeper level, left me completely unavailable.

    In the same way, you are pushing away a partner by performing all the time.

    You see, your partner is going to feel as if they have to perform just as well, and while that may be exciting in the beginning, unless the mask comes off, it also gets exhausting very quickly.

    A loving partner will be less concerned about how many degrees you hold or how much you make at your job and more concerned that you’re passionate about what you’re doing.

    A loving partner doesn’t care how many facts you can recite. They may enjoy your company if you’re a great conversationalist, but that won’t necessarily make them feel something for you.

    The way to a partner’s heart is to make them feel safe enough to explore and experience their own authentic self.

    You do that by feeling safe enough to express yourself—without someone else’s permission.

    Because if you don’t communicate that you’re comfortable in your own skin, this partner won’t feel comfortable or safe opening up to you, either.

    And if a person can’t open up to you, warts and all, they can’t fall in love with you. It’s as simple as that.

    When you put on a performance instead of taking off your mask, you unconsciously communicate a fantasy of reality, because that feels safer than vulnerability. And then you energetically and non-verbally tell your partner that you can’t handle their vulnerability, either.

    And isn’t it freeing? You, in all your vulnerability, are the person they want and need in order to be their own, true self.

    2. Get in touch with your own feelings.

    What many of us do when we feel unworthy of love is numb our emotions and pretend we feel something other than we actually do.

    But a loving partner wants to know you’re angry when you’re angry and why you’re angry.

    Guess what happens if you’re acting one way, while feeling something else? That’s right, drama.

    If they think you’re angry, but they are not sure, because you’re trying hard to plaster a smile on your face, say, “I’m fine,” and stuff it down, you’re not really fooling anyone, just confusing them.

    Your energy and your verbal expressions are going to contradict one another, and that is the seed of dramatic conflict.

    And this type of drama is so annoying because you are effectively keeping a partner at bay, and refusing to connect with them, for fear that they wouldn’t like the “real” you.

    But because they can’t access “the real” you, there’s no real glue holding them there, and they wind up leaving you anyway.

    So show them what you feel, while letting go of the fear that they will reject you for doing so. By reconnecting with your emotions, you show up as your authentic self and make it safe for them to love you.

    3. Be open to meeting someone with the same level of consciousness.

    Around the end of August last year, I started dating someone. He wasn’t originally what I would have imagined for myself, but he turned out to be exactly what I need.

    Right from the get-go, things went really well; we talked for hours on end, and I felt an instant connection.

    There were butterflies, yes, but not the kind of gut-twisting, obsessive sensations I have had in the past, which usually means I should run.

    This was more like, “Ah, you fit nicely… and kinda feel like home. What took you so long?”

    He shows up with fresh flowers, texts me “good morning,” and sees the humor in situations like that time my cat got jealous and bit him when he tried to kiss me.

    While before, I would have instantly dismissed this type of relationship as being too easy (and the lack of drama would have shown me that it wasn’t real love), I now see it for what it is:

    A relationship in which partners join together from a place of inspiration, as opposed to a fear-based need to be filled up with the other.

    This is a partner who already has a higher level of consciousness and is looking for purposeful building. There’s no drama, there’s no chasing, and there are no games or acts.

    This is the key to feeling worthy of and receiving love—finding a partner who is open to the same. The criterion for attracting such a partner, however, is that you are ready to meet them.

    I wasn’t ready four years ago. It took me that long to go from believing that relationships had to be a rollercoaster of emotions to opening up to a loving partnership.

    Ultimately, it’s about you finding your authentic self and realizing that this version of you (the real version) is so worthy of love and should be loved. That’s the premise for a relationship that, instead of being soul-sucking and anxiety-ridden, is the perfect space for self-growth and joy.

  • The Magic of Rewriting Our Most Painful Stories

    The Magic of Rewriting Our Most Painful Stories

    “When you bring peace to your past, you can move forward to your future.” ~Unknown

    It amazes me how things that happen in our childhood can greatly impact our adult lives. I learned the hard way that I was living my life with a deep wound in my heart.

    My father was a very strict man with a temper when I was little, starting when I was around seven years old.

    He had a way of making me feel like all my efforts were not enough. If I scored an 8 in a math exam, he would say, “Why 8 and not 10?” and then punish me. It was a time when some parents thought that beating their children was a way to “put them in place” and teach them a lesson. All this taught me, though, was that I was a disappointment.

    His favorite phrase was “You will never be better than me.”

    As I got older, his temper cooled down a bit, but one thing didn’t change: his painful remarks. “At your age, I was already married, had a house, a car, two daughters, and a piece of land… what have YOU accomplished? See? You will never surpass me.”

    It was his way of “inspiring me” to do better with my life, but it had the opposite effect on me. It was slowly killing my self-esteem.

    When my father passed away, I was seven-year-old Cerise all over again. At the funeral, I asked him, “Daddy, did I finally make you proud? Did I do good with my life?”

    This was the trigger that made me rethink what I was doing with my life. I had to stop for a moment to look at the past. This can be very difficult to do, but sometimes we need to face those painful events in order to understand the nature of our poor decisions and behavior.

    It helped me realize that, unconsciously, I was looking for my father’s approval in the guys I dated. And you know what? It got me nothing but disappointment and heartache, because I was looking for something that they couldn’t give me.

    Inside, I was still that little girl looking for her father’s love.

    When you are a child, you are considered a victim, but when you are a grown up, it is your duty to heal from what was done to you. You just can’t go through life feeling sorry for yourself and complaining about the hand you were dealt. This just keeps you stuck in a sad, joyless life and jeopardizes your relationships.

    In my case, I had to give that little girl the love she so needed in order to stop feeling lonely and stop making the same mistakes.

    The only approval that I needed was my own! When I realized that, I started learning to love myself—regardless of my accomplishments—and I also developed compassion toward my father because I recognized that he was raised the same way he raised me.

    He probably also felt he needed to be the best at everything he did in order to win his parents’ approval. And maybe he thought if I wasn’t the best at everything I did I would never be valued or loved by anyone else.

    Understanding this enabled me to forgive him, break the cycle, and finally let him go.

    So, what makes us slaves to anger, resentment, and abandonment issues? I think it’s the way we keep telling the story in our heads, and this is something that we can transform.

    Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting we sweep things under the rug and pretend like nothing happened. We cannot change the past, and certainly we cannot turn a blind eye to it, but we can modify the way we retell the story to ourselves, and this can be a step toward inner healing.

    I decided to give the difficult parts of my childhood experience another meaning. I edited the way I tell myself the story, and this is how it sounds now:

    “My father was a strict man because he wanted me to succeed in life. He taught me to give my best in every task assigned to me; he didn’t make things easier for me because he wanted me to become strong in character and to find a solution in every situation. Daddy constantly challenged me because he wanted me to develop my potential to the fullest so I could face life and its difficulties.

    I’m certain that when my father departed from this world, he did it in peace knowing that he left behind a strong and brave daughter.”

    This is now the story of my childhood, and you know what? I think I like this version better! It’s helped me close the wound I had in my heart. My childhood left a scar, but it’s not hurting anymore.

    My gift to you today is this: Close your eyes and picture a pencil. Do you know why a pencil has an eraser? To remove the things we don’t like, giving us the freedom to rewrite them into something that we feel more comfortable with.

    You can’t change the facts from your past, but you can change how you interpret them, so feel rewrite as much as you need.

    Your wounds will hurt a lot less when you broaden your perspective, try to understand the people who hurt you, and change the meaning of what you’ve been through.

  • If You’re Insecure and Afraid of Rejection Like Me…

    If You’re Insecure and Afraid of Rejection Like Me…

    “How brave the moon shines in her skin; outnumbered by the stars.” ~Angie Welland-Crosby

    I have this reoccurring dream where I am about to teach a yoga class. I stand to teach, and no one is paying any attention to me. They are all distracted or in deep conversation with one another and have no interest in engaging in the class.

    As I begin, one by one the students get up and leave. I am mortified and discouraged, though I continue to teach anyway.

    I wake up from the dream with a sinking feeling in my stomach and heaviness in my heart. Rather than indulge and spiral into sadness, I turn directly toward the aching.

    “Where is this coming from?” This is the question I ask myself as I dive into self-healing. Just as the body has the ability to heal itself on a cellular level when injured, we too have the ability to heal our emotional wounds.

    I have never been fired, from a job or relationship. I have always been the one to leave. This is not something I take pride in, rather I see a pattern that has developed over the course of my life since childhood.

    When I receive criticism, my insecurities are triggered. It must be because I am not good enough, as an employee, teacher, friend, partner. Clearly there is something wrong with me. My instinct in these situations is to run, to leave before anyone discovers my flaws, before I feel more hurt.

    I fear being abandoned or rejected, so at the first sign of conflict I retreat, like a turtle that goes into its shell the moment it senses danger.

    When I look back at my past I am left with overwhelming grief. As I peel back the layers further, I see more clearly the origins. Beliefs deeply rooted in childhood and cemented in adolescence. False beliefs of being replaceable, unworthy, not enough.

    Underneath the protective armor is an extremely sensitive and hurt little girl.

    A girl whose older sister locked her out of her room and refused to play.

    A girl who was teased by neighborhood kids for being weird.

    A girl whose best friend started an “I hate Shannon club” in fourth grade.

    A girl who always saw her friends as smarter, prettier, cooler, and more likeable.

    A girl who was desperate to be accepted.

    These deeply rooted wounds need proper acknowledgement in order to be healed.

    When we feel vulnerable or hurt, we tend to close off our hearts, gossip, turn to anger, or run away rather than address the discomfort. None of these behaviors will heal our emotional wounds. They are only temporary means of alleviating the pain. In order to break these old, conditioned patterns, first we must identify where the feelings are coming from.

    When We Feel Rejected

    Let’s face it, people can be mean. We ourselves can be mean.

    It can be hurtful and scarring to be left out, rejected, or on the receiving end of another’s harsh comments or behavior. But often, it isn’t as personal as we think. Often, others hurt us because they themselves are hurting. Perhaps it isn’t even intentional and the other is unaware they are inflicting pain.

    When we look beneath the surface of rejection, we ultimately discover feelings of fear and abandonment. But we can choose to change how we think about rejection, and consequently, what we feel.

    While we can’t control what other people think, say, or do, we can control how we receive and perceive. We get to choose whether we allow another’s comments to define who we are or how we feel about ourselves.

    There are some situations where walking away is the right thing to do. But not out of fear, spite, or in defense, but rather from a place of surrender and acceptance.

    We can redirect our energy to people and situations that are positive and enriching. Mutually loving relationships and situations where we treat one another with kindness, support, and encouragement. Where, rather than tear one another (or ourselves) down, we lift each other into the highest version of ourselves.

    There are countless situations that can trigger feelings of unworthiness, but I’d like to focus on two specific ones that have been particularly challenging for me.

    When a Relationship Ends

    Whether we chose to leave or not, there is often a deep sense of loss when a relationship ends. These feelings of loss can reappear at any time after we think we have moved on, especially when we witness someone else taking our place. A place that once made us feel special, valued, adored.

    I experienced this as I watched my ex’s new girlfriend move into a home that was once mine. The feeling of being replaceable. Even if ultimately, a relationship isn’t good for us and is no longer what we want for our future, watching someone move on can bring up grief and insecurity.

    Rather than indulge in these feelings, we can choose to be happy for the other. Happy they have found love and comfort in someone else. Happy at their own ability to heal and move forward with their life.

    Not always easy when we haven’t found love or comfort in another, we haven’t healed, and we aren’t moving forward with our own life. What makes it even harder is that we often reject ourselves when we feel rejected by someone we loved. The antidote? Focus on finding love and comfort in ourselves to reinforce that we are still worthy of love, and we don’t deserve to be or feel rejected—by anyone, including ourselves.

    When We Compare Ourselves to Others

    Jealousy is a destructive emotion and can be triggered by an off-hand comment, a sideways look, or a social media post.

    We are happy and content one moment, the next our ex updates their Facebook status to “in a relationship,” or we see a post from someone who appears to be doing better in life, and we are sent into a downward spiral that involves stalking profiles, comparing ourselves to another, anger, questioning our decisions, feelings of regret… the list goes on.

    In order to overcome the green-eyed monster, we must stop comparing ourselves to others and see our own unique gifts.

    Often it is the desire to be someone special that drives unhealthy behavior and thought patterns. Consider this: You already are special. You already are good enough, just as you are. Without having to change or do anything different. You can stop trying to be good enough and allow yourself to just be.

    When I recently experienced conflict in an interpersonal relationship, I was talking with my mom and I said to her in defeat, “I just try so hard to be a good person.”

    She said to me, “Well then stop trying. You already are a good person. You don’t have to try, it’s who you are.”

    The truth is, no one has come before you or will come after you with your exact qualities. You don’t need to prove yourself to anyone else or to yourself. The fact that you even exist is a miracle. What a gift. Allow who you are to shine, and allow others to shine, without insecurities, jealousy, or fear. Our true gifts are revealed when we recognize we are each perfect just as we are.

    It’s Time to Write a New Story

    Those old stories from childhood, the hateful words on the playground or rejection from others, they don’t fit any more. They never did. We unfortunately allowed them to mean something about us and replayed the same story over and over again. As adults we have the ability and awareness to see and break these old patterns.

    Just recognizing our old stories is a great first step. The next step is to create new stories that better align with who we want to be and how we want to feel. And the last step is supporting those new stories with our perceptions and interpretations.

    Instead of interpreting a breakup or layoff as proof of our unworthiness, we can tell ourselves there’s something better out there for us—and we deserve it. Instead of expecting people to reject us, we can focus on all the reasons we’re worth accepting, and recognize that if they don’t, it’s their loss.

    We can also help ourselves engrain these new stories by surrounding ourselves with people who support, value, and encourage us.

    As I continue on my own path to healing, I am so grateful for an amazingly supportive boyfriend and network of friends and family (including my sister, who has become my best friend over the years), as well as an incredible puppy who teaches me the meaning of unconditional love daily (I highly recommend a dog for healing emotional wounds). Even when I retreat or fall into old patterns, I continue to be surrounded by people who accept me, challenge me, lift me, and inspire me to be the best version of myself.

    My new dream goes like this: I show up to class to teach yoga and students arrive ready and willing to practice. They are engaged and excited to be there, and so am I. I am no longer insecure and fearful of rejection or abandonment. In this new dream, I give everything I have and allow my gifts to shine. In doing this I give others permission to do the same.

    We are the authors of our own story. The kind of story where we get to live our best life. We can rewrite our story if it no longer fits as we continue to grow and evolve on our path. What will your story say about you?

  • Healing From the Painful Cycle of Loss and Abandonment

    Healing From the Painful Cycle of Loss and Abandonment

    “You have not been abandoned. You are never alone, except by your own choice.” ~Jonathan Lockwood Huie

    Loss is never an easy experience. However, it is a part of life, so we need to accept it and find ways to cope with it in order to keep moving forward.

    Whether someone dies or chooses to end a relationship, loss hurts and can leave us feeling abandoned and potentially leave deep wounds and scars.

    I recently read something that suggested abandonment is a type of trauma, and it can cause symptoms similar to PTSD when the abandonment issues from our past are triggered in the present. When those emotions are triggered, we go into fight-or-flight mode.

    I experienced a great deal of loss early in my life, and it created issues around abandonment, trust, and insecurity. Although most of the loss was through the passing of loved ones, I also experienced abandonment as a child and young adult from people close to me, who were alive and well and a significant part of my life.

    It began when I was only seven and my mom discovered she had a brain tumor. She passed away when I was ten. My dad was never honest with me about how seriously ill she was and the fact that most likely she was going to die. I was always told that mommy was going to be okay.

    Even though I know now that he was trying to protect me, it was the start of many repeating patterns in my life. Patterns of loss, abandonment, and deception.

    Was anyone ever going to be honest with me? Was anyone ever going to genuinely love me and stick around?

    I lost many other family members between the ages of ten and twenty-four, culminating with my dad. Our relationship had become strained over the years after my mom passed, mainly because his new wife, who he’d brought into our lives shortly after my mom’s death, seemed to have little compassion for a young girl who had lost her mother.

    She and her daughter became the new priorities in my dad’s life. I felt abandoned at a young age by the one man who I believed would be there for me after losing my mom.

    As I progressed into my teenage years and early twenties, I was looking for love and security anywhere I could find it. When I did find it, I tried to hold on way too tightly, so tightly that I often lost what I had.

    After my teenage years, I continued looking for love, for security, and for someone who would be open and honest with me; someone I could trust 100%. I wanted someone who would put me first. I was looking for someone who would finally prove to me that I was lovable and worth fighting and sticking around for.

    Over and over again, I looked outside of myself instead of learning how to find the love and security I so desperately wanted within myself.

    I have been in various relationships since the age of sixteen, starting with a seven-year relationship that felt like another huge loss when it ended. Not only did I lose him, but also his family, which had become a surrogate for my own. There were a few short-term relationships after that, and then I got married at twenty-seven after dating someone for two years. We separated five years ago, officially divorced three years ago, and after that I went into another relationship.

    All the loss and deception I experienced early on in life have created various fears, fears I now know I’ve created. A fear of being alone (which is why I’ve gone from relationship to relationship), a fear of not being enough, a fear that someone is going to leave me again in some way, a fear that people are not going to be honest with me.

    We all have our own experiences in life and our own stories. The important thing is what we do with them. Do we take them and learn from them, or do we take any gut-wrenching experiences we’ve been through and play the victim, wanting others to feel sorry for us?

    I will admit, I did play the victim for many years, and I wanted anyone and everyone to feel sorry for me. Many people told me that I was a strong person despite everything I had been through, but it took me many years to see that for myself. At one point when I was younger, I did see it, but then it got buried for quite a long time; however, I am now slowly finding it once again.

    I’ve been taking a deeper look at my life and the things I’ve been through, specifically when it comes to love and relationships.

    I’ve come to realize that I have attracted the same type of man many times. I believe this is based on the initial abandonment by my father, who couldn’t seem to be emotionally available for a young girl who had lost her mother and instead dove right into something new in order to not have to truly face it himself.

    When I look at some of the most serious relationships I’ve had in my life to date, I see they were all with men who were emotionally unavailable. Men who lacked empathy and compassion and who didn’t know how to be there when I was truly struggling. Much like my father.

    I realize that I’ve had this belief that if I could convince just one emotionally unavailable man to change, truly care, and be there for me—to heal the wounds of this little girl—then somehow it would make up for the hurt I experienced as a young child who felt alone and hurt and deceived for so many years.

    I thought that if I could just change one man, this would take away all the pain I had in my life for all these years. The pain that was like a knife in my heart that someone just kept twisting and turning, leaving an open wound that could never heal.

    There were times when I did things that didn’t feel right to me, just so the man I was with would love me and stay. I was not being authentic to myself, just so I wouldn’t be abandoned and alone.

    I was not learning the lessons I needed to learn, so what do you think the universe kept providing? Men who were emotionally unavailable or deceptive. Men who I could not fully trust, men who had no empathy, men who left me feeling unsafe and insecure, men who I changed who I was for.

    Finally, my eyes are starting to open. I see now that until I heal these wounds within me, on my own, I won’t find satisfaction in any relationship. I need to discover my path to healing, to being whole and complete, in order to have the relationship I truly want.

    So that is exactly what I am currently working on. Healing those childhood scars, learning to love myself, realizing that I am enough and that I deserve so much more than I’ve experienced up until now. 

    I know that I deserve honesty and respect, care and compassion, and a man who makes me a priority in his life. I just turned fifty last year, and although part of me wishes I could have figured things out a long time ago, I believe everything happens when it is meant to, and I am okay with that.

    We all learn the lessons we need to learn at different paces. It may be a long road, or it may be a short one. It may be easy, or it may be hard.

    One thing I can assure you of based on my own personal experience: the universe will continue to provide the opportunity to learn the lessons you need to learn until you finally come to that moment of clarity. A moment where it all becomes crystal clear, like a lake on a still, quiet day. A day when you have an awakening and can finally begin to move forward.

    And then, you will move on to your next lesson, because in life there will always be something to learn. If we aren’t learning, we aren’t growing.

    So, if you’ve been struggling with something that seems to be repeating itself in your life, take a look at what you’ve been through and see if you can find a cycle or a pattern there. Think back to where this pattern first began, most likely in your childhood.

    Try to step outside the emotions of your current situation and see the deeper work you need to do to truly heal so you can create change in your life. That might mean healing from early abandonment, like me, so you stop choosing people who will reject you. Or it may mean recognizing your worth as a person so you stop sabotaging yourself. Whatever your pattern, there’s one constant: you. The first step is to acknowledge that self-awareness is truly key!

    Then dig down and find your strength; it’s in there! Make a decision that you are going to learn your lessons, break that pattern, and find true happiness in your life. We all deserve that!

  • When You Fear Emotional Abandonment: Do You Know Your Worth?

    When You Fear Emotional Abandonment: Do You Know Your Worth?

    Alone in the Woods

    “Your value doesn’t decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.” ~Unknown

    Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…says Lady Liberty. She was speaking to immigrants wanting to start a new promised life in America, but those words could be my tagline for the men I have had my most intimate relationships with.

    If you were broken, emotionally unavailable, complicated, and confused, I was your girl.

    I would love you more than you loved yourself, or could love me. 

    I would put all my energy into trying to make it work, trying to help you heal, but I would abandon my own needs or truth in the process, because the desire to recognize or honor my own worth was not as strong as it was for me to show you yours.

    Was I aware of this pattern? Perhaps on a superficial level, but it didn’t truly emerge until I ended my most recent long-term relationship last summer.

    One day the light bulb turned on as I went from six years with a man I was engaged to marry (and before that in an eleven-year relationship that sucked my soul dry) to an emotional affair that had left me more raw and exposed than before.

    I was the common denominator in this series of events, but what was I contributing that left my soul and heart so ravaged?

    I devoted the summer of 2013 to unraveling this mystery. I was done with repeating the same outcome just with a different man.

    My search took me back to my childhood, as it would inevitably for all of us adults struggling with conditioning or behavior that we just can’t seem to let go, even though it does nothing to serve our higher purpose.

    My relationship with my mother could be described as a fractured one, at best. She too was broken from her childhood experiences, which shaped her choices, mostly the not-so-good ones as she aged. The difference is, she chose to stay in that place of unhealing and unawareness, whereas I knew better.

    Through my teens and early adulthood, I struggled with trying to understand her choices, her inability to love me and support me the way that I needed.

    I was not brought up to understand my intrinsic worth, to know what a healthy and nurturing relationship looks like and, most importantly, that I deserved to be in one.

    I turned to the metaphysical, spirituality, and yoga to shed light on what I just couldn’t see.

    With each year, I was able to piece together a little more of my toolkit for understanding, but the toolkit my mother gave me for tolerating emotional unavailability and abandonment in my closest relationships seemed to win out.

    I could support, tell all those around me in their darkest days how beautiful, how amazing they were, but when it came to myself, those words were like bitter-tasting medicine that I just couldn’t swallow.

    Subconsciously, I ached for my partner to help heal me—to echo the sentiment I would bestow to them—but it never came in the quantity or consistency that I required. And it never would if I kept looking outside myself. It was a vicious cycle that had to end.

    Then one day it became clear. Through my search, which I was fiercely committed to, I came upon a psychological term coined by Freud: repetition compulsion. The trumpets sounded, the lights turned on, and in that moment it all made sense.

    Repetition compulsion is an “inherent, primordial tendency in the unconscious that impels the individual to repeat certain actions, in particular, the most painful or destructive ones.”

    Usually, it stems from an unhealed relationship with a parent. So in adult life, we’ll attempt to heal the traumatic event that took place as a child through intimate adult relationships, but the outcome will end up the same.

    It never occurred to me that my relationship with my mother, and all the hurt it brought, would ever affect my adult relationships with men.

    My father and I were very close; he was a friend, a rock in my life. But even so, I kept finding the same man drawn to me or I drawn to them. In essence, they were emotional replicas of my mother.

    I was not brought up with clear emotional boundaries or the ability to validate my own worth—not on the level I required to be a strong, confident woman. I flailed. I would have bursts of drive and chutzpah at times, but I spent most of my energy feeling not good enough, not lovable enough, not worthy enough.

    I talked myself out of many opportunities or shied away from experiences because of my inner demons. In a nutshell, I sold myself really short.

    Armed with this new knowledge, I consulted with a counselor to understand further. In a few sessions and with more reading as the summer wore on, I came to that place of healing.

    I saw, objectively, what had happened and what I wanted to and needed to do differently to end the cycle. This education was put to the test this past winter when I ventured into a new relationship that had great promise.

    All my old fears came up, fears of being emotionally abandoned. And when it looked like the same thing was happening again, I did something that I didn’t know I could do. I said no. No to repeating the same mistake. I set my boundaries, I stated my worth, and I was prepared to walk away.

    I spoke my truth and came from an authentic place when communicating with this newest partner. It mattered not if he understood or heard me; it only mattered that I said what I did and took responsibility for my own outcome instead of placing the power in the hands of another.

    In the end, he did understand, and I was heard. Although we did part ways, I was left with more clarity than I ever had before.

    I don’t regret the path taken or the experiences had, including the heartaches. For each one brought me to this point. The point of seeing my intrinsic worth, something we all are born with.

    We must nurture it firstly within before it will be mirrored to us fully. It’s not about being defined by ego or conceit, but knowing, from an inner wisdom, that others cannot define the value we all possess; only we can do that.

    That being said, I’m still human, and sometimes I catch myself falling into that old, familiar pattern. But before I fall too deep, I bring myself up again. I cannot undo the past, but I certainly can lay the groundwork for my present and my future, cultivating fertile soil where my needs are nurtured and my worth is evident.

    I do not have to fear being emotionally abandoned by another, because I won’t abandon myself anymore. So now the tagline reads, I can help show you your worth, not because yours is more important, but because I firstly see and honor my own.

    Alone in the woods image via Shutterstock