Today's prompt from Meredith at Cultivate12:
The Cultivate project
is all about healing yourself. How have you healed yourself, your
relationships, and/ or your community this year? How would you like to heal
these aspects next year?
I have been a hermit for the last quarter of this year. Actually, it probably started before that, but it was exceptionally pronounced once I began my medical adventure of 2012.
Probably the most obvious way I have healed my community is via my writing programs, including the OctPoWriMo project. I know this because people tell me this. Otherwise, I would be clueless. I am just doing what I do, I don’t think about it much.
One of the highlights of my year was my mother’s visit in early October after my surgery. We had such a good time together, perhaps one of the best visits we have ever had. I have not been one of those women with a negative relationship with my Mom. It has been varying shades of good, actually. This visit was far on the end of excellent. I didn’t have any niggling doubts about being left out of anything or being passed over because one of my siblings was more important than me or one of her other grandchildren was more important than my children. It felt tremendous to let go of this stuff!
It has not been a banner year for relationships. I am continuing to grow though. I have never had so much sadness and hurt and need to repair the relationships in my life. The only thing that comes close would be those horrid middle school years.
The positive flip side is I have continued to “get it” and been conscious about relationship repair.
I want to continue to grow my healing abilities with others as well as my ability to work toward healing myself. One of my recent discoveries is I crave other travelers, other people alongside me on the road. One of my misbeliefs is “I have to do it myself because clearly no one has any interest in coming alongside me.” I will be working on that misbelief in 2013.
I have also realized just today that I need to let go of the hurt that comes when people don’t show up at important places where I long for them to be. This is one of my oldest wounds and it really doesn’t enhance my life. I have been pretty good about loving what is in my life in most areas, but this is one that continues to get nicked and cut and shorn and it bleeds and aches and I get exceptionally messed up not only emotionally, but it starts hemorrhaging over everything else. I need to realize people not showing up is about them, not about me. I need to stop expecting other people’s values to match my own.
Again, I think I have been better with this, too – except for in this one area. This one “value” which is actually the remnant of a forty-year-old hurt that has never gotten completely better.
If I managed to heal that, I would feel so much better. When people choose to show up I would be thrilled and when they didn’t show up I would be fine. Normally I can do that, I realize, being more introspective, but my weakened emotions because of my recovery from skin cancer combined with relationship issues revolving around the same "showing up" theme has caused me to make everything have double and triple the meaning.
I need to forgive myself –and heal – for sometimes losing control and I need to be loving toward myself even when I act totally out of my usual nature.
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