Today I Wept
R E S P O N S I B L E We each have our own triggers and today I could no longer minimize or ignore one of mine. Healing the timeline...
I want things to be well. I want all, but especially those close to me, to be happy and I have always felt it my responsibility to do what I can to ‘have my family’s back’. To find a solution when none seems possible, and to always create welcome. I was raised with the notion that I was ‘capable’ and the one whom opened the door to all.
As I have grown in awareness, I know the answer to my discomfort lies in examining the experience that provoked it and gaining insight into how I can choose something different for myself.
Awakening in the earliest hours before the sun kisses earth I find myself in my conscious mind ‘problem solving’. I push it away, admonishing my over-thinking. I refocus, pulling my hiking boots on, and ready myself for a morning trek, thoughts again crowding in.
Arriving at the top of the trail, I deeply inhale the early morning scents of gum and damp earth and begin the upward climb. The sounds of the bush – the birds, the crunch of gravel under my feet – not even these deliciously familiar sounds are enough to keep my thoughts at bay.
The realization that now is the time comes in with a thud.
Softening my gaze, I continue to hike through the forest, but now with more focus inwards rather than absorbing every leaf, every smell, each vision of dappled light. Allowing myself to move back along my timeline I am taken to a series of focal points.
Back to the early days of healing.
Sitting opposite of my therapist, I register shock as she tells me I am enabling my family members to stay stuck. I cannot comprehend how I can ‘leave them to it’. She points out that they are my mirror. I am trying to save them from pain as a distraction and a reminder of my own pain created when I felt unsupported. All I need to do is love them and believe in their ability to find a solution to the problems they have created for themselves. Because, of course, the answer always lies within.
Checking internally, I can accept this and again I move back.
A workplace bully comes into mind. I remember the old desperation to find a solution, to be heard, to find someone to validate the injustice, an old pattern repeating. Again, the wisest of women suggests to me that perhaps I am betraying myself, treating myself unjustly by not listening and following my heart. Again, shock prefaces the reverberation of truth.
Am I betraying myself now?
Clearly I am. I understand that I am not responsible for other’s lives and so I continue to move back.
Moments in time follow – one after the other – where I prevented myself from choosing me because of the guilt should I potentially hurt another. Again, the realization and acceptance that this is not healthy. But I also thought I had long resolved it – what?
Still looking for the answer, I continue backwards along the timeline.
The kookaburras break my focus, and I meet the fearless gaze of a regular, sitting in a tree nearby.
Suddenly I remember having recently arrived in Australia, and as a 9 year old having to go to the shop. My sister wants to join me. I don’t want to go, and I don’t want her company. She is adjusting much easier than me, I think. I feel alone and she no longer feels like an ally. I say she can go instead of me but that isn’t allowed - I am the capable, responsible one. Now I don’t want to go and I don’t want the company.
We go.
I reach the water’s edge and see the early morning sunlight glinting diamond tips on the gentle ripples. Blue sky above, green grass below. Sinking into the damp earth I cross my legs and feel into my heart.
Looking at the memory, I know that this was not the beginning and so I continue backwards until an image of my 2 or 3 year old self materializes.
She is so sad. Drawing her next to me, I put my arm around her and ask her what is wrong. She confides that she just wants her parents to be happy. But they don’t seem happy, mama is so tired and serious, running the house and farm, two toddlers, making ends meet, striving to be self sufficient and spending long days without papa who must work away.
The desire to be the good little ‘Brownie’ – to help and make the lives of others easier begins here. I acknowledge her feelings. The weight of self-imposed responsibility burdens my shoulders and I feel her heaviness. I remind her of our Divine Life Plan. We came in to remember the wound of responsibility, experiencing hundreds of lifetimes of being responsible, of betraying ourselves and putting other’s needs before our own. This ancient pattern is the burden we have carried for long enough, we hug and weep at our folly.
Sitting back, I show her how we chose to live this lifetime as the eldest child of four, living often in isolated places, and of feeling separateness. Of course this brought our wounds to the surface, yet it also developed resilience, self-reliance and compassion. Still observing the timeline, we take a moment to acknowledge each person’s life plans and patterns. This new awareness reinforces the need to fully accept that each of us is here to do our own work – and we do this in our own time. That our ‘help’ can be the very thing preventing them from feeling and developing their own resilience. Finally, I show her the life we live now, the life that she helped to create. Relief and surprise! Breathing deeply, long held emotions flow upwards and out, beliefs that are no longer needed released.
With a hug we exchange the love we have for each other. I have a sense of her lightness as her form merges into mine.
Still sitting, the cormorants swoop into the waters before me, a gull cries and the magpies in the field behind warble that all things are right with the world.
Let me conclude with the statement that I have full understanding that I chose my parents. They did their very best to give me what I asked for and I love them. Solid values I still hold dear, wounds I have needed, many strengths made evident, as well as patterns I no longer need. I also love my siblings and appreciate the roles they play in the physical. Infinite gratitude.
Blessings
Michelle
Michelle Cowles
Spiritual Healer
If this post raises discomfort or issues for you, please see your mental health practitioner or make an appointment. You matter. Your feelings matter and you can choose something better.
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As an eldest child, I can relate to this article.