You can accept or reject the way you are treated by other people, but
until you heal the wounds of your past, you will continue to bleed. You
can bandage the bleeding with food, with alcohol, with drugs, with work,
with cigarettes, with sex, but eventually, it will all ooze through and
stain your life. You must find the strength to open the wounds, stick
your hands inside, pull out the core of the pain that is holding you in
your past, the memories, and make peace with them.
Iyanla Vanzant
The only way to get what you really want is to let go of what you don't want.
Iyanla Vanzant
I’m reading a book by Iyanla Vanzant called Peace from Broken Pieces. I see some similarities between her life and mine – we both fell in love with someone we had known since we were fourteen. We both had him leave and come back into our lives. We both had him leave in the end. Her pieces kept breaking into smaller pieces as her daughter died, she lost her job, and her house. Yikes! And she survived to tell the tale.
I know I still hold a grudge for Ex-man leaving me and it is something that I’m consciously aware of but I just don’t know how to shift it. Maybe if I hold onto that grudge it becomes a bit of a security blanket for me, an excuse that I can hold onto in case I end up failing in my pursuits (the old “He left me high and dry with three kids to support. No wonder I couldn’t manage to follow my dreams. I was too busy slinging hash and putting food on the table.”). All I know is that for some reason, the grudge works for me or I would let it go. I’d forgive him for doing what he needed to do.
What Vanzant says explained that her husband simply, “Changed his mind” when he decided to leave her. When I think of Ex-man simply changing his mind, or choosing something else, it becomes difficult to stay angry at him. How could I be angry at him for changing his mind about me? About us? Or about who he wanted to be in the world? There is such levity to that simple realization that he changed his mind. It drains all judgment.
With this new idea, I might finally be able to forgive Ex-man for the breakup that caused me to go into my pain. It’s not like the pain was new or that the pain was because of him. He merely triggered all those broken pieces to surface so I can work towards peace.
If you left your relationship can you forgive yourself for changing your mind? If your ex left, can you forgive him/her for having a change of mind? Can you let go of the breakup, your ex et al. to make room for what you want in your life?
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