There is something about birthdays….the day you entered this world…however many years ago….the day your mother underwent her own rite of passage to birth you into this place we get to call ‘home’. Through the conduit from where we came, the portal to life and the sacred union that created us.
Whatever our ‘story’ about our parents, our conception – without this ‘sacred union’, for, YES, it was sacred for from it came the miracle that YOU are in the world. Without it there would be no you, in this time and place and the exact glorious imperfectly perfect human you are. We enter the world through the portal of our mother then after a certain age…what we then choose to do with our stories and lives is indeed our choice.
We all have things that have happened, ancestral wounds we carry, our own traumas and pains. Yet, when we settle into the bare bones of who we are, how we are being, (yes, influenced by our past), yet, still with one foot with the possibility of changing patterns and behaviours we do indeed have CHOICE.
One of my ‘primal wounds’ is REJECTION…yup, this ‘little’ story that can hinder many of us. How many of you relate to this ‘beauty’?
However, this morning on my ‘birthday’ I awake with a song that played from a moment shared with a previous lover (one, yes, I am struggling to release…unrequited love…it’s a bitch….keeps us stuck in those old patterns and stories of rejection and ‘what’s wrong with me? I’m not good enough’)….I digress. This song bought me to floods of tears as I lay in my empty bed, another year single, alone, longing. Yet, unlike previous years where I have berated often my very existence on this planet, these were tears of deep realisation that it was time to finally let this pattern and story go.
It is time. I am tired of it. We have to reach a point of being so tired of the story and pattern we really mean it…like REALLY mean it.
It goes a bit like this, where there is an element of blame towards those that have rejected me, fundamentally each day I reject myself…, read that again…I reject myself….consciously or unconsciously….my belly is too big, I’m too old, not successful enough…blah blah yes some of you know my insecurities and the stories I play out, as I write about them, I take them to therapy, I take them into my dance….they are a part of me and sometimes still yes, they get the better of me, until I realise and I again scoop them up and love them back to health.
It is this self-rejection on so many levels, the deeply nuanced or maybe you are still flogging yourself with a cat and 9-tails or stick (no…this isn’t an S&M fetish of mine) this is about self-flagellation on a level that is so deeply painful we don’t realise we are doing it until….well…until we do…or it is pointed out….or we actually cause ourselves actual physical pain..
It’s the moment of these wobbles, these times when life throws us a curve ball ….or pandemic we get to really do and BE the work. We get to practise that which we have read, spoken about and are learning all the even deeper levels of. For me, until we KNOW it on a visceral level, until it is embodied and known becomes body knowledge, I argue, we don’t actually know…
For me these things are not a cognitive process. We can ‘think’ we understand’ but still there is a linear approach. Whilst, yes, sometimes this is vital for our survival strategies, we do not want to continue to live in survival mode,,…that fight/flight/freeze is exhausting and very unhealthy. Unhealthy in our bodies, we become toxic with unexpressed emotions…sick…in our health and mind….unhealthy in our relationships. We continue to play out the patterns of abandonment, rejection, unfaithfulness, co-dependence….you get my drift? Does this sound familiar?
Something a gifted astrologer I know Karen Smith (Gnostic Woman) wrote yesterday, shook be back into the reality of myself and life, the big picture from this place of sadness about the ex-lover and a friend who chooses no longer to speak to me, and I still have no idea why!
Karen writes: ‘Stop loving people that cannot love you back- stop giving your power, time and energy to a person, persons, or situation that cannot or will not love you back.
Stop being angry that they cannot love you. If they could love you or wanted to love you, they would be loving you. If they are not loving you, or if they are loving you in ways that make you feel unloved, diminished, unseen, abandoned or betrayed, it’s not enough.
Why persist in hurting yourself? Why persist in being unmet?
The work begins within. Why are you available for unavailable people and not for yourself?
Where there is drama, there is trauma… heal the trauma.
Do not entangle yourself in this madness any further. Release yourself and let the healing begin’. You can follow her incredible blog and astro updates here https://gnosticwoman.com/
This reflects deeply for me what many of us as humans do. We chase, long for and pine for the unavailable, those that feed that deep ‘REJECTION’ story we hold. This is ‘Trauma Bonding’.
I was reflecting with a beloved friend about this and wondering to myself whether we move away and leave those that rub at that wound or whether we stick with it wound and all and learn to heal this part of ourselves. For it is through the exposure, understanding and loving of it we heal, not the shunning and running, yet sometimes this part is necessary until we are strong enough to face it. I am not quite clear on the answer to this yet, I guess it depends on the person, situation, depth of wound and a myriad of other scenarios.
Yet, I do know this:
- I as an individual am brave enough to ‘show’ up warts and all with all that I am feeling and face that part and welcome it home. It’s a practise!
- I am willing to be brave in the face of possible ‘rejection’ and begin to look at situations and people with a ‘different lens’.
- I know finally I will no longer tolerate being a ‘scratching post’ for someone as I want more.
- I will no longer chase after or give time or energy to that which I cannot change, this again is a pattern that feeds that rejection.
- There are so many fragmented parts of our psyche and soul that are wounded through traumas, it is, for me, our responsibility to find a way to integrate ourselves. We cannot always control the external that create the trauma and some is ancestral or cultural or both, however, we can take control of the journey to assist the healing, we owe that to ourselves, to our beloveds.
- Whilst we are never everyone’s flavour and some will not warm to us, others will turn to us with open arms and hearts and embrace all of us. These are the ones worth our time and attention.
Yes beloved, it is time for us all to know our worth deeply. It’s a journey, it has taken me years and still I forget, some of us hold on to this story so tightly afraid even more of the possibility of being loved for all we are and then the possibility of loss that we navigate through life in half measures, in unhappy relationships and unfulfilling jobs.
These times are challenging times, yet they are also times of deep inner transformation if we allow it. IF we are brave enough and generous enough to ourselves, to listen to our souls voice and ask ‘What is the impossible that only you can make possible?’ for this we have to stop rejecting ourselves and learn that even if we are alone, we are loved, deeply, fully and honestly….trust me in this truth….YOU ARE LOVED. YOU ARE ENOUGH. YOU ARE LOVED. YOU ARE ENOUGH.
Stop rejecting yourself and the world will embrace you back. Trust me….in this I know.
With much love to you on this journey of life as we embrace these times and ourselves…In grace, Sarah