This Is What I Need

When I was a girl, my life was peppered with trauma. That is it's own story, which I've told in detail at other times and won't retell now. The reason I bring it up, is to point out one result of my early life experience. 

Where I 'should' have had caring nurture, compassion and guidance, I was given a lot of time to myself, abuse and neglect. 

My own parents had deficits and this meant they could not give me what I needed as a child. This is not said to malign them or disrespect them. It's a simple fact that EVERY parent has deficits and whatever those are get passed on to a child unless the parent has done very intentional work personally to discover what those deficits are and to restore balance in those areas. Usually this is accomplished through therapeutic help. 

I would argue that in reality, it rarely happens that parents accomplish this BEFORE having children and passing on their own stuff because it is often the children themselves that shed light on the parent's shortcomings.

At any rate, the facts were that I grew up lacking basic nurture, safety and care. At this point in my life, those needs are still with me. In order to grow up whole as a human, we need that sturdy foundation. When we don't get it, we grow up with certain areas of instability. 

That's where my current journey toward self-compassion enters the scene. As an adult, I've spent far more hours trying to heal from the hurts of youth than I care to think about. This is, in part, because many times the efforts towards healing get stunted by a resistance to fully acknowledging reality (that we have xyz deficits that our parents passed to us and that there is no changing that). That resistance means we work at 'fixing' areas in an ineffective manner and don't make as much progress as one might anticipate.

So here is what I need right now. 

• I NEED to accept fully that the painful experiences of my past are facts. All the 'shoulds' I can throw at that pile of experiences will never change a single one of them and will do nothing to quell the pain and grief of not having had what I needed.
• I NEED to spend time doing the effective work of healing.
• I NEED to let go of any guilt or shame around the time/money invested that are needed to do that work.
• I NEED to release myself from the critique of others around this journey, especially family who may have contributed to the deficits in the first place.
• I NEED to understand that since it was meant to be a process of many years helping me grow to healthy maturity, it will also be a long process for me to heal the parts of myself that didn't get what they needed. Could be longer or shorter, but I don't need to judge myself for how long it takes.
• I NEED to cultivate compassion for myself in regards to this journey because compassion is the 'room' where good healing work can take place.

I'm writing this today because I was able to recognize the guilt I tend to feel at how long I spend each day trying to work on my own healing. How many hours I've paid to receive therapy! But when I look honestly at the amount of trauma I've lived through over the course of my life, it makes perfect sense that it takes a LOT of time to do this work. 

I share this because there may be someone else out there who thought that their own work should go more quickly. 

I share this with the hope that you will give yourself the freedom to do the work you need to do to heal. 

I share this to urge you to not apologize for the time you need to do that work. 

If we hope to make our world increasingly better, than we need to collectively do this work and validate the need for that. 

I validate your need to get therapy, to take time, to spend quiet hours daily meditating and healing. You are valuable and you are worth every effort to get you to your highest place! With love to all!

Ursula