Where and who we come from is significant.
It’s also hard to honor that significance if that place, those people, that experience were cruel, dishonest, or toxic to us. If they did their best to diminish our agency and dismantle our personhood because of something that they didn’t like or honor within themselves. That nine times out of ten had absolutely nothing to do with us.
Yet we can’t truly move forward unless we acknowledge what happened and let ourselves fully feel the feels. Not run away or distract ourselves from the waves of grief that break at random and inopportune moments (like on a work call), that accompany the loss of acknowledging what we were, what we wanted to do, and who we wanted to be, and the fact that it just didn’t fucking work out like we wanted it to.
We can remind ourselves in these moments, “it happened for me, not to me.” Easier said than done, but that slight shift helps us get into a learning and growth-oriented mode. Helps us make progress moment by moment, memory by memory, one step forward at a time. Helps us honor the entirety of our history, to embrace it as uniquely ours, to excavate it for lessons about ourselves and other people, and to find ways to step out of those well-worn grooves of habit, patterns, and mindsets and create our own, authentic way.
If we don’t honor the reality of our history, we find all kinds of ways to defend what was. To keep it as an anchor to the past that shows up in our present in all kinds of ways, both known and unknown to us. If we don’t honor our history, we can never grieve and give ourselves the closure we need to move on. We leave it in someone else’s hands who may not, in any feasible way, be able to provide that for us. To release us from the ties that bind and step into the expansiveness of choosing for ourselves, of trying out something new, of quiet moments that were ever-elusive in our former life.
If we don’t honor our history, we leave the intimate process of our healing external to ourselves - a relationship, a memory, a failure, a missed opportunity - that we can’t go back and re-do. We must acknowledge that we are here. In this moment. Which can be scary as hell because the enormity of that responsibility is overwhelming. We can’t blame or shift it onto someone or something else. IT IS ON US. So we take deep breaths, try to embody our moments a little more, take one small step forward at a time. We progress, we heal, we stumble, we get back up. We feel a little deeper. We see a bit more clearly. We risk, we love, we gain strength to keep after it, as messy and vulnerable as it all is.
Please take a few moments to reflect on these questions around honoring your history; if you feel so moved, I’d love to see your thoughts/responses in the Comments below. Thank you for reading and have a great week!
What parts of your history are hard to acknowledge? What is it about these parts that are difficult for you (be specific)?
What would have to be true/in place for you to acknowledge these hard parts today?
How would your life be different if you acknowledged the entirety of your life experience (give specific examples)? What’s preventing you from doing that right now (be specific)?
What’s one step you can take today towards acknowledging the harder parts of your history? How would it feel to take that step?