Memories of the Past and Issues in the Present

One day at my place of employment we had an office manager and the next day we didn’t. It seems she was sentenced to prison for forgery and theft from an employer she had before coming on board with us.

She had kept everything a secret, even from her family, only telling her husband that she had lost her job and everything would be fine. He had no idea what she was facing.

Her sentence is 20 years, with 10 of that to be served on probation. Many say she won’t serve more than two years in prison.

I feel for her family. I won’t go into detail but I’ve been where her children are. It’s not a good place and it’ll haunt them forever. She has a 10 year old daughter at home and two children away at college.

The children will suffer. They will be embarrassed and their reaction to what happened may have dire consequences. Their mom may get through this and never “mess up” again. And with time things will heal for the family.

On the other hand, if the behavior continues, the family will suffer through it as well. I know how this is and it’s a source of pain for those who are in that situation.

As one who has healed, who has had numerous sessions in therapy, done a lot of introspection, and more, to heal not only from what others have done that affected me, but also what I did in reaction to that and to my low self esteem, I can say I hope and pray they get the help they need — that this woman gets the help she needs so that her behaviors won’t continue to damage her family.

What we do does help or hurt others. We may think we are only responsible for ourselves, but if we do wrong others will suffer.

Sometimes those who lie, cheat, and steal never get their just rewards, but this does not mean that others aren’t affected.

If someone in your life continues to embarrass you with their behavior and it seems they always get away with it with nothing more than a turned shoulder, it is difficult to deal with, but first and foremost you must take care of you.

Try to remember that even though you are associated with this person by virtue of a blood relationship or marriage — it is their behavior and not your behavior. Most people will separate that and not blame you for what they did.

It’s a tough situation to be in … I can say from many years of experience. What I experienced as a teen is still continuing to this day. It is a source of pain and embarrassment for those of us affected. All we can really do though is take care of us and our side of the street.

Acceptance

“Acceptance of one’s life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not mean running away from the struggle. On the contrary, it means accepting it as it comes, with all the handicaps of heredity, of suffering, of psychological complexes and injustices.”
—Dr. Paul Tournier

Acceptance does not mean we like where we are, where we’ve been, or what has happened to us. It means that rather than living in denial we accept that we are in a certain place or have had certain experiences and we learn from that so that we may grow and move on.

If our finances are not where we need or want them to be, we can’t fix them by sticking our head in the sand. We must accept our situation as being what it is and look for ways to correct it.

If we have an addiction, admitting it/accepting it is the first step in breaking it. When we have let ourselves go physically we must accept our present situation if we are to lose weight, get fit, eat right, or stop abusing our bodies with various addictions.

If we are experiencing a breakup or divorce when the other person is leaving us, it does no good to make excuses and pretend that they’ll be back and that it’s really not over. Acceptance will allow us to heal.

Denial and acceptance are opposites. One hides from a situation or problem and the other meets it head on. Having denial won’t wish away our problems, situations or issues. Acceptance of what is allows us to make the changes in behavior that will lead to healing.

While denial can numb us to life’s issues, it will only give us a temporary respite from out pain. Denial can represent fear while acceptance offers hope.

If we don’t like our present lot in life, we must first accept that we are right where we are no matter what our situation. Then with a clear head we can begin to work at turning our lives around and getting ourselves to a place where we want to be.

Running away or hiding from our problems will never change them; acceptance is the beginning to healing.

Healing with Laughter

“We don’t laugh because we’re happy — we’re happy because we laugh.”
—William James

Laughter is a healing force. It’s not wrong to laugh in the face of grief or tragedy. It is always helpful and healthy to find something to laugh about, even if we laugh through our tears.

If we are in a rough spot in life we can find something that makes us laugh if we look long and hard enough. Some of us might have just the thing handy. Maybe a favorite movie that we have watched over and over that brings laughter. There may be people in our lives who are good for a laugh.

Most of us know of something that brings humor in our lives. So when we feel down, or even when we are just stressed and overworked, it’s time to pull out that thing that makes us laugh so hard it brings tears.

If we don’t know what makes us laugh we need to find out. Sometimes laughter can come in unexpected times when we are distraught. It may seem inappropriate to laugh. We may have preconceived notions that if a particular thing happens in our life we aren’t supposed to laugh about anything. This is just not true. As long as we don’t laugh at someone in a hurtful way, laughter is something we need and should seek.

Once after one of my cats died I told a friend about it. He said, “I don’t care, I hate cats.” And he didn’t until he saw how sad I was and then he offered comfort. After this same friend passed away I shared with others this exchange about the dead cat and we all got a good laugh out of it, and this was in the midst of early grieving our loss of him.

So while what he said to me was certainly not funny when he said it, in his passing it is now a source of laughter for me. We just never know where we will get it, but we need to find laughter.

To laugh is healing and necessary for happiness in a world that is often filled with pain.

Healing First

“The things you want are always possible; it is just that the way to get them is not always apparent. The only real obstacle in your path to a fulfilling life is you, and that can be a considerable obstacle because you carry the baggage of insecurities and past experience.”
—Les Brown

The older we get, the more open we are, and the more we experience, the more likely we are to have a lot of baggage to carry from these experiences. Life lessons don’t have to turn into burdens that move with us along our journey, but they often do turn into just that.

The way we avoid carrying a heavy load and living in the past is to heal from something before we start anew. Many of us have in our lives gone from a soured relationship with pain and anger and walked right into something else. It’s easy to do because beginnings are fun and it helps us to “get over” the last one. But if we didn’t feel our emotions from the breakup and heal from the pain then it just turns into baggage.

There is no time limit written in stone on when it’s the best time to move on because it varies by circumstance and what we do to heal from pain and loss. We will know when it’s right if we are honest and true to ourselves. But to move into anything new with baggage from our past is only going to cause failure in the new relationship.

This is not to say that we are ever over something completely, most likely we’re not, if that person meant a lot to us. But we do need to be able to distinguish the actions and behaviors of our new interest from those of the former so we don’t project the old onto the new.

Another thing to remember is just because a former relationship failed, it does not mean that we are a failure and that everything in the future will be the same way. We may have chosen the other person for all the wrong reasons, including getting over another person.

We may simply need to choose better and for different reasons than in the past. And we can trust ourselves in that a whole lot better when we aren’t burdened down with a load of baggage.

Shed the baggage by healing your heart and then move forward.

Go Easy on Yourself

“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”
—Mark Victor Hansen

No matter what areas of our lives we are working on, it’s important to be gentle and loving with ourselves as we grow and change. Sometimes we make mistakes or take wrong turns on our journey, but that does not mean we are failures and should stop proceeding.

Perhaps those things we view as wrong turns or mistakes are actually parts of the journey that we’ll look back on and cherish for the lessons they taught us. Most importantly we ought to be kind to ourselves when we are experiencing growth, change, grief, or even stagnation. Beating ourselves up never gets us anywhere healthy, it just gets us beat up.

Many of us will be hard on ourselves because while we made a decision that we’re proud of, we berate ourselves because it took us so long, instead of focusing on the fact that we did it.

When we’re grieving a loss we must understand that it takes whatever time it takes to get through the pain and we need to be gentle and loving with ourselves as we work our way through it.

Sometimes we get stuck in a place in our lives where we’re straddling a fence over what to do next. We may want to make a career change, but we have reasons why we don’t fully put our energy into looking for a new job. Maybe we have fear. Perhaps we are concerned about change. Whatever the reasons, if we are unhappy with something whether it’s a job or a relationship, it’s important to our growth to face the fears and hop over the obstacles to get where we want to go. And we can never do that if we are not kind and loving with ourselves during the process.

We can be our own best friend or our own worst enemy. It is our choice to make. Just remember that when something is loved and nurtured it grows and heals. And that’s a gift we can give ourselves as we work through our own issues.

Growth and healing occur more quickly in a loving environment.

Getting Through Grief

“Hope is grief’s best music.”
—Unknown

The grieving process is one that we would very much like to avoid, but it’s an inevitable part of life. It can strike when we go through personal trauma or change, or when we lose a loved one, pet, relationship, job, home, or anything that means something to us. To experience grief means that we have opened our heart to love and joy and lost something, which is better than to never experience truly living.

The Elisabeth Kübler-Ross model shows that grieving has five stages, which are not experienced sequentially, but rather randomly and some are not experienced by every person who experiences grief. The five stages, according to her model, are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Many times when a person is sad people will tell them not to cry, but it’s cleansing to cry, and a part of the process. If we hold in our feelings they will come back in the future and manifest in other ways. We may have a lot of anger and not understand where that’s coming from. We may experience a deep depression that we cannot seem to shake. No matter how the feelings come up, they will at some point. The best thing to do is feel what we feel now and move through them so that the grief doesn’t interfere with our future relationships.

Grieving is part of life. We should never be ashamed for feeling a feeling. Our emotions are part of us. They mean we are human.

Also keep in mind that the length of time we grieve is not predetermined. It’s a process that is not pleasant or fun, but there are some things that can help us through it including talking to friends and loved ones; exercising; counseling; joining a support group; eating right; listening to or playing music; and doing something fun when feeling up to it.

Most importantly we should be patient and loving towards ourselves no matter how long it takes to get through the process. We will get past a great deal of the pain with time and effort. The kinder we are to ourselves during our grief, the easier time we will have in moving on. The sadness we feel when we grieve feels like something we will never be rid of, but before we know it we will successfully be at a place where we can feel joy again.

Grieving is easier when we are loving and patient with ourselves.

Pain is Part of Life

“Pain and death are part of life. To reject them is to reject life itself.”
—Havelock Ellis

It’s very easy after suffering an incident that caused pain, to just give up and say we won’t ever go there again. Maybe it’s a relationship issue and we just want to crawl into an imaginary shell and hide from the world and the thought of any future romance in our lives. Or it may be a member of our family who continues to hurt us each time we see them and we really would like to just cut off contact with that person, but they are our family so it’s not always the best idea.

Pain can come from many sources and usually it hits us when we have been at our most vulnerable. And in order to get over the pain some time must pass and we will need to feel what we feel until it is gone. Feeling our pain is how we move forward. Shutting down and closing ourselves to future relationships is not the answer if we choose to live full lives.

One way to recover from a painful incident is to practice acceptance. We just stop fighting it and asking why it happened, why someone did what they did. What’s happened is done and there’s no going back in that situation to undo or redo. We accept it for what it is.

Another necessary recovery tool for pain is to forgive — forgive whoever hurt us and forgive our self if we need to do that. We may have been equal partners in the painful situation, or perhaps we are angry with ourselves for allowing our self to get in the situation that hurt us. Whatever the circumstance we forgive those who hurt us and our self.

It’s okay to grieve. We can cry and scream if we have to, as long as we don’t turn our pain onto someone else or turn it inward. Grieving is a process that doesn’t fit into a nice tidy little package. We feel what we feel and stay away from medicating our pain with drugs, alcohol, or anything that we would use to keep us from feeling.

Pain comes when we live our lives fully, just as joy comes too.

Honesty Starts With Self

“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”
—Thomas Jefferson

Honesty with self is the beginning to finding a happy and fulfilling life. When we cannot be honest with who and what we are — mistakes and achievements included — we can’t be whole.

All of us have issues we wish to recover and heal from. Some of our issues show up in overeating, drinking too much, or some other addiction. We may not be aware of the reasons we do the harmful things we do to ourselves, but as we seek to grow and heal, we do discover that many actions brought us to where we are.

Whatever our issues, we first must own them for ourselves. If we cannot be honest with self, how can we ever be honest with anyone else?

Often we discover our real truths while talking to other people if we are being honest. We may surprise ourselves and actually admit out loud to someone what is truly inside of our hearts and minds. Perhaps this happens by accident simply because we are opening up to ourselves and someone else.

It’s part of the Twelve Step to admit to ourselves, God, and another person our faults, but also our goodness. It often occurs over time and with trust for other people, but it starts with us.

We may practice saying out loud while alone our truths, whatever they are, and realize that saying how we truly feel, the gut honest truth about our strengths, hurts, fears, all of what we feel, will set us free to grow and heal.

It works. Holding things inside hidden from light in the darkness of our souls will only keep us sick. Shining the light on fears and failures only lessens the pain it does not make it grow. And in the process we find out things about ourselves we didn’t even realize because we couldn’t be honest enough to ourselves.

Honesty sets us free to be healed.

It’s Not Time That Heals

“They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”
—Andy Warhol

It’s often said that time heals all and answers come with time. But it’s not just the passing of time that gives us the answers and healing; it’s what we do during that time that brings us what we need.

When we need healing we do the things that we know to do to get that whether it’s spiritual or physical healing that’s needed. If we want the answer to something we must ask the question and wait, but while we wait we take action.

For spiritual healing we pray, meditate, go to a meeting or church, forgive, let go, whatever it is we need to do. For physical healing we take our medicine, visit a doctor, pray, meditate, rest, whatever is needed for our particular ailment.

It’s true that it takes time to heal, but time is not the healer. The healer is the action taken and the answers to prayers. We change, grow and heal over time when we do the things necessary to nurture our bodies, spirits, and minds.

Healing comes with time if we do the work.

Forgiveness Gives Us Peace

“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
—Malachy McCourt

If someone has hurt and/or angered us and we are ruminating in it, there is only one option to free us from it. That one thing is called forgiveness and it is not easy.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean we forget the sometimes terrible things others did to us. It doesn’t mean what was done to us is OK either. What forgiveness means is that we let go of it, we understand that others are human, and that holding on to it only hurts us. We allow others to be less than perfect and we move on from and heal from the issue that we are forgiving them for.

As long as we hold on to the anger we have for the other person, for the wrong done to us, we are holding ourselves back. We are unable to heal. We cannot have peace. And many times it will keep our addictions active.

And just because we forgive someone, it doesn’t mean they have to be our best friend. It is more for us than them. Sometimes those who wronged us haven’t even asked for our forgiveness anyway. They don’t have to be told we forgive them. Our energy may tell them, or they may never know. It isn’t about them as much as it is about us and our well-being.

Forgiveness simply allows us freedom and a chance to love more than we do when we hold onto our resentments. As long as we hold onto resentments, we are poisoning ourselves and wallowing in our anger and perhaps self-pity.

Forgiveness opens the door to freedom.