Last Straw, First Hope

Life has lately offered me some amazing lessons in gratitude and forgiveness. Ever since I studied the book, 5 GIFTS for an Abundant Life, I have expanded my gratitude (the G of the 5 GIFTS) and extended my willingness to forgive (the F). You'll have to get the book if you want to know what the I, T, and S stand for and the rest of the message.... This blog post is about something else:  my epiphany that gratitude and forgiveness are new tools to strengthen my Childhood Treasures of Trust and Independence.

AYFKM????

So, Gratitude.... I'm not much for things like gratitude journals but I gamely started one, as guided by the book. I made dutiful daily records for about 4 days before petering out...but only on the journaling. The gratitude just kept expanding, exponentially!

I started out just being grateful for stuff -- a house, a TV, a savings account, and so on. Then, gratitude morphed into an "attitude antidote" to almost any feeling that impeded smooth and joyous living.

You'll have to reflect on your own, uniquely un-helpful feelings. My ego's go-to list of ugly includes a few of the less-familiar dwarves:  Judgey, Impatient, Irritable, and Are You Freakin' Kidding Me??? (also known as AYFKM). These emotional airs arise when I forget that, dang it all, I am NOT the most important being on the planet (Whaaaat?? Are you sure?).

Here's how the gratitude antidote works for me:

Safety is a Lie

You may have read my recent blog about letting go of my canine BFF, Shannon. She was in the category Big Black Barky Dog and she was fierce in her protection of me. Anyone outside my door was intimidated by what they thought they heard on the other side...sort of 1/2 guard dog and 1/2 ravening beast. Now that she's gone, I sometimes feel just a bit more vulnerable to the random crazy that lives in the world.

Last night I found myself sharing with a dear friend about another kind of safety:  the safety to be myself in relationships. I heard myself say that feeling safe to be myself is all about whether I can Trust others' authenticity and humanity. As we talked, I recognized that I invest you--every one of you--with the powerful role of Editor of my Expression. In response to your actual or perceived capacity and openness, I limit how much I let you in, but also how much of myself I let "out."

Of course, I do the actual editing. Nobody can stop my self-expression without my permission and acquiescence. No, I edit myself down for you--without you even asking--and my first lie is that I do it to protect you. It hasn't been a conscious lie; it seems reasonable enough, given my history. I learned early in life that I can't trust others to "stand up" in the face of my power; I have been told I am "too much" for people:  too loud, too fast, too intense, too smart...just entirely too much to take! Right behind this lie that I edit myself to protect others, came the truth. I heard myself speaking these words to my friend, "And...if I live full-hearted and fully-open, expressing my completely amazing self, others will take advantage of me; I will be hurt."

Wow. Now there is a limiting belief of heroic proportions! I don't need to have any other beliefs that limit my life choices; this one covers the territory. "If I am truly and fully me, I get hurt." This single arrow in my quiver of self-deception impales me through my heart, lodging solidly in the mass of the past, and pins me there. Silenced. And Safe.

Listening...without judgment

What do you do when hurt manifests in your life? Maybe someone is currently and actively hating on you. Or maybe your thoughts are of past or recent slights, deep wounds, and traumas. Maybe your hurt arises from your feelings of fear, anger, or hate. However hurt manifests in your life, what do you do?

Do you depress the feelings; anesthetize your mind? Maybe your anesthetic is drugs or alcohol, ice cream, shopping, gambling, exercise or…just name your addictive behavior of choice.

Do you let your feelings capture the real estate of your mind, while you run over and over your strategies for how to manage the hurt, get revenge for it, stop it? Do you lose sleep while your thoughts circle and circle the drain of your pain?

Do you act out your feelings on innocent bystanders in your family or workplace? Yell at your partner or kids or co-workers? Take out your hurt on the grocery story clerk?

Do you turn your anger upon yourself, mentally berating yourself; or maltreating your body by over-feeding or starving it, or with self-injury (sometimes also known as having “an accident”)? 

Or do you become still and listen to the wisdom from within that tells you how to heal the pain? 

Many of you—friends and those who have attended my workshops—already know that, as a child, I was a victim of incest, sexual assaults by my father. Well, now you all know. I will not write about what happened; rest assured you can safely read on without finding any details of what that experience was like for the child I once was. 

Instead, I want to write about healing from the effects of that experience, which has included development of the 7 Childhood Treasures framework and deepening my understanding of their influence in my own life. I started my healing journey just over 30 years ago and recently entered a new phase of it.

Rescue Me

My best friend has been by my side--or, at least, at my feet--for just a little less than a decade. Shannon, a beautiful Black Labrador-mix, adopted me in the summer of 2006 at a dog rescue where I volunteered. Terrified of literally everything new she encountered, Shannon had what is known as fear aggression. After virtually no human interaction for the first 18 months of her life, tied up in some Ozark backyard, she was almost wild. She bit the dog trainer. She bit me. No trust; no sense of relationship bond between dog and human; no faith in love, certainly, nor even in compassion or pity.

We were a perfect match because I suffer from the human form of fear

Shannon, Whitefish Bay, WI,
September 2014

aggression. Shannon's deep-chested bark, snarling and snapping snout, and deadly-silent run at a daily world of terrifying monsters (e.g., a scrawny, gentle granny-cat) were echoed in my defensive snap, scowling brow, and quietly narrowed eyes whenever I felt in danger from a world that still, too often, seems full of the monsters of my childhood.

The modern objects of our respective fears carry no real threat, 90% of the time, but that didn't stop either of us from the very real emotion of terror...or the swift reflex of defensive aggression. As I have worked to continue mining, refining, and polishing my Childhood Treasures of Trust, Independence, and Faith, Shannon has worked right along with me. Each of us has benefited from the growth and progress of her best friend. Each of us has been the other's teacher.

From a near-wild dog who could not be touched, she became a dog who loved to be stroked and could, with enough patience in the human hand, relax with her belly open to the sky. From being terrorized by my tired, 19-year-old cat, and by the swoosh of a propane ring's lighting, she became a dog who could walk down city streets on a leash, past bikers and skaters and joggers, sprinklers wacka-wack-ing, and children squealing. We traveled together; she walked in the Smoky Mountains and on the beaches of Door County. Sometimes she stayed home when I traveled, and learned to trust pet-sitters. She bit no one else ever again.

"I did it my way"

Famous line, famous song; often repeated but little examined. What would it mean if, at the end of my life, I were to say, proud to the point of tears, that I did it "my way"?

Does it mean that I bullied and steamrolled my way over everyone else, ignoring their ways...to always get mine? Does it mean that I never compromised, never negotiated a win-win solution? Does it mean that I never listened to other ideas or to critical thinking about my ideas, or that I never sought input from a higher power?

If you're a parent reading this, you may be thinking, "That's not how I'm teaching (or how I want to be teaching) my child to behave." Or you may be remembering how your family taught you. Was their direct message ever that you should think only of yourself and act only for your own gratification, to always live "your way"?

Some of the final words of this song, "My Way," make

it clear that living "my way" is not being defined in these egotistical terms. I can hear Frank Sinatra's voice ringing in my inner ear:

"For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels."

From these words, I know that doing it "my way" is really about living, not from ego-driven irresponsibility, but from whole-hearted, all-in, fully-connected living, which requires all of the 7 Childhood Treasures, abundant and shimmering in the treasure chest of your spirit. To live in ownership of yourself, to say the things you truly feel, to never make yourself a victim to anyone else, requires all of these Treasures: Trust, Independence, Faith, Negotiation skills, the capacity for Vision, the ability to Compromise, and last but not least, the power of Acceptance.