#[ a young family shrouded in trauma pain and early deaths ]

[bietrofastimoff23]

Lately I've been thinking a lot about how Aegon won't have the opportunity to bid farewell to his brothers, sister-wife, son. and the funeral of Jaehaerys will be the first and last for him, not because others will be saved, but because the bodies of most of them will not be found.

[magicallymadlight-blog]

A Tale of Healing Part 1

She was in the third grade the first time she lied about who she really was.

Before that blistering, hot afternoon on the blacktop of her elementary school, she had never seriously questioned the answer to the vile and demoralizing accusations that came out of that angry boys mouth. Lost in her own bewilderment at his intense anger at losing a basketball game; she was completely unprepared for the life altering event that was to unfold. Until those words escaped his lips, she believed her life to be boringly normal. It never occurred to her that anything was askew at all.

“She is a bastard. She don’t have no daddy!” the boy shouted to the entire third grade Phy. Ed class. She had heard that word whispered by her cousins before, but never in conjunction with the taboo word: “daddy.” This was the early 80s in a small town. The sad truth is that most of the people in that town knew more about her history than she did. The neighbor’s, whose children she played ball with, had branded her as undesirable before her very birth.

Standing on that playground, surrounded by the children she had known all her life - she lied. She put my hands on her hips and stuck out her chin and scoffed at that bully.  She told him that her daddy lived in France and that next summer he was going to take her on a trip all around the world, because he so rich that he owned his own airplane! Without hesitation, she turned and walked away from her gawking classmates with concealed tears sliding down her flushed cheeks and ran straight to the office to call her grandmother to come to pick her up.

“I have a stomach ache.” she lied again.

She continued to lie about her father throughout her childhood into her young adulthood. Rather than face the judgment and contempt from her peers, she learned to wear a mask. As we all know, lies spiral out of control quickly and she was often caught in a web of her own design, conjuring even more lies to support the original lie.

The summer before she was to enter the eighth grade, her mother married a man who had two daughters of his own. She was presented with the choice to stay with her grandmother or to move in with her mother and her new family.  Believing that she would finally have a “normal” family, she jumped at the chance to have a dad and sisters! Of course, blending a family is not an easy task and to compound her own personal festering scars; her very first boyfriend committed suicide the night she broke up with him shortly after her 15th birthday.

The trauma of that life-altering event, compounded with countless unaddressed family issues and a deep self-loathing sent her into a downward spiral of drugs and alcohol- which led to even more lies. The lies continued well into her 30s. Honestly, when she first decided to get sober- she was not even sure what was true and what was make believe about her own life anymore.

She was a complete and utter disaster.

The anger, sadness and fear of abandonment that she had carried all those years deep within her,  but shrouded in lies, alcohol and one toxic relationship after another all erupted to the surface. How could she rebuild her life when the foundation was crumbling into dust?

She started her journey towards healing by admitting some hard truths to herself that she had hidden away under the enormous web of deceit she had woven. She finally heard the faint whisper of that lost little girl who still lived deep inside her being. She learned through her own self-destruction, that the path to healing was authenticity.

She is not her story. She is not what happened to her.  She does not have to let her past define her- but she will own every single moment of it.

She stopped blaming her parents for the mistakes they made. She stopped blaming that boyfriend who took his own life. She forgave her grandparents for abandoning her through death. She even forgave those lost loves that she had once felt betrayed her the most. Amazingly, she found immense empathy in her pain. She learned that her emotions were not something to kill with a bottle of whiskey, but a gift to be treasured and explored.

Through honest self-exploration, she learned that even she is lovable.  

She discovered that she was able to empathize even with the people who had hurt her the most. She became disturbingly aware that we are all in an unending struggle for connection and acceptance- never feeling like we are enough. We see those who hurt us as enemies. We seek revenge. We judge and convict morally, with a glance. We are taught that our external differences separate us in a constant battle to be better than the other. We will argue with impunity to prove that our opinion is the correct one- our race, our gender, our sexuality, our nationality- our values are the ones that are the most righteous. We are all, in a continuous war, with ourselves, for more.

Ask yourself the last time you heard someone say, “I think I have enough now.”

Through her cyclic and spiraling path to her current state of self-awareness, it became clear to her that every single person we meet is just a mirror that shows us the truth behind our own personal masks. Through painful honesty and an ever growing ability to love herself for who she truly is- she has found that she capable of true empathy, forgiveness and unconditional love. She found gratitude for every single moment of her destructive path that led her to this moment.

For in her darkness, in her destruction- she discovered that underneath all the masks she gave herself and all the labels others had branded her with, hidden beneath the pain and desperation, locked up tight and bound with resentment and anger was that little girl in the schoolyard moments before that angry boy repeated those life-altering words he, himself, did not truly understand.That little girl who never thought for a moment before that afternoon that she was different. She had never felt less than nor had she felt unloved. Underneath all that pain and all those labels- she found her there.

Every single person we meet in our journey is searching for a connection. We have lost our communities and families through this cultural adolescence in which our entire purpose has been to find, obtain and conquer and repeat-endlessly. The only value we are taught to place on a human’s life is based upon their material wealth. We have been so lost in the darkness. Yet, through this darkness emerges the most astonishing lights.

The construction of this life she lives today is based on a strong and stable foundation of love. Perfection is much further out of reach than her ambition. She still struggles with anxiety, depression and setting healthy boundaries. She is still searching for that connection- a community, her tribe. She feels everything deeply and truly. She has learned to let those emotions come and go like the tides. She feels them in the moment and then she lets them pass with the next. What is acknowledged and expressed cannot be repressed. When she is angry- and she still gets angry quite a bit; she asks the question of herself, “What about myself do I see in this this situation?” She trusts her instincts and her intuition for they are not often wrong and; she tries to see that little girl in every single person she meets.

She is still judged constantly and without mercy. Most people do not understand who she has  become nor do they want to. She is and always will be what they labeled her- there is no changing that in most minds. But, by some miracle, she has found the strength to stop judging herself by others opinions.

She is a misfit. She is an outsider. She is dreamer and a seeker.  She walks through this life with uncompromising hope and determination to be apart of the change that will bring about a more peaceful, kind and connected future for her children.

We all have walked through our own fire. Every single soul on this planet has a story that made them into who they are today. Every person who crosses your path is YOU, with a different story. Every moment of your life you get to choose who you are in that moment - I hope you choose compassion. I hope you find empathy, especially for those who contributed to your suffering. I hope you choose love. Above all, I hope you choose to be authentically and unapologetically-  YOU…

“Be patient with yourself, self growth is tender; it’s holy ground. There is no greater investment.” Stephen Covey