Someone asked me WHY I do this work? It’s so painful and hard – why do I want to go through that? Why do I want to remember? Why do I want to feel it? What good does it do?
I explained. It wasn’t at all the work I wanted to do, until It was. I wasn’t ready for it in my life until I couldn’t stand to live out of myself anymore. Where one day I woke up realizing I had never lived a day of my life, I was just surviving it. Coping with it.
I hit a point where I realized I was causing so much harm to myself and others to keep everything buried and stuffed down. I noticed so many unhealthy relationships all around me and I felt so overwhelmed.
I became so aware that I was someone I didn’t even know.
That awareness almost took me out. It was the most heart breaking truth that still sometimes hits me with waves of grief.
I had been growing out of who I was since as far back as I could remember . Where going along to get along was so much safer.
I started to understand now that I couldn’t continue like this.
I knew things wouldn’t be the same in my relationships anymore and it would cost me many of them. I knew my fears of abandonment and rejection were very real outcomes that I now would face. I have spent my life trying to avoid more experiences in that. But, I had to start to care more about the cost I was paying by abandoning myself.
I do this work, the unravelling and unlearning, the claiming and remembering, the listening and soothing to truly know who I am and to start to live that out in my life.
To live being truly known means being truly seen.
For some of us that was not allowed, embraced or safe. It cost us dearly. Shutting ourselves out of knowing ourself is a common reality with childhood trauma.
This claiming of self matters. You matter. Even if you never knew it. Even if no one told you.
You need to start to matter to yourself. Everyday, little by little. That can be and feel like an uphill battle after growing into a person that lives out of survival.
I ask questions in recovery like – how known are you in your life? Your relationships? How free and safe do you feel? Are you living your life or just trying to find ways to cope? To survive?
I know in my experience BOTH are really hard and complex. The surviving and the living.
It’s okay to start inwards anytime you are able. I wasn’t able till I was in my late 30s and couldn’t really integrate it till I was 40.
This for me, is why I am here. Why I go inwards to recover and heal. It matters to me because I matter. And as someone who has never felt like I mattered to anyone, I have slowly started to matter to myself. I never thought I could ever feel or say that -but I finally do. And I live it everyday.
It’s been quite the journey to claim myself – one I’ll spend my life on and advocate for always.
If you realize one day how far away and lost you are from yourself that can be the same day to start to claim yourself back.
And I call that your Self Claimed Journey.
With love and support as we journey together.
Stacey
