The Benediction

I feel tugged at and pulled away from my desires lately if others want from me.  I am enjoying time alone and realize to a larger degree than ever before that I barely have time to do what nurtures me, let alone give to another.

Now, I believe that I am on the flip side. I am entering a phase of receiving and it feels so good.  Opening up to receive what I desire, what I have dreamt of, opening my heart and my emotions to really let in and I think I’m really removing some obstacles that have been preventing me from receiving what I want in the past.

Now that I am learning to love myself, I know that to really sleep enough, journal, create beautiful sacred space around me, mediate, get exercise, cook my own food and eat well, I really need to have time alone.  I keep imagining that someday in my future, I may have children, a family, and so this time is that much more precious.  I want to guard it like a precious stone.

So, I have been alone a lot lately.  Saying no to events, friends, and parties.  Even saying no to being with my significant other, which really shows me my growth. I have been a serial monogamist since I was sixteen and time with other was always more important than time alone.

Time alone often brought up my wound, abandonment.  My father left when I was two years old.  I spent my entire youth pushing against societies stories that that event had any impact on me.  So much of my studies in psychology suggested that the absence of my father could leave me with a wound.  Was I damaged? I used all my energy to argue the opposite.  My dad was not around.  No big deal, I didn’t even care.  That event had no bearing on my life.

 Many years of therapy led me to one door- the door of my father’s departure.  There I sat, on her sofa, when at last, the question came spilling out of her mouth.  “Rachel, I’ve known you for years and you have never mentioned your father.”  The floodgates opened and out came the story of my mother leaving him, without his knowledge, moving us away, and me never seeing him much again.  At my therapists prompting, I dug deeper than I ever have to expose the singed flesh of my heart that yearned to have the soothing salve of truth.  I loved him.  I adored him.  I am much like him, in many ways.  I re-visited that girl. She was two.  I was two.  What must it have been like for a two year-old child, who loved her father very much, to have him gone one day, never to return?  It was excruciating.  It was more than I could manage.  My therapist said, “Part of you died that day.”  For the first time in my life, I heard the words that got me to the deepest core.  Yes.  I did.  Part of me died that day.  And since I could not rectify it for myself with the capacities of a two year old, I came to the only logical conclusion one of that age can.  I was unlovable. Not worthy.  So unwanted that my own father left me.

And so I embarked on a life-long journey to repair that primary relationship.  I found every man I could who would leave me. I thought my attraction, love at first sight, meant that we were soul mates. Now I see it meant that they had the perfect attributes to trigger me so I would be forced to face my wounds- not because the universe is evil, but because it is so miraculous that we always get what we need to heal. I re-lived that trauma over and over again through various dramas of abandonment until that day on my therapists couch when I came face to face with her, my little girl, and I reclaimed her and began the beautiful journey of re-parenting myself.  And that is when the benediction came in the most tumultuous, crazy making relationship I have had to date.  (If you know me, you know the one.) Our relationship ended in its current form the moment I got that he was not my father.

We can rise above our past.  No matter what has happened back there, and believe you me, this small snippet is only a glimpse into some seriously heavy events that have occurred in my life.  I am a living testament for sure that we can manifest our lives and have right relations; no matter what rivers we’ve traversed.

So here’s to opening up.  Communicating.  Giving voice to our triumphs and sharing ourselves a little more.  It is up to us to share with the world the gift of our own unique learning’s, so we can heal our hearts together and rise up in the bliss that is our birthright.  Leave the illusion of story, past, hurt, behind.  Claim your seat on the throne, for you are the one.