Our current problems are often sourced in old wounds.
One day this past week, I woke up pitying myself and feeling sad. The night before, I had an experience with my wife and kids that left me feeling alone and unwanted.
So in my morning journaling, I forgave them and I forgave myself - for everything I could think of. I released us all from my judgments and expectations the previous evening. It was freeing.
And the feeling of aloneness still hung with me a bit. So I closed my eyes and sat with the feeling. I relaxed any tension in my body, and I relaxed my mind.
My mind gently drifted back in time, and it found an origin story to that aloneness…
I was 14 and a freshman in high school. I spent the first month or so of school sitting with upperclassmen I played with on the soccer team, but this day a 9th-grade friend asked me to come sit with him and his friends at a freshmen table.
As I sat down at the table, excited, cheerful, and waving a big hello to the other 8 or so kids, one kid at the end of the table made a joke about my high forehead and some of the kids laughed.
My world collapsed a bit.
I was happy and excited, then all of a sudden I was disoriented, alone, and an outsider. I felt it.
There are big-T traumas that many of us experience in life. There are also the little-T traumas that all of us experience. And these big and small traumas make a mark, a wound, and they drive how we get to show up in our lives…until they’re healed.
It was a fact for me in that moment - a fact in my mind, in my body, and in my heart: I’m just different and alone...
That story is bull crap, but it made a lot of sense to 14-year-old me. And I carried that story in my mind, I carried it in my nervous system, and I carried it into my relationships. I carried the feeling of that story throughout my life, and it even showed up the other night with my family.
In my journaling this week, I worked more healing magic on that formative memory. I forgave my old friends in every way imaginable. I forgave their parents, their families, and their upbringing. I forgave our culture. I forgave myself and my views, my insecurities, my pessimism. I forgave my lack of awareness then and after. I forgave my judgments of them and of me.
And I forgave my schools for never teaching me these simple and powerful awareness and healing tools.
I'm blessed and honored to get to source deep and lasting healing and freedom for others each week in my coaching practice - and to witness and experience the new worlds of peace, freedom, love, and passion that become possible.
"Trauma is not what happens to you but what happens inside you."
- Gabor Maté
P.S. As a transformational coach - a life coach, a soul coach - I help teens, adults, and organizations move beyond their self-imposed limitations to be their best and feel their best. If you’re interested in finding out how I can support you or your organization, reach out and let’s talk. 💌