Healing Is Hard

 

It's Time

It's time to stop hurting

Our own selves

When we expect the door 

To stay open for us

For it to only

Slam back in our faces. 

Filling our vessel with anything 

That is less than the whole 

Becomes a thing of our yesterday's when we,

Live for heaven

And for our dreams.

Accept what is 

And accept ourselves, too

Believe in the good

And believe there is goodness still around.

Do you ever wish someone could see

Your soul laid bare?

Or the blood splatters trickling downwards

From the rogue arrow

That riddled your heart?

Do you wish they'd see what they're about to lose? 

Open the gate to your heart

And don't hold back because

Fear will be your greatest enemy,

When you let it take you for a prisoner

In a war you didn't wager on

When you let it eat away at the power

Of grace and gentleness that you possess.

Do you ever just want someone 

To swoop in and save you 

From the perils of life? 

Strap you on their back and 

Promise to forever keep you safe?

The protection you so long for

That should have been there

When you were but a babe

Resides here in your very own bones.

You're worthy of protection

And you can set yourself free.

It's time to start loving ourselves,

It's time to be treated well

And use our time wisely

It's time to lift ourselves over 

The hurdles that desired to stagger us.

At the end of every day

All we have is our own true selves

So let's stay truer than true. 

It's time to validate our feelings

And take a break .

We could wait several moons

For someone else 

To show us the world

But how long are we willing to wait?

It's time to open our own doors,

And face the sun.

Let's really feel it 

On our faces

Let our skin soak up the possibility

Of every good promise.

It's time to stand up

In spite of prevailing fear 

And to tell it "not today."

It's time to start healing 

Close the doors that 

No longer serve us

And open the windows that do. 

For an ounce of hope 

Can go a very long way. 

The best way that I have learned to heal, is to help myself. Healing, as they say, is an inside job. I longed for many years to find that healing through other people's acceptance and protection. People, whether intended or not, failed me. A child was loved with conditions and was not protected from the things no child should ever have to endure. As I entered into adulthood I carried many, deep, open wounds from my past. I wished someone, anyone would save me. From the monsters under my bed and from myself. For protection purposes, as a child, I learned to manipulate people and situations to my advantage. I was a convincing liar. I needed to be in control of play time and of every outcome to anything. I was menacingly, passive-aggressive. I hadn't learned healthy ways to communicate about my pain nor how to love myself therefore I lashed out at the people I cared about the most. I attached easily and quickly to any female figure that noticed me. Much to my folly, I hurt them the most. A plain, "I hate you, don't leave me" sort of scenario. I tested them to the extreme to prove to myself they wouldn't stick around. When they wouldn't, I'd grieve it intensely but I had proven myself to be right. When they didn't walk away, I would only push harder and harder. 

Neglect, childhood abandonment and abuse are terrible things. They absolutely should not ever happen to an innocent child. I don't have all the answers to why some children fall victim to these atrocities and why some will never understand these terms, knowing only unconditional love and acceptance. I do know that broken family lines are chains that are harder to break than what some may initially realize. It's so much easier to go with the flow, even if that flow is a tsunami. 

As a big girl, I had a decision to make. Let the pain that had consumed my childhood and adolescence rule over the rest of my adulthood OR take a stand. Over the years and much to my amazement, there were many people that grew to know and love me despite my flaws and despite the fact that I had tested them and yes, even hurt them. Hurt people hurt people. These people, God bless them, saw me at my absolute worst and they must have seen something in my eyes, too. Something that wished for healthy connection, that yearned for help. They must have seen a child of God reaching her hand out hoping someone would reach back. 

Into the valley of the unknown, my friends helped me to find a special therapy that taught me how to not only survive but thrive. The biggest thing that this therapy stresses is that NO ONE ELSE can heal us. Only we can heal ourselves and all the love in the world will do us no good if we cannot love ourselves. They made it very plain that while I was unaccountable, it was absolutely unfair and not right, the things that I endured. They made it clear that my childlike coping mechanisms I had carried over into my adulthood made sense. Now, I knew better and it was time to be better. It was time to leave that broken girl and her tendencies in the past and move forward. 

I think the most important aspect about this approach was that we never once invalidated the very hard things I went through. I never once heard, "You could've had it worse" or "it's in the past, so it's time to get over it, stop being so sensitive." The past was real, the circumstances were hard and the pain should never happen to any child. But today, we have the tools and the gifts for healing and healthy coping. It was time to take back my power that I had always possessed deep within. Also, another huge thing for me that they helped me understand was that what I was going through wasn't because something was amiss in my spiritual life. We tend to think, we've done something very wrong or we haven't had enough faith. We aren't good enough Christians (by the way no one is.) We haven't prayed the right prayers or praised God enough so He must be punishing us. -- Sure, we can always go deeper in our faith. Sure, we skip devotions and misplace the time to connect with our Savior. However, if things are amiss on our mental and emotional health spectrums it is only much more difficult to tackle things going on in our spiritual life. 

Choosing to heal and help ourselves is one of the hardest steps we will ever take. It may seem easier to lean on everyone else. It may seem easier to keep that child on the surface. That child needs to be tucked safely away and it is time we own up to being the adult that is going to protect our tucked away child. Choosing to heal and help ourselves is the bravest thing we'll ever do. And when we choose this we are actually choosing to help others too. We are helping the ones around us that have been there supporting us all along and we are creating a pathway that others who are going through hard things may walk on and find out that they are not alone and that there is indeed, hope.