The Pain of Others

Little old memory vignettes have been popping up. I have been wondering how come I get treated poorly by some people and saw a vision of my father. He was dusting off his hands while tossing me in the shit pile after I was hurt by him. Because it started at such a young age, It has been embedded deeply at the base memory. Funny how we can take responsibility things or even believe that we instigated that happening to us. Carrying around that heavy burden saps our energy and skews our view of others who “bully” us; those meanies. We can cower and pull ourselves into a tiny ball, hoping it slides off of us. We continue to deflect those barbed words and arrows. It puts us right back into survival mode,

When I can step back to see that it was also a coping mechanism for my father (and mother among others) to transfer how they probably felt about themselves as a way to live with themselves and their painful actions. That imbalance of power structure. You know, might makes fright. Maybe the key is for me to stand up for myself (and that wounded little girl). Enough. Stop. It is rude.

When the student is ready, the teachers appear. It can be that those thorny people are presenting themselves to me so I can take this opportunity to heal and resolve this old festering pain. As I continue to work through this part of my life, I am working on expressing compassion to someone who was so obviously in pain, transferring that pain to me and blaming me for it. Certainly not an easy and smooth road to travel to get to the healing. It does not come with a GPS or road map. It is a start.