11/03/2024
What Freedom is to me! What I have learned. What I have felt, feel and have experienced is real and valid. I do not need others to validate that for me. I need to explore, and approach these emotions and experiences with compassion for myself, with curiosity about how they affect me and how I can grow and heal from things that have caused me pain. How I have reacted and perhaps done and said things that were not in alignment with who I want to be and instead of judgment choose to forgive and release that past self. No one else can fix you or your life. No one else can bring peace to your heart or heal you. No one else is responsible for that. Which also means you are not responsible for doing that for someone else. An aspect of my shadow is control. So much of my life felt out of control that I always felt that I had to control the situation around me. I felt that I was responsible for healing others, fixing problems, taking on the burdens so that I had control of how bad things got. It was a total illusion. I had zero control over others. I thought it was compassion. I thought helping others and listening to their pain and problems all the time even though it often caused me emotional pain and fatigue was my duty. I thought that covering co-workers shifts even though I had 2 other jobs was helping them and the business even though I was physically burned out. I thought that buying groceries for a homeless person when I didn't have any money for my own groceries was the right thing to do. I was always giving from a place of being burned out, and being broken because that's what "good people do". In reality it was fear. I was afraid that I was a bad person and that I had to prove I was a good person. This has a lot to do with the spiritual trauma of my past. I now feel that I do not need to prove this to anyone. I just need to accept that I am a good person with myself. This gives me the freedom to give my energy, time, money, compassion, and attention from a place of strength and genuine caring. And as I see giving as reciprocity I know that such will be returned when I have need and I can accept what is given to me with graditude instead of worry about having a debt. I no longer have to carry the burden of trying to control other people , or situations in an effort to protect myself or even other people. That was never the right approach. I can only choose for myself, care for and heal myself. It's my responsibility and my freedom. No one can take that from me, or manipulate me into believing I am helpless ever again including myself.