sacred candy

July is a historically a tough month for me. It’s my birthday month, and I always get too introspective around my birthday. This year is especially difficult because I’m turning 40. I’m thinking about where my life is, and where I think it should be, but all of my work and reading and prayer and meditation has taught me that I’m exactly where I should be, right in this moment. Sinking into that belief consistently is difficult right now.

I feel off center.

Thankfully, I’ve just entered the portion of The Book where I start to work on all of those issues I’ve spent the past 3 weeks digging up. I feel like I can breathe a bit easier now. It still feels like detox, though. Today all of these feelings boiled over and I had a rough day. I was grumpy and short-tempered and weepy. Just when I had enough, a lovely woman came into the office with flowers for me and it made me happy for awhile.

I was walking tonight with my friend, who is also experiencing many of the same things I am right now. We decided that we need to start doing things, like hiking on Saturdays, because we can’t sit around and mope about being the last remaining single women in our groups. We can’t wait for a life to fall down and hit us over the head. We have to create our lives and forget about everything that worries us so, and let it all happen as it will. I said to her, “We have to become what we want to attract.”

So there’s the challenge. What do I become now?

Oh, silly. This part of The Book isn’t going to be any easier than what came before it.

The visioning process is always self-examination. It’s never ‘God, I want this. Make this happen.” It’s always, “What do I have to become to live the vision, to manifest it, to reveal it?” The visioning process then is a prcoess of transformation of the individual. -Rev. Michael Beckwith

I can’t even begin to describe how transformational The Book is. It’s worth thousands of dollars in therapy, in my opinion. When I bought it, I decided to really commit to it, every day. The past week has been emotional. It’s been about recognizing the agreements, both spoken and unspoken, you make with the people in your life (namely, your parents) and how those agreements are mirrored in your romantic relationships. I think on some level I’ve always known that my mother was controlling and overbearing and my father was physically present, but emotionally absent, and that has had an effect on my relationships with men. But, until I spent an hour writing it all out and I read it in black and white, I never really understood how deep the patterns are grooved into me. It was so stunning that it brought me to tears. Now, I get it. All of it. I understand why I’m attracted to the men I am. Unavailable men are my specialty and now I understand why. I believe somewhere in my core that if I can win a man over, either from another woman, or from his own emotional baggage, I’m worth something. It makes me feel special and valuable. It makes me feel as if I’ve won, and I spent my childhood never winning anything. I understand why I behave the way I do with men (passive-agressive and prone to jealousy). I understand why I choose men who either suffocate me emotionally (like my mother did), or ignore me emotionally (like my father did). It’s a see-saw pattern of pushing and pulling and reaching out desperately for attention from a man, or shunning him when he gives it to me. For the first time in my life, I see it all so clearly. In the 2 or 3 days following that exercise, I felt so heavy. I felt broken. I felt damaged. But, we’re all damaged in some way. It’s how we fix it that really matters. And I’m rabidly determined to fix it.

The one thing that I have become very conscious of is my language. I used to say things like, “Men are pigs” so freely. But all men aren’t pigs. There are some quality men in the world, and I’ll never attract them by generalizing. Words have power. Words are vibrational. I want to send energy into the world that men are worth it…that men can be trusted…that men are good. I want that energy to draw a good, quality man right back to me. And I believe with all of my heart that he’s there, and he’s on his way to me. “Guerilla optimism,” I call it. But before that can happen, I have to fix these patterns, these “sacred wounds,” as the author refers to them. And that is the next part of the process. And I suspect that won’t be any easier, but I welcome it.

To be clear, I’m not blaming my parents for anything. They were wounded in their own ways, and they did the best they could, or the best they thought they could. at the end of the day, I’m an adult and how I live my life and conduct my personal relationships is all on me. But it’s naive to think that how we were raised has no effect on how we behave as adults. This isn’t about blame; it’s about healing.

You fell in love because your old brain had your partner confused with your parents! Your old brain believed that it had found the ideal antidote to make up for the psychological and emotional damage you experienced in childhood.- Harville Hendrix