Long into my family estrangement, the negative comments from my past continued to visit on the present. Sometimes, they played like a repetitive loop. Other times, a certain event triggered the voices of anger, blame, and rejection. I could hear my mother’s voice in my head: You are bad. You are sick. You are crazy. You single handedly destroyed our family.
It is easy to get stuck. Even though we no longer had a relationship, I continued to yearn for my mother’s love and approval. I wanted her to replace the ugly voices in my head with new loving voices. I wanted her to accept responsibility for what she had done.
It’s easy to become seduced by our longing to receive support from the one place that it isn’t available. I knew I had to take responsibility for my own healing and to find support where it was available.
Over a period of many years, I developed a loving community of encouragement. With the aid of loving people in my life, I worked on healing myself by replacing the old unhealthy internal messages, feelings and responses, with new healthy internal messages, feelings and responses.
Slowly over time, I began tipping the scale from the negative to the positive.
As survivors, we need help changing the majority voice we hear in our heads - from that of our abusers – to that of love, so that we can heal, mourn, and move on with our lives.
5 comments:
Hi Nancy,
I remember going back to my mother, knowing that the same abuse would be forthcoming, and yet hoping against hope that she'd changed.
When I found out that I was the one who needed to change, I was so very hurt. After all, I hadn't done anything wrong.
After a great deal of work on loving myself, I was free to choose to love, and with that choice comes peace.
Carol Webb...
(I know it says Richard, but he's the one with a blogspot blog, and I'd have to comment as anonymous otherwise).
Dear Carol,
Thank you for sharing!
I also experienced a great deal of hurt and disappointment when I realized that I was the only one I could change. And that I had to in order to heal!
Warmly, Nancy
Thanks so much for submitting this for the blog carnival. I'm glad you participated again.
Thank you! You have created a wonderful community of support!
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