Finding passion and happiness isn’t just about careers and money. Its about finding your authentic self – the one you’ve buried beneath other poeple’s need.
We always hear people around us speaking about finding inner peace and happiness. What they don’t really emphasize is, that to find this ” Peace and Happiness” one needs to address the pain and the grudges we hold especially with the ones we call family. It is a sensitive and very private topic to discuss. But its the most crucial and fundamental topic that one should consider.
Family is supposed to be our safe haven. But very often, its the place where we find the deepest heartache.
Iyanla Vanzant
So many of my students talk about themselves as the scapegoat, the cuckoo in the nest, or some way in which they feel like they are outliers in their own family systems. For them, this role has created deep pain. Most often, healing that pain is a big part of their full healing.
Now the twist here is, we forget that our family members are sailing in the same boat. We are so busy focusing on our pain, we forget our parents too were children at some point, and they might have some scars of their own. Not all toxic people are cruel and uncaring. Some of them love us dearly and have good intentions. Most are toxic to us simply because of their needs and ways of existing in the world force them to compromise themselves and their happiness.
Sometimes we are the toxic person. Sometimes we are the mean negative person we are looking to push away. And that doesn’t make us less worthy. It is okay. Mistakes are opportunities, own them gracefully and work on them. We are all humans, we are meant to learn and grow out of these mistakes.
Pain and trauma are personal. Even if other people have experienced “worse”. Even if someone else who went through the same experience doesn’t feel debilitated by it. Even if it happened a long time ago. Even if no one knows. Your pain is valid and you deserve to unload the pain you carry in order to take care of yourselves. It does not disappear. Until it is not validated, it continues to hold us captive. It isn’t desperate or pathetic or attention-seeking, it’s self- care. It’s up to us to change ‘Generational narratives’. If they say it runs in the family, we tell them – “This is where it runs the F*** out”. Make it your legacy to break the family legacy.
Every man and every woman who heal themselves, heals all the men and women who came before them and all the others who come after them.
Be the person who breaks the cycle. If you were judged, choose to understand. If you were rejected, choose acceptance. If you were shamed, choose compassion. Be the person you needed when you were hurting, not the person who hurt you. Vow to be better than what broke you, to heal instead of becoming bitter. So you act from your heart, not your pain.
Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed. It means the damage no longer controls our lives. Let us allow our wounds to heal. When we decide to heal ourselves, we heal our parents, we heal our kids, we heal our ancestors and we heal our home.
Your new life is going to cost you the old one. But the people who are meant for you are going to meet you on the other side. And instead of ‘liked’, you’re going to be ‘loved’.
Over and over again, I find the saying to be true: “What you heal within yourself, you heal for your whole family line.”There is still time!
Forgiveness is about empowering yourself, rather than empowering your past.
T.D. Jakes
