This human experience we are all sharing in. Sometimes flowing gracefully and sometimes we are left with our hands in the air questioning everything (possibly using some colorful words 😉). Trying to make sense of it all so we can find a little Peace. Happiness. Stillness. And hopefully a bit of a sense of humor for the complexities we inevitably will face.
I wanted to share some insights that have been with me the last couple days, about how in this human experience we process our emotions in relationships. When someone has hurt us, betrayed us, stolen from us, put us down, judged us, lied to us, left us not feeling honored or seen, etc.
What do we do with the anger? What do we do with the sadness? What do we do with the part of us that in return wants to cause pain and in no way feels we can meet that person with compassion or forgiveness.
I am not one that will encourage you to cover up shadows with love and light. So I am definitely not saying to do that. Feeling your emotions and taking the time you need to process them is a healthy practice. And some of the pain that exists in relationships runs very deep and may take longer than others. Giving this process the space and recognition needed is crucial in healing. Whether it be through working with Ayahuasca or other practices that you find work for you.
But I do know this. When we store anger, grief, sadness, and mistrust in our bodies and spirits for extended periods of time...walls begin to close down on us. It disables our ability to walk in the highest versions of who we really are at the core of our true essence. It blocks our vibrancy, our manifestation, and our connection.
If someone has really hurt you and you stay rage-full, angry, and hold resentments, then you are actually allowing the suffering to continue by giving your power away to that person (who likely is acting out of their own unhealed suffering). Feeding hurt with more hurt.
"But how could they do this to me after all I have done for them?"
"I didn't deserve this"
"How could someone treat another person this way?"
We've all said these things to ourselves at one point or another after some sort of conflict in a relationship. What I've come to see after years of supporting people coming to heal all sorts of different traumas, is that cycles repeat themselves. Someone who has been deeply hurt and doesn't work on their own healing, has a strong capacity to act out through the filters of their own traumas and cause harm to others. And in some cases they feel really justified in doing so, and in other cases they can't even see how they could have approached it in a more reasonable or caring way.
But... you are not a VICTIM!! You can decide where your healthy boundaries lie and hold them with FIRMNESS and still with LOVE. Your light is yours and others can only dim it if you allow them to.
You can separate yourself enough to see what is yours and take responsibility for that, as we are all here with things to heal. But, you can also see how much you allow another hurt person to occupy your energy and stop giving your power away. We can quickly judge or blame others, but if we can find compassion in that we may or may not know what traumas and pain that person has faced and carried in their life, and recognize that this has a huge impact on how they are able to process and respond to a given situation.
As someone who has healed many deep layers within myself through medicine work, I can tell you that how I would respond to a conflict and act in relationships in the past is not the way I would now. I have grown through many hard lessons, and I can humbly admit where unhealed traumas inside of me at certain moments of my life probably caused a lot of hurt to others.
But this is the journey...
For me, I find that when I can just stop and connect deeply with my own light, connect deeply with the lesson I needed to learn from the experience, and turn the focus back onto myself that all the tension starts to settle.
I see all relationships as teachers. Other humans there along the way to help us to grow, to help us to deepen our strength, and deepen our capacity for love (the most powerful force there is).
I give a lot of thanks to Ayahuasca and the plants for how much they help us to access and heal deep layers and traumas, so we can see ourselves more clearly and hopefully walk a bit more gently within ourselves and our relations.