Attracting the Love I thought I Deserved- Self Forgiveness Challenge
I was nominated to undertake this challenge by the beautiful Wren who is one half of the very inspiring and awesome @mountainjewel. She wrote a very touching and beautiful post about what she forgave herself for. I really recommend you take the time to read it, as my summary would do it no justice.
https://steemit.com/forgivemyself/@mountainjewel/when-i-wished-i-was-my-dog-or-self-forgiveness-challenge
But I will say that her post really resonated with me, how often we feel different and that our true values and selves are unappreciated, all because we saw fault in the society that was happening around us. We did not wish to feed into something that feels so inherently wrong, so we set out to find our own way, and that we did.
It is quite a thing, forgiving oneself. Once I started to think about what it was I wanted to forgive myself for, quite a lot came up. Some things that I am not quiet ready to discuss, this week I have decided that I will be more gentle with myself, so today I start gently with my forgiveness. Even though my story is not a gentle story.
In my twenties, I was living in London and I was really starting to come out, of my very well, built up shell. I had the opportunity to meet lots of people and at times begin relationships with men that would have actually been good for me, but I would always sabotage those relationships, if anything became too serious I would freak out and be gone. I imagine that I was not very well liked for that sort of behaviour.
I have down through the years felt really bad for behaving in such a way, until I actually realized why I was doing it. I was so set on attracting the type of love that I thought I deserved that anything else that filtered through I could not handle, because I really did not believe I deserved it.
For me love was destructive, it was difficult, it was painful and a lot of hard work. I really did not know what real love was, for me the only love I had witnessed growing up was a love that was broken and aggressive.
I did not grow up in a happy home, my parents fought all of the time, verbally and physically. I rarely saw them being tender with one another, to this day I do not know why they are still together. My father was the main aggressor and from a young age he was aggressive with me and my older sister, I was surrounded by violence, even me and my sister became violent towards one another.
Just recently on my return visit to Ireland, my sister and I spoke about our childhood. I have very little memories of that time, but she asked me if I remembered the time she almost choked me with a cord. I didn't, I still don't, she said well luckily our mum walked in as my face began to turn blue and pulled her off me. This to me was love.
So understandably I sought out Love that was difficult and painful, because that was all I knew. For me love was about suffering, it was a battle and I only knew how to fight.
My father does not know how to express love. His main form of communication with us his children was through fear and aggression. I spend most of my life fearful of him, scared to be alone with him, because of what he could do. Yet during all this time I so wanted to be loved by him, I wanted a male figure in my life, like the ones I saw in other families.
That when the time came for me to find a partner or be in a relationship, I only knew how to be with some one who was destructive or broken. Those that were not, I simply did not know how to love them. So I pushed them away, I was rude and hurtful and I am sorry for that. I know I have hurt people in the past, but I now know it was only because I was hurting myself and on such a destructive path, the only path I knew.
My life has taught me many things, I have and continue to learn so much about myself and who I am. I am stubborn and wild. I really find it hard to go to others with my story, to look to others for healing, because I do know it has to come from within me and that we are able to heal ourselves. I still struggle at times with how I think I deserve to be love, but I now know why. My heart is very much in the present with my girls.
I know that I need to allow myself to dig a little deeper at some point, but for now I have started by forgiving myself for my destructive path andin doing so really allowing myself to find the time to nurture and be gentle with myself. I am still learning and I am still healing.
I am meant to nominate some other people to take part in this challenge, I invite anyone who wishes to, to please do so. But Formally I nominate @solarsupermama
@tessaragabrielle
@beautifulbullies
@borrowedearth
@article61
@tessaragabrielle
@beautifulbullies
@borrowedearth
@article61
Big Big Thank You To @byn for designing my logo.
thanks for sharing, I came from dysfunctional family too. I was never able to find common ground with my father. And I still have some kind of social anxiety that stops me from living the life the way I would wanted to live it. I guess I have very poor adaptation skills. :-(
I hear you, it is never to late to work through what you have gone through, to find the healing that works for you, you so deserve to have the life you want and you are the only one to achieve that, thank you @skytoin x
Awesome @trucklife-family, Thank you for this. TribeLove!
thank you @rensoul17 xx
beautiful beautiful honest article, dear. thank you so much for sharing. it really touched me. this journey you have taken to self discovery, uncovering why you choose love of a certain type... knowing ourselves and our whys is so important and so true, we seek the love we were often around when we were growing up. thank you so much for sharing this part of yourself, i loved reading it <3 and i'm heartened to hear you related to my story, too. it does feel good to feel "seen" and understood by others. many blessings <3
thank you for inviting me to take this challenge, it really has come at the right time n my life xx
Wow. This is so deep. I am so glad that you got the chance to do this and find where all of this pain was coming from. It is so freeing and amazing to be able to do that even though we practice and learn day by day, but it's a progress and it makes us stronger.
thank you @joalvarez, I did go quiet deep indeed, it really is quite liberating to get things out in the open, it is not something that I have always done, I would much more prefer to just be quiet and get things done, but with 3 girls now, I want them to be more open so I must be too.
I lived my youth around alcoholics. Later in life when I went through counseling I learned that was the reason I attracted to alcoholics like a magnet. I didn't even see the behavior until it was to late because it seemed normal. I guess that's my greatest fear for getting involved with anyone. That eight year journey through counseling taught me a lot of things, one of those being if I looked at how my parents were raised I would find the pattern of their behavior, it turned out to be so true.
you have that awareness now though, so that should really change the type of person that you attract.But I understand your hesitations. It is so true about looking at how our parents were raised, because even though my childhood was not pleasant my fathers was 10 times worse. Thank you @sunlit7 xx
Oh my goodness, you have truly amazing personal insight! So much of what you say resonates with me too. Thank you for the nomination, the timing is very apt for me right now! I am also now in tears again, (they were flowing like rivers yesterday). I will certainly attempt this but I know it will be pretty hard as things are tough here, but thank you again for the nomination.
I hope you are okay, be gentle with yourself, this is my goal as of late and please do participate if you have the time and feel up to it. Sending you much love and light wonderful mama xx
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Wowza that is some story! People go through so much and it passes us all by without us often noticing. Power to you for sharing this. x
I grew up in the same kind of situation. It has taken me 27 years to recover from it... and I had an experience recently when I was doing the Master Cleanse at the beginning of January - I felt a burst of self-love within myself - and the VERY NEXT DAY a man who was my aquaintence became the man I am now in love with who is the first kind loving NICE guy I have ever been able to tolerate being near - usually the nice guys give me the creeps - amazing! It was proof that I am making progress.
thank you @in2itiveart, I am so happy to hear that you have found a path of healing and that you now have the love you truly deserve, thank you for sharing with me xx
Yes, thank you... I guess this is where I learned that "earth" is not a place just to have fun on- our souls have lessons to learn and if we are not raised up in a mystery school, the Spirit gives us our challenges in childhood.
Well, first of all, I'm grateful for several new post ideas from you! Thanks for continuing to nominate me and knowing I will emerge one of these days. It seems to me that you were doing the best you knew how with the tools you had and releasing those men was ultimately best for them because you weren't ready, and it would have been awful. In any case, I hope you are being wildly loved and appreciated now.
thank you mama, I am still finding my way and at times have to fight hard to not push away, writing this is huge therapy for me, xxx
Im so glad you have such a strong commitment to yourself.