From Victim to Empowered - It's Time to Rise!
No one plans for divorce. Brides to be don’t lay around and daydream about what they will wear on the day they get divorced. Pregnant mothers don’t look ahead to the day they will drop their baby off at his Dad’s house for the week. Father’s don’t look forward to the first Christmas morning spent alone because the kids are at their Mother’s house. No one plans for this, no one dreams about this. And still, it can be a beautiful expansion – a rising up.
“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” – Rumi
Even if this separation was not your choice, you have the ability to create whatever you want out of this moment. You have the ability to take this experience and use it as a platform on which to stand, to rise up and create beauty out of pain, healing out of suffering and joy out of sadness. It’s time to take your power back, to step out of victimhood and into empowerment. It’s time to grab the pen and write your own story!
In my recent article published in Elephant Journal (here), I outlined how to make peace your priority. That nothing needs to change for you to be at peace. Peace is an internal state, not a representation of your environment. The people and things in your life that trigger you (make you upset, angry, frustrated, etc.) are only showing you pieces of your internal environment that need attention, that need healing.
There are many ways to heal these old wounds – with a traditional therapist or counselor, a healer or my favorite energy medicine, BodyTalk. My mentor Kristian Strang has even created a step by step guide to work through this healing on your own (find it here!)
The path you take to healing is not what’s important, it’s making the choice to see things differently. To realize that regardless of your current situation, you have the ability to create whatever you want out of this experience. You can see it as something horrible that is happening to you, or something that is happening for you. You can allow your situation to break you down and bury you, or you can allow it to break you open and rise.
“Sometimes when you’re in a dark place you think you’ve been buried, but actually you’ve been planted.” – Christine Caine
Empowerment is not a changing into, it’s a reclaiming, a remembering, a rising up. It’s about connecting to your true self, your inner wisdom, and allowing the expansion calling forth from within. In her recent podcast, Kristian Strang talks about this reclamation. About clearing the stories we are telling ourselves, the beliefs, the programs, and going within to remember the truth. About joining with our higher selves who already know the path – returning home.
This is not a learning, it’s an unlearning. As Paulo Coelho said, “Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that really isn’t you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.”
It’s about releasing all of the baggage, expectations and rules that have been put upon you by others, by society, by the collective – who you should be, how you should act, what is “realistic” and “acceptable”. It’s about getting really honest with yourself about what role you are playing in your life. Who you are blaming for what went “wrong”. What your beliefs are about what is possible for you and what you deserve.
It’s about removing the distractions from your life (TV, Social Media, etc.) so you can get quiet and go within. It’s about removing your blocks (toxic food, toxic people, drugs, alcohol) so you can get clear enough to hear your inner wisdom.
And I’ll be honest, this is a painful reality at first. We are not taught to feel our emotions and for the most part have been avoiding them at all costs for most of our lives, stuffing them down with food, TV and substances. With nothing to numb the pain and nowhere to hide you will find yourself staring your biggest wounds in the face and you will want to run, but don’t. Instead, stay. Feel. Cry. Breathe. Be.
Make time to sit quietly every day to allow in the thoughts, the feelings, the truths that you’ve been avoiding. Grab a journal if it helps and let it all flow. Let the pain break your heart open to your true self. Let it break down the programming you’ve learned your whole life. Let it pierce through the armor that you’ve built over your heart. Let it show you the stories that you’ve told to keep yourself “safe” or the ones you’ve learned to keep yourself small. Let it break you wide open, because that is where the healing occurs, that is where the truth lives. That’s where you find that all of this pain is just a fragmented part of yourself that is looking for love. An old wound that needs to be felt. A past version of yourself that needs to be accepted. A place deep inside where you feel unlovable, unworthy. Let the pain come, feel it, love that version of yourself, and let it go.
“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.” – Rumi
And then rise. Like the seed that’s been buried, use this as the soil to grow from. Bloom. Find your light within and let it shine. Let it lead you forward into the greatest life you could have never even dreamed for yourself. And then go live it!