Part 1
Hey friend!
We’ve made it through one week, now on to week two!
This week the focus of our work is going to be on your history, your past.
As you look at your past several things can be beneficial. You can learn from what you’ve been through or acknowledge that you learned this because of your past. You can look at events with a new set of eyes, as the person you are now in comparison to the 10 year-old child whose family split and parents divorced, for example. New perspective is gained, forgiveness is given. We need to forgive ourselves often. We also need to consider forgiving others for offenses in the past.
It is healthy to look through our past, acknowledge what happened, what we felt then, and what we feel now about it, and then set it aside. We don’t forget, yet we can put things in the figurative hall closet in a nice labeled shoe box.
This way we know the contents, we’ve been through it, and we don’t need to use it every day, so we can store it in the hall closet (remember this metaphor, I’ll be using it again).
Remember, we feel an emotion and we assign meaning to it. We are also able to reassign new and different meanings to things. Beautiful right? People are amazing. You are amazing, you are strong.
This can be difficult work. I commend you for taking the time and investing in your better health. It is often more messy before it gets clean, more painful before it heals up. Like those cleaning projects at home, you pull everything out, go through it, toss some, donate some, find a new home for some, and repack some.
If you were to think of a handful of words that represented your growing up years (to include to the current time as well) what would they be?
Affluent, scarce
Happy, sad
Simple, complicated
Peace, stress
Arguing, not talking
Challenging, easy
Sports, academics
Moving and change, consistent
Big family and circle of friends, small circle of people around
Together, split
Church, community, teams
Jobs, chores, responsibility
Pets
Loneliness, good company
Reading, games
City, country
Hungry, full
Spoiled, neglected
Creativity, imagination
Camping, vacations
Gifts, giving
Helping, being helped
I’m sure there’s more you could add to this list too!
Sometimes just a handful of words speak volumes. When we are forced to condense, get right to the point, it is concise and simple.
I look forward to guiding you in diving deeper into some of these areas.
Truth Section
Your past does not define you. Your experiences are a part of you, they are events.
You are not your past.
You are not your mistakes.
You are not merely a victim.
You are lovable, you are loved, you are amazing.
“You cannot go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” – C.S. Lewis
“Do not fast forward
Into something you’re not ready for
Or allow yourself
To shrink back into what’s comfortable.
Growth lives in the uneasiness
The in-between
The unfinished sentence.
You are a season
Of becoming.” -Anonymous
“You can be both a masterpiece and a work in progress at the same time.” -Anonymous
“You are never too old to set another goal, or to dream a new dream.” -C.S. Lewis
