Family and Self-Acceptance

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged.  For some reason, I haven’t been isnpired.   I think I have 8 or 10 partially written blogs, but each one feels forced.  If I can’t blog from the heart, then I don’t blog.  Today while perusing facebook, I came upon a blog written by a fellow thetahealer.  After reading it, I knew I found my topic.  What’s really interesting is that so many of the people I’ve been speaking to lately are working through very similar issues.  So thank you, Elizabeth, for your inspiration.  If you’d like to see what she has to say, this is the link to her blog.

http://www.theexpandedgateway.com/the_fairies_and_me_blog

I’m deep in the process of accepting me as me, and not the me my family used to know and always expected me to be.  I used to think their criticism was because they didn’t love me or because they thought I wasn’t good enough.  Now, I understand it’s BECAUSE they love me and want what they believe is best based on THEIR belief systems.  Our views of the world are different now…neither is right or wrong.  If I want to be me, happy, loved, and authentic, I need to let go of the anger, resentment, blame, and frustration….I need to change for me to be a better me.

Learning to disconnect from our family’s beliefs about who we are can be a challenge.  Our gut reaction is to ask,” why can’t they (family, friends, teachers, etc) just accept me for who I am”?  What I realized is that we should be asking a different question, actually, two questions.  First, “why can’t I accept myself for who I am”?  Second,” why can’t I accept my family as who they are”?  Changing perspective is huge when trying to come terms with our  life and what we see as it’s daily struggles.

My dad and I always had a close relationship.  We’d have our disagreements (sometimes really loud ones), say what we had to say, and then move on.  After my mom died, the relationship shifted.  I used to wonder why, but it really doesn’t matter as knowing ‘why’ won’t change what is.  Before I go on, this is key when trying to heal things that happened in the past.  Focusing on the ‘why’ is ego’s way of holding on to the pain, hurt, anger, etc.  We are in the here and now.  The here and now in this situation is the relationship changed and degenerated.  However, I didn’t understand about the ‘whys’ back then.

My mom’s death and what I used to refer to as the “loss of my father” resulted in severe depression and caused me to take a long hard look at my life. That’s when I first discovered energy work, spirituality, and healing.   All of a sudden, my views of the world shifted.  My views of myself shifted.  I understood, saw and experienced a whole new reality.  I became a different person; one my family had no idea what to do with….and to be frank, they still don’t…lol.  I liked who I was becoming.  I understood me better.  The thing is I wanted my family to understand me too.  I needed their approval and support.  However, the truth is that while we may WANT other people’s approval, we don’t NEED it.  What we NEED is our own approval of ourselves.  We need to know that we are acting in alignment with our own integrity.  Sounds good on paper, right?  I got all this in concept, but I wasn’t living it.  After all, I was still asking why my family (friends, etc) couldn’t accept me for who I was.  Here’s the juxtaposition…in asking that question, I realized that I wasn’t accepting them for who they were either.  They were and are living life based on their belief systems and I was trying to force them to live their lives by mine.  Whoa!  Talk about an ‘aha’ moment, actually, it was more like a ‘smack in the head’ moment.  When I dug deeper, I realized that what I was really experiencing was my own lack of self worth.   If I NEED their approval, then I don’t approve of me.  (another head smacking moment)  Each time I accept another part of myself, my need for outside approval diminishes.  Once you are able to accept yourself as who you really are, then what others think of you doesn’t matter.  It can’t matter and it won’t matter.

My dad and I are still learning how to relate to each other with me being my authentic self and it comes with a set of challenges.  However, once I was able to view things from a different perspective, our relationship began to improve.  Don’t get me wrong, I still mourn the relationship we used to have, but the bottom line is even though we don’t see eye to eye, he’s still my dad and for that I will always love him…and I’m still his daughter, and for that, he will always love me.

I want to add something here.  In reading this over, it almost sounds like I came to these realizations just by hanging around and maybe reading some books…..and that it happened overnight.  It didn’t happen overnight, but there were small changes and miracles every day.   I did tons of energy work (Reiki, IET, and more)….and whole lot of thetahealing  all of which helped remove blocks and open me up to new perspectives and possibilities.

Are you facing a challenge today?  Try viewing it from a different perspective (even if you don’t agree with that view) and see if a solution arises.