Life feels hard right now because you’re transforming. You are becoming a new person. You’re not the person that you used to be. Transformation is always difficult within the human context because there is often attachment to many aspects of who you used to be, your old self.
As you become this new person, there is the discomfort of having to realize that you have attachments to old ways of being, old thought forms, old people, old friends, old relationships, old environments, old objects – realizing that you had those attachments and then realizing that you have to let them go and then the process of also letting them go.
You don’t have to completely shed your old identity in that you’re not becoming a different person so much as you’re becoming more authentic to yourself. This is who you have always been and who you were always meant to be. You would have been this person, conceptually, from day one, had you been born with all of the experience that you have now, but, it’s just a more authentic version of yourself.
There’s going to be aspects of you within your DNA, your personality, your brain chemistry that are going to be emerging as a result of you finding your way through the challenges that you’re overcoming now. So it’s mostly growing pains, but there’s also just a discomfort of not really feeling like you recognize yourself and that in itself can feel very uncomfortable. To recognize that you’ve become an alien to yourself in your own body and in your own mind.
That unwinding of realizing that you were, in a way, living a lie or living with coping mechanisms for a significant portion of your life for years, for decades, can be extremely disturbing and cause some of the tumult of returning to yourself, of becoming your own being.
There’s a lot of healing to be done for you, especially with regards to your relationship with yourself. Who you thought yourself to be. Who you, in a way, forced yourself to believe that you are in order to deal with the people that you were dealing with.
There’s a lot of pain and sorrow in the amount of stretching that you had to do to deny yourself in order to survive. You know it was necessary to survive, but nonetheless, there’s still a lot of deep grief and mourning and sorrow and loss to be had and to be experienced, and that needs to be honored in the process.
The healing medicine for you here is to not be shy or afraid or apologetic about taking all the time you need to grieve and mourn the loss of yourself really for several years. Potentially decades. Mourning and grieving is a healthy activity. To stifle it or to try to push forward or push through logically trying to reason to yourself that you shouldn’t be feeling the way you feel – that will only stunt the process and make it take longer.
You need to feel your emotions and validate them as they come up with regards to the “loss” of your old self. Take the time you need to mourn, take the time you need to grieve, take the time you need to recognize the trauma that you’ve been through, that you survived, what you chose to do in order to survive that trauma, who you chose to become and mold yourself into to survive that trauma and get to the place in your life where you are today, which is better than where you were.
Take the time to grieve, truly. If you need to create something of an effigy or an image, a disidentified image, of the person that you were and who you became to survive what you have come through so you can have a funeral for that person and pay your respects and either bury them, bury the effigy or burn it or something like that to release that spirit of your old self, then do that. That would be more than welcome by your body to feel like your nervous system is getting some closure with what you’re leaving behind because you’re leaving a lot behind. And you’re not even leaving it behind – you’re transforming alchemically through the soil or the fertilizer of that being.
But your body could use some closure. So whatever kind of ritualistic or ceremonial way that feels good for you or feels true for you to honor the person that you were and that you chose to become to make it through the darker times in your life, that you are now completing the cycle of coming through, do it.
Because that person was a real trooper. That person was extremely strong, stronger than they ever should have needed to be, and they’ve seen a lot of things, and they’ve done a lot of things that not everyone would be able to make it through. So pay your respects to that person and don’t look at them with disdain or with regret of, “well, what if I had been authentic to myself the whole time?” Well, you probably wouldn’t have made it this far. You probably would have been stopped by the external beings who you had to mold yourself around to survive in the first place. So, don’t look back with a sense of regret or “what if I had done things differently or more authentically?”
You did what you needed to do to take care of yourself, and now it’s time to turn around and say thank you to that person that you’re leaving behind and honestly recognize them. I feel like what they need is to be recognized because the people that you were around didn’t recognize them. You may be the only person who truly is able to stand and witness their full being and recognize them.
You can do a visual meditation or visualization practice where you stand in one area, let’s say on the left side of a room. Visualize yourself standing on the left side of the room as your old self, and then imagine your energy stepping out of that body and walking to the other side of the room. Now turn around and face your old self, and now you are your new self. Really stand there and visualize that old person. Literally just witness them and recognize every aspect of them. You can say it out loud – their personality traits and character.
For example, “This person went through several years of this kind of abuse, and they did this to make sure that I made it through. This person survived several years of this kind of anxiety, and they did this to make it through. This person was a good friend to this other person for several years, and this person worked this job for several years, and this person supported this other person for several years. This person kept getting up in the morning when it was too difficult, and they kept getting up anyway. This person showed up to the gym and kept working out even when they felt like crap. This person had tenacity. This person had perseverance. This person had grit. This person had a work ethic. This person was soft and kind and gentle. ” and all these kinds of things – literally everything kind and everything good about this person.
I want you to look at them and witness it and say it out loud. Because this may be the only opportunity that they get to really be seen and felt and heard. So it’s almost like a sending away party or a going away party or a funeral or an honorary ceremonial service or ritual or something, but honor this person in that way by witnessing how freaking amazing they are because the world isn’t going to do that for you or for them.
You need closure. Your body, your nervous system needs closure and understanding that everything you did, you did for a reason. Everything you did, you did to take care of yourself and to meet your own needs. You were never an enemy to yourself. You were only trying to survive.
So please honor that person because you deserve it and because they deserve it. Then let them rest. Imagine that they’re going to go off now and have an endless vacation in some nice place that you would like for them to go to or you can ask them where they want to go or what they want to do. Maybe they love space exploration so they’re just going to go on an endless space voyage with some sci-fi advanced crew from a video game you like. Or maybe they really like cold environments so they’re going to go on an endless vacation to some premier ski resort in Norway or something. Maybe they like watching movies, so they’re going to go to an endless cinema marathon to watch all the Marvel movies back to back to back forever.
They get to now go off and enjoy their life. And you’re going to continue on. You’re going to take the baton from them for this leg of the race as this new version of yourself and you’re going to go forward and you’re going to take over now and you’re going to focus on living your best life. You’re going to honor them in doing that because everything that they did to make sure that you survived, no matter how terrible it felt, they did that so you could get to this leg of the race. So you honor them.
Don’t ever feel like you’re leaving them behind or survivor’s guilt or something for moving on with your life and living the best life possible. You’re paying your respects to them now so you have closure with that, and you going on and living your best life is honoring them because everything they did was to get you to this point. They opened the door so you could walk through it. You walking through it is never some sort of disrespect or leaving them behind or abandonment or something. That is you completing the race, that they, that all parts of you consented to participating in, and that all parts of you want you to finish.
Take pride and feel happy and joyful, feel the joy in being able to complete the mission that aspect of you started. There may have been a lot of suffering. There may have been a lot of struggle, but it’s not a betrayal to them for you to now not struggle and not suffer and be happy. That is exactly what they wanted. That’s exactly why they did what they did. So, you’re now honoring them in completing the mission.
I just feel like your life is going to be really good after that. You seem really healthy after that. Everything seems really good. You’re in alignment, you seem very healthy. You’re in tune, you’re on path, on mission. Everything is good. All your vital signs are very good. You’re just on point after that.
So, do that and then go enjoy your life as your new self and don’t look back.