Reclaiming my personal power

I spent several hours in meditation doing a healing the other morning. I often get a “calling” to do a healing. When I sit down in meditation to answer the call, I don’t really know where it’s going to go or what’s going to happen.The meditation happens the way it wants to happen, and I am just a conduit for the love and healing energy.

I am simply a facilitator and my job is to witness and hold space for the healing.

The healing journey started off with sending love, light and peace to those who suffered in some way from the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Then it got really personal.

I believe that in healing the personal, we send ripples out into the world that bring love and healing to others who have suffered in similar ways. The energy from healing, prayer, sending love or Reiki reverberates out into the world, just like the frightening energy from hate crimes and violence do.

These deliberate acts of healing energy are so needed to bring balance back into our world.

The healing session took me on a journey back through the last 10 years and beyond in my own life. I discovered that there was a part of me that identified with being a victim of unseen forces. The attacks of September 11, 2001 served to amplify those feelings in myself and anyone else who was already resonating with victimization. Today’s healing journey was to release that association and reclaim my personal power and hopefully send ripples of empowerment out into the world.

I’m going to be really honest with you about my journey. It’s super personal, and it feels a lot vulnerable to share it. My heart wants to share, so here we go.

So many times in my life I have come close to reaching my goals and then something always screws things up.

Until I did the healing work this morning, I thought of it as an unseen force outside of my control that was always preventing me from succeeding. Sometimes, I would blame my ex-husband. As I journeyed back through memories of all of the times this happened, I discovered it went way back even before my ex-husband. It went back to the transition from junior high to high school.

It went back to a point in time where I decided that it was safer to not be too smart or too successful so that I wasn’t singled out and emotionally tortured. Even though I tried to hide my true self, it still would pop out here and there, and the pressure would start up again from different people to stop being so smart and successful. It was painful, and it caused me a lot of heartache.

I never understood why it wasn’t ok for me to be smart, talented or successful, but it was clear from the messages of teachers, fellow students, and later colleagues and bosses that I’d better knock it off or else. It happened in classes in high school. It came from professors and classmates in college. It came from sexist bosses in my high tech career.

By the way, this never came from my parents or my larger extended family. In fact, my parents raised me exactly the opposite. They encouraged me to be smart, strong and capable. My sisters and female cousins turned out that way.

But for me, I guess I was more sensitive to the pressures around me. It was painful to experience so much negativity and dislike of who I was, so I learned to hide it.

And I got so good at pretending to be someone less threatening and more agreeable to the people around me, that by the time I was married I was sabotaging my own success before someone else could convince me to do so.

Over my twenties, I downshifted myself from being a financially independent educated woman with a full-time career to taking less and less skilled positions with less and less pay and essentially becoming financially dependent on my ex-husband. I turned him and our marriage into an excuse not to succeed at my dreams.

I become the person I thought I was supposed to be in order to be loved, accepted and not tormented.

I got so good at giving my power away, that I lost sight of the fact that it was me doing it all along.

There were many times in my marriage where I felt I “had no choice” but to go along with things that didn’t support my dreams and goals. I see now that I had many more choices than I was willing to consider at the time.

I was afraid to be too smart, successful or capable because I was afraid I would no longer be loved.

It was right around when I turned 30 that I started journeying back to my truth. I decided that being true to myself was more important than being loved for pretending to be someone else. I realized I wanted children, and this was something I had been in denial about in order to keep peace in my marriage. I also realized I truly, deeply wanted a challenging, stimulating career where I had the freedom to work as fast and as creatively as I felt like, where I wasn’t holding myself back trying to please others.

In my 30th year, I launched my business, and I started putting my truth first.

As you can imagine, this did not bode well for a marriage built on agreements I made, spoken and unspoken, that didn’t honor my truth. I became a different person, but really I became myself. It was really hard letting go of the relationship that had defined my life in my 20’s. I didn’t think I had the option to break the commitment I made, so I tried to make it work despite how painful it was. I put it off as long as possible, until the pain in my body, a reflection of the pain in my spirit, disabled me (temporarily, thank goodness) and forced us both to find new ways to get our needs met.

Then I was free, angry, hurting and frightened.

I had to do a lot of work to forgive myself for being untrue for so long and for compromising in so many ways that weren’t right for me so I would be loved and accepted.

And I did all the work.

I stepped into my own shoes, and I healed. I got used to sharing the truth about who I am with family, friends and everyone else. I learned how to ask for and receive help. I became whole. I kept growing my business. But that little fear that “something out there” preventing me from being successful could still trip me up kept worrying me in quiet moments.

Until yesterday when I realized that what had been making the choices to hold me back all along was me.

So I gave that part of myself a big hug and thanks for trying to protect me for so long. I told her it was time to go now, as I am no longer afraid to be my smart, capable, creative self and be successful.

And a wave of peace, hope and knowing that I am already successful washed over me.