Soulshine

“Too many times I let my feelings hide. I act like it's all alright. You don't know how I feel inside. I act like nothing's on my mind, I act like nothing's on my mind But there's something on my mind. It's easier to hide.” Maya Jane Coles, Easier to Hide I grew-up believing I didn’t have the right to have wants or needs, thoughts or feelings. As a child, I had received the message many times that my wants and needs, thoughts and feelings didn’t count. So I learned to hold them tightly inside of me, or to outright dismiss them as invalid. When I was small, it worked for me to deny expressing myself. I was simply labeled the “shy” child and people thought it was cute. But as I grew into a young adult, being the “shy” child became a problem for me. I found that when I wanted to express myself, I couldn’t. Either I didn’t really know what I wanted or needed, or thought or felt; or I didn’t have the self-esteem to open up and express my...

“Letting someone else decide who we will be, how we will act and what we will feel implies that we have given up our own life in exchange for whatever the other person wants us to be.” Karen Casey, Codependence and the Power of Detachment Codependency is the experience of giving up our own lives. We give up who we are, what we like, what we believe, what we feel, what we want and what we need in exchange for the imagined safety of fading into another person. We think that by enmeshing into someone else we will find love, acceptance, happiness and security. We also think that by blurring the line between our identity and the identity of the other person we will gain a sense of respectability, of finally being lovable in the eyes of the world. We couldn’t be more wrong. We gain nothing—and lose everything-- by enmeshing into another person. No one finds happiness, comfort or love by perpetually trying to please another person. What security is there in never knowing what...

Sometimes I feel very fragile inside. My soul feels like it’s made of the thinnest layers of glass. Inside a heavy sludge is pressing against its every angle. I feel the layers of my soul cracking as the sludge is propelled against them by the pounding of my heart. I feel the voices in the sludge welling-up into my consciousness: “I’m worthless shit,” “I’ll never make it in this life,” “No one really loves me and no one ever will,” “I’m destined to failure,” “I never should have been born.” The pain of the past comes roaring back and I realize that I have many areas in my soul still left to heal. Awareness is my saving grace. I know I need to sit with my fragile feelings and allow them to simply be. They are valid and they need me to learn from them. They are the walking dead, mirrors of the past, and I must walk with them throughout my day in order to release them, free them and their horrors from my soul. This is how I reclaim my life from them. I am intent on honoring ...