Soulshine

One of the most important things about attending a recovery group, like Alcoholics Anonymous or Codependents Anonymous, is that you get to tell your story. Our personal stories are very important. They represent a life that is like no other. Yes, we all have overlapping experiences in life, but no one else has ever experienced life in exactly the same way as we have experienced it. We have all experienced painful situations in our lives, but no one has experienced emotional, mental, physical or spiritual pain as we have. So it’s important that we share our stories, the good and the bad, with people who are safe. Telling our story is scary territory for many of us. First off, we grew up with the unwritten rule that we are forbidden to tell our family story. We were told things like “What happens in this house stays here. You understand that?!!!” Or “We don’t air our dirty family laundry, so keep your mouth zipped!!!” As a result, so many of us learned to clam-up and keep every...

“Let people go by releasing your neediness for their love.  Love yourself instead!” David Elliott, Healing I have often wanted people to give me the love that I felt my parents did not give me. It seems it’s that maternal/paternal wound that often haunts us well into adulthood. We may be grown men or women but we still ache inside for the love we were denied as small children: We want to be told “I love you;” we want to be held and hugged; we want to feel the warmth of a mother’s or father’s love. And, unfortunately, we often project this need (or neediness) onto others. More often than not, the people we choose to project our need for maternal/paternal love onto are equally as emotionally unavailable to us as our moms and dads were. We subconsciously choose men and women whose personalities resemble those of our parents. Then we proceed in trying to secure from these people the love we were unable to receive from our parents. And nine times out of 10 our success rate ...

“Baby, I'd love you to want me The way that I want you, the way that it should be Baby, you'd love me to want you The way that I want to if you'd only let it be.” Lobo, I’d Love You to Want Me (1972) I first heard Lobo’s song “I’d Love You to Want Me” back when I was in high school. The lyrics and the tune haunted my heart. All of my young life I had wanted someone to want me, to love me. At the time, I thought more in terms of finding a lover my age, but looking back now, I think there was something much deeper going on inside me. I think the need this song evoked in me was first and foremost about the love and acceptance that I never received from my parents. I wanted them to love and accept me for being me. I wanted them to want me as their child. But that never happened, or at least I never knew it or felt like they loved and accepted me unconditionally. It was from this wounded place inside that I then projected outwardly, wanting a lover w...

“Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed. Healing means that the damage no longer controls our lives.” Anonymous Healing and forgiveness go hand in hand. We never have complete healing of the damage that’s been done to us until we reach a point of acceptance, of letting go and of forgiveness. Acceptance means we admit we can’t change what happened   and that we don’t have to be the lifetime victim of what happened. Letting go of the damage frees us from our victim mentality and provides us with internal-peace.   Letting go allows us to take our power back from the damage and the person who inflicted it. Once we let go, we’ll find we no longer feel resentful toward that person. Instead, we feel empowered to stand up to that person and to take our power back from him/her in positive ways. So, I’m not talking about revenge here. I’m talking about coming to the realization that the person who hurt us is in some unhealed-way hurting too. His/her unhealed bro...

I was talking with someone last night who had developed an energy-draining disease. He was bitter with God, himself and life. And he was playing the victim. Life had done him wrong. It had placed him in the path of an insect that could infect him with an incurable disease. Likewise God had done him wrong by allowing this to happen. No one escaped blame for his ailment, including himself. So I asked him “Can you accept the fact that you now have this disease? Instead of fighting reality through bitterness and blame, can you ask God to help you to take your power back from this disease by accepting that you have it and that you can’t change things back to the way they were before?” He looked pensive, but I could tell that he was beginning to understand. I went on to say that life may be different now, it may be less pleasant in certain ways, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t work with the illness. We can befriend it and see what it has to teach us about the true value of ...

One of my favorite mantras, which I repeat to myself daily is “Gently, lovingly, I heal all of the deep dark wounded spaces inside of me. With great love I fill-up all of my empty spaces with light, peace and well-being.” I say it slowly and with great reverence. I choose to offer myself love and to allow that love to gently stir within me and to gradually wash me clean of all my inner-wounds; be they spiritual, mental, emotional or physical. We have the power to heal all of the internal wounds that for too long have made us feel powerless over life. The healing process requires only one thing from us: That we be willing to help ourselves. Once we are willing, we can begin our healing journey by offering kindness and love to ourselves. By doing so, we finally make the life-affirming choice to treat ourselves with proper care and respect. Essentially we are making the necessary step toward choosing to value ourselves, and to believe that we are worthy of love and everything tha...