In weak moments I like to imagine that other people make me feel or respond in certain ways. In truth, most of the time my own feelings about the words, behaviors, or sometimes even the glance of another person are reflections caught in my mirror of self.

When patterns and signposts in my life repeat often enough to make a map, they show the many rejected healing opportunities in the past. Fortunately, we continue drawing potentially healing experiences to ourselves until we are healed, or die having barely evolved psychologically.

excavating

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been the fortunate recipient of some synchronous and uncanny opportunities for healing of archaic wounds, wounds I thought were healed by now but which I find are testifying, “You’re not finished yet, my dear.” Not finished yet.
This makes me smile. I’m grateful for growth opportunities.

These opportunities come from every direction in life–family of origin, co-workers, partners, our offspring, strangers, clients, readers. The faithful send damning but healing words that send me to my childhood, where I laid–and had laid for me–the foundation of the home of the self I’d later become.

As we all know by now, these foundations are often off kilter, and the whole house, having taken its shape from them, is similarly skewed. Many times there’s nothing that can be done but to raze the structure to its foundation. Some must dig up even the ancient stones.

the gift that keeps on giving

Along life’s path, people tend to encounter the opportunities most needed for healing. For example, in marital therapy we draw the genograms, take the histories, get into therapy, and inevitably confirm the maxim that people tend to marry their parents, partnering with someone who will recreate with them the selfsame environment of the family of origin.

A person may sever ties with the family of origin, move ten thousand miles away, establish themselves in a cozy little home and community, yet wake up one morning to realize their cottage is overgrown. They’ve unwittingly brought invasive seeds with them, seeds clinging to the psyche, germinating in the unconscious. Without meaning to, they’ve sowed seeds of false identity, false identification, wrong thinking, defense mechanisms, and hated habits that have flourished unseen and surrounded the safe haven they thought they’d built.

Bouquets from the new homestead are gathered and brought inside, filling the home with familiar scents; other bouquets become dubious gifts to others. Having failed to do the terrible work of digging up ancient lands and stones, they’ve doomed themselves to living on them.

At the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, a story circle recounts the origin tales of the Caddo, Chickasaw, Muscogee, Ottawa and other nations. The darkened, circular story space and exquisite story-telling conjure the vast canvas of a night sky, a crackling fire,
the ancestors.

“Our origin stories define who we are,” says the narrator.

It’s true. Our origin stories define us. They tell us who our best friends will become, prophesy the partner, predict the ways we’ll leave and the ways in which we’ll be left. In our different relationships, we partner with someone who re-creates the feeling tone of our family of origin. After this, we have opportunity to do something different with our prompts, healing ourselves and our partners, or we recreate the old emotional climate, make the same old choices, and remain the people we’ve been.

We watch people leave the spouse, friend, workplace, and church, blaming the other all the way, then move on into the next relationship where they repeat the same patterns. The divorce rate in second and third marriages increases exponentially among folks who can’t sort themselves out.

crash site

It takes a lot of courage to work through what has pained you all your life. Not everyone started life with the best circumstances. Not everyone was wanted or loved, or wishes for their mother when they’re ill or needy. Some people had terrifying mothers. Some people grew up with cardboard others called “family” who seemed like mere stage props.

If you go to a public place and watch people for awhile, you’ll eventually see several parents screaming at their children. You’ll see a father jerking his toddler by the arm, overhear a husband saying cruel things to his wife. You will overhear the mean and horrible things people say on their phones. These people saying and doing hurtful things publicly do them a hundred times more behind closed doors. Many of them have children, and they’re cruel and hurtful to their children, too.

Their children survive and move away, but they’re wounded people in need of recovery and healing. In adulthood, they need a great many healing opportunities. They intuitively know this, but unfortunately crash into others in attempts to get their opportunities.

This is why the wounded must learn to heal themselves one encounter at a time. They might consider regarding the situational first responders as those trying to help, even if they helped create the conflict or conflagration. Unconsciously, they are there to help. You’ve drawn that person to yourself. If you’ve no wish to continue with a fire-starter, then your inability to assert healthy boundaries before the bomb detonates is also about your state of health. You and your adversary-healer are in partnership. We marry our parents, so to speak. If we don’t heal ourselves by extending mercy to that other person who was so mean, so rude, so intolerable, then we’ll remain blind to our own shadow qualities and will remain unhealed.
And so will they.

pearl

I am a pearl in the eyes of Transcendent, and so are you. I’m worthy even when helpless, vulnerable, and imperfect; and so are you.

The prophet Isaiah prophesied

I will give you the hoarded treasures of darkness,
And hidden wealth of secret places.

Isaiah 45:3, New American Standard Bible

Our personal unconscious and the Shadow elements in our families of origin, ancestors, and past contain hidden wealth. The most unwanted, secret, rejected, parts of ourselves and our pasts contain lost treasures.

If we consider the possibility that the shadows others display and the shadow we project onto them contain pure gold, we may warily invite them to sit at our campfire and tell their stories. By so doing, we invite recovery. We welcome our own healing.

Our origin stories define who we are.
They’re pure gold.