People look at me in my happy life and those who don’t know me assume that I’m just lucky and things have always been this way. They don’t know that I worked hard to get here and continue to work on staying here. You may want to be happy. I am committed to being happy.
Abraham Lincoln said “Most folks are as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
Happiness is something I choose every day.
It wasn’t always that way. I had years of low lying, free floating anger. I had no idea why I felt that way. I was married and mother to three wonderful children. We had managed to build a house on very little income and were no longer living in the caravan that had become home for 3 and half years. So why was I miserable?
That was 1996, exactly 20 years ago. Two year later in 1998 I decided to go into therapy. I recounted my whole life in synopsis form with this lovely, nurturing woman called Jenny. The story was as follows: I lived in a house with my parents, grandmother, two younger sisters and three older brothers, one of whom sexually abused me from the age of 5 to 12 years old.
I continued to recount how at 5 years old my mother announced that I was now responsible for cleaning up after everyone including my older brothers. I protested that they were bigger than me and asked why I who was smaller had to do this. I was told “because you are a girl”. Looking back I can now see why I was abused by my brother as it was being passed down that girls were second class citizens. In addition I believe this lead to me being bullied throughout the entire 8 years of Primary school.
I continued to outline to Jenny that I had helped out with Granny’s care as she got older while being responsibility for both my younger sisters. I had to ensure that my next sister and I got to school on time from the age of 5 while we walked the mile and a half together.
I then met my husband at 15 years old. He was 23 so he moulded me into what he wanted. I had my first child at 19, my second a month before my 21st birthday. We got married when I was 22 after I insisted. It was a small wedding with 12 people at the reception and afterwards to a pub. I went on to have my third and final child at 24. Here I was at 26 sitting in a therapist’s office wondering why I was angry.
The therapist listened and after many sessions reflected back to me that from 5 years of age I had been responsible for looking after everyone else’s needs and my own were neglected. Nobody was giving me what I needed even now, not even myself. In fact when I looked at it I didn’t know what I needed not to mind wanted. It was no wonder I felt angry most of the time. I was at the bottom of a very big pile of people.
So I started the long journey of learning how to put myself first. I had to read books. I watched Oprah. I found I wasn’t alone. She had to explain to her audience one day that putting yourself first wasn’t selfish, it was self full. It wasn’t leaving your children on the street to starve; it was looking after yourself too. It’s why in an airplane you are instructed to put your own oxygen mask on first. You can’t help anyone if you’re half dead. My therapist told me that if I was giving on empty I had nothing to give so I was taking from those I wanted to give to. That took awhile to figure out. I realised that my resentment on giving when I didn’t have my needs met took from the persons pleasure of receiving, as it was clear I wasn’t happy giving. Even if I hid my feelings of resentment, it just felt icky for them to receive.
I read many books on raising my self esteem, healing past wounds. I attended therapy where I talked, cried, kicked cushions representing people who had hurt me. I needed to get this stuff out of my body as well as my head. I learned that feelings are transient. If you have a feeling and you feel it, it floats away and is gone. If you don’t like a feeling and you shut it down it stays and gets trapped in your body. Then you have to work at getting in touch with that feeling and releasing it years later which is much harder. Yes I know this sounds a little hoo joo but there have been many books and papers written on this. Anyway I am the proof. It worked on me.
I am a completely different person. My body is completely different. I am more relaxed. I know my own mind. I know what I want and what I need and I get my needs met. Furthermore I learned to take responsibility for my own needs. I make myself happy. A big lesson for all of us to learn is that we are responsible for our own happiness. If I have a need that I would like my partner to meet I tell him. I don’t play the “you should know” game. We have an agreement that he does the same.
In all the healing I tried to fix a broken marriage but you need two people working on it. So separation and divorce was also part of my healing too. Trusting myself to put a home around me and my kids without a man was empowering. Learning how to date again when I had married my first boyfriend was an experience but I learned so much.
It really tested my boundaries. One man seemed normal until I realised that he thought it was normal and appropriate to lick your face on a second date. Then there was another man who on a first date brought me to a rather expensive restaurant. He paid for our meals then asked if he could lie down with me. Five minutes earlier I thought to myself this might be the one, finally dating is going somewhere. We were having a lovely time, the conversation was great then it was like the music stopped and everything came to a halt. I stared at him incredulously. I had no idea of his logic I just knew he was going home, alone!
I soon realized that I had to learn to change how I saw the world. I’d read a lot of Wayne Dyer’s books and he had said the following:
“Remember that you get what you think about, whether you want it or not. So if you believe that this is an unfriendly universe, you’ll look for examples to support this point of view. You’ll anticipate people attempting to cheat, judge, take advantage of, and otherwise harm you. You’ll blame the antagonistic, inhospitable cosmos for not cooperating with you in the fulfilment of your desires. You’ll point the finger at belligerent people and bad luck for the kind of world we all live in. I implore you to see the universe as a warm and supportive one because you’ll look for evidence to support this view. When you anticipate that the universe is friendly, you see friendly people. You look for circumstances to work in your favour. You anticipate good fortune flowing into your life”.
I had to change how I saw men. I had come from a marriage that wasn’t exactly healthy so my yard stick for measuring normal was a little off to say the least.
After my marriage had ended, I completed a 20 week course run by a local women’s shelter for women who had been in abusive relationships. We learned new skills while we shared our stories. We talked about building our futures. There were about 12 of us in the group.
I was surprised to find I was the only one who believed it was possible to have a healthy intimate relationship with a man in my future. The rest believed that all men were the same and they wouldn’t take the chance. I proclaimed that I had made one mistake in choosing the wrong man and that I was not going to live my life in fear of making another. I was older with more tools in my box and I was going to meet a better man because of my experience. To say they were horrified at the perceived risk that they felt I was taking would be an understatement. But I knew there was no risk. I had put the work in and changed myself. The only person we have the power to change is ourselves. It isn’t easy work as Carl Jung says “There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything no matter how absurd, in order to avoid looking at themselves as they are afraid of the pain. But what is the alternative?
I met a woman from this group a few weeks ago. It was in the bank so we couldn’t say much. I was my usual happy smiling self when she asked how I was. After pleasantries she asked if I had met someone. I said that I had 2 years ago. I rushed to reassure her that he was a good man and that things were great in case she didn’t get it from the stupid grin on my face. I asked her if she had similar luck. She said she had been in a relationship for over a year but had to let it go because it turned out to be the same as before. Personally I would find that more painful than looking at myself and changing what I didn’t like.
I am not saying that anyone has the right to abuse anyone. This is not condemning the victims. It’s just saying that you have the power to change any situation by changing yourself. I am living proof.
Of that group of 12 women two were dead within a year of the course, both from cancer. That’s pretty high odds. You see when I mentioned about feelings not being processed and getting stored in your body and making you sick eventually, cancer is a likely end result. Cancer is the most festering kind of dis-ease there is.
10 years ago I was 34 when I watched someone close to me die. She was 43. She failed to deal with a marriage that was similar to mine. She kept it all in and it ate away at her. She wouldn’t even talk to me about it even though she knew of my situation. Her death was a big wake up call to me. I saw clearly that I had to change my situation or get out or be carried out in a big box.
I did leave two years later after a momentous final go at fixing it. Sometimes the only option is to get out because abusive people don’t tend to allow you the head space to think. They tend to cause little dramas, start arguments over nothing just to keep you focused on something so insignificant that you can’t see the bigger picture.
Louise Hay has written extensively about healing your life, and thereby healing your body, as has Dr. Bruce Lipton. He says that the situation that you live in has more effect on your genes than the DNA that you were born with. I think that’s great news because you can change the environment that you live in. I decided that I’d be happier and healthier living in a shoebox than spend another minute living in a nice house with the wrong person.
The final step in healing for me was learning to be grateful for all my experiences. Now this didn’t happen immediately or even all at once. It took years of therapy, years of journaling, getting the anger out. The more I did the less irritated I was in myself. Learning to fulfil my own needs and happiness helped the rage subside. I could now trust myself so I could now trust others. I’d learned that if others let me down I would look after myself so this allowed me to trust others again.
I finally got to a point where I really liked this new me that was emerging. I had fought for her and I was keeping her. She rocked. I could see that without this adversity I would never have become her. Through therapy I went on an amazing journey of self discovery, although painful at times it was worth every bit. As I began to reap the rewards it became an exhilarating ride. These rewards might only have been the peace of having my own home where no one could bother or the joy of being in a relationship with someone who loves me for the strong, happy, sexy woman I have chosen to become. As Carl Jung said “I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.”
