Five Minutes A Day – Day 4

Day 4 Prompt: After

So this is what happens after all the observing and pretending – you lose all sense of self. You see, the story of Elle is the story of me. I’ve pretended for so long that I have no idea who I really am. Was I a true sister? Was I a true daughter? Was I ever genuine with anyone? Or have I always been a fraud?

Ah, now there’s the rub. I’ve been fearful my entire life. What if someone found out? That IF has prevented me from doing many of things I’ve wanted to do. Book editor? No. Published writer? No. Astrologist? No. Professional tarot reader? No. Herbalist? No. Reiki Master? No. Always no because someone somewhere would discover my secret – I’ve always been a pretender.

Yet none of that is true, or at least it shouldn’t be true. It’s merely the message I’ve repeated over and over again in my head. I had a wonderful education and even after decades of being out of college, I’ve never stopped learning.

The mind is a fickle mistress who can make you believe almost any lie. And only through years of therapy have I come to realize that my childhood illness and loss of memory was a cruel stroke of fate. I did what I had to do to survive.

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If you’d like to join me for this Five Minutes A Day, please feel free to do so. You can post it on your blog or use my comments below. All I ask is that if you do this on your own blog, that you link to my blog and be sure to give full credit to Kate Montaung (you can click her link to go to her page). Have a blessed day, me lovelies!

The Sandbox Writing Challenge #27 — Can’t Let Go

This week’s challenge is What are you holding onto from the past?

Maybe it would be easier for me to list the things that I have resolved from my past. It took years of therapy, learning Mindfulness and Ho’oponopono for me to let go and forgive, not only others, but myself as well.

• I have forgiven and spit in the face (mentally) of my Creative Writing teacher for telling me that I would never be a writer
• I have forgiven my childhood sexual molesters for their deeds against my person and my mind
• I have forgiven my 1st ex-husband for his abuse
• Forgiven myself for the loss of both of my children to miscarriages
• I have forgiven my family for their abandonment and disinterest, this especially includes my mother
• Forgiven myself for distancing myself from my family
• Forgiven my estranged husband for our failed marriage and realized and forgiven myself for my role in it as well
• Forgiven myself for my mental illness that ruined my one chance of true happiness
• Forgiven myself for losing that one person who would have given me that true happiness and have forgiven her for leaving
• Forgiven an old friend for her ways and rebuilt that friendship
• and I’ve forgiven myself for all of my trampy relationships throughout my life

I’ve even recently let go of two relationships that I know I will never recover and am working on forgiving them and myself for our roles in letting the relationships suffer.

So I am not sure that I am still holding on to anything from my past that I need to let go. Like I said, I’ve had intense therapy, nearly ten years of it. I learned to say what made me angry and then I learned to let it go. I wrote letters to my tormentors, read them aloud to myself in a mirror and then burned the letters. This was a year long process. Then I learned to stay focused on the here and now through Mindfulness. This past September or October, I began practicing Ho’oponopono and cleared out the remaining issues. Now when I get upset or angry, I don’t let the issues fester, I just clear them immediately. It probably helps that I have a faulty memory and if there is anything left out there to clear, I may not remember what it is anymore.

How about you? Are you holding on to a past event that is eating away at you? Ready to let go? Let me know in the comments.