To Hell and Back
Today my mind drifted and I heard an expression which many of us can identify with. “To hell and back.“ It’s a descriptive way of sharing with others where we’ve been in our lives without giving the details.
I can honestly say that for most of us we’ve taken that journey, and some of us come back from it fully charged and ready to take the ‘Bull by the Horns.’ Some of us are stuck in it wondering if there’s a way out.
“You have nothing to complain about.” I love this when someone speaks to you as though they live in your body and have shared the experiences that you have been through. Thank-you for saying that and….”Honestly you haven’t a clue.”
I do not claim that my journey has been worse than yours or that yours has been worse than mine. How do you place a ‘measurement’ on what we as individuals have moved through?
I had a conversation with someone who knows me and some of my family. Their comment had me confused as to what I had experienced personally. I was apparently ’so lucky’ that “x-y-z.” I smiled and said, “that’s funny. That is not my experience at all.” Yes, but ’so and so’ said that………..”
What I shared with this person was that, ‘what I experienced was something different.’ The other person doesn’t know what it was like for me because ‘they’ do not live in my body. Another person can only ‘make up’ stories about what they experience by witnessing with there eyes. What we see with our eyes is more of an illusion than I could have ever possibly imagined. What I ‘experience’ in my body with sensory cues going off…is real.
We have all had something in our lives which we could refer to as ‘going to hell and back.’ All different from the other and yet all equally devastating to us. What I went through was devastating for me and yet for another, what they went through was 10 time worse. This is why our own personal trauma’s are measurable only by our own ‘internal’ landscapes.
Some of the things that people have shared with me used to surprise or shock me. Now I realize that as individuals, there is nothing that we wouldn’t do to survive including mame another person. Sometime the individuals that are mamed, are our children.
Now as adults, the women (and men) that I connect with have been left in a state where they feel incapacitated. They have been mamed by experiences of their past and don’t know how to move forward.
I have journeyed “To Hell and Back’” and I’m here to tell you that I’m still alive. In fact, I am more alive that ever before. By sharing the truth of my experience with others, I have helped others see for themselves that absolutely anything is possible.
I remember one woman in particular saying that I was such a gift for her. She found herself able to open up and share the truth of her experience with me without me judging her or the individuals that ‘mamed’ her. I move through my world without judgment of another because I know, ‘they only know what they know.’ We have all come from similar back grounds and upbringings, and they’re just different and yet very much the same.
I was mamed as well and I choose to not be ‘incapacitated’ by others any longer.
I’ve grown tired of waiting to see how people will react to what I’m saying, in order for me to move forward. I simply move forward and decided for myself whether or not it feels meaningful or not. I’m done waiting for other people’s approval before I decided for myself. My life is clearly about me. If I choose to make my life about you, then I’ll never get on with mine.
So if you’ve been to Hell and Back – and you are indeed back, what are you going to do to choose differently so that you don’t end up back there? If you want growth and evolution, if you want to shine and know for yourself that absolutely everything is possible, stop looking at what you don’t have and what isn’t, and embrace what is. If you want more in your life, then create it. Stop making up excuses why you can’t and start making choices that say you ‘can.’
If you have been to Hell and Back, you know what took you there. If you’re an adult now, know that you no longer have to be ‘incapacitated’ by your past. (And I don’t mean ‘pretend’ that it didn’t happen). Embrace, and love it and no matter how devastating it was, I will share with you that there was genius in it.
If you feel stuck in your life and don’t know which way to turn or maybe start, I encourage you to connect with me to discover “The more that you are.”
I’m in the process of building a Personal Growth and Wellness Center so that no matter where you are on your journey, that there is a place for you to ‘physically’ show up and stand tall in who you are.
I look forward to meeting with you and bearing witness to your magnificence.
Awakening the Possibilities Within
Amy
Growing Forward ~ Personal Growth Services
amy@thepowerlieswitin.com
