Now I know I can drop the twenty foot high walls around me, I have to choose my support team carefully. Before now I have practised being vulnerable in a less than wise way. I have chosen people who replicate those abusive parents. Psychology says that I am predisposed to do that, both because it feels so familiar but also in an attempt to repair the past. Imagine my psyche’s delight when the last person I picked to be vulnerable around was likely to abandon like my father AND blank me when it suited like my mother. All wrapped up in his own vulnerability and warmth. And not all bad. I refuse to believe anyone is. “Hurt people hurt people” is true. But as I read today, “making yourself available to be the punching bag in someone else’s battle doesn’t make you a good person. It just makes you available” (and means you get punched).
Back to me. Today I picked my team. I disclosed to two colleagues what was going on in life. The woman who sits next to me was a great listener and gave me the longest hug.
After work I then met with another woman. I have never discussed personal stuff with her before, though she is a high esteemed and trusted colleague who I had a good feeling about.
Reader, I struck gold. This woman listened. She didn’t just listen, she saw and heard me. We discussed the places I feel safe at work (not many, but thankfully my classroom is one). She got that I don’t feel safe. She understood that with her heart. She said she will be a safe place for me. We talked about using noise cancelling headphones to dial down the noise in the office that I find so threatening at times. She held my hands as I cried and stroked my hair. She talked about the little girl I had been and gave me a picture for her. She said this:
“Little L, you have been given a treasure chest. You open it, look at the things that people have put in it for you and say “these things are not for me”. But that is not the treasure for you. Look in the lid.”
I knew what she was going to say and I cried some more. In the lid is a mirror. “Little L, YOU are the treasure.”
I told her I felt like an oak tree. Again, a picture arrived (interesting, as I work in pictures too). She said “I sense you are the oak tree frightened of being struck by lightning. The fact is, the lightning will strike (has struck), but support will be put around it and you will grow into a new shape, more beautiful than before.”
She also said that she had a vision of me “abandoned to the joys of living.”
I want that so much. I am reaching the point where I KNOW that is what I deserve.
Today has not been all good. There have been points where I have felt scared and put my armour on. I have reached out to people who I definitely don’t need on my team. You know, the “there is nothing wrong with you” tribe. I mean, no, there is nothing wrong with me, but some wrong things have certainly happened and I have a right to feel angry about that.
I hope you have your team cheering you on, too. Let me tell you, it makes a world of difference to the challenges ahead.
How the light gets in 