Today I read a post on Facebook from someone who finds joy and motivation in the writings of Joel Osteen:
“GOD is called the Great I Am, not the great I will be. He wants to show you HIS favor today.”
I am not espousing a religion or a faith but I am inviting the possibility that WE can take heed of this message. So much of our lives and the lives of our clients are spent in preparation for the “perfect” WHEN.
When I find the time; When I’m not depressed; When my family loves me; When I lose weight; When I have the right job, situation, home, spouse; When everything is perfect, then I will be “the great I am”. Then I will have my Life.
So many of the “moments” of our life have been given to pain, sorrow, hurt, sadness, fear and regret; we turn around and it is a year later, or five years later or twenty years later and life is speeding by and “moments” have eluded us.
I often speak to groups of clinicians and professionals and clients and families about TRAUMA. Really, about life events and messages that have prevented us from truly being present in our “moments”; that one, and this one and the next one. Traumatic events have robbed us of being Mindful in the “moments” of our lives.
Today a group of amazing clinicians and I were able to share about the Intergenerational trauma that so many of us have experienced and the many ways in which we live in the mystery of our family history. I have been blessed to be able to Unravel some of our family history and to more fully understand the many elements of that history that have created my core messages and coping mechanisms and ruled my life for such a longtime. It can be a painful and difficult task to ask the questions of my Mother and Aunt and siblings about their memory and perceptions of our family history but so many pieces of my personal puzzle have fallen into place as a result and important changes in my life have taken the place of faulty core beliefs.
For instance, at 50 years old I finally realized that I was a beautiful, bright, talented and gifted woman. My granddaughter at 8 years old, asked me what took me so long! From the mouths of babes. She already knows that about herself. We are changing the faulty perceptions of this younger generation in our family, even though my grandchildren have all experienced multiple trauma events, we have been able to love and support them and “talk” about their pain and sadness.
I was widowed at 27 years old by this disease of addiction. Recently my nieces came to Orlando and we spent time remembering those early years of my marriage to their beloved Uncle and the early childhood of my children. We laughed and we cried and we Unraveled the history and put more puzzle pieces together. It was healing for my grown children because they were very young when their father died and had many unanswered questions. It was beautiful and spiritual and cathartic and led to more questions and more answers. And we “experienced, truly experienced” each other in those moments.
Now you may be wondering how this relates to the Great I Am. The more we process and resolve our pain “In the moment” the more we can experience our life in the present and not be prisoners to our pain or our past.
For years we have avoided the pain, the sorrow, the sadness, the anger, the grief, we have avoided LIFE in all it’s fullness. We will all experience Traumatic events; life becomes richer when we give ourselves permission to experience all of the myriad human emotions in the moment, knowing that pain will pass. That we can cry and weep and wail and snot with someone we trust AND we won’t die and the tears will come to an end. This is what we do for our clients. We witness and provide a safe and loving sanctuary for the work, we support , encourage and listen without judgement and we don’t have to have all the answers, we just have to be PRESENT.
When we can release pain and have resolution life becomes juicier….walking through fear is our challenge and the challenge we give to our clients as well. We MUST give this same gift to ourselves and find our own healing. I have never, ever spoken to a group of clinicians that couldn’t benefit from more healing in their life. We must be willing to do “Everything ” we ask our clients to do. Life gets juicier!
Blessings, Judy
