Listen to our commentary about our blog post. Then listen to the poem, “Cleaning out the Closet” below.
The Experiences that Shape Us
We have all dealt with traumatic experiences that can make us or break us. These experiences place deep imprints on our hearts and minds that can stick with us throughout our lives.
Childhood experiences like abuse, abandonment, and neglect can present child to parent resentments in later years. Some circumstances also challenge our adult relationships, such as job loss, divorce, or betrayal from someone close to us. When these things happen to us, we suffer pain and resentment. How can we move forward and heal from these situations instead of sitting stagnant?
Why am I carrying the load?
When we are hurt, emotions like anger and bitterness flood our minds, and we begin to allow others to control us because of our inability to confront our emotional trauma. These emotions affect our health and stop our growth, and in some instances, cause us to start seeking revenge and holding resentment with the offenders rather than looking for solutions to move on.
Holding on can sometimes be rooted in our fears. We fear moving on past the hurt and the pain because we feel shame and embarrassment. Our imaginations lead us to believe the whole world is laughing at us or that we are the only ones who have gone through this situation. We avoid talking to people about it and use self-destructive behaviors to substitute facing our problems.
“It’s the principle of the matter.” Have you ever said this or heard someone say this statement? Sometimes we refuse to let go of our anger or resentment because we feel that justice was not served to the offender. We want things to be rectified, and when they are not, we don’t want to release ourselves from making sure that the person that hurts us gets what they deserve. We want them to feel our pain, but it hardly ever ends this way. Most of the time, the person that has hurt us has long moved on from the situation while we are still trying to administer our retribution. Someone once told me that I was drinking the poison expecting the other person to die, meaning I’m punishing myself by holding on to everything and counting on the other person to feel remorseful or the pain like we did.
“You are allowed to let go of all those that do not set you free anymore.”
— DHIMAN
Focusing Forward
The first step of letting go is allowing faith to begin to heal. It’s the ability to walk by faith and not by sight. Part of healing is learning to let go of the hurt, pain, and shame of those unnecessary burdens.
Just like airplanes have capacity restrictions, certain things cannot go with you along the path to healing and letting go if you ever intend on soaring to new heights.
There have been many times that I have asked myself why I should forgive someone that has hurt me. They hurt me, and now I have to do the work of forgiveness too? They do not deserve my forgiveness. It may be hard to forgive someone who will not consider your feelings! It just doesn’t seem fair.
Forgiveness is not for them. Forgiveness is for you. Unforgiveness is a poison and a dead weight that lives inside you and holds you down. It takes more energy to hold on to negative emotions than to let them go. Imagine transferring many heavy bags somewhere and the relief you feel when you set those bags down somewhere. You feel lighter. When you decide to forgive a person, you are not saying that what they did was okay. You are saying that you choose YOU! You are releasing yourself from anger, bitterness, resentment, and self-destruction.
“So I have forgiven this person. Now what?” Once you have made a conscious effort to release yourself from all of the negativity that has been weighing you down, it is now time to put your focus forward. This means that it is time to prioritize what is important in your life and work to accomplish your goals. You have to understand that behind every disappointment is a blessing and everything that has been done to you (negatively) and for you (positively) is preparing and setting you up for better things down the road. You cannot open new doors with old keys. Therefore looking back and rehashing the past is not an option you should choose.
Be careful of trigger points that may remind you of the past and take your focus away. Things like negative self-talk and even poor advice from well-meaning friends can cause you to regress to the past.
Finding Value
The process of letting go is not easy. It takes time, patience, and compassion for yourself. There will be days when it feels too heavy and hard. Once I made it through the process of letting go and began to heal, I was able to sleep at night. My mind wasn’t working overtime spending energy on hating someone else. I was able to redirect my energy to loving myself and appreciating my worth. I discovered my strength and started living for me. I was able to look back over the experiences that I had dealt with and use them to create a better life for myself.
