The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on Building the new ~ Socrates

Sounds good, logical, the right thing to do.  However, I learned on my journey that I first needed to survey the damage in my life.  I needed to acknowledge my life was a mess.  A difficult journey when dissociation helped me to deny everything.  My childhood was great…I went to the park, I went to the zoo…..Yea. That was so NOT my childhood.  Yes, I did go to the park and the zoo but it wasn’t everyday and lot more went on.  As long as I denied the existence of the screwed up part, it blurred my vision.  I couldn’t focus on anything.  I was too busy hiding.  My past caught up with me.  I needed to acknowledge what happened to know what rotten crap I needed to tear out of my foundation, which in my case was most of my foundation.  It sucked A LOT.  My counselor coached me through the painful maze of remembering.  This is when I learned there are worse things than cancer.  I had cancer.  It was cruel but didn’t twist my mind in knots.  Dissociation is a powerful survival tool but the side effect is being locked out of your own life.  Yes, it is exactly how I felt like I was locked out of my  own life trying to peer in through some window to get a glimpse of living.  I looked back and acknowledge my past.  I felt like my whole world rocked on its axis.  My perspective of myself totally altered.  Now, I know where the damage lies.  I know the damage is extensive.  I also know that I kept a core part of myself separate from all the ugliness, hidden, protected.  I needed to nurture and encourage myself, all the things I missed as a child, I could do for myself.  After acknowledging the damage, I  could focus on me and my future.  I am learning and relearning that the harder I struggle from the negative the more it sucks me down into the depths of despair and depression. But when I focus on healthy boundaries, striving towards positive goals, practice nurturing myself, and serving others, that is when I start making headway.  Occasionally, I look over my shoulder to see how far I have come.  I am still working on accepting my past.  Mostly I am working on a new bright beautiful future.  I can finally say with sincerity what Dave Pelzer, author of a Child Called It, shared, “I like the person I am today. I would not be that person without the experiences that I had.”

Moving forward….focus on where I am going.