Healing: Deciding Who You Grow Up to Be.
It sounds crazy to say that at 49 years old, I’m still trying to decide who I want to be when I grow up, but I think there’s more truth to that than even I want to admit to.
I’ve been doing an incredible amount of soul searching over the last few days since my previous post, and what I have to share will probably take a while to sort out, but all of my ponderings have led me to this one vital truth.
I need to heal the child inside of me, and finally become the person I want to be.
We all seem to operate within a preconception that taking another trip around the sun, riding this planet through the void of space, should give us another year of wisdom and maturity, but it doesn’t always happen that way.
I’m sure you’ve met some people who struggle year in and year out to finally feel like a functioning adult, bound to the past by something they have been unable to break through. While they look and sound like fully functional adults, there’s something missing in their soul that aches them to the core.
If you haven’t met someone like that before, well… you have now.
Since I last wrote for you, I’ve done something that hasn’t happened in a long time. I reached out on email to my sister, who still lives in England. Through some very heartfelt and honest communication, we’ve opened us some old wounds, sharing memories of the things that we experienced during our childhood, and how those things made us feel.
While it has been good to reconnect with her, the recollections haven’t been ones that I’ve enjoyed.
Because despite popular opinion, reaching emotional maturity isn’t something that’s guaranteed. The evolution of a child into an adult happens much more reliably in biology than it does in psychology.
For a young boy to grow into a man, the physical body needs nutrition, hydration and rest. For a child to grow into an fully emotional adult he requires safety, compassion, guidance and love.
And if any of those are missing, some rather difficult emotions can occur.
As I’ve gone deeper into myself than ever before, facing sadness and loneliness, grief and loss, I’ve come to a greater realization of all that is broken inside of me, and of the parts of me that are still like a child, crying in the corner, desperately trying to find a way out of the nightmare that he feels like he’s stuck in.
Trauma, it seems, is a very effective deterrent to progressing.
As I sat here tonight (Sunday evening) I finally, for the first time, felt a movement in my soul unlike anything I have felt before. After a week marked by sadness, tears, frustrations and a powerful desire to scream, I experienced a sensation that feels like a small step forward.
I began to see the possibility of the person I could become, and I realized that I could come to like being him.
The idea of liking myself is not one I have a lot of experience with.
Which is how I find myself trying to decide who I want to be as I try to evolve into a mature responsible adult. It’s a very strange thing to realize that you are in essence parenting yourself, but the more I look back, the more I understand that there was no one available to do it right the first time.
Both of my parents were too busy trying to survive the emotional train wreck of their lives be able to provide much of what I needed.
So it’s up to me, and I’m grateful to have Holly by my side as I try to make this happen.
Because after all the emotional personas that I feel like I’ve been wearing all these years, the one thing I want to make sure that happens is that I become as authentically me as I can, and hopefully growing in kindness, compassion and love.
Because without those, what would be the point.
Thank you all so much for your kind comments and messages after my last post. You really mean the world to me ❤️❤️❤️
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings