Dear Universe,
Here we are then – another morning, another day in the Life. Let’s decide how this one is going to go.
I have to give you credit. I opted into this particular Lifetime in order to expand and learn through experiences and requested from you that I should have some, er, interesting scenarios to work through in order to achieve that. You, dear Universe, certainly delivered.
Here I am in the middle of one of them. It’s arguably the most complex, challenging and painful of the lot. Am I learning from it? Certainly. Is it allowing me to expand my consciousness and understanding? I suppose it must be. Am I flailing about, totally out of my depth and panicking for much of the time? Definitely.
So back to basics for a moment. Life does not happen to me; I happen to Life. It’s very easy to forget that when I’m in the middle of a Life drama. It’s easy to sink into victimhood and wallow about there yelling, “This isn’t fair! This isn’t my fault! Someone else caused all these problems. I didn’t choose them.”
Well no, in everyday terms I would never have chosen to have people I love suffer what they are going through. It is all too easy to blame the perpetrators. If those people hadn’t done those things, Life wouldn’t be this way. If those people hadn’t done those things, I wouldn’t be here, having to deal with the fallout, day after day. If those people hadn’t done those things… something else would have shown up in my Life to allow me to learn and expand and find ways of dealing with the issues here, because that’s what I asked for when I began this Lifetime, and that is true for everyone involved.
So let’s dispense with all the victimhood and blame and anger – the easy stuff – and move on to happening to my Life.
This is what I’m learning, you see, Universe. You’ve given me some real humdingers to deal with in the past and I’ve often seen myself or – worse yet – people I care about, suffering, and been willing to blame others for that. It is hugely difficult to see that every single individual concerned acted from what he or she considered to be a reasonable or practical perspective. They each carried out what they considered to be the best or most expedient response to a difficult situation. It’s not my task to question their actions or to blame them. It’s my task to take steps forward and move myself and my loved ones into a safer, more secure and comfortable situation.
My little family – the woman, the child and the toddler – are in a safe, though temporary, home. We are making plans to move them into a relatively safe and secure permanent home. We are taking steps to make that permanent home safer and more secure, but that is still not reaching to the nub of it. Security devices, high fences and locked gates may help to protect against physical intruders, may help to make people whose previous home has been violated, whose lives have been threatened, whose trust has been destroyed feel slightly better, but the real work is to build up inner protection.
Each of them is traumatised.
The smallest is terrified by loud noises, raised voices or passers by who remind her in some way of the ‘bad men’.
The child has just built himself a dreamcatcher – a wooden pop gun beside his bed that ‘shoots’ nightmares into a hoop, from which they are projected into a baked bean tin across the room. For him this is serious work – serious self preservation.
For the mother, who seeks to protect and nurture the little ones while dealing with her own loss, grief and traumatic stress, there is a long, slow and painful journey. I can see the glimmerings of a stronger, wiser, truer woman emerging. I can see tiny steps towards the rebuilding of shattered self confidence. I can see a brighter, clearer future that far surpasses the web of lies and deceit that were lurking and waiting to sabotage the past.
My task is to hold that image and project it to you, Universe, because then you will mirror it back to us.
Yours in love and gratitude,
Jan
Looking at Life 