TRANSFORMING VICTIMIZATION: TRUE STORIES

"When the bottom falls out of your reality, you then pay attention to yourself, your fears, dreams and needs in a very different manner. You have nothing to lose in letting the smoke screens in your life fall away.

"As you can learn to look at your life honestly, without excuses and self-imposed, preconceived conditions, you will find the levels of fear and anxiousness diminish. The willingness to re-evaluate the current 'you' and the possibilities for a new "you" is what turns limitation into opportunity and destructive, old patterning into viable, healthy new paths of growth."

-- Meredith Lady Young

How does one heal and grow from an unthinkable traumatic experience? It helps each of us when others open their hearts and tell their stories. In this issue and several following, personal stories illustrate how we can move beyond staying a victim and how to use painful events to grow spiritually. Know that the events that wounded us, whether or not they are as severe as those in these stories, can deepen our relationship with our Self and be used for the upliftment of our consciousness. To raise our consciousness out of the consensus reality of victim/victimizer consciousness, takes tremendous courage and vigilance.

Allow these courageous people to impact you and show you the way out of trauma. Their sharing is very personal and each of them hopes to show you that no matter how challenging a life situation, there are ways to grow and heal from the experience.

Some of the best teachers and healers are the wounded healers who have healed themselves. In the following months you will read others. If you are drawn to write your story, send it to me. If you missed story number 1, click here.

Mark Twain once commented that the older he got the smarter his father got. Likewise, the further I go down the road of self-awareness the smarter Suzanne Harrill gets. So many of the things I learned from her years ago have turned out to be true in my life and possibly yours.

I was born into abusive environments. My parents, now both deceased, would be shocked to learn of my assessment, because for the most part they had great intentions. The problem was they turned me over to what I call "surrogate abusers." Looking back it all makes sense. They were raised during the depression and their lives were indeed difficult. Even though they didn’t talk much about it, I am certain they both grew up in abusive situations. So it makes sense they would direct their child to the care of people they were familiar with, not knowing that instead of caring for him they were actually doing harm.

There was a series of them, from nuns who were physically and emotionally abusive, to a sadistic pediatrician, to a seminary I attended where the priests were sexually abusing some of my classmates. As I grew into adulthood, I unknowingly continued seeking out the same types of people, including those I looked to for healing, like therapists. More about that later.

My healing journey began when I met Suzanne Harrill. I was probably one of her hardest sells in that I viewed what she was telling me, and what I was reading in the books she recommended, as so much horse manure. But, as I told her, "What the heck, I might as well try this, since nothing else has worked." I was desperate and I knew there had to be something better.

I can identify two turning points in my journey: "A Course in Miracles" and "Love is Letting Go of Fear." Those two books, of all I read, have affected me the most profoundly. In them I learned the power of forgiveness and the fact that I could connect to my higher self, listen and get guidance, view and experience life differently, and basically turn my life around.

I became sold on forgiving once I realized that I continued to attract people into my adult life that had the same abusive energy of those in my earlier years. I was unconsciously drawing them to me in a vain attempt to try to get back at them. The end result was that I continued to create the same no-win abusive patterns.

That reality came crashing home when I ended up in a corporate job where I worked for the CEO of a large company. I was told he felt my expertise was crucial to the success of the company, but I was placed in a department where I had to answer to abusive bosses. Once again, I had created a situation where I was supposedly appreciated (loved), but had to contend with some incredibly negative situations. It took me a while, but I finally realized it was almost a carbon copy of what I went through as a child.

In the process of identifying recurring patterns, Suzanne taught me that life is like a spiral staircase. As we ascend, we encounter similar situations, but are higher on the stairs, i.e. more aware. A couple of years ago, I found myself dealing with a corrupt clergyman (not another one!). This time, however, I was on the church’s board of directors; I was his boss, and higher on the staircase. Thanks to Suzanne’s teachings, and a lot of ancillary reading and prayer, I finally became aware of what was going on. It became an opportunity to do things differently. So much of the healing process is the identification of a pattern that began in childhood and keeps recurring until we forgive it. The "A Course in Miracles" gave me some powerful imagery to forgive those people, bless them and let them go.

I also had something working in my life called the "law of opposites." That’s a phrase I coined when I began to notice that as I tried to accomplish something, frequently the opposite happened. I realized this pattern was established early on when the people who were supposed to care for me did just the opposite. During my journey I learned the power of asking that a situation be different and I have been able to make significant changes.

Looking at the big picture (with age comes insight), I have come to realize that what went on before was supposed to happen. My soul had agreed to the experiences as part of its journey and I needed to experience them in order to know the difference between then and now. I have made peace with that life and moved on to a new plane where I have several core beliefs:

I don’t have any enemies unless I want them.

I believe the world is a friendly place and, thanks to that belief, that is what I experience.