Reconnect with your soul

 My connection to how much I made believe my lies to be true and self gaslighted into victimhood expecting freedom from her trap from those she made herself feel small with in order to adapt herself with others and that means literally everyone. I didn't know the first thing about being myself and was neglecting that until it gets invisible for me to really tune to so that I can let that slide as if I don't matter yet again all over again for all these decades of experience of doing that to myself.

It got so thick and numb in me that I just couldn't cut the layers, the root of those layers, and the space that it took within me eating my insides out as if an infested bacteria that was feeding off my emotional pain and physical sensitivities. It was as if I just had to give in in order to stay true to adapting to this self created limitation pattern that got woven into how I was looking at my life, and so much of it seeped into past wounds as if they have been empowered to define me. And the real pain was that it had stopped hurting - it stopped hurting to not be genuinely myself, my moods, highs and lows, frustrations, fears, anxieties and so much more.

What truly stood out for me was how many times I had gotten saved, cautioned, protected, guided, reassured and so on through divine interventions -  just quick, clear messages coming straight out of nowhere and landing when I really needed to hear, feel, or see them, but it took me long to realize that I was not willing to see how close I was to the spirit world and was seemingly burying myself with the smallness of my adapted limitations that I had repressed myself to fit into.

There was nothing new about my life and I had taken chances to try something new but only to want to have the old patterns of thinking and old habits to stick through for me as if they had to be my close friends to see me through. And they did do that but there's only so much that old friends can come along specially ones who are not good enough for you and you are just holding onto them because you think you need them, and they have just pushed past your boundaries to indulge, utilize and misuse your big, giving, creative, kind space.

It's true then that it's not who you were that matters now but who you are and who you want to be and become that matters. It's just work in progress and at whatever timeline that really kickstarts doesn't matter as long as you keep going and are sincerely committed to it.

You can restart your connections - what makes you feel hopeful, feel like your heart expands in joy, like your tears wipe out the dust from the limiting layers collected from the past, like you can trust to talk, to cry, to open your heart to your God, your guiding energies, your higher self, because you deserve to have a moment or two of quiet, of truth, of love, of gratitude, if you really mean them in any particular order that maybe or even not and have a bone to pick with, but truly spoken from the heart, from the crust of innocence, from the clear voice of your inner child, is all that matters. The validation that you are heard, understood, loved, protected is a beautiful gift and not something to let go of if you discover them from deep within your inner core, from your God within.

It's just one life we have got we think or we maybe like this from many past births, but not being the same old self making the same old mistakes and feeling like nothing new is happening is a loop we can break free from at least in this lifetime. We can recreate ourselves if we allow that to happen by willing to change how we see ourselves, what we think of about ourselves, and what are the words, the inner chatter we go through to create the narratives that makes our life stories what it is in our minds. We can if we put our hearts into it change our life narratives and take immense pride, responsibility, and trueness to this purpose if we channelize how to delimit ourselves, how to reconnect with our soul, our inner soil, and grow fully, unconditionally, and with all the love that you choose to nourish it with.

Forgiving myself - a big bucket list 🙂

 To forgive myself - the hatred I had harbored for my body because it was/is "too sensitive".

To forgive myself - for seeking constant approval for my health conditions and emotional support for helping me regulate my emotions and feelings.

To forgive myself - for abandoning my true feelings, frustrations, emotional pains, sadness, anger, hurt and adapting to environment by repressing them.

To forgive myself - for not trusting my inner strength enough and seeking validation from others for who I am, my personality, individuality, and weak boundary setting, and giving in easily my will power by not working on my resilience and constantly staying in a state of numb repression and robotic way of functioning on day to day basis.

To forgive myself- for thinking I can't put forth my opinions and shutting down on my individual voice and just obliging with an ideal picture of myself in order to adapt to others expectations.

To forgive myself - for lying to myself every day just so that I can stay in the victim mode and keep expecting empathy or understanding from outside world and form judgements that I stubbornly stay stuck to.

To forgive myself - for depriving my self of genuine self respect and trying to justify others definitions of who I am and who I should be.

To forgive myself - for not honoring my life space and taking control of my life as my responsibility and choosing to disconnect, stay indifferent at the cost of my inner growth as a person.

Self forgiveness through Ho'oponopono

 We are not victims bound by life, we are our mind interpretations of how situations, context, people in it are received by us through the mind based projections -  the mind has a looping into truth make believes which seems to stick to the web of our karma (either from past births or from present). We exist not because of our mind's perceptions of what life should be, but how many unresolved emotions and unrealized feelings and experiences it had amounted to in spite of our mind and its cognizance of our reality through stacked up memories which need to be lived through and connected with in order to live our lives fully.

We need the past until we free up our consciousness with release from triggers, traumas, and silent sufferings which continue to haunt even in the present and while being technically alive physically at one level, but keeping the portal of the past open much longer than what's needed is a stumbling block in the flow of individual consciousness.

Ho'oponopono, a Hawaiian practice of forgiveness and healing is the point of conjecture where things, memories, triggers, hardened emotions, and stumbling blocks that need to be diluted, let go of to facilitate the flow in the present is enabled through chanting repeatedly "I am sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you," in order to receive clarity for what can be done today and how to be at peace with oneself.

After all it's not what hurts or who hurts that matters but how long do we hold on to it that does. It saps the energy, the vitality, the vision for our lives from us when we get so stuck on how we should have been treated, or how things should have turned up as per our expectations, and in short all the heavily weighing down rotten fruits of our individual life trees that any how will drop to ground lifeless along with shedding leaves shrouding them as blanket, but before that a small bucket full of ripened life experiences need to be held on to. And all this if we stop looking at our life trees with regrets alone but take pride in how far, how long we have come and how tall we still stand in well earned pride for who we truly are and for what fruitful experiences we bring to this earth.

Ho'oponopono is the mantra of loving release from the grip of unconscious mind as and when it's applied to challenges and problems that are not toxic as we make it out to be, but needed uplifters, blessings in disguise to stir us up and wake us out of the thoughts template that we become accustomed getting stuck in thinking.

The prayer for loving release, seeking forgiveness from our inner child, from all those tightly held memories, dense emotions, echoing triggers and so on is what this ancient Hawaiian mantra is all about. The simple act of self forgiveness for depriving ourselves of embracing our inner truths however unexpected, ugly, too realistic, and utterly simplistic it may be, but the more that we bow our heads in humility to our guiding truths which are our inner wisdom to help us navigate better and travel lighter.

The mind tries to call it the shots as it stages what it perceives as right and does so as a victim, as a bitter, negative, suffering, disappointed role plays and enjoys all the attention it gets by mere daily rehearsal of these on day to day basis as we end up doing and enable the mind to direct us as people and  direct our lives.

We choose to helplessly watch as audience as our life unfolds as the mind takes over and performs for garnering all the pity, sympathy, attention and throws light on others by blame shifting, manipulating, slandering others name and fame, harboring jealousy, greed, and so many other twisted facets that keeps the mind at work under wraps while life happens to us and not through us.

We forget that we are not here for long but hold on to our past negative memories as paraded on centerstage as if our feelings about it is the only important thing that exists and nothing or no one else other than our narrative and projection counts for anything.

Our feelings and emotions around it matter too but the longer we wish to justify hanging on to it and get stuck by not letting go, the harder life feels. Life is here for us and we are here alive participating in it and it's not against us - all it wants from us is to allow for genuine truths to surface through the debris of our echoing shadows, to listen and acknowledge it, to allow the light of our inner wisdom through expanding on our truths guide us far and beyond what the fearful, conditioned mind can conjure up. 

And it's a start of sorts to unwrap the gifts of your life with gratitude because you earned it, because you are grateful for it, and it's a lifetime like no other.

Life unfolding

 The disintegration that has led my self get so fragmented and so "other" centric and less focused on my real self has been a lot to process and accept as my programming, and I cannot go back in time to "fix" this and have no choice but to accept this truth. I have had a broader sense of me as placed in the flow and energies of others and making way for them and allowing for them to determine my adapting to them as if I don't have a will and boundary of my own to determine. 

Making way for others is so much part of me that it becomes detrimental to my self growth and the more I have learnt to do so as means of coping up, as means of my laziness, as means of giving in to stronger willed and controlling people, the more I thought I fit in with the joint family set up that I was a part of. As long as people approve and appreciate my efforts in doing so, then that much I feel validated.

The root problem is my very own ill self validation and lack of vitality and allowing myself to rest and get used to this feeling that this is who I am anyway, all thanks to the physical health issues I seem to have gone through and just giving in to my mother's narrowed way of looking at my health and wellbeing as a way of being loyal to how much money, materials she had brought for me and just repressed my true feelings to come out for decades together.

To become the 'other' in my life is something I am so used to doing and so much so that I completely dissociated and felt forced to want to be alive in the body I am given which I seemed to despise, all thanks to the fears, insecurities, ego, will, possessiveness of my mother that I had absorbed and was attached to and didn't know how to break free from this absorption and enmeshment.

My mother saw me as damaged goods much similar to how she saw my father in the same way and because he had passed away leaving her pregnant with me, her anger, disappointment, a sense of betrayal just took another form while seeing me grow up and having "over sensitivity" and "weak health" as she was apparently frustrated, belittled my health problems in front of other family members, made me feel guilty for being sensitive, and her anger spilled over as no matter how much she tried to control my sensitivity, she couldn't, and I just felt more and more anxious and worried about my next health episode which may again upset her.

This got repeated so much so that I didn't realize I had abandoned my self  and left it in the dark so that I can satisfy my mother by being "good enough" for her. Not wanting to discover my true feelings, moods, and my likes, dislikes and so on became my pattern of living and just numbed myself to adhere to becoming the other in my life.

I had to make way for my mother, I had to stretch my personal space to empathize with her and so much so that my personal space became a territory that she could walk in and out of on her own will and wish and even if this were some years ago, but it hurts me, saddens me, as I feel so exploited, so manipulated to give in to her controlling my life as if it were damaged goods that she can poke and prod into and try to fix it and made me feel as if I had no say in it by the way she made me feel.

These are pieces of my fragmented life and I need to acknowledge them as they have made me who I am today -  someone who has mourned her past, who still mourns for it, who is trying to forgive herself for who she thought she was and for absorbing and taking in my mother's projections on me more seriously than what I really thought and felt about myself. Mourning also for feeling disempowered as a result and even if my bouts of anger, sadness, breakdowns have come and gone, I just wish to acknowledge that this is still my life whether I felt like I had any say in it or no, and daughters who are born to such controlling, clueless mothers whose words, deeds, behaviors have a huge impact on their daughters that it's still not too late to wake up and take control of your life in your hands the same way I have done. 

To come from past shadows into one's own light is painful but totally essential to move on with your life because no matter how much the past might have defined me and all the "over protection" of my mother might have confused, made me feel belittled, lost, and broken, but the essence of who I am as a human, as a work in progress is open until the end of my life. I need my backup, self motivation, and lots of downtime, sleep, nutritious food, laughter, good company, silence, meditations, walking, sunshine, nature and so much more to help integrate my essence into my being which is unfolding beautifully one day at a time.

Find your voice and have a say in your life

 Children of narcissistic mothers yearn for true, accepting love from their mother and what they instead find is a person who has no idea where she starts and where her children end. She has no idea of what her identity is outside of manipulating and controlling her children and conveniently wears the disguise of victim just to invoke sympathy and attention from others.

The narcissistic mother may not have been secure and loved for who she is but since her ego has unmet needs and a tendency to want to prove others wrong at the cost of earning her rightful place which she assumes is by projecting a false sense of self and brainwashing her kids to hero worship her while slips her true personality under all the drama which she creates over and over until people believing that it's true -  the truth is that they can't stand to face themselves and need others shoulders to push their responsibilities on and if they don't seem to match to her expectations, then guilt trip them and keep them in the fog and blames them for lack of their responsibility to take better care of her. She intentionally does this so that her own children get projected in the wrong way so that she wins this battle, this competition, this war, so that she survives by wearing her children out, by dehydrating their spirit, and keeps score of how much to give back in unnerving, destabilizing, and overshadowing ways in case she senses that they are on the winning side and have control in their hands, and all the while living in the pretense that she creates that she is quite adaptive to her children's decisions and will support living with them.

She cannot live apart and needs her children to live through them. Narcissistic mothers need to feed off their children's open mindedness and has to find a way to fit in even in the smallest spaces that separates her from her children. Children of narcissistic parents need to develop more self love and empathy for themselves for coming so far with their mothers that all the time, opportunities to explore and have fun in their own ways separate from the intertwined web of living with their mother seems to have gone and there's nothing that could have been done to undo all the time gone by.

The inner landscape of children of narcissistic mothers is a dried and saturated space which has their mother's presence written all over it -  narcissistic mothers can exploit the concept of motherhood to get what they want and go to whatever extent they want to make sure they stay in the center of the child's attention span. The children have to become the grownups in order to accommodate their narcissistic mothers at the cost of giving up on experiencing their childhood and all those precious experiences which would have made lovely memories that go well into adulthood and beyond. 

Being securely attached to a narcissistic mother is next to impossible as she needs you, your innocence, your energy, your trust, your spirit, your attention, your kindness, your time, your life, and your everything in it to sustain her. Feeding her off off you is going to disempower you as the child of such a parent and the more you step into your gut instincts, your intuitions, your nudges, your restlessness, your spontaneity, the better chances you have to organize your life around yourself. You need to keep reminding yourself that your life matters and your priorities in life are different than what she leads you on to believe. 

Let her live under the impression that she is your omnipresent, omnipotent God, and she has gone through whatever she has gone through to make your life what it is today, but never allow her to soften your will. Your will is your power. Don't let her break it and use it against you. The trauma is not in the weakness she makes you believe you have(be it physical, mental, financial health) but in your losing your clarity by being attached to such a toxic attachment and allowing her to win, to control, to manipulate your life and which only adds up to losing a sense of your self, which is a far greater loss than any of these.

Narcissistic mothers need boundaries while you need your balance. Your perspective of what life is for you matters and not their defining you on their basis of what they see is fit and right for you, because what was right for them at some point in time need not be right as time progresses and you start to grow -  not for them but for your highest good which would ideally make them feel good and not the other way round -  using their children's will manipulatively against their knowledge to get what they want and grow off their separate roots and make them become dependent on them unconsciously.

Living for yourself is not a crime and so don't feel guilty if you begin doing so. Self love is not an antidote against narcissistic mothers, but a healthy means to gradually and slowly connect to oneself piece by piece day by day.

You don't have to pay the price for being created by a narcissistic mother, but stay enough motivated and energized to want to invest in yourself and your dreams no matter how small or big it may be. Because it's finally your life and if you don't get to have a say in it, then who does?

Emotional neglect

What does emotional neglect feel like? It feels like you are invisible despite being physically alive. The part of you that craves for attentions becomes cold, numb, and goes to the point where you stop feeling your feelings because you don't know what they are and how to address them. 

I was so trauma bonded with my mother and my mother emotionally insecure more so after losing my father suddenly in a massive cardiac arrest, wanted to live through my blind trust in her and which as a child I thought was what was right for me, but little did I realize that she thrived on self pity and sympathy from others and that's what I was used for in order to project my sensitive health as my weakness so that her brothers and their families with whom she and I lived would continue to feel sympathy for her and with this she can sustain being in her self pity web with me alongside entangled in it.

All this complicated layering was too confusing for me as a kid as I assumed that my presence in her life meant something to her but I felt so betrayed and angered and saddened when I realized this fact that she simply conditioned me to be her shadow and the more enmeshed I lived being one, the more restless, sick, and sad I started to become but kept repressing this as I could not bring myself to process, to understand, to distinguish my feelings separate from hers and all this blur that it created in my life was something I didn't know how to deal with and so continued numbing it going to the extent of self forgetfulness, self neglect, lack of setting boundaries, and constantly seeking a sense of exploration, flitting sense of attachments with projects, creative pursuits, and again detaching myself from pursuing my interests more and more as I was too uncertain, overwhelmed, confused, afraid of stepping into being an individual and living like one. 

And so individuality remained a 'concept' in my life and the more I studied on self help, spirituality, philosophies, psychology and so on, the more far away from actualizing my self I became -  it again became a means to detach from putting in efforts to know myself and give attention to myself. Because I was so used to being emotionally neglected and so used to trying to cope with all the material things given that I didn't realize that individuating is a powerful and needed process to discovering who I truly can be. The material things provided satiated and made me feel stuffed, indulged, and somehow cornered into giving in to all the material comforts as if it will stop occurring to me to pick myself up and channelize my energies into putting efforts to becoming more of me. 

I was less of me and more of my mother for decades together that my consciousness, thoughts, feelings, emotions, and anything or everything that I could discern as me was so convoluted living as her shadow, living off her, and living away from me. All the 'effortlessness' it seems to live in my body but live disconnected from my feelings, my mind, my true desires, whatever that be, have made me sort of a clouded headed person who's trying to wipe the spillovers of her mother's influences from her head screen. 

This basic disconnect and confusion within myself doesn't mean I am detached on an elevated sense, but since I was for long neglecting my mental health, I assumed that seeking spirituality would be some sort of bridge to fill this gap within me. Agreed that God or a Higher energy is all about unconditional love and acceptance, compassion and forgiveness, but to expect that He/She do that for me is again cutting myself from connecting to my core which is love, acceptance, compassion and forgiveness (of self and others) and maybe much more. What is within is what you discover and become more of and what validation you seek from outside does not make you more of you -  it just is a hook to seek external understanding of your life situations and conditionings. And living in the midst of a parent who is emotionally neglectful, who has been passed on emotional neglect from her parents and brothers and who just learnt to make do with it, but wanted to latch on to my life, my energies, and my vulnerabilities and trust from my childhood so that she can get a sense of control over her life and my giving in to her reliving my father's sudden demise, her sadness on seeing me get sick which somehow is similar to my father's health and constitution, was just her way of disempowering me and drawing my helplessness, my cloudy judgements, my lack of being connected to my personal ego, space, will power, as means to encroach and cut through my weak boundaries and constantly live off my forced empathy which was a major source of energy drain for me.

And so detaching from these conditionings of my mother's over shadowing, being an indulgent parent, and becoming aware of self care, self discipline, and discovering ways and means for healthy self expression is a new way of life for me. How much loss of mental health and sadness over losing my time, energy, and giving into the dramatic trappings of my mother and her family was something that prevented me from discovering my inner self. I assumed them to be some sort of protective shield which/who kept me safe when I was feeling sick and tired, but little did I realize back then that living in such an emotionally dysfunctional family environment was making me believe that I was weak, helpless, and that my choice to overcome all these is by hiding under this protective shield. I was in fact blocking my natural flow of creativity, spontaneity, and all the ideas that I used to brim with, but since there was a blatant lack of support from my family including my mother in order to help me with a bit of support mentally, emotionally so that I could have opened up freely to talk to them about what I am feeling and what's holding me back, I just caved in, became more and more lazy, dissociated, and ruminated in a make believe fantasy world where I am honest, bold, assertive, communicative, and unafraid of speaking up my thoughts, opinions, and feelings.

I feel like I was some sort of a body without a head, without a sense of direction of where I should go. The intuitions that seemed to whisper, sometimes yell in my ears, and sometimes is an uncomfortable feeling, seemed for me to come from outside, but I only realized gradually that intuitions are answers from a different source, agreed, and not thought out from my mind, but they are responding to what I truly need and are talking to my soul. Since I felt so non existent, I could not piece these sudden messages that seemingly came from outside as I felt and were more or less divinely guided. Although I was not so ritualistic or religiously following pujas or activities and through which I was going closer to the divine energies, but it is their protective energies and guidance and timely blessings that have helped me remember my place here on earth in the midst of challenges, learnings, growth, and reflections, and so on, and so made me understand that I am not entirely all alone as I assumed myself to be. 

Do not allow emotional neglect to grow on you and eat their way into your roots, your life energy, your spark, and your personality. Because emotional neglect keeps you in the dark of your own feelings and emotions, your needs, your highs and lows, it's like an overdosed tranquilizer that seems to cut you off from being human which is all of these and so much more. 

Thriving in emotional neglect is trauma and it cannot be compared to the traumas and challenges of others no matter how big or bigger others problems may seem, but it does not give anyone the right, the power to belittle your struggles, your emotions, and your growth through thick and thin. Because your fights within yourself is real, your restlessness to want to break free from the numbing walls is real, your sadness on having to cope up with others lack of emotional and mental support and for their lack of time, attention towards you is also real, and all these hurt and break you down, but the perseverance to want to rise and stand up and be your own friend, support to become the individual and the human that you can become is also beautifully real. Embrace all this. The most potent antidote to emotional neglect from your parents, your family, your friends, neighbors, and so on is self love.

Self love through awareness of who you are as you discover yourself more and more, your basic likes, moods, opinions, feelings and a lot more is opening that window for genuine self expression, and when being yourself with all these feels just fine, then you don't have to seek approval from outside, because you are enough with what you have, what you don't, they are all part of you. And so, embrace it kindly and without criticism because you deserve it.

Self love - the joy of being yourself

The joy to want to live to the fullest and explore life with all its charm, unexpected glories, and beautiful surprises is what I had wanted to live for and still hope to live for. The sadness of an unexplored, unexperienced, unfelt life is huge and words can't explain the vastness of this vacuum. I lacked the willpower to be true to my life and what it could maybe unfolding. A closed bud is part of nature as well but unless it wants to experience its growth through sun, rain, heat, breeze and so on, it remains an unopened creation who is too absorbed in her past pattern of remaining closed in due to her fears, worries, tall expectations from herself, and staying stuck in whatever comfort levels of her daily life so that she can resist growing and discovering her true beauty inside and out.

I am more accessible to my mood swings, anxieties, and frustrations now having realized that they are a healthy part of growing up and do not repress in order to want to 'fit in' with the concept of ideal someone or the other. My parents' collective trauma from their individual personalities and from that of their families on them is part of my DNA maybe but the joy to being true to myself by exploring my inner world, mental, spiritual landscape is something that was not all joy at first but an unexpected yet spiritually awakening journey which asked me to affirm my true self and courageously embrace my faith in myself and on the Higher Self and Divine energies which have been guiding and protecting me from falling back into the traps of numbed feelings and unresolved emotions and fantasizing my way to make-believe reality in my head which involved my consciousness, imagination, time, and energy on that. 

My reality is still a distraction away from facing myself and sitting down with what my goals are and how can I work towards them and that distraction I assume comes in the form of tv, mobile, content surfing, making grocery lists and buying home essentials from time to time, and putting my focus also on getting stuff which my mother needs from time to time. It's like as much time and space I have staying away from my true intentions and work towards manifesting them, then that much I can just forget or neglect to concentrate on myself which is and which has been my way of living -  as if my feelings, frustrations, expectations, highs and lows don't matter - they do and when they have been repressed so much by further staying distracted in day dreaming and fantasizing it's like I've deprived a part of myself which is as true as the other random parts which all come together to make me who I am. 

My mental health needed support but it lacked the voice to ask for help and am happy I have found my voice in reaching out and expressing what truly I am going through not just from a physical perspective but also mentally as well. 

Maybe this is self love - Learning to connect with your own voice and expressing yourself through the passing situations and what I experience through it all in my own ways is key to unlocking this stuck, stagnant part in me which I have begun accessing.

When you learn to love yourself in thousand different ways and more and honor it with a well deserved space in your life, then you have understood self respect and the many beautiful ways to be grateful to yourself for being blessed with this opportunity to know yourself more and more. No one can provide that space and no one needs to approve of this space for yourself in your life. You are enough to do so.