divineroots
by Liisa Robinson
Divine Roots Blog
Beginnings and Endings
The end of a year and start of a new one is often a time that we reflect on the passages of our lives. It’s an opportunity to bring to awareness all of the facets of our lives and perhaps offers a particularly clear lens on things that are currently in transition (or things we *wish* were in transition!)
It’s gotten me thinking on the idea of beginnings and endings. I think these ideas tap into our human desire to make things neat and tidy. My experience (and likely one of the sentences I use most in my counselling practice) is that “humans are messy”. So, when the new year rolls around, sometimes we get this desire for a clean ending on a new beginning.
On Endings…
I’m not sure who coined the word “closure”, but I would like to have a firm conversation with this person. So often, I sit with people who want to know the answer to the question “what will it take for me to have closure on this?”. Certainly things can shift, feel differently, move, change and show up differently in our lives, but all of our experiences are a part of our fabric, part of our cellular make up, and will in some way weave throughout our lives. We might want to tie something up with a bow and say “that’s in my past, I dealt with that”, but we are always in relationships with it in some way. If we can accept that we don’t have to have everything totally figured out, sorted, and closed, then we release the pressure and we can just BE with ourselves. Many of the things people want to leave in the past, like grief, trauma, difficult relationships or choices we don’t love, are not things we can DEAL with, they tend to be things we can learn to BE with. In North American culture, we have this idea that we can DO something about anything that causes us discomfort. That’s just not true. On grief especially, people have this idea that if you don’t feel it “properly” in the moment, it will come back to bite you in the butt. My experience is that we feel things the way we do, when we do. When we don’t need to get closure, we can start to be with the stories about our lives that confuse us and just let them weave into our futures in the way they will naturally be. Doesn’t that take the pressure off of personal work when we don’t have to do it “right” or get “closure”?
On Beginnings…
New Year…New You! New Relationship…New You! New Body….New You! Pardon me for a moment while I tuck my soap box back under my desk so I can have this conversation with you, dear reader, from a gentle place. Consumerism has done one heck of a job suggesting to us that we can somehow become “different” through the purchase of a product or by morphing our physical being. Now again, I’m not suggesting that there aren’t times in life where we shift our energy, adjust our focus, or start to make choices that are more in line with our values. These are times of great wonder, where our inner selves and the way we live are lives come more into alignment. What is not so wonderful is the total overhaul mentality that sometimes comes along with the new year (and subsequent pain when the “results” aren’t realized) . I have a strong hunch that deep alignment is not found in a one size fits all (or none) diet plan, a bottle of supplements, or some glossy new conditioner / partner / career. So how do we approach personal change without getting trapped in this cycle of looking for “newness”? My suggestion is that the most important piece (I crack myself up when I imagine that I know what is “most important” for anyone…but I’m going to keep typing anyways!) is accepting where you at RIGHT NOW, before any changes. Any time we change from a place of feeling shame, guilt, or less than, we are dishonouring ourselves. There might be parts of where you are at right now that aren’t serving you, but that doesn’t make you a bad person. The self judgement that comes along with personal work can be very subtle and slippery. As Richard Miller said in a training I did with him last summer “Acceptance doesn’t mean inviting yourself to tea and then asking your guest to be different. It means accepting everything that comes through the door”. If we knew that where we are today, right now, is exactly the right place for today and that we must have made the best choices available to us to get here, then we can shift and adjust our actions from a place of compassion and wholeness. Once our whole self is invited to tea, deep alignment starts to become more clear and it bubbles up from deep within us (which is SO much more clear than what a magazine might offer us!).
One other note -Sometimes people have made choices in the past (or are still making them today) that have really hurt others or themselves. Compassion and acceptance can exist with with accountability. You can be accountable for your choices without having to be a bad person.
So, however the “New Year” is showing up for you, if you are taking inventory and considering adjustments in your life for the future and considering what you’d like to leave in the past, I would recommend that, as a starting place, you honour totally and completely the person you are today, right in this moment. This being likely doesn’t have “closure” on all the tough parts of life, and is likely gloriously messy and complicated. Welcome to being human!
Please note: the information on this blog is not intended to be therapeutic. Your own knowledge of self (perhaps supplemented by your own therapeutic relationships) should supercede advice or thoughts read on the internet.