When you learn how to trust your memories, they will return to you. The next time your mind tries to show you something from your past, you will allow it. It becomes contagious.
What do I mean?
Memories and tragedy sit inside you like a dead carcess eating away all the good. The rotting emulsion makes you sick – physically, spritually, and emotionally. The only way to expunge them is getting close to them, feeling them — returning to them. If you do not return, you cannot heal. Period.
When you are triggered, for the love of all that’s good, STOP, LISTEN, AND REACT.
The other day my girls found an old picture of me and sent it to me with a kind note. Here it is:
I am 16 in this picture. I was flying first class to Hawaii. It was a family vacation. The minute I received this picture, tears began to stream down my face. You see – my father made me stay in his room on this trip. While the other older kids got to go out in the evening, I was banished to him and my mother. I was raped time and time again on this trip.
The contagian of healing got me through those horribles memories. I felt them – raw and real. I cried. I screamed. I let them go.
By letting my memories free to surface, I move through them rather quickly these days.