Nothing breaks my heart more than a child in an unsafe environment, whether we’re talking about physical or emotional violence. If something happened along your journey that made you feel terrified and powerless, my heart also goes out to you. You do not have to let your past dictate your present, though, and I hope this comes across in the most compassionate way possible, but I believe it’s your work to heal. I think that really needs to be your priority, because if you don’t, you’ll never uncover and share your gifts, and you’ll also take other people down with you. You won’t mean to do that, it’s just that when a person crosses your path, and they see the beauty within you, even if you can’t see it yourself, they’re going to want to stop, and they might even fall in love with you. If you’re still struggling with things that happened to you, through no fault of your own, through nothing that was or is lacking within you, believe me when I tell you, those people who love you and see you will suffer and you might even hate them for it.

This is what abuse does. It cycles back on itself, and if you don’t break the loop, you perpetuate it. Those are your choices. Or you can try numbing yourself so you don’t feel anything, but what kind of life is that? Also, the rage seeps through, anyway. Healing is your best option by a long-shot. How you go about doing that is intensely personal. A great therapist is an excellent place to start. You can’t change anything that exists outside your awareness. If you’re in a state of misery and you can’t seem to pull yourself out of it, if you notice patterns in your life romantically or professionally that do not serve you, if you have difficulty maintaining close relationships with people, if you’re abusive and unable to control yourself when you get angry, you need to find help and support. Nothing good can blossom and sustain itself until you go back and and investigate the source of your pain; it’ll just keep rising to the surface, driving your choices and your actions, wreaking havoc in any way possible to get your attention. It won’t end unless you end it.

Awareness is only step one, though. Figuring out what happened along the way to make you hate yourself, doubt yourself, believe you’re unworthy of love, or that you’re broken…that’s the beginning. Looking at your tendencies, your belief systems, your way of being in the world, your ability to be kind consistently, or not, all these are areas that need to be brought to the surface so you can get your hands and your head around them. Step two is figuring out how to rewire your system, how to unhook your journey from something that happened long ago. How to redefine yourself, recreate your outlook, reimagine your future, rediscover your capabilities, remember who and what you are, that’s step two.

For me, yoga was, and is an essential part of the equation. I think of therapy as the “top-down” part. You get inside your head, and by that I mean what’s conscious and what may be unconscious, and you hold that stuff up to the light so you can see what the hell is going on, and you do that in a safe environment with someone you trust, and you do not look away. You look until you see and you understand what you’ve been thinking, believing and doing that’s landed you in the state you’re in. Yoga is the “bottom-up” part in my book. You get on your mat and you breathe and you move, and whatever your tendencies are, they will show up on your mat with you. So if you have a loud, harsh unforgiving inner critic, guess what voice you’ll hear as you move through your practice? And because you’re aware of your tendencies and you now understand this does not have to be the way of things, the way of you, you can choose not to feed that voice. You do not have to believe everything you think, as the saying goes. You could, if you cared to, kindly tell your inner critic to f&ck off, and you could begin to feed a loving, accepting, patient, kind, caring, compassionate voice. Whatever you feed will grow and strengthen.

Is it painful to confront your pain? Hell yes. It’s brutal and uncomfortable, and if there was a way around it, I’d advise it, but it’s not like you have to lean into your pain for the rest of your life. If you’ve been living this way for thirty or forty years, then you’re probably in for a few fairly painful ones. They might be lonely or scary or isolating. You can probably count on a lot of resistance internally and externally. Confusion, fear, and doubt will travel with you for a time, but if you flood your system with new information from the top-down and the bottom-up, believe me you can heal. You can reinvent your life so it feels good to you. You can leave your past where it belongs, and get busy co-creating your present and your future. No one else can do it for you. No one else can save you, or complete you, or solve it for you. We each have to do our own journey.

If you’re in love with someone who isn’t yet willing or able to look honestly at self-destructive habits or patterns, you can’t save them. You can love them, but you cannot fix or mend or make up for anyone else’s inability to love themselves. You can get really hurt trying, though. Don’t over-inflate yourself. You aren’t here to manage anyone else’s path. No matter how much you love someone, they’re going to have to wrestle their own demons. If we could do it for each other, of course we would. We’d do it for our children and our parents and our best friends and our partners. It simply doesn’t work that way. We struggle through the birth canal, in the dark, trying to find our way until we come into the light. Sometimes you have to rebirth yourself. Same process. Wishing you strength and love and peace and joy and good health and wholeness. If you want to practice with me online, try this. Try it for a couple of weeks, and see if you notice a shift.  I teach because this practice transformed my life, and there are few things I enjoy more than sharing the tools that worked for me. Life is not something to get through, it’s something to be experienced and celebrated and lived fully, from your heart.

Sending you love, and a hug if you need one,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3