A lot of people have been scarred emotionally, which deters the process of creating positive life change and transformation or achieving inner peace.
You can’t grow beyond your weight or emotional baggage. You must understand that personal development comes with 100% healing achieved.
For 15 years, I forgave my father over and over again, letting go of all the injustice I think we endured under him (my mum the most because she married him). But, I never stopped hurting and reminiscing about it the painful feeling and chaos we often experience whenever he is around.
I always find myself talking everything bad against him. It’s just like a scar that I’m ignoring that never happened.
Don’t get me wrong, forgiveness is like letting off all that weighs you down so you can fly higher but it’s not healing.
Healing doesn’t come naturally because you forgave your abuser or offender. It naturally comes after forgiveness because you met the real you that isn’t defined by pain, depression, shame, or guilt.
Here’s my story
One day, my aunt asked me to come over for a weekend to help her plan for her birthday party, I was never in the mood for anything like a party but I wasn’t going to say NO. She has been my no1 support after my mum.
I decided to get busy. I arrived in Port Harcourt a bit earlier than I expected, and my aunt has already left for work but I met her husband. I’m not much of a talker and he wasn’t either. We gave ourselves the ‘Silence-no-talking” until he broke the silence and asked after my dad. I felt scared and angry that I flamed to talk and cry.
In all these, he asked me- Will I allow my dad’s choice of abusing and neglecting us to define me? I rolled my eyes and tears stopped flowing down. It wasn’t the question I wanted to hear nor one I was expecting. I was looking who will indulge with me and sympathize with me.
So I couldn’t answer.
He said 15 years should have taught me a lesson that he isn’t ready to change from whom he is, but ‘WHO ARE YOU?’
I couldn’t sum up to summarize who I am or want to be I was even in more despair emotionally.
The feeling of despair was because I discovered I had gotten addicted to the abuse and that my mind wasn’t ready to commit to healing while in the right sense, I thought I was already healing.
Right then, I knew I was in his shadow and had his scent smell all over me. I thought I was healing but I was scaring myself even deeper than the wound.
I misunderstood emotional healing to be letting go and forgetting it never happened. But, it did. And I never forgot.
Truth is that Healing takes time and commitment
Until I started putting effort, to heal my punctured low self-esteem and emotions, I have magically started feeling bold and confident. No more, am I experiencing self-doubts or becoming less confident about myself.
It’s always messed up when you feel you’re ready to start healing because it’s not what thought you know. You believe what seems easy so you don’t heal inside. Sort of a mind game, our mind plays us. It has mended the pains and patched them up so well that It isn’t ready for reopening old wounds.
When we desire and have the intention to heal, all of the creeping shit locked up inside starts coming out.
Yes, these are things that prevent our healing. They come to block our desires to begin healing. But so you have it in mind, it doesn’t mean you’re on the wrong path.
What is Emotional Healing?
Emotional Healing has become who I am before the emotional abuse and getting to see my true version of who I am.
It’s like wiping the dust off whatever surface you have in your home to reveal its true version and be used for its purpose.
It becomes the story I’m telling without bitterness or regret whatsoever.
You’re wiping off the layers of fear, doubt, shame, guilt, and pain that is covered beneath. You clean it again and again because life always happens. And you shouldn’t get tired of cleaning.
To heal is a commitment to change your life.
Healing is a process, not a magical pill, it just widens your eyes to see beyond that cloud and meet the real YOU.
Emotional healing is the process of acknowledging you are hurt, allowing your feeling of being hurt, accepting those feelings, and integrating while processing whatever painful life experiences might have broken you. It will definitely involve prayers, self-care, self-compassion, self-acceptance, mindfulness, and self-love.
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