Resistance and Commitments
Before I knew it, I was sinking. Quickly, I was going under.
The more I looked around, the more I listened—the further under I went.
I began to panic. I began to scream inside. I reached my hands up, begging for help.
It was only after I reached out for help that I realized I had revisited my past. I’d slipped back into those old familial and familiar patterns. The ones where I, perpetually, felt like the outcast. The one where I, without knowing it, would beat me up inside for not being and relating to my siblings and others the way they seemed to do so effortlessly. For a moment, I’d lost my courage for being who I was to the victim of all that I used to be.
Luckily, it wasn’t a trap, I’d come to realize—but an opprotunity.
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A milestone of power.
Over your recovery and healing journey, you will naturally come to recognize an equally powerful and debilitating truth: you have power. You have, more specifically, will power. It’s an essential milestone that you must reach, for without it—you will often be swept up and taken away by temptation and the energetic trap of who you used to be. But, because we have will power—it becomes our anchor to pull ourselves out and through. It’s why healing is possible.
In that moment of reaching out for help, slowly beginning to panic inside—out of fear of returning back to that old traumatic part of me—I remembered one beautiful thing: my commitment(s).
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What are you committed to?
When I remembered this, I found myself again. I exhaled and began to whisper, “hello hello hello” as a gentle way of gathering myself up again. As my awareness of what was happening around and inside of me grew, I told myself that I was okay. I recalled the fact that, no matter how much progress I make on this journey, the past still likes to visit (and it may be necessary for it to, too). I remembered that no matter how strong the past presents, it still yields to the power of now…in the face of perspective and awareness, it will always be weak. I empowered myself further by remembering that I am committed to my healing; I am committed to being authentic to my truth, to my now and all of the work I have done on the inside. I stood up straight, I replanted my feet and I remembered, “I AIN’T GOING BACK.”
Clearing & finding gold.
Reigniting all that I had forgot, caused me to realize I am different. And, this truth is no longer as much black or white, good or bad as I always perceived it to be—it just is. I don’t have to fight with this reality, I can simply let it be and all that its meant to be. Often, due to the overwhelming nature of our trauma and how much we are or had to process, we become a bit dramatic. In time, as we release our hypersensitivity, we also lessen the burden of what and how we saw things. In this way, we realize, the timely necessity in revisiting parts of our past for the sake of clearing.
Slowly, I returned to my senses. I began to smile because of how quickly I was able to navigate that moment. I smiled because I realized I wasn’t yelling for just “someone” to rescue me from that quicksand. I wasn’t even yelling for God. I was actually yelling for me, for me and all the ways God has empowered me with the wisdom and strength to no longer lose myself…and to be my own rescuer.
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Lost. Found. Committed.
If you are lost, if you have found yourself caught in quicksand and sinking deep, reach for your commitments. Revisit your altar. Scroll through the pictures in your phone, reconnect and remind yourself of just how far you’ve come. Turn back into your journal—read the wisdom and strength that you had, and that has brought you through. Remember where you are going. If you are not doing this, you are letting resistance win the race. If you are not doing this, you are allowing your past to overwhelm you when it has the opportunity to inspire you forward.