I'm an extremely social being who was placed in the position to have experienced 2020 while living alone. What I learned from this was how to be with and love myself through sitting with uncomfortable emotions like- loneliness and feeling as if something was wrong with me to have no family foundation, no children, and no significant other when the world shut down.
Moving through that gave me an insight into the importance of really getting to know, accept and love myself. I learned how to embrace my story, which has deep roots in trauma.
Yesterday I listened to a podcast with Rob Lowe interviewing Oprah and Dr. Bruce D. Perry talking about their new book "What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing." It highlighted for me my story of what happened to me that shaped my cognitive social development and effected every other event in my life- specifically at 3-4 years old my mother told me that she could "rip up the papers that said she had to love me." Which I believed to be true and was followed by 14 years of emotional abuse, corporal punishment, witness of physical abuse and dysfunctional family dynamics. I left home in 1998 a month shy of 18 feeling as if I just got out of a war zone.
I began maneuvering the world motivated by anger and wanted to learn how to not be like my family. I studied psychology, child development, and yoga (philosophy, practices and lifestyle principles.) Through the years I applied everything I learned in my own life.
It took digging into my being, was quite messy and involved a trip to a mental hospital at the end of 2016. I had to learn how to be informed by but not controlled by my past. Then this taught me how to move away from anger and towards loving compassion for myself, my story and all the lessons it taught me.
The ancient teachings of Yoga taught me how to lay a foundation for my life, something my family didn't give me. In turn I share Yoga as a light for others to learn how to accept, care for and love themselves just as they are.
If intrigued reach out.
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