My Choices Make My Experiences

Raising two daughters can be a sometimes tumultuous journey of up and down and inside out and emotions all over the map. Now in their twenties, my daughters and I are less prone to pressure filled moments exploding as we move with grace into respecting the gifts we each bring and knowing we are all human on this journey of our lifetime – even me, their mother!

Some time ago, one of my daughters and I got in a tiff. She commented on how she hadn’t applied for a course she’d wanted to attend and I asked, "why not?". My question became the kick-off point of an extremely heated discussion about how I'm trying to tell her how to live her life.

Feelings were hurt, defenses built until finally, she laughed and said, "Mom, let it go. Do you want to be right or happy?"

Harrumph. I'm her mother. Of course I'm right! What's happiness got to do with it? Just kidding. In the end, I laughed with her as I realized that our argument was not about what was said or about what we were discussing. My participation was based on my fears. My trepidations. My anxiety around disagreement. And that anxiety is founded in the past, not in the here and now.

My father was an angry man. Arguments in our house were fierce, loud and scary. My mother would cry, my father would yell and my sister and I would hide in our bedroom while outside our door WW3 unfolded.

One of my biggest fears around anger is that if I get angry, I'll never stop being angry -- the child's mind perceived my father as angry, always, therefore it added it up to the equation/belief -- anger is not safe. Anger never ends. As an adult, when emotionally charged conversations occur, rather than staying connected to the conversation that is, I disconnect from the moment and scurry back to the past of what was. In fear of what could be if I don’t watch out, I let go of my truth and cower beneath my childhood fears. In my childish mind, Disagreement does not equal rejection becomes a lie. To that five-year-old inside me, Disagreement equals rejection. My childhood experience proved it -- one or both of my parents would inevitably threaten to leave during the course of every argument. To run away and leave us all alone. Isn't that rejection? Isn't that what happens when people argue?

As I open up to my truth, to my accountability for myself, I continue to unearth childhood drama's and fears. As I unearth them, it is my responsibility to throw them into the junkyard where discarded memories that cause me pain, disrupt my peace of mind and undermine my truth today are laid to rest.

There was a time when my 'know it all' mind would say, "Louise, you should be over that by now. Drop it!" What I've come to realize with my 'knowing mind' is that getting 'over it' is not the purpose of remembering. Remembering and the triggers that lead to their appearance in my responses today, is about leading memory into the light of day so the triggers can lose their power to disrupt my peace of mind. In peace, I flow with grace and ease beyond what was, into the beauty of my life as it is today.

Memory can be an angst riddled space where forgotten landmines threaten the harmony of each moment. I can't walk away from my memory. I can't forget memory either. It's with me, it's a part of me -- and memory has a wonderful purpose of keeping me connected to the world today. It is the warp and weft that has created my beautiful life today. And while I can't erase memory, I can disable memory's power to blow up my happiness today. I can disengage the triggers that do not lie quietly in the past and take away their power to trip me up with their annoying insistence that they are right to keep me trapped in fear, by stepping into my truth -- I am a fearless woman living the life of her dreams when I leap into the moment free and clear of memory's thrall.

The past is just the past. Nothing other than a memory -- When I fearlessly and lovingly choose how I remember the past and react to memory's call, I give myself the gift of grace, and the freedom to be my authentic self today. When memory doesn't serve me well, I choose to claim my right to lovingly face myself in the mirror today and say -- That was then. This is now. The past does not create my life today. I do.

And I choose to create a life of beauty, a life where I live fearlessly in the rapture of now, living each moment up for all I'm worth.