My dad walked out when I was 2

My dad walked out when I was 2

Perhaps as life a defining moment as a two year old can have although my memories of childhood don’t directly suggest it.

I don’t remember any feelings of fear or abandonment or conscious of any echoing through my life.

I guess I may have been young enough to not be directly affected. I’m sure I was indirectly affected.

Although having had two daughters go through the same age I find it hard to believe thats true.

But that’s often how it works. You have to make sense of what happens so you simply learn that you are worth less. You are less desirable and thus begin to treat yourself that way.

It’s often said we are a collection of our memories and in particular our traumas.

A clients told me about a project he was involved with collecting eye witness testimony.

They found that if a statement was taken outside of the first 15 minutes it had become inaccurate.

The brain makes neural connections with all of our other memories and beliefs.

And less lovable than others is a crappy belief to kick life off with.

I remember being 5 and being excited to see my dad for a trip to the zoo like he was just a visiting relative. I don’t remember feeling bitterness around it or my life.

I remember being a little older and being bitter and angry as I couldn’t do some of the things my friends with two parents could.

I remember later finding it difficult to talk about without a frog in my throat.

Years later I was angry for the way I believed my mother had been treated.

I remember meeting him in my twenties and feeling sorry for him. A man whose demons were forever shouting down his better angels.

Each time I reflect I find a different memory, not just of the event but of my life since and the impact.

I see how to blame someone for all my have nots is to blame them for all my haves.

I see that to hold resentment, anger, bitterness, is really just to make my own poison and drink it.

I see that the stress we experience today isn’t a measure of what’s happening but of what happened and our constantly revisiting it with the same level of thinking that caused it.

I see that if you feel like life is overwhelming you right now it’s not because of weakness and it’s not because of reality either.

It’s because the lens through which you have been trained to view the world is one that has you on high alert to a threat that either isn’t real or isn’t half as threatening as your brain is telling you.

And the great news is, this is infinitely changeable by constantly challenging and re-defining how we see the world.

The past will never be within our control, the good news is how we see it isn’t factual, we can change the story.

And the stories we tell are always within our control.

When we look at those stories that are a little harder to tell we start to find that we start treating ourselves better too.

I stopped smoking and drinking heavily and I never had to face them head on. As my story changed my actions did too.