Learning to let go and forgive
This has been a transformative year for me. I have been shifting so many limiting beliefs, rooting out the sources of them all the way back to my childhood - and past lives, thanks to Timeline Therapy - and letting go of that reality.
It has freed me.
It has added a layer to my writing and storytelling, as I recognise how my inner mentor was guiding me to look at themes my young heart needed. Things like challenging rules and systems, learning to trust intuition over advice, being comfortable with oneself and one’s differences, and stepping into one’s power.
Over the years I have explored these themes through almost all of my work. I didn’t connect it to what I needed to do though. Not until 2020. Not until I really saw the root system of my limiting beliefs - and stopped holding myself responsible for their existence.
I can recall doing CBT and telling the therapist the belief “I’m not good enough” was something I just started to tell myself one day. At the time, she was implying my parents were responsible, and I am fierce in my defence of their encouragement and support.
We dropped the subject.
So for 6 years I held onto the reality that I gave myself a destructive limiting belief.
And then this summer, in a creative essay about identity, I remembered my childhood dream of wanting to a singing sensation, a superstar like Toni Brixton, and thinking “and it’s okay, because by the time I’m old enough to do that, I’ll be able to straighten my hair.”
Cue record scratch.
I’ll be able to do what?!
And it came back to me - how lack of representation in media had left young me believing that curly hair was an oddity. That no one famous had curls, so - logical procession - to be a success, one could not have curly hair.
The relief that followed the tears was freeing - I didn’t do this to myself. I didn’t decide one day that I was undeserving of happiness, or not good enough to have space in the world. I absorbed a subconscious lesson from a world that wasn’t prepared to deviate from an outdated colonial ideal. And as soon as I knew that, I let go of blame and holding myself responsible. And I let go of the fear that I could not truly change that belief (because maybe it was actually true).
In that moment, I accepted who I am. I embraced my wild heart. And I recognised I choose how and when to change my mind, and I stopped agreeing with that belief.
It still comes back, playing a boom box outside the window in the rain for me to take pity and let it in. Or perhaps masquerading as someone else: dressed up for a night out, wearing wigs and performing outfit changes that would make Lady Gaga of 2005 jealous - but I see through it. I continue to disentangle myself from its long tendrils.
I’ll talk about unearthing the root system of limiting beliefs another time.
Each time I let go of a past belief, a doubt, a limit, a reason to tighten the reins and pull back - I am free to charge ahead. I give myself permission to believe in a dream and go for it. No more waiting for a perfect version of myself who has proved she belongs. Proved she deserves these gifts. Proved she is a success against criteria she can never meet.
I tell myself - different-pathed does not mean less than. And I believe it.
But this newfound freedom comes with another revelation: my chains are ones I laid myself, carefully wrapped around me, and closed the locks. I can see now that I had the keys the whole time and didn’t use them.
That I could have had this feeling sooner, were it not for me.
I am disappointed to discover freedom was so readily available. To consider what could have been if I had started down this part of the path sooner - instead of being trapped looping around the roundabout, continuously missing my exit.
Regret creeps into my heart.
I am not done healing.
2020 is a harsh reminder of what that freedom could have granted me in my life. I take courses I waited a decade to feel ready to do. I sit in a small flat when I might have had garden space. I cannot give to causes around me with as much generosity as I long for. And I remain 4000 miles from my parents as my dad’s breathing labours and covid lurks around corners for the elderly and compromised lungs.
So the hardest thing to accept as I near the end of the year, and the lesson I need the most, is that of forgiveness.
My critic lunges to judge me for these past missteps based on its faulty information. It has a vicious tongue. I have to remember all my mindset training to turn away from its harsh words. Remember a different approach: the choices I made at the time were the right ones for what I knew at the time.
I have been letting go, but today I realised, I have not been forgiving. I have not been kind to my past self for not learning these lessons sooner.
In my readings, a message to let go has come up so often it was getting annoying. Yes, yes, but I am letting go! I’m working on those beliefs! I see that they are a field of dandelions, but I am rooting them out and focusing on my positive intention instead.
I’m letting go!
And then today, it hit so hard my eyes welled up.
If I have not forgiven, how can I really let go? I’ve picked the flowers but left them cluttering up my mind. These old beliefs are decaying and dying. They do not deserve any more attention or emotion. Have I not discovered I deserve kindness and love?
Yes.
Then why am I still blaming myself for my decisions? Blaming myself for not living up to this nonexistent standard. I didn’t have a good reason. Only the sudden awareness of a door closing as that old belief gathered the last of its things, and slipped out of my mind.
So I forgave myself.
For not doing it sooner,
for not putting the puzzle together quicker,
for not yet having the flexibility to live the way I yearn to.
I finally let go.
And when I was done, and my heart lighter and free, my muse of creativity joined me. Clarity landed.
I saw the backstory for my nanowrimo novel playing out. I saw my main character and her life which is so different to the limits I placed on my own, and I could leap into my zone of genius - my zone of creative inspiration.
My path had appeared in the space forgiveness left.
Right where it always is: directly in front of me.