Families and Loss
Why so much suffering in relationships?
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Sometimes, I think that the whole human race deserves a big, fat, failing grade for relationships, especially when it comes to creating authentic, transparent, warm and supportive relationships.
Even in the midst of families and community, we end up feeling isolated and abandoned. We never learned how to listen to each other. We don’t take the time to really see the wonderful person standing there right in front of us. And when we end up feeling excluded and pushed away, we blame the other person. That’s when the door to real communication feels permanently shut.
Relationships seem to be the most difficult testing ground of our spiritual journey. We begin our earth lives in families, all kinds of families. And sad to say, not all of our families provide the nurturing and safety that we need for growth, empowerment, and certainty.
In our birth families, you and I struggled to find safety and support:
— You and I experienced some very painful experiences on this journey
— You and I didn’t always agree but we thought we needed to
— You and I didn’t always like one another for whatever reason
— You and I didn’t always appreciate the other’s point of view
— You and I both said and did hurtful things to one another
— You and I often didn’t know how best to support one another
— You and I were critical and judgmental of one another
And so, on and on the story goes.
There are some choices for which we must take responsibility, and other events were not ours to choose. Many of the circumstances of our lives were arranged by The Great Storyteller of life. The family that we were born into, our birth order, the social constrictions placed upon us, the religious affiliations, and various other props of the play, were not in our control. All we can do is search for the real truth among that rubble of lies and falsehood and repair what is broken. That is our biggest challenge, our purpose, and our unique assignment in life.
There are so many painful moments in time that we can never take back. There are so many things that we wish had never happened. And some experiences are just too painful to remember, but we MUST remember! Our deepest happiness depends on remembering and healing the trauma and pain of the past.
When we do not transmute the past memories and pain of trauma, we continue to suffer in many other ways until ultimately we take responsibility to heal and transform every past wound and trauma. If we were fortunate, we even used our broken and dysfunctional family system as a model to transform, heal, and repair even the deepest of wounds.
Please remember that in some way what happened in the past was ALWAYS meant to be. In some deep and mysterious way, ALL of our past is a fractal of a more profound and intricate tapestry that is being designed, woven and created by The Great Weaver of Life. The Weaver takes into consideration everything, every past life, every mistake, all the broken pieces, and weaves them into a tapestry of beauty and perfection.
As we fulfill the challenge to repair what is broken and heal the part that is our responsibility, we have accomplished our mission in life. Our loving relationships will always exist forever across the divide of ‘this world and the next.’ The soul is LIFE itself. The soul does not die.
Relationships are the finest tests of every individual, the tests of our character, revealing the flaws we have failed to heal or correct. We all have many failings, and we are not the best judge of how we have failed or succeeded in creating healthy, self sustaining, and powerful individuals.
The test of our work on ourselves is performance under stress . . . when you’re standing there with your face in the furnace.
Dying is only a gradual diminishing and final vanishing over the horizon of life. As when we watch a sailboat leaving port and moving toward the horizon, the boat becomes smaller and smaller until we can no longer see it. — Henri Nouwen
You and I must simply trust that Hashem and Divine Love is standing on a faraway shore seeing that same sailboat become larger and larger until it reaches its new safe harbor.
We pray that this generation will forgive our very human failings and that we will ultimately succeed in repairing and transforming our world.
Blessings,
Copyright 2019 © by Rachel L. Neumann of Your Pathway to Empowerment. All rights reserved. You may quote, copy, translate and link to this article in its entirety as long as you credit Rachel L. Neumann, the author by name, and include a working link back to this web page. All other uses are strictly prohibited.
