[Edited for clarity 10/19/2019 and re edited 08/14/2021]
MAKING PEACE WITH THE PAST
Making peace with your past. I truly did not know what this meant.
I mean, I understood the concept of it. That by doing this, I would somehow be able to move “cleanly” forward from some situations that had me mentally, and emotionally stuck in the past. I just did not understand the logistics of it.
Like how in hell can you make peace with a situation that hurt so badly, that most days you move through life pretending like it never even happened.
.You know, like broken relationships, deeply hurting someone you loved, bad childhoods… How in the world can you REALLY make peace with these type of things??? Like for reals. Not just with lip service, but deep down in your soul, so that your whole body knows it.
That’s what I wanted to know. And one day the Universe answered me.
WHAT IT ISN’T
Subconsciously, I equated making peace with the battlefield, and the “waving of the white flag”. Somewhere in my mind, making peace symbolically meant giving in, surrendering, being defeated.
It meant losing something, and somehow becoming weaker. Or cowering to someone or something.
It represented giving my power away, and letting my defenses down.
And on another level, it also meant giving up control around being able to finally fix a situation, at some undetermined, “forever in the future” time. And doing this would require an acknowledgment that I had ultimately failed.
WHAT IT TURNED OUT TO BE
Through a pretty stressful inner talk around a past situation, I came to realize that making peace = acceptance.
The acceptance of the way things are, not what they should be.
Let me say that one more time for the people in the back…
Making peace is the acceptance of the way things ARE, as opposed to WHAT THEY SHOULD BE.
It’s the acceptance of what’s left, after you shove all the “could’ves, would’ves, should’ves, and what ifs” to the side and out the way.
Coming across this tweet was the breakthrough.
[ https://twitter.com/Rude_Astrology/status/1158354875861884928 ]
“You’re stuck in how it should be not how it is. That’s why you’re failing.”
I was like “Whoa. This is it.”
Making peace is the conscious act of SEEING things as they really are, and ACCEPTING THAT REALIZATION into your consciousness as the truth. That’s it.
No more:
– Denial
– Fighting with the truth
– Struggling from a place based on incorrect assumptions
Just acceptance and true acknowledgment. Then you can act from the Truth of what’s really here.
But… seeing things AS THEY REALLY ARE is a lot easier said, than done.
We’ve got to tunnel behind any feelings that might be falsely tinting a situation for us.
HOW IT CAN HELP
In the acceptance of the Truth, you can NOW choose to say from a place of relief, “Okay. It is what it is. What am I going to do NOW?”. The battle is over and you now have control of the only thing you ever did, your actions about the situation. Only now, your actions can be based on reality, and be REAL and impactful solutions.
You can now plan action from truth. Or plan no action at all. Or decide that you don’t know what to do yet, and just stay with the truth of it, and see what comes up.
WHAT IT TAKES
This wasn’t an easy process AT ALL. It went deep. I did it alone and I struggled.
It was scary, and at times I felt like I was going to implode, but shit had to go.
I did A LOT of writing over the course of several days.
I took a lot of breaks when it got too rough, but I came back to it. But I was determined to bring myself into the present, whatever that might take.
WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN
There will most likely be a struggle (war???) over your belief systems around the situation. This is a snippet of what it looked like for me:
Make peace with the past.
What the hell does that even mean?! Make peace with what has been tormenting/haunting me?! That sounds like acquiescence. Surrender. Defeat.Is it though? What does ‘making peace’ really entail?
Cowering?
Being a door mat?
Giving your power away?
Fear?
Stockholm Syndrome?
Do any of those sound like peace to you?
Well how in the world can I have peace with something that is causing me so much pain?! That doesn’t even make sense to me!You want to overcome it, get rid of it, vanquish it, fix it… right? What if “making peace” with it can be a first step to accomplishing all of the above?
HOW TO DO
So back to the tunneling behind emotions part…
We’ve got to take a step back and remove the emotions from around a situation. The goal is seeing what’s going on from the viewpoint of an outsider who is not emotionally invested.
Examples of thoughts we might be holding around situations:
“She should be doing __________! Why isn’t she?! This is not how it’s supposed to be. This is not how it used to be. If I do __________, she’ll come back around.”
“He keeps acting like __________! If only he’d _______ , everything would be great! It used to be great.”
“If only I’d done ____________ … I wish I had a time machine. I could make it right. Right now I’d be sitting pretty.”
No.
What IS the situation? Where are you RIGHT NOW?
What’s the reality of it RIGHT NOW?
See it. Feel it. Struggle through to the acceptance of it. That’s where the peace IS. The fight is WITHIN, not with someone or some thing. The fight is for the Truth of Now.
There will likely be tears, inner screaming (and outer too? lol), the feeling of holding on for dear life, but at some point we have to trust and just step off and see what happens.
We can examine the fears surrounding our holding on to whatever it is that makes us feel safe/justified/comfortable. This might be an opportunity to see if those fears are logic based. Or were they slapped together in a terrified panic, to stave off the full blow of a traumatic experience.
MORE THAT WE CAN DO
We may also be able to say:
“I made the best choices with the mental/emotional tools, and information I had on hand, at the time.”
“I accept the outcome of the choices I made. With what I knew, I did the best I could do. (or I did what I thought was right… what I thought was the best for everyone involved.)”
You can acknowledge from here that there is nothing else you can do about what transpired, and that you’re all “tried out”.
You can acknowledge that the decisions you’ve made have turned to shit, AND still be okay with that. Still be At Peace With That. And can now move on in peace.
WE can acknowledge the TRUTH of what happened, without beating ourselves up over it.
FROM HERE
We sometimes tell ourselves lies to get us through hard times. To ease the pain and to just survive. That’s our instinctual defense/survival mechanism. That IS it’s job.
We are human and this is life.
But at some point, those lies no longer serve who we are, and/or are trying to become.
From this place, the point is The Lesson Learned, and being able to move forward with those lessons.
This is about growth. Growing into a better life that requires the recognition of the reality of our experiences.
And with all of this, we can now set down the heavy, heavy weight and truly move forward.
Just some things to maybe think about.
Hope this helps someone who needs it.
All The Best,
Tru
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[Photo Credit: Kinga Cichewicz]
