I am about to turn 50 and this looming awareness has set in motion some changes that have shaken me and forced a remaking of how I tell my story and how I see myself. In the last 6 months I put myself under the direction and care of a person who deeply challenged who I was and what made me tick. I had a mysterious illness that affected how my mind and body work. I confronted some old pain that I thought I had dealt with but ended up being stored away in my body and out of my awareness until it was discovered through deep inner work and released.
These challenges required me to conduct some interviews and research with extended family and family history which caused me to realize that there was generational issues that affected me without me knowing it for much of my life. An example is that my father experienced a high degree of emotional neglect and therefore did not have some very basic emotional elements to pass onto me. Some of this lack lead to me desiring to understand my own inner world and lead to my eventual work as a teacher and counselor, but another part caused me to wonder if I was someone who could be “well handled” in the sense that I frequently felt growing up that there was too much going on inside me for anyone to understand or enjoy fully. I have had to work, this year, to express more of these hidden parts and allow my weaknesses to have more voice than I would tend to allow in the past. This has been powerful and a bit disconcerting as I have had less control over myself but more free expression and discovery.

The process of writing this now and experiencing it have been important in my life and have put me once again in a childlike place of having to be open to the unknown and hope with trust that good will come from things I do not fully understand.