The Powerful But Difficult Task of Forgiveness

Recently I ran into an old neighbor of mine, someone that at one time I spent a lot of time with talking and reviewing our respective lives and often our divorces. This woman is quite a bit older than me and at first I had seen her as a kind of second mother to me since my own mother had passed away, but as I got to know her I realized that in many ways she was not a nurturing person as she had too much venom hiding just beneath the surface of her smiling demeanor. She was angry, bitter and often depressed by how her life had turned out. She held a major grudge against her ex husband who had cheated on her and treated her in ways that made her feel hurt and wounded.

When I saw her this time I asked her how she was doing. She told me that she was “Bad, bad, bad” – her way of telling me that she was depressed again. I talked to her a little bit about this and tried to give her some encouraging words. As we chatted she asked me what I had been up to and I told her about writing my book and how recently my ex husband and his significant other had given me a party to celebrate the publication of it. He had invited our children, their spouses and the grand children. I told her it was a wonderful party and how I felt loved and valued by them.

Her response to this at first was that she thought this was great but then she said that my situation was very unusual and then went on about how most people could not and would not have the kind of relationship we had, that this just was not possible for most divorced people. At this point she began talking about her ex husband, who by the way has been gone to the great beyond for at least 30 years – this woman is in her late 80’s – and how she simply could not forgive him for what he had done to her.

Forgiveness Is Not Condoning 

I then talked to her about forgiveness and how it was not a condoning of the person’s actions but a letting go of the anger, hurt and bitterness. I let her know that I knew this was not easy and often took some time – several years in many cases, but that eventually, if you do not forgive, that is, let go of the pain and bitterness and move on, this lack of forgiveness will both run and ruin your life and not only will you be a victim of whoever hurt you, but now you will be a victim of your own thoughts and feelings - a double whammy if there ever was one.

What I saw with this woman, and I would like for you to think about this in relation to your own life, is that her anger and resentment about her ex husband was part of her story and she regaled in telling it. She often used it to garner sympathy and used it as Carolyn Myss in her book Why People Don’t Heal, called a type of currency. She used it to get attention and to feel validated. She became a martyr. But now in the late stages of her life she was no longer getting much from telling this story, everyone had heard it and most of us, me included, had a kind of so what attitude. Since almost everyone has been hurt in one way or another by someone or some thing, who wants to hear the same old story, over and over and over again – not only was she getting older and moving into despair, her story had grown old and stale as well. She needed to forgive him and let go or she would leave this earth a miserable and angry person.

Integrity Vs. Despair

Erikson in his stages of growth and development calls this last stage of life Integrity vs. Despair. He says you have two choices in each stage of human development – the positive life affirming choice or the one that will cause you to live a dysfunctional life. But don’t wait until you are at the tail end of your life like this woman is, instead begin today to forgive and let go of what has hurt you in your past. You can take your time with it, but your goal needs to be to get to a place of forgiveness. So sit down and write out a letter to whoever has wronged you. Spell in out in as much detail as you want – use cuss words if that makes you feel better and then burn that letter. Or keep it for a little while longer – but don’t mail it, and then at some point burn or destroy it.

Put Them on Trial and Then Pardon Them

Another way to go through the process of forgiveness is to put the person on trial, metaphorically speaking. As Scott Peck has said “You can not pardon someone for a crime he has not committed. Only after a guilty verdict can there be a pardon.” This process involves making sure the person actually committed this crime against you. But do this on your own – don’t involve others, except for one witness or possibly a therapist or minister. Write out their offense, gather evidence and then do your own sort of mock trail of them. Once you feel certain they are guilty – let some time pass and then when you feel ready, burn or otherwise destroy all the evidence in a ceremony of forgiveness – if you want to, you can invite a witness to the ceremony, but then once you have done this make a point to consciously move on.

Don't Forget to Forgive Yourself

One other important thing - make sure to forgive yourself as well, particularly in cases where you had a choice to either stay or leave the person or situation.  We often need to forgive ourselves for our part in what happened since many of us have reasons for staying and not seeing what we could have seen had we wanted to or were willing to take the risk to leave.  This is sometimes more difficult than forgiving someone else, if you need help with this you might consider a therapist or a minister.  

The Four Stages of Forgiveness 

Sometimes when something bad happens to us, particularly a hurtful thing done by someone close to us, we want to get over it as quickly as we can and so we rush to forgive them since the conventional wisdom is to do this, just as I am suggesting here.  But it's important to spend some time in grieving what happened and not go too quickly into saying you forgive them - let some time pass, let yourself feel hurt and upset.  This is normal - but then get on with what I have written here.  As Estes said in her book Women Who Run With the Wolves we should, "... Forgo - leave it alone...Forebear...abstain from punishing...Forget - to aver from memory, refuse to dwell and last to Forgive - to abandon the debt."
If you do the things I've talked about above and the ideas of these other writers, then  I guarantee you that your life will begin to feel powerful and energized. 

Blessings, Lorraine

Remember to check out Lorraine’s new book, Second Act Soul Calls – Your Guide for the Re-Invention of your life at Midlife and Beyond with Passion, Purpose and Possibilities – available now on Amazon. 

Ten Signs You’re either a Perennial or Late Bloomer

I saw on my Internet home page a few months ago that Davy Jones, of the 60’s band the Monkey’s, died of a heart attack – he was 66.  That’s a good twenty to thirty years earlier than the average baby boomer.  The 66 year old's I know are in excellent health and are very interested and involved in life.  What happened to Jones?  That’s a good question and one that I probably will never know, but what I do know is that being a late bloomer, that is someone who continues to grow and develop and yes bloom late in life, or those who are perennial bloomers, the ones who have been blooming all along, are the ones who have the last laugh and enjoy life well into their 80’s, 90’s and beyond.  I have identified ten things that separate the early bloomers who die young and the perennial and late bloomers who live long soulful lives. 

1. They move into new things and new challenges as they move along in life and don’t hang on to their youthful exploits and accomplishments.
2. They value and respect their age but do not deny it or focus on it.
3. They make sure they continue to learn and grow throughout life and do not allow thinking about “getting old” to enter into their belief system or their self-talk. They do not engage in jokes about this. 
4. They take care of their bodies, their minds and their spirits by eating right, exercising, being optimistic and having faith in their abilities to negotiate the course of their lives, no matter where it takes them. 
5. They have identified their gifts and talents and are using them in service to something bigger than their own comfort and pleasure.
6. They avoid negative thinkers and those who accept aging as a slow slide into oblivion by by remaining engaged in the mainstream of life.   
7. They know that making a contribution to the greater good is what’s really important to a well-lived life and they are busy doing that.
8. If they have unfinished business from the past they make a point of attending to it and learning and growing from what has happened to them along the way. 
9. They forgive those who have hurt them and ask for forgiveness from those they have hurt and then they let go, disengaging from any on-going conflict, chaos or old resentments. 
10. They are grateful and reverent about life whether they do this via a religion spiritual path or simply by living each day feeling blessed.   

My guess about Davy Jones is he tried to hang on to his rock star status and this is simply not possible for the long haul.  He needed to move on from that into something that allowed him to grow and develop and also to give back what he had been given.  I see this, at least, at this time, with Steven Tyler, now in his early 60’s, who became a judge on American Idol last year.  He’s still holding on to his rock star image, but is also moving into a more mentoring stage of life.  Of course, the jury is still out on him. It will be interesting to see if he can truly transition into a musical sage rather than someone who still wants to perform with the twenty year old's. 

But that is what he will need to do or do what Bob Dylan has done, continue to perform but get into art or something else as well.  Dylan has authored three books of his drawings and his artwork is now on display in a prestigious gallery in NYC. 

So, whether you are a perennial or a late bloomer, rejoice in your life, it’s better to bloom late than never to have bloomed at all. 

Blessings, Lorraine

Five Steps to Becoming Authentically Powerful

Most people think of power as something they have rather than something they are.  They see power as residing in some thing, this thing resides outside themselves such as a large bank account, a prestigious job or a position within an organization or group.  But this is power of position, status, money or rank.  People who have this kind of power can lose it in a heartbeat.  They lose their job, they lose the election, the stock market crashes, they go bankrupt, the people they have power over outgrow or out distance them in some way and no longer see them as powerful as they once were, or they grow older and are no longer seen as significant or important.  There are many, many ways of losing external power. Authentic power, on the other hand, comes from within and cannot be taken from you.  People with authentic power emanate this power by who they are and not from what they own or what position in life they hold.  They feel confident and in charge of their lives and have influential power where other people are concerned, but they never try to have power over anyone but themselves.  Below are five ways of developing authentic power: 

Step One – Value yourself and the gifts you have been given.  We are all gifted – figure out what your gifts are and begin to use them today in your work and personal life.     

Step Two – Develop emotional boundaries. People with authentic power have solid emotional boundaries and understand when to say no and when to say yes.  They don’t expect other people to take care of them emotionally or do their emotional work for them, nor do they do this for others.  They set their own boundaries and they enforce them.  If they say no, they mean it and if they say yes, they follow through.    

Step Three– Reprogram your inner dialog.  People with authentic power have an internal dialog with themselves that is positive and proactive.  If you want authentic power then change your internal dialog from evaluations of yourself and others – both negative and positive  – to thoughts about how beautiful and challenging life is and what you can do to make the world a better place.      

Step Four – Be a person of integrity.  Develop your character by never lying, cheating or stealing by being very conscious of the insidious ways we can do these things by using denial.  Not telling yourself the truth of your own culpability in life's problems is one of these forms of denial.  Also connect the dots in your life and take full responsibility for the state of your life.  Learn from your mistakes and do not blame others or circumstances for the failures or messes in your life.   

Step Five – Work hard and commit yourself to accomplishing what you can with the gifts and talents you have been given.  If you are a writer, then write, if you are an artist then make beautiful pictures, if you are an engineer then build something, if you are a teacher, then teach someone, if you are a doctor then heal someone, if you are a lawyer then defend someone or some thing, if you are a mother then nurture your children, if you are a chef then make a delicious meal, if you are a business person then make or sell something, if you are a technician then fix something, if you are a grocery clerk then ring up that sale and smile at your customer.  In other words, no matter what you are gifted to do – get busy doing it.  Accomplishments build self-esteem and self-esteem builds authentic power. 

If you do these five things you will become a person with authentic power and any loss of the other kinds of power will only produce a temporary sense of unease but in the long run won’t affect your sense of well being since you have built a foundation of internal power which can’t be taken away from you via external events or situations. 

Blessings, Lorraine  

The ABCDE of Disputing Negative Self Talk

This exercise is designed to help you dispute the negative self talk I wrote about in last weeks blog post.  You may use this with events that have just happened or ones that happened long ago but which come up in your mind and in your self talk and your comments to others on a daily or at least weekly basis.  I am using divorce and a negative job/career event here as examples, but it could be anything else from missing an exit on the freeway and having to turn around or forgetting to do something that later got you into trouble or getting into an accident or any other adverse event in your life.  The self talk is the negative about the event, the people in the event or your own negative view of yourself in relation to it.  Do this exercise for the big negative events in your life which keep coming up and for the smaller ones that happen along the way.

Using a spiral bound notebook, do this exercise everyday for 30 days, at least once per day.  Check in with yourself and ask yourself this question.  Did I say or think negative thoughts about my ex spouse, my boss or myself in regard to what happened in the adverse event that happened to me?  If the answer is no – then ask yourself what you are thinking right now about it?   If you have not had any negative self talk today, then ask yourself if you had any negative self talk this week?  Check in with yourself about adverse events that happened recently and any conversations you have had with friends that may have included some negative talk about the event.

A stands for Adversity - Here’s where you write down the event or experience that triggered your pessimistic thoughts. Simple and matter-of-fact, with no associated thoughts or feelings, just like this: “I got a divorce or I got fired or I got downsized or I was late to work again today or I'm stuck in this job or any negative thought related to you or others or even the world.

B stands for Belief – Write down the words you use to explain the adversity exactly as you say them to yourself or when you are venting where it is safe.  In other words, write down what you believe about this event and what you feel about it, such as people my age can't change jobs, it's too late, or there are no good men out there, or I can either accept this or that but I can't have both.  In other words, your negative world view about these kinds of things.  

C stands for Consequences – Write down what you believe the negative event has brought into your life.  What impact has the event had on your work, your enjoyment of life? Examples? “I feel defeated and lousy”; “I feel very, very scared that I will never find any one who will love me.  “I feel cheated and lied to.  "All men, or all women, all bosses are just out to use you and abuse you and I’ll never get what I really want in life.” "I'm too old, and this is it - I'll never be successful or I'll die alone."  

D is for Dispute – A dispute is a rational challenge to your emotional belief, since most emotional beliefs are often less fact than attitude. Here are a few ways to experiment (that’s right, you might not be successful the first time, so keep at it until you are!):

–Marshal Factual Evidence. Challenge your pessimistic emotional beliefs with a list of facts. Are you truly so miserable now that you are divorced or working for a new employer?  Does it really matter to you and your life now that your ex or your boss is a jerk, a narcissist or someone who simply does not care about you?  How is your life better now than it was before the incident?  List all the facts that contradict your pessimistic statements. (Still believe your belief is true? See Deal With the Truth, below.)

Less Destructive Alternatives. One way to try this is to pretend a caring friend is doing the disputing  – how would she or he respond to your negative assessment of the situation?  What would they tell you? Do you know a natural optimist? What would he or she point out to you about the situation?

–Deal with the Truth without Self-Judgment. Let’s say you’ve decided that your negative comments about yourself or the situation or another person are true – you did marry a jerk and lived with him or her for many years.  You did wait too long to do somethng you should have done at an earlier time in your life.  Now you have to face the fact that maybe, some of it was your responsibility?  Maybe you did expect everything to stay the same and when it did not, you went into a snit and acted like a martyr and now you see that was you not taking responsibility for your choices- he or she may be a jerk but you chose them or chose to stay with them.  Is the negative way you tell yourself the truth useful? No. Negative thinking never results in positive change.

But true optimism isn’t sugar-coating, either. So look at the truth of your situation and plan to change it: do you need to let go of your resentment and pain related to the incident since all it is doing is keeping you in this loop?  Well, yes!  What else do you need to do to change the circumstances of your life?  Do you need specific, written goals and plans for your future? Your weakness and human imperfections are normal, and you’re more likely to move forward when you accept them as being okay or identified and now you are working to improve them.  Do you need to forgive yourself and move on?  When you’re not beating up on yourself, you’re freer to make plans for how you want to change and grow. By the way, each person comes into the world with gifts and talents - one way to move on and begin to get out of the loop of negative self talk is to value and use your gifts and talents and find places where others value them.  Staying in situations where you are not valued is a natural feed line to your negative self talk - so begin today to figure out how to find a place where you can bloom and not feed the monster of negative self talk.  

–Dispute With Action. Negativity tends to lead us to self-involvement and a form of narcissism, and it never hurts to distance ourselves from that by engaging in something outside ourselves, whether it’s helping someone else with a problem, or taking a break and simply doing something positive that makes you feel good.   Research on happiness demonstrates that people who consider themselves happy and leading meaningful lives are generally involved in some kind of giving back to the world what they have been given - what I call contributing to the greater good.  This activity needs to coincide with your core values and beliefs. Building those activities into our lives keeps our own pessimistic reactions in perspective. This also contributes to the building of our self esteem and self worth - so a win-win for everyone. 

E is for Energizing – Read your disputes out loud. How do you feel when you hear the words? The measure of an effective disputation is the energizing effect it has on your emotional state. If your feelings haven’t changed, try again. Sure, this sounds like a ‘Catch-22’, but it’s true. Remember, a dispute is a heartfelt, rational change of though, and if it’s not substantial enough, it won’t help you, so make your disputes heartfelt and logical.  Telling yourself all will be well tomorrow and then getting up and doing the same thing will not get you out of a negative self-talk loop.  Nor will ignoring or using denial to get through he day.  Make a list of the good things in your life and put them on several 3x5 cards and carry them with you or post then in your office or home so you can see them. 

That's it - use this system beginning today for 30 days and I guarantee if you do, your self talk will become positive and you will feel energized!

If you have questions about this process or have trouble with it then send me an email  or call me for an appointment to deal with this with the aid of a professional mentor.  I am here to help.

Blessings, Lorraine

The Loop of Negative Self Talk - The Muzak in Your Head

Most of us, no matter how positive and upbeat we are, will have some negative self-talk.  This is like Muzak– you know that easy listening music that plays just below the surface of your consciousness, at the grocery store, the doctors office, in elevators and any place where people gather where nice background music makes shopping or waiting a more pleasant experience.  Well, our self-talk is just like that, it plays beneath the surface of our conscious minds and only when something happens to make us become conscious of it do we notice what we are telling ourselves, on a minute-by-minute basis.  This also becomes our naturally occurring comments about our lives that we share with others in a kind of non- conscious way.  This happens mostly in social situations where gossip and sharing is done in a small talk way.  In other words, someone brings up a subject and each person gives their party line on that subject.  This happens in situations where there is no major consequence to you for your opinion on the subject, at least not from the people you are sharing your opinion with, but there is a major consequence to you, yourself, if this party line is negative and keeps you stuck in a negative loop. 

Muzak Tune # I Married a Jerk and I Can Prove It!

Let me give you an example.  Let’s say you are divorced.  If this is fresh, that is, it just happened less than two years ago, then the chances of you making negative comments about your ex are pretty common.  This is understandable, as most people will need to rid themselves of these negative feelings as they go through the natural grief process of morning this major loss in their life.  Depending on how long you were married, this grief stage could last from two to three years, but once you have established a new life for yourself as a single person you need to begin to let go of the negative thoughts and comments about your marriage, divorce and ex spouse.  If you don’t and these thoughts continue to be part and parcel of your mind’s “Muzak” then you are stuck in a loop and that loop is keeping you from enjoying your new life.  This negative self-talk and the small talk it engenders with friends and family, becomes insidious and will keep you forever going around in this loop.  It also has the affect of attracting other negative thinkers and talkers and this creates pity party alliances. 

Muzak Tune #2 - My Boss and My Work Don't Appreciate Me

Another example is a work situation that turned out bad for you.  Maybe you got fired or downsized or reassigned to a position you did not choose or you went for a promotion and someone else got it and now two or more years later you are still running the Muzak from that situation in your head every single day.  Then when you are not at work and are with family and friends these negative thoughts and opinions tend to fall out of your mouth like pearls of wisdom but which are in truth, bitter pills of discontent which you keep spitting out and they seem to be always there ready to do this spilling out. 

Muzak Tune #3 Nobody Loves Me, I think I'll Go Eat Worms

Another area of self talk is simply the tendency to be pessimistic and to beat up on yourself and the world with all the possible bad things that could happen, but have not yet happened or if they have, in most cases, the result was not as bad as you may have predicted.  If you tend to see every possible thing that could happen as potentially negative and or dangerous - then you too need to look at your self talk. 

In addition, if your self esteem is not what it should be then take a look at the Muzak in your head and see what tune is being played.  If your self esteem needs shoring up then do some things to make you feel better about yourself and stop lamenting your mistakes - everyone makes mistakes and self forgiveness is the key to moving past a negative situations.  The big thing with mistakes is either you learn from them or you keep making them.  So first forgive yourself for whatever you have done that didn't serve you, and then put in motion the ways and means of making sure you don't make that mistake again.  

Muzak Tune #4 - Venting Where Safe and Negative Body Language 

Playing the negative self talk about what has happened to you in your head and then venting where it’s safe with friends and family is not going to be of service to you in maintaining your job, your career or your self esteem in the long run.  So like the divorced person, the first thing to do is take responsibility for your part in what happened.  The second thing to do is forgive yourself for what you did or didn't do or what you thought and ended up revealing through your non-verbal behavior.  Remember, most thoughts come out whether they are said or not, via our body language.  If you think your boss is a jerk and an idiot but you never voice this to anyone at your work, make no bones about it, they know – it all comes out through your non-verbal communication.

If these examples remind you of yourself then it’s time to take a stand and get yourself out of this loop.  Now some of you may say, yes, but he/she was a jerk to me or he/she did do this and that bad thing and this may very well be true.  You could have married a narcissist, a dishonest person who lied to you or who cheated on you. Okay, you divorced them because of this and now you need to rid yourself of their impact on your life – in these cases divorce was only a first step in this process.  Now you need to heal your wounds and get on with your life. 

It's Time to Play a New Tune 

In order to heal and get on with a life of passion, purpose and possibilities you will need to rid yourself of as much negative self-talk as possible.  Negative self talk is addictive and habit forming - it becomes over time like a mantra - you simply say it to yourself and any one who will listen any time the topic of your marriage, your job or your self worth is triggered.  It’s a neural pathway that has been set down in your brain and until you make a concentrated effort to change it, it will always be there.  Time for a new tune. 

New Tune # 1 I forgive Myself and Give Myself a Break 

The first wound you need to heal is your own complicity in the marriage.  In other words, you married this person, you stayed with them and you had your reasons for doing this.  Forgive yourself – you were young and naive, you were broke and desperate, scared and insecure, you were in need of a rescue or there was some other reason you let yourself choose or be chosen by this person.  Forgive yourself.  That’s the first step.  If you feel you were wronged and you don’t see your own complicity in the marriage then you need to get real with yourself.  Getting real means to stop being a victim and take responsibility for your part in things.  

Maybe you were flattered.  Maybe he or she was a prize or appeared to be and winning the hand of this person made you feel like you too were a prize.  Maybe you were just going along with the culture’s ideas about marriage, but once married you realized you were not interested in a traditional marriage but your tribe believed in this and so the only way to get out of it was to make your spouse the bad guy so the tribe would okay your decision to divorce.  Maybe the person offered you things you felt you could not get on your own – an upscale lifestyle – joining a social group you did not have access to without them and so on. 

There are a million reasons people marry who they marry and another million for why they do not work out the way the partners thought it would.  The only way to deal with and heal from a broken relationship is to take your part in it and own up to it and then forgive yourself.  Being a victim is a monster you have to feed on a daily basis – stop feeding that monster. The same is true if your negative event is work related.  If you got fired, downsized, reassigned or whatever the event was, blaming it on the company, the economy or President Obama and not taking responsibility for your part in it, is a vitality killer.  You were there, you took the job, you chose to stay and whatever happened, in most cases, was not a surprise to you and if it was, then it was because you were not paying attention.

New Tune #2 I Play By The Work Rules or I Find a New Game

Unlike a marriage, where it’s a partnership and is a legal contract, working for someone else is not.  Going into a work place and having the mindset that they will take care of you and treat you with respect and so on is naive and foolish.  It’s also naive and foolish to think that if you work really hard this will protect you from any negative events.  In many, many cases this is not what keeps people employed. Working hard is a given by the company, they expect it but being a team player is what gets noticed.  

What keeps people employed is that they recognize that the real job is joining the culture of the company and buying into the ideas and programs of those in the position to fire them.  Being a company man or woman and knowing how to play politics, this is the real key to being promoted and staying employed.  The other one is rolling with the flow – the changes that naturally occur in any business.  We live in a very volatile world where work is concerned and those who adapt to the new are the ones who stay employed and happy in their jobs.  Those who resist change and resist joining the corporate culture are destined to have negative events happen to them. 

New Tune #3 I Learn from My Mistakes 

Maybe you married the wrong person, for you, or you took a job that in the end didn't fit you, or you started out in the world with little self esteem because your primary care givers didn't recognize your genius or you simply have a temperament that tends to second guess yourself, regardless of why your self esteem is not up to par, the day has come for you to start shoring it up by playing a  new tune.  

New Tune #4 - I celebrate and Value Myself 

I once saw a poster in an agency I was thinking of going to work for which said in big bold letters, "God Don't Make No Junk"  Well, I agree - play the tune that celebrates you and stop letting the Muzak of negative thinking bring you down.  Another way to eliminate the negative loop of self talk and playing that negative Muzak in your head all day is to use the ABCDE Disputing Technique.  I will post this next week, so stay tuned.

Blessing, Lorraine

Just the Way You Are

So I got flack from some of my readers yesterday about how long my post was – so here goes a short and sweet one. Billy Joel wrote a song back in the 80’s, Just the Way You Are – It’s one of my favorite songs. In it he says, “Don’t go changing to try and please me, I love you just the way you are."  Well, we gotta love ourselves just the way we are as well. So here are five things you can do to start letting the true you shine through:

1. Go shopping and buy yourself something your ten-year old self would have loved to have and put it somewhere you can see it every day.

2. Post an affirmation that says “You Rock, Just the Way You Are!”

3. Do something this weekend that you have been longing to do regardless of how silly or unrelated it is to your regular life.

4. Give yourself permission to loaf – let your imagination take you to a new place,

5. Get a massage, make love, go swimming, hold a baby, go out into the moonlight and lie on the grass and look at the stars - do something sensual and savor it.

Okay, that’s it for now…next time, well, I’ll surprise you, don’t you just love surprises, I know I do.

Blessings, Lorraine  PS - That's my granddaughter Ellie - Isn't she a doll?

Pentimento - Letting The Real You Shine Through

The word pentimento comes from the art world where painters, particularly some of the old world masters would often paint over an image and then later the painting would fade and the old image would begin to show through. I think this happens with people, as well. In our first act we develop a persona, an image, if you will, of ourselves that is designed, more or less to show to and be approved by the outside world. In fact, I would say that this image building is more or less the major activity of the first act of life. Who are we? What are we good at? Who will we associate with and what will we do with our time and talents? This begins at puberty and goes on for another twenty, thirty, maybe even forty years. In many cases, we become what we set out to become, or we become what our parents, teachers, spouses and bosses want us to become. Most of us want to be successful in the world and we look for others to mentor and guide us in this process.. By our mid forties, this image, this persona is pretty well set but is it the true you or simply a painted over version of an earlier image that begins to show through whether you want it to or not?

But where does this earlier image come from? It comes from deep within your soul and is there in childhood. Most people, if they look back on when they were say eight or ten years old they will see their true nature. But this nature, particularly if it does not fit the norm for your family and community will be “painted over” by years of social conditioning and peer pressure. Children are rewarded for being good little boys and girls not for showing their true colors. I was both a tomboy and a budding artist/writer when I was ten years old, but this was not looked on in my southern family as appropriate or useful behavior for a girl. What my mother and my father wanted from me was that I become a “little lady” and help my mother around the house by being a kind of second mother to my siblings. Going out into the woods and creating stories about the people I made up out of my imagination and then building “houses” for them out of the sticks and stones and whatever else I could find, was not what they had in mind for me.

Spending hours on my bed reading left my mother cold too – “Get in here, Lorraine and help me with this laundry, I can’t do this all by myself.” She would say. Then later when as a married woman I decided to go back to school for a degree she asked me why I did this and when I said I wanted to go to work and have a career she said, “ I thought your husband had a good job, doesn’t he provide for you and the kids?” When I told her that wasn’t it, she told me that a decent woman stayed home and took care of her children unless her husband was unable to do it and then she might go to work, but only then. So I got no approval from my family for my true self which was from early on a dreamer, a thinker and a creative person.

Then after I graduated from college I got that job – that career - and I listened then to all the voices of the women’s movement, which told me that the juice of life was in the corporate world of business. I dressed for success and I went out there and tried to have sisterhood with all the other feminist but what I found was I didn’t like that world. I found no sisterhood, all I found were women, and men, trying to best each other so they could get a heads up on you in the drive for promotion and ultimately, success. It wasn’t creative, it wasn’t interesting and it sure the heck didn’t fit any dreams I’d had back in the woods when I was building those dream houses out of sticks and stones. I was disillusioned.

So I quit the corporate world and became a therapist. I put a little more paint on my image and tried to make it stick, but this too turned out to be a non creative, often depressing world where I felt like I was going into a dark wet cave everyday trying to help the people in this cave get out of it and back into the sunshine. I was able, Thank God, to get some of them out, but most didn’t budge.

Then about five years ago I began to see this other image in the mirror when I looked really close. The pentimento of my true self was starting to shine through all that family and societal conditioning. I began to unburden myself of other people’s opinions of me, and what I should or should not do or be. I joined a writing group and found my true niche with the other writers.  I started taking only the clients I felt were capable of living in the sunshine and I eventually closed my practice and became a full time writer – what I had always wanted to do and be all along.

But, what about you? What is trying to show through your public image? What image is under there wanting to be freed from the layers and layers and layers of social conditioning and pressure from others to be something you truly are not? If you could strip off the paint of years of pretending and going along with the program, what do you think would show through for you? Who are you underneath all that slapped on paint and gunk from the outside world? Don’t you think it’s time for you to take a peek and see what shows up? Think about it, and then start divesting yourself of the image you present to the world that is not you but only a pentimento of your true self.

Do this illuminating exercise - Think back on what you were like at ten years old and write up a profile of yourself or tell it like a fairy tale - describe your likes, dislikes, favorite stories, favorite heroes, favorite activities and who your friends were and what you did.  What made you laugh and what made you cry?  See if the true you shows up and how you might begin to let him or her show through now and get yourself out there into the sunshine before it's too late. 


Blessings, Lorraine