On Loss and Gain

Copy of October 21st Post

I realized recently that I had totally and completely shut down emotionally for a long time. I mean of course on some levels I was aware of and distressed by it, and I understood intellectually where, when and why it happened, but at the same time I was also shut down about being shut down. Somehow without trying or meaning to I just stopped and refused to feel anything at all. In retrospect, kind of like a little kid picking up her toys, going home and refusing to play anymore. I think sometimes that's the safest thing we know to do when we don't know how to deal with the pain and loss in our lives. In one way it was like being in one of those lulls I talked about on another post, but at the same time there must have been tremendous amounts of growth and processing going on below the surface.
Eventually I became aware of the fact that sometimes you have no choice but to just walk thru the pain for as long as it takes to heal. All that tremendous loss sucked but I wouldn’t trade any of it because it got me to where I am today. I couldn’t have come as far as I have without those experiences. That’s why I believe every loss is actually a gain and no amount of pain ever goes unrewarded. Sometimes it can be hard to remember we are the sum of our experiences and without them we would be someone else entirely.
From all this I learned discipline, patience, stoisism, endurance, inner strength and will. I learned that I can let others be exactly how they are without it determining how I am. Its not what others do to you that shapes what you are, its what you do with those experiences that determines what you become. I can choose to sit and wallow in what has happened to me, been "imposed" upon me by others, or I can use it as fuel, a backdrop upon which I construct a new way of being and perceiving life. It’s all our choice.