I don’t remember the first time I heard or read this truism: you can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first.
The impact of those words is that the healing journey is risky. Any healthy survivor will echo those words. Once we open the door to our painful childhood, we never know what’s going to come out.
For example, I hadn’t cried since I was 11 years old; I started my healing journey 40 years later. Then I cried—almost every day for weeks. I’d see something about mistreatment on TV and the tears would flow. Or read a scene in a book.
More than the tears, I began seeing things about myself I didn’t like—things others could see but had previously hidden from me. It hurt for me to face them and say to myself, “Yes, that’s true.”
Hard. Risky. The safer, easier path is denial. I had lived in that community too long.
The acute responses to my self-knowledge (i.e., the intense pain) lasted months. But I prevailed. I can only thank God, my wife, and my best friend because they were there when I needed them. Even so, it was my pain, my traumatic past. And as one wise survivor said to me, “The only way out is through. You’ll never be free of the pain until you re-experience it.”
Today I’m healthier. I love being who I am—something that didn’t seem possible 10 years earlier. I took my foot off first base. I risked being hurt, humiliated, and misunderstood, and I just kept going.
So can you.
Move your foot off first base. Take the risk.
1 comment:
Interesting post Cec. For most all of my life I have played it 'safe' in a way. I referred to it as always keeping my options open, keeping an ace in the hole; if you take my meaning. Never fully committing to anyone or anything in case it doesn't work out. The fear of failure has haunted me. This post speaks to me of that practice in my life. I'm not sure how emotionally / mentally undo that practice but I do understand what you are saying and the need to be able to commit to that second base run. Just not sure how to do that.
Post a Comment