A story of change….

change is only possible when we engage our narrative of the experiences we have had in life.

i grew up saying i would break the chains.

i will be different.

i will not be impacted by my childhood experiences.

my marriage and family and future will not be bound by what i had known as a child.

so i walked out.

i married and left town.

with 3 crockpots and $20 we embarked on our life together.

we both abandoned what was behind, thinking it was as easy as that.

we left to get the life we wanted.

the life we believed we could have.

we had vision for it.

we were determined.

turn the pages of time and here we are.

well. turn a few pages back.

to the days we discovered a simple yet difficult truth.

yes. we made changes.

we fought hard to be different.

to raise a family.

to do life.

and indeed we were different.

but there were threads to our earliest relationships and experiences that held us back.

or down.

or kept the lid on the beauty of life.

an internal lid that kept us from our true potential.

anxiety. lack of attunement. emotional deficit. confusion. fear. isolation. depression.

things of today would happen and we would respond from things of yesterday.

our past experiences had been wired into our brains.

we kept falling into the same holes.

it is like we kept seeing the world through the lens we were given as children.

we were seeing the world through those experiences, not today.

william faulkner puts it this way:
“the past isn’t dead. it isn’t even past.”

our earliest experiences had indeed influenced our lives despite our hardest efforts.

so we began to engage our narratives.

we named our stories.

we sat with the hurt in our stories.

and as we did this we began to experience significant shifts in our lives.

it was in a season of disorientation that we found this to be true.

we began to reflect.

we began to look.

we began to understand our selves and each other through facing our narratives head-on.

there are 2 ways that our neuro connections develop. genes and life experiences.

the experiences we have determine the particular way neurons in our brain are wired and connected. which is why we cannot embrace change until we turn around and look at our experiences. our narrative.

changes happens when neurons hook up differently with one another. and since the original wiring happened in relationship, this new wiring had to take place within relationship. we cannot name our narratives and sit in our wells alone. we need others who can sit with our pain with us.

side note. this is why i believe in coaching and the year-long townsend leadership group i have brought to santa cruz. because it changes everything.

so that is the journey my husband and i embarked on a while back.

a journey of true change.

healing.

our journey into the future is also a journey into our past.

it’s not about blame. our parents. our teachers. our situations. each other.

it’s about understanding how we experienced life.
how it felt to each of us and how we learned to respond.

we protected ourselves as children and developed our own version of hiding mechanisms.
it was necessary.
but those ways we used in order to protect ourselves are no longer necessary.
we get to say goodbye to them.
we finally can create new ways of responding to things that may feel familiar.
we get to write the next part of our story with our eyes open.

that is the journey we are on.

and it is beautiful.

and i will share more as we go.

if this is a journey you too would like to be curious about, i would love to invite you connect with me.

~tina