On wholeness & loving ourselves realistically

I often get emails that deserve a longer more considered response than I usually have time for — here’s one that I’ve been sitting on for a while. Today was the day to reply:

Hello Susannah,

I’ve been really enjoying The Sacred Alone class. This is the second class I’ve taken with you. I am so happy I found your blog and read your story. Honestly, I’ve been needing to get to know the girl in the mirror for a long time. I identify with a lot of parallels in your story. My father, while he didn’t leave us, was painfully absent and I’ve been through a good many years of therapy to fill the hole. In the past month I wrote a letter to my father as homework for my therapy visits. I read this letter in our last session a few weeks ago. I feel freer. The anger I use to feel is at rest, but a part of me wonders if I will ever be done with the “daddy issues”. To fill the hole I’ve longed to have a man in my life that is to me what he never was. I am a serial monogamist, bouncing relationship to relationship. After nearly 28 years, I’m tired. I’m taking the Sacred Alone to rely on the only person who I feel like can truly fill the hole – me.

I’m afraid and I have a question. It’s a bit of a personal one, but from someone who has fought this battle 12 years longer than I have, how did you know or how did you get to the point where your own love – your own self – was enough to feel whole?

Through reading your blog and taking your classes, I’ve thought several times “I want the strength of this woman.” “I want to be able to take control of my life and career the way she has.” You’ve truly been an inspiration to me. Thank you so much for sharing your story. You’ve made the idea of a girl who didn’t have a good relationship with her father, and doesn’t have to remain broken and depleted a little more attainable. That she can become strong and successful.

Love, M

Dear M,

In all honesty, I still have occasional daddy issues. Not with the man who left 30 years ago as I’ve worked through all that. And not with the man who lives on the other side of the world, as I don’t know him and don’t feel the need to be in touch with him. My issues, such as they are, are a lingering part of my blueprint, the stuff I learned in the first 18 years of my life. (I sometimes wonder if we’re just supposed to spend our lives untangling all the crap we learned as kids.) The old programming surfaces every so often, just to keep me on my toes.

I was in back-to-back romantic relationships from the age of 17 to 32, right up until the day my partner died. In my 20s I was self aware enough to know I needed time on my own to really get to know myself, but back then I wasn’t brave enough to do it. I relied on another to make me feel whole, although truthfully it wasn’t that effective. I still felt lost, still felt unsure — I just had someone else to blame for not making me happy (nice, eh?)

Because I was so caught up in the patterning of the past, and the dysfunctional idea that another person could fill the father-shaped hole in my life, it wasn’t until I was forced to be alone that I finally got the chance to heal. My bereavement wasn’t just about the loss of my love — I also had decades of scrambled thinking to unravel. I had to learn to be on my own, and give myself the chance to discover who I really was.

“how did you know or how did you get to the point where your own love – your own self – was enough to feel whole?”

It happened very gradually. Obviously there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but when I trace my journey backwards there are some key practices and milestones that stand out:  

— I learned how to live on my own, in a home I created just for me. I learned to take pleasure in cooking for myself, in arranging my furniture the way I liked it, in being solely responsible for the bills. I figured out how I wanted to spend my weekends at home, without the comfortable distraction of another’s company. I learned to let go of the need to have others around me to feel okay. I learned how to go places without needing to check in with anyone else. I became independent for the first time in my life.

— I mapped the terrain of my heart through my creativity. I’ve always journaled but it reached prodigious new heights in those first years of my healing journey. It’s amazing how fast you can cut through the undergrowth when you truly open up to self enquiry. The journalling of my 20s was decidedly shallow compared to the places I went to years later. I asked the questions and finally excavated my insides for answers. I still do this today.

— I began figuring out what truly lit me up. Relationships take up a lot of time and energy (usually in a good way!) so being on my own gave me time to figure out what was important to me — not me as somebody’s girlfriend, who generally went along with what her boyfriend wanted to do. Starting a blog and picking up a camera again changed everything and paved the way for what I’m doing now.

— I befriended the woman I saw in the mirror. We don’t have a perfect relationship — far from it, in fact. I intimately know the less appealing sides of myself — the stuff I’d rather no one else ever sees — but rather than cover it up or run from it, I embrace it. I own my “bad” as well as my good. My shadows as well as my light. I don’t believe there’s ever a point where all the crappy parts are healed out of existence — there is no perfect state to be achieved. Instead, I believe the goal is simply to embrace all of who we are. To get to know all facets of your being, from your body and outward appearance, your age and experiences, to your secrets and desires, your broken bits and your brilliance.

I do feel whole. In my bones I know I am complete exactly as I am. I am my own best friend. I trust myself completely. But that doesn’t mean it’s all perfectly shiny days over here — again I say FAR FROM IT! Outwardly it may look like I have it all together, and in many aspects I’m doing pretty good, but there are parts of my life I’d like to make over. After nine years my single status is long past its sell-by date. I will always be a pessimistically-inclined lone she-wolf — that hasn’t changed. I love my family above everything, but I often let friendships fade out and that’s not a side of me I’m proud of.

But on the whole, yes, I am whole. I own the good in me and the shit in me, too. I do a fairly good job of loving myself — a realistic job is perhaps a better way of putting it. I love myself realistically. In this lifetime this is who I am and 99% of the time I am happy with that. There will always be days that I’m not, and that’s okay — I find I’m less stressed about it these days.

So in summary, dear M, give it time. Gift yourself with the space to get to know yourself. Trust that the desire to be whole is the beginning of the realisation of that goal. And that getting older is very often the making of us. It has been for me. Let it unfold. And take yourself out on dates — just you and you. xx