Openings

The past three weeks I have been opening windows into my past life when I lived in Israel for twenty years, almost thirty years ago. I have discovered that I was hard working and a devoted mother, and that some people liked me back then. I also peeked into windows that helped me see just how much I lacked confidence back then. For so long I believed that there was something wrong with, me or that I was a bad person. But as I looked at my past home, and thought about relationships with others at the time, I see only that I lacked self-worth in the deepest way. 

It has been difficult for me to confront this reality because of course it makes me realize that some of the choices I made were so obviously based on not feeling deserving of being treated well, or even kindly, by others. All of this I have been reflecting upon these past five years in therapy. But somehow, this visit to Israel this time has confirmed my understanding at a much more profound level.

I get it! 

At moments when it has been painful, I am strengthened by the knowledge that all those feelings are about the past, and that my present reality is different now. I am not a child or young woman searching for love or acknowledgement any longer. I am all the ages of me I ever will be (as Fred Rogers said), and I am beginning to accept, and even quite like, what I understand about who I am today.