Saman,

Thank you for taking the time to write to me. I am grateful to you for doing so. My growing up experiences, the ones as a child, were not happy at all. The words I heard were the exact same ones that you wrote about-Worthless, useless, failure,no one likes you, unlovable, evil person. It took time for me to realize that these words are/were lies. Now, when something sparks those memories, I am totally unfazed by them, because I know they were lies. Those words came from somebody that was in my life that had a profoundly negative soul, for whatever reason. Saying those words to me was his denial so to deal with that, he chose to project that on to me. Those words were more of a reflection of himself-inside. By him not taking responsibility and accountability for his actions, he took the weak coward way out by assigning blame, guilt, hate, and resentment on to me. I learned very early to distance myself from him. In the beginning the space I gained was minimal, but it was enough to let the light shine through. Distancing myself from him gave me the space I needed to discover the real me, to be the architect of how I wanted my life to be. It opened a whole new world for me. It was actually pretty cool. From the very beginning I KNEW those hateful words were not true. What I did know is that they were lies. It is understandable that you forgot your childhood. Like mine, it was probably dominated by those words. Your suppression and repression of those memories are a very normal defensive mechanism. But those two defensive mechanisms are not without their consequences. There are many expressions of such consequences, such as what you are psychologically and even perhaps physically experiencing. To surrender to and find attachment to the lies you have been told, hold absolutely no value. There is no need for you to own them. I want to share something with you that I find to be so true to me even to this day. I learned this when I lived on the Rez:

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Too often people feed their demons inside of them and I tell people that when you feed your demons, they will feed you. The demons you have been fed are the lies that somebody else believed. Saman distance yourself from these people so that you can have the space you deserve to create the life you want. Discover the truth, and that truth is who you are inside because it was you who created it. Please stay in touch. Your life is a story that I really do care to hear about.

I wish you all the love, peace, and happiness life has to offer, for an eternity longer than a lifetime. It is the least you deserve.