Dear Sandy1:

You moved back to your parents’ home after many years of living away. The emotional experience you had when you lived at home as a child, 26 years ago, returned with intensity. That experience was that of loneliness, of a desire for love amidst the lack of it.

In 8th grade what you did in your loveless home, was looking for love with a boyfriend. Twenty six  years later, recently, you did the very same thing: looking for love with a boyfriend, the same boyfriend: “I spent the rest of the night stalking him on Instagram (hadn’t even thought of him really since 9th grade)”

You even had the same thoughts 26 years later: “about what I could’ve done… during our relationship.. that might’ve prevented the breakup… I’m obsessing over my journals and the details of what happened during the relationship to figure out if he ever liked me.”

In your recent note to me you wrote: “I feel comfortable in their (your parents’) presence, but still have reservations for speaking my mind and even really being myself.. Daily I think about moving so that I can get my freedom back and feel free to be myself again instead of feelings so inhibited”

Just like it felt then, the child that you were, inhibited, not free to be you.

The interesting thing is, we carry our childhood experience through our adulthood everywhere we go. Unless we heal and resolve what needs to be healed and resolved, we keep living the same past in many ways, often not aware that we are.

When you went back home, your childhood experience was brought to your felt-awareness with intensity. Now you know, don’t you, that your childhood experience of living without love, was always with you.

Notice: you wrote that you feel comfortable in the presence of your parents. We do get comfortable with what is familiar to us, with what we adjusted to best we can.

I hope to read more from you.

anita