Dear Joe:

It may be a good idea for you to read your previous postings here and take notes, learn from what you wrote over time, starting with your first post which I quoted from, above.

These are my thoughts today, my analysis: There are the practicalities of this China possibility and seems to me you got an excellent reply post about it. But there are deeper things to consider, what I call “the building blocks” of what-is, of reality- this is what I am good with- the Building Blocks.

From your first post, a year and a month ago (quotes above), I learn that teaching is not, or has not been your passion. You wrote: “Those that can’t do, teach…” Then your teaching experience was not great. You wrote about it: ” I had to teach loud schoolkids and nosy noisy teenagers. This drained a lot of my energy”.

About traveling, you wrote: “Over the past year I built up this fantasy about travelling and working in as many different countries as I can and seeing all of these great things. I’m not sure if this is what I want anymore. Maybe I only felt these things because life at home without a job and without purpose is boring, and travelling would be a great escape from all of these feelings of insecurity and emptiness that I have. It would almost be like escaping from myself.”

The Answer is not in Asia, in teaching, in traveling.

At the end of your first post you asked: “When you feel as though you have gotten over something bad, why is it sometimes that this problem you thought you had exorcised comes back to bite you further down the line…”

You were referring to your experience with the host family, but it is relevant to your experience with your family of origin- it will “bite you further down the line.” It will in Asia, it will bite you everywhere you go. It will bite you whatever it is you do and with whomever you will be with.

Unless you heal.

In a more recent thread where it occurred to you that there is nothing wrong with you, you wrote: “I have accepted the fact I am never going to reason with my family at all. They are never going to take me seriously. Trying to get them to see how hurtful their behaviour is, this is an exercise in futility. We are never going to have a close relationship – this hurts but I accept it. I won’t be able to mourn and heal until I remove myself from them.”

You wrote it yourself: “I won’t be able to mourn and heal until I remove myself from them.”

There is the Answer. It doesn’t matter where you go or what you do. What you need, if I may be so bold to suggest that I know it, is to FEEL confident, to feel OKAY, to feel, on an ongoing basis, that there is, indeed, nothing wrong with you. The place where you feel these things, believe these things, happens between your ears.

The aim is this: healing, being you. Being who you were deprived of being because you were hurt and mistreated by your family of origin. If going to Asia means you are likely to end up needing your family to bail you out and back to living with them, then Asia is not a good idea. The good idea can be as simple as living elsewhere in the UK, doing any kind of work, as long as you are no longer interacting with your family members at all, at least until you heal a whole lot away from them.

Like your illustrated characters that seem Waiting (so they seem to me)- stop waiting for your family to okay you. Go all the way to really, really no longer waiting. Release yourself from what they caused you to become (insecure, scared…) and become who you were from the beginning: absolutely Okay, acceptable, loving, lovable, curious, adventurous.

anita