Anita,

I hope you never get tired of hearing my gratitude for you. You have been a major catalyst for my healing and a source of wisdom I feel lucky to have came across. Thank you.

I have been feeling well the past week since quitting one of my jobs, it has allowed me to slow down to think, and more importantly feel. I have quit smoking and hoping it sticks long term this time, it makes me socially anxious, avoidant, and keeps me from accessing my feelings by sedating me. I’m hoping that i’m finally understanding those feelings need to be felt to completion for me to feel any sense of peace and real joy. I have been sober the past week and it is helping tremendously for me to feel at peace. I had been slacking on my meditation but have gotten back into it first thing in the morning and right before bed. Meditation helps me access joy which i’m so glad to say right now, it also helps me access the pain i’ve been running from. The pain of the broken hearted boy you described.

I’ve come to understand all my behaviors and trauma bonding relationships as “rebounds” from a broken hearted childhood since you made that post. I think back to all the times as a child i was alone with my pain, disappointed, scared, and angry. I talked with my sister about it some this week and she’s finally starting to understand me. She always says our parents “did the best they could” but like you wrote to me once we as children were the ones doing the best we could with them. I can tell she is frustrated, my mom asked her what she wanted for christmas and my sister said for her to go to therapy. She then said my mom tried to ask if they could go to family therapy, which seems like an attempt on my mothers part to evade the fact that she is the problem for lack of a nicer term. This brought up a memory I had long forgotten when I was discharged from the hospital as a suicidal teenager my mom took me to family therapy, just me and her, before i ever got my own therapy. As and adult and therapist now i see it for what it really was, an attempt for my mom to protect her ego and get a professional to identify me as the problem and not her. I can remember how awkward it was for me because my mom wanted to sugar coat everything and make it about her and i just wanted some attention from the therapist, she was a nice warm lady.

I wanted to share with you an experience i had earlier this evening while meditating. My roommate left around 10:30pm to take one of our friends to the psych hospital. She had cut herself severely for the second time in 2 months. I feel for this girl she has been through so much trauma it breaks my heart and brings tears to my eyes thinking about it. I prayed during my meditation and cried so much the floor was wet beneath me. None of the tears were for me tonight, strictly for others. I cried for my friends, my family, my clients. my coworkers, i thought of you as well and cried for all the pain you must have experienced to gain such wisdom. It was a good cry if ever there was one. I feel motivated to work even harder for myself so that i can be there for others. I have been thinking alot lately about how all beings in this universe are connected and how love is clearly the answer to all the worlds problems. What i couldn’t understand is how did things get this bad in the world? I just kept asking why. Why all the pain? the violence? where did it start? when did we lose our compassion as a race? I don’t understand why but i feel my purpose i’ve known but have feared to live, which is to heal my self and guide others to healing themselves. It seems obvious to me now, yet why do i forget so often? i’m not sure of any answers right now i just know the world needs my gifts.