What are you in Need of Remembering?
What I’m discovering is that this journey of life is ultimately about remembering…remembering who I was before life cut off my voice, my gifts, my power and my light. It has nothing to do with becoming someone new. Here’s what I learned about self-remembering.
I’ve been a seeker all my adult life and a pretty deep seeker over the last seven years. I had thought that all this seeking was to be someone I’ve never been before as if I was seeking out a new me, someone who wasn’t there before.
Isn’t that what the whole self-improvement movement has been about? To become someone new and improved. That’s the idea I had bought into.
We came into this earth world with an agreement to forget. Can you imagine how overwhelming it would be if we were to remember everything all at once?
There is also the process of forgetting as we move out of childhood. Over and over, experience after experience we forget a little more of our true nature.
Before adulthood, before peers and teachers and parents who were just doing things the only way they knew how to do (no blame here), before taking on the roles of wife and mother, before responsibility, obligations, guilt, shame, fears, traumas — all I knew how to be was ME. There was no cloaking myself.
Now I find myself at the age of 50, almost an empty-nester, rediscovering activities I used to engage in as a child. Activities, that at some point my adult-self decided were not important enough, that they were superfluous, silly, a waste of time. Yes, I did some of them alongside my kids when they were little but then it was to be a good parent. It wasn’t for me.
Who knew at 50 I’d be…
Brushing paint on paper with nothing in mind to paint.
Dancing without caring if others think I’m good or not.
Befriending the piano keys, relearning chords and beats.
Writing in my journal my innermost secrets, no key now needed.
All led by a deep desire, a nudge over and over from within, to just create…make art…no product to be graded or judged.
I’m remembering that I am a creative being. We all are creative beings. It’s the force that runs through each and every one of us, through all of life.
It was as if life pulled down the shades. It is of course all part of the process of living. We go to sleep. Then for some of us there is a sudden and jolting wake-up call. For others it is more subtle and over time.
You see we all are just remembering the parts of us that were lost in grown-up land.
This is the land where daydreaming was frowned upon. Where the end result was praised more than the process itself. Where left-brain activities such as math, research papers and spelling were emphasized much more than right brain activities such as art, pretend play, movement and creative writing.
Comments by peers, well-meaning teachers and parents, taken in by a sensitive child such as myself, did not help me from shutting down my artistic/creative self.
So now I am in a process of unraveling and undoing. I am ultimately remembering.
What are you being called to remember right now?
Your voice?
Your sexy side?
Your intuitive self?
Your power?
Your feisty side?
Your wildness?
Your wise self?
Your playful, fun-loving self?
Your rebellious self?
A practice I’ve been guided towards for this remembering journey is to return back to the activities that I enjoyed as a child before I decided that I was too grown up to engage in such nonsense. I’ve returned back to painting like a did as a Kindergartner and the piano, which as I became a busy teenager became a chore so I quit. I’ve returned back to meandering under the trees whose branches I loved to climb and play house under for hours, lost to time. I swing. I cartwheel. I twirl. I dance every chance I get. I make loud noises. I take long baths.
Some of these sound silly? To me these playful activities are a most important form of self-care, of self-love. They return me back to my essential nature. They open my creative flow. They make me remember what life is really all about…joy and love.
I’m finding remnants of myself that are deeply familiar but so covered in cobwebs, dust and grime caused by years of shame and not good enough thinking, that they have to be coaxed out gently and compassionately.
I find myself bowed in grief for losing these parts of me for so long.
I’m finding parts of me that I never knew were there — the part of me that can sit and daydream or listen to the same song over and over, lost in the melody and words.
As I bring paintbrush to a primary color of tempera paint (remember the smell?) I do feel silly at first. My inner critic is more than willing to stand behind me, judging my abstract images harshly. So I thank her and send her to the end of the room, telling her I’ve got it from here.
As I type words to the screen I’m aware of my shoulders tightening, my throat locking up and I remember once again how I used to write as a child, for the pure joy of it. I put aside the editor self and drop into my safe space, letting the words pour forth like an open faucet.
Step by step, risk after risk something in me unravels, comes undone. Piece by piece, word by word, stroke by stoke I am set free.
All I have to do is remember.
The Divine helps me. My angels guiding my fingers to the next word, my body to the beat.
I make a promise now to stop forgetting. The remembering is just too much fun. I desire to remember all of me.
It’s time to stop trying to become someone you are not.
Selfies and videos are not needed for this remembering…just a willingness to follow those nudges, explore and be open.
Reengaging in our lost loves of childhood is just one way to remember our true nature. There are many other paths.
Article originally posted on medium.com