I am teaching a class I call “Discovering Your Authentic Self”. In the first class session I talk about how the self-concept develops so we know from where the false self comes. I wrote a little story to emphasize how we accept some ideas of self that are not true. I emailed the story to my students this morning. And then I thought about you, my blog readers. I am giving you the story too, right here.

The Story

A friend and I were having coffee together. She started telling me about how sad she was feeling. I asked if she knew why she was feeling sad. She said that she was just so tired of feeling loss. She said that whenever she meets someone in her life and forms a relationship, the relationship ends with them leaving her. “They always leave me, just when I start to love them,” she said.

I asked her to think back in her life to all of these kinds of losses. She wasn’t talking about people dying and leaving her, but people who just up and left her, never to return. She started telling me of this romance or that, of this friendship or that and even down to a dog who ran away. “None of them really loved me or they would have stayed,” she said.

I asked her to go way back in time in her life to the very first person whom she loved that left her. I could see the wheels turning as she drifted back in her life. I sipped my coffee and waited. Then I saw the tears appear. I knew she found that first person.

She started to speak and could barely talk through her tears. “It was my daddy,” she whispered. She started to shake a little as she just stared down at the table. She was reaching the bottom of the deep well of her life long sadness; she had been abandoned by her father.

She started telling me her story. When she was a toddler her daddy was her best friend. He took her everywhere with him, in the car, being pulled in a wagon to the neighborhood store, to the park, just everywhere. Then daddy started to change. He started hurting her mommy. She was confused. How can this wonderful man whom I adore do such horrible things to my mommy? She went on with her story. “And then one day grandpa came, helped my mommy pack our bags and off we went away from my home and my daddy. I thought daddy would come to see me, but he didn’t. He came maybe once or twice in 2 or 3 years and then he was gone for good, never to return.” She started to think how this event had shadowed all of the loves in her life. “Everyone I love has abandoned me. I get to the point of loving them so much and then they just leave. Why?” she yelled. “Am I such a bad person that no one wants me? If my daddy didn’t even want me then how can anyone else want me?” And there it was, her answer.

I asked her to think of all of the people who love her who have not left her, the ones who have stayed, who have remained true to her. She was startled by the question. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. Then she started to count and as she counted the numbers got higher and higher of all the people in her life who had loved her and still do love her. She looked at me with bright eyes and a smiling face and said “There are so many!!”

I asked, “Are there more who have loved you than who have left you?”  “YES, oh yes, there are!!” she shouted with joy. “My life is full of people who have loved me and still do. I never really saw it before.” I told her to always remember this moment, how deeply loved she really is and to bring that love into her heart. She is loveable and now she knows it.

Put all of your attention on the love in your life, on the goodness in your life and those hurts and pains of the past will slowly drift away from your present. Remember wherever you put your attention that is where your energy goes.

Until next time, love, connect, transform.