Healing the War Inside Myself

I tried to claim to my journal that I don’t understand righteousness, but then I felt and saw that I do. Righteousness lives in me if I can undefend myself enough to see and acknowledge it. I can see ways righteousness owns me, if unchecked.

There are layers of impact seared into flesh and strewn across generations. I feel this in my bones. I say that I can’t comprehend all of the deaths, but my body carries whispers of stories I don’t remember and never heard. My cells remember tears shed with love and despair that still flow today. It’s a knowing just outside my periphery awareness that I had nightmares about as a child and taught myself not to dream.

My consciousness can’t hide in my own ignorance for long because my body and spirit know and remember. Depression and anxiety make so much sense to me when considering behaviors of traumatized humans carrying on over time with and without healing opportunities or proper resources.

My humble prayer of my lifetime is to heal my own heart as a small step towards healing that which sustains and necessitates war.

Ceasefire. However that could happen in the world, can I allow it to happen inside of me?

If we could stop firing guns and bombs at others, would we be able to stop the war within ourselves?

Does it happen the other way around too? Could we stop tearing into our own flesh, stop hardening and brutalizing our own hearts, and stop wreaking havoc in the wake of our own self-hatred? Would that change the instinct that exists in many to kill others who are not like us, who threaten our godly ideas of what is right and wrong, who took what we saw as ours, who started it, whose family harmed our family, whose very lives we were taught to devalue or condemn.

I don’t know if it’s possible. I cannot imagine a world I’ve never lived in, but I wonder what would help me understand how to try to imagine something better?

Pausing. Genuine listening. Healing the war inside myself.

That is what my inner guidance says.

Be with the parts of myself that I can’t accept. Hold hands with the part that can’t stop fighting. Lovingly hold the part that wants to kill or eradicate something. Hug the part that can’t ever forgive.

Am I outrageously naive or does my inner guidance offer value?

Be with the parts of me that other myself. Sit with the parts that judge myself. Listen to the plans those parts make to try to control myself and others.

Be patient but diligent with the ancient struggle to love myself. Keep my heart open. Feel all the reasons why. Own the extreme privilege to be able to have this opportunity to reflect from a safe place and within a resourced life.

Accept that this is my starting place at the trail to the base of the mountain. Start to imagine what small ways I can move forward loving myself through the inner wars and creating a pathway to something I’m still imagining for myself and this life.

This is the best I can do today. May I always find a better, clearer, kinder, more compassionate way tomorrow.