Such a powerful metaphor and it rang true with my own experience as well. I see a few reviews here that say it isn't for them, and I'd like to help with that by sharing my own experience, just in case it might help someone:
I grew up in my maternal grandparents' home. They were not very emotionally mature people, they had a very unhealthy relationship based on control and misogyny, my grandmother had Stockholm Syndrome and took a ton of abuse which then she forced onto her kids and grandkids, and everyone was at the mercy of my authoritarian grandfather. Additionally, there was conditional love and favoritism and worth based on whether or not you were "conceived/born out of wedlock". I was conceived out of wedlock, and my grandfather treated me as a lesser being because of it, on top of the fact that "female = lesser being" in his mind.
I grew up desperate for his love, but only really got his dissapproval. It carried over into my adult years and for a very long time, I was so angry at him. Angry at both my grandparents for traumatizing us all so severely and having no idea what they had done.
I did not want to accept it. I did mental math over and over and over for years trying to understand "why why why". As if my brain could make sense of a senseless situation and then I'd suddenly be okay.
I had breakdown after breakdown, sobbing and screaming into the void, which honesly felt GOOD. But I was also holding on to a narrative that gave me an ego gratification each time I "took laps" around the traumatic storyline of my life.
"They're MEAN and STUPID and HOW DARE THEY" - so on and so forth.
And you know, sometimes you have to do that, but if your EARNEST INTENTION is to heal from it, then one day, you'll wake up and realize that you've trapped yourself in an endless loop, and it won't feel great anymore. It doesn't mean you're suddenly okay with happened to you - its more like, you realize you've gone up to the buffet 100000000000 times and gotten the same food each time and what was delicious before now tastes like crap and you don't want it anymore.
The more I listened to meditations like this, the more the message sunk in that what I experienced at the hands of my abusive grandparents made me MORE loving, made me MORE capable of giving and receiving love, made me MORE aware of what cruelty and suffering in the human race was, and how I could be a generator of love to the whole world.
We in the west have an Instant Gratification mindset. We want healing NOW, not later. We want proof NOW, not later. If it doesn't work NOW, then it "must be BS" - according to the instant gratification mindset. Healing takes time. But it will take MUCH LESS TIME if you get out of your own way [read: stop creating a narrative to get lost in] - just let yourself cry, let yourself sob until you shake, let yourself process everything that's been repressed inside of you.
There was a time where I didn't want to hear anyone talking about my grandfather in a positive way. My cousins + sister remember the sounds of my grandmother's bracelets jangling around on her wrists being a pleasant sound that reminded them of her sweetness, but I remember those sounds as the sounds of her arms getting into position to strike me and beat me and hurt me.
I didn't want to remember my grandparents as ANYTHING but unredeemable monsters.
But I had trapped myself in that narrative, which meant I was gonna be stuck there for a long time.
But an earnest intention to heal is POWERFUL and was always watching out for me, despite my trauma brain's need to "play the tape" every day.
My earnest intention to heal nudged me constantly in the direction of healing, not stuckness. And one day, just like the buffet food started to taste nasty, the tape started to make no sense to keep watching.
I was recently informed about a study that was done about wild dogs living in/around the Chernobyl meltdown site. They studied their DNA and found that they have radiation-resistant cells now, thanks to their exposure.
That's US, y'all! What we were exposed to made us more resilient than we know! And that's gonna get us through so much crap, it's gonna make us better at being kind to the world and everyone in it!
It's all gonna be okay.
Feel what you need to feel, process what needs to come up, I promise you aren't alone - I am thinking of you, I am sending you love, I believe in you, and you're way more powerful than you realize!
Okay, thank you for letting me write a wall of text.
Let the fecal matter flake off your faces, fam โค๏ธ
