Hello,
My name is Jessica Amos.
I'm a mindfulness teacher and coach,
And I'm the founder of Stay With Yourself.
Today I want to talk to you about something that I get asked a good amount as a teacher.
One person recently very specifically asked me,
While on my healing journey,
How do I separate myself from my family of origin?
And I thought this was a really interesting question and I know this is a question I have asked myself as I've gone through my healing journey.
As we begin to heal,
As we begin to face maybe some of the things that have happened to us in our life and we want to start healing our mindsets and our beliefs about ourselves and begin to love ourselves more and feel belonging and feel seen and feel heard and feel understood,
That a lot of what comes up for us is that we didn't receive these things as children.
And throughout our lives,
We sort of carried this story and this feeling and this belief that our needs as young people weren't met.
And we want to start separating from our family of origin and our history and where we came from.
We want to leave it in the past.
So the question comes up,
How do I separate?
From my family of origin.
This is my answer to that.
It comes from something that I heard around how to heal from grief,
Which I think is really a similar topic.
It is,
You can't separate yourself out from your past.
Your past is a part of you.
It is a part of what has brought you exactly to this place here now.
We are not trying to erase the past or have it not exist or pretend that these things didn't happen.
We can't separate ourselves out from where we came from.
So just like with grief,
Grief can feel so big and it can feel like,
How am I ever going to move on from grief?
How am I ever going to move on from my history,
From my past?
And the answer is simple,
And I love it.
It's not that the grief goes away.
It's not that the history gets erased.
It's that we expand around it.
It's that we grow around it.
We grow in our capacity to hold it,
For it to exist inside of it,
For it to be a part of our experience of who we are,
Of our history,
Yes,
And of our present awareness.
Around how we want to be in the world and who we are choosing to be now.
So I like to think of it as a garden.
You begin to tend the garden around the grief or around your origin story,
And you expand,
You expand,
And you expand.
So maybe it doesn't get smaller,
But you get bigger.
Around it as you grow and you move out into the world and you explore who you are and you begin to express yourself and you begin to Live from your authentic self and speak your truth.
It's not that the story Gets smaller is that you grow around it and now you're able to hold You're able to hold all of it and I believe this with anything so whether it's the question about family of origin or grief or inner child healing work or anything else that's coming up for you,
It's that we expand our capacity to hold it and to grow around it.
And that's what it is,
The work of becoming whole,
Of not just becoming whole because you're already whole,
But embracing your wholeness.
And stepping into your wholeness,
You are belonging to yourself and really owning your story.
You are deciding what you do with it as well.
And I think that's a beautiful,
Beautiful thing that has helped me.
So that's the question that I want you to walk away with.
What are you holding inside of you that feels so big?
That you need to maybe grow and expand around and what would it look like to grow and expand your capacity to hold and invite all parts of yourself.
Back into yourself so that you're not separate,
But you're really embracing your wholeness,
Including where you come from and the things that have happened with that loving embrace of your beingness.
Thank you again for being here with me.
Until next time,
May you stay with yourself today and always.