Bringing the family up to date

I’m currently in the process of writing a letter to my family that still lives back in my birth state of Alabama. My purpose for writing the letter is to tell them about this blog and the work I do. To do that though, I’ve got quite a lot of explaining to do because while I do love my family very much, they honestly know very little about me. They see me about once every two to four years for a couple of days at the holidays and that’s it. For most of them, that translates to about three hours at our Christmas dinner. As I’m not the most chatty person when it comes to talking about myself, especially in a house full of mostly strangers (aka extended family members), the amount of information they receive on my life during a visit is very minimal.

I wasn’t even really aware of how little they knew about me until 4 years ago when I took my partner home to meet them for the first time. He knows me like no one else on the planet. After spending some time with them during our visit, on the way home he told me “They don’t know you at all.” It made me laugh because of course they knew me, they’ve known me all my life. In talking with him further on that though I realized that he was correct. For so many years I’ve judged them and chose not to disclose anything about my life with them because it was too foreign to them and they wouldn’t be interested or it would be too far out of their comfort/belief zone for them to care. I realized that I have become a stranger to my own family. I want to correct that and give them the choice to know me more or to continue being in the dark rather than me deciding for them.

By choosing to write this blog I’m choosing to share a great deal of information about myself with anyone who reads it. To bring some of the messages forward and have them make contextual sense, I have to include information about my work, my personal life and my spiritual path to this point. I can’t open myself to the world that way and only exclude my family. I can’t fully live an authentic life and have it be a secret to only those who supported and nurtured me as a child. I want to be able to be open and honest with them about my entire life but clearly that is going to take some explaining. I want to release my fear of their judgment of me and my life and work.

I tell you this because that letter is my primary focus for the moment. The blog entries may be a little slow this week while I finish that letter but I have a few things that I’ve written in the past that I’ll be posting to continue this online dialogue. To bring some of the deeper messages forward I have to continue the process of healing those splintered parts of my personality. I have to become more whole and live more authentically so that my energy isn’t being used to maintain false personalities. Maintaining lies requires energy because you have to remember what you have and have not told the people who only know a small part of you. I have to let everyone see me for all that I am and let them chose to continue to have me in their lives or not because of it.

If you looked at your life, how many versions of you would you say there are out in the world? Do your work associates know you one way, your friends another, your family another and your partner still another? Do any of those align fully with who you really are? Is there any person that knows everything about you? For every false personality that we create that way, we have to spend our energy to maintain that. We have to filter the information to different people based upon what they know about us so that we can keep the façade going. Lies require energy, truth is free.

For me to do all that I am committing to doing at a deep spiritual level, I have to call all my scattered energies back in and just “Be”. Secrets divide us. Truth unites us. Once I tear down these few remaining false personalities and rid my life of secrets, I’ll have more energy available to build a stronger container to hold more of my authentic self. My authentic self is that part of me which holds all the wisdom and the full awareness of my Oneness with all that is. That part holds the deeper truths which I am now ready to share with those who chose to listen.

I hope you’ll stay with me and share your thoughts on this journey. The responses I’ve gotten from several of my clients thus far have been amazing. I’ve gotten some requests for areas that they would like to hear more information on regarding my background and my journey to this point. I’m happy to share that and much more as soon as I finish my family letter. It shouldn’t take me much longer and they’re the last group I have to share this blog with. Thank you for staying with me this far. I look forward to our journey together. It’s going to be amazing.