The earth’s history is in each of us. We breathe the air of our ancestors down to our first parents.
For some, it is anger, resulting in beating others in desperation to heal their own pain. Others drown their voice with food.
A few share in a beautiful design that lives on in fashion, architecture, movies, poetry, the beauty of the screen or behind the lens of a camera...
Many quiet the roar through sports, violent games of addiction, song, shopping or rocking of babies. All trying to conquer truth. While millions sit in shame, blame, guilt, punishing, pride or fear.
This connected me to what Oprah Winfrey said at the 2018 Golden Globes:
"What I know is speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we have."
But what if your voice is not heard? What if the emotions are stuck in your throat? Stuck in the fibers of your DNA and wrapped up in anger, addiction, disappointment or trauma?
Though I did not watch Oprah’s famous speech for the Golden Globes live, what happened for me, like millions of others was a deep reckoning within.
What I heard, what I learned and began to heal came through the forgiveness of the past. To help the past, to heal the desire to love where I came from, to be loved and love the voices of the thousands and thousands of men and women I know and admire from afar.
The truth in that moment for me affirmed that living our truth was living in forgiveness, in love and speaking without fear, in our truth.
You may have a different experience, but I have learned from the thousands of people I have coached, that truth is perspective and truth of the soul. Regardless of the truth it holds for others, it is the truth of those who experienced it.
This era we are ushering in is a new time and space where we are turning our attention to healing through voice, acceptance, and genealogy to find where we belong and connect in love.
Whether family or not our love for each other lives on forever in the things we do and say and in each breath we take.
This is our work now, friends. I feel healing comes from healing a personal history. To do that, we need to heal our family history.
Heal Our Family History
It begins at home where truth lurks often in lies, closets with old bones, stories untold, and voices not heard. The fact is it is forgiveness of those who turned the path, who wronged the innocent, who spoke to the negative voices too long in their minds and died addicted, angry, sad, lonely, but none are forgotten.
You see— our love for each other is what lives on forever. This speaks truth for generations and generations regardless of whatever we are capable of giving or receiving. It still lives in the muscle memory and DNA handed down from our ancestors.
It's what matters more than anything else.
That truth is who we are in our quiet moments. It's what we fight for and cry for.
Our truth is what we believe and perceive.
I believe that each of us knows who we are and why we're here deep down at our core - even if that truth seems hidden at times in our lives it is there. Truth seeks friendship, recognition and ultimately desires forgiveness and love to wash away the pain.
Peeling back the layers to remember, heal, seek, find and accept rather mask ourselves with roles, or layer ourselves with armor.
Learning to listen to the quiet whispers in our heart and not shut off our dreams because of fear peels back those layers and heals our histories.
I feel we are being called to step fully into love and accept our most authentic and truthful selves, and forgive.
This is why we're here.
This is the most important work we can ever do. It's about learning to be honest with ourselves about who we really are, where we come from and be who we are meant to be.
I do not know about you— but I feel every one of us has a reason for being here.
“What I know is speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we have.”
My truth is in loving my family and teaching others that the things they do in their home transfers out into the world. Mended, or broken. Wrong or right, it transfers.
Understand The Truth Of Your Family
I feel a collective pull uniting men and women to know their truth, to forgive the past and unapologetically rise up in truth. Are you ready to stand in your truth? Rise up and collectively, forgive, love and learn to heal your history and speak with your most authentic voice?
Tell me...
What are you doing now to change that?
What do you need to get that process moving?
I will share with you some tips I have used to help me in my process:
- Study my family history and start asking questions about who they are...
- Look to my parents. What are they like? What were they like?
- Look at my aunts, uncles, and cousins looking for duplication and where none existed.
- I asked myself if there was no duplication in behavior patterns, why was that?
- I sat with these things and looked at where I was stuck.
- Where were the shadows of anger, disappointment in what I felt inadequate in?
- Was I overcompensating?
- Where did I see this in my family?
- Who’s “fault” was it? - I stopped and listened until I heard a soft command to forgive. It was not my place to judge, but I could discern.
What I heard next was to forgive. Those who had wronged, been wronged and those that suffered were in turmoil and my personal judgment made the situation worse, not better.
Without my forgiveness, the chain of abuse, trauma, and sorrow could not be broken. Therefore, my family history past and present, could not be healed.
At this point, it came down to recognizing and forgiving anyone, including myself, for “what went wrong”. With this simple process, I have found my truth and more love in my heart for not only my family but also for those around me. More space for peace.
“What I know is speaking your truth is the most powerful tools we have.”
-Oprah Winfrey
May you find peace, truth, and love as we collectively pick up a pen, design, create or speak a truth that ends suicide, depression, anxiety, abuse and heal our family history. The tools are there, may we use them with grace and love.
Oxo
