Letter to the past
Dear ex,
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for all the lessons I have learned because of who you are. In some of those lessons, you were an example and I was able to learn from you. But in recent years, you have helped me grow because you showed me time and time again how not to do things. By giving me such clear examples and making the consequences of that kind of behavior so clear to me, you encouraged me to continue to explore my own identity as a woman and mother.
Situation after situation, I was presented with a mirror image of what unhealthy, toxic patterns do to someone. Both to the person who has such patterns and to the people around them. All these insights together have greatly increased my knowledge of trauma and how it manifests itself and affects a person's personality, behavior, and physical and emotional health. The more knowledge I gained, the more I was able to step out of my judgments and let go of the idea that others MUST change.
After all, it's not about the other person. I can't create life for you or my children; I can only create my own life and help create the conditions for someone else's life. No matter how dear someone is or ever was to me, I can't bring about change.
What I can do is take ownership of myself and my behavior. And you have invited me to do so time and time again through your inability to do so. Every time something happened that brought up negative emotions in me, I started to examine my story behind those emotions.
By asking questions like these, so much has become clear to me time and time again, and I have been able to seize opportunity after opportunity to let go and embrace my growth. Sometimes by adjusting my view of you to a much more realistic image than the one I had because of my love for you. Sometimes by adjusting my expectations of others or myself, because the benchmark I was using was not healthy.
Sometimes I assumed behaviors that I considered completely normal, but which were actually my qualities and therefore above average, or which stemmed from survival mechanisms and were therefore not healthy to use as a normal point of reference. Realizing these mechanisms in particular immediately brought so much more liberation. Such insights only require a different choice, and the rest then follows naturally.
By realizing that I was doing something out of survival, to keep myself alive, to keep myself and my children safe, or to keep myself going, even though that is no longer necessary NOW, it gave me the space to choose emotions such as 'I am safe!', 'I no longer need to keep talking to be safe, I am safe even without talking!', 'I have the right to my own healthy boundaries!', 'I am allowed to enforce my boundaries!' or 'Others do this too, so why shouldn't I be able to? I can do this too!'.
The freedom that has come with this is life-changing, both for me and for my loved ones. I have changed from a woman who was afraid to live and didn't dare to be visible into a woman who:
So thank you, dear ex, for helping me grow. For showing me what is not good and what I can change to create different, better results for myself and my children from now on.
Thank you for showing me that I am the creator of MY life and that YOU can live YOUR life and have YOUR story, and that this does not have to make any difference to what IS in MY life and that of the children. By realizing more and more that you can have your story and that I can still live my own life on my terms, it gives us both space to be ourselves and value each other.
It no longer matters what story you need to keep yourself going and survive. Even if that story so obviously ignores the facts.
That is acceptable, if it is necessary for you. It is not up to me to determine HOW your path of growth should proceed and what you need to achieve that. I can leave that to God and the Universe. After all, they are there for all of us and they do not judge. They allow us all to follow the paths we choose for ourselves and support us regardless of how good or bad the choices we make are. They understand better than anyone the value of choices and experiences and how they can shape us as human beings. And they know best what each of us needs NOW and in what order.
For years now, that order has clearly no longer been the same. Our paths may diverge and take different courses. We are allowed to grow in the way that suits our life lessons and life contracts and the desires of each person's soul. And sometimes we have been able to do that by continuing to mirror each other, even after the relationship, where we have opportunities to grow further.
So far
However, due to the growth I have experienced in 2019 through our contact moments, I feel that our time as each other's teachers is over. You have nothing more to teach me, and I can now let you go even further and allow you to go your own way.
I can now focus on remnants of 'old pains' from my childhood and have the opportunity to further cleanse elements that limit my BEING and energy. I already have the reassurance that I don't have to remember everything for that. I can fully concentrate on releasing stuck energies and limiting beliefs.
I am so grateful for that, that I still have that opportunity. I already feel that there is much more freedom to be gained and I look forward to going through this phase of growth and growing pains. It will enable me to live with even more love, trust, happiness, peace, vitality, and abundance. And the more I achieve that, the more I can give to my children and the more I can inspire them and others.
So thank you for all the pain, sadness, powerlessness, fear, frustration, and helplessness. They have shown me the way to become the woman I am today. I am so incredibly proud of myself. I have achieved so much. So much more than I ever dared to dream. But I also know that there is so much more hidden within me that is yet to blossom.
So thank you for everything.
I continue on my path of growth, my path of revolution, with growing confidence and faith. I wish for you, too, to experience the security, confidence, and joy that are possible on a path of growth. Good luck.
Additional tips for this blog
It can be very helpful to write a letter to someone who has hurt or caused you pain in the past. The above is my farewell letter to one of my exes. It is not the first time I have written him a letter, but it is the first time I have shared such a letter.
What I want to help you realize with this letter is that you and your emotions are separate from others. As soon as you experience negative emotions such as pain, sadness, powerlessness, frustration, anger, helplessness, and incomprehension, your Inner Compass sends you a signal that YOU can do something about the situation. Sometimes this involves taking different action, but often it involves inner work. Work in which you can turn inward and ask yourself all kinds of questions that will help you:
So even if you experience your own or someone else's 'growth' as harmful, a setback, deterioration, etc., that growth may still fit perfectly into the Divine Plan for you or that other person.
Are you going to seize your opportunities?
Therefore, try to let go of judgments about a situation or person and focus entirely on the opportunities in a situation: What can you change NOW?
Are you perhaps giving away more power by allowing yourself to be affected? Could you look at the situation differently, so that you are less affected by it or no longer affected at all?
Are there perhaps others that you can use to look at yourself, the other person, or the situation?
And what words do you use when you talk about it, and what emotions do you use when you do? What are you actually creating for yourself and your future in those moments?
After all, everything you give attention to WITH EMOTION grows. So will you remain stuck in your frustration, pain, anger, or powerlessness, or will you also shift your thinking and speaking to how you WOULD like to see things?
And what actions do you show? Do you behave the way you would like to? Or would you like to do things differently? What step could you take today to achieve that?
These types of questions are ideal to ask in a letter to someone from your past who has caused you 'pain'. By writing down your answers, you may gain insights that have a healing effect, allowing you to let go of some of your pain WITHOUT the other person having to do or say anything.
A letter to the past can therefore help you to forgive yourself for everything that has happened in your life and give you a sense of liberation and redemption.
So who are you going to write your letter to?
This letter can contain anything you want, because you are not going to share it with anyone else. You are doing this for yourself. By writing this letter, you are giving yourself the opportunity to release stuck energies and pains and to clear them away a little more.
I wish you the best of luck with it.
