A very large onion...

Recently, I have felt like I have been ‘peeling the onion layers’ for so long that there couldn’t be much of the onion left to peel?!  I have shared before that my childhood, particularly my teenage years, was not ideal. Over the years, I recognised how the turmoil had impacted and continued to impact my life.  It initially became more apparent as I had children and they were growing up. Our relationship was so different from what I had had with my parents. There also came a point in our marriage where I had to question where we were and where we were going. I considered all these things even more as a teacher and head teacher, particularly when I was working with young people who were finding school a tricky place to be, and yes, I was considering my own children, as I worked with those young people. I fully accept that our four beautiful children were affected by our marriage splitting up and the possible impact now on our grandchildren. Our past informs decisions we make along the way and I know that my past fed into the success and subsequent ending of our marriage.  Would things have turned out differently had I done the work I now have? We will never know, and it isn’t helpful to stew about what might have been.  The driving force, as I personally heal, is that my healing can be passed on through future generations, helping them to heal too.  That is also why it is so important to me to work with others, supporting them through their story.  If we all work on our own healing, it will ripple out, throughout our families and into our wider families and communities. What a wonderful world it could be!
Every moment is an opportunity.  An opportunity for a new beginning. From the moment we take our first breath to the moment we take our last breath we can change.  There is so much science behind this. In schools, I share how we are programmed to survive, and how this can become a problem.  Our amygdala reacts to a situation, as if we are in mortal danger.  We experience ‘fight’, ‘flight’ or ‘freeze’.  This was, and can still be, very useful, but most of the time now it can work against us. Being negatively programmed can be exhausting and lead to stress, anxiety and illness. Learning to take a step back by taking that mindful breath/moment/minute/or more (!), we can notice that we were about to react and instead take time to consider other options and respond, as opposed to rect. The tools that I use daily, enables me to get to that point, but it takes practise! It’s like anything. We can’t run a marathon without putting in the miles, we can’t score a goal in the World cup without years of practising our ball skills and we definitely can’t play a concerto with a leading orchestra without thousands of hours of playing scales and exercises. So why do we expect to be able to be mindful just because we have read about it and dabbled for a few months? It is a lifelong skill that will need to be practised and used regularly, so that when we REALLY need it, it will be a natural response.
Going back to peeling the never-ending onion, I did peel quite a chunk this week! Throughout a large part of my life I have not had the healthiest relationship with food.  I have attempted several times to figure out exactly why, although I did have a fairly good idea. I have previously tapped with a colleague, but we didn’t hit the exact spot, then a few months ago I bought a book called ‘Tap, Taste, Heal’ by Marcella Friel.   I have scanned bits of the book now and again, but hadn’t looked properly at it till last week, when I came upon the chapter on ‘The Secret Wisdom of Sabotage’.  This chapter talked about how we have our self-identified ‘roles’ in life, with reasons and stories about who we are and why.  We might be ‘the good one’, ‘the bad one’, ‘the fat one’, ‘the thin one’, ‘the rebel’, ‘the crazy one’ and so on.  By now I am quite sure, your role will have popped into your head! I had a few!! I tapped on this, which seemed to start the ball rolling again.  I then had a session with a fellow practitioner (practitioners regularly get together to discuss, share and practise EFT/Tapping).  The session very quickly identified a meal when I had been asked to eat olives in a salad, when I was about 15years of age. This was a very vivid memory.  I was a ‘good eater’ but at that time in my life I HATED olives.  It was not so much the olives, but the controlling element, the adult involved and the ongoing situation at that time, that had been the main cause of distress.  As I tapped, we revisited parts of my life that I had buried for many years. WOW!  What a difference I felt, as we delved deeper. It seems that the more we deal with the past, the further back we go, and we can keep going (if we want to), until we are at peace. How does that sound to you?  The ‘lightness’ I have felt this week has been fantastic, even though I was quite unwell for a couple of days after the EFT session (it has been noted that this can happen when a big shift has occurred).   I am having another session in a few weeks and am looking forward to it.  It feels very liberating to be finally tackling, what I believe to be the core of my onion.