Giving up on hopes and dreams…

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Being wounded doesn’t make me weak; it just means I have an injury and self-value dictates I tend to it . Andrew G. Wall.

It never dawned on me to consider giving up on my hopes and dreams. To be honest, I never really made a point of consciously sitting down to create any.  What I did was survive.

So I stop and I think about it. I realize I have had many hopes and dreams. Almost all of them I have had no control over. Like hoping that my sons are happy and successful. (That’s their life journey.) Hoping someone will like me just because I like them. Hoping I will have a successful career doing what I love because I want lots of money and want to ‘seen’ and more importantly, heard. Hopes and beliefs that some people are who they are not, and why aren’t they behaving in ways that suit my needs!?!

I am editing and commenting on a new book, Wounded – Mining the Silver Lining, by Andrew G. Wall. And it’s hitting me right between my eyes!  This is what I am beginning to learn and process.  And finding very challenging…

As I look at some of those hopes and dreams that didn’t came true and can no longer be, Andrew says they need to be grieved. And he’s right. How can I move on without acknowledging the wounds? Without grieving the wounds? I can’t. I haven’t. So, I remain angry, resentful, depressed, frustrated and afraid. I become a victim. I hate being a victim!

The friends who I thought were close, but aren’t. The career that never was, and likely will never be. The parents who might have accepted and approved of me for who I was, and didn’t. The parent I wished, prayed and hoped that I would be – and wasn’t. The person I strive so hard to be, and am not.

It’s one thing to tell myself to let all that go. It’s another to grieve the wounds. We don’t give ourselves permission to grieve them. It doesn’t even dawn on us that we can, and must. It doesn’t dawn on us that we can create new hopes, new dreams. Instead we judge those we think have wounded us. We judge ourselves for not being better, perfect, wiser. We blame. Why is that?!

I realize now, at least at a conscious level, that any hopes and dreams I have for anyone else, aren’t mine to have. I may believe I am coming from love, but only they can dream their dreams. Perhaps what I am really looking for is validation through them. I realize I have no control over them. Nor am I accepting and loving them fully for who they are…which of course, means I have a lot of healing to do in accepting and loving myself exactly as I am!

How can I get to wisdom until I do?

So, I process. I cry. I accept. I cry some more. And one day, soon, I will create new hopes and dreams, for myself – with the wisdom and love for Self that I learn along the way. I hope…

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