For the last time, after twenty-four years of my life, I closed the door of my home. Gently, I touched the wood of the front porch and said a silent thank you.
This was the home I had worked hard to renovate with my soon to be ex-husband; the home into which my children had been born; the home which had been filled with the sounds of family parties; 18th’s; christenings and countless more happy occasions. It was the home where I had first set up my practice in the front room, until we had built my beautiful clinic in the back garden.
Sadly, this home had also been witness to so much of my pain. The nights where I hid behind furniture, or under the dining table. The nights I sat up the top of the garden in the shed crying till my heart could break. The nights I sat holding my young children’s hands as they lay sleeping, with silent tears rolling down my cheeks, asking for their forgiveness because I did not have the strength to leave.
Was my husband physically violent? No. Yet, his words would wound me so deeply I could sometimes hardly breath. I was always living in fear of what would upset him next, never feeling good enough. Often being told to ‘get over myself’. Sometimes I would walk around the neighbourhood, not knowing what to do, too ashamed to tell my family or friends.
So, what happened? One day I stood in my clinic and stamped my feet at God. I said, ‘I have had enough – I can no longer find the energy to work at love’. I want unconditional love in my life.’
For change to happen you have to be the change.
On reflection (hindsight is a wonderful thing), making that statement to God was my point of change. I began to realise that I was quite good at being the VICTIM in my life. Whilst I believed training in my therapies was bringing big changes to my life, I still hadn’t looked deep within at the childhood traumas that had in themselves, lead me into this relationship. The hardest road that any of us must walk is to be in a place of total honest and responsibility.
I now accept that he was only expressing his pain, and that I could not read it, I had gone into the marriage to fix him, a mistake made by many of us. Having learnt about attachment patterns I recognised he could not love easily with the pain from his childhood. Never marry somebody to change them!
Now I look at him with compassion and thanks, (yes sometimes I am still triggered). I choose to look at the great things I received from our relationship – especially my two amazing sons. I was part of a contract; it is now completed. I am healed – and yes, God did send me unconditional love in a new relationship.
Article by Krystyna Lawson
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