Last Monday I visited a Reiki Master, Pamela, who shared some interesting feedback during our session.
As she made her way to my throat chakra, she asked what happened when I was 16 and 18. Nothing dramatic between the two ages came immediately to mind. So she asked me about my friends in high school. She felt it was connected to that.
I shared that I didn’t really feel like I had any real friends in high school. I wanted so desperately to be friends with everyone that I ended up not really being friends with anyone. And the few friendships I did have had substantial turmoil around them. It was a very frustrating and sad time for me, despite what most people that knew me then might think. I hated high school.
We went through a visioning exercise where she asked me to see myself in my old school…then one by one bring back the faces of those that I’d gone to school with. The faces of those I liked and that liked me, as well as those that didn’t. She told me to feel the anxiety…and I could. It stuck in my thought and made me catch my breath in a funny way.
Then she asked me to see those same people as adults. Many with children of their own that they are trying to care for. She asked that I recognize that they are doing the best they can as parents…and they did the best they could as children. One by one, Pam asked me to forgive each of them for the way they treated me…and how I felt. Then she asked me to forgive myself for not feeling like I fit in.
By the end of the exercise I had such a sense of relief…almost peace. I had no idea I was still carrying around that grief. Next she asked me about a time when I was 25.
It, of course, had to do with a boy and the fact that I didn’t feel like I’d handled a relationship very well. Again, she asked me to forgive myself. To recognize that I’d done the best I could at the time…that I’d made the best decisions I knew to make. To recognize that the relationship taught me how to love. Again, I felt a sense of relief I wasn’t expecting to feel.
She went on to say that I carry a lot of tension…a lot of emotion…in my throat chakra. There seem to be many old wounds that I’m still hanging onto….unable to speak of…unable to let go of. They are stuck. She told me to start singing and chanting. Anything to get my vocal cords vibrating so I can shake this “stuff” loose. She suggested a simple OM would help. Funny she suggested that…I can’t chant OM without it getting stuck in my throat. No kidding…the last part get stuck…always has. Guess she might be onto something.
When I told Princess Grace about my experience and the issues with my throat, she said she could also hear the weakness in my voice. And noticed that things would get stuck when I was speaking. I’d never thought of myself as someone who didn’t use her voice, but I suppose…I mean clearly there were emotions still trapped there that two different people were picking up on.
Ironically, this walk down memory lane about old high school friends has been a bit of a running theme as of late. Several of my horoscopes have introduced warnings that I’m struggling (yet again) with where I fit in….with who my friends really are…of questioning whether my tribe is still my tribe. The stars are encouraging me to step back and look at who I’ve surrounded myself with…and who I want to have by my side going forward. Warning that now is a time when some will be left behind.
I can feel that happening. It’s been an ongoing process since I retired, actually. Almost immediately, friendships started morphing. Some got closer while others started to fall away. It kinda feels a little like high school again, actually.
Here I sit as an adult, starting a new life, and some of the people that I thought I was closest to are nowhere to be found. No reason as to why. No fight to speak of. No argument to note. Just a newfound distance that can’t be overlooked. Maybe that’s why Pamela tapped into those old traumas…because my current circumstances very much reminds me of that time. A time when no matter how badly I wanted to be friends with someone, it just wasn’t working out.
In high school, I shouldered the blame for that. I thought there was something lacking in me. Some reason why I wasn’t good enough to be friends with someone.
Now I know it has nothing to do with me. I may have triggered something in that person that they can’t…or don’t know how…to deal with, but it has nothing to do with me. I’m not lacking…not insufficient in some way.
The challenge that I have to figure out how to deal with is to keep these new emotions from getting stuck in my throat…along with the old ones. Because no matter how much I know it’s not my fault, it still hurts my feelings. It still sucks to see the people you love replacing you with new people. It hurts to be purposefully left out.
But more than anything, it hurts to keep those emotions tucked away…locked up inside…a tangle of vocal cords and emotions…because as afraid as I am of a friendship ending, there’s a part of me that is even more afraid to speak the words out loud. To admit that it’s over…or at least on hiatus. That part is afraid that my admittance means I’ll lose other friends…that I’ll somehow be cut off out of people’s lives.
I need to realize that this is the Universe’s way of opening up space for new friendships…healthier relationships. To remove fear and judgement from my life. To embrace likeminded individuals as I continue my ascent to a healthier, happier lifestyle. And if that means others walk away, that’s their choice. That is indeed the path I’m on…and the challenge I’m facing…and silence is no longer an option.