Us Aussies are famous for our sheds and the stuff we shove in them. The seventh hammer we picked up at a garage sale, the second hand toolkit that has the really cool thingamajig we’ve wanted for ages, and let’s not forget when Uncle Dave gave us the four thousand nuts and bolts that ended up all over the floor when the dog ran in with the tennis ball and knocked the open container over…. You get the drift – we like stuff in our sheds!
Same thing applies to the Pandora’s box that you’ve shoved so far into the back corner of your portable shed (yourself), that it’s collected so much dust that not even the industrial strength leaf blower hanging in your actual shed, could clean it up. Emotions that haven’t been processed and released, grief that is stuck, past hurts that haven’t healed and let’s not forget the cost of the coping mechanisms we develop when we don’t heal the source of our stuff.
My Pandora’s box was so big, the weight of it alone was enough to almost kill me. Decades of unresolved pain and grief, which started with the sexual abuse I endured as a young child. The secrets held within both sides of my family that were screamed into the silence of day to day life, of all the stuff we weren’t ‘allowed’ to talk about. Then there was the first job where I ended up nearly being raped. My list goes on, suffice to say the cumulative effect of all my unresolved stuff would have sunk the Titanic.
I told my younger self that I was in control, that I had survived, what more could I ask for? Turns out a damn lot more. Here’s the catch though – to have the great romance, to have lasting happiness, joy, calm, peace in my relationships I first needed to find that within the greatest and most important relationship there is – the one with myself. That also meant finding the toughest, thickest, strongest pair of cleaning gloves, taking a deep deep breath and lifting the lid on my Pandora’s box to start facing my stuff to bring it up and out so I didn’t keep carrying it. Also, so I didn’t keep vomiting my stuff (unwittingly) on others – usually the people I cared about the most.
This is the power of what your Pandora’s box can hold. Remember this though peeps – if you feel grief, trauma, pain, disconnection, resentment etc. you can also feel love, joy, peace, acceptance and calm. Keep sitting on the lid of your Pandora’s Box though and all you are gonna get is a sore backside and more of the same pain, showing up in various ways throughout your life. As always the choice is yours…
Till the next blog, take care of yourselves blossoms.