#264 It's happening for me. A concept that's hard to accept.

When I first heard the phrase "it's happening for me", it threw me for a loop. I definitely wasn't ready to accept this at the time. As a matter of fact, back in 2006, I was at church with a friend and she told me that one day I would look back and be grateful for this. I wanted to tell her where to go. I was in a terrible situation and it was going to lead to bankruptcy.

When I talk about the "it" that is happening for me, I'm talking about some serious stuff - vision loss that led to me losing my drivers license and career that I loved. There were many major events in life that reached this level of personal trauma and I was starting to feel a resentment about the world. 

It's happening for you - my first response was:

"Are you for real? You've got to be nuts."

After all, I wouldn't wish those things on my worst enemy. Think about something in your own life that you think is awful, how does it sit with you that it is happening for you and not to you. 

It's a heavy concept and not one that I bought into easily.

It took me more than a decade to begin to see that those dark nights of the soul were really a school of hard knocks. The thing about the school of hard knocks is that if you graduate from there, you learn some powerful lessons that stick with you for life.

There's this podcast that I enjoy listening to these days. These two young men had terrible conditions in their youth that lead to drugs and incarceration. They've taken what they have learned in those situations supplemented by school and turned it into a tool for changing people's lives. It's quite remarkable to watch. I feel inspired listening to others who have taken these situations and turned them around. That's one thing that I find helpful.

People ask me, how do you do this? How do you take something like vision loss and get to a place where you see it from another perspective.  I can only share what has worked for me. I thought the world was against me - I said all the things like "I must have done something terrible in another life". I had no idea what was happening but I couldn't take any more of it. So I reached out for help. 

First with a lovely therapist called Andrea. She said to me after a half dozen sessions "I can't wait to read what you write." I am sitting there covered in mascara and snot and she is talking about me writing. I thought she was nuts. 

Then there was grief counselling - losing your license at a young age is terrible; you're not only losing your ability to drive but you're losing your independence and your connections to peers. People who don't drive don't get invited to social events because they will need a drive. I was an ultra independent woman who lived life on the edge of experiences - losing my license was like aging. It forced me to get sedentary. I hated it. But staying in that place of resentment wasn't helping me. I needed to grieve. 

Then I moved to EMDR which is a modality that works well with folks who have layers of trauma in their lives. I noticed changes immediately when I started practicing with Tracy. This stuff is amazing. I am fortunate to have found these people. Sometimes the counselor didn't charge me in the early days - I had no money but I was so eager for relief.

I got real curious about the concept "it's happening for you". All of those bad experiences have enriched my life in ways that I could never have imagined. It has allowed me to develop empathy. For four years I took a bus to university in my forties. There was a woman on the bus who supported a disabled spouse and I never would have met her in my business jet-setting life. She taught me so much about how to stay positive in life. 

There's no sense talking about "would you change anything". I can't. What I can do is reframe it and doing so has helped me to get to this place. If going back means that I have to give up any of what I do today - I choose to stay here. I'll manage with the rest. 

It isn't easy. People are going through some terrible things. I don't profess to understand it all. I do know that this notion of "it happened for you" keeps me sane.