Let Go and Be Free
Discover tips on self-healing, overcome a dysfunctional childhood and find happiness.
Are you hard on yourself? Are you struggling with your journey? Do you wish that all of the hardships would end?
At the time that I am writing this, more than 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment due to quarantine orders from the Coronavirus. People are suffering. I hope, and I pray that when you read this, there will be better news. My little time capsule is just a floating bottle in a massive ocean.
I woke up feeling scared. I hadn’t slept well the night before and needed to be at my friend’s house hours before the sun rose. I had somehow agreed to run the Philadelphia marathon. Two years earlier, a simple question had put me on the road to my first marathon. A friend and his wife asked my wife and me: “Would you like our old treadmill?”
The last time I had run more than a mile was back in high school.
I’m now going into the seventh week of working from home due to the Coronavirus pandemic, and I miss human interaction with those outside my family. Most of my days are spent with my kids and wife, and our connections with non-family members are mostly through the phone and Zoom conference calls. We also spend time talking with our neighbors, but I miss some of the little things: Calling a friend up and making plans to have lunch or dinner together, for example.
“No man is an island” is a famous quote by John Donne.
Do you like yourself? Do you love yourself? Are you happy with who you are?
These basic questions might dredge up lots of negative memories for you if you grew up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family.
When the focus is on the addiction in the family, everyone is swirling around trying just to stay afloat. Bad behaviors that we learned from those in our alcoholic family might have stayed with us through adulthood.
Take this pill. Go on this diet. Order this tonic to regrow hair. Get this Botox shot. The list goes on and on.
In America, there are a lot of quick fixes being offered to people. From the ones I mentioned above to “get rich” infomercials that are pyramid schemes, everyone is trying to sell their “easy three-step plan” to solve all your problems.
My family and I have been sheltering at home for weeks now due to the Coronavirus pandemic. I’m tired of being stressed out about it. I’ve written an article about my grief of all that we’ve lost, but right now, we learned on the local news that we might need to continue sheltering at home for a few more weeks. No one knows for sure.
I know that when I push too hard and try to make things go my way, that’s when things usually fall apart. I’ve tried to use sheer willpower to make things change the way I want. But there’s a trap in that. The harder we push, the harder it is to be free. There’s a fine line between actively doing good and letting go.
Adult Children of Alcoholics tend to try to control things and make them go their way.
Many of us have been through hard times as children and maybe have seen and experienced things that we’re ashamed to admit. Guilt, fear, anger, confusion, and anxiety are all bundled into some memories of our past.
The road ahead is long and unknown. We don’t know if we have days, weeks, years, or decades left in our lives. There’s no way to know.
All my life, I’ve tried to fit in and be accepted by people. As a kid, I often thought that I must have missed out on the class at school that taught you what to do to be normal.
I didn’t like sports growing up but liked to study and read. I daydreamed about far off fantasy places that I had made up.
We often get many platitudes in life and nice sound bites such as “just do it” or “be true to yourself,” but there’s often not a lot of concrete advice on how to actually do the work that needs to get done to get from point A to point B.
Many “experts” have written volumes to help teach you what to do when to do it, and still, people suffer and struggle.
