Being Authentic When I Don't Know Who I Am

I remember back to the early days of beginning healing as a male child abuse survivor.  For me, my entire life was turned upside down as the result of being paralyzed from a Conversion Disorder.  Now, Conversion Disorder has been renamed to Functional Neurological Disorder.

Back to the topic though...

At the time, I thought I had life figured out.  I thought I knew what my career path was.  Each year, I listed my top goals for the next year, two years, five years, 20 years, and so on and so forth.  I had my job that took me from early morning to late at night almost 7 days a week.

All of this was who I thought I was.  It was my identity and I thought I was being authentic.  Yet, when you're losing control of every physical part of your body and you start seeing that final white light as you're body is leaving this world, it tends to slap you pretty hard, waking you up to see more than you see in that moment.

I had buried so much...

This moment brought me front and center to all that I didn't know about myself but I thought I knew.  I had so buried all of the stuff that happened to me because it was horrible.  It was too horrible to see or even think about or even allow myself the remotest of connections.

As I began to heal, I began to see more of the true side of myself, the authentic side.  It was parts that I didn't even realize existed, but they were there.  It was parts that quite surprised me.

Even as I began to heal and start to discover what being authentic meant for my life, I realized that I had just reached the tip of the iceberg.  There was so much more for me to discover.  There was so much more that I had no way to see.  It all seemed like a fog and a mystery, but beyond that point, it was who I was.

I've gone through some tremendous healing work connecting not just my mind in healing, but the physical body as well.  What I have found is that as much as I thought I healed and discovered, there was much more than I could even see.

What we cannot see in this moment...

Being authentic is in my mind about learning to let go and become aware of that which we cannot see in this moment.  It is allowing myself to go further, grow in awareness and consciousness so that I can know myself from deep within.  It is about learning to connect to the deepest parts of my body, including the pain so that I can regain all those parts and discover more of myself.

As I continue to progress in my healing, I'm learning that the more I discover, the more I realize that further possibility exists.  What I know today about being authentic is no where near what I will probably know tomorrow or the next day.

There is so much out there that I have found.  There is much more to myself that I never realized.  Along with all the pains and experiences in life, I'm learning how to become more authentic.  For as I am becoming authentic, it is then that I truly discover what authenticity means.

We have to reach further for who we are, past all the horrible stuff that happened.  We don't need to ignore, neglect, or numb to all these things, but we need to squeeze them so hard that they have no life left in them.  It is then that we reclaim the power from them enabling us to being more authentic in our own life.

I realize that this may sound like new age philosophy or mumble jumble, but I can tell you from healing in my own life, this is at the heart of what propelled me forward.  It took me out of the depths of despair and into moments that I never could imagine existed.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2017 by Don Shetterly

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