“The Wizard of Oz”, is an enticing and long lasting story that encapsulates so much about life. Join me in a series of weekly blogs that root themselves in the Zen of this story while you grasp a greater understanding of you and your relationship to your soul’s journey. Each week a different aspect of the relationship this tale has with interpersonal and emotional issues will be delved into.
Have you ever felt like you wanted to run away? Run from your family of origin, run from your work, run from the internal voices that push you to try harder, do better or even to give up?
That is what Dorothy did at the very beginning of her journey into her Dark Night of the Soul, as she ran from her Auntie’s house with the definitive hope that someplace has got to be better than the place she has found herself in.
What is it that makes us feel that the home we know is no place for us to be. What pushes us to run away in the hope that another path or another facsimile of a home will take away the internal pain we are running from?
In the home where abuse was experienced by you as a child, no matter what type of abuse you experienced, I am sure you thought that as soon as you got out of there all the wounds would heal—you would finally find safety. Then, somewhere along the path of life, you realize that the haunting moments of that home, cannot simply be wiped out because of your leave-taking.
The emotional and physical scarring that took place erupts throughout your life looking like anger, fear or with you embodying the very role you ran from, the abuser. The eruption is like a volcano that lays dormant for years, building its internal steam until it erupts, at first a little bit of the eruption takes place and then there is an internal trigger that may come from left field yet affects your very being.
In trying to understand why this is happening to you, at this time in your life, you might begin to look around taking note of the people around you, what your professional life is like, who you have relationships with and how you are living.
- Are there any parts of your life’s baskets that remind you of the home of your youth?
- Does your current environment feel as if it is out of control?
- Are you out of control?
Time to take a breath. Be mindful that each breath you take allows you to feel “you” and begin the journey to the internal home that you want to create. You have the ability to create that sense of safety and security when you dialogue with you, the adult, and you, the child.
The child that lives deep inside of you and has never left you.
Once you begin this dialogue between these two very integral parts of you, the sense of loss, confusion and angst will begin to have a voice.
Once you meet the voice you will be on your way to the ownership of wearing the ruby slippers.
Once you try them on, feeling their power, the abuse of the past will not need to continue to erupt in the present.
