Too Powerful to Partner.
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A Marianne Williamson quotation has stuck with me from the day I first read it. It has now become the foundation for my healing journey. My mantra of sorts. It is what I aspire to become. It is who I hope to be.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.” ~Marianne Williamson
I’ve healed from a childhood that was unimaginable for most. I know a worthiness now that fills my world with hope, love, laughter and a light that I did not know existed.
Still, after all that work, there is a whisper inside of me: What if you become too powerful to connect?
I hear the whisper. I know it is there. I acknowledge it, and every single day I try to make peace with it, calm it, soothe it, bring it the quiet knowing that this is not what the Divine intends for me.
Yet my solitary existence is a constant reminder and a sliver of doubt.
Since I was a child, I’ve been able to see people’s pain. It is like they wear a big banner visible only to my eyes: “This is where it hurts. Do not touch.”
Yet, as I get close to them, my open, nurturing, healing heart calls them to share their pain with me.
“This is where it hurts,” they say. “See me, hear me, love me,” they say. Then they add, “Please, please help me make the pain stop the way you did yours.”
I did make my pain stop, but there was no easy way, there was no magic pill, and it was my pain and my pain alone for which I held the cure. The cure was not in another person.
I spent four years in a solitary battle between me and me. Healing is not a team sport. I did it alone and it was excruciating, but I did it, and now, finally on the other side of the dark night, I see the truth of myself and others, and I vividly see my challenges to partnering.
It took about two months in my most recent relationship for the vulnerable, transparent connection we shared to stir up so many untouched pains for him that he had to recede.
At the end of this relationship, like so many others in my recent past, I sat wallowing in my humanness while knowing spiritually that this relationship was returning me to me, to the pieces of myself that need my love and attention.
How do I stop bringing people’s pain to the surface? It is not me that they are running from, it is their own pain that they are seeing for the first time that has them running scared. This has nothing to do with me.
They prayed for healing and they got me. Here is your pain. I am only holding up the mirror of who I used to be. Now it can no longer be denied. We cannot heal what we do not acknowledge. Now they have acknowledged. I was only the conduit. Your pain has been moved from your blind spot. You see it now. Get to healing.
Not ready to heal? Didn’t want to see your pain?
“It hurts too much. Never mind. Can’t make me. Don’t wanna.”
Want to see how long you can go back to pretending?
“Well, you can’t do it with her around. Time to bolt!”
For three days after the breakup, I pondered this challenge, this flaw in me that I deeply needed to fix. There has got to be a piece of me that needs fixing so I can stop bringing people’s pain to the surface.
Finally an answer. Finally the truth.
Stop calling in people in pain.
Wait, what? Most of the world is in pain. I will be forever alone. Who will I connect to if I’ve healed and I no longer try to help people heal? Then what?
I will be alone forever.
Wow, so there it is. The piece of me that is keeping me down. The part that keeps me from my brightest light, my true power, my fear of being too powerful, of not being able to connect to others if I’m not connecting to their pain.
So here I sit, alone, determined to heal this piece of me that needs my love and attention. Determined to connect with only happy, healthy, healed people, and just like Marianne Williamson stated, to be powerful beyond measure.
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Christie Del Vesco is a College Administrator and Professor, a Universalist Minister, a member of the RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network) Speakers Bureau and single mom. She’s a children’s advocate, a survivor of many forms of sexual violence, and a voice for the survivors who have yet to find their own. Chris is a firm believer that we go through what we do, to help others when they go through the same. She also believes if we would all just “be the change,” we can change the world.
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