Getting to Know Me

GETTING TO KNOW ME
by Nancy Joy Hefron and Ezekiel

As an emotional healer and one who knows the value of finding your part in the creation of all life’s dramas that you find yourself in, I am amazed at what it takes to uncover my own pieces sometimes. As we all know, we are most hidden from ourselves. I have learned that life guides us to create relationships through which we are pushed into coming face to face with those hidden spaces inside ourselves. There comes some poignant moments in one’s life when the realization of how deeply we have been fooling ourselves, manifests profoundly and shakes us to our core. This, of course, we call growth. Just like a seed really never receives instructions on how to grow, at some point it will find itself in conducive conditions and intuitively the seed just puts its plan into action. Our growth plan is imprinted in all of us and all those dramas and situations that trigger us are truly activating our grand design. I am reminded that a seed has to break open to sprout.

Recently I completed an article on shame for my website. Through a remembered incident from my childhood, I came to understand emotionally what shame truly was and how it underlies most other dark emotions. When we are young and life’s incredible array of shattering experiences smashes into our innocence, we have no way of understanding or integrating what is happening. What we cannot integrate, we turn into shame. We believe that surely we must have caused whatever pain we encountered. What I have discovered is that this deep shame I have been holding onto all these years has kept me stuck in a very dysfunctional pattern my whole life. A pattern which, despite all my work in this area, had escaped me.

I also now believe that at some point in our childhood, we take on this deep shame and try desperately to heal the shame by repeating very dysfunctional behaviors that keep recreating the very thing we are trying so hard to heal. No matter how much personal work we are doing on ourselves, we will remain caught in this loop until we can stay centered within ourselves in a drama as it unfolds and take the focus off of the other person or people. As long as it is about them…what they did or didn’t do and how they did or didn’t do it…we remain circling in our repeated pattern. I know this to be so and have for many years and yet, still my ego so ingeniously drove me into the next painful situation. Even though I am aware of this pattern, I have kept repeating it. YIKES!

I have a deep, old and very painful pattern that has exposed itself to me recently once again in a powerful and painful way. Although I have known the pattern is there, I did not realize how deep the old shame was that has prevented me from shifting it. I have a string of intimately close friends who over the past twelve years, have walked the Spiritual pathway with me, sharing at the deepest levels of consciousness that I can imagine. I tend not to be able to have a casual friendship. Most people, that I am drawn to, become very close friends with whom I share myself as openly as I know to be. A few even become partners on the Spiritual path, sharing our work, our ideas and working together to take our next steps.

For the past seven years, one of my closest friends has been Carol, a woman who amazes me and whom I respect deeply. I have learned so much from sharing and growing with her. I believe we both felt our friendship could weather any storm as we taught and practiced the emotional tools of compassion in all we did. We traveled the world together discovering new pieces of ourselves along the way as we accomplished our planetary work. I love Carol deeply and was closer to her than most other friends I have known with the exception of my beloved husband Mark. So, of course, just as with mm Ex-Husband, it is the ones we love so deeply that are the ones who have agreed to play the most difficult roles for us so we can get the next piece.

You can probably already guess that this relationship blew dramatically apart recently. In fact, it erupted right on the heels of completing my Sham On You article. It is not at all necessary to go through the painful details as they happened so quickly I was helpless to do anything but be with what was unfolding. For me, it was beyond any comprehension and I knew instinctively that Carol and I were acting out tremendously difficult yet profound roles for one another, as ancient as any drama could possibly be. I almost instantly knew this was all about me and my own shame. It was about me creating this explosion and then wondering what hit me. It was about me finally taking responsibility for the shame that has kept me in my pattern.

As I dove into the abyss of my pain and my pattern, I identified six other Spiritual partners with whom I was emotionally intimate and close. All six friendships had gone through a huge blow-up and separation. All but one of these friendships ended up with my friends being angry at me, rather than the other way around. Three of them have gone full cycle into healing and, now with my newest piece, I know in my heart, all six will be brought back into full compassion. In each shattering, I was aware that it was my “care taking” these dear friends and trying in any super human way I could to stop their physical and/or emotional pain each time it arose. Of course, these friends drew in even closer as they felt my ability to walk with them through the dark abyss of their pain and drama. I always wondered why I attracted powerful Spiritual beings who expanded through such drama. I fooled my self into believing it was because, in this lifetime, I had chosen to grow by being immersed in the dramas of others. Actually, more closely true, is that I did not know how to recognize my own dramas.

From my Shame on You article, I learned that when my mother would go into her drama of emotional or physical pain and blame me or anyone else within a hundred miles for the experience, I took on the responsibility in my emotional body for her drama and/or pain. I, somehow, internalized that pain and created a whole persona based on alleviating her pain and anyone else’s pain who reminded me of my mother. That is why and how my plan went into action creating relationships with these six spiritual companions on the journey. As each relationship blew apart I found my part as the caregiver who, lost herself in these dear friend’s journey. I knew it each time and yet, before I realized what was happening, I was there once again. Oh, I had glimpses that there was something so deep but I could not zero in on the reason, only the pattern. With Carol, there was a somewhat different energy unfolding. The day the bomb exploded, I was totally aware that I was caught in a time loop and the thing I most feared and had tried to avoid was once again here. The difference is, this time I knew I was in the loop and I also knew I had some personal power at this moment to get that deeply buried needle in my haystack. Interestingly, I had always joked with Carol that she was my princess and the pea because she could zero in on the smallest irritant and would not rest until she had a hold of it and was comfortable. Little did I know I was lying on my own pea, unaware of my inner child’s pain. The erruption went something like this…

It had been a very long month. Carol and I were involved in a Circle of Women who were committed to using their wisdom to create miracles of healing and abundance in their lives. We shared weekly phone calls with our Circle Sisters as well as Emails. Without going into detail, let me say that this was ,and is still, a dynamic and varied group of Spiritually based women each moving through their own patterns and lessons as we walk the spiraling Circle path together. Carol was, at this time, the leader of our particular Circle and I was one of her right hand Sisters, so to speak. I was tasked with assisting her and supporting her in her leadership role. The whole month had been challenging for this Circle as the personalities of the Sisters activated and triggered each others own individual plans. Just like those seeds I mentioned, we had created the perfect culture in which we were to sprout activating our soul plans. I was worn out and exhausted from the dance we were doing, and yet, I did not know what I truly felt or how to stop the music. In fact, I didn’t even know that I didn’t know what my truth was. Looking back, it reminds me of the old Jane Fonda movie, They Shoot Horses Don’t They? In that movie, Jane was in a dance marathon contest to earn money to save her life. In the end, which was worse, stopping the dance and loosing the contest, accepting the consequences, or propping herself up and continuing the dance until there was nothing left?

In all honesty, Carol was doing an excellent job handling her duties as her life patterns and soul plan were guiding her but, my long-standing pattern with Carol was to help her achieve her goals and be successful. It was more important to me than myself although I didn’t get that part yet. Finally, while in the Spa getting a manicure and pedicure one fateful Monday in the beginning of March, I had a huge shift. Another Circle woman and good friend, Sandy, had just called me on my cell phone and shared her perspective. Her words must have shifted my confusion for I had a moment of absolute personal clarity that triggered some old ancient memory. I can’t exactly describe this phenomena, but it was a so clear. The minute I grasped the memory, it faded but if left me with a knowing. This drama was only an issue for me because I was taking on the issue. Why was I doing that and what did I really feel? What was my truth? Well, emotionally, I had been this little girl trying for all I was worth, to stop Mommy’s pain so I would not feel this terrible shame. This shame kept telling me that somewhere deep with in me I was the cause of the whole situation. Carol was my Mom and her pain was huge.

I got home from the Spa and called Carol all excited because I had begun to understand my true feelings about the Circle situation. As the words came tumbling out of my mouth, I had no immediate idea of the havoc I was creating for Carol. A whole series of events began to tumble out of control at this point. Instead of the big, “oh yes, I get it Nancy,” I had expected, I got disbelief. Things spiraled into an incredible mess from there so chaotically that, the next morning as I tried to share more of my experience with Carol, she got physically ill and could not speak to me. As the phone line went dead I sat there at my desk and had such a feeling of dejevu. I was repeating the time loop I had kept repeating since I first took on responsibility for my Mom’s discomfort. I knew I was at a power point. From this point on, I made a heart decision. This was all about me. It was nothing Carol did or didn’t do. It was about both of us being caught in a pattern that had repeated so often throughout all time that we could not even recall that we were in it again. The only pattern I had any power to heal was my own. And, the only way to heal the pattern was to feel the pea. I had to get this emotionally so I could begin to let go of my shame.

As the day wore on my emotions took me on a powerful journey and I was once again standing in my room as I was in my childhood. My mother was kneeling on the floor pounding her fists toward me and shouting. What was I to do? I was only about eight years old, so I just stayed there and took it all on. That little girl was trapped in that room by her mother’s pain and she took it all on. I am sure this had happened to me many times before that day and again many times after. I have memories of her pointing her finger at me as she berated me at about age four as I was trapped against the kitchen wall. There was yet another memory where she was leaning over my bed in my face and pointing her finger at me again, screaming. Oh the shame I sat in all those years! Never even realizing I was imprisoned by my own emotional body. Then, images of my ex- husband floated by. He had me backed into a corner in the garage and was in my face because of more pain I had caused. Then my son came onto my screen memory and appeared in the hallway shaking his fist at me. Suddenly, a huge well of anger arose as these images kept coming. They even took me to past life experiences of such emotional abuse. All these times I stood right there and took it; just knowing I caused the whole situation. In a flash my body shifted and I knew I was getting my little girl out of that room; away from that wall; out of that corner; far from the garage; and free from that hallway. It was my own drama happening to me over and over again until I finally understood. No matter what, I must set myself free. That was my pea, the constant irritant that kept me circling back into the drama. I had found my needle in the haystack and just simply felt the enormity of the revelation in every cell in my body. I just shook all over.

Details really are not relevant to me here. I don’t know if I could share them accurately anyway as each incident throughout the drama came though my own personal
sifter. They were seen and felt by my own mental, spiritual and emotional fields. Just like the blind men that each touched the elephant in a different place and described the elephant by only their perceptions. I do know that as I moved into seeing my pattern and feeling its roots within myself, I began to take responsibility for it. What this meant to me was that I needed to embrace that little girl in my heart and let her know she was not the cause of anyone’s pain but her own. For once, she was the most important person in my life. What she wanted was more important than anything else. I finally understood the depth of her pain, of my pain. I also knew, as I reached for myself deeply, that my friend Carol would be wounded by my shift.

I read once that to fully embody our true selves we must become willing to play all three emotional roles. We are all healers, victims and wounders. The most difficult role for me was owning the wounder and valuing that part of myself also. I was embracing my wounder and leaving the healer behind to recreate balance within every cell of my body.

I have another friend, Dianne, who is the most extraordinary astrologer I have ever encountered. She explained to me that my emotional habit pattern is that I have a tendency to feel overly responsible for others. WOW! You can say that again and again and again. Our souls are such fantastic teachers. By placing myself in a world of emotional healing I have forced myself to come more and more into balance. The moon represents emotions and my moon is in Capricorn. This means I am grounded emotionally and have good clear boundaries. My moon, however, exactly squares Neptune. This makes me very empathic and dissolves some of those emotional boundaries as I absorb everyone’s feelings. As a child I absorbed them unknowingly and made them my own. Although over the years, I have worked diligently to stay balanced in the emotional fields of my clients, when it comes to family and friends, I still had to return to the child to uncover the pain. I am now in the process of embodying compassionate detachment in all my relationships. It has now been two months since the dramatic explosion of this friendship took me to my roots and cracked open my seed so that I could more fully embrace all of me.

Carol has chosen to end our friendship completely. While this has been sad for me and I have missed her depth, her humor and her friendship deeply, I am also joyful to have found me. I acknowledge that this healing for me has caused my friend great pain. It is like two people each holding one end of a rubber band connecting them. The rubber band gets pulled tighter and tighter over the years until one person realizes the strain of holding their end and lets go. Of course, the sting as the free end of the rubber band strikes the other person is tremendous. I have great empathy for Carol’s pain.

The beauty for me is that I have returned to several relationships and shared deeply my part in their pain. In both cases such a new balanced and healthy relationship has been created as both friends saw their own shifts within my healing. I hold my heart always open as I grow and learn more fully who I am. I have energetically released Carol from her role with me and feel deep compassion for who she is and for her journey. Whether in this world or another, I know we stand hand-and-hand in complete integration of the heart. The human healing process relies, in part, on the ability to remember, grieve, and finally to let go. I thank Carol and myself for this experience to embrace all three.

Thank you for listening. Blessings!

Nancy Joy Hefron and Ezekiel