Giving Thanks to my Past

“Your future needs you. Your past doesn’t”

“Never be a prisoner of your past. It was just a lesson, not a life sentence.”

“In order to love who you are, you cannot hate the experiences that shaped you.”

“Growth means choosing happiness over history, and never looking back.”

These are just a few quotes that I have found over time, that have made me reflect on why at times I so desperately want to rewrite the past. What if my parents had stayed together? What if we didn’t move every two years? What if my dad showed me more affection? What if I wasn’t taken from my mom to live with my dad’s new family? So many “what ifs” we love to ask ourselves. I have come to realize, just like I’m sure you have too, that these questions only bring harm to our inner child. I have finally learned in my 40 years on this earth to just thank the past! Thank you past for shaping me and molding me into the person I am today!

My dad and I didn’t always have the best connection. I always felt like he didn’t understand me. He was too busy providing for the family to really “SEE” me. The attention I got from him was when my step-mom complained about me doing something wrong, and he would step in to discipline me. He didn’t always communicate love and affection, but I understood it was because that was also lacking in his childhood. I always ask myself why he had me come live with him and his new family if he was just going to be working and traveling all the time? He left my step-mom in charge of 5 children, two of them not biologically hers. Why didn’t he just leave us with our mother, where we felt love?

My mother wasn’t raised with love and attention either. She didn’t always have the means to provide luxuries, but we were fed, clothed, sheltered, and most of all loved. I felt loved when I was with her! That is what children need. No matter what the outside world looks like, a child wants to feel loved and appreciated by their parents.

Into adulthood, my dad wanted to have more of a connection with me. It was hard for me because that had not been established when I was younger. Also, I didn’t always get along with my step-mom and they were a package deal. In my mind, it was such a strained relationship that it would cause me anxiety and panic attacks when I knew I would be around them. He made me feel guilty for not calling enough or wanting to visit. It just didn’t feel natural for me, but for some reason I felt like he made it my fault for not having that “daddy’s little girl” type of relationship.

My dad passed away December 17, 2013 at age 52. He had heart failure, something he had been dealing with since his first heart-attack at age 35. The year before he passed, we had a heart-to-heart. I poured my feelings and emotions out to him; something that I hadn’t really done before because expressing our anger or frustration was frowned upon. I let him know that it was him who had laid the foundation for the way our relationship turned out. It just wasn’t fair to put it all on me. Being around him and my step-mom felt like a duty and not something I looked forward to.

A few years earlier, he had called me on the phone and was so mad at me (until this day I still don’t know what I did), he started saying I was hateful and evil and the worst daughter and sister; that after I got married I had changed and became stuck up. I was actually happy to have found my husband, who brought stability and love into my life. So many things we had never addressed and only swept under the rug came out that night. That evening, he looked at me and said he was sorry. He was sorry that he had said things he didn’t really mean and couldn’t believe I was holding on to them all these years later. Since he himself had grown up in a poor village in the Dominican Republic, he wanted to show love by providing things. That statement made me see things from his point of view. For the first time ever, I understood where he was coming from. I let him know that all I needed was love and that without that, those things did not matter. We embraced with tears in our eyes.

That following year, he was gone. Since then, I have been trying to make peace with all of it. So many insecurities within me because I felt my light was always being dimmed by others since birth.

“Don’t be loud and overshadow the others.”

“Don’t allow others to think you are beautiful because you might get a big head.”

“Don’t show off your body because you will be judged.”

“Don’t express yourself in anger or frustration because we don’t want to hear it.”

I can keep going on and on. Since then, I have been on a journey to discovering who I really am and to loving who that person is.

On January 24, 2019 I wrote this in one of my journals:

“Faith sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible.”–Corrie ten Boom

My life is just simply my life. I have lived it . So when people ask me about myself, I just ramble off facts and they really fascinate people. When I really think about it though, God took this little Puerto Rican/Dominican baby, born to teenagers, and brought her to where she is now. I’m living a life I never dreamed I could live. I’m living a life that I’m sure others seeing where I was born, could not have imagined that this baby girl would be where she is. So many things were put into play and needed to happen in order for me to be where I am today. My grandmother had to make the decisions that she made. My parents had to make the choices that they made. So many great decisions and also so many bad ones. I have to remind myself, had it not been for everything that my grandmother had to go through, my parents had to go through, and I had to go through, I would not be where I am today. I need to stop dwelling on how things could have and should have been different. If things had been different, would I still be living this life I am living now? I need to appreciate the past for what it was, including the hard times because it has shaped me into the person I have become. I need to let go! I need to forgive! I need to remember that we are all doing the best we can with what we’ve been given. Until I accept that things needed to happen the way they were supposed to, I will never be able to move forward. So today, I am letting go of the past. I want to look at my past and thank it. I thank it for all of the wonderful memories. I thank it for teaching me and giving me lessons that I can pass on. I thank my past for molding me into the person I am today and for this beautiful life I am so privileged to live. So I am choosing to look forward. Thank you God for all that has happened and guiding me through this crazy life.”

My soul has truly been freed since that day! On my podcast, Virago 24/7, I will talk about these things and many others from the past, but it is only to lay the foundation of what has brought me to where I am today. I’m no longer dwelling on the past or hurt by what has happened. The path to my future is wide open and waiting for me to follow it! There is no longer anything holding me back!

“She’s been orbiting a dark star for far too long, caught in his deadly gravity. But now she’s finally free, setting out on a new trajectory. Heading for a place where her shine won’t be stolen.” -John Mark Green

#lettinggo #movingfoward #ourpast