Prompt: “As each year progresses, we unknowingly gather many thoughts, beliefs, and patterns to us. In fact, what we are carrying may have been passed down to us from previous generations.

Looking at the thoughts and patterns that may be holding you back from living the life you want, trace back through the generations of your family and see if your beliefs originated generations ago.

In 2016, how can you bring healing to these patterns of thought that are holding you back?”

It’s always difficult to say much about family patterns, because there’s so much I just don’t know or understand. And yet, I can see that there has been a history that may have impacted me. It has manifested for me as methods for coping that can become addictive and dis-ordered, ways of soothing or even masking suffering which ultimately lead to a denial of my truest self.

I also have a cultural history, specifically in terms of what it means to be a woman, a good citizen. This tells me I should be agreeable, quiet, nice, generous, self-sacrificing, and pretty, (which is actually not a single thing but a whole list of things that are constantly shifting and changing with trends and fashion).

What holds me back is a resistance to simply letting myself have what I want, letting myself be who I am. What says I can’t is a whole jumble of fear, mistrust, uncertainty, obligation, and judgements about what is right and wrong that comes together and binds me with “you are not allowed, who do you think you are, you can’t do that, you can’t have that.” I misread my environment, see all kinds of threats and complications and obstacles, and sometimes I just give up.

There’s an avoidance, a resistance I need to burn through. As Rumi said, “love is a fire and I am wood.” Maybe it happens by gently challenging those old beliefs, the misinterpreted limits. Maybe it happens by saying what I mean, having what I want, becoming unapologetically self-centered, and trusting myself.