As I unpeel my onion, layer after layer, as tricky and uncomfortable as each one may be, I love sitting with the nuggets that are revealed.

 

I am close to the cages I clasped around my heart right now.

 

I clasped them quite rightly in need to protect.

 

And I know right now, in the grooves of my growing, the nuggets reveal themselves because ‘they’ know I’m ready to move beyond the darkness and infuse them with love.

 

In my unpeeling, in the layers of abuse that I’m slowly, so slowly, beginning to give space to, I see the devastation of my love. In the violation of my sacredness, in all the corners of pain and refusal, I see the crippling of my love.

 

I realised this week, in the whirlwinds that I tried to find myself and not be blown away by as a child, I see how the abuse of my love was probably the most damaging.

 

My hands and heart that wanted to reach out to the world and give, purely give, because I knew no other way, were, time and time over, paralysed with criticism, ridicule, indifference and rejection.

 

My rising, to connect with the world, be part of this world, time after time, sunk quickly down, hiding, where I’d kick myself for trying.

 

But I didn’t ‘learn’.

 

Like my breathe, my desire to participate, just kept rising. My love just wanted to give.

 

And so I learned to love like this. Reaching out, kicking back in.

 

It was never good enough.

 

It never made the mark.

 

I kept doing what I wanted to do. Love my family.

 

I kept being kicked back in.

 

I laced each one with a BUT and tried again but the response went on.

 

A learned pattern of love, they couldn’t receive it.

 

I learned not to receive it, this ventilator of love, a wall being built each time it tried to reach back inside into me.

 

And so a powerhouse of nutrition was demolished. And too a Yes to this life.

 

BUT

 

My pulse to love never diminished.

 

My pulse to connect, revel and dance always fought to go on.

 

Even though I was taught how not to digest it, it’s fire still burned so strong.

 

So the twisting of my relationship with our deepest companion, I can now, as I peel deeper my onion, meet a little more gently.

 

The denial, that had ventured down from generation to generation, is stopping here.

 

The value starts now as, brick by brick, I invest love into my defences.

 

It’s a gentle story. It’s not easy. I am an adventurer in new territory.

 

It’s taken 44 years, almost half a century, to uncover this battling.

 

44 years of this immobilising bruising.

 

But my pledge to myself right now is for the next 44 and beyond, I allow love into the crevices.

 

For the next 44, my own self-abuse I endeavour to be no longer.

 

Image: Linda Nielsen