The Pain That Becomes a Path Home - Part 4
Post 4 of the series: Held by Something Older: If you’re new here, this is the last in a short series about the support that’s been with us all along. Part 1 was about the trees, Part 2 about the friends no one else could see, and Part 3 about the ancestors, the wiser presence, and the future self still beside us. You can start anywhere.
Some of the hardest chapters we live through were never fully explained to us. Not by anyone, and not by anything that made sense at the time.
Some traditions, and some modern research into memories of the time before we were born, hold a striking possibility: that we may arrive already carrying a sense of what we came here to learn or become. The hardest chapters, as much as we’d never choose them again, end up shaping exactly the kind of depth or purpose we now carry. What if some of us came to learn self-love, and the only road there ran through self-loathing first? What if the starting point for empowerment had to be near-total disempowerment, so the difference could be felt in the body instead of just understood in the mind?
None of this excuses harm that was done to you. It simply means the transformation isn’t a detour from the real journey. The transformation is the journey.
For me, learning self-worth meant starting at worthless. I grew up in a home where everything was about presentation and what everybody else would think. Worth was something you earned by being useful to other people, so that’s what I learned to do. I became a people-pleaser and an over-achiever. I managed how I looked, over-gave, and kept performing, because that was the only way I knew to feel like I mattered.
What changed, slowly and with a lot of help, was what “service” meant. It stopped being about earning my place and became the kindness I could offer myself. I went from judging myself to accepting myself, and little by little I could offer other people the same: no judgment. I’m not finished, and life still humbles me regularly. But being humbled is a big part of why I can offer a safe space now. I know what it is to need one.
That depth created doesn’t have to stay a wound. It can become the reason you notice someone else’s pain before they say a word, the reason you refuse to make people perform for your care. Many of us find that our depth becomes our advocacy.
And remember the future you we met last time, the one who has already lived through this and knows how it turns out? That version of you already knows what this was for.
This is really what the whole of this series has been circling: nature, childhood companions, ancestors, inner guidance, a future self. All of it points toward the same home, which is simply yourself, steadier and more whole than the story of what happened to you.
A small practice: What This Has Been Preparing You For
About five minutes.
Bring to mind something difficult you’ve moved through in your life.
Ask quietly, “What did surviving this teach me that I couldn’t have learned any other way?” If it helps, imagine your future self answering.
Let the answer be simple: a quality, a sensitivity, a form of strength.
Silently say, “This is becoming something. I am not just what happened to me.”
If this stirred something in you
Finding the thread of meaning inside your hardest chapters, and learning to live from that steadier place rather than just visiting it, is exactly the kind of deep work I offer through EMDR Intensives and Spiritual Transformation sessions. If something in this series has stayed with you, I’d be honored to help you follow it further.
And if what’s heaviest right now is something more recent, there’s a gentler starting point too. Run by two of my colleagues, it's a group-guided practice for entirely individual processing: a structured, evidence-based protocol called G-TEP, the Group Traumatic Episode Protocol. Everyone’s guided through the same steps together, but the material you work on is entirely your own. Nothing is shared with the group, and you never have to say your story out loud. If you’re interested, you can reach out through www.GroupEMDRofWA.com.
With Love and Light, Deanne
Comments