A part of loving ourselves and knowing ourselves is our stories, our experiences that have an impact on us today. Making peace with our past and ourselves is an ongoing healing journey. Some memories keep recirculating when all you want is for them to disappear. They are not going to go away because we can’t control our thoughts. Events, people, smells, a song, trigger certain emotions, and a past hurt, comes rushing in, re-

re-membering that moment. If we understand that all the thoughts we are thinking are happening right now, not in the past, you will know that you are allowing that thought to hurt you. What do we do? Pema Chodron says, lean into the pain, the storyline in your mind, don’t run away, pray it away. You lean into it. Let it inform you. Stay present. Experience your yourself in the story. Find compassion in the midst of it. Pema’s point is to experience the now. To let yourself be affected. To grow, not run away.
To experience life, we must be open to change at any moment. Pema calls it the path of the spiritual warrior. It takes bravery to be fully awake, she says, because a lot of suffering comes from wanting things to be different or every have happened in the first place. From expecting the “ideal” to overcome the “actual,” or needing people, places, or things to be different for us to be happy. I know for me, when I can have a conversation about a past wound and now express it with love and understanding, I have healed that part of me.

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”
― Pema Chödrön