Blog 18 -The Gift

Page 13

 You can’t FORCE the spirit to write. It has to want to. Just had to say.

 So today I share a significant basis for the book. I could call it grief, abandonment, or a gift. It wasn’t a gift that my father died, my mother was overcome with grief and I was emotionally abandoned by my mother at age four. But there was a gift to follow. There was a pony in the horseshit.

My mother told me that I could no longer go down the hall to the stored toy box in the apartment building to get my toys and play inside. I needed to go outside and find some friends to play with. I of course had no idea what that meant or how to do that. I only knew I was not to leave the corner area of the block we lived on.

So on one of my first wanderings around the corner I encountered a boy who was a little older and he told another boy about his age and I there was going to be a fight and we needed to stick together and prepare ourselves. He gave each of us a gift that he said we would need for strength.

 The gift wasn’t just the physical object (you will have to read the book to find out what is was) but the value of connection, a model of survival, a necessary resource for emotional and physical growth. A basic nervous system requirement for adaptation and survival from life’s fears. My first lesson in polyvagal theory if you wish to look it up is “co-regulation”. -That simple gift gave me the desire and direction I needed in raising myself-.

The enemy never appeared and I never saw either of those boys again.

However connection has directed most every aspect of my life and most certainly helped me in developing a very successful private practice and my own personal support group. Our very survival, our nervous system is dependent upon emotional connection. If you aren’t emotionally connected to others the consequences are dire.

Connect to reveal and heal and live a full life. My Gift at age four was co-regulation. Thanks Mom and thank you to the spirit in that mystery boy’s message.

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