There was a point in my life when I consciously decided against my happiness. I faced a choice: my happiness versus my children’s and my husband’s.

I chose for them and against a significant part of me.
That was very hard - and very painful. But for some reason, I had to make that particular choice. I didn’t want to live with the burden of making so many people unhappy just so that I could be happier- maybe.

Today I know that it was a karmic decision. I didn’t want to burden the Universe with four people I was responsible for to be unhappy. It was just too much.

THE RISK OF BECOMING emBITTERed

I worked on myself to prevent myself from filling with bitterness; I looked for ways to express at least a part of myself more fully - without success. It was as though I was accursed - everything I wanted to achieve for myself only, my plans, my own career, my own success - failed. I had to say goodbye to more and more things, hopes and dreams, one after the other.

At the same time, the situation at home was not easy. I raised our children almost alone. My husband was travelling for business, and in my family, there was simply no one who felt responsible for their emotional well-being. It was a tremendous ordeal for me.

I withdrew my true essence more and more inwardly and only lived for external things. I only became aware of all these mechanisms much later.

When I had given up almost all my plans, and nothing remained but my physicality, I began to take more care of my body and came upon yoga in an unpredictable winding path. To prevent me from falling into depression, that was the beginning when I started to learn to understand my history.

QUESTIONS AND THEIR CHALLENGING ANSWERS

• Who was I?

• What was it about my strange family history?

• What were unconscious mechanisms at work?

• Is there a generational pattern?

• Why does no one want me?

• Why do I have all these talents and abilities if they only bring me unhappiness?

• What have I done wrong with my children?

• Where have I denied myself? And why?

• What do I actually want?

- so many questions. And the answers were hard - and still are.

I had to learn to be me without becoming embittered.
The grief and sadness that spread through me were overwhelming.

I had to realise that when the going gets tough, I have to be ready to let go of everything in order to be happy.

A NEW PERSPECTIVE

Through the teachings of my Vedanta teacher Sharada, I came across these two sentences:

The meaning of these sentences reveals itself very slowly and over time.
And again, it has to do with letting go - but a form of “letting go” leaving you with peace, not bitterness.

Nevertheless, it was a painful process.
Countless unfelt emotions demanded to be allowed to come to the surface finally. I cried so much. So much. And with every tear, I understood more and more where the pain inside me came from. I understood where the pain of the women in my family came from. Why so many of them became embittered, depressed, cold-hearted or manipulative - and that I was well on the way to becoming the same. That hurt.

I wanted to free myself from this guilt and from this burden that lay heavily on my soul - and I kept digging to understand even more.

LEARNING WHAT LOVE IS

In the end, I come to the point that you need to understand what love means truly. What it really means in its most concentrated essence.

That was what helped me to get out of this downward spiral. To feel me again, give myself more space again, without resentment and defiance, but out of a feeling of being true to myself.

“I am okay the way I am.”

This realisation has crept into my perception.
I have felt it in my yoga practice; I had cried it out of me in Savasana or when I paused in poses that demanded everything of me.

“I am enough. I am allowed to be here in this world, just as I am.”

That was and still is a demanding path. And I’m not sure how many more mental crashes I have to experience to arrive at a more solid foundation finally.

UNFELT EMOTIONS punish your soul

Not lived and not felt feelings. They are the cause of what makes you unhappy. You may be able to consciously choose not to feel them, but that does not erase them. They remain inside you until the time comes for you to feel them.

The misconception is to believe that feeling sadness and despair makes you sad or depressed, but it is the other way around: not feeling them makes you sad, hard and embittered - and that is the worst punishment you can do to your soul.

You are whole and complete - just as imperfect as you are.
You were never meant to be anything other than this...

This conviction may make you trust again. You are excellent and in the right place. Nothing about you is wrong or strange.

I know how hard it is to come to this understanding eventually. I mean really. Not just to think it, but to get to that inner conviction and truth.

But can you be happy without this belief, without this truth?

You have to let go of so many things again and again in the course of your life, people, hopes, dreams, things, places, plans, goals.

If you count everything to your list of losses because you think that’s what makes you happy, you will experience so much shame and disappointment. The risk of becoming embittered is so high. It can take everything away from you: your happiness, your love, everything.

Only with the rock-solid conviction that you are whole and complete can you accept everything that is as a gift. You discover the many thousands of little things that daily life has in store for you for what they are: gifts to enrich your life.

Your Perception changes your reality

With the conviction of being whole and complete, everything changes.

Your focus is no longer on what you don’t have, what you have had to let go of, but on what you do have.

Everything that I have given up and let go of, I have let go of out of love.

I had to learn to look very closely to see what I did out of love for whom or what. In the end, this brought peace back to me and the conviction that I was not wrong but right and enough.

And that was ultimately what cleared the way for me to embrace the idea that I am whole and complete.

…and so are you…

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