Accepting Love - The hardest task of all

I think I've shared before a picture of the traumatised child which explains how hard it is for adoptive and foster parents to successfully give that child an experience of unconditional love. A friend who is an adoptive Mum shared it with me and at the time it resonated powerfully with me. When someone has been shown nothing but proof that they are worthless, when a care-giver seeks to pour love into the cup of that personality finds the love running off without even touching the inside. This is because all that has gone before, the trauma itself, the coping strategies and the fundamental frameworks of belief about themselves as worthwhile human beings serves to form an often invisible film stretching over the whole of the mouth of the cup.


I have spent the past ten years of my life slowly working to remove that film from myself. I know that in reality some who have tried to break through it have encountered, not a feather light, flimsy film, which lets in light, but steel shutters. What I have learned to accept in the past few months is that despite learning a lot about trusting others, the key to opening these shutters lies entirely in my own hands. It is not enough for me to acknowledge that love is being given to me, but for me to accept, without reservation or justification that I am loved. There are many moments on the path to recovery from childhood traumas which are paradoxically painful and healing at the same time. No human love is perfect, nor is it without risk.

Because in reality there is no human being who can love us perfectly. But when we begin to accept that we can love ourselves without feeling like frauds, then we can begin to move towards receiving love as it is intended. For me, I know I have shared before that I have a faith in a God who is bigger than me and all my problems and one of the main things that I have learned to accept is that my belief tells me, I am loved because I exist. Simple as that. One of my favourite thoughts of this year has been: 'The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but YOU ARE, because the party wouldn't be complete without you.'

With healing I can now see that life is not all bad, but there are also good things in life. Some of those good things exist in me and my personality and/or abilities and gifts. And some people, not all actually think I'm worth loving. Again, this has been a long hard path to accept. As I wrote the word 'loving' I battled myself because my instinct was to find a less powerful word, such as 'like', or 'appreciate'. How many times do we stop ourselves accepting love as it is given, by changing its strength in our minds, minimising what the giver has intended? How many times have friends and loved ones tried to reinforce the positive things they see to love in us, and found themselves frustrated by our reverting to our (comfortable) old patterns, minimising what is good in us. 'Oh anyone could do that', or my favourite one 'You're just flanneling me'.

Funny how easy it is to believe in the absolute truth of critical opinions given to us or in our own minds, but how easy we find it to undermine positive praise for who we are and what we do. It's a natural consequence of not being given validation as children. Self validation because an alien concept and a skill we need to be taught later in life.

I have had to look at the negative thoughts and critical voices from my past which constantly circulated in my mind and decide if they are something that I want to listen to, or if I am willing to listen to the (admittedly) strange and novel, voices that tell there is a balance to things. Sometimes I mess things up, sometimes I do really well.

Over the past few weeks I have been wrestling with positive thoughts, because they feel odd and sometimes accepting them means something painful. I am learning that I can do things I never thought possible, that I can build webs of friends and I can cope when the ups and downs of human relationships happen. I am not shaken to my core because I disagree with someone, because receiving love means that I accept there is core of belonging within the relationships which means we can cope with 'falling out'. This is a new experience. Such little blips in reality, would in the past have meant me walking away for fear of rejection. Now they are the warp and weft of accepting that I am loved, which in turn frees me to feel love for others, without fearing the pain of having that love rejected.

So here I am saying, the steel doors are opening and I choose to receive the love that is offered to me. I know I haven't arrived and my recovery means that I continue to take one step forward when I can. As long as the movement continues forward, then I can say that my heart which has been frozen for fear of the risks involved in connecting with others, is melting. If that's sappy - so be it.