I grew up in an emotionally and verbally abusive family.  My father was a product of an uneducated immigrant family and my mother from a background of educated covered wagon pioneers.  There were many barriers to joy and love in this family, yet despite my father's continuous disparaging comments, I was always privately told by my mother that I was beautiful, smart and loved.  A common thread of both families’ backgrounds was that it was possible to leave a bad situation, break out of the mold, and improve one’s life.  Of course, many of their experiences were due to monumental reasons: war, jobs, obtaining free land.   At my current age of 53, I look back and see how fortunate I was to grasp a hold of that pioneering spirit at a young age, believing that I could achieve whatever I set my sights on.

After a failed first marriage, I decided to leave my home town and move to the ‘big city’ of New York.  Of course, this was against all of my family’s better advice, except my mother, who thought it was wonderful.  Moving there proved to be successful for me and led to another move south to marry for the second time and manage an office for my company.  After 8 years, I found myself divorced again and leaving the company to go out on my own.  Admittedly, this was a scary prospect on all levels, but the pioneer in me kept telling me to move forward.

One of my longtime models in life has been Katherine Hepburn.  Her outspoken spirit, coupled with her ‘I can do it and I don’t care what you think of me’ attitude have been beacons for me on my personal journey.  You see, being someone who was raised to be ‘good’, ‘perfect’ and ‘nice’ was a pattern that I realized along the way has some benefits, but many others to the detriment of my own soul.  Along the way I dropped being a slave to the ‘good and perfect’, but decided the ‘nice’ was OK – as long as I was being nice toward myself first!

Fast forward to today, and I am still learning upon this journey.  I’ve had a recent move back into the boiling pot of being close to my family of origin. It took this move for me to realize that while they are my family of origin, I am much happier with my family of choice.  These are the ‘good and nice’ people that I have met over the years when I was not physically near my family. They are ‘perfect’ as they are, and accept me as ‘perfect’ as I am, too. 

What has become important for me to be aware of is the presence of any ‘toxins’ in my environment.  Toxicity can come in many forms. It can be chemicals, eating or addictive habits, over doing anything, and it also shows up in the form of people.  I have learned how to use my internal gauge, that of knowing that I can actually ‘feel’ a toxic person.  Over the past few years I have consciously paid attention to how I ‘feel’ around everyone.  If I have any uncomfortable feelings, I stop and process it.  Sometimes it is someone that reminds me of my family of origin, many times it is someone who is simply self absorbed, and often it is someone who honestly could care less about me.  These people, I have learned, are not positive to keep in my inner circle.

Healthy minded people make me smile. If they show up at my door, unannounced, I am truly thrilled to see them.  They give without asking, and I am eager to give in return.  It is a mutual support system, and the end result is joy.  It is the state that I choose to live in, and love to pass on this feeling to as many people as are interested in receiving and giving it.  It does take continuous personal work to stay open and aware and be self sensing to possible imposters.  My first action is to always give everyone the benefit of the doubt. If the line is crossed and I ‘feel’ something wrong, I honor that feeling and pull back, remembering my mother’s words of how beautiful, smart, successful and loved I am and can be.  I choose to send these people love.  Everyone needs love and we receive love in return for giving it.  It may show up in another way, and we may lose someone from our inner circle in the process, but in the end, it IS what the world needs….now…love, sweet love.