I recently had a surprise visit with my extended family.  It doesn’t happen often that all of us can be together.  It is always a special time.  It also is a rare time to truly catch up on the deeper conversations of our lives.  What is our life truly like?  How are we managing ourselves, our challenges, and our uncertainties?    Our health, our past, our future, our fears, our successes, and our connection to one another in our family.  As sisters, as aunts, as daughters, and more.

Anytime we get together, the overwhelming experience I am left with is abundant gratitude.  I am fortunate that I have a loving family.  One that supports our differences and still loves one another unconditionally.  One that shares wholeheartedly in our desires and dreams of a good life.  We share in and celebrate the successes that each of us have achieved.  We also share and look to heal the losses that each of us have faced.

I was reminded of something that is not common knowledge, but makes a difference for anyone who has healed an unseen wound…  When someone shares an experience that was hurtful or harmful, they may do so in a way that expresses the emotion that is tied to that experience for them.  Such examples may be:  anger, rage, sadness, despair, hopelessness, etc…

I was sharing some specific examples from a past wound in an angry manner.  As I was sharing this, I didn’t dilute my emotional expression of what it was like in my past to have this experience.  I told it like it was.  I was intent on catching my family up on specific details that I hadn’t had the chance of doing so before now.  In doing so, my energy changed.  My voice and volume changed.  My anger was clear and I expressing it fully.

Later the next morning, one of my family members shared that they wish I wasn’t still so angry about this experience.

I was puzzled.  You see, I wasn’t still so angry; however, I was consciously sharing the past experiences in a way that expressed the fullness of the betrayal, including all the emotions that went along with the experience.  Over time, I have learned that sharing things in this manner, without diluting the emotions involved, communicates the situation more effectively.  It also gives an opportunity for the one sharing to let it out and get out these strong emotions.  Doing this can serve both the one expressing and one who is listening from love.

I’m glad that my family can speak candidly.  In hearing this comment about how I was still so angry, it gave me the opportunity to clarify.  I could explain myself, how I was sharing, including my emotions and why.  I could explain that I’m not still so angry, but that as their daughter I need them to know the details & how it was for me, and I wasn’t going to dilute my experience.

It also gave me the great reminder that sometimes when we communicate, we may know what and why we are sharing such experiences, but our audience may not.

For me, it was important to bring my family into the loop on specific things that they still may not have known.  As a daughter shares herself to her loving family.  Not just the joyful times, but also in sharing the downside of life fully, including the harm and the anger, not because it’s still with us, but because anger was the experience at the time.   It was a part of it.  This experience is a part of our life.  It doesn’t have a hold on us, yet it had a part in shaping us into the person we are now.

The fact remains that healing can be provided just by listening to someone share a past experience when they are ready to do so.  Such conversations are typically a gift for all participants.

Toni McGillen

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