by Nikki Russel, Recovery Coach
March 14, 2023
Relationships have served as a mirror into my heart, showing me where I need to grow and giving me the inspiration to overcome my greatest fears. Relationships reflect my internal frame of reference, the dominant conditioning that insists on being safe. I unknowingly used relationships to justify an abandonment wound I held since childhood. I had distorted love and minimized it into a container of protection. I was seeking in others what I desperately needed within myself. With this perspective, I would hold people in my life hostage, demanding they give me what I was lacking.
Recovery transformed my heart and relationships now teach me forgiveness. What I used to view as injustices done to me by someone else, I see as opportunities to heal something in myself I could not have known without them.
If in life you get what you give than relationships are a gift because in the other person I can feel and see what I need and I can offer that as medicine for myself and free them from my mental prison. When it came to relationships in my past, I had an ideal or an expectation that they must provide the love I needed. Today I know that I offer the love that flows freely through me to you without cost and no requirement to love me back.
I risk my truth in a relationship. Relationships walk me to the edge of my comfort zone and ask me if I am willing to take a leap of faith for love. My answer today is a resounding YESÂ…I would not miss that experience for anything!