When the fog of grief from my mother’s death cleared, and I made my way back from exhaustion and imbalance, I was rewarded with fresh clarity. Since then, many of the challenges of my personal life have started to make sense. I don’t know if it is part of the aging process, my search for discovery and life lessons, or simply gifts from the universe; but I am evolving with new awareness and understanding. It is freeing me from the constraints of my stories.

A friend recently said to me, “The way you shed is more than the actual pounds.” I had to slow down to understand what she meant. I asked her if she had ever used that phrase before, and she replied with some surprise, that she had not — it just popped out. I am shedding. Shedding the weight that I have carried of the patterns of my life.

I haven’t always been able to let go and let God. Most of my life I have been a perpetual ruminator – holding on to every experience good and bad to revisit and reexamine. I revisited the past, imagined my future and frequently missed the present moment I was living.

Fortunately, I have been gifted with a very buoyant countenance filled with unlimited optimism, hope and positivity. It has served me well and has been a source of my resiliency. And I needed that bounce. I have been battling ghosts that I didn’t understand until now. I have shared that my family, like many others, held a secret. I did not fully understand the impact of that event on my life until now. The tentacles of the experience reached deep into my family and our relationships.

Before I was born, my parents — whose marriage was tenuous — lost their first born son. Young Jimmy was five and died of a cerebral aneurysm. My sister, Jane, was only three years old. This tragedy broke this family. My sister lost a  father who became distant and a shadow of his outgoing self, and a mother to inconsolable grief.

And suddenly, the little boy whom my sister shadowed was gone.

My sister and I are not close. I could explain this as our four year age difference or our very different personalities, but I think it has more to do with the tragic event that changed the course of my family and each of our lives going forward.

I was born one year after Jimmy’s death. I don’t know how I was conceived in all of this brokenness. But I arrived into this world and this family. My role was almost predetermined. My mother, like a she wolf, was going to protect this child. My sister was unsure if this new addition to her family might compete for space, time, and affection. Lastly, my father, who I have chased my whole life for his attention and approval, was not going to risk breaking or loving another child.

I know that each of my parents loved me as only they could. I have made peace with the dysfunction. And now, with the dysfunction that made me. I understand better the push-pull of my relationship with my sister. I see clearly now the role I was cast into by my mother. And just recently I discovered the root of my lifetime of challenging romantic relationships: I am attracted to men who are emotionally unavailable. (I feel like I am at an AA meeting and I have just introduced myself. “Hello, my name is Leslie and I am attracted to men who are emotionally unavailable.) There I said it. I have lived this pattern. I persist. I demonstrate loyalty past the point of health. I fill in these men’s flat sides with my own strengths. I have sought out self-help books, workshops, and counselors. And yet I was into fixing. I watched my mother and I joined in the effort and continued doing ‘the fix.

Until now.

I have finally uncovered the source of my pain. All the change that is required is my own.

I can shed this mindset, too!

Leslie