Drop the Duffle Bag

When I seek to understand, I find empathy

When I live with empathy, I find compassion

When I live with compassion, I find love

Love is the answer

Love, me.

• 

I had just lost my second sibling and I was angry. I was angry at my parents for what this sibling had endured. I was angry at how he died…an unspeakable life and death. It’s difficult to type this passage recalling all the abuse. I was angry for all that we had endured. Our lives, the suffering, the tragedies, the sadness of it all. I was still angry. I felt like his death had ignited the memories of our childhood and all that had happened, and didn’t happen, back then and through the years. I was mourning the loss of another person that I loved. One of MY pack. My friend. My buddy. My little brother. And I was mourning the loss of a family that never existed…I did that my whole life.

The September after my little brother’s death, I went with a dear friend to a Women’s Spiritual Retreat in Cocoa Beach. I needed it bad. I wanted the anger gone. I knew what it would do to me if it stayed much longer…physically, emotionally and mentally. It was there that I completed the poem.

Several months early, I had also made a journey to the grave of one of my abusers. I went to forgive them and let them go. Let them go forever. I needed to forgive. I knew I needed to forgive for my sake. I needed to be free. All the pain that rose up with my baby brother’s death was wreaking havoc in my soul. I HAD to be free, or else. It was there that I began the poem.

At the grave site of my abuser, I began to understand that person’s life. Abuse is not innate, it is learned. Hurt people hurt, right? How had that person been hurt? What was that person’s story? How did he come to be an abuser? Sitting at graveside I envisioned this person as a child. A child that was being hurt in the same way that I had been hurt. I realized that if someone told me that day about the story of this little person and that they were being hurt by someone, I would have such empathy and compassion for this child. How terrible that this child was being hurt…a precious child…a little spirit being broken and abused. Horrible. Tragic. Unjust. I wanted to hug that child that day and take their pain away. Empathy for my abuser, not excusal. And so the process began…Understanding, Empathy, Compassion…for the love of self.

Forgiveness does not mean excusal…it just means forgiveness. Freedom from the bondage… Release of the pain. Letting go of things that did not define me…they just happened to me…a long time ago. They were not happening to me today. Those things are of no use to me. I had already turned them into lessons. I didn’t need that pain in my life.

We had an old army duffle bag when I was a kid that we moved from place to place to place. It was dirty, stinky, old, filled with old, broken sports equipment that we no longer used. On one of the moves, I picked this duffle bag up again, looked down, and asked myself…”why do we keep dragging this crap around everywhere we go?” I stopped, dropped it and realized that that is what I did with that pain…dirty, stinky, old, useless equipment that I no longer needed…carried it around in my soul. That’s when I decided to “drop the duffle bag.”

Empathy freed my soul…

When I seek to understand, I find empathy. When I live with empathy, I find compassion. When I live with compassion, I find love. Love is MY answer…