Have I become my mother?

Healing the relationship with my mother in order to heal the relationship with myself

I had a dream recently that I became my mother. It jolted me awake so suddenly because I was so horrified by the notion. The fact the dream had such a big impact on me means on some level I believe it to be true.

Before I forgave my mother, my worst fear was becoming her. And the more I fought and judged her, the more I became her. The things I run away from and deny are always the things I need to deal with most. Forgiving my mother will always be in the forefront of my mind when I start seeing patterns repeat itself.

Can I become my mother? Sure, if I choose to. There are days I feel like I'm just like her. I certainly look like her.

But I’m not my mother. I’m not following the same path. I’ve broken the cycle of trauma and hurt and chose to go my own way. Most of all, I’ve chosen to forgive her. Because holding resentments against her no longer serve me. It allows me to cut the negative cord that’s connected me to her for so long, it allows her to show up differently in my life, without the negative stories attached.

The things you haven’t forgiven will continuously show up in your life, again, and again, and again, forcing you to look at them. You can either ask yourself the question “what needs to be forgiven in order for this to go away?” Or you can just keep pushing through, holding onto resentments that do not serve you.

Before I forgave my mother, I did EVERYTHING I could NOT to be her. But that gets exhausting. And you usually end up becoming exactly who you are trying not to be. I am an extension of my mother. Not only is she my mother, but she’s an extension of me, because we’re all connected.

The below poem has always helped me to acknowledge what parts of my mother I have, what parts to learn from, and what parts I can choose not to be.

“You do not have to be your mother unless she is who you want to be.
You do not have to be your mother's mother, or your mother's mother's mother, or even your grandmother's mother on your father's side.
You may inherit their chins or their hips or their eyes, but you are not destined to become the women who came before you. You are not destined to live their lives.
So if you inherit something, inherit their strength, their resilience. Because the only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

— Pam Finger

Shame vs. Guilt and how it manifests in my life

Rather than the Oxford English Dictionary, I used Brené Brown’s definition of shame, which is a clear explanation that rings true for all of us.

Brené says she believes there is a profound difference between shame and guilt. Guilt can be adaptive and helpful, like holding something we’ve failed in up against our values by feeling psychological discomfort.

Shame on the other hand, is tied to something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do that makes us believe we’re unworthy of connection.

Shame is huge for trauma survivors, in particular those who have suffered abuse. Many times the perpetrator gaslights us to believe we brought the abuse on ourselves, or that we even wanted or enjoyed it. Over time this creates a huge sense of cognitive dissonance as we feel one thing, but are made to believe another.

Shame is one of the biggest issues I've had to work on, both with myself and my clients. It's easy to pretend we don't suffer from shame as many times we don't even understand what it is.

When you understand how shame affects your life through your emotions, actions, beliefs, habits and relationships, you realize how much shame controls your life.

When I lived in shame I felt I was bad because of my past. I lived with a subconscious sense of disgrace, chronic self-reproach and personal failure, all stemming from my childhood.

To heal shame I first had to understand how it sabotaged my life, held me back from reaching any goal and stuck in the mentality that I wasn't worthy of love, respect, and connection. This manifested in my sub-par relationships, lying about my life and denying to look at some really hard truths about my childhood.

The first time I felt no shame, I knew it was something I never felt before. You will know when you're shame free because you'll feel different, just like you feel something is off when stuck in a shame cycle.

I still have feelings of shame and I always will. But now I can recognize the old shame feeling, acknowledge it, be like "oh, it's you again" then move on from it. Being aware, acknowledging it, noticing how it feels through your body then moving on has been the quickest way to get out of a shame spiral.

The only person you can save is yourself

The only person you can heal is yourself. The only thoughts and judgment you can change are your own. The story we tell is the only nightmare we believe. We can heal from anything because our present pain is self inflicted from past pain, attached to beliefs and stories we created around the experience.

Does heading mean you never suffer again? No. As trauma survivors you're allowed to be angry and to forgive. You're allowed to be healed but still get triggered. You're allowed to move on but acknowledge the deep pain that was inflicted on you. You're allowed to go through all those things and still be healed.

Healing is about acknowledging all these things, experiencing the deep pain come up again and again, yet having the tools you need acknowledge the experience and how many times you've relived it. Then forgive yourself for the pain you've endured all this time. This allows you to move past it and come to an understanding with yourself and your life.

If you're waiting for the perfect apology from someone who's wronged you you'll be waiting a long time. The best thing you can do is learn to provide the apology and love to yourself that you never received. But this means acknowledging some hard truths about yourself and your beliefs around the situation that maybe you haven't faced before. The result is peace, letting go of self hatred, letting in self respect, boundaries, and dropping that weight you've been carrying around for years that was never yours to carry in the first place.

You can do it! And if you need any extra support, email me at hello@serenakelley.com. I'm here for you.

My struggles with body dysmorphia

I was going through photos of myself when I found this one and went to delete it. I disliked this photo for several reasons:
1. Bad angle, makes my arms look fat and my boobs look small
2. Hair looks thin and scraggly
3. You can see my crooked teeth, a huge source of shame growing up
4. Wrinkles

I immediately noticed the insane negative self criticism and decided to take a good look at the photo until I got comfortable with it, and then posted it.

Growing up around women in Brazil with long hair, big boobs and lips, I was constantly bullied for my looks. I was tall, skinny and awkward. Kids would pull out chairs from under me and laugh when I fell, saying it was such a long way down for me to go. They’d tell me “You’re so skinny you can stand sideways behind a broomstick and disappear.”

When I went to my first teen camp in the cult at 16, everyone knew who I was & I thought people wanted to be my friends. At the end of the camp we all received T-shirts and signed our names on everyone's. Some of the girls I thought were my friends wrote things on the back of my shirt like: “Roses are red, violets are black, why is your chest as flat as your back?”

Of course I laughed this all off but deep down I was so hurt. I wasn’t like the others, I didn’t have big boobs and long hair. Guys didn’t look at me like they did my friends, so I decided I would be a tomboy and just be friends with all the boys instead. I hid my body and swam with t-shirts so no one would see my chest.

It took me over a decade of eating disorders, drugs, and body dysmorphia to finally get to a point where I stopped the self destruction and decided to treat my body as something sacred vs something despicable. Even so, I still have these thoughts.

I don’t want to look like everyone else. I don’t want to cut up my body and put things in it to change the outside when I feel awful on the inside. The best I can do is continue using this time to uncover those hidden thoughts about myself in order to grow, be stronger and (obvi) keep being the badass faerie dragon queen I am. I'm much happier that way anyway 👑🧚🏻‍♂️🐉

Stepping out of my familiar comfort zone

“What saved you as a child will suffocate you as an adult.”

When we experience trauma as a child, we develop habits and patterns to protect or soul and brain when our body is in physical distress.

Our ego taught us self preservation, which served us then but now only hold us back with its negative self talk. Things like:
You're not doing it right
People will mock you
You're too old
There's not enough time
You're not smart/pretty/educated, etc) enough
There's not enough....
You should/shouldn't do...

Any type of "well meaning" talk like this is only your ego working to keep you small, in your place, not rocking the boat or being a "nuisance". Your ego steps in when you're pushing out of your comfort zone on the way to greatness.

When you commit to greatness, all the stories, beliefs, and habits formed as a child that helped you survive start coming up as an adult. The ego knows you’re stepping out of your comfort zone and will try to keep you stuck.

In order to bypass the ego we need to stop being afraid of ourselves and become who we really are, which is also what we have the most resistance to because of the lies our ego tells us about what will happen if we do it (everyone will leave/laugh/hate me).

When there ego conspires to throw you off course, sometimes it works! Last year I succumbed to fear, got stuck in small-minded thinking and was temporarily silenced because of attacks on my character.

When I finally stopped listening to my ego and listened to my soul, I realized that what helped protect me as a child now held me back. It was time to shift my attention from the ego to the soul, embrace my warrior within and stop being afraid of who I am.

When I embraced these challenges as a step to growth rather than attacks, that's when I experienced a transformation. I let go of all the old stories and beliefs about myself, and began transitioning into who I’m meant to be.

My resistance is the only thing that separates me from my power. I no longer want to be fueled by fear, living a mediocre life. I want to continue on the path to greatness living a shame-free, fearless life. You can too!

Embracing my feminine powers

One of my goals for this year was to embrace myself in all my oddities by stepping into my power to become who I really am. But what does that mean, exactly?

In the book The Magdalen Manuscript it says that "Restoring women to a place of honor in our culture begins with women honoring both themselves and their stories."

In order to reclaim my power I need to honor my story, honor my past and the person I've become as a result. I learned to honor the feminine in me and not see it as a sign of weakness. Honor my gifts, my sexuality, and my body. Everything that society taught us to downplay and be ashamed of.

For thousands of years we've been taught that women are evil, weak, helpless, and less than. We're taught that we're here to support man, to please him, to sit down and shut up & give him children. These are all lies passed down through generations to keep us from our power.

Our bodies are sacred, and we should treat them as such. We cut up and add things to our bodies to make us more appealing to men, then give our power away by sleeping with random dudes who bring us zero pleasure. We settle for the first ok guy that will make a decent husband with a mediocre life because we think aren't worthy of the man of our dreams. We are afraid of our own bodies, our cycles, our ability to heal, love, and bring life into this world. This and so much more is how we give our power away.

Each time a woman steps into her power and a man honors the woman in his life, the pain and lies of the last 2 thousand years gets closer to an end and women get closer to the power we lost along the way.

We must come back to a place of balance between spirit and earth, masculine and feminine. We must find our strength and stop letting anyone else tell us otherwise.

That's what I've been doing, what I'm continuing to do, and what I hope all women will embrace at the right time.