Those Darn Boxes!

If you can imagine for a moment a house. This house represents our lives. We have different rooms in the house and those rooms are different areas or relationships in our life. Some rooms are used often and others are down right spooky. Now imagine challenges we face in life: breakups, abuse, hurtful words, death and other things. Facing these things are hard and for people like me, it's sometimes easier not to face them at all. So imagine putting that grief or trauma into a box, some boxes are bigger than others and some boxes much stronger. We take that box and we slide it under the bed, we hide it in the closet or we may even sleep close to it each night. Yet we don't dare open the box out of fear. Fear of the pain, hurt and memories that lie inside.

I've used this analogy for years in dealing with grief. Sitting around a grief circle or one on one mentoring. I've written about it from time to time. Helped others work through their own boxes that have come to clutter their home. In all the work I've done with others to find peace in the tragedy I never looked at some of my own.

I found that it was easier for those who help others with their boxes to simply ignore their own. It's easier to help you with yours than it is for me to face my own. I was in Bend Oregon earlier this year working with some fellow siblings. There was a long time therapist who was present for the event. We had a long discussion on her boxes, her fear and her grief. I sat there listening from a place that I thought was box free...

I found that it's incredibly easy to simply ignore my own boxes when I can focus on others. It's so very much easier to simply ignore the clutter in our home when life is beautiful and there's lots of things to enjoy. For me, I was becoming more vulnerable in a relationship and reaching deeper into my own closet. I was finding emotions that I hadn't dealt with in years, even as far back as my childhood.

Something else I've realized, we sometimes do anything to keep from facing our past and opening those boxes. We use people to entertain us, fill us and affirm us. We use drugs, alcohol, work, relationships, spending and exercise to keeps us from facing those darn boxes. Fact of the matter is, if we don't face them they sometimes get knocked over and ruin our day. And sometimes they cost us beautiful things that mean the world to us.