For more years than I can count, I had longed to be adored. Yet with each relationship I had with a man, the initial adoration had very quickly shifted into something else.
I had blamed them, or blamed the honeymoon effect, or blamed myself for not being adorable. And then, during a facilitating session, I was amazed to discover a core belief that if I was adored, I would be hit. All along I had had a legitimate reason for not being adored. Why on earth would I let myself be adored if it meant I would also be hit? Much more preferable to feel the pain of not being adored than suffer physical pain.
A lightbulb went on too. From the ages of 3 to 6, my son used to hit me. I put a lot of effort into helping him shift out of this from an Aware Parenting perspective – ie. lots of opportunity for him to express painful feelings through crying and raging with my loving support; lots of connection and love; and lots of power-reversal games and laughter games to release fear and powerlessness. And yet he still at times, would hit me.
From this deeper, structural perspective, I can see that he has been living out my beliefs. I adore him; he adores me; adoring me means hitting me; so he does that.
So, I sat with this realisation, this self-responsibility. It was no longer the exes’ fault that they hadn’t adored me; it was no longer just Sunny’s painful feelings that had caused him to hit me; it was my core belief being outdrawn into the world. The exes hadn’t adored me, to protect me from being hit; Sunny had hit me because he adored me and he had simply learnt this belief unknowingly from me.
I sat with it for quite some time, as the past 20 years suddenly looked completely different from this new reality. I could remember the moment, in each of my three primary relationships, when I had thought that the man no longer adored me. How differently I saw that now. The pain shifted into self-responsibility – not in a way that was hurtful to myself, but a way that felt empowering. I saw too, how I had chosen to stay in those relationships for a long time without experiencing being adored. I came home to my own authority. And with that came the potential to change and be different.
I no longer wanted to live with this belief, this identity. It had cost me a lot. I had paid an expensive price and probably several relationships.
So what did I want instead? Something more friendly, more beautiful ~ to be adored is beautiful and why I (and all of us) are here. I thought of a new baby and how they are here to be adored. Yes, that is now what I want and am willing to have, willing to be.
So I stepped into the experience of knowing that to be adored is beautiful and is why I am here, and WOW! What a beautiful identity experience….. I enter the felt sense of this identity, and it is all I ever dreamed of, and more. Being willing to receive the adoration, the man, the relationship, being given flowers and gifts and all that I love.
So, now I have a different relationship with myself. I feel different. And my daughter sits beside me as I write this, playing on my MacBook Pro on “photobooth”. She shows me a picture. She has a picture of two of her faces, each staring back at the other lovingly, and a heart is above her head, made of her hands. She shows me that as I change my self-relationship, my relationship to others, and to the Universe, then that new identity and belief is also something she is free to have…. she is freed from carrying my outdated and painful beliefs and free to be love and receive love and give love.
What a beautiful gift I received!
Do you let yourself be adored? If not, are you willing to let yourself see why not? And are you ready to embrace a new way of being with adoration?