It’s an interesting thing to see the narrative arc of your own life.

I’ve recently started to “unpack my baggage”, a term of endearment I use to describe my latest journey into self exploration. In an earlier blog post I explained how writing has always been a form of my mental and emotionally processing. At some of my earliest literate stages of life I can remember having a pencil and paper nearby, and used what words I could to describe what I knew.

As I got older the words I used evolved, as did what I knew. But one thing I always knew and has remained a constant throughout my life: Words Have Power. They give us the means to express thoughts and emotions out of the ether, and translate them into something others can make sense of…or maybe just translate it so we can understand it for ourselves. Either way, the process of explaining those inner workings helped me work out a ton in my life. As I filled each journal and notebook, they would become part of the collective weight of the suitcase that contained them. A vintage suitcase to be my literal and symbolic baggage.

Over the years I have filled many diaries. There was a time I use to read back on them often and reflect on what was. I remember as a child almost compulsively looking back on my own life. My writing style is very narrative, and reading back with all the hindsight can be quite an interesting perspective to take on. As I’ve gotten older I’ve found I wanted to take on that perspective less. I wanted to look back on those old versions of myself less. I wanted to read back on the struggles I was grappling with less. In fact, all I wanted to do was keep my precious baggage in the corner collecting dust. For years this was the main function of my baggage. A heavy reminder of what was that I would sit somewhere to take up space, unexamined but nonetheless ever present.

I recently decided it was time to start examining these old books. See if there were some truth nuggets to be found within them. Forgive parts of myself I’ve not yet let go of. And to honor my experiences with all the perspective my hindsight has to offer.

I have chosen to do this in a therapeutic setting. For me, re-reading about some of these experiences is like looking into a dusty old shoebox that’s been in the attic for ages. You don’t know what you’ll find in there. Some of the things you haven’t thought about in years. Or you forgot about entirely. Some of those boxes are full of joy in the remembering….

but some boxes you’d just as well assume the lid stay shut on.

But there’s lessons in the struggle. If hindsight has taught me nothing else it’s taught me that. Learn the lessons or be doomed to repeat them. Your life, your history, is a story with a purpose. We all have our own hero’s journey to take on in these stories. It may not be as glamorous as defeating the bad guy, or living happily ever after, but that doesn’t make the story any less.

Your story is important.

My story is important.

I want to understand my story, so I can better understand myself.

So the journey begins to unbox and unpack the baggage I’ve let lie for so many years. I’ve only just begun and I have found the looking back to already be challenging my perceptions. I can look back now and understand the timeline of my life more fully. I can see why I made certain choices, how those consequences, good and bad, impacted my direction in life. I am putting together how my story unfolded in a way I have never understood before.

For as challenging as the looking back has been, it’s also been enlightening.

Somewhere within all these pages of what was, is the key (or keys) to forgiving deep hurts I’ve been holding.

Writing has always been part of my HeArtwork practice….and it may well be what unlocks my ability to progress on this journey I’m on. To heal up and end cycles. And to come to know and love the girl I was—-the girl I still am

….in all her imperfection and glory.