I understand that we often do need a bad guy or a crusade at certain times in our lives. This is especially true when we are children, but we also see it in politics and in the media. We must place the blame of our problems or hardships on someone else so we can survive whatever trauma we are living. That is quite literally our only goal as children, to survive, and we will do whatever we have to in order to accomplish that goal — however real or imagined the circumstances might be.
There does come a point where, in order to move forward as sovereign beings (aka empowered adults), we must take responsibility for our our past. Where we must put down that idea that someone else is to blame and move forward in our lives. This is still the case even when we intellectually know it was clearly someone else who traumatized us. That is not the point. Only through claiming responsibility for our own past experiences and making the effort to heal within ourselves can we move forward and heal as a society. We must completely accept the past, take responsibility for everything as our own, unconditionally forgive everyone who has “wronged” us, and move forward in that space of complete acceptance and forgiveness.
Essentially, we claim complete responsibility for our past and release the responsibility of everyone else involved.
This is what is known as Personal Responsibility.
Some examples are as follows:
Let’s look at the feminist or women’s equality movement. I hate to be the bearer of bad news (or good news I’d say), but women don’t need to fight for equality. They need to claim it. It is not the responsibility of the men/masculine to heal the women/feminine from years of abuse and control — it is the responsibility of the women/feminine to accept that wounding as theirs and to heal it within themselves. Only in healing that past that can they reclaim their power. There is no need to hate on men. There is no need to fight the patriarchy or treat every man as a toxic masculine. For women/feminine, rising up into their own power will force everything else to fall in line behind them.
You want equality? Stop playing by their rules and create your own.
And I know this will be controversial, but I am going to say it anyway. The same goes for any other group of people who are fighting for equality. If you choose to take responsibility of your own role in past traumas, including those of an ancestral nature, you can then stand in your power and move forward in it. When we claim responsibility as being the creator of our own life, instead of living in the energy of victim, things change. And not a moment sooner. The longer we fight, whether for equality, recognition, or an apology of past traumas, the longer the disparity will last.
It is not your father’s responsibility to heal from his abuse towards you as a child — it’s yours. You chose the life you are living and now it’s time to live it, accepting responsibility for the trauma of the past and learning to love the person that trauma created. Just as you signed up for your life and your experiences, so did your father. He agreed to be abusive to you so that you could experience it and become stronger as a result of overcoming that abuse and reclaiming your power.
It is not the responsibility of any perpetrator to heal from what they have done, it is the responsibility of the victim. Only in healing our own wound as a victim can we reclaim our power as an individual.
These are choices that must be made. They don’t typically happen organically and there are tools to that will help. But this is important. Reclaiming our past, or taking full responsibility for it, isn’t easy when you are pissed off at the person or people who have wronged you. It hurts to be violated, persecuted or abused and we want to be angry about it. And yes, we have a right to be angry.
For a time.
The point is that you can’t move forward, you can’t heal and you can’t be happy until you come to fully accept responsibility of your past.
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