A Great Falsehood
I know, now, that there is no necessary connection between having an impairment and being unhappy.
That such a great falsehood was allowed to be planted and to grow inside me for decades, occasionally leaves me feeling quite devastated. Every revelation has its downside; and while I now feel uplifted and energised by the liberation that comes with recognising this lie for what it is, I can’t escape knowing that I’ve wasted acres of time and energy trying to rationalise, and then escape from, the deeply rooted assumption I held to, that impairment and unhappiness were bound to twist together.

Paralysing childhood reasoning is much easier to dismantle and let go of, when we are allowed to talk it through and can be offered reassurance and a wider perspective. Goodness knows, we all have challenges to deal with. And we don’t all devise a twisted logic to try and make sense of the impossible.
Only now do I see, that I could have been very much happier if I’d had more considered and unconditional love. Though I’m very grateful for all my life lessons, even the hard ones, I’ve come a long road round to the obvious truth, that it is love that makes people happy and well adjusted, able to cope with whatever life throws at them: the kind of love that I now allow myself to feel, and that I try to offer to other people.
In so many ways I have been, and I am, incredibly lucky. And I wish I could have felt that luck and joy – that sheer sense of freedom – more often, when I was younger. I have come late to the realisation that none of our warped thinking matters. We are free, whatever our lot in life, to be relaxed, happy, calm and certain of our confidence and our achievements.
That feelings of freedom and happiness can flourish despite our challenges, is a wonderful lesson to harvest from a great deal of reflection.
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August 17, 2020
Taking refuge
Fran Macilvey 'Trapped: My Life with Cerebral Palsy', cerebral palsy, Fran's School of Hard Knocks, Happiness Matters 0 Comments
Taking refuge
In the process of growing up and getting older, have I been taking refuge behind unhealthy behaviours? In a household which was unusual, it comes as no surprise that I must have learned some very odd coping habits. And of course, I would unthinkingly accept what I saw around me, adapt to it and adopt it as mine too. Odd, that we adopt dysfunctional behaviour in order to fit in, when dysfunction makes true co-operation non-existent or at best, reluctant.
And so in the cause of adapting to what I have seen and felt, I have become too often, and painfully, bad tempered, perfectionist, judgemental, and I have spent a great deal of thought and mental energy in “fixing things”: keeping people happy, not rocking the boat, both appeasing and enabling bad behaviour, even while I was totally unaware of doing any of that.
In the process of realising all this, I’m having to recalibrate a lot of things I thought I understood. I’m having to take fresh responsibility for being too quick to be offended, for being sharp with judgements, and being impatient. None of what we get through in daily life matters so much that it should make us unhappy, and since bad behaviour alienates people, it’s no wonder I’ve felt too often alone and beleaguered.
But it’s never too late to start again. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point, and I’m glad I have, finally reaching a place from which I can work constructively. Painful as it may be, understanding my part in keeping difficult things going, and choosing now to work and behave differently, brings rewards I could previously only dream of, and a kind of peace and resolution that I feel as if I’ve been searching for all my life.
Thanks for listening.
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