Category: Parenting

Healing from witnessing your parent being abused

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Family Constellations, Healing from child abuse, Parenting, Personal Development, Self help techniques

Last night I watched ‘The Drover’s Wife’ on Netflix. It broke my heart wide open and then I closed it over to cope with the grief, the anger and the pain from domestic violence and alcohol fueled violence that affects so many women and children, myself included.

It is devastating as a child watching your parent be verbally, emotionally, physically and/or sexually abused. It is infuriating that you are too small to save them, to fight back, to stand up to the abuser and tell them to “STOP. Take responsibility for their pain and their life, to be a caring, mature adult and do the right thing”.

The joy of life gets stripped away as you deal with your anger, your resentment, your fear of when it is going to happen next or if it will get worse. You worry about your parent getting seriously hurt or killed and you being left alone with the perpetrator. You worry about when he/she will turn on you. You feel so helpless and hopeless.

You wonder why none of the other adults in your life step in to help. You wonder why your parent stays and allows themselves to be treated so poorly.

You struggle to lift your head up and live. You wonder “What’s the point of trying if it is always going to be like this”. You don’t ever relax fully just in case the fighting breaks out again.

Fun times, parties, are not fun for you as you know once the perpetrator gets drunk the fighting is likely to start. So, you brace yourself ready for what is to come. You hope and pray it doesn’t occur this time. You pray that maybe just once they will pass out before they attack and abuse.

You wonder whether there is any goodness in them at all and how they can live with themselves afterwards, after being so cruel and destructive.

You wonder why life is so hard and why humans can be so cruel. To survive you harden up, you numb yourself to the pain, you become bitter, cynical and angry. You do what you have to do to survive, even if that means isolating yourself from those you love, never letting anyone close because you don’t want to see their pain, face them being hurt anymore.

You close down and retreat into yourself or you leave, run away physically or energetically, no longer being a part of the family system. But energetically, spiritually we are always a part of our family system. They are in our blood, our DNA, the cells of our body. We live because they lived and passed on life to us. We can’t cut ourselves off, that’s like cutting off our own arm.

If we do cut ourselves off fully we will eventually get drained, exhausted, burnt out as we have cut ourselves off from the goodness, the energy supply, the river of life force that flows through our ancestors to our parents to us.

They are a part of us. We are a part of them. Our job as adults is to find our way back to our hearts, to feel our pain and to humbly stand before our parents and speak our truth.

“It hurt so much to see you suffer. I just wanted you to be safe. I wanted to feel your love and play. I wanted to be seen and listened to, to be heard and cared for. I accept you couldn’t give me that, you didn’t have any more energy, love or joy to give to me with what you were facing.

Thank you for giving me what you could. What you couldn’t give me I’ve had to find from elsewhere. It’s taken a long time to find it Mum, but I have found it. I honour you and all you went through.

I thank you for my life and for the closeness we now have. Thank you for finding your way through too. I’m so glad you won’t let anyone treat you that way ever again. I love you so much and I welcome you back into my heart, my life, my love and I look forward to spending more time together actually enjoying life. Thank you Mum, thank you for my life”.

When we can do this, we set them and ourselves free. We get to have peace in our hearts and calm in our bodies and nervous systems. We get to step out of hypervigilance, scanning for danger and isolating for protection.

We get to rejoin life and to see that there is love and goodness out there. There are lots of people who treat each other with love and respect. We start to let ourselves participate in life more fully and receive the love and goodness we have always longed for.

In time we also see that the perpetrator didn’t know how to behave better, how to cope with their hurts and disappointments from their life. As we heal we eventually find compassion for them and their journey. We see that they had deep pain inside which leads to their lashing out and hurting others.

We see that as an adult we can now walk away from that. We don’t have to stay entangled in their pain. We can hand it back and leave it with them. We can bow, honouring their difficult journey and then turn to face our own life, to walk forward into our future, using what we have learned to create as much goodness, love and joy as we can.

May all children and parents who have suffered from domestic violence find peace. May they heal and come back together to honour the love they have for each other and enjoy the rest of their lives as much as they can. Blessed BE.

Here’s a link to my page with free resources to assist with healing from child abuse.

(The healing process I’ve explained above is just my life’s example. A lot of the deep healing occurred through doing Family Constellations sessions where I could feel my feelings and speak my truth to someone standing in as a representative for my Mum and my Stepdad. I didn’t have those conversations with my actual parents. That would have been too confronting with the level of pain I had and they may not have been able to hear it.

Family Constellations creates a safe space for you to speak your truth and heal. Once you have healed and found more peace you might have a truthful conversation with your parents. When you’ve reached a greater level of peace within you, you are less vulnerable, less likely to be reactive or defensive if they can’t hear you or acknowledge what you have been through. Your parents will have seen what occurred very differently to you. If they have not dealt with their pain they may simply deny it or push you away as it is too hard for them to face it.)

How do we reset our moral compass after abuse?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Healing from child abuse, Parenting, Personal Development, Self help techniques

Recently I’ve been having more memories of sexual abuse arise. As I comfort my younger selves and release the buried trauma and emotion I found myself asking this question and channelling this answer. I hope it is useful to those who have experienced abuse and are finding their way through it. Many blessings to all, Jodi-Anne

When you have been sexually abused your body becomes numb, armoured, and protected so that you don’t feel the full impact of the abuse or what happened afterwards. As you heal you start to soften the defences and open back up to love, touch, closeness, and intimacy. For some this is too scary, so they stay celibate, not able to trust another to treat them right.

Some stay in the pain and continue to let themselves be touched in ways that are not beneficial. They let themselves be used by others for the momentary feeling of being wanted, loved, and special, only to find that once the act is over the other leaves them feeling even more alone, abandoned, used and discarded.

It is a hard path to navigate. It is hard on your body that gets armoured with each impact, each indiscretion, and each choice. It is not empowering to sleep around thinking you have the choice and freedom to do as you please. Seducing others so you feel powerful just leads you to despise them and yourself. For at a later stage you will regret your choices and your naivete. You will feel the emptiness and neediness that was underneath your actions. Even though you were voluntarily engaging with others sexually, it is still a form of self-neglect and self-abuse.

The healing comes when you start to honour yourself more fully. When you start to say “No, I am going to look after myself. I don’t need anyone else to give me false affection. I am going to meet my needs. I am going to honour my body and all it has been through. I am going to treat myself like the precious being that I am. I am going to hold my own hand and look after myself. I will love, cherish and honour the innocence inside me, which is still there, still pure, no matter what I’ve been through. I am still a beautiful bright light. I’ve just been covered in dust. I am going to cleanse my lens and shine.”

you are worthy of love signage on brown wooden post taken
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Pexels.com

No need for shame, guilt, punishment, rejection or further loss. You are worthy of great love, kindness, care and joy. When children are exposed to sexuality too early they don’t realise their bodies are sacred. They don’t realise they are precious and only to be touched by loving hands at the right time when they are older. They simply don’t have the information or adult reasoning capacity to make wise choices.

The physical sensation of pleasure is tempting. The choice to have closeness and feel special is attractive. It draws them in, especially if they are not receiving healthy levels of love and affection from their parents, leaving them needy, hungry, longing for connection, susceptible and vulnerable to abuse.

Children are so innocent, so pure. Even those that appear a little naughty or rebellious. They are just learning what it is like to be human, how to deal with all the emotions that arise in their bodies and little brains.

They need healthy adults to guide them and protect them from inappropriate activities. If these adults are not around or not paying enough attention then the child may find itself in less-than-ideal situations. It is not the child’s fault. The child is still innocent, even if their curiosity led them down a destructive path. They just needed more guidance and protection from the adults around them.

Parents need more support, guidance and help. Parenting is a hard job. It is a job, a full-time job, and now that it is common in society for both parents to be working, and for children to be put into daycare more often, the children are made susceptible to inappropriate tactics of other immature, wounded adults.

Children’s emotional needs for safety, feeling loved, seen and heard do not get met if parents are always rushing, tired and exhausted. Their needs don’t get met if parents aren’t available to play and be with them, to sit and hold them in nurturing and healthy ways. If they don’t get their needs met then they are put at risk, as they will be looking for that love, that closeness and connection from others who they encounter.

Our society is not set up for parents to be successful. It is set up now for parents to be drained, stressed, exhausted and depressed or angry, as they know life can be easier and more enjoyable.

Many parents struggle with putting their children in care for long hours each work day, but they feel they have no choice when they need the income to provide a home and a lifestyle of success and wealth.

Children do not care about wealth. They care about you and their connection with you, with how close they feel to you, of whether they feel wanted or not, or a burden to you. They sense your disappointment with life if that is your situation. They sense your emotional pain and distress. They try to help fix it so you can be available to love them more. They want you to feel good so you can give to them. So they sacrifice their needs and start asking for less, expecting less from you. They may help out around the house more or just play on their own.

They may disconnect from you and connect with others whose time and attention they can get. This leads to unhealthy patterns where a child may start seeing the most popular kids at childcare or school as their role models, their leaders or pseudo-parents. They start to copy them and take their lead as to how to dress, behave and what to do. They become followers of others in the hope to belong and be accepted, to receive praise and love from others.

They no longer look to their parents for that role modelling. They no longer care as much about winning their parents’ approval, so they don’t care so much when you tell them off or discipline them. They feel “You don’t care about what I wanted so why should I care about what you want or need”. They rebel from younger and younger ages. This is documented in Gabor Mate’s book ‘Hold onto your kids: why parents need to matter more than peers.‘ It is a brilliant book for parents to read and it includes guidance about how to win back your children’s hearts and minds so that they do feel close to you, listen to you, and see you as their role model for life guidance.

The focus of society on wealth at all costs has serious consequences for all of us. Our children suffer. Our health suffers. Our joy suffers.

If you are an adult survivor of child abuse, know that your parents did for you what they could with the awareness, emotional pain and life challenges they had. You can heal and break free from the pain of the past. You can reclaim your innocence, your purity, your light and your joy. It just takes time. Time to heal, to feel what has been buried inside, to mourn what was, to feel and release anger, disappointment, resentment, despair and rage, to move through depression and numbness, to open back up to lightness, to feeling sensation in your body and dropping back inside of it, to inhabit it instead of being dissociated or stuck mostly in your mind or your base instincts/survival mode.

It’s a big journey to come home to your heart and honour the beautiful child that you were, to love, honour and protect that child so it feels safe inside you and relaxes to play again, to enjoy life again, freeing you to move forward now from a place of wholeness, not emptiness. Honouring yourself, and being there for yourself and your children. This is how we reset the moral compass. We choose love and safety, fullness and flow as our guiding lights, instead of fear, emptiness and neediness. Meet your own needs so you can venture forth with excitement, joy and passion for life.

May you find your way through any darkness and rough terrain as easily as possible, so you can enjoy the sunshine and the rain, all of life’s phases and challenges. They all become easier when we are facing them from a full cup, from a nurtured and satisfied place of self-love and self-acceptance. You are important. You do belong. And you are wanted. Welcome home to your heart. Blessed BE.

P.S. There is a range of free resources on my website that may be of assistance to you with your healing journey.

Why does trauma repeat through families?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Family Constellations, Healing from child abuse, Parenting, Personal Development

This week I’m sharing a video that explores why trauma repeats through families. It is often completely unintentional, but a parent’s wounding from the hurts in their life can make it hard for them to be fully present and available to their children.

Despite their efforts, part of their energy is tied up with their past and has them metaphorically turned towards the past and away from the now. The kids feel this and grow with a sense of lack. Once they become parents the same process repeats unless they take action to heal, so they can face now being present fully and available to their kids who will then grow with a sense of fullness, of being seen, held and safe, knowing they belong and that they are okay.

Family Constellations is a modality that can help unentangle you from the past so that you can turn and be present to your now, more able to give and receive love.

In this video, Jodi-Anne explores ‘Why does trauma repeat through families?’ It is one of over 100 questions she has asked about life and channelled an answer through automatic writing. All of these answers to questions about life, how to live peacefully and happily are available for free on the ‘Life Insights’ page of her website.

Why do we look for approval?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Family Constellations, Parenting, Personal Development, Self help techniques

It is human nature to want to feel loved and secure. Feeling that way occurs when you have a strong sense of belonging – to your family, your tribe, your community, your social supports, friends, etc.

You feel safe and secure when you sense that you belong and are accepted by those around you. When you feel you don’t belong, when you feel excluded or in danger of being excluded, you feel terrified of dying, of being left alone to fend for yourself. This terror relates to tribal days when you did need to band together for survival, to hunt the wild animals that could attack anyone left on their own.

In today’s world it is not so dangerous to be on your own, but loneliness, the sense of isolation, rejection, of not being enough – all erodes your happiness and eventually your health. Studies have shown that those who are lonely and isolated suffer higher rates of chronic illness and shorter lifespans. It is almost like the will to live reduces, because it is so painful to live in isolation and darkness that comes when your thoughts are negative and self-loathing.

It is hard to love and accept yourself when you feel rejected by others. The issue may not be about you. It may be something specific to the group rejecting you, but it still feels bad to be rejected. This is why people will do bad things in a group. They will be immoral and do devilish things that they would not do on their own. They go along with the crowd, they don’t stand up and say “No, I don’t want to hurt that person or break that law. It is immoral and I won’t do it”.

It takes great strength to stand up in such a situation and say no. It risks being ostracised, losing your standing in the group, being rejected and hated. Few people have the courage to do so. Many go along with the crowd and silently regret it for the rest of their lives. This feeds self-disgust and loathing.

Sometimes this gets high enough that a person will leave the group on their own choice, as to stay feels unconscionable. But few people make that choice. Most stay and self-medicate through addiction to numb the painful thoughts and feelings. Others will project the self-hatred out onto their enemy, their chosen other, and this further fuels the conflict occurring.

All of this occurs because each person wants to feel that they belong, that they are accepted, and that they are an acceptable human being. Many of us doubt our worthiness, our goodness, we feel not enough. This comes from childhood conditioning, when our parents weren’t able to be there for us all the time we needed them, and occasionally they looked at us with frustration and tiredness. They gave us looks of desperation and we sensed that they wished we didn’t exist or that we were different to how we were.

This was just their tiredness and stress. It wasn’t really about us. It was about them and their circumstances, but we take those messages to heart and feel that we are somehow unacceptable.

No parent means to do that to their child. They love you and want what is best for you, but they did not have the energy reserves or capability to be always loving and positive in their interactions with us. No one could. It is very demanding being a parent. There are no times off. No vacations from the responsibility for that child and its life.

Most parents do their best to meet the child’s needs. Some do not. Some in their exhaustion and pain will blame the child for their adult problems. Some may even say it to their child, saying “If it wasn’t for you I could have….. If it wasn’t for you I would have….You ruined my life, etc, etc”. Some parents can be very cruel even saying that they wish the child had not been born.

All of this negativity gets taken to heart by the child, who then has such inner turmoil and emotional pain that they may rebel, turn away from the parents and look for love and belonging elsewhere. This is what leads to gang membership. The person finds a group where they are accepted and approved of. They will do whatever they need to, in order to join and stay apart of their new family.

Thankfully most of us just join a sporting club or community activity or friends group where we feel held and safe and accepted.

All of us try to find somewhere, where we will be accepted and gain a sense of approval, a feeling that we are good enough, we do belong, and we are okay.

Some will try desperately to please their parents, bending over backwards doing whatever they ask, in a desperate plea for acceptance and belonging. Some parents will give that to their children and some will continue to manipulate the child well into adulthood in order to get what they want.

All of this could be avoided or reduced if there was more support for parents when they have their children. If parents with newborns were more supported, whether that be by family, friends, community or government services, it would make it easier for them to be more positive in their interactions with their children.

Most parents unfortunately are exhausted, over tired, fatigued and living on adrenaline, coffee or sugar to get by. It is not a healthy way to be, and it is inevitable that problems will occur. It is hard enough coping with children as a couple. It is even harder as a single parent.

Parents need support so that they can enjoy their time with their children more, so that they can have a more balanced life, with time for them to relax, do a hobby, and have some fun. Without this balance the parents will be in deficit and the kids will feel that and absorb it, feeling like there is something wrong with them, when there isn’t.

The above patterning is the reason for so many people desperately seeking approval. There are solutions at the societal level as discussed, but there are also solutions at the individual level.

We need to recognise any self-lacking thoughts and change them to more positive, self-affirming thoughts. We need to feel our emotional pain from past interactions and be loving and supportive of our self.

Doing inner child work is powerful, reclaiming those younger parts of us that split off, that hid or became tough to survive. We need to welcome those younger selves back into our hearts, give them the love that they missed out on, and welcome them home to our hearts, to know that they are okay and they belong with us.

When we integrate these disowned parts within us, we will no longer feel rejected by the world so much. We can do inner visualisations and Family Constellations with our parents to heal that split and to connect in with their hearts, their goodness, and their love for us.

There are many ways to do this, so that we feel more complete, more accepted and have a stronger sense of belonging, knowing we are okay, we are enough and all is okay as it is.

When we can heal our pain from our pasts and come to a place of self-acceptance and acceptance of our life how it was, is, and will be, then and only then will we drop the need for approval, as we know that we are okay.

Approval then becomes something that is nice, but not needed. We can be our authentic, creative self, showing our heart’s true desires to the world, following our heart’s longings without fear of ridicule or rejection, knowing that if it does occur it won’t cripple us, as we know we are okay.

Criticism can then be seen as another person’s opinion, which is about them, it is not about us. Any barbed spears they throw simply bounce off as there is no wound for them to land in.

When we love and accept our self, we go forth into the world and shine our light confidently, lovingly and securely, knowing we are good enough and all beings are. This is what we hope for all beings, to reach this place of love and acceptance, of self-approval. When that manifests we will have a much more peaceful time on Earth. Blessed BE, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (24 July 2018).

  • Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.
  • If you found this blog useful you may wish to consider purchasing a copy of Jodi-Anne’s book ‘Advice from a higher Source’ which contains 85 more answers to questions about life. The paperback book or ebook can be purchased online at – http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/JMS2011. (Once you have clicked into view the description of the book, go to the top of the page and choose the flag symbol for your country, this will show you the price in your currency and enable you to purchase it in that currency)

Do we need to forgive?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Conscious Evolution, Family Constellations, Healing from child abuse, Parenting, Personal Development, Self help techniques

Many people say that to have peace we need to forgive those who have hurt us, to let go of the pain and any resentment, judgement, hate or anger we may feel towards the other person. It is true if we hold onto these emotions we are keeping our self stuck in the energy of the past events and keeping it alive in our body. By focusing on the “wrong doing” we keep our self reliving it and replaying it in life, as we attract in other similar situations – in a subconscious attempt to heal the wound.

If we have formed beliefs that the world is dangerous or people can’t be trusted or everyone’s out to get me, then we live life with that viewpoint. Our eyes can’t perceive all the data that is there when we look at a scene. Millions of bits of information is sent to our brain which filters it based on our beliefs of what is most vital for us to see for our survival, our well being. So if we are locked in fight or flight or trauma from the past with beliefs that we are in danger all the time, then that is what the data gets searched for and we only see that subset of infomration about the scene we are viewing. We don’t notice the beauty, the love being shown between people or animals and their owners, etc, we just see the potential dangers, threats and situations to avoid in order to best protect our self. It is a self protection mechanism called a ‘negativity bias’. It is an evolutionary tool, a mechanism that makes sense biologically to keep us alive.

The sad part is that if you have those type of negative beliefs or buried trauma inside your body you miss out on seeing and feeling all the goodness in life that is their waiting for you to see it, to let it in, to trust and believe it is possible, that you deserve it and to accept it. You are worthy of good things, of fun, of love, of laughter and joy. You are worthy of wealth, abundance of food, shelter, clothing, health, etc.

The world is abundant, there is goodness out there, all around us, we just have to do the work to heal our programming – our negative beliefs and to shift out the pain and trauma in our bodies so it knows the war is over and can relax and start to enjoy life more.

Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) helps you to clear out the stagnant fight, flight, freeze energy out of your body so you can relax. It helps to complete the old trauma activations by shaking and using up the cortisol and adrenaline released during moments of stress, tension and trauma. If in those moments you didn’t flee or fight back then those chemicals stay in your body adding to tension, rigidity, pain and numbness. This can be reversed by completing the trauma activations so your body can calm and relax back down knowing it’s over, you’re safe now and all is well.

If you are holding on to a grudge about what has happened to you or onto what you have missed out on because of your experiences – then you are keeping yourself caught in that dynamic of feeling bad, victimised, empty of joy and vitality. You are punishing yourself with your choice of thoughts and actions that will result from that level of thinking.

Forgiveness is not about letting go of wrongdoing, it is about realising that whatever has happened in your life has happened and accepting it and getting on with your life to let more goodness in. You accept what is and turn towards life, to focus on the now and what is to come, instead of being turned away from life focused on the past, entangled with it and missing out on your now. Focus here, now and move forward, you can do it. It is a choice you have to choose to make.

Many people hold on as they think it is punishing their parents or those that hurt them. They don’t want to let them off the hook, but doing this just keeps you caught up in the pain. You need to choose to let it go for your own sake, so you can move on and enjoy life. Your parents may not have been perfect parents, but they did what they could for you with the knowledge and emotional maturity they had. They too may have been suffering and caught up in the pain of their past.

Family Constellations shows us that when people are entangled with ancestors and the traumas or unfinished business within the family system, their energy is literally stuck there in that event or with that ancestor who may have been rejected, died young or suffered some tragedy that wasn’t spoken about or fully grieved. That stuck energy, that trauma occupies their energy, they are bound to it, turned towards it, enmeshed with it and literally unable to look away and focus on their now.

If your parents were entangled in the past in this way, they simply could not focus all their energy on being present with you, giving you the love and nourishment that children desire, hunger for. They literally were not available to live their lives fully and you missed out on their attention, the full connection with them that you wanted. They too missed out on being fully present in their life and on being an attentive, loving parent with their children. They missed out too.

See how the trauma continues down the line. If you judge your parents and turn away from them, reject them, assume you are better than them or know more than them – then you too turn away from being present fully in your life. A lot of your energy is caught up with your past and what you missed out on, on the pain and disappointment or anger over what happened. You say no to them and in essence no to life. You stop letting whatever goodness they can give you in. When you have kids they too will feel the lack of your presence and feel like you are not fully present or available for them. They too will feel they have missed out and they may judge you and turn away as they get older. The pattern repeats unless you heal the trauma, so that all who are entangled can finally let it rest and turn to focus on their own lives, to live them fully, joyously, focused on creating and accepting the goodness of life.

Family Constellations can help to untangle the traumas and past hurts, it can help free everyone involved, so they can focus on the now and enjoy it.

Your parents didn’t deliberately hurt you. If it seemed like they did, this was just their pain seeping out, being projected onto you. They too have wounds from their childhood and from their ancestors which they carry. They too are burdened and lived out all this pain the only way they knew how to do so. The result was what you experienced as their child. They didn’t have the tools to do it differently. Now we can. Now we can set ourselves and them free, to enjoy life more fully.

Do the work to heal and let go of the pain, accept what happened and see your parents for who they truly are, and thank them for your life. Focus on the goodness they gave you and let it in. Even if there was trauma and abuse, they gave you life and that is a great gift. Accept that and honour them for that.

If your parents are still alive and you interact with them, let yourself receive their love in whatever way they can show it to you. They may not be able to express it, but perhaps you can see it in their gestures, their gifts, their contact with you and wanting to spend time with you, their compliments or money or food – whatever it is, let them give to you, let yourself receive the goodness, love and energy from them, so that your cup is filled, so that you are nourished and can live your life from a place of fullness, not emptiness, barrenness, darkness.

If your parents are dead or are not able to give you love then you can visualise receiving the love and goodness from them and from other relatives who you may have had more positive interactions. Recall positive times and relive those memories, anchoring in the fun, the love, the goodness. See those ancestors around you in Spirit, supporting you, encouraging you, cheering you on as you live your life.

Let the goodness in. There is much waiting for you to receive it, but to do so you have to let go of the old emotions and traumas, so your arms are free to receive the new. You can do it! You can do it for yourself, for your children, for your family. All will benefit when you heal and let go of the past burdens that you have carried. The whole family system is affected when a member of it chooses love and does the work to heal. It is a true gift that you can give to yourself and your family, so all can live more peacefully.

Forgiveness is not about right or wrong, about who did what and atoning for it, making up for it. It is simply about accepting what occurred and healing the wound so you are free from the pain. It takes effort to heal and become free. Simply saying “I forgive you” does nothing, very little. It actually has a negative effect because in essence it is a judgement on the person and their action. It says “I know you should have done better, but you didn’t, and I begrudgingly accept that and I will forgive you because I am a better person, a bigger person than you”. See the judgement in this, feel how it stops the flow of love.

It is like putting a boulder in the river, disturbing the flow of life force energy from your ancestors, your parents, to yourself. It is like you are trying to politely cover up something that is disgusting and pretending it is no longer there – like putting a white cloth over the top of some vomit or dog poo. It still stinks, it is still there, but it appears to be gone, buried, hidden. You then tiptoe around it, trying not to look at it or step in it, but it is still there, just waiting to be seen, festering, decaying and having a negative impact on your vitality.

You are not bigger than or better than your parents. They are the BIG ONES and you are the LITTLE ONE. They came first, they gave you life and the life force flows from them to you. If you resist them, you resist life. Let the life force flow to you unhindered. It is not about forgiving them, it is more like accepting them for who they are and letting them stand there with no judgement or condemnation. Just let them be who they are and thank them for what they did give you. Anything they couldn’t give you, you can get from elsewhere. You can make something good out of what they gave you, make something good out of your life and the opportunity presented to you. In this sense forgiveness is about peace, acceptance and harmony, and restoring these to the family system for the wellbeing of all. Blessed BE, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne M Smith (21 October 2017).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

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How to be free of the past and enjoy life

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Parenting, Personal Development, Self help techniques

Most people are running away from painful past events in their life, trying to push them away, out of awareness, and focusing on their now – or at least trying to do so. But anything pushed away stays put, begging to be seen, felt and released. You cannot avoid doing so for long, it will catch up with you one way or another.

Life is not meant to be led on hyperdrive – slow down. Slow down and feel what needs to be felt. Slow down and honour your body – notice the stress and its impacts on you. Choose to honour yourself and your needs.

Life can be beautiful, magical, peaceful, but most people are pushing themselves too hard, focused on careers, money, getting things, material objects that can be ripped away in an instant.

Natural disasters occur to cleanse the planet of built up negative energy. The Earth too is stressed due to the way we live and how we treat her. We deplete her mineral reserves and exhaust her supplies, same as we do with our own bodies. Of course, they then can’t function fully, healthily, there are consequences to these actions, and we are seeing them all over the world wtih climate change disasters. This cannot be stopped. The damage is done, but we can reduce it now, so it doesn’t keep accumulating, keep getting worse.

Be the love you want to see in the world.

How can you help? By living more simply, by focusing on your own health, by wanting and doing less. Yes it all helps, but you do not have to sacrifice or go without. It is not about scarcity. It is about abundance.

An abundance of opportunities to live more simply, to be connected with your heart and following its desires – these will be different to those of the mind. The heart often wants rest, play, fun, it likes to be creative, to be artistic, to rest in nature, to be nourished from slow, peaceful activities. It likes to have presence and connection, to slow down and actually be with someone – to penetrate the surface and know someone’s deepest, inner most self, to connect heart to heart and share how you are really feeling and what you are longing for – to have true intimacy – in to me u c.

Life is not meant to be a race course navigated at high speed. It is more like a walk in the park. Take time to enjoy your life, to live it and foster true connection with those you love most. Share how you are feeling, what you are working on, what you are cleaning out of your body through acknowledging it, feeling it and letting it go.

When you take the time to be present to your feelings the pain can shift, you can be set free from what has been kept inside – liberated, so that it no longer burdens you or weighs you down. It is worth doing, so your future can be more of what you desire and less repetition of the past – repeating until you do feel it and release it.

Honour yourself and take time to heal. Honour your planet and live more simply. Honour your children and feel close to them, tell them they are loved, they are enough and they are deserving of a happy life.

Role model self care, honesty and being happy – making the most of any situation. Show them how to be resilient and cope with life’s hiccups, the challenges that come along the way.

When you help them gain this emotional intelligence you are setting them up for an easier navigation through life. You are helping them to be a good athlete, able to jump the hurdles, run the race and succeed over the high jump – the bar can be raised and they won’t be scared, because they will know how to navigate through the pitfalls and darkness that can come at times.

Enjoy life now. Don’t wait for some better time in the future – it won’t come, that idyllic day when ‘poof’ it is all magically okay. You have to make it happen, by actively cleansing out any emotional density or trauma locked within your body.

You can use Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) to help you to release the stress, tension and trauma that is in your body. TRE shakes these energies out of your body, helping your nervous system to calm. Most of the time it is gentle, relaxing and you don’t even know what it is that is being released. You don’t see or feel the story associated wtih it. The energy just leaves, shakes out.

The shaking uses up the cortisol and adrenaline released in moments of fight or flight in the past, where you were scared and your body reacted to protect you. If you did fight or run away you use up those chemicals but if you didn’t or couldn’t then they stay in the body leading to chronic tension patternsw which leads to sore muscles, stiffness, pain, less flexibility and mobility.

Using TRE helps your body to come out of freeze, out of fight or flight, so it can move again, so we regain our flexibility and ability to feel joy. TRE unlocks the prison that we have been locked in within when we’ve experienced trauma in the past.

By clearing out these energies and blocks you become free to see the beauty all around you, to be peaceful and content inside. This makes it easier to handle whatever life throws at you. It is worth the time and effort to heal, so that you can enjoy the rest of your life more.

It is not up to you, life will keep bringing you events, to show you the pain inside – it is attempting to get you to face it. Once you have done that you won’t attract those types of experiences any more – you don’t need to, it is gone, done, healed, you don’t match it any more vibrationally.

Life is not meant to be a race, slow down, enjoy it more. Prioritise time with those you love, those who make your heart sing, those who you feel most comfortable with and can connect deeply with, truly seeing and honouring each other. Build these deep connections and you will have strong roots, a strong foundation to help you weather whatever storms do come your way. Connect, connect, connect to your heart – that is the key to living life joyously and peacefully. So be it. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne M Smith (14 August 2017).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and HEALING FROM CHILD ABUSE pages of this website.

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What is Family Constellations?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Family Constellations, Parenting, Personal Development

Family Constellations is a method for clearing our blocks to love within families. When the blockages are cleared, all members of the family feel stronger, more supported, more connected to who they are, where they come from and they know they belong, that they are okay, good enough and a necessary part of the whole.

Much of the pain that people feel comes from a sense of not belonging, of having been rejected or not accepted in some way. Many people feel not good enough in some way. This comes mostly from their childhood experiences, but it can also come from further back the ancestral line.

Unhealed wounds within the family soul will affect how the current generation feel. It will affect how much of their energy is available now to use as they please and how much of it will be entangled with their past experiences or their ancestors’ past experiences.

Family Constellations helps to clear these entanglements so that more of your energy is available for you now. This helps you to feel stronger, clearer and to be able to focus on achieving your goals, living your life and raising your kids.

By clearing out the wounds, traumas and entanglements within the family soul it stops the transmission to the next generation. It frees them of the burden to complete it on behalf of the ancestors. You are being of great service to all of your family when you do this work to free them all from the chains of past trauma – rejections, exclusions, unspoken of tragedies, losses and early deaths.

Pain does not disappear. If trauma is buried, life does not just go on as before, it is tainted, limited, the life force choked and diminished. Freeing it back up, feeling and completing the trauma, lets the life force flow more fully again.

Family Constellations is a technique for identifying blockages within the family soul and clearing them. It helps individuals to break free of the entanglements that have impacted them and enables them to move forward with greater peace and harmony. It is a powerful process, sacred in nature, with its respect for the bigger movements of life, destiny and evolution.

It is a process worth doing, not just to benefit yourself, but your whole family. They may not consciously notice the effects, but energetically they will and you may notice changes in their behaviour, their thinking, their sense of self. For their energy will be freed up enabling them to move forward in whatever is the best way for them, for their highest good.

Family Constellations enables love to flow throughout the family which benefits all. I recommend it and have experienced powerful shifts myself through its use. No longer do I judge my parents or my family. No longer do I resent their choices or their lack of love shown to me. I have seen their pain, their entanglements and accepted they couldn’t do any better with the burdens they were carrying. They did the best they could with the situation they were in. Each had pain and felt unable to move, to be present, to give to me what I needed. The pain I felt was theirs and others in our family lines – it passed on through them to me. This continues to occur until it is healed. In doing Family Constellations I have resolved much of this, so my children will be less burdened than I was or my parents were. This is the gift of Family Constellations, to free yourself and your loved ones, so all can feel more love, more acceptance, more peace. Blessed BE, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne M Smith (26 March 2017).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

How to love your wounded child back to love and innocence.

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Healing from child abuse, Parenting, Personal Development, Self help techniques

inner-childYour inner child is your barometer for your alignment with Source and your destiny. She or he tells you what feels good and what doesn’t. She lets you know if there are actions you need to take and being a child she will throw a tantrum if you don’t do them.

Being a child she wants what she wants NOW, and will get angry or sulk when it doesn’t happen. If you ignore her, refuse to listen to her, she will slam a door in your face and go into her room and hide. There she will be forlorn, mope and go into depression. When this occurs your vitality drops, your joy and ability to enjoy life plummets, you feel burdened, over responsible, plodding through life doing what must be done, as each day passes in this way your heart flame dims, your vibration lowers and a coldness and darkness sets in. Life seems less exciting, less vibrant and less meaningful. In the extreme it can feel numb and like a robot going through the motions.

Your inner child while silenced, is still watching and when the opportunity arises she will let you know know how pissed off she is. She will tell you in words if you listen and connect in with your heart. If you don’t, she will take over your body, come to the fore with rage or sadness or fear. You will get triggered by life events and react from a child like space. The mature adult will disappear and you will responded from the wounded child – tantrums, sulking, hurtful words, immature behaviours, because that is the age the child is and it is her energy that has come to the fore.

She can be a drama queen and pout or order that someone’s head be chopped off, metaphorically, for some minor infraction, such as not saying hello and noticing her pretty new dress or not appreciating the unicorn hidden in the garden. “How dare you not notice or care, how dare you ignore something so important to me!” The inner child will stomp and kick and throw stones. She will punish you and others for not doing what she needs most, which is to be loved, to be noticed, to be cared for, played with and held.

The inner child, like all children, just wants to be loved and listened to. She wants the chance to play and do things that make her happy. She will skip through life singing if you let her. She can help you enjoy life so much, but only when you connect with her and come from a heart centred space, operating from love in all you do.

She is your guide back to your heart, back to your innocence. She lets you know what is meaningful to you, what you shouldn’t ignore, what can help you to feel whole and stress to melt away. It may be simple things like patting your cat, admiring your garden, walking in nature, playing with children, painting, cooking speacial food, whatever it is that you truly find as fun, calming and satisfying. Activities that make your heart sing and that when finished, you look up and are suprised at how much time has passed by. These are your passions, your joys and the inner child reminds us that these are what is truly important in life. She doesn’t care about work, chores, deadlines. She hates boredom and apathy. She embraces life, lives it to the full and bubbles over with enthusiasm.

If you are not feeling such joy and vitality, there is a strong likelihood that your connection with your inner child is not strong enough. If she is unhappy, you will be unhappy. Make the effort to connect. Close your eyes and ask inwardly to connect with her or him. Ask and wait patiently. See if you can sense him or her. You may see a door way or a couch that they are hiding behind. You may see a cave or a dungeon that they have been trapped in due to your total neglect of them and your true passion for life.

At first they may not want to connect, not trusting you to care for them or to stay around. They may feel hurt, abandoned and vulnerable. Send love, see loving energy flow towards them and let them know you are there, you are willing to connect and you are sorry you haven’t done so before or regularly. They may come out from their hiding place and take a peek at you or a step towards you, they may come running for a hug, as this is what they truly want. They may start talking a million miles a minute teling you everything they have been waiting to say. It is up to you to earn their trust, to win their heart over, so they feel safe enough to come out of hiding and open up to enjoying life again.

As you build your relationship, you will notice your energy level rises, your joy rises and your sense of peace and satisfaction with life. Instead of looking out and seeing dullness everywhere, you may start to notice the flowers, the colours, the blue sky. You may start to slow down and just BE, taking time to rest and even time to play. This is important, we all need balance between doing and being, so our bodies don’t get exhausted and depleted.

You can build your connection with your inner child by connecting in regularly, it only takes a few minutes to close your eyes, connect with him or her, send love, ask how they are feeling and what they would like you to do. They may want a hug or icecream or to play in the park. You can literally do these things in real life or you can visualise them, giving the inner child an icecream as you walk side by side down the path at a beautiful park. The inner child just wants your time and attention, same as a living child, for that is what the inner child is, a child living within you that holds your pure essence, your Source connection and innocence. Once you help him/her to heal their wounds and to feel loved and peaceful again, then that becomes your experience of life, the energy you get to live from.

When you are facing challenges or have big decisions to make, you can comfort your inner child and let them know it is okay, you the adult will handle this and they can go play. You can ask them how they feel or what their view is on the situation, but make it clear that this is adult business, not child business and they can go play. If they feel threatened by what is occurring in your life, reassure them that they are safe. When you are in a confronting situation, tune into where your inner child is and how they are feeling. You may discover that they feel exposed and scared. In your third eye see them moving behind you for protection or into your heart where they can be held and supported. This is what they need, for you to be the good parent looking after them, meeting their needs, so they feel safe to relax and enjoy life. When they do, you do. It is well worth the effort to build a loving, strong, playful relationship with your inner child, so you can return to a state of peace and happiness within. Blessed BE, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (15 October 2016).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

What is an entanglement?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Family Constellations, Healing from child abuse, Parenting, Personal Development, Self help techniques

An entanglement is an enmeshment with another person that affects your ability to be yourself and do as you please. You are so caught up with the other person that your thoughts and feelings are tangled up with theirs. It is hard to know where you end and the other person starts, there is no boundary or separation, the two people are entwined, tangled together into one messy situation.

This comonly occurs when a child tries to take care of a parent. The child sensing the parent’s pain or inability to cope with their life, steps up and takes responsibility for helping reduce the burden on the parent. This is a reversal of the orders of love – parents are meant to give and children receive.

Happy kidsChildren are meant to grow focussed on life, play, having fun and age appropriate issues. It is not normal for a child to be thinking about adult problems and trying to solve them. But children will do this out of loyalty, out of love and out of a desire to stay safe and keep their home. No matter how dysfunctional or painful a child prefers to stay with its parent, rather than be taken away into the unknown, even if that unknown is a more loving home with other family members or foster parents.

Our loyalty to our biological parents is huge and stays with us our whole life. If we violate that bond, if we judge or reject our parents we feel a loss, an emptiness, a sadness deep inside, as the flow of love from the family line has been blocked. We are refusing to accept our parents and our life as it is. In essence we are saying ‘NO to life’ and we suffer as a result. The life force flowing to us is diminished as we are saying NO to our parents, NO to their love, NO to receiving any energy or support from them. We are saying “NO, you are not good enough, I wanted more, someone different to you”. This is fighting against life, fighting against what is. These are your parents for better or worse, they are your parents. They gave you life and if that is all they gave you it is a true gift. At the very least accept that, be grateful for that.

As we heal we can come to see our parents as not just ‘parents’, but as people with their own issues, challenges and emotional hurts. If we are trying to fix them, change them, influence them, we are still entangled. We are still caught up unhealthily over involved in their energy and trying to control life. This is like standing in front of a dam that is cracking and trying to order the water to stay there, not to move. It won’t work. As the dam cracks the water is going to gush forth, because that is what water does, gravity does.

Your parents have their own lives to lead and it is not our place to judge them or be overly involved in their business, to be entangled like this stops us from living our lives fully. It is best to accept your parents as they are, to say ‘YES to life’, YES to receiving whatever goodness you can get from them and to accept that as all they can give you, to say “That is enough. What you can’t give me I will get from elswhere. Thank you Mum, thank you Dad, you are enough”. When we can say this and mean it we are freed from the entanglement. The love strength and support from the family line can flow to us, helping us, supporting us to live more fully. We are accepting our place in life and letting ourselves receive the goodness from our family line.

Reaching that place of acceptance can be a long journey. It takes time to grieve what could have been, what you felt should have been and to accept what was and is. That is the journey of life. It is true and authentic emotional release work required until you do feel peaceful inside and accepting of your family.

You could choose to stay in judgement and anger over what has happened or hasn’t happened in your life, but this just punishes you and limits you and your ability to live life joyously. Best to untangle the web, to break free and accept what is and make the most out of it. This is one form of entanglement that can have a massive impact on a person’s life.

Another kind of entanglement occurs when a child takes on a burden for the ancestors present or ancient. It can be a sibling not wanting to live fully because they see their brother or sister afflicted with an illness or who died and they feel guilty for living or being able to do what the other could not. In essence they wish to join the lost sibling. This will result in poor health for themself or some other dysfunction in their lives, as in essence they are saying NO to life, NO to goodness, abundance, health and vitality. They are saying I don’t deserve this or I have no right to this. It is self sacrifice out of loyalty, out of love and entanglement with the fate of the other.

Instead of dying for the other choose to stay a while longer, choose to live fully for them, to do what they could not do, to achieve whatever you desire and to join them when it is your proper time. Whether it was a sibling who died young, your parent or your own child, you do not have to follow them into the grave. You can live and hold them in your heart, feel them in your heart. They are there, their energy is available to you. Your ancestors long dead watch you, pray for you and send you love. They want you to succeed and to advance the family line. It is okay to feel your sadness and to move through it back to peace and happiness.

Another type of entanglement which sounds a little more bizarre, occurs with past relatives whom you may not have even met. It is possible that a young woman having difficulties with infertility is actually entangled with a great Aunt who never married. The energetic connection is such that the present soul put up their hand to relate, to repeat the pattern that occurred in the family line. The same occurs with members of the family who suffered tragedies such as loss of a loved one, death, murder, suicide, etc. A present family member who is connected to the past ancestor may also have suicidal thoughts or mental health problems, they may have financial difficulties or other challenges in life.

Sometimes it is as if the current family member is atoning for the sins of the previous ancestor – they struggle to make up for the wrong doing of the other. In different situations it is as if the family member present today chooses the same fate out of love for the other, wanting to empathise with them. Either way it is not helpful to the present person and it hinders their ability to live their life fully.

When the entanglement is identified and healed the person is free to live how they like. They can consciously honour the past family member and their fate, but choose to be free of the entanglement now, with love and respect, bowing to the ancestor and leaving it with them. This is core Family Constellations work and it is beautful to watch these resolutions occur and people being freed from the knots that have bound them and limited their ability to enjoy their lives. With the knots untied they can walk forward easily to do what they wish, without hindrance. May we all walk freely and enjoy our lives. Blessed BE. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (18 September 2016).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

What is the family soul?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Family Constellations, Healing from child abuse, Parenting, Self help techniques

reflective-treeThe family soul is the collective energy that surrounds a lineage of people from the same family. It contains all the memories and experiences of everyone in the family.

When there is trauma or exclusion a wound occurs to the family soul, a distortion of the energy, so instead of love flowing through the family line, pain now flows from the ancestors to the current and future generations. This also occurs when the orders of love are reversed, for instance if a parent is absent and a child does not receive the nurturing and connection it needs. The absence may be due to war, abandonment, physically if a child is given up for adoption or if a parent themselves is sick, unavailable emotionally or physically. When a parent is ill or emotionally unavailable, often the child will try to ‘give’ to the parent to help them cope or feel better. The child takes on responsibilities that are not theirs to carry – it may be helping out a lot around the house or caring for the other children or even caring for the parent. The orders of love are reversed in this instance as the flow of energy is child to parent, instead of it being the parent giving and the child receiving.

It also occurs when someone is excluded from the family, because everyone does belong to the family system, no matter what they have done. Excluding someone is like throwing a block, a big boulder into the flow of the family soul, the river of lifeforce energy flowing to all people. The block diminishes the amount of energy available to all people. Worse it creates a tear in the fabric of the family soul that will only be healed when that excluded person is bought back into your heart. If this does not occur, someone in future generations will subconsciously choose to relate to the excluded person and will end up feeling like they are not accepted or don’t belong, they will repeat the fate of the excluded individual as the family system attempts to heal the wound.

It is just like our personal journeys where life presents us with a repeating situation until we learn the lesson. This is the same thing, but at the family level. Discovering this enables those who are suffering to resolve it by welcoming the excluded person back into their heart, energetically welcoming them back to the family system and restoring them to their rightful place. This allows the lifeforce energy to then flow freely again to all members. This occurs at the soul level, energetic level, it does not have to be physically and often it is an ancestor long dead who was excluded and in need of reconnection to their rightful place in the family.

If there has been trauma in the family system, be it war, violence in the home, tragedy from loss of children, divorce, early death of parents, etc then this trauma can also pass through the family system to the current and future generations. It is as if the unresolved pain seeps through the blood of all involved instead of love, strength and support. This too can be healed so that those affected are freed from their over reactions to situations, the inappropriate feelings or thoughts they may have that don’t seem to be appropriate or consistent with their life experiences. For instance persistent suicidal thoughts or depression or anxiety could actually be resulting from entanglements with past family members, you are feeling their feelings, they are not actually your thoughts. These cease once the wound in the family soul is healed by acknowledging the tragedy, the loss and giving it it’s rightful place, allowing all to feel and move through the situation, instead of being stuck and controlled by it.

The family soul is a container of energy around all members of the same lineage, when all is well in a family you can feel the flow of love, flowing from the ancestors to yourself and the other current family members. This energy strengthens you, supports you and encourages you to live your life as you wish to do so, for you are the leading edge of consciousness, the person now evolving while here on Earth and expanding the consciousness within the family. The ancestors want you to succeed and do well, they want you to thrive and advance the family line. This is life as it was meant to be. This support is available once you heal any blockages to its flow. It is worth doing and quite easy when you know how.

There are many methods that can help. Family constellations is one of these, where the field supplies the information about what is missing and blocked and needs to be resolved within the family system. The challenge then is to feel what needs to be felt, forgive all involved and welcome them back into your heart. It is a similar task to our personal issues, just with some larger influences. It is a part of our evolution, our connectedness and oneness with the fabric of life. So be it. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (15 September 2016).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.