I met my polar opposite yesterday, the opposite end of the spectrum, a woman who left her childhood completely empowered.
Two completely different upbringings and their outcomes.
Her parents made choices that gave her power and kept her mind free of fairy-tales and lies. Mine was deluged in illusions. We had to live our their intentions.
The two of us...one trained to follow and give up her mind, the other was groomed to keep it clear, wide open and self discerning. A huge and profound impact on how we entered into the grown-up world.
Between the two of us, who would be more susceptible to grooming and luring of predators? Which one had a firm grasp on her self and self confidence?
I didn't even know I was allowed to be a self...I was a part of a bunch. Take the rest away and I didn't know how to move on my own. My actions always visited the churches beliefs first, my mother second, my husband third and or someone, before a choice was made. I didn't know how to make one on my own, for my Self...She had no church to appease or others, and was made to think on her own.
She mirrored to me just how confined I was by her total freedom. I can appreciate her wide open upbringing and wonder can she even visualize mine...to even gain a morsel of true understanding.
Can you even know what it feels like to be whittled down to zero if you have always been given wide berth to be yourself? Can a wild horse appreciate the confines of a barn and fence?
I have had the privilege to have lived on both sides...to experience the differences. Yet somehow I can see how she has been 'offered' the choice to go into the barn and has refused...preferring the open space.
Seeing the two of us, one raised as a wild and free person and the other with someone holding my reins, steering me, and using me for their use. A work horse and a wild free one.
I ran away into the land she was raised in.
And yet didn't know how to roam free.
Just has hard as it would be to get her acclimated to the barn, it was equally hard to become accustomed to having no reins.
She wasn't introduced to religion until she was 16. She had to take a college course on religion to learn about them all. She then saw them with a well defined sense of self and reality and they were seen with a much clearer eye than say mine....I was introduced by being submerged into it, never having lived outside of it. There wasn't a choice.
Can you imagine introducing a 16 year old to religion; to take away their free spirit and put it in a barn? Imagine if it was illegal to speak to children about religion until they turned 16. Religions would dry up...and spirituality would bloom.
Not only was I kept on a short leash, but abused. It was like my course was powerlessness, while her's was empowerment. I had to fight my way to the place her parents kept her.
Just as she didn't have a choice but to follow her free spirits, I had no choice but to live in the barn.
Yet somehow, I believed I wanted to be in the religion that it was my choice, when in fact, I was born in captivity. It was my comfort place, and the lands outside the barn were places to fear or at the very least seemed foreign and uncomfortable.
Interesting we both felt at home on opposite ends of the spectrum...and I would have lived there forever, If something within me didn't begin to get restless....yearning for something, I just didn't know what.
It was as if the land of wide open mind space was calling me. And I am not certain I would have made the leap, if my barn if you will, didn't explode. If my illusions were not exposed...everything collasped and I was left standing in an open field.
And it took me many years to find my way, my self, and my power.
I just get left with the total different mindset our parents had...to empower or keep powerless. Her life was lived completely different based upon the intentions of her parents.
Two different journey's of empowerment...one was taught from birth and one was discovered when the illusion fell apart. Her parents never lied to her, and mine lived out their lies...raising me in a non-reality based childhood, while hers was the total opposite. It was an amazing encounter...I had never met anyone raised so free.
Imagine being allowed to be yourself or actually be forced to be yourself, find and live your own truth! Being raised not to follow...
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