It all starts with a Facebook post…

It all started with a social media post. Doesn’t it always? You might be surprised to hear that it wasn’t about the mask issue for me this time. No, it was something way more personal, something that stirred my deeply-stored sadness I thought I had locked away.

This also is not a blog about my hurt feelings, although they do matter a lot. This time, it’s about another subject that has always been something that has been a sometimes secretive part of my insides, also deeply shoved down in my dark core. This time, all it took for it to come out of it’s self-imposed hibernation period was seeing a silly “quote” online.

You know the ones I am talking about. Those quotes we all have posted in the past with the seemingly harmless undertones of our past hurts. Sometimes we hope that one person it’s intended for will come across it and maybe we hope that they are magically now cured of their “faults” that we imposed on them. It has happened to me and I have also posted these myself in the past. They are always non-helpful in the sense that they don’t really truthfully make us feel better about a situation by posting these. We think we might feel justified in our haughty and hasty “it’s just a quote I found” sharing to our “friends” who then will maybe “have our backs” when they see it. What we are really doing when we send out this energy is a “look how hurt I am, you guys!” call. Asking for others to agree with us, hoping for “supportive” replies in the comments for our own validation of really those same hurt projections. Does this really help us? Does it really make the hurt go away? You know the answer.

Pssst. The answer is no.

When I have posted these unhelpful <and really, let’s be honest: passive aggressive> quotes, I was never really seeing the entire bigger picture; not to mention I was always really in a very low vibration because they were coming from these hurts. I was so in my box of “why did that person do this to me?” and other limited view boxes of “I want them to know what they did to me” as well. If you are in one of these boxes right now, you can’t see the entire span of what is real because you are choosing to put a lid on yourself and close yourself off from not allowing yourself the space to take a big step back. You can’t pan the camera out from its wide lens because you are holding the camera however you see fit. The box is small, cramped and square like our mindsets when we choose this way of being.

The other part of this is that we forget about the other person when we choose this method of non-healing. When I have seen these posts about me, it creates a vortex of sadness, more hurt, more depression, more anxiety and the more I spin into the darkness of the behaviours: both mine and theirs. It takes me on a heavy trip to a place I call Shame-ville, where everyone walks around with their heads down, only thinking about how horrible they must be and even so far as being undeserving to reside on this planet. How can one little quote directed at someone have this affect? Some might not even give it a second thought. Someone who has done the work on themselves, done the shadow work and remembers they are Divine and entirely worthy of beautiful and loving friendships and partners. Yes, sometimes I am these things mentioned myself. But sometimes, there could be some massive details that the post(er) doesn’t realize about the post(ee):

• The person you are referring to behind that harmless quote might have a serious mental health concern that you are not aware of.
• That quote might be the thing that is the straw that breaks the camel’s back and that person’s emotional state cannot deal anymore
• The person you are so hurt by has not divulged something deeply personal about their situation and does not have the energy to tell you
• The person you are directing your hurt at could be suicidal, severely depressed, taking medication for anxiety or in extreme situations could also be diagnosed with Bipolar/Schizophrenia.
• The person you are posting about in this way does not have the energy levels to maintain highly social relationships due to PTSD, past traumas or they are going through highly stressful experiences.

My heart has been broken, too. It’s not just yours. I have felt angry and abandoned, too. I see and feel your frustration with that person and you are, of course permitted to feel those and hang onto them if you choose. You get to always choose to hang onto hurt and not forgive. But for me, I could be that person you are posting about. I could be all of the massive reasons you shouldn’t. I have been that person.

In our humanness, we get very focused on our own energetic “cameras”. Only taking photos of what we see as beautiful. Some cameras take pictures of weeds, some take pictures of landscapes. The thing is though, we don’t see what others are pointing their cameras at because our eyes are focused on our own. We are forgetting to look up at each other. We are forgetting to ask the other what they see right now. Because I guarantee, they are not the same view and they are not holding your camera.

The quotes will always be posted. I will probably do it and you will, too. Perhaps next time before you do though, you might take a deep breath and ask yourself if this is helpful in the big picture. Put your camera down and look up.