“I’m not heard. I feel ignored. I’m not important. My needs go unnoticed. I feel alone. I feel empty inside. Nobody likes me.”

These statements are hard to swallow, but they represent the voice of rejection, the wound that aches inside the body.

This wound speaks loud and clear through the mind and can be felt as though it’s behind the scenes, taunting you.

It shows up as the blaming, shaming, critical, and judgmental self-talk and is impossible to endure.

As children, we had yet to develop a discerning ability to separate a sense of self-worth from the actions modeled by others. Therefore, inadvertently, converging the dysfunctional behavior of others with a sense of personal lack, severely distorting the view of the self at a fundamental level. The experience, fractures the connection to the foundation of self and uproots the possibilities of understanding who we are. It plants an unhealthy seed inside the psyche that says something’s intrinsically wrong with the self. We begin to believe, that love is not deserved but that also, there is no love to be given. Once that seed fully blooms, it obliterates the self and corrupts any experiences to follow. That severed connection or dis-connection makes it hard to believe that we are deserving of any goodness and makes it increasingly difficult to feel whole.

I was in the beginning stages of frozen shoulder when I went for a massage. The pain was so severe, it was hard to stay present. My mind kept falling into channels of stuck energy that felt impossible to move through but I was determined. I stayed focused. I took really deep breaths. The pain was so great, I could hear myself screaming in my head. Then for a moment, a voice rose into my consciousness and through the pain, it said, “I deserve love.” The statement didn’t faze me in that moment but I repeated it in my mind. It became a silent mantra, “I deserve love, I deserve love, I deserve love…” I didn’t stop. I wouldn’t stop, even through the pain, I just kept going. Eventually, the pain did subside and I was able to tolerate the massage more. Then, I thought about the message. I took it literal, “through the pain, I deserve love.” I thought, the pain I feel deserves love… The pain deserves love… Pain deserves love. If I can accept what’s there, then I can give myself what I need to feel better. I relaxed deeper into the massage, into the message, into myself than the voice came back, but this time, I heard something different. It said, “I deserve TO BE loved.” That I, the person, the self, deserves to be loved. To be loved. Be Loved. Beloved. I’m the beloved. Love is inherent in me.

The messages were so powerful that I got the sense they were the key to unlocking the healing potentials of the rejection wound. I realized these statements were not separate, they were connected and they weren’t just for me, but for the world. They are the missing links that establish a new connection, a self-connection. That the experience of pain separates us from the experience of love. It disconnects us from the whole and what we deserve. Once you get that, the magic happens. A new foundation anchors in the sense of self and you reclaim your worth, you take back your innocence, and that emptiness inside starts to fill with love. All those disconnected parts start to link back differently, into a state of wholeness. It’s Acceptance and Love that heal the wound of rejection.

Jennifer Circosta- Tiny Poet, 10.18.2021