Anyone who has experienced a family estrangement knows how it impacts on your life, it is devastating and we find it hard, if not impossible to see through the darkness that accompanies this state of our minds.
The once confidant and positive person becomes shattered and can become increasingly bias towards everything negative, it is as though we have a need to believe negativity is all around us.
Those negative emotions can become contagious.
We all know that if in our workplace, someone starts the morning in a negative frame of mind, it gradually brings everyone down, it isn’t long before the conversation becomes one of doom!
Obviously we can’t be positive and jolly all the time, when you are hurting that is a real emotion and has to be acknowledged, but I know from my own experience that I have to work hard on bringing those positive thoughts forward because I simply don’t want to be in this constant whirlpool of negativity, I know it damages my mental health.
We also all have a private and public face.
I can smile at a stranger, start off a lighthearted conversation with someone at a bus stop when actually all I want to do is sit in a heap and cry. I can have a conversation about something that doesn’t really interest me at all, but that is my public face.
My private face is when I am alone, when I step inside my front door and close it behind me, that’s when the facade drops, and the negativity engulfs me.
I start to rake up all the things that that didn’t go according to the plan in my life, I overthink everything, the future becomes too difficult to even contemplate.
And yet.
My life has not been worthless, I was a daughter, I am a sister, a wife, a mum, a grandmother and I hope a good friend.
I have a home, and I am safe.
Yes I have so much to be so grateful for, and I need to keep reminding myself of all of the positive things not just in my life, but positives that we all have, here, now in this present moment.
Outside influences we may have no control over, but we all can control how we react to negativity, we mustn’t get caught up in the doom bandwagon, we can be the person who gives the smile, the person who chats to a stranger, the person who allows the recipient to see life is good and for them to know that someone cares.
Although as I write, it is grey and snow is on the ground, there is a Blackbird singing to his lady on my fence, the daffodils are holding their heads up above the snow and another day has dawned, a day with a promise. A promise to give us light in what can feel like a dark world, but there is always light if we look in the right direction.
