Once upon a time...

...when I was just a young woman of about nineteen, and a student, I met a woman. She was just a few years my senior and had only recently graduated from the same school I was going to. I respected her, and our teachers presented her as a model graduate. She was hard working, and climbing the ladder. I was even assigned to work under her a couple of times. But I found that the closer I got to her, the more she frightened me. I couldn't tell if her laughter was genuine or ironic, but it seemed bitter, almost hysterical at times... I was not very insightful as to human nature in those days. I tried to avoid her, unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately as things turned out) we attract the things we fear. And so it was one day, when I was feeling free, and happily talking with my friends, I didn't notice this woman enter the room behind me. In a moment she began to verbally attack me, with such sure scorn and despise in her tone I was shocked. Like a deer in the headlights I just let myself be run over by her poisonous words, and they seeped into my very core. The fact that it happened in front of my peers increased my shame a hundredfold.

If I had been taught how to value myself, the strength of knowing your own self worth, her words would have rolled off, but I wasn't raised by a wise woman. My mother was barely eighteen when she had me, and she knew very little apart from her own traditional upbringing. To a large degree I went into the adult world naked and raw.

The attack of this woman stayed with me for years. When I graduated, in good standing, I sobbed bitter tears, sure of my own unworthiness. I never asked questions least I appear not to know something important. I wore a mask with everyone, and I hungered so for recognition... but any recognition I received I shrugged off, because I thought they were simply fooled by my mask, Ms perfect. I worked like a fiend to keep that perfect mask in place, terrified that someone would detect and reveal to everyone my deep unworthiness. I healed wounds, eased pain, saved lives, but couldn't see myself as I was. I couldn't own my triumphs, or forgive my lacks.

Well, from that day forward I thought of this woman as my enemy. I could look back at my life and say I don't hate anybody, even my ex-husband, but then I would think of her. I wondered how I would ever heal that wound, and time passed. I learned philosophies that led me to wisdom. I learned that those people we think of as enemies, in this illusory world, are in fact some of our greatest friends when we pass this plain and know the truth. I learned that no one incidence can scar a person so deeply as I was scarred unless it reminds us of unresolved pain from previous existences. I learned that people in our lives are mirrors to us of who we are.

One fine day I thought of Helen, and I wasn't filled with hatred, or shame anymore. It came to me that I was allot like her - a little too smart, so that my humor often confuses people who aren't in on the joke; a little too sharp when I am stressed; impatient with people who are lagging behind me intellectually, like with republicans, and the religious right. And it occurred to me that she may have been having a really bad day herself, and that perhaps she was so driven because she too was filled with toxic shame. It also came to me that what she did for me was help me solve this problem of low self worth, by being that one last straw. Perhaps I have been suffering with this for lifetimes, but now I have the keys, and either have healed it, or am healing it, and she helped me.

The key is to see self clearly, without judgment for the human weaknesses but compassion instead. Once you have recognized yourself you won't need it from others. You will know your own humanness, your beauty, your true power, and your own godliness.

One thing I have learned from this is that some people are very vulnerable, and that I don't want to be their "Helen", because I think for every one person who finds a way to heal those wounds there are likely a huge number who never do. Another thing is that we all live in a world toxic with judgmental attitudes, and that I would rather be compassionate toward human weakness, than be one who adds to the toxicity with my own intolerant condemnations.