Is Suffering Optional?

    What if the point of our suffering is to heal our consciousness in such a way that suffering becomes impossible? Impossible because by the time we heal ourselves completely we will have seen, internalized, and believed devastating lies and then found a way to fully and unequivocally reject them. My first parents taught my siblings and me that we did not deserve laughter, that we did not deserve tenderness, that we could not be loved. And then, starting in 1999 with our new forever family, we were given a chance to try to unlearn those lies. My resistance to this healing experience was that I held the firm belief that my early childhood was "not that bad" and was convinced that what I experienced did not count as trauma. Mostly because I did not remember much and what I did know and remember I excused away with the idea, "well many children were whipped with a belt and therefore what I went through was not traumatic."
    But what if there was some truth to that false belief. Only in that suffering can be optional. However, we have to accept that we are not now, nor have we never been powerless. My trauma directly relates to powerlessness and had caused me to believe that I was not worth protecting, that I was not worth providing for. I did not see myself as anything but a burden, as anything but in the way. There were mornings when my biological mother did not have the energy to get up to fetch me a Pop Tart from the cabinet above the counter and I was just a couple inches too short to climb up to get them. I would try to wake her every so often and then try, without success, to get to them by myself.
    The good news is that I am unlearning these falsehoods and the more I unravel them, the closer I get to the truth, which is that I am loved and lovable, that I am worthy of protection, provision, and tenderness. The more I consciously dismiss these myths, the closer I get to the truth that the innocence and the worthiness that I thought were taken from me could never be stolen by anyone but myself....my ego self. Only I can take these things from myself by believing I don't have them and/or never had them. There is a saying that goes, "whether or not you think you can do something, you're right". The same goes with how you view yourself. If you believe yourself to be powerless, you will make decisions that support that belief and see yourself as a perpetual victim.