Releasing Fear – Part II

{ April 26, 2010 @ 6:01 am } · { Releasing Fear }

Last week I wrote about fear and let you know that this series was going to talk about my personal struggle with fear, what I have learned in the hopes that you can learn from what I did and that it helps you break through your fear and anxiety.

I also introduced you to a few tools that were available on m website to help you release your fear and anxiety around any aspect of your life, from business, sales, career, relationships, etc. If you missed it, those tools are available on our website at www.valsorter.com.

Now as for where we left off. I was telling you about the two year old that came into my life with the answer to ‘what question to ask’ myself to peel back the layers of the impostor living inside of me. Now keep in mind, by impostor I mean that person in me that was not truly me, not supportive of my success and not helpful in building a great life for me or my family, and especially not willing to grow and get better, the part of me that holds me back and doesn’t let my true genius come through. I believe we all have an impostor living in us, and some of us have many impostors inside us…

Now, this two year old, like I mentioned, was very wise with their question. So I asked myself that very good question, the question a 2 year old asks. And it is the hardest question in the world to answer sometimes. The question prompted me to keep digging, to pull off the layers of the impostor I had built up in my head to protect my heart from a pain that happened many years ago around food. The question was so powerful that it eventually brought me back to a time in my life when I was about 13 years old.

When I was 13, I lived in Arizona and we were very poor. My mom and dad had recently separated and my mom had taken us and we left. We grabbed everything we could from the house and that would fit into our van and we were gone. We drove and drove and ended up in a little desert town that we called home for the next four years. We were 4 early teens with a single mom and we were all we had. Now, don’t get me wrong we had some tough times; but my mom did the best she could and I am so grateful for her tremendous strength and her incredible love. For without those two things, none of us would have made it. We held each other up in those first few years. We were lost and had our entire foundation ripped out from under us. We didn’t understand, as children, what was happening. We just knew that dad was gone and we went from having everything we ever needed to having nothing.

All four of us kids found jobs doing anything we could to help. At one point most of us worked at Pizza Hut. It was a great place to work at that time in our lives. We were grateful for all of it and to be able to help ease the burden on mom. They would give us the pizzas they messed up during the dinner rush to take home so we had extra food. One memory of mine from that time is of opening the fridge to find a stack of pizza hut boxes and nothing else in the fridge. I couldn’t stand the smell of pizza, let alone eat it for about 10 years after that period of our lives. Needless to say, we had a lot of pizza. So we learned a valuable lesson – working at food establishments was an easy way to get extra food. Back then almost all of them, if you worked a full shift, gave you a free meal. I worked at restaurants until a few years into college as a result of learning that lesson.

I remember one time, it was a particularly bad day or week and my mom was upset. She was often upset and tried to hide it, we always tried to cheer her up – sometimes it worked, sometimes it couldn’t be done for any of us. And sometimes, the days were just so dark you didn’t think it would ever end and you wondered why or what you did for your dad not to care about you anymore and to just leave you and not care that you were hurting so bad. This day I remember being hungry and there not being any food in the house. This happened sometimes, or the food was old and the cheese moldy – we had to cut the moldy pieces off and eat the rest – so gross…. They tell you, the flavor is just in that piece of cheese that you cut off, but they are wrong – nasty stuff. I was really hungry but didn’t want to tell my mom because it would upset her more. So I went hungry and I didn’t say a word.

When I kept asking myself the question of ‘why’ did I feel this way about food, I went back to that time in my life and discovered that memory.

Next week I will share with you more about the memory itself, what I did to get past it and how it has helped me in other areas as well. I look forward to sharing my journey with you, please feel free to leave comments and share you journey as well. I’ve found this is a great part of the healing process and we are here to support and love each other through this amazing journey. Know that you are not alone and I will always be here to listen and give support and encouragement to all the amazing people out there.

To our journey,

Val

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