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A post shared by Jennifer Abra (@thesingingmedium) on Nov 9, 2018 at 1:47pm PST

The other day, I sent a revealing and vulnerable email to someone I recently met.

You know the one—the email you aren’t sure if you should send or not, going back and forth between: “Yes! You only live once!” and ” No, don’t be ridiculous.” In retrospect, I probably should have listened to the devil on my shoulder who advised me not to send it.

But I sent it anyway.

I poured my energy, my deep-rooted emotions, and everything I ever experienced that had caused me a lot of confusion into this message.

The recipient had asked me for the email, after all. And it was a chance for me to experience some much needed relief, clarity, and answers to questions that had constantly been playing through my busy mind lately. I was so terrified to hit send that I quickly and impulsively closed my eyes and did it in one swift click from my shaking finger.

I am still unsure of what I expected back in response from this recipient, whom I had just literally bared my soul to—and looking back, maybe too bare for them to handle. I just kept telling myself that it would all work out for my highest and best, and that I had nothing to be embarrassed about.

I was proud of myself. I had done something extremely risky and had no control over the outcome. When I hit send, I felt a rush of exhilaration course through my veins—I felt alive inside. It was so outside my comfort zone to confess about spiritual quests, out-of-this-world experiences, and the high, yet unexplainable emotions that arose whenever I was around this person. Now all I had left to do was surrender and wait.

I never got a response to this email.

I got nada. Silence. Crickets. 

Being human, I did what I am used to and proceeded to tell myself lots of self-deprecating stories—I should never have sent it, how stupid of me, why did I even think I would hear back—and my self-esteem sunk lower and lower.

I knew full well there was a chance I would not receive an answer, due to the vulnerable nature of these words alone, not to mention the fact that I did not know this person well.

Maybe he never got it. Maybe he just doesn’t know how to respond. Maybe, maybe, maybe—whatever the lesson provided to me on this day, I do know that it has nothing to do with the recipient.

It is all me. Full disclosure: I am very comfortable playing a victim role in my life:

“They left me!”

“I was abandoned.”

“They just deleted me!”

“They didn’t love me back.”

“I am not pretty or good enough.”

These are only a few of the stories that are now programs governing my decisions and choices.

In the middle of the night, I woke up and remembered that in all of the times I was hurt, abandoned, rejected, feeling alone, sad, deleted, or harshly ignored, it wasn’t the other person’s fault. In truth, it was me who was abandoning myself. I was rejecting me. I was ignoring me. Sending the email itself was a perfect example of this.

I thought, the people I used to blame for my hurt were only reflecting those behaviours back to me—they weren’t doing anything wrong. Most likely, they also had their own deep-rooted hurts and traumas, also not knowing how to heal and deal.

In the middle of the night, I saw myself as a small child around six years old in a pink nightgown with pink curlers in my hair and slippers sitting on a hard couch. It was then I knew the truth: all of the feelings I was carrying, I had been carrying since that little girl first experienced them.

I felt sad and cried for her, not knowing how to help her see that she was not any of these things, that no one had ever truly abandoned her. I assured her that I was going to stop ignoring her cries and let her be seen. In my mind’s eye, “little me” then stood up. It was as if she was taking a stand and remembering she did have power inside of her again.

I knew all those times I had been rejected were because I had rejected parts of myself.

There are parts of me that I don’t love— the darker side of who I am, which I try to hide from others, full of shame. I lower my eyes so no one can see that I call myself (and have been called) “toxic,” “a horrible person,” and more awful names I would never call that little girl inside.

I engage in this kind of deprecating talk daily. I don’t accept that my mistakes are simply lessons that the universe has lovingly brought to me so I can become my “future me,” who I want to meet and become so I can attain my big dreams.

I don’t forgive myself either. I hang on tight to hurts and feel sorry for myself instead of offering forgiveness.

But, like that little girl, I want to stand up now.

I no longer wish to call myself anything but beautiful, strong, wise, powerful, intuitive, creative, all-knowing, and all of the words I know I embody.

I want to take my focus off of the negative words, one-by-one, until they lose their power. I attract what I am. And who wants to be toxic, spiteful, rejected, and ignored? Not this girl.

The email, and its recipient, was just one more mirror in the land-of-looking-inward. This kind of mirror always shows you what you truly believe about yourself, not the mask you wear for others. 

I now realize that people can only offer me what I offer energetically and that because of this, it’s time to stop playing the victim. For that to happen, I have to do the work.

I have to accept the parts of myself that I believed were hard to love, and then love the sh*t out of them instead. I have to remove words like “toxic” from my vocabulary and stop reading blogs, articles, and the like about that popular word.

I picture little me and think of how awful it would be to call her “toxic” and “unworthy” of my love.

I am ready to meet and attract others who love themselves a bit more, who are joyful and wanting to love me, and who will stay with me to show me how amazing I am.

I am ready to take back my power in this way.

All of this wisdom from an unanswered email—in hindsight, I am kind of glad they didn’t respond.

Without the unanswered email, I would not have received all of these insights and clarity about who I am, who I want to be, and how to heal myself even more.