Recalling The Abandoned Self

This article is about reclaiming

the fragments of energy,

the pieces of our souls, 

we have left, lost or abandoned.

Reclaiming Our Energy

Claiming or reclaiming our energy is a contrasting practice to clearing energy that often gets lost in the urgency to clear, cleanse and detox. This article is about recalling the parts of self we have left behind.  I believe reclaiming will be helpful for all to consider and beneficial for some of you to practice, as I will be doing.

Calling Back Your Energy: Is it Spiritual Hygiene or Soul Healing?

The practice of calling back your energy can be both, a daily spiritual hygiene practice and a meaningful soul healing practice.

There are different reasons why we leave our energy in places we have physically departed.

• We deposit or leave energy in places where we want others to see us a certain way or accept us.
• We leave our energy in places where we feel the need for a sense of control or recognition even after we have departed. 
• We may leave our energy in a place where something devastating occurred to keep watch.
• We may leave our energy where we feel time is moving too fast and we want to hold on to the past even as we move forward. 
• We may not trust ourselves at our most powerful.
• We may not trust that others are capable of healing without our rescuing or saving.
• We may not feel that we will be able to tolerate or process the discomfort that arises when others are  distressed or want us to give more than we can.

The perceived benefit of leaving our energy behind is usually experienced subconsciously. It may also be a while before we register another effect of leaving our energy behind, which is to chip away at our power and sense of wholeness.

Energy retrieval is an uncomplicated way to maintain our energy as whole as well as luminous, light, and vibrant. 

A feeling of our full spectrum of energy and its capacity strengthens the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual selves.

 

Now visualize a strong surge of energy pouring from the sun into the crown of your head. 

Imagine it flowing towards the shoulders, spreading across the chest, down the arms and fingertips, through the belly, hips and pelvis then making its way down the legs, ankles, calves, feet and toes.

Intuitively allow each cell in your body time to draw in and integrate this surge of energy and strength.

The Soul Healing Spiritual Energy Call Back

My Story of Abandoned Energy

I became aware that I had left parts of my soul with people who hurt me and rejected me because, subconsciously, despite their rejection, I didn't want them to forget me.

I harbored a kind of codependency that questioned:

"If I am truly forgotten by all the people from my childhood, would I even exist?"

Memories can give us clues to places we may have historically left our energy, deposits that today keep us from feeling whole.

My parents divorced when I was three.

I come from two distinct ethnic, religious, and spiritual  backgrounds.

My paternal Roman Catholic Italian family lived in Chicago and my maternal Russian Jewish family lived forty minutes away in the suburbs of Chicago.

I was an only child and grew up in North Eastern Pennsylvania with my mother and step-father in my step-father's home town.

From the time I was three, for two weeks every summer and two weeks every winter, during the Christmas season, I would visit my Italian family. I would board the plane solo with a flight attendant, be given a plastic pin of an airplane, my wings, and an aviation themed coloring book and crayons. Once the flight attendant put me in my seat, I sat through the ride just like every other passenger for the four hour flight from Wilkes-Barre Scranton Airport to Ohare.

I felt very close to my Italian family growing up but as an outsider.

To my Italian family I was a Jewish kid and interesting, if not weird, as a result. My father and stepmother left me with my grand-parents, great-grandparents and Aunts for most of the trip, occasionally swooping in to take me to a high end restaurant downtown where I was always encouraged to carry a book, such as one of my many Nancy Drews, so I wouldn't bother them.

My Jewish suburban family did not live far away but visits with them were typically arranged for when I visited them separately, and less frequently,  with my mother. I felt close to my Jewish family but also, as with my Italian family, as an outsider. To them I wasn't really Jewish. I was Italian, my name was Barone, and I was from a broken family with much less money.

The trips to see my Italian family in Chicago repeated annually until I was in high school. Inexplicably, my Italian family simply stopped talking or interacting with me.  I had no idea why and my father and step-mother, who now lived in New York City, had no explanation or empathy for me. My father didn't know why they decided not to talk to me, didn't want to discuss the topic, and appeared to feel that whatever the reason, it must have been my fault. No one explained why this happened or even acknowledged it was happening and I had no memory of ever having even a slight disagreement with these people I had loved and who I thought loved me. It felt very all or nothing. 

This wasn't an isolated incident in my life.

Two decades later, my father and step-mother also cut ties with me and again there was very little I could point to as the cause. All or nothing.

Much later I saw the estrangements of my Italian family and father and step-mother together as characteristics of something passed down in my heritage.

I remembered hearing my grandmother and Aunt talk about estranged cousins. Uncles fell in and out of favor. Years later, I found out that their biological father, my biological great grandfather, lived not far from their home where I visited in Chicago. This was despite the fact that they had repeated the story that this man, their father, had never left Italy. 

My stepmother, of a completely different ethnic background, had repeatedly told me from the time I was very young that she would not share my father with any child, even as they provided for my visiting with them for short visits once or twice a year.

This story of linked estrangements is relevant to my soul retrieval practice because:

• 1. I had left large portions of my soul with my Italian family even as they cut off communication with me. I thought it was my duty to continue to send them love and further, I subconsciously, had not wanted them to forget me. The energy I left with them was substantial, unrecognized, and absolutely unappreciated. I only realized recently that I could call that back to my own heart and soul. That hole could be filled and should be filled with the return of my essential pieces of self.
• 2. I had similarly left a large portion of my soul energy with my father and even my stepmother for the very same reasons. Wanting not only to be remembered but also to evolve spiritually, I consciously responded to their cutting off of ties with loving detachment and various forms of spiritual amends, though for what I had done I had no idea. I called it detachment but it was not. If it were detachment I would not have left my energy with them. If it were detachment, I would not have worried about being completely forgotten.
• 3. I felt that as forgotten, I did not in some meaningful ways exist. I wanted to forget that child that nobody seemed to find worthy of love. I would educate her, dress her well, make sure she was professionally successful as an adult. The child went wherever they had left her.  With who I was as a child coming into question, I wondered who I really was as an adult. As an adult I had my own beautiful and extremely loving family and friends and for that I believed I should be grateful. Now I wonder if I had been leaving my self with them in order to prevent the estrangement of the past from occurring. Could I just love my husband and children and friends without going overboard to make sure they could never find me in any way wanting?
• 4. In my leaving of my energy and self, I took responsibility for the estrangement and for being someone I thought not worthy of love. I made deposits to be sure the people who I loved and loved me would never make the decisions my Italian family had made.
• 5. During the early years of flying from Wilkes-Barre to Chicago unaccompanied, I would always look around the plane for the least scary looking stranger. I was determined not to lose track of them, just in case the plane were to crash and I would be stranded with the survivors on an island. I would look to the person I selected to teach me how to find food and shelter and to include me in their signals for rescue. I left my energy with these strangers too, on tall of the possible landing spots below, and even on the clouds I visualized hanging onto to soften my fall.
•  

I Have Reclaimed The Fragmented Pieces of Soul and Energy Left Behind

What I know now is that I do not need to be remembered to exist.

I do not need to be remembered to be the loving person that I am.

I do not need to be remembered to be the mother I am.

I do not need to be remembered to be the compassionate psychologist that I am.

I do not need to be remembered to be whole.

The gratitude I feel for my life now does not demand I be self-less.

I need not leave parts of myself where I was estranged in order to prevent those I love from leaving me today.  

My gratitude does not mean that I owed those who left me my presence.

I am entitled to all of me. To my sovereignty.

I called back the parts of myself from the people who made clear they wanted nothing to do with me so that I could grow in my spirit and grow in my work for others.

With the exuberant energy of that girl returned, I live with a wholeness of spirit I had not felt before.

The Soul Healing Energy Call Back Exercise

After finding the time and space for solitude, take a comfortable seated position. 

Extend the crown of the head towards the sky and allow the sitz bones to anchor into the floor, the bed or a chair.

Feel your connection with the earth below and cultivate a feeling of strength and stability through your lower body.

Breathe deeply into your belly and expand your rib cage. Soften your eyes and jaw and feel the expansion through the upper body.

Wiggle your fingers and toes to awaken your inner energy. 

Rest your hands comfortably - palms up cultivates receptive energy while palms down cultivates a more grounded energy.

Take a series of deep cleansing breaths, inhaling through the nose to a count of four, savoring your breath for a count of four, exhaling through the mouth for a count of four, and then enjoying the emptiness for a count of four before taking your next inhalation.

Reflect on your life. 

• Are there people or places you miss?
• Are their past lovers who occasionally tug at the corners of your mind?
• Were their conversations or arguments that have left you wounded?
• Was there a time where you feel you lost your naivete?
• Are there conversations, experiences or events that weigh on your heart ?
• Was there a time when you held your truth tight in your throat rather than expressing it?
• Was there a place where you did not own your strength, believing that strength would disqualify you from being loved? 
• Do you carry a memory of being betrayed?

Create a gorgeous column of light above your head - making the light any color that feels right. Imagine a radiant sun at the top of the column of light, also of whatever color you choose.

Mentally write your name on the sun.

Reflect on the scenes and exchanges you called forth above.  Energetically call back all of the soul pieces you've left behind related to these memories.

Concentrating drawing your energy from each of these people and places into the radiant sun  above your head.

Say "I now call back any fragments of energy that I've left behind. My energy, my body, my emotions, my boundaries, my joy, my healing, my choices. Please return to me cleansed by the sun and charged fully for the highest good of all involved."

Give yourself time and space to settle into this time of drawing back. 

When you feel ready, visualize the radiant sun full of your energy pouring the energy into the crown of your head and imagine it flowing down through your neck and shoulders, spreading across the chest, down the arms and fingertips, through the belly, hips and pelvis then making its way down the legs, ankles, calves, feet and toes. What color is this wash of energy? What texture? See it filling you with light.  Soak up all the surge of energy and strength brought forth. Welcome it home.

Once you feel you have completely integrated your returned energy, take four deep breaths, using the inhale to sweep into the bottom deepest parts of the belly and exhaling and completely emptying the lungs through your mouth.

Thank the sun and let it dissolve away.

Stand up and take a slow deep stretch pulling your arms overhead. Rotate your arms forward and backward. Draw your shoulders down onto your back and feel the expansion through your upper body and heart space.