Baggage. What a heavy word itself. Be it emotional or physical, we all carry some kind of baggage with us. Furthermore, we could even dare to say that our baggage define us, to some extent. The personal experiences we enjoyed or endured do not determine who we are, but the experiences (read: difficulty/trauma/hardship) we overcome, do. Nedless to say, this is far from being an empirical truth; it is merely my own opinion. Whatever unpleasant or traumatic event happenned to you does not define who you are, but the capacity to bouncing back from it, certainly does.

I am pointing out at a heavy topic here. But our life baggage is. It really is heavy. The more you live, the heavier your baggage is. No major breakthorugh here. Some baggage may be easy to offload, whereas we could be bearing one of a different kind througout our lives unless we are able to transform it with our own determination and willpower. Oh, and therapy also helps.

What we lived through as children, how we were treated, loved, encouraged or discouraged… That is the baggage we may struggle to offload. And any unresolved issues carried from that point on will also stay with us conciously or unconciuously… They can even translate into specific conducts and behavioural patterns in our adult lives.

I can count myself as one of the lucky ones to have had an average happy and uneventful childhood. To this day, I still get flashbacks of my curious self trying to figure out what the world was about at the tender age of 5; my introspective little soul always lost in her thoughts ( most of the time).

But from my normal, average childhood also stemmed some patterns, beliefs and asumptions which for a long time hindered my own potencial and prevented me from thriving. My own deconstructing work is by no means finished. I still find myself trying to put the jigsaw pieces of my life together. For this reason, and because I am a firm believer in the therapeutic effects writing has, I want to dedicate this to you. To tell you that I finally learned to forgive you.

• I forgive you for your never applauding me when I reached my own little milestones.

• I forgive you for imposing notions and beliefs which limited my potential instead of expanding it.

• I forgive you for your lacking the affection I so much craved for.

• I forgive you for your hostile mutism.

• I forgive you for not being there when the only thing I really wanted was for you to SEE me.

• I forgive you for your authoritative ways towards me – and for telling me off everythime I was stuck in a Maths problem-.

• I forgive you for your never seeing me as the independent and brave woman I am.

Forgiving and accepting. What a liberating feeling.