Everyone has done or suffered through situations they are ashamed of and keep a secret. Almost everybody has skeletons in their closet.
I hid painful secrets or skeletons deep inside for years. In a private place, no one was allowed to know about or enter into for fear of being exposed.
I call this private place the Skeleton Closet.
I was hiding secrets and living in fear and shame
The door to this closet is tightly shut and under high security.
No one was ever getting in, and nothing was ever going to get out. I guarded past experiences or skeletons with my life.
Those painful secrets, past experiences or skeletons hiding inside your closet affect your life far more significant than you realize.
Those skeletons affect the way you think about things, and the choices you make. They can have a significant impact on the direction you’re traveling in life.
You can’t go forward in life with a closet full of skeletons.
The painful secrets or skeletons will continue to hold you down.
You will continuously make the same unhealthy choices and mistakes over and over again. Spend your life traveling in the same circle, never getting anywhere.
You must acknowledge the past to proceed into the future.
I call this cleaning the skeleton closet. Freeing the skeletons is the most uncomfortable and rewarding thing you will ever do.
Let’s do some closet cleaning!
Step One: Acknowledge
You can’t heal what you don’t acknowledge!
Take a long hard look into your past, really dig deep inside yourself and reflect over the moments of your life until now.
You’re looking for your story; the one you hold onto and allow to run your thought life.
The story keeping you downtrodden. The most painful moments of your past, and that story or moments you don’t share openly with anyone ever.
My story was growing up in a dysfunctional family with no real guidance in life. I was the strong one and the protector of my younger siblings.
Always doing a Mother’s job from a young age, and fighting for things to be done the right way due to abuse and neglect.
I spent three and one-half years living in a domestic violence situation and endured losing our children.
Did you find your story yet?
Good, now let’s work on helping you overcome those skeletons so you can put that story to rest and open the closet door once and for all.
Step Two: Take Action
Now you must take action!
This step requires you to take action, to deal with your story, to bring back the most painful moments and memories of your past.
Memories you have hidden away inside for years and memories you would rather keep hidden inside.
This step is about learning to deal with painful experiences, skeletons, and painful memories. It’s essential that you stop ignoring the past, stop hiding the past away and end forgetting about it.
In step two, I learned to deal with and feel all the feelings ignored for years. I let myself feel them and permitted myself to be mad as hell.
As the memories came back, I had feelings of anger, sadness, fear, regret, resentment, and disappointment. I felt unloved as a child and as an adult: aggravation and a great sense of loss and others.
I wrote an open letter to release the feelings of anger, sadness, fear and regret too.
Step Three: Accept
Accept the things you cannot change!
This step requires you to accept what you cannot change. You must acknowledge, deal with and accept that everyone, including you, has painful past experiences, skeletons, and painful memories.
We have all made unhealthy choices and done the wrong things in life.
Everyone has lost people who are important to us and suffered painful experiences. You cannot let these experiences hold you down and take over your mental state of mind.
Learning to accept the things we cannot change is essential to renewing your mind and necessary for you to experience healing and personal growth.
In step three, I accepted the loss of children and acknowledged the feelings of failure I felt inside for not being a mom to them.
Realized the poor choices made in life were due to living in a dysfunctional home. I learned that you could not change the past. I was grateful to the Lord for healing my broken heart.
Step Four: Learn
Learn to leave the past behind you!
This step requires you leave your painful past experiences, skeletons and the painful memories behind in a healed state.
When you do, you’re able to open your heart once again, and will experience life anew.
You Win!
When you free the skeletons in your closet, you win by experiencing personal and spiritual growth, and will be open to new experiences in life.
You will be one step closer to an abundant life.
In step four, I learned to leave the past and the feelings associated with it behind in a healed state.
Writing has been a part of the healing process for me.
I was a shy and reserved person before this cleaning process began. And never would’ve written openly on a blog, let alone write a book about these experiences.
I lived in fear of judgment from others.
I’ve opened the closet doors, cleaned those skeletons out, and let the light of Jesus Christ come in. I’m walking in the light of Christ, and now everyone can see the grace of God.
Do you have skeletons hiding in your closet?
Have you experienced a similar closet cleaning in your life?
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