In order to heal from physical issues that have an emotional component to them, you need to be willing to acknowledge your truth by allowing whatever is being held in your body to arise and be released, which often means acknowledging some painful truths. The emotional issues that get held in the body often originate in childhood, so when you become willing to explore these things you may end up noticing places in which you were hurt as a child.

But loyalty to one’s parents and family of origin, regardless of the actual circumstances of one’s upbringing, is a very deep-seated impulse and can get in the way of healing from emotional wounds being held in the body.

I often hear this expressed by some version of one of the following beliefs or statements:

• “I don’t want to wallow in the past, you just have to forget about your past and move on”, or
• “This is just parent bashing” or
• “They did the best they could”

The work you’re going to do in Ally is not about wallowing in past wounds or living from a place of victimization. Rather, it is about moving beyond your past by acknowledging and resolving the wounds you carry. As Carl Jung says “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” I could replace his “fate” with “pain” or “illness” and this quote would be just as applicable. So this is about owning your wounds, in order to move beyond them.

As far as the concern about parent bashing or blaming … this program is NOT about parent bashing. It is about you getting in touch with YOUR truths, acknowledging them and feeling the impacts on you. It is not about blame. So even if your truths include suffering abuse at the hands of someone else, it is possible to acknowledge this, place the responsibility where it belongs (in the hands of the adult perpetrating the abuse), AND stop short of getting into blame (which places you in the victim role). It’s a fine line between acknowledging that you were victimized as a child, and not remaining in a victim mentality. Instead, and paradoxically, claiming the truth that you were victimized then allows you to reclaim your power now and move forward in an empowered way. To not do so puts you in a place of denial about your past, which means it stays stuck in your body.

In fact, I have found that doing this … acknowledging and resolving your own pain … actually frees you up to have a more authentic and empowered relationship with your family of origin, rather than distancing you from them, as is often feared.