This is an open letter from a client who after working through his trauma from his childhood was able to see everything he thought was true about himself was a program or conditioning of what he thought would make him feel loved. Through my EMIT Yourself program we worked one-on-one to Educate, Motivate, Inspire and Transform him into someone he always knew as his authentic self. Education of why we are the way we are is the first step to awareness and the path to change.
All the money in world won’t create change if people don’t know where to invest it. Invest it into people’s healing to work through the pain of not feeling good enough.
I feel like I need to respond to what is going on in my country since I am a white male and my race is responsible for the oppression and unfair treatment of black people in America. I want to apologize for all the times I cursed at you, called you the N word, told you to get out of my country, spit at your children, and other hurtful things I may have done. I apologize for my fellow white people who do the same. I am sorry that I have been conditioned to hate you and stereotype you as a class of people less than myself. I apologize for taking out all my frustrations out on you because I was raised to believe you are stealing from my people, you are ruining my culture and my community, you are breeding with my women and tainting my race. I truly apologize and I ask your forgiveness.
I ask for your forgiveness and understanding every night when I get home and drink myself to a stupor just to forget who I am and what I was raised to be. I ask for your understanding when I think of the ways I want to kill myself because of how I acted throughout the day. I ask for your understanding when I cry myself to sleep every night wishing I won’t wake up in the morning. I scream inside for help but have nowhere to turn to for the fear I am not a man in my father’s and his father’s eyes.
I ask for your forgiveness and listen to my words for I am tired of being afraid, being conditioned by my old man to judge you for I do not even know you. I remember him seeing me play with my school mate who was black and when I got home feeling the burning of his cigarette into my 6 year old back telling me I had no right to play with someone who is so evil. Getting the belt, punched, kicked, locked in the basement for days without food until I saw life his way. This was my childhood, my teens and now my life. Like my father, my grandfather, my great grandfather I was forced and brainwashed to believe in something I questioned everyday but the programming took over and it became too strong to stop. It meant following their rules in order to hear “I love you boy” just keep listening to me. “I love you” I would do anything to hear those words. It meant I was enough even though what it made me do made me worthless to the world.
I ask your forgiveness as I too am having a child and have broken free from the prison of my life only because my evil leaders have all passed. I ask for your forgiveness and reach out to you to take my hand and show me how to raise my son to accept everyone and know I love him for who he is and the choices he wants to make in life.
I want to change, and I ask that you can change to and accept me for who I am now and not who I was before I saw the light. I ask for you to join me and raise your son without the conditions that he must be afraid of me. I ask you give me a second chance to prove my acceptance and love for everyone for I am tired of living for the day I can die and be free. I want to be free now. I want to see a better world for my child and I understand that better world starts with me and what I tell my child. It is what we tell all our children that creates change for the better.
I ask for your forgiveness as there are many of us who just want to be loved but unfortunately that love comes with evil conditions that steal the love you have for yourself.
Together we can change. But it is going to take wearing the other person’s shoes and not fighting who is right or wrong.
Can we at least stop the cycle and start the healing?