To Thine Own Self Be True (Blog)

[Erin Pavlina]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Erin Pavlina's blog:

To Thine Own Self Be True

[Dan.Linehan]

Thanks Erin -- beautiful article.

[Angela]

How did you clean things up with your sister, Erin? Did you ever talk about any residual pain she might be holding about that period?

[Playlife]

Originally Posted by Angela

How did you clean things up with your sister, Erin? Did you ever talk about any residual pain she might be holding about that period?

Isn't that pain her own responsibility?

Not being mean or anything here though, despite the rolling eyes. It's a serious question actually.

[Dannyboy1]

I was picked on a great deal when I was young. I also had ADHD and didn't know it, so I'm sure I was a bit flakey. There were two choices for me at that point. I could chase after the cool kids for approval and continue to destroy my self esteem, or I could say, "They're idiots and I'm better than that." I went way over to the angry side, which was good because I had confidence I could do anything, but it caused a lot of anger and frustration over why kids treated me like that. I stood up for myself and other kids that got picked on, but it took me a long time to face my anger and say, "It's not necessary anymore. It got me through some rough times, but now I need to grow past the anger." I recently went to my 20 year reunion and saw the shock on peoples faces as they saw a confident me with a beautiful 2 year old son in tow. It was a great feeling and funny how I had outgrown all the people who used to bully me. I've been through so much and have so much more confidence and it showed. I could see they saw it in me that I was above any pettiness and all my anger from the past was gone. I didn't care. I was happy.

[Angela]

Originally Posted by Playlife

Isn't that pain her own responsibility?

Not being mean or anything here though, despite the rolling eyes. It's a serious question actually.

You mean the sister's responsibility? Yes, her response is 100% her responsibility. And Erin, being the highly conscious person I know her to be, would have taken 100% responsibility for what she had generated -- not only for her sister, but also for herself and for the world. Cleaning up with her sister would be a matter of generating the kind of relationship that she (Erin) wants -- again, not only with the sister, but also with the world -- and with herself. Erin has a great relationship now with her sister, so I reckon she has cleaned things up. My question is just: how has that looked? Old childhood hurts have a way of surfacing when you least expect them, and I wonder how the cleaning up process has gone.

My deepest apologies if I am intruding or presuming incorrectly.

[Erin Pavlina]

No that's a good question. My sister never abandoned me. I was the one who abandoned her, so when I came back she accepted me and my profuse apologies with open arms. There's something really special about our bond. It really sometimes feels like she's the other half of me. I could no more hurt her than I could hurt myself. Maybe I incarnted with a twin to learn oneness.

She overcame a ton of issues regarding self esteem etc. She became a very independent, sensual, healthy, beautiful woman. All along she could see the popular kids for what they were. she's always had a clarity about that sort of thing.

It didn't take long to mend our fence. I'm very lucky to have her in my life.

[Angela]

Have you shared with her the beauty of what has been possible for you out of that whole incident, the oneness, and the trust and forgiveness and gratitude, etc.? Maybe your twiniosity makes it unnecessary for you to put into words for her -- or maybe she just gets the gift of watching how you have blossomed as a direct result of what you learned in that whole debacle?

How wonderful it must be to be a twin. I'm going to have to give that a go.

[Erin Pavlina]

Yeah we have talked a lot over the years about our childhoods, the challenges and obstacles we've overcome, etc. We knew another set of twins and they were just always competitive. They would actively try to hurt each other. It was so sad for us to watch.

I can remember when we were just toddlers her climbing out of the crib and coming over to mine to help get me out. My first memory actually. Then we would run, hand in hand, out of our room until our parents caught us trying to escape Good times!

[Marth]

"To thine own self be true" whats that from anyway? That takes a lot of courage bringing that experience up. I regret disconnecting from my brother, it takes a lot of integrity not to in those situations, especially when the experience is in highschool coming from your girlfriend. lol

[Mato Kinze]

Originally Posted by Marth

"To thine own self be true" whats that from anyway?

"Hamlet" Act I, scene III: Palonius is giving advice to his son, Laertes as he departs for University. "And this above all things: To thy ownself be true. For it follows as the night follows the day that you can not then be false to any man."

[Steve Pavlina]

Erin learned oneness in a previous life, so this time she's studying twoness.

[Angela]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Erin learned oneness in a previous life, so this time she's studying twoness.

Well, she does seem very good at speaking the twooth.

[Ree]

Erin, this must have been a very conflicted time for you. Did you have good or bad feelings during the time you continued to hang out with that particular crowd after you had "denounced" your sister, up until they denounced you?

I guess what I'm saying is you obviously thought you were doing these things for "fun", as is the main goal of most of us during our teen years. But were you able to enjoy yourself after that or did you feel guilty and feel that you had done something wrong, even before the crowd turned against you?

Thanks for sharing with us

[oberlee]

Twooth!

Am I a total and absolute dork for saying that cracks me up??? LOL...

[Erin Pavlina]

Originally Posted by Ree

Erin, this must have been a very conflicted time for you. Did you have good or bad feelings during the time you continued to hang out with that particular crowd after you had "denounced" your sister, up until they denounced you?

I guess what I'm saying is you obviously thought you were doing these things for "fun", as is the main goal of most of us during our teen years. But were you able to enjoy yourself after that or did you feel guilty and feel that you had done something wrong, even before the crowd turned against you?

Thanks for sharing with us

I was having fun with the popular kids but mostly I just wanted that sense of belonging and I was drawn into their crowd. Being accepted by the popular kids is a hard thing to resist at that age.

But I always knew we were doing something wrong. I couldn't believe some of these 14 year olds were having sex. That blew me away. Thank goodness I didn't get involved in that. Neither did I get involved with the alcohol and drugs that were floating around. Not everyone was doing it though so that helped.