Nature Vs. Nurture
The age old question…nature vs. nurture. Science has tested it, psychology has philosophized it, but me…I’m a living testament.
I often say that I don’t know how I made it out of my teen years without a kid or an STD…or alive. I was reflecting on this today as I was having a phone conversation with my mom. Even that act alone, having a conversation with my mom, is an anomoly of nature.
Nature…I do believe our primal essence is Love, Tribe and Peace. From the time that we are born though, our environment begins to show us how this is not true. We are torn from our home (our mothers womb), we no longer have everything we need given to us on demand, we experience separation in a traumatic way and we are not seen, heard or understood in the way we need to be. Not intentionally, of course. Even the children born into the most loving family still experiences this. And then there are the children that are born into families that create an experience worse than being abandoned.
I was born into a family somewhere in the middle and, as the days went on, progressively got worse. By the time I was 8, I had been abandoned by my dad, chased with a shotgun by my stepdad, sexually abused by the first man and shamed about my sexuality being expressed (prior to my abuse) just to name a few experiences.
It’s because of this that I am glad that nurture isn’t 100% of the deciding factor on how I would turn out. Because how I was nurtured was in a way to think abuse was Love, that I was what was wrong with the world and all the horrible things that were happening were my fault.
Now, I was able to leave that reality at 19 but nurture won out for the following 19 years. I lived in a constant trauma response, meaning that my mind was still running the script that I was in danger and experiencing the trauma even though in my physical reality the abuse had stopped (for the most part).
Nature…I come from a lineage of alcoholics, addicts and abusers. I didn’t have nature on my side either! I started smoking, drinking and having sex at 13. Drugs were sprinkled in there along with overachieving, people pleasing, codependency and other juicy little destructive tendencies. I began honing my own narcissistic tendencies as they were being honed on me. I was the typical sob story that came from a broken home…
So how the hell did I get here? How did I become who I am today? I live a magical Life! Yeah, sometimes it can be hard, but I have a beautiful relationship with my kids, I love the fuck out of myself, I co-parent with the kids dad and his partner like a true family, I connect with my mom and I am living my dreams of Fire Dancing, holding Ceremony, connecting with Nature, experiencing out of this world experiences and helping people along the way.
So was it Nature or Nurturing that got me here? I think it was both. Just like it was both that threw me in the hole I dug myself out of. There were a handful of moments that I had the gift of awareness…even though at the time the awareness hit, it felt like my world crumbling instead of the parts of me creating the crippling pain and fear falling away.
We have all had these moments. When, like a flash of lightening we see something that could change our entire lives…if we choose to let it. I’m sure there were MILLIONS of these moments that came into my reality, but only these few were the ones that all the stars aligned and my awareness was sharp enough…harsh enough…to let it break me open.
It broke me open deep enough to break away all the things that had covered up my Nature. And as more of the armor started to fall away…it became something that I valued. I became something I Loved…something worth nurturing. And the more I nurtured myself, the more my true nature began to expose itself more and more. And thus the cycle continues.
Sacredly and Wildly loving you…
Jenn
