Where is your treasure?
Recently I was watching the ‘red table’ interview between Jada Pinkett Smith, her mother, and her daughter Willow, that was floating around on Facebook. Well the motherhood and self-love part of it has, but I tracked down the full version. It’s very inspiring and powerful and you’ll find it here if you fancy checking it out.
There is some great stuff in it about self-love (well worth the watch just for that alone!), and fame, but the bit that brought me to this blog was Jada’s mother asking her if she had any resentment about the way she had been raised. Apparently they had had this conversation many times before, and the mother goes on to explain that she had become addicted to drugs after Jada was born and used until Jada was about 17. She felt that she’d been a bad mother.
Jada corrects her and explains all the good that came of it. The freedom she had as a child, the decisions her mother made that helped her, her mum getting out of the way and allowing Jada her own path, and how her childhood turned her into exactly the person she is today.
Then she talked about how you can’t know where your treasure will be found so you can’t label things good and bad.
I disagree.
I think you can know where the treasure will be found.
You will find your treasure in your deepest darkest caves.
The most painful experiences, the biggest ‘holes’ in you, the sorest points, the worst times…these are where your greatest growth will come. These are where your treasure will usually be.
Now it’s not automatic of course. Jada could have done what many do – walked into that cave of her childhood and simply sat down in the dark thinking how dark it was, how awful, how terrible. Then she could have come out and told everyone how dark it was, how awful, how terrible.
But she didn’t. She asked some really good questions of herself instead…and found her treasure.
Remember, it’s never what happens to you, it’s what you do with what happens to you.
She worked out the gifts of what may seem a ‘bad’ situation. She worked out how that helped her become her. She worked out how it wasn’t actually ‘bad’ at all.
Does this apply to death and grief?
Damn right it does. Yes. A thousand times yes.
Like Jada did, you get the option to look at what has happened in your life and see something different. You get the option to go into that cave and find your treasure.
Please do.
If you’ve had a death or deaths in your life, how has this changed you? How has this helped you become more of you? How has it added to your life and to who you are? How has it helped you become who you are today?
Figure that out and it will change forever how you feel about a death and how you feel about the person who died, their life, their death, and the legacy they have left in this world.
For me, the 6 deaths in my life in 4 months and particularly the first of the 6 – my dad….these have absolutely shaped where I am in life, what I have, and who I am.
I would not live the life I do, do the work I do, know the amazing people I do, if it weren’t for the path my life took after these deaths. They were the catalyst for everything.
I look at my sweet baby and I can trace the path that brought me to her and those deaths were part of it. Without them I would not be here. I would not have her. I would not be me.
So dare to walk into your own cave – the cave of death and grief – and seek your own treasure.
I promise you it is there.
Kristie
xx
