When I was six years old someone tried to kidnap me. She showed up at my school with a handwritten note saying that my mom’s boyfriend (who was with her prior to her death and is a very well know celebrity) had sent her there to pick me up and she was suppose to take me to him.
Thankfully the school called my father. He said under no circumstances were they to release me to her. Turns out she was a crazy fan and she was going to use me to get to my mom’s boyfriend. Yikes.
After that scary event my father decided to move us away from Hollywood. He settled on a small mountain town about two hours east of Los Angeles. Lake Arrowhead.
Besides my mothers death, Lake Arrowhead was the source of all my childhood trauma. That’s where my father turned into a substance abuser and a rager and he emotionally abused me on a daily basis. His parenting (or lack there of) taught me to believe that I didn’t matter.
I share this with you because recently my wife and daughter and I went to Lake Arrowhead for a mini family vacation. Fortunately, and no that’s not a typo, nothing went as planned.
Our daughter struggled in Arrowhead. She’s usually a rockstar sleeper but for whatever reason she didn’t sleep well. Like barely at all.
I planned on meditating and reading whenever she was asleep but that went right out the window. I also planned on taking her past my old childhood home to take pictures with the house in the background but that didn’t happen either. Perhaps she was picking up on old energy I was still carrying around from my childhood.
After a day and a half of her struggles we called a family audible and decided to pack up and leave. We needed to get our daughter back to the comfort of her home. That’s when I stopped trying to make things happen and that’s also when the real magic began.
While packing up our bags something in me said to get online and look up my old childhood address. It said maybe it’s an Airbnb or a VRBO and you can see what the inside looks like today. So I got online and sure enough there was my old home on Zillow listed as a pending sale.
Memories immediately flooded in as I looked through the pictures. I saw my old room where my dad use to scream at me in the middle of the night and I saw the kitchen where he tortured me in the morning. I sat there at my computer and cried as I remembered all of the painful memories.
More importantly though in that moment I felt the tap on my shoulder from the Universe which was saying hey buddy… your old childhood home is for sale. It’s time to sell the childhood beliefs that have been holding you back all of your life. It’s time to let go of all the fear and shame that you carry. It’s time to let go of the beliefs that say you’re not good enough or worthy of love. It’s time.
The next morning while driving down the mountain it rained. As I looked in the rearview mirror at my smiling wife who was sitting next to our daughter I started to cry because I knew what the rain meant for me. It was a cleansing that was washing my old childhood away and it was beautiful.
My dad bought that house in 1979 for around a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Get this. It sold on my birthday (no joke) for one point one million.
My old self, the victim, would’ve been pissed that my dad didn’t hang on to that house. Instead rather I’m able to see it for what it really is. My childhood experiences have made me a very wealthy man.
I wouldn’t change my life today for all the money in the world. I love my daughter more than anything and I wouldn’t have met my wife, the love of my life, had I not gone through everything that I went through as a child.
So embrace what you went through as a child but don’t hold onto it for dear life. And if you are maybe it’s time to sell it. We do spring cleaning in our homes but how often do we spring clean our minds? Let go of what’s no longer serving you and watch your life expand in ways that you’d never imagine.
Lots of love,
Zachary, The Conscious Father