This past week, Lee and I were having lunch in a local restaurant. Seated very near us was a table with 3 women. They were talking rather loudly so it was impossible not to overhear bits and parts. At one point, one of the women said “he ruined my life!”
I never heard another thing any of them said because I sort of became lost in thought on that topic. Is it possible for one person to ruin another person’s life? I didn’t get to ruminate on that too long because before too long, Lee was snapping his fingers in front of my eyes saying “Come back. Where’d you go?” But I did set it aside in my mind to ponder later.
I’ll be honest, I don’t want that to be true. If someone can ruin another person’s entire life, then that is a singularly disempowering statement. In this moment, I think I’m settling into three possibilities.
- Maybe it’s possible for someone else to significantly mess up another person’s life – for a time. Maybe having a terrible marriage during your 20’s makes your 20s seem horrible. But hopefully the ruining can be limited to the 20’s following the end of the relationship. Hopefully the person can take what they learned and build a better future by avoiding coming within miles of someone manipulative and terrible forever after that. I always want to believe that people can survive terrible things and come back stronger than ever.
- Maybe it’s possible for person A to ruin person B’s life if person B keeps it forever in their head that their life is ruined. If person B can’t see past the wrong-doing to recover (like in scenario 1) then the retelling of the story of “my life is ruined” over and over will create the reality of a life ruined. But that implicates person B in the “ruining” of the life.
- Someone’s life is seriously impacted by an injustice. For me, this includes someone being wrongfully accused of a crime and being imprisoned for most of the rest of their life. Or perhaps a drunk driver plows into a car and takes away the victim’s ability to care for themselves ever again. And yet, the forever optimist in me stillwants to hope that the victim of such a terrible situation would find a way to make their lives worthwhile. By the grace of the Divine, I’ve not walked in those shoes, so I can’t really say for sure. I suspect that for some people that’s a ruining. And for some exceedingly, extraordinary people, they find a way to rescue the meaning and purpose of their lives and find joy where they can.
I know that every life is different. Our lives are often driven by the past and our perceptions of that past. Recovering from trauma and abuse for example, can take years of therapy to heal. Our perceptions of our own strength is also a part of this. If we see ourselves as strong and able to overcome, I think we can. How our lives move forward is most often based on how we see the present and the future as well as how we have processed the past.
I’m curious. What do you think? I’m still turning this around in my head.
With you on the journey,
~Radleigh
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Totally agree with you on that we can let bad experience define us or we can choose to learn from it the choice is ours we cannot appreciate the good without having the experience of the not so good its all about our personal choice in which way our experience defines us
You can recover from unjust happenings but you won’t forget them.
I believe one should continue to live your life and try the best.
The second possibility you mentioned, is one that I can be reflective of the most. If there is a window that can lead you to see your responsibility in a situation/co-creation- that that is a window to empowerment. That window could be a window of time or a window to the Divine that helps you process and work toward forgiveness through you. Another thought came up, within the context of the word “ruined”… I imagine an over-cooked and burnt dish that is “ruined”. And being inedible defeats any purpose to why it’s there and now it can’t serve anyone. (Hello metaphor- lol).. But this lead me to thoughts like the one that I had for many years. I told myself that I had a bad memory. I had epilepsy as a kid and therefore- all this kind of talk and self-doubt.. Then one day, I said that I had a good memory. And it turns out that I actually have a great one. Like really great one, I just had to remember. And I feel that, over time, we all remember the great parts of ourself. We turn back on our oven of inspiration and do our best to witness and stay mindful of our rising, as well as us getting “burnt out”.
Brilliant!
🙂
I know you are, but what am I?
(I caught the end of Pee Wee’s Big Top movie yesterday- lol)
Ha!
I ruined frozen mini pizza a couple of evenings ago, which was suppose to be an easy, quick dinner. But, I managed to burn those simple (pop in the oven or microwave) mini pizzas when I forgot to put on the timer as I decided to heat them in the oven. But it didn’t ruin our dinner time nor our family bonding. We sort of nibbled at them. The next time, I will microwave them – and keep even a frozen mini pizza dinner – KISS – Keep It So Simple. In other words, a ‘ruin’ can help us improve our lives, bond us closer together with loved ones, even in simple ways.
Beautiful viewpoint
I think that what we perceive as ruining, occurs so that we may learned a valuable lesson. Perhaps it is and learning this lesson and teaching others how to avoid the pitfalls, binds and lifts us all.
I chose to learn…I refuse to be a victim of someone else’s nastiness or control issues…Unfortunately it took a while and several longterm relationships to work it out…I’m still a work in progress 🙂 But I finally found at the age of 55! I can use those experiences to guide me…if lower energies are attacking me I am doing something right for myself and/or the world.
The attacks come BECAUSE you are on the right path 🙂
I hope this is helpful to other people…I offer a shortcut
I’m so glad you came through it. 🙂
I think it really depends when it happens in a person’s life. If you’ve had a sense of self, then I think that you’re right, you’ll come back to yourself. But if something happens when you’re very young, you may never know who you are, and where to return to. As you can guess I’m speaking from experience. I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I’m 60 now. It’s taken my entire adult life to slowly learn from the people around me what it is a human being can be. The teachings about the angels have helped me feel that there is someone I can always count on. And now I study Zen Buddhism to learn what good human behavior would be, and about the concepts of impermanence and interbeing in this life. So yes, my life has become good after all.
I am sending you so much love. And congratulations on rescuing yourself.
#3 encapsulates the whole spiritual quandary: why does God/universe let these happen? or before arriving, did we know these were possible outcomes to enable growth in us/others?
The never ending question. I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about the concept that we might have known of multiple, possible outcomes. That’s really interesting.
The difficult thing here is if we do not have a strong hold on who we are personally which includes loving our self, taking care of our self and independence then we tend to rely on other people or situations to give us that feeling. When that person or situation stops being in our life…it could feel “ruined”. this is a tough situation when you over hear something like this because you know there are answers to help. thank you for sharing Radleigh.
Thank you Katherine.
While I understand your point, perhaps speak to some victims of sexual abuse and read “The Body Keeps Score” to understand how one person can forever negatively alter the path of another’s life. Not that healing is not possible it is just that the one who experienced the abuse has to spend time, money, and karmic energy to heal and it is a long process. Life is never the same as if the victim had not experienced this horror.
“Not that healing is not possible it is just that the one who experienced the abuse has to spend time, money, and karmic energy to heal and it is a long process. Life is never the same as if the victim had not experienced this horror.” I 100% agree with that comment.
100% agree.
I’ve had similar long-than-usual distracting thoughts after hearing seemingly dramatic statements personally and professionally, and I find myself wondering if this is directly linked to the culture of reality entertainment we find ourselves connected to or obsessed by. It’s similar to rubber-necking on the highway, or the reason so many flock to stadiums to watch cars race against one another. In this instance, is person A looking to be validated for their belief by sharing it? Indeed, a person making a statement about another person ruining their life I assume is hoping to gain something. If this were a life-altering situation like losing a limb, or a life, or through trauma, healing from it would be absolutely necessary before the word “ruined” could be upgraded to “changed”. Ruin has a negative slant to it.
Hi Radleigh,
You are right. Sounds like a toxic relationship. If you have to be willing to end it and hopefully have the strength to do so. Speak up, I know it was not easy for me. I just don’t want to be silent anymore and will not let some else take over what I want out of life.
Too many times we are the ones to change for someone else and always compromise. When do they compromise and why do we do it to keep peace. Some times you need to shake things up a little for change to occur.
As I mentioned you are right.
My husband and I have full custody of our 5 year old grand-daughter. Parenting children is exhausting but full-time grand-parenting is at times, even more exhausting, but we are willing to care and protect our precious little one. Neither my husband and I want our grand-daughter to end up in foster care and there are no other relatives who are able to care for her. That means there has been a lot of family drama. And a lot of hurt. But we don’t need to let what was ‘ruined’ to continue to hurt us and devastate us. Through this heartbreaking ‘ruin’ in my family, that’s when I grew close to angels. Although I knew angels existed, I never communicated with angels before but now, I talk to them for reassurance, guidance, loving-kindness, and healing.
So beautifully said.
Maybe it’s not so much about overcoming but just believing we are okay and are worthy of all things that are good.
Maybe there is no judgment.
Maybe I want to believe it was a lesson for my greater growth.
Maybe all there is … is love.
So many maybe’s.
Love.