When I say goodbye

One of the first lessons in A Course in Miracles is: you are never angry for the reason you think. I like to change the word ‘angry’ to other things from time to time, such as sad, happy and so on. It reminds me of our many layers, and what complex beings we are.

This morning when we waved our daughter Bethany off at the train station so she could go back to university, I choked back the tears. You are never sad for the reason you think, I told myself.

The truth is, I really hate goodbyes. I’m crap at them. And this morning I thought to myself: jeez girl, you’re 47 now, get a grip. It’s just a goodbye. She hasn’t died. It’s not the end of the world.

As a young child, I spent many visits to Brisbane airport waving and crying as my dad flew off to work in Papua & New Guinea. When I say goodbye to someone I love and the tears are at the edge, I know they’re as much about my loved one as about my dad and about me.

It’s about the little girl who hated being abandoned.

Sometimes it really annoys me that she’s always there waiting to remind me that I’m not really an adult, but a wounded girl. And then I remember this: we are all the walking wounded. We all have an inner child that we try to shoosh up with band-aids and denials. Perhaps I need my inner child’s constant conversations to keep me on track, to always remind me that I’m not alone. We’re all covered in plasters. We all carry wounds that we’d rather not show to the world.