This Again: Why Some Painful Memories are SO Hard to Let Go of

This again. It’s been a challenge doing the deeper work when year after year I keep coming back to the same memories — moments that are hard to let go of, no matter how much time has passed.

The first is of a Brazilian girl standing in front of me, angry, upset. We’re both maybe 4 or 5 years old.

She’s mad at me, and I don’t know why, and she doesn’t want to talk to me ever again. She also hits me with the shocking news that this is her last day in our apartment complex. My heart sinks.

I have no closure. I’m in my 30s today. That happened more than two decades ago.

I still find myself wondering what I did wrong, and sometimes I wonder, where is she now? How is she doing? Is she okay?

This again. Over and over, I come back to the same scene.

And maybe this is the part that bothers me even more. The exhaustion of returning to it. And then spiralling in thoughts like, “Why am I still bothered by this? It’s not a big deal, why can’t I get over it?!”

When the guilt and inner criticism kick in, too

We begin to critique ourselves, as though these memories that are so hard to let go of are a sign that something is wrong with us.

After years of trying to “fix” these memories, I have to remind myself: it makes sense. It’s valid to feel hurt. To feel so hurt and abandoned and stuck, that we keep returning to this again. For instance, here’s another one I can’t get over.

It’s a new day, and I’ve just reached the school playground. I make a quick scan and move excitedly to join my friends.

We’re in fourth grade. There were five or six girls that we used to hang out with as a group.

My excitement is short-lived. One of the “main” girls, Dunja, whose face becomes cold when she sees me. Her eyebrows narrow. She says, “You’re not allowed here anymore.”

The playground was loud. Kids were running around us. But suddenly it felt like all the sound had disappeared.

I’m confused. I don’t remember what happened next, if they walked away from me or if I walked away from them. The day was a blur, but the rest of the school year, I would see them in class and outdoors playing together, and feel gutted: I lost my friends. I had been kicked out. Something was wrong with me.

These had been my friends for a very, very long time, and just like that, I probably did something or said something, and they didn’t like me. Maybe because I was Indian now, and 9/11 had just happened. I didn’t know why, but just like that, I was abandoned. I ruminated on this over and over… and over again. Grasping for some reason that made sense, but was this something logic could even solve?

And yet, I kept spiralling, now with pain plus the heavy weight of self-judgement.

This again. Sigh.

Why being so stuck in the past actually makes sense

Fast forward to today. The version of me that has a more empowered lens. Here’s what I’ve come to realize:

Our soul is looking for ways to heal through interactions with other people, places and events that we wouldn’t be able to otherwise.

If there hadn’t been that person, if there hadn’t been that situation, if we had been just isolated all by ourselves, we’d probably end up thinking we’re okay, because we arrived at the point of enjoying our own company.

It would have taken us much longer to make spiritual progress. Of course, it doesn’t justify the pain, and without trying to spiritually bypass it either, I’d like to believe that the pain is only there as long as we believe in the story that led to it. So, for example, my story in each of the above was one of abandonment, and that something was wrong with me.

But little by little, as I would chip away at them, I would keep seeing that there was nothing personal about any of this.

Maybe the Brazilian friend was helpless about her move, and I was her safe space. Unfortunately, she used this space as a punching bag for her emotions. Maybe she wasn’t allowed to cry about it at home, so that turned into lashing out at her friends? Maybe she was projecting her frustration and disappointment with her parents onto me?

And maybe the group of girls at school were growing into bullies – they had their own stuff to deal with, and I wasn’t like them, so it made sense for me not to be a part of their shenanigans. Maybe I would have left them anyway at some point?

I felt small when I saw myself through their eyes, but when I stepped back and allowed my soul to remind me who I am, it began to shift into empathy for them.

But why so many times? And how many times is too many?

I often speak about soul contracts in my work.

And I see now that sometimes, certain souls sign up to do a lot of work with us, even within a short span of time. These moments and interactions are intended to have a deeper impact.

They’re not the memories that you recover from within a session or two. They stay with you for a very long time. Who knows, maybe till the end of your life?

And now I’m starting to see these opportunities that arise to heal the same wound again as different opportunities, because there is a different layer to the lesson. Sometimes more nuance, sometimes a new lesson, and every time a deeper level of depth that I didn’t have before.

If you think about it, the same lesson could be playing out in more subtle ways in our lives, but this one event really helped blow it up so we could finally see it.

I also see that these recurring memories are touching on core wounds. Not the high-level stuff, but the stuff that became our identity and created ruptures in our sense of self.

So I don’t believe there’s ever too much of the same healing. Or that the millionth time return of a wound means you are oversensitive or whatever else you might begin to assume.

What if we start asking instead: what lesson is here for me to understand next? What haven’t I seen in this before?

Concluding Thoughts

So, now as I keep revisiting these memories, these core wounds, I can only appreciate the depth that life has given me, which has taken decades to see and understand.

So, my invitation for you is, if you are struggling to get over something, allow yourself to subtly reframe it as a gift. A loaded gift, like the Russian dolls that just keep on coming at you, little by little and little by little.

Like peeling the layers of an onion, it could have been any memory. It could have been 10 different scenarios that happened at 10 different times in your life, but instead, it’s this one thing, this one ironically comforting memory, because it’s so familiar that you keep coming back to it to heal different layers of the core wound that your soul is trying to help you heal.

The next time it happens, maybe say it with a smile, and welcome it in like a long-lost friend.

This, again. 🙂

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