Osama bin Laden’s Call for Love

Osama bin Laden’s Call for Love

The reaction to Osama bin Laden’s death brings a lot of energy to the pain in the world and the focus on more pain to come. My interest is not in giving more energy to a clearly disturbed human being but to the victims who are so desperately trying to heal their pain. Three things are clear to me, and are a must for victims to hear if they want to heal. Do you want to heal or do you want to be right?

The first clarity is ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. Whether we have been a victim of something as big as a war or as small, to some of us, as the way someone spoke to us from a customer service department, we want to be acknowledged. We have a need to be heard and with my experience, we will not let go until we feel we have. We want others to know how ‘bad’ it was and how we are good and do not deserve this; and if we feel they don’t understand that, we have a problem letting go.

The second is PAIN. We hold onto it in our memory which in turn is held in our body. Our body takes on the stress of these memories and has been proven to create illness as serious as cancer. We have learned to ignore these messages that our bodies give us and focus on the internal or external voices that overtake us.

The third is a CRY FOR LOVE. Under every emotion is the human need for love. No matter what we feel, we are truly asking to be loved for who we are, regardless of whether we have been hurt, feel ignored or have even committed a crime ourselves; we are looking for attention. Being in this place of ‘victim’ DOES serve us. Some ask what makes me think anyone would chose to be a victim and the answer is simple…we may get acknowledged and even feel loved, even if only for a short second. And it is a lot easier to ‘complain’ about our victimization then it is to do the work needed to heal.

I know that in hearing this, many victims will become defensive and even say “How dare you make me wrong. I am the one who has been victimized and you have the nerve to blame me?” Trust me; I know the feeling of hurt at that present moment as I have been there. A victim of sexual assault and a family member who died in concentration camp, I have felt the pain and still get reminded of it. The difference is that, through a lot of personal work, I have come out never forgetting the past, choosing to learn from it and heal my body from the memories. I know that victims can come out victorious and that is the message I chose to send from the death of Osama bin Laden.

Namaste!