Finding the Gifts of the Harbinger

How do you break the chains of the past?
  Wise ones from the native people's would say,
  you re-write the dream.

Choose to step out of the role in which
  you cast yourself
  and recast yourself in a different way.

You create your reality, not just figuratively,
  but quite literally.

In search of wisdom, I instead found
  a child still wounded.
  And that child wants to teach me.

So, I listen
  for I do not want to be held
  by chains of my own craft.

I want to evolve
  through the rich experiences
  offered me in this life.

It is true,
  my discovery set in motion
  a vast tide that swept over many
  including myself,
  
and challenged us all,
  some of us at the very core of our being.
  Perhaps, that in itself was the gift.

Mindful that I can speak for no other,
  I revert back to the first person
  so to honor the path that others must/choose
  to walk.

Looking back now, I see there was no other way.
  This part of me had to be birthed
  for therein lie the gifts.

And the part I want to re-write?

No longer am I the 'victim of circumstance'.
  I am co-creator.

No longer am I defined by, nor does my worth
  depend on, what others think of me...
  or what I think of myself.
  
No longer am I the 'betrayed', the 'abandoned',
  the 'cast-out', the 'ugly', the 'worthless',
  the 'disappointment'...

I am different...
  and that is not a bad thing!

Others who are confronted with my
  differentness are, in turn, invited to peer within
  to see what evolves there.

It is not for me to dictate or judge their response.
  It is their walk, not mine.

If I can accept each in hir own response
  and see it as a reflection of hir own journey,
  I will be respecting that person just as s/he is
  and honoring the path s/he is walking in this life.

That's for starters!