Once upon a time there was a little girl. Her parents taught her a lot of messages that parents aren't supposed to teach children: **"No, you don't matter. Your feelings are wrong. You are wrong. Our feelings matter more. You are bad."**

Those messages were too confusing and painful for any little girl to understand. So an angel came down and gave her a box.

*"Here,"* said the angel. *"Put those messages in this box."*

And so the little girl put the messages in the box. The angel closed the box for her. 

Suddenly the little girl didn't hurt so much. She didn't feel very good either. Sort of like... **emptiness, and disconnected from the world around her.** But that was better than the shame of feeling defective and rejected from love. 

As she grew up, she encountered more pain. Bullies at school and abusive relationships. Fortunately she had a solution for those things -- the box! She put more bad feelings into the box and felt empty again.

To avoid the feeling of emptiness, she fantasized about finding perfect love from someone else, and she offered perfect love to everyone. She copied other people and acted just like them, so they would **never** want to leave her!

But despite her best efforts, the same thing kept happening... Over and over again. 

And every time, she put the pain in a box and started over, determined to find the person who would make her feel whole and loved.

Except the box was starting to get full. **It started to spill over, and she couldn't control it.** She yelled and cried at people she cared about, which made them leave. Then she felt ashamed and buried those things deeper in the box. 

"Why does the same thing keep happening to me?" she screamed into a pillow. "Why does the world hate me? All I need is the perfect lover, and then I will be happy. But you keep sending me pain and rejection. I can't take it anymore. My box is overflowing. How can I possibly find the perfect lover with this box inside of me? I hate it!"

That night, the angel appeared in her dreams. 

*"Darling, the world does not hate you. The world loves you. I love you. So much. I am trying to guide you down a different path than the one you're taking. I am trying to burst open your box, so you can feel the pain from so long ago -- and heal it. But every time I remind you of this pain, you feel betrayed and block it away. It is not betrayal. It is an opportunity to finally open the box and become the pain inside.*

*You can spend the rest of your life running from this intolerable feeling of inner-defectiveness that arises when you're abandoned or rejected. You can keep avoiding it with grandiose fantasies and drama and crisis and accomplishments and impulsive behaviors, but it will never leave you.*

*Because it is who you truly are.*

*I gave you the box long ago because you were only a child and had no other way to cope. But you are an adult now, and you do not need this box. You can experience the pain inside, and you can find the true love on the other side -- my love -- the love you have always sought from others, inside your own heart."*

When the girl awoke, she realized -- for the first time in her life -- just how loved she had **always been**. So she looked down at the box and said: 

"Okay, I'm ready".

And the angel watched, with joyful tears in her eyes, as her child began the long journey home.