A New Path

When life hands you lemons, by all means, make lemonade!

I’ve been doing some really heavy lifting these past few months… I’ve had my head down, soaking up as much wisdom as possible from audiobooks like, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, all four installments… To Boundary sessions from my peer support community on Share Well… Hosting my own sessions with the intent of empowering women (mostly since they are the ones who show up) Being in a bookclub for, The Body Keeps the Score! I feel like the person I was meant to become and that’s huge!

I’m facing my fears like never before because I’m here and I belong to this community. The community of individuals who prioritize healing traumas in ourselves and in each other. Having experienced my own traumas this year and seeing how counseling helped me to return to my cognition and put in motion this deep need to find support and be of support to others who feel alone and isolated, overwhelmed with no one to turn to but desperately hoping to be seen and heard and understood. It might not come from the people we expect it to come from but it is possible to find connection and community and I’m here today to tell you how much mine has been helping me!

These beautiful lemons called lessons. How much wisdom they own. I feel grateful for what I know and for what I’ve accepted today. Protecting myself means saying no to the people who don’t see me. To the people who have no desire to get to know me but who judge, criticize and pick me apart to somehow fill an empty void within them… I wish them lemons and lemonade.

I’m no longer available for anyone who seeks to put me down, guilt trip or shame me. I’m here and I belong and commit to the life I choose to live, regardless of who accepts or believes me. It’s taken me some time to get here, to remember who I am and why I care so much and why I’m here. This is a journey worth living.

I started training as a Crisis Textline Counselor this week and what I’m learning validates the person I’ve always been and I couldn’t be happier returning to me. We have to start caring about each other. We have to let them know that they are not alone. They are not alone. We are not alone. My faith in humanity has been restored because we have all at one point or another, experienced scary thoughts and emotions. Feelings that we wish would leave us but that keep appearing and nodging us to do something… Seek relief. It is a brave thing to show up vulnerable and scared but to ask for help because you know that it’s there and you know that it will make you feel better.

I’m extremely grateful for every hard conversation and every hard feeling that stuck around waiting to be relieved from my person. I feel stronger today. I came up for breath. I’ve returned to my body and I feel like the healing is working. I don’t want to stop doing the work now that I know it works. Get to know yourself all over again, if that’s what it takes. Soothe your scaries. Believe that better is on the way because it is. Most importantly, never give up. Keep trying, you will find the answers. You will find what speaks to your soul and you will want to live again.

I met a stranger who told me that a part of myself was dying so that I can live again. At the time, I could only feel the pain and now I can finally feel the strength pushing against the pain. I want to do my part because while it is not possible to live a life free of pain and suffering but because we will feel those things, it’s imperative that we learn how to alleviate that pain and live through it in a way that we forget how it feels from time to time. In those moments, we reach the prospect of something new… A new horizon, the other side of pain and it looks like peace. Keep going because I’m rooting for you.