Welcome to a New Way: Why Change doesn't have to Hurt

About two years ago, I took a dear friend’s advice and made an appointment with this magical English woman named Linda Penny when I was visiting LA.  I still don’t know her official title, but Linda is most certainly a healer.  She uses all types of modalities such as kinesiology, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), and Reiki.  I’ve never seen so many oils, bells, and curious gadgets to sort someone out.  Without a doubt, Linda is off the charts intuitive.  

I’d been feeling incredibly stuck at the time and much of it was manifesting in my body.  Every night I’d wake up at around three a.m. with sharp back and neck pain that kept me up until around six when I’d doze back off only to jolt awake in 30 minutes thanks to my alarm.  

The body pain and lack of sleep created a depression cycle I simply couldn’t shake.  I knew the issue was emotional and at the same time felt like I had all the tools to work with.  So I called in the big guns, Linda Penny (whom I affectionately now call Money Penny), being one.  

That 90 minute session left an indelible mark on my life.  She said so many wise things to me that day, yet the one thing that really stuck was this: “You know, Katie, change doesn’t have to be painful and dramatic.  It’s really quite simple.”  

I don’t know if it was her charming British accent or the fact that I’d done so much emotional heavy lifting throughout my life to grow and heal the wounded places, but her words play on repeat when I fall prey to the grip of fear and discouragement.  

When we find ourselves in stuck seasons, we resort to what seems logical—we work harder.  We armor up, think harder, clinch our fist, and full of determination, walk straight into a bigger pile of problems oftentimes affecting our physical health.  

I’ve learned that Money Penny is spot on.  Change doesn’t have to be an exhausting uphill battle.  Rather, it’s more about getting back to the basics.  

Over the next 20 weeks, we will be doing just that here on the blog.  If you want to get emotionally, relationally, or physically unstuck and see lasting change take shape in your life, please join me on this journey.  We’ll start at the root and expand out, exploring your story, where you’ve been, and where you ultimately want to go.  

I’ve got some exciting opportunities for you along the way, so I do hope you’ll join me as we transform the back half of 2019 and unlock desired outcomes you’ve been working towards a long time.  I don’t think it has to be difficult.  I do think we need a new way forward though.  
I’ve got a roadmap…you’ve got the key. 

Let’s go.


Love & Gratitude,
Katie 

This Is Us

I didn’t become a therapist because I felt I’d be any good, saw myself as hyper-empathic, or wiser than the next gal.  Far from it!  In fact, when I started grad school, I had about as much confidence in myself as a three-legged cat.  There were obstacles.

I became a therapist because I knew I had too.  And for some unidentified reason, I desperately wanted to.  It was and is part of my calling.  

I’ll never forget my very first therapist.  Her name was Angie Smith and I thought she was the bee’s knees.  I was 15 and losing a battle to anorexia nervosa, the presenting iteration of my chronic depression at the time.  We lived in Mobile, Alabama, an unapologetically southern town dripping with Spanish moss and too many syllables.  Lovely? Indeed.  Progressive? Not so much.  I’d never heard of “therapy” before.  I also kept the fact I was in it (and taking medication for depression) on the DL.  High school is brutal enough.

My work with Angie made a lasting impact on my life and work.  I’d meet with her every Wednesday at 2pm, and when I left, I noticed a vague sense of hope well up inside.  This wasn’t because I got to leave school early either.  It ran deeper—it was a feeling I would slowly build on throughout my recovery.

Angie had also suffered from and overcome an eating disorder. Yet today, she seemed so put together—and pretty.  Not to mention she was from Nashville where she’d been a singer-songwriter for many years. So she was smart, pretty, and cool...a triple threat, but in the most inviting way.  

In our work together, I learned the value of having a safe space and person to tell my story to and feel unconditional love and acceptance on the other side.  I was lucky enough to have this from my parents (and big sister when we weren’t fighting over clothes), yet to have a totally objective experience without emotional ties or history was something profound. 

Fast forward a decade and some change.  Thankfully, I’d gotten a handle on my relationship with food. However depression still clung tightly, like a red-faced, wailing toddler to his mom the first day at pre-school drop-off.  

Sure, I’d been in and out of therapy the whole time, and Lord knows it had been a lifeline.  Yet individual therapy didn’t fix my loneliness.  Isolation was often how I’d cope with the sadness and 50 minutes of talk therapy every week or two just didn’t cut it.  This wasn’t a reflection on my therapist either.  In my book, I worked with some of the best.  

I discovered something shocking: I’d been hiding behind therapy.  Mind you, it wasn’t the worst place to hide, it just wasn’t giving me the context to practice the insight and tools I’d been gaining with other humans who might possibly relate.  

Now that was a new concept, and a terrifying one at that.  Yet my depression had become life-threatening once again and I didn’t have a choice.  

Enter Onsite workshops, a beautiful treatment facility right outside Nashville specializing in experiential group therapy.  Just like Angie, Onsite left an unforgettable imprint on me.  It was the ultimate reset button I needed and showed me the vital importance of experiencing healing in community. 

Make no mistake, I wholeheartedly believe in the power and necessity found in individual therapy.  I'm not saying we throw the baby out with the bathwater.  However, I do feel it's simply not enough to get the optimal results we're looking for in our lives.  I believe we need a layered approach consisting of individual and group work.

Before you call it a day and hit the snooze button on this post, hear me out.  This is all about you and me and how we work together in order to bring more wholeness and connection into our daily experience.  

This year, I’m changing up the way I work so as to provide a more holistic prescription that facilitates deeper connection with self and others.  This new model is based on the belief that EVERYTHING is relational—everything.  From relationship with self, to others, to food, to work, to emotions, and so on.  

If this is true, (and it is), we must learn to grow and heal in relationship and community, not isolation.  To that end, I’m thrilled to share with you what I’ve been designing these last few years based on tons of research and inspiration from you.  

Later this month, I’ll be rolling out the specifics and an opportunity for you to take part. For today’s purposes, get excited!  It’s going to be loads of fun and involves three core principles I believe to be the most powerful for the journey we’re on: community, experiential therapy, and the Enneagram.  

Indeed, this is your year to tell your story, be seen, be known, and be loved. But even more, it's our year...2019, this is us.  

Love & Gratitude,
Katie

A New Day: Respond vs. React

Mindfulness gives you time.  Time gives you choices.  Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom.  You don’t have to be swept away by your feeling.  You can respond with wisdom and kindness rather than habit and reactivity.

– Henepola Gunaratana

Happy New Year!  We made it.  Whereas it feels really good to mark a new year with a clean slate and endless possibilities (so I keep being reminded of through Instagram feeds and my inbox) I must say, I’ve gotten a slow start to 2017 accompanied by a slew of contradictory emotions: relief, excitement, lethargy, longing, confusion, and tons of heightened expectations.  What about you?

How to’s

There are a zillion blogs out there.  I read a handful of them and I write merely one of them.  What I hope you will find different or inviting about mine is a certain level of transparency and vulnerability. I like stories as opposed to “how to’s.” It makes me cringe when I think of following zippy blog trends entitled: “three foolproof resolutions for your best year”, and “how to attract your soul mate in less than a month”, or my favorite siren, “Your extreme makeover starts here!”

King

I’m not digging on the dedicated and brilliant bloggers out there who offer hope to thousands through this approach, Lord knows I’ve been wowed often. However, with each passing year, as I show up for myself and my community, I’m learning something invaluable: extreme quick fixes are often just detours. Connection is king.

Carbs

In light of this, the “slow start” to 2017 I mentioned earliermay not be so bad after all.  In fact, perhaps grace, self-compassion, and connection are bleeding through the imperfect, jagged little edges of these young days .  Writing’s slowed down, work outs lightly sprinkled in, family laughter and Netflix watching heavy, carb and sugar consumption strong, and goals/intentions for 2017, still a bit foggy.  Strangely though, a newfound waft of acceptance and presence rises up through the air like the inviting smell of freshly baked bread.

Hustle

You see, I love extremes, or have loved I should say.  As a youngster, I was super particular, giving my sweet, saint of a mother hell if my pony tail wasn’t perfect.  It had to be just so.  Sensitive beyond words, I carried the unbearable weight of desperately wanting to be liked and accepted by peers and teachers at every turn.  I was hard on myself.  I didn’t much like myself either, learning to hustle big time to gain entry into the rooms I longed to set foot in.  One of the byproducts of this premature shame was a pretty hard-core eating disorder in high school.  What started off wanting to feel better about myself through running and healthy eating turned into a voracious and life-threatening battle with anorexia.

Whoosh

This is not a sketch of that journey; a different story for a different day, and a hopeful one at that.  This is encouragement for the weary soul or two out there who don’t want to buy into a billion dollar industry that tells us we need to change and we need to change FAST.  I’ve got nothing against new year’s resolutions and change for that matter, that is, if they serve you well.  In my experience, they always end like a hot and heavy, short-lived relationship.  I like to call them “whoosh” relationships: they promise the sun, moon, and stars, and then Bam! Like a cotton candy sugar rush they crash and burn when the lights go up and the curtain closes.  It’s like the jerk of whip-lash, the “whoosh” of a cold whip of wind.  I spent my 20’s learning all about that situation—not a good look.

Reaction Formation

Interestingly enough, I think humans find extremes far easier than balance.  We like to react out of fear instead of respond out of desire.  Marketing exploits this behavior big time, and anyway you slice it, they’re clever.  They know that people go off the rails a bit over the holidays and wake up January 1 with a foggy head and a few extra pounds.  Swooping in, they save the day with their slashed gym membership prices and 30-day cleanse program promising a new you in just one month.

We’ve been hooked.  When those dollars are spent and the motivation trails off the next afternoon, we go looking for another option, or some leftover toffee, whichever comes quicker.  The shame cycle’s begun again.  Perhaps I’m cynical, or perhaps I’ve had LOTS of practice reacting out of fear and manipulation rather that choosing what will truly satisfy from a place of mindfulness and connection.

Logo

If you jump on my website, you’ll see a logo and the story behind it on the home page.  My approach to therapy and coaching is built on relationship as I believe when we begin to soften and mend our inner dialog, healing our relationship with self, external pieces of life follow suit and eventually thrive as well.  It’s not magic, it’s a journey and one I’m very much still on.

Four Questions

Today, I want to invite you into deeper connection with you by asking four questions that will lay some groundwork for the edits and goals you may have this year.  These are adapted from one of my favorite podcasts “The Accidental Creative”—so good I had to share!  Being mindful of desires, feelings, and curiosities will take us much further than stringent rules and regimens we place on ourselves.  Without the “why” the “how” is obsolete.

Let this be a journal prompt for you this week, one you come back to over and over either to realign with or tweak.

• What do you want to feel in 2017? (i.e. energized, awake, confident, accepted)
• Where do you want to go in 2017? (This can be figurative or literal. i.e. I want to explore a new city, yoga class, or I want to go from full-time to part-time at work so I can spend more time writing)
• What do you want to learn in 2017? (i.e. I want to learn to play drums or I want to learn to meditate)
• What do you want to change in 2017? (Reminder: this is desire driven, NOT fear driven!  Approach this from a place of “I’m enough” rather than insecurity.  i.e. I’d like to build in more margin for rest and play into my life.)

Please please share your feedback from this exercise! When we give voice to this stuff, it solidifies a bit more.  I hope you will join me as I ease into 2017, listening, noticing, and responding to it’s inviting call to action.  If you’d like some extra light for the journey ahead, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Love & Gratitude,

Katie

xoxo

Holiday Grounding 2.0: Advent of the Soul

When you get to where you’re going, where will you be?  

I ask myself this question often as I easily confuse productivity with busyness.  I imagine you fall into a similar trap as well.  Consider this, how many times a week do you ask someone how they’re doing and they respond with a slight sigh, eye roll, and an arsenal of reasons there’s just not enough time in the day.  “Life is just so busy these days!” they respond.  I’m definitely guilty of it too.  I tend to wear exhaustion proudly like a badge of honor just so you don’t have any qualms or confusion  about my level of productivity, or worth I suppose.

Stella McCartney

It’s a curious thing because I do wear that badge around like it jumped right off the Stella McCartney 2017 Spring runway, yet get so offended when someone actually notices it and asks, “Katie, you look tired, everything okay?”  The nerve!  Don’t they know I’m bulletproof? (Ha!) There are then two options at this point: I’ll either abruptly excuse myself, go slap some extra concealer under my eyes, snort some strong peppermint essential oil, and blame it on allergies. Or, the flimsy Plan B is always , “Who, me?  Are you kidding?  I feel great!” with a fake toothy grin and high pitched laugh.

Compensation

I’m pretty sure there’s shame at the root of this.  I recently read Shauna Niequist’s book, Present Over Perfect, and was rocked to the core by her level of honestly regarding her own addiction to productivity and responsibility.  She shares, “We all have these complicated tangles of belief and identity and narrative, and one of the early stories I told about myself is that my ability to get it done is what kept me around.  I wasn’t beautiful, I didn’t have a special or delicate skill.  But I could get stuff done, and it seemed to me that ability was my entrance into the rooms into which I wanted to be invited.”  In my case, I find myself hustling for acceptance by constantly going, achieving, producing.  It feels really good, until the payoff  isn’t enough anymore.

Roadmap

We all do this to some degree.  There is a lack or perceived deficiency as well as a need for acceptance, so we buy into narratives of belief about ourselves that were validated by someone important to us along the way. Eventually, these beliefs build out a blueprint of identity, a roadmap for the future.  I believe discovering and aligning with our truest self, our unique identity, is absolutely crucial in order to thrive.  It facilitates a high road forward and  thankfully, we can ditch that low one.  One of the greatest gifts of my life is to journey alongside others in support of this process.

Christmas cards

We must make time and space to ask ourselves this vital question: where am I going?  Put your narrative of holiday busyness aside and stop addressing those Christmas cards just for a moment. Consider this, if they’re getting a card, chances are they also care about your overall well-being.  Stop and give ear to the still small voice inside that longs to be heard.

Light

According to the Western liturgical church calendar, the season of Advent is upon us.  I’m not bothered by whether or not you consider yourself a religious person or a church-goer. What I am interested in is your desire to stay grounded and committed to a vision for your life that’s evolving, flourishing.  What better time to do this than smack dab in the middle of all the season’s light, celebration, and chaos!?  This begs the question: how do we maintain this inward reflection and presence and also give ourselves fully to the thrill of the season? I’ve been pondering this a lot lately.

Ritual

Advent simply means ‘coming’.  It’s an anticipatory time of preparation for hopeful things yet seen.  In church tradition, this thing is the birth of Christ, a savior.  It includes all these beautiful, sacred practices enrolling candles, wreaths, songs, smells, and colors.  I attend an Episcopal church that’s super liturgical and relic-heavy.  They do ritual really well and I absolutely love it largely because I need all the reminders I can get. Ritual creates infrastructure and order within which to practice these life-giving reminders.

Woo Woo

This is highly applicable for you and I as we have the opportunity to apply these same seasonal rituals  to the interior spaces of our lives and daily experience.  I call it an Advent of the Soul.  That’s a really woo woo way of describing our own sacred processional of time and space leading up to the birth of unique dreams and desires for the coming year.  The community we want to build, the business we want to start, the relationships we want to attract, the songs we want to write, the cities we want to explore, the joy we long to cultivate, and on and on.

Bonus

We unlock so much power as we tap into it and access its truth.  Other bonuses include: you don’t have to dress up, fight the cold of Sunday morning, or traffic for that matter, and the doors are always flung wide open, ready to welcome you in.  This advent takes place in the most exquisite cathedral of your heart, and it’s offered all day and every day wherever you are.  Disclaimer: this largely depends on our decision to stay present and awake to the moment instead of checked out in Netflix land with a vat of Chex Mix and a tumbler of Chardonnay.

3 Questions

Rituals are meant to ground us and that’s exactly what I need this time of year: a strong tethering to hope and a steady guide into truth.  This ritual of advent locks into my favorite daily practice: writing.  Don’t worry, I’m not heaving more homework on your already crazy schedules.  This will only take ten minutes, (of course more if you’ve got it!)

Answer these three questions:

1. What have you gained in 2016?  I know it’s been a rough year for many, however, find the silver lining and tease that out a bit.  Obstacles are always our best teachers.
2. What is your word?  Pick one word that is meaningful and representative of this new season and write it down.  Take a minute to unpack the story behind that word.  For example, I spoke with a man the other day who described this heaviness he’d carried the past several months due to lots of family drama.  He desperately wanted to put that unnecessary extra baggage down and decided“Levity” was his word for 2017.
3. What narrative of belief are you willing to let go of that’s holding you back?  Write that sucker down and see what comes up.  Try not to judge it, just notice what’s there.

Commit

Now commit—over and over and over again.  This is the stuff of that magical, sacred journey of rebirth; the Advent of our soul.  You will forget, stumble, and fall down into those dusty dark corners of old familiar voices time and time again.  That’s not the point.  The point is you keep daring, keep reaching, keep walking, one foot in front of the other, into what will come.  It’s a courageous path to forge and most settle for a lesser resistance.  You, my friend, are not most.

You’re also never alone on this journey… I’d love to hear your answers to these three questions this Advent season!

Love & Gratitude,

katie

Triumph Over Misery: The Beautiful Story of Ruthie Lindsey

Author Jamais Cascio once said, “Resilience is all about being able to overcome the unexpected. Sustainability is about survival.  The goal of resilience is to thrive.  I never thought I would need to know this lesson until my life was turned upside down.

-Ruthie Lindsey

Meet Ruthie Lindsey

Today’s post is very near and dear to my heart for several reasons.  Our guest blogger is Ruthie Lindsey (visit her website), a designer, speaker, stylist, and overall inspirer.  She travels all over sharing her incredible story that invites us to a high and spacious place of living beautifully in the midst of painful realities.

  I have known Ruthie now for about fifteen years and have observed from a distance her journey in and out of joy-filled vibrancy and physical/emotional pain, concurrently.  Whereas we will go months without seeing each other, every time we do, I’m reminded of something so lovely and moving.  I am reminded that there is always hope, even in our darkest nights.  She simply exudes life, style, and fun.  If you have met Ruthie Lindsey or follow her on social media, you know exactly what I am talking about.  She takes her pain and brokenness and fear; she holds it up to the light, vulnerably-courageously,  and gives it a name outside of hers.  Unmistakably, she touches the hurting hearts of countless others.    It’s beauty from ashes and that kind of beauty is simply incomparable; without need of filters.

Close to Home

My older sister and best friend, Kristen has dealt with chronic pain due to endometriosis and resulting surgical nerve damage for nearly two decades.  It breaks my heart to watch her in pain; to know she is suffering and no one can take it away from her, definitely not me.  This type of pain is systemic: when she hurts, her community and family suffer as well because we love her and desperately long to see healing.  This overcoming story not only gives me hope in facing my own nasty demons, but also for my remarkably courageous sister who has yet to see the light at the end of her tunnel.

Ruthie Lindsey’s story is not just about chronic pain, it’s about the suffering we all face in our human frailty.  It is about standing smack dab in the middle of our story, pain, loneliness, heartache and all, and writing a new ending that offers life and hope to others.  In return, our cups get filled no matter what circumstances dictate.  Hope is a hurricane of a force.  When we give it away from a place of desperate need, we cultivate sunshine in the center of our storm.  I sincerely hope you read every word of her story.  Your life will be richer for it.

The Accident

When I was a senior in high school, I pulled out in front of an ambulance that hit me after crushing my car door going 65.  I broke three ribs, punctured my lungs, my spleen ruptured and I broke the top two vertebrae in my neck.  I was told I had a 5 percent chance to live and a 1 percent chance to ever walk again.  After I was stable and off life support, they took bone from my hip and fused it into my neck by wrapping it with metal wire.  I was so fortunate to have youth and good health on my side.  After a month, I walked out of the hospital with only a neck brace.  I was able to graduate on time and I honestly went back to my “happy go lucky” life as normal.  I would occasionally get sore if I danced too much (which is often), but otherwise I was able to forget it even happened.  I felt very removed from my story.  When I spoke about it, it was almost as if I was talking about it in third person, like it happened to someone else.

A Rude Awakening

A year after graduating college, I met my very first boyfriend and we were married within 10 months!  A year into our marriage, I was walking out of a Starbucks one day, when a searing pain shot through my neck and into my head.  I fell to my knees and nearly blacked out.  The pain continued with more and more frequency, and would leave me with horrific migraines.  It was so debilitating that I couldn’t function.  I saw tons of doctors, and each time they would order a scan and an elusive black spot appeared on the film.  They simply informed me it was the magnet in the machine interacting with the wired from my spinal cord fusion.  I tried countless (unsuccessful) therapies, then was prescribed heavy narcotics for my pain.  As a result of the pain, and the medication, I began spending more and more time in my bed.  I isolated myself and withdrew from my community and my marriage.  I though of myself as a burden.  This continued for over four years, exhausting money we barely had.

After these four years of mental and emotional exhaustion, I saw a new doctor who insisted on seeing what was under that little black spot on all my films.  A $50 X-ray showed that one of the wires had broken and pierced my brain stem.  What I learned is that I am apparently the only person in the world who has ever had this.  Specialists explained the risk of paralysis involved in attempting to remove the wire, but explained that if we didn’t try, I would eventually become paralyzed anyway.  I was one wrong turn of the head away from never walking again.  Insurance wasn’t going to cover my surgery, claiming my accident as a pre-existing condition.  Two weeks later my dad informed my mother that he was going to sell our farm to afford the procedure.

Loving Well

The night before he came to see me and tell me what he was planning to do with the farm, my dad had a freak accident.  After falling down a flight of stairs he passed away shortly thereafter from brain damage.  My dad’s sudden passing was a massive loss to my family, our community and me.  I remember lying in my bed night after night pinching myself until I bled because nothing felt real.  I felt I must be in a nightmare.  We were all absolutely devastated and heartbroken, but out of that loss something really beautiful happened.  My godfather set up a medical fun for me in my dad’s honor and money and letters started pouring in.  We would get letters that said, “Your dad sent me on my senior trip” or “your dad bought my prom dress” and your dad paid my tuition” or “your dad fixed my roof,” and on and on.  When my brothers and I were kids, whenever we left my dad’s presence, he would always say, “I love you so much, remember your manners, and always look out for the little guy.”  He wanted us to see and love the people who everyone else missed, and that’s what he did.  because he had loved people so well, this crazy amount of money was raised so that I could have this surgery.

Spiral

The doctors were able to remove the wire from my brain stem by taking bone from my other hip and fusing my neck back together with titanium screws.  Although able to walk afterward, I ended up getting major nerve damage in the surgery, and now my right side feels like it’s on fire at all times.  While recovering, I ended up contracting a bacterial infection called C. diff while in the hospital for another minor surgery.  I was so sick.  I stopped sleeping.  I had constant panic attacks and ultimately I had a full-blown nervous breakdown.  My husband was away on tour in Australia, and I had the feeling my marriage was coming to an end, which sent my downward spiral into a tailspin.  I became incapable of taking care of myself, so I moved home to live with my family in Louisiana.

Wakeup Call

My breakdown made me want to change everything.  I realized that I had identified myself with my pain for so long, so that is exactly how everyone else saw me.  Every conversation and interaction revolved around my condition.  When I would see people, they would ask, “How’s your back?” or “Are you hanging in there?” In some subconscious, gross way I found comfort in that, because it helped to justify having resigned myself to never-ending bed rest.

We teach people how to see us.  I don’t know what it was, but something changed, and I decided I was tired of people always feeling sorry for me.  If we lead from a place of brokenness, insecurity or bitterness, that is exactly who they will think we are.  But, if we lead from a place of love and wholeness, with compassion and strength, they are able to see us for who we really are.  I started to speak out loud the beautiful things I saw in people, places and experiences I was having.  I was looking for it an I was speaking it, and what’s so amazing is that as I was looking for beauty all around me I was reconnecting with my community.  The more I made myself get out of my bed and connect and love people, the less I was noticing how much I was hurting.  The very nature of pain is selfish and pulls our focus inward.  When I focused my energy outward, when I was doing things that were life-giving, things that I loved, I wasn’t thinking about my pain.

Energy Shift

The best decision I made was to wean myself off of all the pain meds I had been on for so long.  It took four months to wean myself off of the meds completely.  My marriage couldn’t survive under the circumstances, and I found myself single for the first time in a decade, and as a result of my time in self-exile, the bills were piling up.  I decided to focus my energy on doing little projects around the house to help me reclaim the space as my own.  I didn’t think much of it at first, but friends began assuring me that I had a knack for design.

The Rest of the Story

In short time, friends asked me to collaborate on projects.  I started an Instagram account and began posting the things that I was doing.  People started asking me to help them throw dinner parties, arrange flowers, set tables and decorate spaces.  I learned to say yes.  Around this time I had also started having people who didn’t know me following me on Instagram.  I started getting comments like, “You live my dream life!” And “I want your life!”  And to be honest, it made me feel nauseous.  I remembered lying in my bed for years, looking on Facebook and feeling so depressed, wishing that was me playing with my children and having all of these adventures, instead of lying in my bed hurting all the time.  I needed to give people a context for my joy.  I ended up writing out my entire story and sharing it online.  I remember feeling so vulnerable and exposed when I hit publish, but I knew I needed to give everyone the full scope of what was going on.  The truth was, my circumstances had not changed.  I was still in pain every minute, I was handling a divorce and I missed my dad every day, but I had learned to live differently.

We so often think, “I will be happy once I get, fill in the blank (that boyfriend, a certain job, a husband, baby, that house, etc.).”  But those things won’t fulfill us, until we ourselves are fulfilled.  I learned to find contentment despite my hardship.  And unexpectedly, I discovered that exposing myself made me feel less vulnerable.

Living to Thrive

Suffering is one of the things that unifies humanity.  At some point or another we all experience loss.  Sometimes, feeling hopelessness can give us a new lens through which to see the world because we learn to be more empathetic to those around us.  Now when I interact with someone suffering from heartache, loss or unendurable physical pain, I immediately have common ground to stand on with him or her.  I would never wish what Iv’e experienced on anyone, and I know that there are plenty of people with even more harrowing personal stories, but if telling my story of overcoming anguish helps just one person feel like she or he is not alone in despair, then at least what I went through had a purpose.  It took a long time, but I finally found myself.  It’s not the version of a life that I fantasized about as a child, but it’s better, because it’s a life that I earned in triumphing over my misery.  I’m proud to say I learned resilience from the unexpected, and now my mission in life is to thrive.