Words With Myself

With New Years just gone, many of us will have goals, changes, ideas that we want to bring into fruition. We use the new years vigor to empower us to make grand changes and implement new motives but often times can overextend ourselves and burn out quickly. Instead, our goals and changes should be aimed at long term growth instead of a short term with high intensity. Incremental change in manageable chunks can help us to see real progress and make our goals sustainable and achievable.  

No matter the situation and how unfair it may be, the only part of things you can control is yourself. There are always ways we can hold ourselves accountable and address the internal trauma that is causing us pain, for us to move forward we must take ownership of our own responsibility and forgive ourselves for the mistakes we might have made. There is a quote I love, "If you think they are to blame, there is work to be done. If you think you are to blame, there is work to be done. If you think nobody is to blame, you are already there." It is not about blame, it is about healing and growth, in order to move forward we must address our own actions, responses and traumas and allow ourselves to move forward. Compassion is not just for others, we also need to extend it to ourselves.

2023 is the year of truly stepping into myself. Embodying who I am and moving forward to the things that I want without holding myself back or being bounded by fear. 2022 harbored a lot of necessary yet painful growth and this year it is time to embrace that growth and use the lessons learned to truly start creating the life I want to live and tailoring my reality to how I want it to be. I hope you all have a wonderful year and all step into your truest, fullest and deepest selves. 

After a difficult weekend, myself and reality finally came to a head. I had been ignoring everything that was going on in my life and marching forward instead of confronting the truth of my situation. I am unhappy, depressed and exhausted, and that is OK. What is not OK is ignoring this fact and letting it fester until it crippled me into submission leaving me exhausted and stripped apart. We cannot bottle things up forever, we can't keep pretending everything is OK when it is not. We must muster the strength to confront how we feel and allow ourselves to confront the problem head on in order to address it.

It's true, loving things hurts. Caring hurts. Whether it is deliberate, accidental or by means of the laws of nature, any time we open our heart there is going to be suffering that comes along with it. Does that mean it is the wrong thing to do? Absolutely not.

Sometimes we can fall into the trap of believing the lessons we get from healing can actually be standing in the way of our goals, because the lesson contradicts the intention of the goal. It can be incredibly difficult to let go of out expectations in life and fall into the void uncertain of what is on the other side. The catch-22 being, until you jump, you will never know and constantly live out this unsatisfied character detached from their purpose.

Momentum can be a powerful force in our lives, both for good and for bad. Each positive step we take will lead to the next, same for each negative step. Confidence, strength, self-assurance, non of these a permanent characteristics despite many people trying to portray otherwise. We all have moments of weakness and moments of strength, sometimes we doubt ourselves and other times we celebrate our achievements. However, we can change the course of momentum in our lives for better or for worse, if you are down now you can take steps to be up, if you are up now down is only a few steps away.

Many people avoid making enemies, but to take any form of stand or doing anything of impact is going to cause you to make enemies. This leaves you with a decision to make, am I going to avoid taking a stand or staying true to my beliefs, or am I going to make enemies. The choice is yours to make, but for myself, I would rather be at war with the world than be at war with myself.

Hurt people hurt people, an old adage but an unwavering one.  Trauma has symptoms when left untreated and if we are constantly acting out of trauma we are likely to end up spreading that trauma onto those around us.

When I feel a strong emotion, my default go-to is to analyze the who, what, why's of the situation and try to understand what is causing it. I have gotten so used to doing shadow work, it has almost become my instinct to delve into what I am feeling before I have even had a chance to truly feel it. Shadow work has become some form of defense mechanism as I know that understanding and processing trauma is the road to heal it, I am trying to shortcut the negative emotions before they even arise. I think in some way, I am cheating myself from actually processing the trauma. Rushing to get through it and not allowing myself to feel how I feel or process what I am feeling and instead rushing to try and logic my way out of it.