Healing Forward

I see a lot of people starting to talk about changing up their lives. I see so many people acknowledging that they don’t know where to start, but that they have to start learning more about themselves. 

I want to tell all of them that they are right where they need to be. 

I remember when I was feeling the exact same way. Looking back I didn’t realize that I had already dove in. I was aware and I was ready for a drastic change, I just didn’t feel like the change that I desired was truly within my reach. 

I didn’t know that it all started with me. 

I didn’t know that it all started within. 

Awareness of the present is the foundation of it all. 

If you can’t see yourself, you won’t know yourself. 

I spent a lot of time thinking that I was the most self aware person, but I wasn’t. I knew some of my strengths, and I saw a lot of what I didn’t like about myself. Or, more so- what other people didn’t like about me. I built up a world of what “everyone” thought, on a few negative experiences. When I really started pulling it all apart I realized that I had a lot more great experiences than I had bad ones. 

So why did I cling so tightly to the negative ones? 

Those experiences hurt me, challenged me and changed me in ways that I wasn’t ready for. 

It was in my lack of understanding why anyone would do these things that messed with me the most. 

I have spent a lifetime seeking information. If it doesn’t click in my brain, I want it to. I had multiple experiences with teachers, relationships, etc etc. that treated me like I was unteachable, stupid, slow, and even had a teacher tell me that I would never get it so I should just give up. 

It was exhausting. It was so hurtful. I let it get inside and change the way that I felt about myself. 

Instead of seeing how I could make these situations better, who I could talk to, or what I could do to learn the information I needed to know, I put all my energy on why.

Why would they treat me like this? 

Why would this happen to me? 

Why was it so hard for me to learn? 

I was a victim. 

I got stuck in that feeling. 

I didn’t find any answers because I wasn’t actually looking for them. I was asking rhetorical questions because I believed them and nothing anyone said would change how I felt about it now.  Every time I asked why, my brain told me it was because it was true. 

I built a life around trying to make others feel easy around me because I was so tired of constantly feeling like a burden.

Which, I did feel all the time. 

Even when I wasn’t admitting it. 

I could be having the best day ever and one person would suddenly do a deep sigh or roll their eyes at me because they had to break something down and my anger inside was boiling. 

I kept it all inside and pretended it was fine. 

I didn’t tell anyone. 

If I told them, they would just tell me more ways that it was my fault. It’s just who I was. I knew by now that it was difficult for people to have in their lives. 

It’s crazy because looking back, the majority of my life and the people in it, didn’t feel that way at all. 

The people that loved me didn’t get to live in my thoughts like that though. I didn’t have room for them. 

I was too busy replaying the negatives and searching for an answer, a way out, a way to a world without them. 

I didn’t know that the way to what I wanted depended on switching my thoughts. 

I always thought that someone else had to fix it for me. Show me that it wasn’t all the same, or provide answers for me. 

I had plenty of great examples of that though, and none of them changed anything within. 

I spent so much time looking for why people hurt, acted horrible to each other, and how I could fix that part of the world that I didn’t have the capacity for anything else. I didn’t know that giving so much of my energy to the things that I didn’t want would create more of the things that I didn’t want. 

But it did.

It wasn’t until I stopped searching so hard for the answers and I started accepting myself that things truly started to turn around for me. I changed my belief. I started to understand that everything I searched for was within. I just had to change my focus. 

The people I love got to live in my brain. 

The moments, the memories, the feelings that they bring to me, I finally made the space to appreciate all of it. I let go of the things that hurt me because I understood that I was different. 

If the past replayed now, I would respond differently. I could protect myself. I could stay focused on what was important. 

Healing forward was new for me. I spent a lot of time in the past trying to make sense of everything that had happened, but writing my books taught me that it’s all about the lessons. 

It doesn’t matter what happened- it matters what we do with it. 

Being positive all the time isn’t the goal. 

It’s what I see happening to so many people right now. 

It’s awareness. 

It’s acceptance. 

It’s rerouting. 

It’s self love. 

I see how my reactions created my life.

I see where I was tested beyond my capabilities to stay calm. 

I see where I had room to grow. 

I see where I still have room to grow. 

This makes me proud. 

I celebrate my awareness. I thank the challenges. I accept the emotions, and I find the beauty within. 

The path to your life is through your thoughts and you pave it with your actions. 

Instead of searching for all the things that hurt us, find compassion. 

Put down the blame towards others and yourself. 

Find gratitude for your strength, your resilience, and your never ending quest because here you are. Still trying. Still searching. Still evolving. 

Through it all. 

When you are sad, search for gratitude. 

When you are angry, search for calm. 

When you are frustrated, seek understanding. 

When you are treated unwell, search for compassionate boundaries. 

When you are happy, soak it in. 

When you are calm, let it flow through every ounce of you. 

When you are peaceful, seal in the path that got you there so that you can find it more easily the next time you need it. 

A big part of healing is being present in the beauty of who you are right now and building a life that you love being in. That starts within. How you think and feel about your current reality is what changes your reality. 

That all starts with being aware and accepting your truth. 

We are all right where we need to be. 

Trust the timing of your life.