I’ve been through great adversity before, and it has always shown me who I am, I haven’t always liked who I’ve seen, but I know that I have the power to change it.
In our daily lives we often fill our days with busyness, things that distract us from what we may not want to look at in ourselves, our behaviors and the place we choose to live day in and day out. It’s easy to keep our minds on other things, numb ourselves or allow ourselves to get overly focused on people, places and things so we don’t have time to look at ourselves. For me, I did this for much of my adult life before hitting an emotional and spiritual bottom, when I then was forced to look at myself for who I truly was. It was difficult to do, as I had been running from myself for so long, stuffing down my feelings and emotions and those things I thought made me a bad person that I no longer could look at myself in the mirror. Stopping and looking was nearly physically impossible.
The adversity I faced with my mental health only gave me two choices, to give up and die or fight for my life, but to fight for my life I had to get honest about the choices I had made and I had to surrender and ask for help. Surrender. Before falling to my knees in pain I thought of that word as weak, of someone who wasn’t strong like I thought I was, or a loser, but that moment of surrender was the strongest decision I ever made because it was in that choice that I took my power back from my I had become. Standing up and admitting I needed help was just the start, I had to commit to being honest about myself and my past, that wasn’t always easy, but if I was ever going to like myself hiding behind my lies and half-truths wasn’t going to get me to a place of healthy living, I had to do my best to be my best, and that meant I could no longer hide.
When that curtain is pulled away and all you have is a mirror in front of you there is no humbling moment bigger than that moment. Standing there and looking at myself I saw nothing but hate, sadness and defeat, but I was encouraged to find the good, it was difficult to think of anything, but I was told that even one thing was a good start, I could work from there. The road from self-hatred to self-love was a tough one at the start, but the journey from that place to where I am now was worth every step, every tear and every ounce of love.
Today I, and all of you, face a new adversity, one not of our own making, but one that has affected all of our lives. As we’re forced to slow down, or even stop, the lives we know, this time also shows us who we are, and if we don’t like what we see, life now offers us plenty of time to change. Perhaps that’s what we are meant to take away from this time, that pause to let ourselves reset because we may have, individually and collectively, gotten off course of who and what we are meant to be. This is a time when we have the opportunity to shine, for ourselves, and those who need our light, and to really look at who we are and what we are. Are you liking what adversity is showing you? If not, get to work. SLAY on!
SLAY OF THE DAY: Have there been times in your life where adversity has shown you who you are? Did you like what you saw? What did you do to change that? Did you do anything to change? What could you have done? During this time of adversity, are you liking what you’re seeing? What don’t you like? What can you do to change that? This is a good time to reflect and make some changes. Love yourself through the changes you want to make and know that we many of us are doing the same, we can come through this better than we went in, if we’re willing to take a look at who we really are.
S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you
State Of Slay™ 