Slaydom

I’m Not Perfect, I’m Flawsome!

The picture accompanying this blog is from a time when I was definitely not flawsome, flawed yes, but not flawsome. I’ve had this picture since 2003 and, outside of the person who took it, I’ve ever only shown it one other person. This is a picture I would have never let anyone see before stepping onto this journey, and, in reality, it’s taken over 11 years of this journey for me to finally show it you today. This was not the picture of someone who had it all together, nor is it a picture of the person I had so painstakingly crafted for you  all to see for most of my life. This is a person in pain, in fear, and slowly loosing her grip on all of the outside things she used to “keep it together,” I look at this person and recognize her, but I now feel compassion for her, knowing she’s still inside of me, but has learned to stand up and be proud of who she is, flaws and all, I appreciate all them because they have made me stronger, and they’ve made me flawsome!

What exactly is flawsome? Well, flawsome is learning and living to celebrate our flaws, to celebrate not being “perfect,” well there’s no such thing, so stop holding yourself up to unrealistic standards, so instead turn those things that we think make us flawed into strengths, to love ourselves, all of ourselves, for living authentically. We have the power to turn what we think are flaws into being flawsome! Now, this, not perfection, is actually something we can achieve and make happen. Are you game?

How do we do this? How do we achieve flawsomeness? Well, it’s about loving and knowing who we are. Who the heck are we? Loving ourselves unconditionally. Like I’ve said before, let your freak flag fly and be proud. It’s about forgiving yourself. Oh yeah, that again. How are you doing with that? It’s time to forgive yourself for all the things that you think make you unlovable, and well, flawed. Let that stuff go, it’s only holding you back from SLAYDOM, and for showing the world how truly flawsome you are. Look at yourself and your flaws with love, love everything about yourself, show yourself the love that you would want from others, the love starts with you, love all of you, and when we love ourselves it shows others how to love us, it shows them how we want to be loved. Stop living in the past and the future, live in the now! We can learn from the past to do things better in the future, but to sit in resentment from our past doesn’t serve us, it’s already happened and there isn’t anything we can do to change it, what can you do better next time, make a commitment to do that and move on! Focus on the positive, the things you know you are good at, celebrate those things, focus on the good and you will find more good. And, focus on the strengths and talents you know you already have, build on those, and share those with others. One of the fiercest qualities of being flawsome is sharing your flawsomeness with others, sharing the love you have for yourself and perhaps making it OK for someone to share their flawsomeness with you.

Listen, there’s nothing really flawsome about that gal in the picture above, except that she didn’t stay in that place, she, with every last bit of strength she had, got up and fought for herself and started a journey of healing and self love, unfortunately she put herself through hell for many years after this picture was taken, but she eventually got there, and now that gal up there, is this gal right here, writing these words, now that’s flawsome.

If you are feeling lost, beat down, empty, and hopeless, make today the first day of the rest of your life, you have the power to do that, the journey won’t be easy, but trust me, it’s worth every step, and, you have all of us SLAYERS by your side walking the same path.

Get out there today and be flawsome!

SLAY OF THE DAY: What makes you flawsome? Write it down. Smile SLAYER. Make a commitment today to not judge yourself, when something comes up that you feel is a flaw and needs to change, acknowledge it, smile. Write down the list of flaws that no longer serve you. How can you make those flaws flawsome? When those things come up, stop, and think before reacting, how can you make a better choice for yourself in that moment? Look at yourself with love each day. You are learning SLAYER, be kind to yourself on your way to SLAYDOM, and remember, you are flawsome!

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you

 

Forgiveness: First Steps To Freedom

I know what you’re thinking, screw ’em, all those jerks who hurt me, burned me, betrayed me, I know, I have a long list as well, and we’ll get those people, but what I want to talk about today, and what is most important on your journey to SLAYDOM, is finding forgiveness in yourself. Yeah, you! When I finally had the courage to sit down and talk to someone about the circumstances that finally brought me to my knees, I was asked to write down a list of people who had harmed me, finally I thought, let me show you why I’m here, let me know show you all the horrible people and the horrible things that were done to me to get me to this place, and I feverishly wrote that list. What was asked of me when I was done was, did you write your own name on your list?

My own name?! What? Yes my own name, because I had harmed myself the most, and I believed I deserved it, that I didn’t deserve to have good things and good people in my life because I was a bad person, I was weird, I was different, awkward. I was told in order to heal I needed to first forgive myself. That was a blow. How the hell would I do that?

This was a place in my life, my journey, when I romanticized taking my own life, when my self worth was less than zero, and all of the lies and manipulations and shitty things I had done to move through life without you asking me too many questions or letting you get too close, had caught up to me. I thought I was lower than low, the scum of the earth. I physically could not look at myself in the mirror and say “I love you,” it’s not that I wouldn’t, I could not, trust me, I tried, I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror, I brushed my teeth looking down into the sink. So, to now be asked to find it in myself to forgive myself, I thought it was impossible. Thankfully it was not.

No matter what we’ve done, or think we’ve done, it can be forgiven. What I learned is, I had to allow room for myself to be human, to be flawed, to learn, I couldn’t expect myself to know things I was never taught, and that I could now make a commitment to learn, to be the person I wanted to be, to hit the reset button and start again. But hitting reset didn’t mean forgetting the past, it meant taking full responsibility for it and learning to do it better. When I was able to look at myself from that perspective I was able to start forgiving myself. It goes back to those tools in our toolbox, if we don’t have the tools we need, we use the ones we have, so we can’t fault ourselves for not using tools that aren’t there. Our job now is to find and use those new tools so we can do it better, and that takes time, and patience, a blog for another day. But if we’re able to acknowledge the places where we’re lacking the tools to do it right, we can start forgiving ourselves for doing it wrong, and forgiveness is the first step to freedom. It may seem really scary, and it is, but that’s exactly where we want to be, because where it feels safe got us here, it’s time to do things differently.

We are always hardest on ourselves, but what if we stopped that, and started to love and nurture ourselves? Acknowledge our flaws and work to fix them, or find a better way, to maybe do the opposite of what our nature tells us to do because it’s what we’ve always done, or what those around us have done. Who do we want to be in the world, our communities, our families and relationships? We can be those people, we just have to work on it, and, start by forgiving ourselves for those things we think are unforgivable.

SLAY OF THE DAY: What’s stopping you for forgiving yourself? What do you think makes you unforgivable? What do you think you can do to start to forgive yourself so you can move forward from here? Building on the blog before, write a fresh gratitude list with five things you LOVE about yourself. Read it out loud before bed and in the morning when you get up. Don’t forget to smile SLAYER.

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you