I am still here

“Honor what you’ve been through. Honor how you’ve survived. Honor your strength. Give yourself grace. Be kind to yourself. Start mothering yourself the way you mother your children, the way you mother others.”

My counselor reminds me every week of how valid my feelings are, of how worthy I am to take care of myself, and how I’m NOT crazy just because I feel this way because I’m still dealing with my past. What’s important is that I do deal with it. My ability to bounce, to get back up again and again, is a testament to the strength I do have, and I need to honor that, not kick myself because I change my mind (random example: restarting writing and blogging again).

Sometimes people get the wrong idea. They either think I’m a basket case (based on my writings) or that I don’t really have issues at all (based on real life interactions since I am a pretty happy-go-lucky person). Through all these several weeks of counseling, I am getting better at caring less. I know what I’ve been through, and I know better now how hard it would be for most people to keep moving forward. So I change my mind often, so I go to school and then quit, so I decide not to write, and then decide to write, and then decide not to write…who cares? Ultimately, it always boils down to me, not anyone else.

But the point I want to make is this: I am growing. Despite all appearances, despite back and forth and letting go and holding on, I am growing. I’ve been closed up so tightly in so many ways for way too long, but I am growing, I am blooming. I am releasing expectations I’ve placed on myself, these ideas that I have something to prove, and I am just being me, a flower in full bloom. I can no longer allow myself to be closed up, closed off, hiding away my words, my thoughts, and my dreams.

More than that, I can no longer run away from these things just because I get scared. To succeed has always meant to have to really step outside of myself, my little box of comfort, to allow real change to take place, not just talk about change, but real living, moving change. The kind that requires stepping out and believing – REALLY BELIEVING – that I am worth success and happiness, that my friends do love me for who I am and not what I can do for them (and if they don’t, they aren’t really my friends anyway and why would I want to pour so much of myself into them?), that my family (my children and husband) has no greater expectation from me than just my love, and that there is a world waiting for me to step into it and BE ME.

I am still here. I am just as wonderful and beautiful and talented and smart as I ever was, only now I am seeing it. And I am still here. I am still growing, blooming, becoming. I am a work in progress, and for that, I make no apologies.

Grow on, grow on…