Your power comes from remembering who you are. Sounds so simple and frankly it is. Too often, we allow the world around us to take over and tell us who we are or who we ought to be. The world says, “plan the perfect career path the day you start college” or “you should be ashamed of the non traditional path taken”. It says, “if you’re not a perfect mother or a mother at all you are not fulfilling your purpose”. It says, “being a wife is essential to who you are” or “if you are not a strong man with no feelings, what is even the point of you?”. All of the ideals that have been presented to us by our society have become a part of our inner voice.
I, of course, am no exception. What I have come to understand is that the battle we fight is not with society, but rather with ourselves. I personally did not have a traditional upbringing. I was raised in a broken home and have seen many, many, heartbreaking moments, especially for a child. I grew up resentful, angry and most of all hurt. For a long time I looked for someone or something to fill the void. I ended up a mother at a very young age and stuck in a relationship for 12 years. When I look back at those moments in my life I try to understand how I, the person I am right now, could have made the decisions that I did. I constantly bring myself back to the saying, “if I knew then what I know now, I would have (you can fill in the blank)”. It is said that hindsight is always 20/20. I mean, of course I would have made different decisions if I had some super power to see the future. In reality, I don’t. I keep telling myself and those around me that I have made a lot of decisions that I am not proud of. We are taught to be ashamed of our mistakes, which turns into a lifetime of self punishment. The truth, I am actually very proud of me.
I made the decision 3 1/2 years ago to love myself first. I had to let go of the ideas I had in my head of what made up the perfect life. I forced myself to see the life I had for what it was and not for what it could be. That meant, letting go of people and situations that were no longer serving me. With that decision came a LOT of self doubt. I constantly wondered if I could do it on my own. Could I go out in life and be successful in love, in motherhood, in my career? Most days, I felt like a failure. How could I be a successful mother when my children were now a part of a “broken” family? How could I possibly succeed in my career and in education when I had failed to keep my family whole? I doubted every bit of who I was and what I was capable of. I wanted so badly for my children to grow up in a house with their mother and father that I gave up on love and happiness. What took me a very long time to see, is that the very essence of who I am, is love. Therefore, I had given up on me.
Failure is not the opposite of success; it’s part of success.
Arianna Huffington
Needless to say, I have learned so much since then. I have seen how much this vast world has to offer and I just want to immerse myself in it. I want my children to experience it. I am at a point in my life where I want it all. I want to be the best mom, the best partner, the best employee, the most educated culturally and otherwise. I want a life full of love.
This stage of my life is new, exciting and also extremely scary. I am incredibly afraid of being vulnerable, which is what this part of my life requires. I have come to realize that the fear I have is rooted in self doubt and past experiences. I find myself reverting back to thinking and reacting in some of the same ways I formally have, which is easy to do because it is familiar. What is hard about that, is that growth occurs in the unfamiliar. In order for me to become the person I have never been I have to be willing to do the things I have never done.
Having the aspirations that I have require a lot of time and energy. I am taking steps in the direction of growth and success, but with that comes the shadow of self doubt. More often than I care to admit, I allow the doubt to overpower me. Unfortunately, that spills out onto the wonderful parts of my life. What were once MY self doubts, become the self doubts of those around me, whom I care for deeply. Sounds odd, right? Why is it that in doubting myself as a person others start to do the same thing? In truth, we see people as we are, not as they are. In our minds, that sounds silly. Why would they question themselves when it is me who is imperfect? Honestly, when they look at you, they see the imperfectly perfect human that you are. So when you question yourself by questioning them they begin to question themselves. It is a tough pill to swallow. It’s not your intention to make people feel that way, it just happens. The more you know who you are and what you want, the more freedom you give others to do the same. Evolution of our society is dependent on that freedom. The moment you give love to yourself is the same moment you give love to the world.
We have the power to be and do whatever it is we believe in. The best part is that we get to tell the world who we are, not the other way around.
