Everyone's life looks exciting and full of adventure on social media, and while I enjoy seeing the good stories and the happy pictures as much as anyone, I know that happiness is a process from within.
It's never about living up to comparison or judgment. It's all about feeling secure in who you are and where you're going.
You get there by letting go of what you're holding onto. It's getting rid of the old stories of who did you wrong and moving away from being the victim to become the heroine.
You lived through it, you learned, and now you know better because of it!
Everyone you know is fighting a battle. There’s an old saying that, if everyone threw their problems in a pile and you saw everyone else’s, you’d grab yours back.
Everyone has stuff they’re trying to figure out, and it's ok because without the pain you'd be stagnant, and that’s just another kind of pain.
Growth, happiness, and fulfillment come from staring into the messiness of it and then finding some perspective from it.
It doesn't even need to be your own. You can learn from the stories that other people have gone through. It’s the perspective of knowing you’re not alone. That’s why you can suddenly hear something in someone’s story that clicks for you. It may not be what you’re going through, but the emotions feel similar, and you felt it.
It’s the "Aha" moments, the energy when it all comes together.
A few years ago, I read the book "Love Warrior" by Glennon Doyle. It was the story of her difficult life that led to her popular blog, and to her "real life" friendships with people like Oprah and Elizabeth Gilbert, (Eat, Pray, Love).
I'd never heard of her before, and I have absolutely no idea where I came across her book, but she shared her story of growth and the raw pain that transcended boundaries and changed perceptions of what's normal for women to endure.
The thing is, as I read her story, I realized some of the things I've been through weren't so unusual. Even though it was nothing in terms of comparison, but I felt the emotions. Afterward, I felt a release of some of the embarrassment and guilt.
You're not alone is the basis of this group.
Women need to stick together and stand up for one another. It doesn't matter if we have different views on life. Learning different ideas builds tolerance and understanding on both sides. We could all use a little of that right now.
A change in perspective happens at different times for everyone. It's about recognizing what you've learned along the way, no matter how painful, brought you here, and now you're more amazing than you know!