You always have an idea of where you want to go in life. You have a mental road map of what you can envision. You know what you will look like. What home you will have. You will know what job you will have. You know what your voice will stand for. You know what sort of relationship you will have. You can taste the food of the restaurants you will frequent. You can smell the flowers or plants you will grow in your front yard. You can hear the squeaks of your flooring under your feet though you have never set foot on them before. You have a solid idea of what you desire.
As life pans out and you get older your vision of your dream varies and starts to make of course alterations. You still in your heart know where you want to end up yet you find yourself getting crazy off course. You are hit with roadblocks. You get distracted and waste opportunity. You experience a tragedy that instead of strengthening you it begins a downward spiral of self sabotage.
If you haven't gathered my referencing of "you" in this passage so far, I am really referring to myself. But I think YOU already knew that. I am a firm believer in transformation of life not because i've read about it in the Bible. Not because i've seen it in films. Not because I've read it in the back of an old Life Magazine in my GYN's office. But because I has experienced it first hand and know this belief like I know my name or like I know the skin tag under my right arm which i've named Fred. He's huge and almost is worthy of his own zipcode so naturally he needed a name. Ok back to transformation. Let's skim over the skin tags.
Transformation doesn't happen over night. For me I feel like the most valuable points of my life that led to my current transformation took place over a 15 year period. From about 16 to 31 I am completely two different people as many of us are as we age and mature. For some this never happens. Not that I am judging any 40 years still living in their Mother's Basement wearing a Mighty Mouse Tee and plowing Captain Crunch like there is going to be a cereal shortage. For myself I feel as though I jumped around quite a bit in my maturing process. I went mentally and emotionally from 16 to 30 back to 19, continued through 21, then jumped to 40, then 50, then I know I hit somewhere in my 60's and then popped back over to 28 and lived out my years until my current 31 years old. This can make you feel mentally, emotionally and spiritually like you are staring in your own version of Benjamin Button. I was going fast and felt old. My body, heart and soul felt worn and tired.
When you come out of this period of mourning as I like to refer to it as, you feel like you are reborn again. You see things for the first time. You discover emotions you hadn't felt since you were a small child. You have a more profound meaning for what you are destined to become. All of those visions you thought of when you were growing up start to seem possible again. So what do you do? You surround yourself with the reality you want to manifest. You start to take steps into obtaining that end path. You put on your war paint and get serious to get there and nothing will be tolerated that tries to get in your way. Once you have truly been through and seen hell when you are on the other side and happen to experience something tough it truly seems like a cake walk. For me I know that because I survived an abusive marriage by my first husband and made it out I know what anything i face in life will be achievable to conquer.
Taking a step back to view the bigger picture is hard at times. Especially when you are in the middle of your transformation. You are focussing on the go go go. What is next. Where do I go from here. Ok now what. When you are in a mental and emotional rat race to make up for lost time it's really hard to review the road that got you there. I don't know if it's because i've been locked up in my house since March 12th and i'm becoming some philosophical guru or i'm just going clinically crazy from my only outing having been a stroll to my mailbox in the past 2 weeks. But I am grateful for the path I am still following. I am grateful for the pain. I am grateful for the abuse and struggle because I would not be who I am today without having gone through those traumas. If I was given the opportunity to never have been a victim of trauma I would say no. Let me go through it again. It changed me. It developed me. I made me stronger. It still makes me stronger. I wouldn't change it for the world because it was part of my journey. It was part of my transformation. You can not expect anything to transform if you doing let it go through it's natural process. Warriors don't prepare for war on the day of the battle. They train hard for years until they are ready to armor up and head to the front lines. Life happens. Embrace it. Own it. Don't sugar coat it. Share your story. Embrace your disasters just as much as your victories.