Choices

As we travel down life’s road, we often come to a crossroad where we decide shall I go left or right. One road is newly paved and smooth. The road is full of potholes and rough. Which one do you choose? If you think of course, I will take the easy road it is smooth and I will arrive quickly to my destination. What will you learn on your journey? What can you teach others about surmounting challenges? How has it made you a better person?

What if you choose the road full of potholes? It’s going to take you longer to reach your destination and you may even hurt yourself along the way. What will you learn during that process? What can you teach others? Has it made you a better person?

Often in my life I found myself going down the road with all the potholes and thinking to myself why do I seem to always be on this road? Why can’t life be easier, why can’t I find joy? Why does it always have to be so hard? I got frustrated and yes even felt sorry for myself. The road to growth can also have dashes of self-pity.

I have often found myself doing self-examinations and trying to heal from having grown up in a dysfunctional family. Went to therapy off and on for years, read lots of books, did self-reflecting and also just carried on with my life. However, in November 2018, something shifted. I found myself in a very dark hole, but instead of going through a period of self-pity and “woe is me” thinking, for some reason I started examining my life and trying to figure out what the Universe was trying to teach me. I’m not saying I never shed a tear, in fact, for months I couldn’t stop crying, but I felt different as I was trying to figure out what I could learn from this situation. I grappled with these emotions for about a year and then Covid came along and we were doing so many more things via remotely. I came across a course on Self-Love and after weeks of debating I registered for the course and I have never looked back.

I not only completed the course and found out a lot about myself and how I really needed to listen to what I needed in this life and to not always put other’s needs first while sacrificing mine. I found that I needed to vocalize why I was important not only to others, but to myself. I found a sisterhood from a group of women who were also trying to find their voices. The changes were gradual, in fact, it wasn’t until November 14, 2023 that I actually saw how much I had learned and how far I had travelled.

I was encouraged to start writing these musings and to my great surprise people were interested in what I had to say. One friend told me one article generated an active discussion between her and her husband. I’ve had others tell me they could relate to the things I was saying. While I’m still trying to absorb that these musings have been successful it feels so empowering to share my experiences and hoping someone may find my words to be just what they needed to come out of their own personal darkness.

When I started on this road, I felt it was to heal from all of my experiences, but I don’t think that healing is the right word. When I think of healing I thing of a wound that you treat with ointment and a bandage, sometimes even stitches. Eventually, it heals and other than perhaps a scar there is no record of the wound. When you have experienced trauma, it doesn’t work that way. You overcome the rawness of the trauma, but the hurt is still accessible.

I prefer to think I’m on a journey of growth. Always learning, forever expanding my understanding of myself and my beliefs, finding new ways to deal with situations, discovering more about myself, pushing myself to explore my inner thoughts, listening to my self-talk, eliminating self-limiting beliefs, forcing myself to do things that are out of my comfort zone. If I think of my journey as one of growth rather than healing then I don’t expect it to end as learning and growth is something we should all strive to do the rest of our lives.

This reminds me of a quote I recently read by M. Scott Peck: “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult.”

This resonated with me because in the past 5 years with all of it’s ups and downs, I have truly accepted that life is difficult because we are meant to continue to learn and grow. Silly humans thought we only learned while we were in school, little did we realize that schooling starts from the moment we are born and ends the moment we die. How much we learn and grow is up to each one of us. So, I will stay on this potholed road and enjoy every moment of my travels.