start where you are

Sometimes, when we are struggling, or going through a hard time, we long to move out of whatever we are going through to get back to how things were – “if only I can feel better”, “I wish I could go back to how I felt then when things felt easier“, “if only I could go back to that moment when . . . . “.

Sound familiar? I know we have all been there. We have all wished to take back a moment or a time, or to wish that we could go back to a particular good feeling, or a time when we felt a little more connected to others and ourselves.

I myself have gone through that many times – in fact I have gone through a really rough patch this past week with feeling something new, and wanting to go back to something that feels familiar, but I know if I just continue right where I am, that I will find myself right where I need to be.

Many many times I have wished to go back to a moment where I felt the most connected to myself and all my support – – but what I am learning and understanding is: by longing to go back, I am never truly going forward. I am learning that a part of the struggle – a part of the harder time I am going through is where I grow. Sometimes we need to get disconnected to re-connect to something better.

I am learning that being in the present moment of where I am (whether I am connected or not) is the place where I need to be; even if it feels absolutely horrible and unbearable. I can’t grow, or heal by going back, this journey is about going forward holding to whatever is here in this moment.

This past year I have really come to a clear understanding of being and honoring the place I am in – even if the moment is hard and painful. I am finally learning that emotions, and every tear shed is an untold story within trying to find its way out to be seen, felt and heard.

I am beginning to understand that emotions are not the enemy like I once thought them to be – only when I try to keep those emotions in does it become the enemy within me.

I have gone through many changes this year. I have gone through more changes this year, than I have in the whole 9 years of being in therapy and on this healing journey, and sometimes when so many big changes happen, it can be scary and vulnerable, and that is what this year has been for me so far.

In those changes, I am scrambling for something to feel familiar, and sometimes when we long to feel something familiar in the new, we want to go backwards to a time that feels more familiar. We long to feel something that once felt good and safe … but this journey is about finding the new familiar, the new comforts in the healing of going forward.

The healing journey and the work my therapist and I have done this past year has also been an amazing journey forward. My therapist has taught me so much about trusting the moment in front of me, and really honoring the emotions that I was once feared. It’s still a work in progress, but more and more, I am beginning to see that only when I honor the emotions and tears that show up – that they begin to heal, not hurt as the old messages would tell me.

When I sat down to write this blog, I thought to myself “I wish I could write the way I used to write” – well, maybe how I used to write isn’t the way I write now. The journey I have taken this year has changed me, and my writing will now serve a different purpose; a new purpose that will heal me forward, not backwards.

I will say this – I look forward to seeing where this continued forward path takes me. I am no longer going to focus on where I was or the moments that felt better –  but rather use where I was as a way to move forward to a new and better place within me.