What Doesn’t Kill Us…(Day 25)
I’m tired and I’m emotional. A combination I wouldn’t wish on my greatest enemy especially on a Monday of all days. As if the start of the week wasn’t bad enough. I find myself struggling to form sentences, pulling at straws resembling words in my brain hoping to make some sense of this day and how I’m feeling.
I’m tired because, well, I got home at 3am this morning. Plus I had a jam-packed few days at home including my high school reunion and, well, I’m not 21 anymore. I’m overcome with emotions, a number of them, because truthfully, I have a lot going on in my life right now, weighing on me. In good ways and bad but overwhelming my emotional cup as they say. When you combine those two characteristics together, it can be recipe for disaster, like bursting into spontaneous tears at the airport. Not like I’m speaking from personal experience or anything...
Anywayyy, I read this book while on the plane yesterday that felt like it was a divine intervention for emotional ole me. It’s called “Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity and Change by Maggie Smith.” Smith wrote this book of quotes and essays about change and transformation when she was going through one of the biggest changes in her own life, ending an almost two decade marriage. She translated her pain into a book that would help others navigating their own challenging trials and tribulations. ’Keep Moving’ found me at a time when I needed to remember to ‘Keep Moving’ myself.
I found myself flipping through the pages, bringing out my phone to snap photos of some of the quotes I found most meaningful and transformative. One in particular really struck me as I navigate a particularly challenge time in my own life. “Do not talk down to yourself for struggling; the struggle is part of the transformation. Trust that the version of yourself that emerges on the other side will be stronger for it.”
I am notorious for being very critical of myself in just about all aspects of my life. When I was growing up this manifested in school and in sports and now, it manifests in, well, everything else in my adulthood. I tend to bury emotions, to push down those fears and feelings that threaten to bubble up and expose me for my imperfections. I hold myself to very high standards, standards that don’t have room for anything less than perfection. Standards that certainly don’t have room for spending time wallowing in self-pity, sorrow, anger, negativity, or any other emotions one traditionally feels when navigating the choppy waters of life.
Reading this quote I was reminded of the importance of giving myself breathing room. Room to ’feel my feels‘ so to speak and to almost thank them for the transformation they’re no doubt cultivating in my life. It is because of our trials and tribulations that we have strength, that we have experience to navigate the next set of challenges and that we come out on the other side even better versions of ourselves. I’m grateful for the challenges I’ve endured because I wouldn’t be who I am or where I am today without them. And today I choose to acknowledge them and the fact that the version of me that emerges on the other side will be stronger because of them…