I have been told this quote several times throughout my life and had thought I had fully grasped the meaning of it, until this Fall.

This Fall, and quite frankly this past year has been an awakening for me. An awakening of who I am this very minute and an awakening for who I want to become and the life that I want to live.

This process didn’t happen overnight and the road I have embarked on has been anything but simple or easy. But it is a road that I can only hope that everyone chooses to journey down at some point.

It all starts with the question: Who am I and what do I really want out of this life?

But beware, answering these questions are challenging, uncomfortable and difficult. It is an answer you don’t find in a day or a week but over a period of time.

Over this past year, I have journeyed through the questions:

Am I happy with who I am?

Am I happy where this life is heading?

What do I want?

If I could have the life I truly wanted what would it look like?

The hardest part about these questions, and the reason why most people don’t venture to ask or answer them, is that in involves the risk of realizing that the life you are living and the person you have become isn’t at all what you had hoped.

Which is a hard pill to swallow in and of itself, let alone finding the courage to take the actions to alter it.

This year, I have had to ask myself these hard questions.

I have chosen to make hard, heartbreaking decisions and changes in my life. I have had to take a really good hard look at myself and swallow my pride at the parts of me that I have developed that do not embody anything at all that I want to be.

I had to learn to be naked and insecure, even with myself and am learning how to forgive and embrace the journey I have been on.

These haven’t been times of light for me but times of dark. They have been periods of anger, sadness and extreme loneliness.

But something remarkable is happening…

I can feel myself becoming who I had always envisioned becoming and it feels so good.

I feel myself gaining confidence back in woman I am, the decisions I make, and yes even feel that I am beginning to build the life I have always wanted to life.

Brick-by-brick, moment-by-moment, choice-by-choice, I can feel the foundation of my soul being built from the ground up.

This is only the beginning of my journey and I assume it’s a journey that will never really quite end, since it is part of life to continually grow, change, and evolve.

It has been an extremely bumpy road of slip-ups, and several one-step forward and eight steps back, but it is a journey that I am so thankful I embarked on.

I wanted to share this with you because I hope that this just simply prompts you to ask the question: Who am I and what do I want?

I hope it serves as a reminder that millions of people have embarked on this journey before and have survived and serves a guiding light that you also can embark on the journey.

Everyone is entitled to live the life of their dreams or at least the life that they are truly happy with, whatever that might be. You just have to be willing to enter the darkness, so that hopefully someday you can enjoy light and warmth you never knew existed.

Life is too short regardless, don’t waste your time not living life to its fullest.

 

Happy Friday!