Healing

After several emotional weeks, I've started to realize that part of the healing process for me is actually embracing the feelings that I am feeling.  There are so many bottled up emotions inside of me, I always felt I had to be strong and I kept such a tough exterior for so long in an attempt to show the world that I could not and would not be broken.  I cried so many silent tears, but recently I have cried like I've never cried before, and a lot of people close to me can probably attest to that too.  It is such a strange feeling for me to just let go and roll with these emotions.  For so long I felt like if I cried, it meant I felt bad about the decisions I made so I put on a fake smile and braved it like nothing in this world bothered me.  I felt like I was admitting that I somehow failed if I showed any differently!  In reality, while every decision I made was the absolute best decision and I have zero regrets, at some point I had to start feeling my feelings too.  I am at that point.

These feelings are raw and hard to go through, but they are absolutely necessary.  I was looking back at some of my very personal writings that I haven't shared and it started to dawn on me how much I am healing and how much I am really growing as a woman.  I ran across something I started this summer where I challenged myself to write down three things I was grateful for.  I've only done it a few times but I really took note as to how the things I was grateful for were things in my life that were helping me to heal the most, including my emotional feelings.  I also noted that while I challenged myself to three things, I always came up with four.  Growth, right?

In addition to writing, taking pictures has always been another way for me to connect myself to the world around me.  The picture I am sharing is a picture that has always made me feel so calm, because I can remember exactly how I felt the moment I took it.  Life is a never ending path of choices, and in the end you need to be able to make peace with the path you choose.  Hopefully you are choosing the path of love and the path of growth and not just as we enter a new year and a new decade, but always.  Take a few moments to feel what you are feeling and write it down, take a picture, or do whatever you need to do to remember it and embrace it!

Also, I randomly realized I need a puppy!!! I've never not had a dog at my side and I think that's the real reason for my tears!