This is definitely one of my favorite lessons
and one that I continue to learn and apply as time goes on. The idea here is fairly simple. Throughout the course of our lives, we
develop stories about ourselves based on experiences we have. Obviously, you are the main character of your
story, while the setting and plot changes over time. The stories we build up become filed in our
brains and we tend to relive these stories over and
over again. We retell them, we identify
with them, we define ourselves by them.
You become what you believe and often we believe in the stories we tell
about ourselves, especially when we tell them for so long: I’m fat; I’m scared of heights; I’m damaged; I attract the
wrong men; I’m becoming my mother; pick your poison, whatever it may be, we all
have stories that we have been telling about ourselves forever. The trick to it all, though, is you only live that reality because you insist
on buying into it. And it really is
that simple. We hang onto the stories of
our past whether or not those stories are serving us in the present. Take a minute to think about some of the
things you believe about yourself – are those ideas serving you in a positive
way right now? For the longest time, I
identified myself only as a poor girl who came from a broken home and a
dysfunctional family, with heavy baggage that I believed only I could
carry. That was the story I let rerun in my head and what I would admit to others when the conversation veered in my direction. Now, I don’t believe
in any of that anymore. Did those things
happen to me? Yes, of course and, in
large part, helped me become the woman I am today. But do those things define me? Absolutely
not. They are just things that happened
to me; they are, by no means, who I
am. You can’t change your past; you can
only choose how you use it to move yourself forward.
So, I started to tell myself a new story about who I am and
I have continued to create new stories for myself. I am a strong woman who has survived a great
deal. I am a beautiful woman, who has
created life and has ownership over her mind and body. I am a smart woman, who has earned her keep
and makes an effort to learn something new every single day.
These are just a few of my stories.
Sure, there are days when those old stories sneak up on me and try to
find a place in my current library. Days
when I feel like I could very easily become that girl with the weight of the
world on her shoulders, a couple of dimes to her name and no one to help
shoulder the burden. But then I look
around me and see all that I have gained in each area of my life and I am
reminded that I only have to be that girl if I want to be. You don’t have to be a writer to rewrite the
stories you tell yourself. Every story
has chapters in it that are painful and hard to read. But you have a certain amount of control over
how you let those chapters shape your life and, ultimately, how you get your happy ending. You have all the control over what you choose
to believe both about the world and about yourself. Identify what your stories are and, if you
don’t like the way they sound or the path they seem to be leading you down, start
the rewrite of your own life.
Day 5: The bigget the hurt, the bigger the lesson.
Boy ,have I learned this one over and over. This is one of those lessons that doesn’t really sink in until you’ve been through a handful of hardships. Back when I was 17 or 18, I remember someone telling me that every crisis or hardship with which we are faced is but a preparation for the next challenge that may come our way. Now, I had been through some pretty hard times when I was told this and my immediate response was, “Well, if that’s the case, who would want to go on? If this isn’t the worst of it, I don’t think I want to know what comes later,” which seems like a pretty natural reaction. My mind reeled at the prospect of what might happen to me that could be worse than what I had already been through. What I didn’t understand at the time, though, was that hurt can be presented in such a wide variety of ways. One hurt never quite looks like another, therefore it’s hard to rank the level of pain inflicted. I couldn’t see the overreaching idea that within each hardship I faced was a lesson that would prepare me, in general, for life and all that it had to bring my way. The lesson didn’t have to be specific to that kind of incident, but instead, on a more broad scale – more applicable to other scenarios. To tie some of these past few lessons together, I quote Rick Warren from his book The Purpose Driven Life, “There is no growth without change; no change without fear or loss; and no loss without pain.” With this in mind, the biggest lessons come from the biggest changes which, sometimes, can result in the biggest losses or pains. And the pain, or grief as it can sometimes be experienced, is not only normal, but completely necessary. Grief is not a bad thing, it just gets a bad rap. So many people want to skip the pain, sorrow, or trouble that comes with any loss, hardship or change, when, in fact, it is one of the biggest and most important parts of the journey. That grieving process is like a workout for your heart, your brain and your emotional muscles. You strengthen yourself by really experiencing everything that goes along with the hurt you feel from the loss you sustained. There is no detour around that part of the adversity you are facing and the longer you try to avoid it or push it down deep, the more difficult it will be to get through. So, if someone tells you, “you’ll get over it” or something similar, they are not only insensitive, they are wrong. You never really “get over” something tragic, especially the more difficult it is. You aren’t meant to get over grief; you are meant to get through it. The memory of the struggle and the journey it takes to get through it are what make the lesson stick with you; once you are through the worst of it, the lesson waits for you just on the other side. That is your light at the end of the figurative tunnel. It might be dim or impossible to see at first, but trust that it’s there and is fueled by the strength you have built reaching out to grab it. Afterall, as they say, this too shall pass and, when it does, you will be a stronger, better, wiser you.
Lesson 6: You can’t change the length of your legs, the width
of your hips or the nature of your family.
I read this lesson in an article that was generated by Glamour back in
1997 called “30 Things Every Woman Should Have and Should Know By the Time
She’s 30.” Apropos, yes? The article
went viral pretty quickly, turning first into an email circulated by
girlfriends everywhere and then, later, a book.
I love this lesson because the lesson about the inevitability of change is significant by
itself, as I indicated when I wrote about it, but this puts a finger on some of
the specific points that I, personally, can relate to. Two hard lessons from the same root that I
have really come to grasp over the last couple of years, the first of which
relates to the body. As a woman like any
other, I am coming to learn more about my physical body the more years I spend living inside of it. I always used to roll my
eyes at women who would say things like, “Enjoy that now, you won’t be able to
eat it forever.” Honestly, I still roll
my eyes at those women. Yes, my
metabolism and body were different when I was 20, but I don’t think a cupcake
here or a slice of pizza there is what is responsible for the changes my body
has seen. It’s just the way it is. At first I was mad about it. I really wanted that body I had 10 years
ago. I worked hard to get back there, I
tried to force my body to accept my brain’s desire to wear a size 4 again, and
I got mad and defeated when it didn’t happen.
I loved my body while I was pregnant, but hated it when I put on the
weight AFTER I had already had my daughter.
Then one day, several months ago, I made a decision (and reading this
lesson in that Glamour article had a lot to do with it). Why am
I mad at my body? If I want to lose the
muffin top or the excess weight in my face, I need to make changes. But, I can’t be mad about how wide my hips
are or the fact that my legs aren’t as long as I want them to be. Those things I can do very little about. I carried a human in my pelvic region…you
just can’t undo that and how that changes the shape of your hips. And as far as my legs go, well, I have never
been happy with their length, spending countless hours of my youth wishing they'd magically grow a few more inches. Why be
mad at the things you can’t change? Your
body is the house for your brain, heart and soul. Fuel it with good foods and positive
thoughts, work it out here and there, but don’t hate it because it doesn’t look
the way you think other people want it to look.
I have a long way to go in really accepting my body, but I have also
come a long way from loathing it and making sure others know that I hate the
shape of my thighs/the length of my legs/the width of my hips. I am learning how to own the size of my jeans
and learning how to feel sexy, truly beautiful, in the shape my body is
taking. It made life, for crying out
loud, and it has gotten me pretty far in this world. I don’t need to reflect an image created by a
media who clearly doesn’t truly understand what it means to be a woman or have
a woman’s body; I need to love the skin I live in and reflect to my daughter a
healthy idea of what a woman’s body really looks like.
Now, as for part two of this lesson, I have spent years
trying to accept this very truth: You simply can’t change and/or choose your
parents. Not that I wish I could have
chosen differently, but there were moments when I wished I could change things
about them. For the most part, though, these
people were chosen for me – without their permission or mine. Children spend their whole lives, up until a
certain point, idolizing their parents and seeing in them all of the things they
think they want to become. Parents don’t
seem like regular human beings from the eyes of a child. No child considers the fact that parents have
crises, deep feelings and thoughts, or interests outside of their family. Sort of how young students look at their
teachers without seeing their humanity – you know, how when you were in first
or second grade and you were shocked to learn that your teacher not only went
home at night, but ate food, watched TV and used the bathroom. When I was that age, I thought that teachers
just lived in their classrooms and did…I don’t know, teacher things all the time, like robots. I think that children feel the same way about
their parents to an extent. Because
their “rule” and existence so directly impacts the lives of their children, it
is easy to lose sight of the fact that they are humans too and not just the cruel
beings who don’t understand us or don’t listen when we talk. But it’s important to remember, especially in
those moments when you start blaming your parents for every wrong that has ever
happened, every bad birthday, or every bad quality you feel you developed
because of them, that you can’t wish them away. Those two people, for
better or worse, were always meant to be your parents. You, quite literally, would not exist without
them. Any other combination of DNA would
have resulted in an entirely different being.
So, even if they weren’t the best parents in every moment or situation
or they weren’t the best couple that could have ever come together, they were
always meant to be together to fuse what DNA they had to specifically create
you. Accidentally or on purpose, your
creation was no accident. This took me a
LONG time to wrap my head around. As
someone who has dissected over and over again, not only all of my interactions
with each of my parents, but also the genes I inherited from them in kind, this
was a huge “ah ha” moment for me. For
better or worse, and whatever their faults, my parents are just that –
mine. I wouldn’t exist without them and
I wouldn’t be who I am, again, for better or worse, without all that they and I
have been through. You can’t change who
your parents are. You just can’t. Those two people created you and you have
life because of them. Hating them or
blaming them forever for whatever ails or afflicts you doesn’t solve whatever
the problem is and it doesn’t move anyone forward. It also doesn’t make it hurt any less on
their end when they see the scorn in your eyes or hear the blame in your
voice. Use some of the lessons you’ve
learned – Some things you can’t change, it is what it is and take ownership of
your life – and understand that even though they gave you the life that you have and all that comes with it, you
are the one who made choices about how to use it, walk through it and look at
it. You can’t choose who gave you the
life, but you can choose how to live it and be thankful that it was given to
you at all.
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