Post 3: When "owning your shit" began

Post 3 I remember as a kid my mom saying something (couldn’t tell you today what the specifics were), but my response back would be, “YOU’RE MAKING ME MAD!” And she’d say back to me in that soft, calm (which was odd 😉), sarcastic, condescending mommy voice, “I don’t make you feel anything.” Um, yeah, you do, and right now I’m pissed, and it’s all your fault. I really didn’t know what she meant until I was an adult. All I could see was you said something, I didn’t like it, now I’m angry, and it’s all because of you. Makes perfect sense. No? Ah, until you realize that there is only one person who is in control of your emotions (and actions and reactions), and that’s you. In fact, if I was being very honest, I probably really didn’t get the concept until just before I started on this journey. See, it’s easy to play the victim. My husband did this, therefore it doesn’t matter what I do, everything is his fault. My parents did this when I was a kid, that’s why my life sucks. To me it seemed logical. lol I could tell you it was a beautiful lightbulb moment, but it was a head-lowering, ah, f*ck moment. If my present life wasn’t the product of someone else or something else, it meant my present life was all on me, and I didn’t like it. It meant for everything I saw as negative or I hadn’t achieved yet or I was feeling or I didn’t have (or I did have) was all me. No one to blame. No excuse to be made. Now what? All you’re left with is feeling pretty low about your current circumstances (never mind how you’re feeling about yourself). At this moment in my life I was in school hell, feeling like the biggest failure ever and my marriage was at an all-time low. It was my rock bottom. So I owned my shit -- that’s what I call it -- all of it. The good, the bad, the ugly, the stuff so far down inside you didn’t think it would ever see the light of day again. ALL. OF. IT. Now most of this wasn’t stuff I shared with anyone at the time. I just wrote about it in my journal (or as I liked to refer to it, the book was I never going to write, but if I did it would be called “Own your shit; change your life.” Here’s what I learned: We ALL have a past. We all have made mistakes. Maybe done some things we weren’t so proud of. Maybe sabotaged ourselves because we didn’t feel like we deserved something better. But there’s no one out there who doesn’t have a past, who doesn’t have things to own. It’s what makes us human. It also makes us relatable. (See, if I share my life, maybe you’ll feel better about yours 😉) So I owned my shit, my share of the things I had done, the things that had been done “to me,” and then the beautiful lightbulb: If I own it, I can change it. When I was the “victim” of my own life, blaming everyone (okay, mostly Terrace) on where I was and what I didn’t like about my present life, I gave him all the power. First, Terrace can’t change my life. No one can. No white knight is going to come “save me” and make my life wonderful. Second, if you don’t like where you are, change it. All you. You are in control. Starts with one choice…

Feb 24, 2020, 8:54 AM