BBB#66
Repeat your worth to yourself daily.
My Life: You need to breathe life into yourself daily. Especially when you are coming out of a toxic relationship, depression, or dark period in your world, affirmations are a great way to give back to yourself. Pouring into yourself will help to fill you up when everyone else is busy taking. As you grow and build your village (BBB# 39), you will have a few more people to help you pour into you, but you are your first source and most essential to keeping this from depleting you.
I wasn’t taught to pour into myself. How could my parents teach something they didn’t have for themselves? Before I even stepped out into the world, I was beyond depleted, and like many people, I turned to other ways to falsely fill myself up. I learned that drinking would fill me up in a way that would give me a false sense of security, bravado, happiness, etc. Smoking and drinking were the right blend to help me get through my nights and frustrations in college.
Filling myself up falsely became a crutch that prevented me from seeing clearly; some of those things I displayed weren’t false. They were masked underneath all the drama. I was strong. I was brave, and I was worth a lot more than I had given myself credit for. Life has a way of taking you through it to help you see the things that may be going unnoticed. It is up to the individual to decide, though that they want to explore it deeper. It wasn’t until I was grown with two kids, an ungrateful husband, and an all-consuming career that I was more than depleted. I was making myself sick with stress.
Reflection: When I decided that life was terrible as it was and that I knew if nothing more I deserved better than what I had at the time, I began to reflect. I had lived most of my life in this cloud of uncertainty, and I might not be the Queen of Sheba, but I was definitely worth true happiness. At that moment, I decided that things could worsen if I allowed them, and at the very least, I would make sure that I was happy. It was that simple. My goal was to be happy (BBB# 30). So I began to search for the things in my life that made me unhappy. My husband was the first to go. Bye! I wasn’t secure enough to leave my job, so the universe took care of that for me. All I had left was my children and me. I had a lot of work to do with myself because at the current I wasn’t making myself happy. I adopted plenty of things about my personality over time to survive, but I hated those traits.
I picked off things and worked on my inner workings, figuring out why my internal was so in turmoil. Once I could weed through all the negative emotions, I found I was pretty happy with myself. What I was most unhappy with, though, was the fact that I was walking in the world alone. I knew I needed a soundboard and close support, romantic. That was very important to me. I knew that 90% of my issues stemmed from relationship trauma that I could not resolve independently. That being involved in a healthy relationship would allow me to notice my triggers and begin dealing with the reasons why I was spiraling in the first place.
Immediately I got on my knees and prayed. I only prayed that I open myself up to allow Him to fill me up in a way that I couldn’t do alone. That He knew exactly what I needed, and trust was at the top of the list, but for once, I was admitting that I desired an Alpha, someone to lead because that was an adaptation of my personality that caused me to be most unlike myself and unhappy. A man where I could indeed be myself, and I would try my hardest to stay open to the process. When my prayers were immediately answered, I had figured out the reason why all my other prayers had not been answered right away. I lacked Faith.
The Test: Faith is to be placed within yourself. A faith that I remind myself of every morning and sometimes during the night. When I first began dating my soulmate, I had to have faith that not only would I be able anything that transpired between us, but faith I would survive and be okay even if it fell apart the next day. I didn’t know that I feared abandonment and that my first relationship manifested this in every possible way. I began to believe that men didn’t stick around and the toxic relationship that I was in made me think I was the reason for the abandonment. At the time, I spoke to myself repeatedly that men were “shhhh.”
In my second relationship, I hadn’t much changed from what I was in the first relationship. I still had every insecurity as I did the first time. The difference was the caliber of man I was dealing with the second time around and that I had faith in myself. He was a different quality, and our goals were similar, although the methods we try to obtain them are vastly different. He was steady, patient, and kind through my transformation period. Not to say that I am done with the process, but I am secure that I have my number one fan there to support me as I grow. I also have faith that I am worth his love and that my love is worth whatever ups and downs I may have.
I rushed through my transition. The process for my recovery sped ahead quickly, and at times I felt like I was drowning in my issues. I spent a very intense year with my significant other, dealing with trigger after trigger. Damn, there were so many, but through it all, he never blamed me; he just pointed out that what I was dealing with was internal. I said all this to say; I created an affirmation when I first decided my goal was daily happiness. It has become more detailed over time, but at first, it was as simple as telling myself every day that today I would do something that brought me true happiness. The writing, the family time, the soul-mate, the hobbies, the time to self – I do what makes me happy, and I remind myself every morning of that goal. Without the affirmation to fill myself every day, I couldn’t find a reason to smile. Life hasn’t changed. I have!
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