Several years ago, my life came undone. It was horribly painful and embarrassing, and I felt like a huge failure. The abridged version is that I was a twice divorced, single mother before the age of 30. And to make the shame so much more consuming, I was in graduate school to become a therapist. The irony of these two life-defining moments was not lost on me for a second. I began my counseling internship just a small handful of days after the finalization of my second divorce. As I sat down across from my very first client, feeling like I might vomit onto her feet, she stared at me wide-eyed and seeking wisdom, and all I could think was, "what fresh hell is this?"
But y'all. I opened my mouth and wisdom came out. I know, right?! It shocked the hell out of me too!
She needed to know how to love herself, and I knew what to tell her. She wanted to know how to manage her anxiety, and I handed her tools. She needed help setting boundaries with her family, and I knew what that was! Somewhere along the way, everything that I had been studying in school collided with all of the jagged pieces of my life, and it all started to make sense. Over the course of my internship, so many young women sat across from me and asked the same questions. "Why is it so hard to love myself?" "How come everyone has this figured out except me?" "Will anyone ever love me?"
Over the course of the last 6 years in private practice, I've realized that women of all ages struggle with the same questions and longings. We are so much more alike than different. We desire to be known and seen. We struggle to feel that we are enough, that we matter, that we have value. We struggle with feelings of obligation and resentment over being used up or not considered. We want to be heard and respected, but often feel overlooked or walked upon. We struggle to stay calm in the midst of deep emotional triggers, and we want so badly to get closer but are often scared to let ourselves be vulnerable.
As I have continued my therapeutic training, and worked with people in a variety of stressful life situations, I have also seen a transformation in my own life. I truly feel like a Rewired Woman. Before I began walking intentionally towards health and balance, I was a pinball, reacting to whatever emotion I bounced off of, and chaotically clanging around in the world with no discernible path or trajectory. I was exhausted, ashamed, and I felt so terribly alone. After doing my healing work, I am a different person. I focus on staying balanced, on maintaining and building safe and intentional connections with loved ones, on processing my emotions and deciphering my needs, and on communicating in a way that fosters peace in my life and in the lives of others.
Rewired Woman is a program that I am putting together to help other women find their balance in life, my truest passion. It is a guided workbook experience that incorporates the tools that I used to find my most authentic self, combined with a therapeutic framework that supports healthy connection and self love. My desire is to create a safe community of women who will encourage each other to seek their best selves and live their best lives, to grow peace instead of chaos, and to create the lives they've dreamed of living.
A few years ago, I was eyeball deep in shame. Surely I was far too broken to be useful or lovable.
This is horsecrappery from the pits of hell.
Shame is just a story that you haven't yet owned. I now own my stories, every single, scandalous little detail. I will read them with pride, because they made me who I am.
Restored. Renewed. Rewired.
No comments:
Post a Comment