I keep looking at this pic of Joshua and I at a black tie wedding last month. I look totally normal. And we had such a blast that night! But there was so much going on below the surface that you couldn't see. Over the last year I have been:
Having debilitating anxiety and panic attacks
Struggling to connect and feel vulnerable in existing and new relationships
Feeling lost at work and like I have no idea what I'm doing
Feeling lost personally and like I have no idea who I am
I spent so much time and effort trying to control and avoid the things that were triggering my anxiety that 45 days ago, I finally realized I couldn't keep going that way. I hit rock bottom. At first, it felt like weakness to admit I was feeling that way, or to even have anxiety in the first place. But now I'm absolutely sure that it's the definition of courage to be open to confronting our past trauma, the root of our fear, or whatever it is that is holding us back. Not to ignore it like I did for so long, not to yell at it - but to sit with it calmly in the darkness and ask: "What are you here to teach me?"
In this conversation between Oprah and Gary Zukav, he describes our soul as a fleet of ships. Our purpose is to follow the mothership, which guides the path of our soul, in order to fulfill our life's purpose. Over the last year, I've gone through a raging storm. Many circumstances in my life right now are bleak, and I'm facing some very real challenges and problems that I need to solve. And in that storm, I lost my true north. I let doubt creep in. I didn't just wonder if I was going the right direction, I started to question: "Am I even in the right boat?"
Forty-five days later, most of my circumstances look exactly the same, but I feel so peaceful. I am excited about life again. I know that I am in the right boat and going the right direction (bad circumstances and all - those things don't happen in spite of your journey, they are an integral part of it). I'm steering this little boat, so I can choose to get back on course, and leave the path of the storm (I just needed to find my way out). I have absolute hope and confidence about the future, because I have faith we, as a fleet, are going somewhere great again.
Which is a lot of blah-blah fluffy stuff so here's what these past 45 days really looked like. Here's how I turned my life around in a month and a half: