Re-writing Your Story To Find The Hope That Your Soul Deserves

In my past, I have expressed some OCD tenancies with my journals  I would purchase a journal with a specific intention set for it.  And if I made one single error in that journal, it was ruined.  If I changed my mind or didn't stick with that journal it was tossed aside with journals from the past that were basically empty but I had declared them useless to me.

It's so easy for us to look at our life's journey and see the "bad" decisions that we've made.  I have labeled them as bad, scratched them out and blocked out parts of my journey until I've succeeded because that's all that matters, right?  Like the time that I wasted 5 years with a narcissistic, asshole that cheated on me throughout the entire relationship.  Or the time that my marriage failed because I was a religious hypocrite and he was an unfaithful and selfish man.  Or maybe the time that I decided to move out of my mom's house before I finished high school to move in with my then boyfriend, his parents and siblings because I was ready to GROW UP, only to end up being controlled by this man in ways that I swore I would never be controlled!

After each one of those seasons of my life, I wanted to give up!  I felt as if I would never find love, not real love anyway!

I made the decision a few years ago to begin to re-write those stories as an experiment to see how that would affect my mindset shift.  I was doing so good with my personal growth and my spiritual health, but I still found myself struggling to "get over" the relationship and the idea that I had "wasted time".  It wasn't wasted time, I was just wasting time wallowing in it instead of really taking a deep dive into my own shit.  I took time to feel the shit that came with all of those really negative experiences.  I did this alone!  In the process of me relearning from my past experiences, I was learning to LOVE myself!  

I would feel all of those feelings and then I would dance, cut the grass, weed eat.  I took a solo drive to the beach.  I would do yoga, sing, CRY... I did a lot of that, I screamed a few times (my neighbor came to check on me once), I began doing ART which was revealed as a talent that I didn't know I had pretty much my entire life!  I began expressing those feelings into things that were going to benefit me, bring me joy, and bring me GROWTH!

All 3 of those relationships were leading me in a direction of learning to love myself a little more and a little differently each time.  They each revealed areas of my own that needed improvement.

Allow me to share those rewritten stories with you.  I share these stories from a place of self love, self respect and a greater understanding of how my mind works, and how we have to tame our mind if we want to truly live a happy and fulfilled life DESPITE how damaging, traumatic, and scary the journey has been.  Re-writing these stories isn't about making up something that didn't really happen like writing a fairy tale.  Nope, it's about finding the seeds of knowledge and wisdom that are hiding within the experience so that we can absorb that and learn from it.

My first "adult" relationship, while I was "ready" to grow up, I wasn't fully prepared for the life that I had found myself in.  I learned very quickly how my personality and my young naive self could easily be controlled and manipulated and if I didn't quickly gain some of my own boundaries and a strong foundation it would happen again.  This lead me to find my faith and joy at a church that I soon called my home away from home and my family.  I spent so many years devoted there, serving the youth group and children's ministry, and building relationships that are still very meaningful to me to this day!  

My 1st marriage revealed so many things to me.  It took me a lot longer to recover from this one, so it wasn't until years after the separation that I realized the good from this.  I treated him terribly because he didn't believe the same way that I did.  I had to own my actions that drove a divide in the marriage.  I had to take some responsibility for the falling apart of that marriage too!  I didn't realize that I had become the person that I judged so frequently.  I had not learned how to truly and unconditionally love anyone yet.  At least not outside of my mom and my son that blessed us during that marriage.  I can say that the marriage gave my son an amazing father figure, I didn't have to do it alone like my mother did.  He and I both acknowledge our downfalls in our marriage, and have worked to become better humans so that we can co-parent together and I have to say we've succeeded.  Both of us are happily re-married to different people now, and consider each other's family an extension of our own.

My 3rd relationship was probably the most defining for me.  It revealed so many areas of growth that even still new areas are being revealed to me as some of those "bad" memories come back with my self growth work.  The infidelity began quickly in this relationship and each time I would "forgive" and carry on.  This relationship was what I would call the Roller Coaster To Hell that I could never seem to get off.  I was still attending church at the beginning of this relationship but quickly fell out of that as he moved in and we were then "living in sin".  I couldn't face the church, I felt as if I had let them all down and I just needed some time before I could make this one right.  I learned that while my faith in God was strong, I was very confused about who God was to me!  I needed a firmer foundation than what I had.  My creator isn't someone that I should feel the need to walk away from when I have "failed".  I began to spiritually wake up during this relationship, about 4 years into it, when I lost my mother to a VERY short 4 month battle with cancer and it was glaringly obvious that life is too short and I was not living my life's purpose.  I started to realize how my mindset needed to change if I wanted my relationship to change too.  I took full ownership for my relationship issues for a short time and was sure that if I repaired my mindset and my confidence he wouldn't want to cheat on me anymore.  After some serious work my mindset and confidence definitely shifted but his cheating, lying, drinking and bullying became more frequent.  It was almost having the opposite effect on our relationship.  I knew then that I had to get out of that relationship, but didn't know how.  I didn't know how to be alone.  Every time I'd end it and separate however I could, he'd come back.  There wasn't a way for me to get away.  Or that's how it felt.  This relationship revealed that I was putting myself in this situation over and over again, and because I had done that for so long the ending was going to seem to draw out and would probably be traumatic.  It was very scary and it was very traumatic, for both of us.  I needed to stand firm on my new foundation and confidence to set the boundary and close that door completely.  I'm no longer the victim of those 5 years.  The end seemed to drag on longer than necessary, but it did end.  Not everything is meant to last forever, not even romantic relationships.  

All of these failed relationships taught me something about myself and about how relationships work (or shouldn't work) and I truly believe I'm a better partner to my husband today because of every single one of the failed relationships I've had in my past.  My husband is MY PERSON!  I've never felt unconditional love the way that he and I share our love.  It's beautiful and raw and vulnerable and above all else safe.  I'm thankful for my journey, because I'm that much more grateful for the absolutely beautiful relationship that I have with my husband today!

Re-writing our story can really help us to see all areas that we need to learn from so that we can continue to grow and better ourselves.   Your soul deserves that kind of healing!

If you'd like to book a FREE 15 Minute Mindset Maintenance Session with me today, visit My Calendly.