Journey to Healing

For a few years, I have felt like sharing my story.  However, there was part of me that felt fear and another part that felt shame.  I felt fear at the vulnerability of sharing my story, and shame because my life turned out to be less than picture perfect, as was expected.   But I still felt my story needed to be shared.   I felt that someone else could benefit from knowing they’re not alone in their situation and feelings.

Over the years, the shame has subsided. I realized the people who were shaming me  weren’t actually the ones affected by my life, and as long as I was ok with the choices I had made, everyone else’s opinion was just that … their opinion and not the definitive answer for my life.

In 2003 I married my “high school sweet-heart”.  Our life together progressed in a normal way, we were both 20 at our wedding, young yes, but at that point we had been together 6 years and believed we were were ready for the next step in our relationship. Although life was progressing in a normal way,  we were living separate lives.  I was working full-time while he traveled for work and attended college online.   Up to that point our relationship was pretty common for people in their early 20s; college, work, parties, weekend poker games and planning our future.

However normal things appeared on the surface, inside I was growing lonely.    I missed my family deeply and felt disconnected from my then husband.  I had begun to feel invisible to him.
I continued telling myself and anyone that asked, that life was good, I was happy and things were going well.    Yes, I was happy in my life, but not in my marriage.    It seemed no matter how my loneliness was expressed, it was unacknowledged.

In 2008 everything fell apart.   I wasn’t looking to have an affair, but when another man started recognizing me and making me feel good again it was unexpected but felt nice.    We began talking and texting every day.
I filed for divorce early 2010.  We had moved  back to Utah to be near family, and ended up separating a few weeks later.  We tried “dating” each other but couldn’t even carry a conversation through dinner.   Things were strained, and I didn’t feel it was fair to him, that I continued pretending I was ok and happy in our marriage.  

My honesty in the situation was shocking to most and I eventually stopped talking about the situation and just held my feelings to myself.

A couple months after filing my divorce, I began seeing a guy who I’d met through my sister and her husband.   We got along great and in the beginning of our relationship everything felt “meant to be”.    We had our son in 2011.  Our relationship had lots of ups and downs.  Many things changed within me and I became insecure and unfamiliar to myself.

One day, I looked in the mirror and told myself that enough was enough.    I needed to get my self together and be a good example for my son.  I had spent most of that relationship missing the man I met during my marriage. I didn’t allow myself to  realize how deep my feelings were for him.  I tried suppressing them and convincing myself that he was better off without me. Which made me feel crazy.  I regretted every day that I forced my feelings down.  We still kept in contact for a couple years after I’d moved from Texas, and I knew he also still carried feelings for me.  I just thought I was doing the right thing by trying to make the relationship with my son’s dad work. I was so torn apart internally.   Part of me wanted to leave and follow my heart and that scared me.  So instead of doing that I kept trying to fall into my old pattern of pretending to be ok.   And that made me feel even more crazy.  I knew I needed to take time to listen to my soul again and let my heart heal.   In 2017 I decided to take a break from being in a relationship.

I began a meditation class and started to get back to me.   I made a list of things that made me happy in life and tried to spend time doing those things as often as possible.  

Life is always going to be busy.  It will always seem like there isn’t enough time.  But I decided to be intentional and make time for me. Even 10 mins a day of working out makes me feel 1000 times better.

The last 10 years of life have been mostly a blur — 5 years happened so quickly that I barely had time to think. 3 years I spent sitting in regret and sorrow. The past 2 years, I feel I have finally caught up to myself and have began to heal.

This has really been a life-long process of growth, however, there was a point where I had lost myself and forgotten the path I was on. I realized,  I needed to either move forward and get back to a me who was happy, or accept the deep sadness and settle for less than I was destined to be.
That day  I chose joy,  I chose self-love and healing.   And I chose freedom from fear.

This blog is about self-love and healing.  It’s about finding and maintaining my identity and rediscovering me. I will share some of my personal journal entries and experiences with meditation and life.
I hope you will join me on this journey and have an open conversation with me, and that we can grow together in this adventure called life.