Once upon a time, I knew everything. I was young, I was courageous and ambitious with the bravado of a warrior. Like anyone who had never been through much in life, I had all the answers to life’s problems. I had a detailed chart on my goals and timelines. I was humble, a little, but I was more obnoxious than humble.

The truth is, haven’t we all been like that at certain points in our lives?…aren’t our late teens and most of our twenties spent idealizing how our lives will turn out ? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, I think every growing person needs those years to overcome the hurdles of uncertainty and to strengthen their resilience in life.
Fast forward to my 30’s…literally..when life didn’t go as planned..it turned out that career success didn’t mean personal success…who knew book smart didn’t equal street smart?..and how could I have guessed that my EQ (emotional quotient) could get me further than my IQ (intelligent quotient) ever could?….If you knew this all along, then I’m sure you’re further in life than I am. For those of us that learned this later in life, better late than never my friends.
So came my thirties and everything I knew to be true was shaken…a detour on the road with broken relationships left me questioning the rest of my decisions. l didn’t know who I was and what I wanted anymore. It’s very possible to wrap your life in someone else’s that you lose the boundaries that make you who you are…it’s a dangerous thing to be unable to define yourself without another person. And yeah, I know what the romantic school of thought proclaims, but outside of love, there exists another world that has to be lived. No one can be anyone’s “everything “, that’s an unhealthy precedence to set for a relationship …the best thing is to grow together and learn what you can be for each other…but not “everything “.
I took a few years to go through the Kubler ross stages of grief; the bargaining took longer than the acceptance phase, and you’ll be psyched to know that there was no particular order of these stages, sometimes I was in denial and acceptance all at the same time. But my lessons came in the acceptance phase. One day I woke up and realized time had passed and I was still alive…I looked beside me and my daughter was writing her name in full…I don’t remember teaching her but she said I did. And with that realization, I made a decision to try a little harder to be present in life. I had no elaborate goals or big declarations…just a few steps that made it possible to smile a little more than I had the previous day.
And now, I look at myself in the mirror when there’s no one else around, and see that my eyes are still there, I didn’t cry them out…I trace the lines on my saggy breasts because I breastfed for 3 years straight, and I realize how motherhood strengthened me.And I cradle the fatty cushion on my tummy that hasn’t budged despite the workouts and diets and I’m grateful it carried my 2 precious beings that mean the world to me, but again, not “everything “.
It’s a scary thought to live the rest of your life with seething resentment of things that didn’t go as planned…how much of life are we willing to let pass us by as we refuse to let go of the hurt and pain, just so we don’t repeat the cycle?
Life lessons don’t come from holding on to the past but from learning from it…the glow comes from surviving not languishing in the things that cannot be undone. And that’s why they say “explore your self-hate so you can start practicing self-love”.
Afromomma says.