I CHOOSE PEACE!

The start of a new year always seems like a catalyst for change or at least the intent. It almost always has something to do with fitness. The gyms are crowded in January but come February it always seems to die down. It's starts to get challenging and uncomfortable so the momentum dissipates. Much like life in general. We are motivated to do the work or achieve some sort of goal but when you get deep into it and it gets challenging we go back to our old ways because it's more comfortable. Maybe it's society's need for instant gratification. We want things to happen right away and if it doesn't why bother. It's so cliché to say "no pain no gain", but it couldn't be more true. Acheiving that goal feels even better if the journey there wasn't a straight path.

Peace, for instance isn't as easy as saying "I choose peace". You have to be fully emersed in chaos, pain, grief and misery to realize that what you want is peace. However, in order to find peace we need to find alignment within ourself. The challenging part is revisiting the trauma and exploring why and how we respond to it. Who the heck wants to do that? I sure as hell didnt. Sweeping things under the rug was much easier. Often times I would blame my environment, circumstances and people for my misery. But at what point do I take accountability for my peace.? This a difficult one to swallow because of the resentment that grows towards the people that have hurt me. That's the Scorpio in me, I can be relentless when I want to prove my point. This just left me feeling more angry, more resentful and even more spiritually unbalanced. Even further away from any fragment of peace. I was allowing my ego to make choices for me and it was not benefiting me at all. Why was it so important for me to have others surrender to my truth? Why was I putting so much energy into getting validation from the people that hurt me in the first place. I wanted control of my life but I thought controlling how I was perceived by others was the control that I yearned for, I believed it would give me some sort of equilibrium. I realize now that it was my spirit that was misaligned. I had to develop a deeper connection and awareness of myself and truly take control of my peace. Understanding myself deeper was what was going to give me the control I was lacking. I had to accept the hurt and convince myself that any hurt inflicted on me had nothing to do with me. Allowing the actions of others affect me was making me a prisoner in my own body.

This recovery journey isn't just about my physical recovery. God gave me exactly what I've been praying for all these years. I wanted to heal the wounds of my past and ultimately find true alignment....peace. In order to do this I had to ask myself some difficult questions. I had to humbly go deep in my past. However, I had to go back fully accepting that the wounds never completely heal. They are replaced with scars. Much like the scarring in my lungs, my neck where my tracheostomy once was and stomach where my feeding tube was placed. My RMT had to go deep into those areas to loosen the scars so that I can breath better. Not a comfortable feeling by any means but absolutely necessary. I had to face the pain and discomfort, acknowledge it, accept it, grow from it then release it so that I can breath better. I had to also search internally at how these past experiences from childhood to now affected my relationships with others especially myself. The parts of me that over time created a disconnect. The parts of me that I didn't like but didn't know how to change because I was too concerned about how I would be perceived by others. I was living in survival mode because I wasn't honouring my power to assess who was worthy of access to me. I didn't believe that I was worthy of using my right or even my ability to control the negative and toxic energy entering my space. It was freely flowing into my space and as a result I could no longer distinguish between peace or a "fight or flight" response. It became my reality, the norm. The stressors, the hurt the trauma became a way of life. I was so dysensitized to the hyperarousal that somehow I didn't know how to live without the "drama". So I surrendered my peace, and my truth only to satisfy my dependence with "drama". How did I allow myself to get to this point? More importantly how the heck was I going to dig myself out of this deep hole? There is one thing I do know for sure, the way I was living, and how I was coping or not coping was not what I wanted for myself.

I choose peace! Not someone else's perception of it but my own. Like everyone else I have faced hurdles, been hurt, I've endured pain but with all that pain I learned to love. With all the hurdles I learned to be more compassionate. With all the hurt I learned how to soothe.

I take accountability for my peace and my own healing. I will embrace the stillness and the quiet because it's in the stillness and the quiet that I will hear the wispers of my soul, where true peace chooses to take solace.

My healing and my peace is my responsibility and I have complete control. I will no longer allow the trauma and the pain to dictate how I live. I am more then my unfortunate circumstances. There is true purpose in all that I've overcome. My survival story is my confirmation that I have more to discover in this life. For this, I am eternally grateful.

~I dedicate this healing journey to my children, Gabe and Rosie. Prioritizing my healing is what ends the the cycle of generational trauma. Though I may still make mistakes along the way ending the cycle will ensure that my children will never carry the burden of nurturing my inner child because I made a commitment to do the work.