Stop walking your sh*t into the next thing
If you know me, you know I love how a steady diet of podcasts like Glennon Doyle's We Can Do Hard Things can impact your whole day+week+month+year=life. And, if it's a story of catastrophic sadness followed by the redemption of rebuilding your own life, I'm ALL in. In a recent episode, Jen Hatmaker joined to talk about a common story arc in our lives: loss, recovery, and the audacity to rebuild.
This was the single best discussion about a relationship ending that mirrored my own experience. But you don’t have to get divorced to live this story. We all have relationships (our partner, children, parents, siblings, work and health) that could be impacted by this concept of disintegration followed by reintegration.
Here's my hot take from their conversation to help you reclaim your inner badass:
Our own armor is a way of deflecting/denying what we don’t want to see, feel, experience because we want shiny examples of how great our lives are
It’s important to allow yourself to feel your feelings (not buffer them away with distractions) even though it’s hard (or as she says "It's kind of bullshit, it’s hard, I’m not practiced.”)
The whole truth (not just your tidy version) is the beginning of the rebuilding ("If I don’t pay honest attention to my own patterns, I will walk that shit right into the next thing.”)
None of us are exceptional. Nobody is impervious to betrayal, loss, trauma, change (“I’m responsible for me, that’s it. We are not always powerless, at the whims of what someone else does to us.”)
Forgiveness is a choice. In the beginning stage of loss when you are trying to pick up the shattered pieces of your life, let your rage and fury fuel you. But then move on so you aren’t stuck at the crossroads of resentment x bitterness (“The truth is that forgiveness has absolutely nothing to do with that other person. Not one thing. It doesn’t require their participation, its an inside job. In letting somebody else off the hook, I’m really letting myself off the hook. I can exhale, lay the whole thing down. It’s so heavy, so heavy to carry all that around every day.”)