I can’t cure anyone. I can’t guarantee they will heal. I can only tell them my story, remind them that they are not alone in their journey and offer a glimmer of hope for healing.
Laughter lightens my heart and therefore heals my soul as well.
Extreme emotional pain has a profound effect on the body. I witnessed my already frail body become even more toxic and plundered.
Forgiveness enables me to walk away from that pain, the loneliness and suffering.
I’m not ‘different’ from anyone else. Crises and tough emotional periods are the grit around which my inner self has been formed. Some, I have come through with more grace than others.
Through each crisis in my life, with acceptance and hope, in a single defining moment, I finally gained the courage to do things differently.
I did the only thing I knew how to do: I built my own walls of silence to disguise my desperation and what later came to be recognized and diagnosed as depression.
I thought by masking the depression with silence, the feelings might disappear.
As a sufferer of depression for many years, I know the importance of trying to find positive experiences in each day, no matter how small.
I have learned through repeated experiences that in order to heal, I MUST forgive. The forgiveness is not for the transgressor. The forgiveness is for ME.
Forgiveness does not mean I approve of or condone what transpired.
When I could find something to laugh about for 30 minutes, my grief lightened just enough to make the day bearable.
With each opportunity before me, God presented me with a choice. I could accept His offerings, His wisdom, His grace. Or I could choose to hold onto the pain, the anger and the resentment a little longer.
It is important for me to focus on positive actions taken to heal instead of beating myself up over what I did wrong each day. It shifts my perspective, thus making my body and mind more hospitable places for healing and positive energy.
By first grade, my sense of worth was in direct proportion to what I learned and what I contributed back to the class. I had already become a human doing instead of a human being.
We cannot fully heal if we cannot experience gratitude on a daily basis.
When we have loved, that loving part is the best part of any and every day.
Most of all, I remember her laughing. It filled my ears. Her smile, her sparkling eyes, and her infectious laughter, along with the vistas, were limitless and unending and powerful.