Can you remember what it was like?
You know, becoming an adult. Having to take responsibility for your life. Seeing the world opening up to you. And having to suddenly start making decisions and setting a clear direction for your life.
Exciting, yet terrifying and confusing all at the same time. But why…why does it have to be this way? Is that just how it is? Or have we gotten it all wrong?
When I was a little girl, all I wanted to be was a doctor. I loved the feeling of making things “all better”…so naturally; being a doctor was what I wanted to be….right? Or, Is that what “they” wanted me to be? I remember thinking it would be nice to help people. To make them feel better. I was a fixer from the very beginning. But was it me who was urging myself into this goal or was it THEM?
I grew up as the child of immigrants. My mother came over to America to Ellis Island from Austria as a young girl, and my father was Egyptian. My parents divorced when I was about 5, and I never saw my father again. I grew up as an upper-middle-class little girl going to a Prep School in New Jersey. My life was pretty much planned out…finish school, go to a fancy college, go to Medical School, marry a nice Jewish Doctor, and there we have it. Sounds good enough right?
I always knew there was more. I always KNEW that there was a bigger plan for me. That there was more than what “they” were showing me. I knew I was given a good life, despite its imperfections, but I didn’t think that I could stay as I was….I knew I could still bloom. If the caterpillar stopped and decided it was just good enough as she was, we would all miss out on the beautiful butterfly she was able to become.
Oh, Ladies. We are so much more than we have become.
Somewhere, somehow, we were all given the wrong information. Somehow we got so much of it put into our heads that we started to BELIEVE the things we were told….we are too much, or not enough. Have you heard it? Have you heard the lie? The you’re…
“not skinny enough”
“not smart enough”
“too loud”
The LIES.
These are the things I’m convinced THEY tell us in order to hold us back. In order to have us conform to what they believe is the “best way.” They aren’t trying to harm us….they are just doing what they know how to do.
Do you ever wonder who “they” are anyway? Aside from the obvious…your parents, your teachers, your family…who ARE these THEY who keep telling us what we can or cannot do…what we should or should not do??
I continued to be a “good girl” throughout my teen years (relatively speaking) and I went on to get a scholarship to a Private 4 year University. Here I continued to do as I was told…I enrolled as a Pre-Med student, joined all of the clubs, became a VP of my Sorority, and kept on the “path” I thought I wanted to be on.
Still…I knew there was more. What was it that was calling me?
I didn’t know…I had never really been allowed to dream outside of the dream that I was given. So I ignored my entrepreneurial spirit crying inside and I kept pressing on. I enrolled in grad school. I thought, surely, this was it. This would quench the need for more within myself.
If you are anything like me, you know that the Entrepreneurial spirit is a strong one. You know that longing for MORE. …you don’t know what it is right away, but you feel it tugging at you constantly.
The more I ignored what my inner me was trying to tell me, the more I searched outwardly for something more. I soon met who would become my largest life lesson. My now ex husband took me down a road I never imagined I would go down…repeating the history I had seen in my childhood. The next 10 years of my life were full of addiction, abuse, and hate. It was a cycle I thought was “normal”. He was what I thought was my reason…to help this person become a better version of himself.
The thing is, I was living my entire life trying to escape myself. Trying to escape the “me” that was inside, telling me to live my authentic self. To let myself OUT of the cage that I had been kept in and live as ME!
It was during this time that I found Life Coaching. I decided that if I could learn how to help people on a real authentic level, maybe I could fix everyone! Maybe I could change the world….little did I know that this would be the beginning of changing myself. Changing myself back into the ME I was before the world tried to tell me who to be. Life coaching healed me. Becoming a mother was the next step.
Becoming a mother was the beginning of the breakdown….or as I like to call it, the breakthrough. And, from that point forward, my dreams changed. I still had, and currently have, big dreams. But now it wasn’t just about me.
Everything I do now has one thing in mind, my son.
It’s crazy how one little person can change your entire life, but they can. He changed mine. My son was the one thing I never wanted that I needed the most. He is my world in the best way possible.
Before I never really had a purpose in my life, now I do. It’s to be the best version of myself that I can be for him. To make sure that he is equipped with everything he needs to eventually go off on his own and succeed in life. To make sure he has everything he needs growing up, and not by just handing it to him on a silver platter. If I’m not the best I can be, I can’t be the best mother for him. If I’m not always doing my best and giving it my all, how is he supposed to learn how to? NOW things started to make sense. I had a real purpose. This was my more.
I can’t sit here and tell you that being a single mother is easy because it is far from it. I struggle more often than not, most days I feel as if I am failing and have no idea how I’m going to make it to the next. Babies don’t come with a handbook, do they?
Because my life isn’t just about me any longer. I’m a mother; my life will never again just be about me. It’ll always be about someone else before myself. And this is my why. I have to create my best, authentic life, not just for me, but to show him how to do this. To show him that it’s ok to be his authentic self…from the very very beginning!
Today, I live my life authentically each and every day. I run my own business from home, and I work with women who are ready to find their authentic selves. My passion is helping these women out of the crisis (whether it be in their minds or a true crisis in their world) and into a life of their dreams. The dreams of their real authentic selves.
I’ve come full circle.
I’m not perfect. My life is not perfect. I still have insecurities. I still have a little PTSD from some of the things I’ve lived through. But that’s exactly the point. I lived through them. I found myself. And I found my purpose. Through. It. All.
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” ~Maya Angelou
Until next time…..
