Bigger Than Me

One of my favorite things to do each year is to reflect on my growth, and the lessons I have learned over the course of the year. 

I am not ready to sit and do this exercise yet, but what I have reflected on over the last couple of days is so much bigger than me. 

Having my journals as a safe place to release to, is a special thing that I started a couple of years ago. 

For the first time, I sat with many of them, and read through the pages. 

I’ll be honest, at times I cringed. 

At times I cried. 

Most of the time, reading the words on the pages, it brought me right back to those raw, happy, vulnerable, heartbreaking moments. 

Some I’d like to forget. 

Others, I would love to relive. 
But there was a common theme among many of those pages. 

Not enough. 

What I was reading were pages of a young woman, trying, with her whole heart, to be enough. 

Enough for her family. 

Enough for her friends. 

Enough for people she wanted to be her friends. 

Enough for her career.

Enough for herself. 

Honestly though, never really feeling like enough. 

Always trying to “fix” herself. 

Always trying to do better. 

Be better. 

Some of the words on the pages were hurtful. Mean. Downright awful. 

And those words were written to myself.

The obsession over my exercise, my food intake, my negative coping mechanisms.

Trying to control every ounce of my life, and when I couldn’t, which was most times, leaning harder into those negative coping mechanisms. 

Gosh.

It truly breaks my heart to see how I have treated myself over the years. 

How I have spoken to myself. 

I will sit with this as I do my reflection of these last year, and create my intentions for the next. 

But one thing is for sure….. 

I am going to enter 2024 loving the shit out of myself.