What it is, and what it isn’t | How did I get here?

It isn’t guaranteed success and frankly, it’s a wonder that fact hasn’t sent my enneagram 6 brain into shut-down mode.

Over years of conditioning, I started to live my life smaller and smaller. First, it started in the circle I ran in. It was more important to be perceived as good than actually being a good human. Behavior is more important that being authentic, got it. 

Then it was postpartum depression accompanied by gross negligence by my then -community to believe my desperate cries for help. They don’t think that I need external help, despite me being desperate for it. Perhaps they are right and I don’t need therapy but I should just keep trying to pray more, worship more, believe more and one day, the switch will flip. Over time, I started to believe that since I had been given the recipe and the outcome was not changing, something was fundamentally wrong with me*.

This year will not be a journey of shaming myself or blaming others for where I am. 

This will not be driven self criticism or regret. 

This will be anchored in the belief that a life without fear is possible and not just possible in a general sense but IT IS POSSIBLE FOR ME. 

*I am no longer part of that community and have since put that season of depression behind me. I still have a complicated view of religious communities but I imagine we’ll unpack that more in the months to come.