Growth
All posts tagged Growth
New Beginnings happen anytime. Doesn’t always just mean a total restart. I look at Mondays as the opportunity as a weekly New Beginning. It is the day where I can put all the negativity of last week behind me and focus on the positives of my future. Don’t allow the negativity around you to take hold. Set one day a week, whatever day you choose, to be your day to begin a new. If you want it can be every morning if you like even. It’s Your Choice! Make It Happen!
When you grow up around others that would rather live in victim status rather than surviving their past you easily take on the role of an enabler. You become the one to try daily to empower them to be the best they can be regardless of their past. It is easy to watch yourself cover for these people for their behaviors instead of expecting them to overcome. You think you are doing what is right and what you are supposed to do but unfortunately it can be deadly to an addict for example. Enablers will cover for those they believe can’t defend themselves and in the process they empower them to get worse and worse and not learn to survive. It’s like the saying, ” Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” If you see yourself enabling those around you then you need to look in the mirror and ask yourself are you really helping them or hurting them? You could be LOVING THEM TO DEATH!
Are you doing what you are meant to do or are you just going through the motions and doing what others tell you that you have to do? So many are ignoring their given talents and just doing what comes easiest instead of extending themselves a bit and being happier and get more out of what they are doing. When are you going to follow you passion and gifts? If you allow yourself to sell yourself short and just get by you will never know exactly what it is you could have become. Never sell yourself short, cause you have unlimited value. Reach for it and make it happen.
Each of us has different likes and dislikes. Some of us love the outdoors and anywhere there are trees and water. Others of us are more into the lights of the big city. Then there are others that would prefer sitting in the peace and quiet of a library. Whatever is your happy place, find it and be sure you are visiting as often as you can to bring happiness to your heart and soul.
When will the time come when you say to yourself, “I acknowledge the past, however, I accept my present for what it is. My past will not dictate my future!” The moment you can do this, is the moment you will finally loosen those chains that have held you back. We cannot truly move forward without acknowledging the past. Stop reliving it over and over. Once you learn the lessons you were meant to learn step out of those chains and be free to make the future you truly desire and were meant to live.
There are always going to be those people around that I call the chronic complainers. They have to go against the majority just to stand out and get attention. They would complain if they were to get everything they asked for. They are just starved for attention and they can’t just be satisfied with things as they are. You will not be able to change these people and the best way to handle them is to know that is who they are and just don’t engage or feed their complaints. Unfortunately, these types just carry negativity around with them and if you allow them to, they will bring that negativity to your life as well. Don’t enable them by feeding into their complaining. Just walk away and find a more peaceful situation.
What does tolerance mean? Why don’t more of us have the ability to tolerate? Tolerance is the ability to tolerate or accept things we don’t necessarily agree with. I would much rather be learning to tolerate things I cannot change about others and accepting everyone for their uniqueness. I have learned so much from people who have different views than my own. They may not change your views but they can definitely give a new prospective. Open your eyes and learn from the world around you and be tolerant of those that may not agree with you or them with you. As I say, “Agree to Disagree!”
Have you ever thought about why reptiles shed their skin? When the reptile grows it has to shed it’s skin to allow for the growth. We need to learn that as we ourselves grow we need to shed things in order to continue to grow. If we restrict ourselves by keeping these “skins” we will hurt ourselves or lose time by constraining the natural process of life. Let go of things that do not encourage and assist with your grow. If you have things or people in your life that seem to be holding you back you need to evaluate the relationship and determine if it can be “stretched” or do you just need to let it go and allow yourself that space to grow?
I don’t care what color your skin is, where your parents came from, or how much money is in your bank account. Every single one of us has a purpose in this world. We are one race, HUMAN. Each of us is diverse in our own special way. There is only one YOU. Embrace each others diversity. As I sit here writing this post, sitting no more than 6 feet from me are two gentlemen playing a very intense game of chess. The color of the their skin, their past traumas, or their status makes no difference. They are two diverse human beings enjoying a strategic game. It makes me smile to watch these two men enjoy a quiet night together. Just to think that 100 years ago these two men would not have been allowed to sit in a public place peacefully. It is amazing to me how far we have come yet I know know we have a very long way to go. I truly hope that when my grandchildren are my age they will be able to not even remember the time when our diversity was a bad thing. I want for them to not have to focus on the thought that any of us were better than the other, just that we are different and that is AMAZING!!
This is the perfect time of year to embrace the spirit of the season and remember that we are never truly alone. It can be tough to lose those we love and we start to feel sorry for ourselves when we think of them being gone. If you believe and embrace the spirits they will fill you with love that even while they were on earth they could never have shown you. Our spirits are stronger than our physical bodies. They are what get us through the tough times and when others past on they are still around us even when we don’t feel their presence. During the Holidays I believe their spirits are even stronger so take a moment and feel their presence and remember the love you had and will always have. Embrace The Spirit so that it can truly embrace you. HUGS
We have so much to learn from the stories of others. If you haven’t told yours there is someone out there waiting to hear it. We may believe we are alone and that no one would possibly want to hear our story but in actually there are others going through things that are similar to what we have and they can learn from us. If you are keeping your story secret you are hurting yourself as things that get buried that are still alive will only dig their way out and often won’t be happy for being buried alive. We have so much to learn from each other and learning from others stories can potentially help us to uncover our own.
As a mother of children who genetically inherited mental disorders they didn’t ask for or even deserve, I often feel this guilt for the choices I made. I know their pain as though it were my own even though I try to not enable them just because they are battling. They are strong at the core even though they feel they are victims at times. I often think of it like those who speak of the ghost pain after a limb is amputated, As a mother our children are an extension of ourselves and we do actually feel the pain they go through whether it is real to us or not. We will forever be connected to them but have to accept that they are a separate being and have to be allowed to make their own choices and experience their own failures. Love them but don’t love them to death.
Think of the ups and downs of life like heart beats. Some are stronger than others and during happiness it is different than during sadness but there is still a beat. We need the peaks and valleys or else we flat line. Even though we don’t like the low moments we have to remind ourselves that it is only a moment. Next thing you know life bounces back up and you are on your way up again. This is the heartbeat of life and without it we are dead. Enjoy the beats and blimps.
So many of us build walls in order to protect us from our past. The problem is that this actually can do the opposite and it can prevent us from moving toward our future. These walls that are meant to be made temporary and not allowed to encompass us entirely. All too often those who built these walls get comfortable behind them. They end up becoming trapped behind that which they built to protect them. It is natural to want to never be hurt again after you survive, but by projecting on to the world the acts of specific people or events all you do is close yourself off from the love and good that you should be allowing yourself. Do not allow yourself to remain the victim forever. Allow yourself the time and then be sure to start healing. The longer you build that wall the thicker it will become and the more difficult to tear down.
I have written about my history and the fact that I was molested and then raped when I was young. I have not spoken about how that man stole my soul as it was as a young girl. That very first incident changed my life forever and this man stole that from me. Do we as a society think about this as much as we think about the acts themselves? Innocent souls are stolen by the predators and when they are caught they are given unimaginably short sentences after giving a life sentence to their victims. The victims are shamed and often, like myself, don’t speak out. In my case, I blocked my trauma out for 5 years and during that time had self-hate and harm. I thought about suicide many time and actually attempted, just wanting to go to sleep and stop the inner voice from continuing to tell me horrible things about myself. My inner voice hated that I didn’t get her justice and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting help or why I wasn’t making sure the man that stole our innocence got punished. When I finally allowed myself to remember the rape again 5 years after, I promised myself I would never be silent about this again.
As a society, we tell children that sex is bad and that it is not something we talk about. Even this is wrong. We need to stop stigmatizing the act of sex and put the focus on the fact that these people that do these acts to children are predators and need to be given as extreme of consequences as they impose on their victims. These predators steal the souls of their victims and need to be punished as such.
We hear so often we have to love ourselves so that we can truly love others and be loved by others. What does it mean to love ourselves however? This means you have to accept that you are the person you are meant to be and that there will be people that don’t appreciate who we are but that is not something you need to focus so much on. Be sure that when you find the person you love that you don’t allow others to tell you that it is wrong for you to be who you love. Love is different for each of us but never forget you wake with yourself and you fall asleep with yourself as well. Love You!
This journey from Survivor to Thriver and Then Beyond, is in no way easy but it is truly within reach of each of us. Myself, I am between the Survivor and Thriver Stages and I work every day to take the necessary steps to keep moving more forward that backward. This road is often bumpy and there are many days I just think "Maybe I am good with just being a survivor. Why do I need to thrive anyway and is the beyond really that amazing? I am happy as I am now. Why do I need to keep pushing myself?"
The simple answer to all this is: I am meant to do MORE! My journey hasn't ended so why should I just stop working to achieve the ultimate life I am meant to live? I survived sexual abuse! I survived suicide! I survived a life of negativity. Why? The only logical explaination I can come up with is that I am meant to THRIVE and even more importantly reach BEYOND! I am meant to share my story so that others can survive themselves and know that if I can do it they certainly can. If you have done the work to survive your past regardless of what it held, be sure you are working toward thriving and living this life you have, to it's fullness without regret.
If we all accepted each other's strengths and weaknesses and stopped listening to the negative words that are thrown around, you would learn to enjoy your life much more. Remember if you don't hear the information direct from the source you honestly don't know the truth. Try believing in the positive and ignoring the negative for one week and I promise you your life will change for the better. Love you all!!
When we are born we have no reason to believe anyone or anything is going to hurt us. We trust with everything we know until the time comes when that trust is broken. Once this happens we begin questioning the intentions of things and ultimately others around us. Once trust is lost it is not easy to regain and tough to not project on even those who have never done anything to not trust them. It must be a conscious decision to put our past experiences behind us and to make a conscious effort to not make others pay for the actions of a few. It has to be as though after trust is lost with one person you are “re-born” in a sense and you can’t continue to hold everyone around you responsible for actions of a few. When you realize that once trust is lost it is not only the person who broke that trust you no longer believe it but you ultimately have lost trust for yourself in your judgement. Trust is freeing and as long as you are careful and you listen to your instincts so that you aren’t putting yourself in situations where those who have bad intentions have to access to take advantage, being able to trust is so much healthier than hold on to that negativity of not trusting and thinking everyone is out to harm you.
Your life is like a business! You should be working at it every single day and those in your life should be helping you to build the business not to let it fail. Surround yourself with like-minds and be sure you manage your life well! It’s yours to lead and choose who is in it!
There is a huge difference between being alone and loneliness. We all need to be alone from time to time to get to know ourselves. When we spend time in silence with our own thoughts we truly get to know who we are. If you can be content in your own presence then imagine how you are going to be with someone else. The key is to not allow yourself slip into loneliness. Loneliness is when you are alone and all you can think about is how empty you feel. It is not healthy to feel lonely because it can easily transition into depression. The healthy place to be is when you can sit in a room alone and not feel that you are. You are able to sit in silence and enjoy your thoughts and the silence in itself. Strive to be happy alone. If you can’t be alone with yourself why would anyone else want to be. Think about that.
I want to discuss Post Traumatic Stress and how it feels as though our souls have been stolen after a traumatic event. There are of course various levels of Trauma but no one can really say that one level is easier than another. It truly depends on a multitude of variables and it really isn’t anyone’s place to determine how each traumatic event will effect each person. Two people can go through the exact same event at the exact same time and each will process it all differently. No one person has the knowledge or power to determine another persons thoughts or emotions. Everyone of us is unique and need to process things in our own way. For society to tell us we need to just accept something and get over it isn’t realistic in a lot of cases.
I battled with PTSD myself after I was raped at the age of 12. I repressed the incident so that I wouldn’t have to face the truth and continue to relive the act over and over in my nightmares. This is how I dealt with the trauma and it almost killed me as I dealt with suicidal thoughts and attempted, thankfully I failed. The one thing in my life I can honestly say today that I am proud of being a failure at. Those thoughts can really get the better of you and for those not having them you have no way of comprehending what it is like. The only way I can try and describe it would be like this… Have you ever had a recording of something you hated play over and over and you couldn’t get the player to shut off? You feel anxious because you want it to stop but it just continues no matter what you do? It is kind of like that but the voices or images are inside your head and there is no off button to push, or power cord you can pull. Think of it like those battling with those voices and images in their head finally have enough and they make suicide their disconnection from the ultimate power source of life. Typically, they resort to these measures because they believe there is no other way to get them to stop and no one can possibly understand what they are going through. Those battling with memories of a traumatic event, continue to replay that event over and over in their minds because their brain is trying to resolve the issue and can’t change the outcome. They are the star of their own personal thriller movie in their minds and they are often scared to share with anyone for fear that no one will believe them or will believe they are weak.
No matter why, it is wrong that they should be made to feel they are the ones that did anything wrong. They need to be ensured that they are loved and that they will not be judged for the acts of others choices or even their own in some cases. Things that have happened in our past, whether that is yesterday or several years ago, can never be changed or taken back. We have to learn to acknowledge those events and history and accept who we are today. In order for us to overcome our past we have to put it in the past and not allow it to continue to tear us down in our present and definitely not let it hold us back from our future. We are on this journey together and we all need to help one another achieve the future that we were meant to have.
I am a huge component of Constructtive Criticism. There is a difference between Constructive Criticism and Descructive Criticism. The root of those Adjectives tell a lot about the intent of the Criticism. Constructive is exactly that, intent is to build up. Where as Destructive does the exact opposite, it is intended to tear down the one receiving the feedback. Now think about those two words a bit and tell me which would you rather be the recipient of. Personally I am pushing for much more CONSTRUCTION in this world. We need to be building one another up instead of tearing each other down. Choose your words wisely. Maybe even say them to yourself before to others. Listen for yourself how the words make you feel. Do they make you feel like you want to try making the change or do they just make you sad or even angry? Let’s work on building each other up and building a more positive society.
I made a huge break through the other day in my healing. I acknowledged a weakness in myself that I believe is going to help me to truly let go of a little more of my past. I have a pattern of allowing people in my life that control me through manipulation. It is typically people who are insecure with themselves and they find by tearing down my self-confidence they gain power over me, hence in return “holding me down”. I realized this is a metaphor for my past and the way I have programmed myself to survive. This I have realized is all tied back to my rape and the act of being physically “held down” during it. I see that I have learned to accept this behavior out of habit. By now acknowledging this about myself, I truly believe this is the next step I need to continue this path of healing that I am on. I refuse to allow myself to be “held down” by others any longer. I know my worth and I know that I have much to share with this world. I will no longer allow the weakness of others to become my weakness. It is an amazing feeling, when you can start to see things in your life clearly and be able to learn the lessons of our past instead of allowing them to HOLD US DOWN!!
There comes that time in our lives that we have to spread our wings and become the person we were meant to be. This often results in the loss of people we thought would be there forever. When we grow we don’t all grow together we have to accept that your needs and goals may not be the same as those from your past. During this growth process we learn new things about ourselves and see things in a different light. Unfortunately, some may not agree with your choices and you may not agree with theirs. This is okay, it just means you are both growing and like the branches of the tree of life we go in different directions and often we don’t meet up again the same as we once had.
This is for all my single readers primarily. Do you often hear the phrase, “Age is just a number” when meeting new people in the dating arena? I think about these 6 words quite often as I don’t agree that is is just a number. Now do I believe it is a make or break in a potential partner? Absolutely not! There is someone for everyone and every situation in our lives for sure. However, if you are very accomplished and have your share of experience you may look for a partner with similar experience. Well often, not always, with every day of age comes a day of experience right? So if you try to say that age is just a number then you are discounting the importance of the experiences that are acquire with every day you are alive! Myself, I appreciate every experience I am given and consider them a badge of honor that I either enjoyed them or even survived them. Never discount what you have learned with every day you are alive and continue to go out there and push yourself further and further to achieve so much more!!
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We all start out as caterpillars. We’re not born as the flying butterfly soaring through the sky. The caterpillar sees the world from the ground up. It explores the foundation in order for it to have the experiences of starting at the bottom before it flies high to the top of any mountain. If we want to get the opportunity to earn our wings we must survive life on the ground and then we must take the time to “cocoon” in order to transform to the flying butterfly. Never discount the importance of these two phases of your life. Do not be in a rush to become the butterfly or you will not develop completely and many end up with holes in your wings. Take every moment of your life in stages and don’t try to rush through it as each step is important to the final goal.
There is a great project I have seen on YouTube by a few different people that has inspired me. This project is The Beautiful Project and it shows how telling others they are beautiful changes them instantly. There is something beautiful in us all but we often can’t see it until someone else points it out. Be that inspiration to someone everyday. Step outside of you comfort zone and appreciate the beauty in a stranger. Go up to someone you don’t know and compliment them on one thing and tell them how beautiful they are. Imagine how amazing this world would be if we all started focusing on the beauty around us and less of the ugly. We all have beauty to share and when it is acknowledged by others it gives us the permission we need to shine. Give those around you the permission they seek to be the amazing beauty they may be hiding or not seeing for themselves…YET!!
What an amazing thing to be able to say is “I am a Survivor, Not the Victim,” of a horrible event or in some cases series of events. When we choose to be a survivor and not the victim we empower ourselves to overcome the shame or emotional pain that will prevent us from growing. Being a survivor indicates that regardless of what happen previously you will not be held back from what you believe you were meant to do in your future! Never allow your past to hold you back from your positive future just because at one time you were a victim. Remember that being a victim is meant to be a temporary state. A survivor is forever!
The mind is an incredible organ! It can block things that you go through until you choose to be ready to handle them properly! Don’t ever be ashamed of this process. Embrace this gift but don’t allow your past to hold you back from the potential future you have ahead of you! Those memories may return in time in pieces in order for you to be able to process them in the way you can handle them. I have learned this lesson myself recently! While accomplishing goals I set for myself I have also unlocked obstacles that were thrown in my path in my past. I can now process these past mistakes in the mindset of accomplishment and I know that in order to get where I am today I had to go through everything, good and bad, that I have been through. Accept that we are who and where we are in our lives because we needed to see things as we did to appreciate the future we have ahead of us!
While analyzing my past for the lessons I have learned, I have been empowered by all the things I have overcome and survived. I consciously chose to be a survivor of so much adversity. To others they saw a strong women with drive and motivation even when I doubted that about myself. “Fake it until you make it!” This is important in our lives at times. The key to this is to actually work to “Make It” not just sit back and wait for it! I have learned so much from those around me and from the mistakes that I have made along the way. Please remember that our weakness is the foundation to our strength. When we acknowledge our weaknesses we are able to build on them and grow from them. “How has my Past made me Stronger?” The answer to that is…My Past is my foundation to my future!!!
Fall is a great time of year. Seeing nature change right before your eyes. The trees go from beautiful greens to amazing shades of red, orange and yellow. While admiring the beauty this year I got thinking. It is like we get the opportunity to watch nature shed the past and prepare for the new of Spring. What an amazing feeling to see that it is natural to go through continuous change and by accepting this we learn that we have a new opportunity continuously to improve on ourself, learn lessons from the past, and grow from it. Keep Growing!
We often hold on to things that we need to throw out. “Out with the Old and In with the New,” I say. If you have items in your life that hold negative energy, you need to let them go. Holding on to the Old Negativity leaves less room for all the New Positivity waiting for you in the future. Let them go and open up to Positivity.
Have you ever notice how easy it is to get tethered to our past because it is what we have known. In order to truly let go of our pasts, we need to cut the tethering lines to those parts of our past. The lines that are holding us to a metaphoric dock that could actually sink us if it goes down. Without us even seeing the signs of damage to the foundation that in time could pull us down with it. Don’t just untie them, cut the right at the bow, the bridge, the waist, and finally the stern. Drift from your past then go towards your future, Full Steam Ahead!
When I think of Tough Love, I tend to wonder how can you be tough on someone you truly love? It isn’t easy to not want to help those you care about and watch them struggle when you have the means to help. How do you help them without actually enabling them?
Think about our kids and how we tend to want the best for them. If we continuously give to them without any expectations they aren’t able to learn how to fend for themselves. Now if we decide to teach them how to achieve their own goals we then give them the tools they need to succeed in life away from us. As parents we learned that we aren’t perfect ourselves but we want to give to our children what we didn’t have. In doing this there are times that we actually hurt them more than help them. If you can honestly say you have guided your children and given them the proper tools and they still choose the wrong path then it is definitely time to step back and let them figure things out for themselves. However, if you have only expected them to grow up and not shown by example how are they truly supposed to learn. Children are followers until they are shown how to be leaders. By first showing unconditional love, they still know they are loved when you are forced to implement tough love.
This same philosophy goes for those around us. If we continue to tell them what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear, how are they going to grow and better themselves when they are perpetuating the same behaviors over and over. Tough love isn’t easy but again when your friends and family know you love them unconditionally, they will know you only say what you say out of the kindness of your heart.
Just remember that in order to implement Tough Love, you first have to show Unconditional Love. Otherwise you are just being selfish and controlling and that doesn’t teach anyone anything positive in the end.
We should never forget where we came from, even when we grow and move on. Our past is part of our foundation. As long as you are sure to grow from it and not allow it to hold you back from your ultimate future.
We all have a past. Some good times, some bad times, some times we may wish had never happened. It is only when you choose to focus on the negatives that you can’t see each part for what it is. Be sure you remember mistakes you made so that you are able to relate to others whom aren’t perfect either. Your experiences can be empowering for you as well as others who may go through similar obstacles.
The worse thing any of us can do is forget we are all human and we make mistakes. I’m not perfect and try to see everyone as equals. If you make a mistake and you honestly want to learn from it and grow, I will be there to to help you up. I will give you positive encouragement as fertilizer to stimulate your growth but those who forget their mistakes tend to judge others without remembering where they all came from.
On my birthday I try to reflect on all I have in my life and all I am thankful to have accomplished in the last year. This last year has been an amazing one in my own self growth. This has been a year in which I got in touch with my positive core and took the initiative to cut out the negativity from my life. Some things others may not have seen as negative but for me to identify them as items that were constantly bringing negativity in to my life that was what was important. This doesn’t make those things or people bad just not good for me. We all have a purpose in this world and if we choose to allow negativity to continue to fester in our world that is up to us. It is my choice to keep myself away from these eliments and in this year I have learned how much of a difference in my everyday emotional well-being it has made. Find what makes you truly happy.
In the next year I hope to grow and take VixTalks to the next level and share all that I have to share with those who are open to the amazing life of positive thinking. Hang in there with me and together I think we can show one another an amazing world. Hugs to all…~Vix~
While sitting in a Senior High School Class listening to a couple guest speakers talk about their son being molested by their babysitter, I had an unusual feeling of understanding come over me that I somehow knew the pain and confusion this child must have been feeling. Feeling that no one understood what you were dealing with and the deep ache to rid yourself of an unknown secret. I really didn’t know why I had these feelings, but I sat in that classroom almost in tears and amazement on how these people were talking so freely about this traumatic event in their son’s life. Luckily this was the last real class I had that day because I was not able to focus on anything but the words these people talked about and how they were very clear that this is not the “Victims” fault that these people do these things. They also explained that if we knew anyone who had or was being hurt by someone we needed to speak up and not allow them to continue to make that person or yourself the victim any longer.
I walked around in a fog most of the rest of the afternoon and into the evening. I had trouble going to sleep that night with strange thoughts running through my head. Once I finally fell asleep I was restless and the next thing I knew I awoke screaming, “NO! STOP! YOU’RE HURTING ME!” The memories came flooding back to a horrible night in my life that I had somehow blocked from my subconscious. It was now back and I was never going to forget it again.
I had been molested with inappropriate touching and actions by a man close to our family. He made threats that I would be hurt or that my family wouldn’t believe me if I were to even tell them. This went on for several years and I just allowed this man to treat me like my feelings meant nothing. At age 12, I finally got the courage to stand up to this man and tell him “NO” and that I wouldn’t allow him to treat me like that ever again.
I thought that everything was going to stop and that I had finally been able to take control until I went to sleep that night. I awoke to the most excruciating pain and my head being forced into a pillow. I was on my stomach and I couldn’t move and at times could barely breathe while this grown man raped me and said horrible words to me while shoving my head further in the pillow so I couldn’t scream. I must have blacked out because I don’t remember anything after that.
From that day forward I was a different young lady. I went from being very outgoing and high spirited, to a tomboy and guarded. I wore clothing that didn’t flatter me as to not attract males. I became just one of the guys in my group of friends and started pushing those who were close to me away so that I couldn’t be hurt like that again. I didn’t speak of that night because I just remembered him telling me that no one was going to believe me. I eventually completely blocked it from my memory as a way to protect myself. I also felt there must have been something I had done to deserve this and that maybe I done something to encourage him. He made me a victim and by allowing that I empowered him.
This all came back to me 5 years later, yes I blocked this horrible event out of my memory for 5 years and all it did was tear me up from the inside and created insecurities and depression that I could not truly understand. I had thoughts of suicide and the feeling of just being completely alone and misunderstood. Once this all came back to me I decided I would never keep silent about it again. I pulled myself together and wrote it all down in an anonymous letter to the class, we had a drop box that was in the room that we could put questions in and the class would give their opinions and advice. I didn’t hold anything back in that letter, well nothing but my name of course. I asked if they could help me to determine what I needed to do next to overcome this and how I could stop from being this victim and now take control of my life, once again.
When I got to school that morning I dropped the letter in the box while no one was in the class and proceeded with my school day feeling a bit of the burden I had carried so long, lifted from me. When I arrived to class that afternoon the teacher was standing at the front of the class with his stool and asked everyone to please take their seats. I knew what was about to happen. We all sat down and he sat on his stool and proceeded to tell the class that he had something very serious to read to them and that their help was very important. I gathered all the strength I had in me and listened to the words read back to me that I had written that morning. It all truly became reality at that moment. There was no going back.
After the teacher read the letter he looked to the class for their words of wisdom and guidance. I continued to not show signs that the letter was from me and I even asked and answered questions. These students were so helpful and they didn’t even know that the person who wrote those words was me. We discussed how this is something that is history and by continuing to allow it to fester was only hurting me and holding me back from my future. They talked about how this is not something I did or could have stopped. We discussed that my taking a stand was a good thing even though it caused this to escalate. This was the man’s burden to bare not mine.
After class let out I walked up to the front of the class to talk to the teacher as I did every day. He looked at me and asked me how I thought he and the class had done with the letter. I responded, “You did great!” He said, “You think so?” I looked him in the eyes and said, “It helped a lot!” His eyes changed and started to fill with tears. “I didn’t know,” he said, with the tears starting to flow. I looked at him and said, “I know that is why you helped so much.” If he would have known it was me he may have not been so open about his responses. He gave me a hug and for the first time in many years felt the warmth in another person’s hugs without being scared.
I will leave this story with this for now and will continue with stories that came from me deciding that I was not going to continue to be the victim of this man and that I would never be silent about it again. All being silent did was hurt me and the negativity of the secret was like a cancer in me and was just spreading and once I refused to allow it anymore my life changed. I won’t tell you it was always perfect after that day but it was the strength that I pulled from and continue to pull from today when things get rough.
In closing, don’t read this post and pity me for what happened in my past. My past is my foundation and what made me the strong independent person I am today. I want to share this story so that maybe I can reach others that are going through, or have gone through, similar times. Maybe, just maybe, you can see that you are not alone and you too can find the strength to be “THE VICTIM NO MORE”.
~Vix~
I have this theory of déjà vu. I believe before we are born we are shown many “moments” in our life that we will eventually reach. These moments will happen at some point in our lives but it is truly our choice how we get to them. I see it like a clam shell of sorts. The base of the shell is the point we are trying to reach and every time we reach that moment we are given a flash of the memory as a way to know we have reached that moment. Each time we have this flash we are then given the choice of “roads” to take to get to the next one. You are basically standing at the top of the clam shell with many choices of roads to take. Some are shorter with a few bumps in the road and some are longer but no matter which road you chose at that moment, you are inevitably going to reach that “moment”. Have you ever noticed that sometimes you have déjà vu within days of each other and other times you don’t have one for years? I believe that is because the shorter road was chosen and you made it to that”moment” quicker than if you were to have taken a longer road. We all have choices in life. It is up to us what roads we take. Even when bad things happen to us we chose if those things will destroy us or if they will make us stronger. Chose your road and remember there is a great moment to come, you just have to be sure you chose wisely and get there the best way you can. Even the long roads can be the fun ones if you enjoy the journey. Never regret choices you have made. Learn from your mistakes and grow from them.
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