Sadness and pain are things you have to sit with and get to know or you’ll never be able to move on.
I still wake up every day and try again to become a better version of myself. Some days I feel as if I’m getting closer to the best version of me. Other days I eat cream cheese for dinner. But the gift of life is that we get another chance tomorrow.
What’s good will always be good, and one of the most awful, beautiful things about the hard seasons is that unless we experience hardship, we’ll never truly appreciate and remember the good that was always good.
I don’t need to find anyone. Right now, in this moment, I’m my own hero.
Nothing is wasted. Every single moment is preparing you for the next. But whether or not you choose to see this time as something wonderful – the time when God is stretching you and growing you or maybe forging you in fires hotter than you think you can withstand – all of it is growing you for the person you’re becoming, for a future you can’t even imagine.
You are more than you have become.
I am successful because I refused to take no for an answer.
This amazing thing happens when you start to grow in one area of your life: other areas improve with it. If you drop a handful of pebbles into a lake, you’ll move the water around a bit. If you drop a boulder into a lake – meaning, if you put all your energy into one area – the impact is incredible. The ripple effects of that choice spread out in all directions.
There is another option – one people rarely cling to – embrace the madness. Interestingly enough, the people I know who do this best are the ones whose lives are the most chaotic of all. They’re my friends whose husbands are serving overseas. They’re the women I know who are raising special-needs children. They’re the single mamas working three jobs. I believe it’s because they learned a long time ago that there is beauty in the chaos, as well as freedom in not trying to fight against the tide.
When we go through something difficult or encounter a big life change it takes courage to move forward in any way. Meaning, in order to move forward you must decide that there is something greater at stake than the way you’re feeling or your fear of feeling pain again.
And on the days that seem the hardest, you’ll remember that – by an inch or a mile – forward momentum is the only requirement.
Nothing that lasts is accomplished quickly.
I am still here because I refuse to let anything or anyone decide what I get to have. I am still here because I refuse to let my trauma have the last word. I am still here because I will not let a nightmare have more power than my dreams. I am still here because I didn’t allow the hard time to make me weak; I willed it to make me strong.
Only a small part of our population is encouraged to believe in themselves and their potential from childhood on. People raised with advantages tend to see more possibilities. People who were taught self-worth from a young age are more likely to believe in their capabilities as adults. People with more resources usually perceive a goal as more easily achieved than those who have less.
Having something to work toward gives us purpose. Achieving new milestones, even little ones, gives us a sense of accomplishment and pride.
As an artist or a creator, you have to decide. You have to choose a path or live the rest of your life slowly killing your ability to do great work for fear of what others will think. You have to decide that you care more about creating your magic and pushing it out into the world than you do about how it will be received.
The longer you live in a state of honesty, the easier it becomes to simply exist there all the time.
Made for more is the definition of you, and your desire for more is not something to be ashamed of! Our potential – the potential that resides in every single one of us – is our gift from our creator. What you do with that potential is your gift back to the rest of the world. The worst thing I can imagine is that you might die with that potential still untapped inside of you.
I am successful because I have never once believed my dreams were someone else’s to manage. That’s the incredible part about your dreams: nobody gets to tell you how big they can be.
When you’re looking for a community of women, look for the ones who want to build each other up instead of tear each other down.