Instead of measuring my success and value by my own standards, I was measuring it by how others perceived me.
I had found that taking risks, being true to myself, and making decisions with good intentions can exceed even my own expectations.
Ultimately, we can never change someone else’s behavior – we can only change our own.
Because the truth is, nobody knows what’s best for you better than you do. You have to really sit still and ask yourself: What do I want? Does this feel right? What should I do? I realized I had to go back and do what I had always done. Listening to my gut was just as important as listening to the advice of others, and only I knew what was best for me.
As painful as some of the past year’s changes have been, they will ultimately lead to a better place. The adversity you come across in life may cause pain, but with pain comes growth and the opportunity to rise to the occasion as your strongest, best self.
Because you can’t expect to be treated great if you don’t first believe that you are great.
There is a love like no other. A love that requires no conditions. A love that can’t be explained or learned. It’s a love that gives you a greater purpose. It’s a love that can set the rest of your world aside.
Reality is hard to see through the adrenaline rush of a new love. It’s easy to project your hopes and dreams onto a relationship when it’s new and exciting, but the truth is that it is only in knowing who you are at your core and staying true to yourself that you can possibly see the difference between passion and real love.
You have to be okay on your own before you can have a healthy relationship with another person.
If you keep hearing negative things about yourself, they start to seep into your consciousness and you start to feel like they’re true. They cloud who you know you really are and you can lose yourself.
It was easy to blame other people for treating me in ways I didn’t like, but now I was seeing that I was the one at fault. The only way you can be mistreated is by allowing yourself to be mistreated, and that was something I did over and over again. Somehow, I needed to find that glimmer of self-respect, buried deep inside, that would allow me to say: I am never going to let that happen to me again. I needed to learn how to stand up for myself in a different way, but I didn’t know how.
Once again, the show became life imitating art, imitating life, because we went in with this whole boxing thing – you’re down but not out, and no matter what’s happening in your life, you keep fighting.
It wasn’t a “Eureka!” kind of moment – it was the slow realization that the parts of me that had been empty were starting to fill up again. Yet, as gradual as this all was, there was one surreal moment that crystallized it for me – one moment where I suddenly understood what Idol meant to people and what it was doing for me.
Your power is in your individuality, in being exactly who you area.
Through the kids, I had started to understand more about love and what it was to truly give love and receive it. I learned that there are certain things it’s not okay to accept, and that was making me feel powerful and strong.
What I wanted to say is that abuse has no bias. It’s not gender specific; it’s just never okay.
You’re hitting rock bottom,” she said. “You know, Jennifer, you have to hit bottom before you can make a change, and it’s finally happening.
Your friend mourns your losses with you, because they experience them too. The truth is, no matter how lonely you might feel, you’re never going through anything alone... you can choose your family.
Emotional pain is such a strange feeling. You can forget you’re in it – or try to, anyway – and then it sneaks up and finds its way to the surface.
Families come in all shapes and sizes, and they don’t have to fit the perfect dream ideal to make you happy. They are the people that support and love you by giving you strength when you need it the most.