The Beginning of a Basic B*tch Seeking Enlightenment

Somebody tip the DJ, this song is tired and we're ready for a remix. AKA: How to re-write your life to be the person you were meant to be.

It’s hard to know where change really starts, isn’t it?

I don’t know about you, but whenever I look back on my life, I can see a ripple effect that lead to every major decision or event in my life. There is never just one little thing that suddenly shifts the trajectory of our experience. Rather, it’s an accumulation of events, beliefs, and mental bread crumbs that come together to form…something.

When I think about meeting Tom, I can look back and see the breadcrumbs that lead me to him and Destiny.

When I think about our decision to downsize, I can look back and clearly note all the hints that the world dropped in order to point me in that direction.

Perhaps not everyone looks at their life this way, and I can’t help but feel like you’re missing out if you don’t.

I still believe things happen for a reason, good and bad. I know not everyone shares that sentiment. But I also believe there is power in embracing the pain of our lives. After all, what other choice to we have? Life is going to bring us pain no matter what. We may as well decide to use it to our benefit.

That is how I look at the decision to finally become an active participant in the outcome of my life.

No more letting the chips fall where they may. I wanted to choose my chips and at least have a general idea of where I wanted them to fall.

Being the observer

The origins of the decision to change my life could probably be traced back to my childhood where I felt more like an observer in a zoo rather than an active participant.

I watched chaos unfold in the lives of the people around me. My parents, my siblings, and my friends.

Each time I watched an event play out before my eyes, I made an internal decision that went a little something like this, “I don’t want that.”

Seeing my siblings struggle after becoming teen parents led me to avoiding any kind of sex that could led to the production of a baby until well after I graduated high school. No thanks. Not worth the risk.

I actually told my high school boyfriend that if sex was that important to him, he could seek it elsewhere. #peaceout Also, can we acknowledge that there are truly great guys out there who are willing to honor the wishes of their girls they date? Not enough people talk about them.

It’s easy to see that every tiny experience from my childhood played a role in my grown up decision not to want my life to be pure chaos, but I think the final nail was hammered in after my dad died.

A period in the middle of a sentence.

I have shared the story of my dad’s death a thousand times over, because it has truly shaped who I am as a person.

There I sat in a hospital chair staring at him dead on a hospital bed, my grandma stroking his hair. A million thoughts raced through my mind in a blur of confusion.

But he was going to move up north.

He won’t be walking me down the aisle.

He’ll never get to do all the things he said he would do.

The idea that the period at the end of my dad’s sentence came at the age of 43 was not something my 19 year old brain knew quite how to understand.

Wasn’t he still supposed to be writing his story?

After nearly five years estranged from him, I knew we were reconnecting due to his failing health and yet my ever-opportunistic mind believed that he would get better. The people who told me he was sick didn’t know that he was secretly a super hero. They didn’t know like I knew that he couldn’t be defeated and yet there he was, gone.

He did this to himself. Was the next thought that played on a loop in my brain for the next ten years.

He actively wasted his life.

Right then and there I decided I would not follow in his footsteps.

I would be in control of my life in any way that was physically possible.

If my dad had never picked up that bottle, he wouldn’t be lying in that bed.

He was in control of the movements that lead to his destruction. It was so clear to me that this was preventable, and I blamed him more than I knew for longer than I care to admit.

Painting a picture.

It wasn’t until I reached about the age of twenty five that I started questioning everything I knew about life.

Up until that point, the biggest impact my dad’s death had had on me was causing a deep fear to not waste my life.

This desire wrongly translated into me believing truly living meant buying anything that caught my eye, going out every weekend, and accumulating all the best things in life.

That was living. Right?

It wasn’t until I accumulated all the right stuff (except maybe the pink muscle car I dreamed of owning one day), that I realized I was still…empty.

Sure, I had done everything I thought I should in order to paint the picture of a perfect, well-lived life, but everything still felt off. If I still wasn’t happy, maybe I was broken, or maybe I had been looking in all the wrong places.

Basic B*tch Seeks Enlightenment

With no better way to put it, I had attempted to build a happy life that was only skin deep. It’s tricky too because I had nailed it.

I wore the right stuff, I was the right size, I owned the big home.

This means I was also treated better by those around me which only makes living a false life like this more difficult to walk away from.

When your ultimate hope for life is to get people to like you, and it finally happens and you still feel stifled because you’re still not your full self…well, it’s a crushing blow.

For the first time in my life, I started asking myself big questions like,

“If I keep trying to be who everyone wants me to be, will they ever actually like me?”

“Do I even know me?”

Let me tell you, it felt like I was starting from scratch, except it was worse.

I wasn’t starting from zero.

Because I had built up a life to look the way other people thought it should, I was more like somewhere below negative zero. It was like I wanted to rebuild a house from the ground up, but first had to remove all the furniture while also trying to determine which furniture I actually liked. Not what was trendy, not what other people told me I should own…what I actually liked.

Negative zero.

Redefining purpose

I had grown up in the church, and was thankful to have always had a faith, but for the first time, I was determined to understand my own spirit, who I was, and what purpose I might have been given for this lifetime.

Some people don’t believe in purposes. Maybe that’s because some people come without them? Or perhaps it’s more about our human idea of what a purpose should look like.

I can tell you, in the pursuit of purpose I have tried way to hard to find it.

Maybe I am just meant to be a stay at home mom who devotes all her time and energy to her family?

*Enters deep depression.

Maybe I am meant to be a renowned author and speaker whose name is known far and wide.

*Becomes uninterested in her small blog.

This big pursuit of a grand purpose I think is what hangs most of us up.

Still, I couldn’t deny the fact that I just knew something was off with where I was currently at.

Ten years later, here’s what I know about my purpose:

• Spending time with my family is one of my top priorities.

• Fully devoting myself to the service of others is draining if I don’t take care of myself.

• I am meant to use my voice.

• Writing is a skill I enjoy getting better at.

• I was meant to find my voice rather than saying words I thought others wanted to hear.

• Living with passion and purpose doesn’t have to be tied to a paycheck.

(People kept telling me that last one, and I kept ignoring them. Go figure.)

What I know about finding yourself (the quick version)

Starting next week, I will break down the lessons I learned and applied to my life in order to grow and —seek enlightenment. For today, I want to offer up a few ideas on where you get started.

To find yourself: find where you hide yourself

For me, I largely hid myself behind my looks. When you are pleasing to look at, people are just nicer to you. It’s a fact.

In order to prevent anyone from ever not liking the real me, I made sure to keep a shiny, polished version face forward at all times.

Others hide themselves behind their accomplishments, a sense of humor, an attitude of “I don’t care what anyone thinks,” over-serving, and mirroring.

Pick your poison.

When you can begin to find the mechanisms you use to hide yourself, your full self from the world, you get a look into how you can begin chipping away at this defense mechanism.

It’s scary, believe me. You’ll feel open, and vulnerable. Freedom is on the other side of these fears.

To find yourself: find what you were told was not OK about yourself

We were all given some messaging about what was wrong with us when we were little, whether intentional or not.

I still remember the day my daughter was being loud, talkative and, well, fighting back with me when she was about 5 years old. In a spit of furry, I yelled, “You are such a BRAT!”

In an instant something in my body recognized that word from a moment in time that I had long since forgotten. As much as I loved my grandma (and perhaps that’s why it hurt so much), at one point in time she called me a brat and my subconscious was ready to face it.

I stopped arguing with my daughter and excused myself to my bedroom.

Brat. Why did that word hurt so much? What was it that I learned bring a “brat” meant?

Voicing an unpopular opinion.

Speaking up for myself.

Being loud.

And, well, being bratty too I suppose.

For the first time, I was coming to terms with this word and had to decide on a way to proceed with it that wouldn’t make my daughter believe that speaking up for herself was a bratty thing to do.

I wanted to find the words to let her know that her voice mattered and was important (because I was still learning to use mine), while also making sure she knew we need to be intentional with how we use those words.

Words hurt.

So, what were you told about you that wasn’t good.

Too sensitive? Not too bright? Like a bull in a china shop? (My mom still quotes this one that she’s carried with her since childhood…and I have no doubt it effects how she views herself as an adult.)

Remember, whoever said those words or formed those beliefs, they were only speaking from their pre-programmed mind.

No doubt they were passing down beliefs about what you should be like based on what they believed they should be like or what people in general should behave like.

Their words were not facts.

You can go ahead and erase it from your belief system about who you are as an individual. You have my full permission.

The next time those words pop up ask yourself, “What is it that makes me believe this is true?” “Is this true?” And visualize tying that word to a balloon and letting it float away into the sky. Bonus points if you let out a deep breath of air while you do it.

Keep reading

My biggest recommendation for changing your life and aligning with who you were meant to be? Stick with me.

I got your back.

I’ve shaken free from another layer of who I thought I had to be and I am ready to finally use my voice the way I have been wanting to.

To share my story and inspire you in yours. Join me, won’t you?