Life is Messy

“She could never go back and make some of the details pretty. All she could do was move forward and make the whole beautiful.”  ~ Terri St. Cloud

In Bold Brilliance I write about my messy beautiful life in a highlight reel and under the editors constraint of a given number of words. The stories I share are a bit vulnerable and yet with it I had the gift of distance and hindsight with which to write from. It reminds me a bit like when we were in elementary school and we were given a worksheet full of dots with numbers next to them … and the paper looked like a mess until we connected the numbered dots in order and then a picture appeared.  Can you think of how your life is a little like that too?

In the book I write of some of the challenges that I faced in my life and my career. Challenges that no one can truly prepare themselves for - and I was truly not prepared by my upbringing or by the examples I had in my life. I didn’t have a clue what constituted grit or resilience and I had seen a lot of examples of people just staying down once they were knocked down. I hate to admit it but I spent a good chunk of my life with a victim mindset and a learned helplessness.  I had also learned that if you don’t try something then you won’t fail.  I am not proud of that part of who I was and how it bore itself out on my journey.

In everyone's life there comes a time when you have to choose to be something different, to do something different, to become something more. People who know my messy story (even some of the messiness in between the ‘dots’) have asked me what was the catalyst for me to change and to take charge of my life and my decisions and my outcomes (good and bad). I wish I had a nice pretty answer for that. I do know that I gradually came to understand that no one was coming to save me and I think that like a lot of things in life - it was a series of closed doors, open windows, and trails of breadcrumbs from those who had gone before.

As the quote from Terri St. Cloud suggests…. Not all of the details of my life (or yours, I would suggest) are ‘pretty’.  I think it’s important to look at your life honestly and yet gently - I was doing the best I knew how to do at that time. And once we give ourselves grace (and forgiveness as needed), and learn what life wants to teach us through those experiences, then we grow forward. Paulo Coelho is quoted as saying "When you can’t go back, you have to worry only about the best way of moving forward.”