Is your heart keeping you in situations that don’t feel right but you stay because this is what life is “supposed” to be. Has the false sense of love been so engrained in us that we’re willing to settle for less?

Less than what we deserve, anything is better than nothing. To have a warm body next to you. Even if it doesn’t ignite that flame in you. It doesn’t inspire you to be better instead brings out the worse in you.

Not able to express yourself and how you feel because let’s face it your feelings don’t matter. Have we become so conditioned to think that we have to cater to others instead of ourselves?

You can’t be your true self because you’re trying to be everything they want you to be. Each situation you go into you find yourself being chipped at a little more to the point of not being able to recognize yourself.

What happens when the pressure begins to be too much? We’ve all been there that suffocating, poisoning feeling that you just can’t shake.

Until one day you decide that it’s worth more to be able to breath freely than to have this illusion of love. You realize for once that you absolutely had to love yourself first or no one else would. You realize that you’ve been alone before and that you survived.

People look for perfect but perfect doesn’t exist it’s the imperfections that make it worth it. You have to ask yourself is it worth it? What have you learned in the imperfections? If nothing and you realize there’s truly no resolve to any problems then it’ll be a vicious cycle until you say you had enough.

Is it easy to walk away? No but it’s more than worth it. To be able to find your strength that strength that ignites your own flame. That ignites that part of you that wants and deserves more, the part of you that will learn what you could and could not settle for.

I left my relationship and over time made a list of what I NEEDED in my next relationship. I just needed to be able to express myself and not feel stifled and at this point I won’t be able to settle for less.

What would you need going into your next best thing? How much are you willing to give up to have a warm body next to you?

Loving yourself first is difficult because you have to breakdown all of the walls you built to protect yourself. Just think if you could love the wrong ones over and over again, if you just poured a fraction of that into yourself how much better you would be.

What does your love look like?

So many times we underestimate the power of healing ourselves. Healing ourselves of past pains the things that shaped our reality.

I thought that my personality was my own until I went to therapy and she told me that I had the personality and characteristics of a person who had an addict for a parent. Here I thought I was being me and I was in control of who I became not knowing I was being shaped by circumstances.

At one point I became so detached and I guess you could say depressed without even realizing it. I felt it was better to feel nothing in order to cope with everything that came my way. Why feel anything when people were out to hurt you?

I know now that’s not the case and people are not out to hurt me and anyway who could hurt me when I was in control of everything that was me. I had to realize everyone comes with lessons whether it be good or bad. I had to learn that no one was going to/ could save me that I had to save myself at all cost. But at what cost?

I gave up a 9 year relationship with the father of my daughter and despite him being the best that he could be for his family something wasn’t sitting right. The connection was gone if it had even ever been there. Once I freed myself I was able to breath and think clearly, clearer than ever before.

I started to open myself up so wide that I noticed all of my faults in how I treated myself over the years, whether it was my promiscuity, whether it was my abandonment issues any and everything that held me back in life. I had to decide for myself to get to the bottom of it all.

And that’s exactly what I did. All of these different circumstances made me feel like I wasn’t enough and there was so much self doubt that I couldn’t make moves in any direction.

I truly had to laugh and ask myself what made someone enough? And why did I feel like I wasn’t deserving of better? And truthfully speaking it wasn’t that I wasn’t enough I wasn’t DOING enough. I was doing nothing to fulfill me I was an empty vessel void of everything. I had to find ways to make me happy.

As I started to do those things like writing, reading and even reaching out to people mostly writing. I felt like I became bigger than myself and each time I did that I killed that part of me that felt I wasn’t enough. I decided that I deserved to be happy in whatever that looked like to me.

So despite circumstances I learned that I’m in control of how I feel, I learned that no one can make me feel loved if I dont have it for myself, I learned that in pain you’ll grow. The only one aside from my child that I’m responsible for is myself.

And learning this I would have to say this is what my happy looks like.

What does your happy look like?

I have to admit the things that would usually bother me no longer have a space in me. I have to say while I still suffer from anxiety I’m no longer frustrated by it. Learning to ground myself with little things like breathing, twisting my ring focusing on anything that I can touch even if that means laying flat on the floor. Once I’m able to breath I can now focus on the real problem at hand instead of the little details that plagued my mind. In every problem there’s a lesson you just have to be willing to solve it.

I’m learning that things are happening around me and even if it does for a moment affect me I can’t let it bring me down. I can’t save the world but I could save myself and in doing that hoping that people see my strength and use it for themselves.

I have to go with the flow of the current and not fight against it I’ve been there and drowned. Finding my own sense of peace in whatever that looks like to me has been the most rewarding.

What does your peace look like to you? Just close your eyes and picture it, feel it radiating through your body. When you feel it go search it out.

Whether that means leaving relationships, friendships, even jobs/careers.

The one thing money cant buy is a peace of mind and it is by far the one thing you cant live without.

How do you choose to find your peace?