No More!

I recently hit a point in my life where I began seeing things as they really are. After years of hardship, I feel like I began to see things more clearly. I saw patterns I'd never seen before. I saw some ugly truths I'd been trying to avoid. I saw what I was no longer willing to put up with.

If you haven't gotten to this point in your life, I encourage you to step back and really examine relationships, patterns, and seek truth. It's a good thing to look at your own actions and hold yourself accountable, but please realize this: others need to do the same. You can be the bigger person while still giving yourself a voice! Stand tall and let people know what you will and will not accept!

I will no longer

• Keep quiet for others' sake. I've never shared all the times family members have hurt me because I love my family so much, and I didn't want to make their lives more difficult. This hasn't turned out too well.

• Shrink to fit other people's lives. I will be me, and I will not be kept down.

• Accept responsibility for everything. Every story/situation has two sides, and it is not possible that only one person is always at fault.

• Explain myself. It doesn't get me anywhere. I know who I am, and that's all that matters.

• Tell people why they should love me. If you do, you do. If you don't, I'll try to be okay with that.

• Explain who I am. If people see me differently, that is on them. I know who I am, and I know the right people value me.

• Apologize for the past. If I've taken accountability and apologized, that's all I will do.

• Prove my worth.

• Be the old me. I will continue to work towards healing and show up proud.

• Feel guilty for things I need to do for my own mental and physical health.

• Expect grace, love, empathy, or understanding from certain people.

• Be angry because people don't have a loving heart for others.

• Be dismissed. If someone wants a relationship with me, they will have to work with me to repair what's been broken.

• Do things on everyone else's terms. I will have some control. If I want to handle something a certain way that's best for me, I will.

• Allow anyone to make me question what I know to be true of myself.

Some good friends and mentors of mine who know me well suggested this be "my song". I tend to agree. This is Me