This week's post is from the talented Laneshia Lamb! Laneshia and I instantly connected through a Writer's Group in Ashley Coleman's Write Laugh Dream after I read of her posts. Read that post here. I love how invested in self growth Laneshia is + I'm totally confident you guys will love her too! Here she is...
Resilient is such a strong + beautiful word until it describes what you need to be. Then it becomes a journey, seemingly out of reach. It’s like bathing suit season when you’ve been eating doughnuts all winter, or a clean house when you’ve done nothing all day. It literally becomes everything you want minus the work you don’t want to do to get there. And, why is the task so daunting, because we have to face ourselves. We have to face our failures, our insecurities + in a lot of cases our unanswered prayers.
I have found myself here before, usually after I have loved incredibly hard + for whatever reason a stop sign appears before my beating heart, with little to no time for me stop. As you can imagine, I crash, hard + my heart breaks. During this time I feel everything. The wind seems to be a little colder, the air a little drier, my commute a little longer + life in general bleaker. It’s easy to allow myself to be engulfed by everything that’s happening around me + at that point I want easy because life just became hard. I remember times when I did just that; I settled for the easy road. The results of my decision were buried emotions, unaddressed situations of my past, a gray hair or two + the overcompensation for my hurt. Not pretty. It wasn’t until I decided to take a long hard look at myself that I realized something wasn’t right. My paranoia, my inability to trust, the fact that I couldn’t relax, it all lead back to my choice of the easy road. I hadn’t dealt with anything but it sure was dealing with me.
Once I accepted that there was an issue, I started my path to Self Discovery. Along the way I found there were 5 consistencies amid by heartbreaks.
I accepted all of the blame for the heartbreak.
I internalized the heartbreak as an indication that something was wrong with me.
I allowed my mistrust for others to impact my ability to trust myself.
I gave up my power.
I made myself a victim, often times, unnecessarily.
| Accepted Blame | I accepted the blame, even if I hadn’t done anything wrong. I would take it as a means to hurry the reconciliation. This didn’t help the situation, even if it did lessen the time between heartbreak to makeup, because I wasn’t living in truth. The situation would always reoccur because I created a pattern of “acceptance” for unacceptable behavior.
| Internalization | I thought something was wrong with me, either I was too much of something or not enough. This is never good because you go into future relationships trying to change who you are as a result of how you feel another viewed you, who you aren’t even with. I had to learn to just let it go, we didn’t work + that’s fine. Another’s inability to see my light should never affect how bright it shines.
| Self Trust | I had chosen to love someone who didn’t return the love the way I needed them to, obviously something was wrong with my decision making skills, right? That’s what I thought. Not realizing that in a lot of cases we can’t control who we develop feelings for + we control even less what they choose to do while they have our feelings.
| My Power | I allowed myself to shrink after heartbreak. I would shy away from my emotions + my sensitivity, thinking that “being hard” would make love easier. It didn’t. I was made soft + emotion-filled for a reason, just because a relationship failed doesn’t mean I needed to change what made me, me. That was my power + mine alone.
“Take the time to love on yourself after the storm; there is a rainbow on the other side....”
| Victim | I took my baggage with me, making myself a victim in unwarranted situations. I was paranoid + attempting to avoid hurt at all cost. At the time it didn’t matter that the cost was literally my sanity. I ended creating arguments that were really about how I felt in a previous relationship; my feelings had nothing to do with where I was. I was an unnecessary victim.
Coming to terms with how I responded after heartbreak was essential to my recovery + my ability to be resilient. I needed to go through the process of self discovery in order to (1) repair, (2) rebuild + (3) reform. Facing yourself head on after heartbreak is difficult but it’s essential. Otherwise, it’s like an infection that hasn’t been treated. It will spread until it infects everything.
Take the time to love on yourself after the storm; there is a rainbow on the other side.
“ I am a mother, a daughter, a sister, and a friend. I tackle every single day intentionally and I write because its my gift. I am a creative. I live in my own lane, which is specific to no one thing or another. I love incredibly deep because doing anything haphazardly is no fun. I laugh hysterically. I am simply me, and this is my lifestyle.”
