I’m a job-hopping, felt like I didn’t belong, anxiety-ridden, domestic abuse and trauma survivor, “big” personality, impulsive, high energy, talks too loud in public, bubbly, sometimes too motivated woman, who is now a BADASS ENTREPRENEUR.
You’re not married to your current story.
I’ve been at what I can only consider my lowest of lows, in some dark dark places. You probably know what I’m talking about, because something popped into your head when you read that. Well, you can still climb out on top.
If you’re saying that you’ve overcome your trauma, but you’re still too afraid to tell your story, or you’re feeling guilt and shame at the thought of it, then this may be a hard pill to swallow—
—but you still have a long way to go.
Tell your story! Every nook, cranny, bad decision. Every hard-learned life lesson. Every stupid mistake, all of it in all of it’s raw vulnerable glory. And scream it loud. OWN it.
You don’t have to bear the weight of it anymore. Give yourself permission to be free.
Because your story just might be what someone else needs to hear to finally be able to say, “I’m not alone.”
Just so you don’t think I’m not a practice what I preach kinda gal—I value transparency and share my story with pride. I suffered a trauma where I was held hostage and beaten unconscious by a former schizophrenic, meth-addicted client I had served while working at a correctional facility. I had to advocate for myself to even get him put back in jail, more advocating than a beaten woman with a swollen face should ever have to do. I questioned my life, my career, my reason for being alive. Then, I fell in love with a human that society said “I shouldn’t have” and in the process lost my license to practice social work.
I can picture all the shocked and appalled faces right now. “She’s TELLING people that!?”
Sheesh, you can google it, it’s public knowledge. Hot off the press, I'm human after-all.
And just to clarify, sharing your story does not need to mean bearing it all on social media and with strangers on the street. It simply means integrating it as part of your identity and rejecting any shame that it may bring. Your past is part of you, and has made you who you are. Embracing it is the only way to find real self-love and glow the way you're meant to.
I not only healed from my story, I found strength and sparkle from it.
And so can you.
You just have to start, flip your story, be the badass you are and show the world your light can shine again.
I’ll be here waiting.
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