Getting my &*#@ Together Series: Know Thy Self

I started blogging a few years ago and would write about a variety of topics, from celebrity bs to my take on love and relationships.

Here I was, doing my best impersonation of an adult, working, going to school, taking care of kids, and I’d lost who I was – or to be more accurate, I never really knew who I was, but got distracted from that fact by all of the responsibilities that adulthood brings.

I found myself slowly losing the motivation to be creative and slowly, but surely, I stopped writing.

But the embers got stoked again recently and I found myself writing, but I also found that is just wasn’t the same as last time.

And that’s when it dawned on me: I finally figured out who I am and that has manifested itself in so many ways, including my content.

So in an effort to live my truth and add some structure to my baby online empire, I’m going to dedicate the next few weeks (or until I run out of things to talk about) to sharing my trials, errors, and triumphs on the road to getting my ___ together.

Please believe me when I say that I’m no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I can say that I’ve come far and have no problem talking about how I got here.

The day it finally hit me, I was so hyped! I called my mom and screamed into the phone “I found myself!”

And in true mother form, she told me how happy she was for me.

I had meditated, grounded myself, prayed, cut some people off, and set proper boundaries with others … everything everyone tells you needs to happen on your path to finding yourself.

And I felt great; like I was floating on air, dipping and dodging all of the negativity in the world.

A few weeks past and the feeling started to fade. Before I knew it, I felt lost again and I was pissed.

So I did what any self-respecting adult would do … called my mom again.

It was at that point I realized two things:

1. While I adore my mom, there was nothing she could do to help me. (sorry, ma)
2. Finding yourself and being at peace with who that person is is not only a personal process, but something that I had to constantly work at every day.

So here I was pissed again.

I did all of this introspective work and I had to do it all again. What I didn’t realize was that finding yourself isn’t like running a race. You don’t get to the finish line, plant your flag in the sand, and breathe a sigh of relief that you’ve finally achieved something. You get to the finish line, plant your flag in the sand, breathe, and keep going because there’s another road ahead.

Nuts and bolts, we change every day, b.

Our thoughts, feelings, experiences, the music we listen to, the people we surround ourselves with, each passing moment, it all shapes us. It’s up to us to determine if we’re going to use these things to help us grow or not. When we fail to acknowledge this, we stop growing and when we stop growing, we lose ourselves.

So I keep at it. I take pictures of things I think are beautiful, have conversations with people with whom I know are going to give me a full belly laugh, sing songs in my car with the volume as high as it can go. I do it all, I feel it all, because it all helps to shape me.

The trick to it is making sure the things around us are feeding us the right “food”.

But more on that next time folks, because I could seriously go on for way longer than you’d like to be staring at this screen.

Until then, be kind to yourself.

Love and light,

Erin