Finding Your Quiet: A Sometimes Painful Journey
I recently found an old journal that shocked me into writing "The Time is NOW!" the book I'm currently working on. The following is an excerpt from that journal. At the time of this entry I had been married about four years, I left my job to raise our two boys (then two- and three-years old). We moved about five hours from our families and friends. I had still not had any help in dealing with a violent physical attack that had happened the year before I got married. This was a very dark period in my young life...
"I can't control my emotions...I feel both love and hate so strongly that it scares me. I have lost who I am. I have no identity...I am nothing...with nothing to say, nothing to give...I am tired, so tired. Why can't I find joy...what am I so angry about...I feel useless...God, what do have planned for me? How can I hear you above the noise of my life. I am isolated, alone, unworthy and afraid. Help me...I am in pain."
As a young woman, getting comfortable with time alone was a challenge for me. I tended to define myself through the eyes of others. I always felt my value directly related to how others viewed my life: were they proud of "who" I was and "what" I was doing with my life?
I found it difficult to like myself if others didn't like me, too.
When I had too much alone time, I found my inner voice was not very kind. In fact, she was downright nasty to me sometimes. I spoke to myself in a way that I would never consider speaking to another person.
For me the trick to spending quality time alone was to focus on what brought me joy. Cultivating the aspects of my life that made me feel at peace so that my kind and pure inner voice would drown out that negative voice that was sometimes almost deafening.
Society has a tendency to turn up the volume of that negative voice, doesn't it? It seems that everywhere we look, society is telling us that we should all be thin, rich and young...and anything less than that is unacceptable. If we aren't those things, we should do everything in our power to become them.
Wouldn't our time be better spent, would our lives be more fulfilled if we focused on being wise, real, honest and thoughtful? Aren't those the qualities that society should be parading around as everything that we should be?
Let us learn from the example of the "baby boomers." Many of them are retiring and suddenly depression and illness among them is skyrocketing. Why? They've spent their entire lives working and now they finally get to relax, so how come they're so unhappy? Because while they've been successful professionally, many of them have defined themselves through their work - what they've done versus who they are. With work over, they're lost.
Finding your quiet is the first step in finding your way home to yourself.
It has taken me many years to find my way back to Michelle.
Here's to starting your journey!
"I can't control my emotions...I feel both love and hate so strongly that it scares me. I have lost who I am. I have no identity...I am nothing...with nothing to say, nothing to give...I am tired, so tired. Why can't I find joy...what am I so angry about...I feel useless...God, what do have planned for me? How can I hear you above the noise of my life. I am isolated, alone, unworthy and afraid. Help me...I am in pain."
As a young woman, getting comfortable with time alone was a challenge for me. I tended to define myself through the eyes of others. I always felt my value directly related to how others viewed my life: were they proud of "who" I was and "what" I was doing with my life?
I found it difficult to like myself if others didn't like me, too.
When I had too much alone time, I found my inner voice was not very kind. In fact, she was downright nasty to me sometimes. I spoke to myself in a way that I would never consider speaking to another person.
For me the trick to spending quality time alone was to focus on what brought me joy. Cultivating the aspects of my life that made me feel at peace so that my kind and pure inner voice would drown out that negative voice that was sometimes almost deafening.
Society has a tendency to turn up the volume of that negative voice, doesn't it? It seems that everywhere we look, society is telling us that we should all be thin, rich and young...and anything less than that is unacceptable. If we aren't those things, we should do everything in our power to become them.
Wouldn't our time be better spent, would our lives be more fulfilled if we focused on being wise, real, honest and thoughtful? Aren't those the qualities that society should be parading around as everything that we should be?
Let us learn from the example of the "baby boomers." Many of them are retiring and suddenly depression and illness among them is skyrocketing. Why? They've spent their entire lives working and now they finally get to relax, so how come they're so unhappy? Because while they've been successful professionally, many of them have defined themselves through their work - what they've done versus who they are. With work over, they're lost.
Finding your quiet is the first step in finding your way home to yourself.
It has taken me many years to find my way back to Michelle.
Here's to starting your journey!
Labels: inspiration
posted by Michelle Yozzo Drake at 3:42 PM
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