Phew….2019 was a doozy! It was 365 messy, beautiful days. In all my 39 years, I think 2019 will be locked in as most significant. Life is like the weather, you have bright sunny days and others that are stormy. I feel the same way reflecting back on different years of my life. Some just meh and uneventful, some amazing with little bad stuff, then the years of losing loved ones. Those years were tough yet sort of a blur. I was just surviving. Going through the motions. Then there is 2019…the year of healing.

Instead of glossing over my pain, grief and anxiety. I leaned into it. For the first time ever, I took a long look in the mirror and really saw myself. Sadly, what was looking back at me was not who I wanted to be. She was angry, sad, bitter, treating herself and people she loved poorly. She was selfish, and self-centered. It was time for change, and I knew it.

I thank god often for the turning point of my life. I had a panick attack in early January 2019. I thought I was going to die. I literally sat up all night unable to catch a full breath. I will never forget that night. I had fallen asleep only to wake up a couple hours later feeling as if I was having a heart attack. No matter how many deep breathes I took it felt like I wasn’t breathing at all. My hands were clammy and unable to loosen out of a fist. I had no control over my body. For someone who survives on control, I was terrified. This went on for hours before I finally woke up my husband to ask him to please just hold me. I remember crying and looking at him saying “I know I’m safe, yet I still feel like I’m dying” My rational mind knew I was not having a heart attack. I was in fact breathing, yet couldn’t get myself to come out of it. That day I would reach out to my Dr for help and hear words like high functioning depression and anxiety for the first time.

I was forced to face all of the things weighing me down. Everyday was the same. I had been on auto pilot for almost 4 years. Outwardly appearing fine, a functioning member of society. A SAHM taking care of her children, showing up for all the school functions, doing all the house stuff. All good right? Wrong, I was surviving not living. I was an actress playing the roll of who I thought I needed to be. Did I have moments of joy? Absolutely! Was everyday tears and sadness? Honestly I can’t think of many like that at all. How many of us are just surviving, not living? I can tell you it’s very hard to distinguish until you step into actual living. Feeling EVERYTHING is living. Leaning into the good and the bad is living. I was just waking up, doing what I had to do in order to survive another day. I was neither sad nor happy. Just sort of there.

By this time my anxiety had gotten so bad that I could not get full breathes pretty consistently. My shoulders felt like cement. I was not sleeping well. I was short tempered with my children, and seemed to be in a constant state of annoyance. Each night when my kids would go to sleep I’d be up crying and beating myself up about all the times I’d lost my cool. This was not the mother I wanted to be. I was not being the wife I wanted to be. The day after that panick attack I knew I needed change. I didn’t know what the hell that change looked like. I would read about this thing called Reiki, and give it a try. You can read more about that here https://lifenofilter.com/2019/06/07/the-shift/

2019, you were rough! You were messy and painful. I thought losing my best friend to cancer was hard, I had no idea working through that grief and healing would hurt even more. I didn’t think that healing would change me so much. So much so that it took sometime to get to know who I was becoming. I learned to forgive and love the old me. Slowly that turned into unconditionally loving the new me. Living in the trenches of facing and healing your trauma is not for the faint of hearts. It sucks, it hurts like hell. It’s time consuming and a lot of work. Here I am almost 365 days later, still doing the work. Do you want to know the hardest part of it all? The people you will lose along the way. You will lose people you love. Not everyone will understand the person you become. Change is scary, not everyone will grow with you and that’s ok. It doesn’t make them bad, or less, it’s just where they are. Keep growing anyways. You’ll find your tribe and it’ll be amazing.

As the year comes to an end, my heart is full of gratitude. I’m grateful for my friends and family that stuck around supporting and loving me for everything I am and everything I’m not. I’m grateful to the 4,500 people who took the time to read this blog. I’m grateful to every client who has trusted me to help them on their healing journey. It’s an honor to be apart of. My heart is grateful to the four amazing women who walked into my life, and help me daily step into who I am. Working along side them is a privilege I do not take for granted. Then there is my husband and children, who accepted apologies for not always being the best wife or mother and continue to grow alongside me. They support me while I chase my dreams. And lastly, me! I’m grateful for myself, gratitude for finally loving myself enough to do better. To love better, live better, and make myself a priority. To anyone feeling like your stuck, know you can change it all. It just takes one baby step in the right direction. ❤️