I saw a video online where the lady was saying we shouldn't be so hard on ourselves. We tell ourselves things we wouldn't dare tell friends, family, our kids. She brought a childhood picture of a friend she was talking to and asked if they would say the things they tell themselves, to that little girl in the picture. Instead asking what they would tell their younger self. So, I found a picture of myself when I was really young, and started thinking about all that I had made it through all these years, and it gave me hope. So, here is what my life has looked like over the last 45 years:

By the time I was 5, I was taking away from my biological parents and put into 3 foster homes. One of which I got abused in. Then adopted by the 5th family my sibling and I had been put into. I struggled with being severely shy my whole childhood and was picked on and bullied at school from 5th-8th grade. My middle school, I decided I was tired of having a low self-esteem and being so shy. So, I started on my journey to always trying to better myself. I overcame my shyness by the end of highschool and became the extrovert I still am today.

My mom had become very obvious in her narcissism by the time I hit puberty in middle school. So started me on a road of co-dependency and always being a people pleaser and fixer. Still had a low self-esteem. Went to college and dropped out half way through because I had become lost on my path and very depressed. Dated a lot in my 20's, trying to fill a whole that I had and trying to find my acceptance and love in all the wrong ways.

Met my AH in my mid twenties. Got love-bombed, we moved way too fast and the honeymoon period barely lasted three months. I ignored my gut feelings and all the red flags, sure that enough love would bring out who I really thought he was inside. Had my boys all while slowly being emotionally, verbally, financially and covertly abused by my AH. His drinking got worse and I was left to do mostly everything for me my boys and my husband, all while losing myself and not understanding what and why these things were happening to me. He got sober a couple of times, but did recover and would eventually secretly start drinking again. I tried everything I could, to change how I acted and looked at my AH, carried, fought for our relationship all by myself. Believed all the many promises of getting fixed and stopping drinking, only to be disappointed more times than I care to remember.

Got to a point of being reduced to ashes and dust of my former self and started searching for why things were the way they were and was it normal for me to feel so utterely unhappy and insane in this relationship. I came across an article about being in a toxic relationship and started unwrapping the layers of all that I had been put through all these years. All the abuse, manipulations, games, gaslighting, projection, diversion, minimizing, red flags and so much more. I began my journey to knowledge and healing.

I now know where I want to be eventually and where my worth and strength comes from. How to detach, not let anyone affect me or my emotions and how to not engage in all the games our AH's play. I am not where I need to be yet, nor have a concrete plan of how to get there, but there are some things that came from looking back over my life.

Even though I have gone down the paths I have gone down, nothing could ever take away my positive outlook on life. I still choose to see the best in people and love them for what makes them special and unique. I still can enjoy simple beauty that surrounds us every day. I still enjoy giving of myself, regardless of what I will get in return. But have also learned how to read people better, what my boundaries are and what I will and will not accept from people and how they choose to treat me. And I have managed to perservere and survive without needing the coping mechanism of drugs, alcohol or any other substance, besides coffee. 

Please, go through your stories and look at all that you have made it through in life, what things nobody can ever take away from you and all that you have learned, and yet you still keep going and living to see another day. Look at the kind of badass you really are and own it girlfriend. Wear it all like a figgin badge of honor and be proud of all that makes up the beautiful people that you are and will be some day.

Here's to a much better year, 2018