Out with the old, in with the new…

“Legend has it that when a phoenix rises from its ashes, she is even more beautiful than she was before she burned.”

Ive always had an affinity to the mythological creature called the Phoenix. Hence the name of this blog. The phoenix is a powerful symbol of transformation from our darkest moments to rising above them. The power of symbolism allows us to convey a message in a much more impactful way. As with the Phoenix, great transformation only happens when you let go of what isn’t serving you any longer. In a lot of cases that can be past trauma, past relationships, emotional baggage and past circumstances, but they all usually have one thing in common, the past. Change and transformation doesn’t happen instantly, and I believe we don’t ever really stop changing or transforming. The question you have to ask yourself is are you changing for your best or for your worst? For me, I realized I wasn’t changing for my best when my life started to show clear signs of unbalance, which usually means we are already in an unbalanced state for a long time.

It’s not easy, it takes a lot of time and effort to rebuild yourself piece by piece. But if you go through enough you learn that what’s worth it, is rarely ever gonna be easy.

Start by asking yourself if your future self deserves for you to show up for her right now? Because every little step matters. If you do 1% today of what you need to do in a year you’ve accomplished 365% of it. And that hits deep because it’s so true. We usually procrastinate what we know we need to do for when circumstances are all in perfect order. But circumstances will never be in perfect order. As cliche as it sounds, the time to start will always be now.

This day and age, we're so used to instant gratification and a year seems like a long time, but 10 years passes by in the blink of an eye, let alone a year. Look yourself in the mirror everyday and tell yourself you deserve it because you do, we all do. Choose one thing to do that benefits your well-being no matter how small and that’s making progress. Believe me, it’ll be worth it. Avoiding yourself and your healing will only deter you from achieving what you deep down know you can achieve. The sooner you stop avoiding those messy feelings the sooner you’ll get closer to who you essentially are.

Make the space for yourself and find those you can confide in. You’d be surprised how often those people can be strangers who are going through something or have overcome something similar. No matter where you choose to go, above all else make sure you make that self-commitment and stick with it. It looks different for all of us. And when that self -defeating voice tries to manifest and slow down your progress don’t fight it, comfort it, acknowledge it and let it roll off your shoulders then keep moving forward like the bad bitch you know you are. I know all to well the urge to self-sabotage is prevalent, and those feelings or thoughts of self-defeat don’t ever really go away you just get better at being there for Yourself and shrinking them so they don't affect you as they used to. True healing happens out of nowhere there’s no timeline, but you’ll know when things in your life just start to change for the better and you start to seek out more ways to maintain the balance.

There’s healing in being heard, & power in confronting Yourself and keeping yourself accountable because it's no one else’s job to fix you.

We are and always have been our own heroines.

Honor the teacher within and live life purposely. Believe it or not, true beauty can be found in the midst of chaos. Thats where the magic is hidden, the key to who you are meant to be in is the throes of your hardest experiences. Our gifts are found not only in the things that we are passionate about but especially in the hard, messy lessons learned.

A lot of times we get caught up in rushing our healing, trying to hurry up and feel “better”. We want to perform at our highest level and forget all that occurred, dismissing all we went through and not giving it the validity it needs to heal. I’ll be the first to say that we shouldn’t ever focus solely on our problems and that we especially need to be active solution finders, but in order to get that point it starts by honoring what you did go through, clear out that mental and emotional baggage so you can refill yourself with what does serve you. If not you can often end up back to square one or worse.

We all have those times when you no longer want to keep feeling how you do and want to move on, I get it. I really do. In my humble experience, we go through what we do for a reason and we grow and heal al lot faster by accepting and acknowledging how you feel rather than just trying to splash fresh paint over it. This is all part of choosing progress over perfection.

Everyday in every way choose progress over perfection. Nothing in life is perfect, don’t allow social media or anything else to trap you in that illusion.

#Selfhealing is messy, it’s hard, it’s scary, and it’s often lonely but all those ugly feelings are phases you have to go and grow through to transmute them into healthy parts of yourself. As Robert Frost says, ‘the only way out is through.” Theres no going under, over, or around true healing; there’s only pushing through it, being patient with yourself, developing self-love until you reach the other side. Its a rebirth, a realignment with who you are at your core. And it gives you the confidence and the resilience to handle life a little better because you show yourself that no matter how broken you are, you’ll always find a way to rebuild yourself. Learn that you can live through what you thought was meant to destroy you. Allow your resilience to fuel something new.

We all have issues and we all have a story, only difference is that we all handle them differently. There were times in my life that I would think to myself there was no way I was going to be able to get past certain situations, I saw no absolvement, no solution, no light at the end of the tunnel. All I did was feel sorry for myself, affecting and sabotaging all my relationships. Continuing this cycle, spiraling down more and more, feeling it get worse and feeling powerless over it. Until I learned the reason I was afraid to be alone was that I was afraid of confronting a lot of things that occurred to me in my past and those feelings came to the surface when I reached the steep learning curve of being a single mom, full time college student and had literally no one to help. Or that's how I felt. Until I decided that I wasn't gonna feel sorry for myself, actively searched for what I needed to "fix" myself and get the support I needed no matter what it took. Nowadays you call it taking your power back. For me, I called it learning to count on myself and not being afraid to confront my own shit. This was the beginning of my #selfhealing journey. But before all that for a VERY long time I hated being alone, and ironically I felt alone all the time especially in a room full of people.

I don’t know if anyone else has ever felt that way or feels that way now, if so I want you to know you’re not alone. If you see someone that looks like they haven’t had the best day, it doesn’t hurt to find someway to help them smile. At the end of the day everything we do ripples onto the world around us and you matter a lot more than you know. However, don’t misconstrue this for having any type of tolerance for toxic people which I'll get more into in another post.

I can say that finding solitude saved my life but the type of solitude I refer to isn’t when you just don’t want to be around anyone because you feel empty, sad, ashamed, or depressed. That would be a call for a professional, which I am not and would not ever claim to be. I am only an expert at my own experiences and can only speak on that. But in my lowest of lows, I've been there. What I’m referring to when mentioning solitude is what I like to call intentional solitude. Where your intention is to build that relationship with yourself. You can do that in many different ways but starting little morning or evening rituals before or after the family is awake or asleep or if you live on your own just making sure to not give away your energy on social media until you’ve checked in with yourself. Having these small rituals from breathing techniques, meditation, stretching, journaling, reading etc are extremely healthy for anyone trying to create a more positive impact for themselves overall. Intentional solitude is nourishing to your soul and that’s where you’ll learn to trust your intuition and your instincts again. As kids we never second guessed ourselves as much as we do when we’re adults because we get so conditioned and filled up with other people’s crap. Like a broken record we can replay old stories of our past, things we’ve heard from those we look up to, and things from the world around us that cause us anxiety or fear and keep us confused as to who we really are. Learn to give yourself the gift of intentional solitude from time to time so you can unlearn to relearn who you are again and step into your own power. Get back to you and find what serves your highest self so you can discard the rest. Find your true tribe, those that have your back, support you and do that by showing you not by filling your mind with what they think you want to hear. Find the strength and power that you’ve had within this whole time and like a Phoenix, rise from your ashes.

Sending you all positive healing vibes now and always,

Anneli