Happily ever after is a choice! Happily ever after was created in fairytale world. Many believe in it, but happily ever after just depends on your definition of it. If your happily ever after was taken, you never possessed it in the first place.
I will warn you, you may decide to agree to disagree with me on this one depending on where you are at in your loss journey. I read a lot. Articles, books, blogs, posts, magazines, you get the picture, I read. Good for me. Does reading make me an expert? No. Does being book smart, really allow you to identify with me? No.
Experience, world experience and going through a similar struggle, struggles, that is what allows us to identify with one another.
There is a movement taking place, right now. It is one of empowerment, one that more and more are starting to grasp and hold onto. I see so many hearts taking back their shape. A new mold being created. It gets me excited and gives me so much joy for you and I. It is a movement of hope, a movement of responsibility. We have a responsibility to ourselves to hope and to feed our spirits with the right things, the right people, the right content. Our surroundings and attitudes really take on those of others, so be aware of those around you. Are they feeding your spirit, or keeping you in a place of hopelessness?
I came across a post that read, “Not everyone gets their happily ever after”. It had me really stop and think about this statement. I began questioning, have I identified with this? Do I identify with it? I think I have and I haven’t, during different seasons of my life. I simply do not believe this at this stage of my life.
It is through growing, healing, and loving myself again, that I see so much clearer.
Growing up, I clinged onto the fairytale, I waited and I found my man and believed we were going to have a beautiful long life together. Then in 2004 when he died tragically, I agreed with the statement, “Not everyone gets their happily ever after”, because I felt my happily ever after was robbed from me. During that time it hurt to see others lives moving forward, seeing them get engaged, married, pregnant, welcoming their new bundles, growing their families, seeing life move forward for them. I was so fixated on what I had lost, that I couldn’t think of anything but that. Until, I started to really work on myself and chose to see the joy in my days, the joy in what I had already had, that would never leave me, never be taken from me. If I believed my happily ever after was taken from me, that I would never have that again, then I never truly possessed it in the first place.
A love that is real, true and life altering, can not be taken from us. Although not here in the physical, we still possess that same love and we will until the day we die and are reunited again.
Happily ever after lies within ourselves and should not depend on another for us to achieve that definition. Loving, caring for, listening to ourselves and following our hearts through the struggles that life brings, will lead us to us, our true hearts.
If happily ever after lies in someone else, then we certainly will stay in the space of not being happy. It starts within us and stays within us. It is a decision, not a fate, not a destination! Happily ever after is a choice and it is up to me and to you.
Think about it and please forgive me for relating this to a tree, but grief has so many rings, so many stages. The rings of a tree are called annual growth rings and so I truly feel it a great analogy. You see, life can be pretty tough on a tree! Yes, you can relate. It can be brutally tough on us as well and has been. Trees go through drought, excessive rain, fire, insect plagues and disease epidemics, injuries, thinning, pollution. All of these acclimates leave their mark on a tree’s annual growth ring. Does this sound familiar? YES! Our annual growth is altered and affected by our surroundings, by the things that happen to us or the things that don’t happen to us. The way we grow, is altered by our struggles, our hurts, our feelings, our environments.
Your growth ring may not be growing right now, you may feel in the darkest places and spaces where time has stopped and memories flood through and surround you. It may be hard to breathe, feel so lonely, so misunderstood, so lost. You may have said out loud, lord please take me and spare me this pain. I know. Your life has paused and everything around keeps moving, and that movement feels like light years ahead of where you are. I know.
So here is what I ask of you. Silence your mind, breathe in and out slowly. Relax your senses and when you feel calm and centered, ask yourself this?
“What is my happily ever after wish for myself?”
“Who do I want to be?”
Tough questions, right? Maybe you don’t know, you feel blank. Thats ok, keep silencing your mind and keep asking yourself these questions.
Happy is a choice, healing is a choice, living fully is a choice. Choose yourself today because unlike a tree, we have the power to stand up and move our roots, change our surroundings and take back our power.
This life is what we make of it, so be a maker.
I am sending love, light, worthiness and prayers your way. My disclaimer in all of this, is that grief is on-going and unending. It sneaks up on us in even the most unapparent moments. You won’t conquer it, you won’t get past it. You will get through it however, in your own time, your own way. It is unique to you, so give yourself the grace to understand that and take it easy on you.
