New & Improved
We are 6 months into 2024! I don’t know about you, but life is flying by! So much has happened in this short amount of time. If you are reading this blog post it means that you subscribed! YAY!! Thank you so much! It means a lot to me that you are venturing on this journey of life with me. I hope that I will continue to inspire and motivate you in ways that no one else has been able to do for you. With that being said, WELCOME to the NEW & IMPROVED Helpin’ & Healin’ site. While yes, this is a blog, but you will get so much more within this space! I am so excited to share with you. Today’s blog post is exactly what you read in the title: New & Improved. While the blog is new and improved, I want you to think about your life in this way. From this day moving forward, you are new & improved. What does it mean to be new and improved? Well, that is in the eye of the beholder. If you are looking in the mirror, every day you wake up is a NEW day to discover, and IMPROVE upon something/anything in your life. As a previous blog stated, perspective is key. If you haven’t read that yet, go check it out after you read this one.
Take one thing in your life that you feel like is old and needs improving. I am not talking about anything materialistic either, like a couch in your house. I am talking about an emotion, a feeling, or even a behavior that you want to refresh in your life. Maybe it is your outlook on money? your job? they way you choose to self-care? the way you react when you are angry? how something triggers you? Whatever you choose, choose one. Often times we want to tackle too many things at once, get overwhelmed, and then nothing gets done. Trust me, I understand. A great supervisor of mine once said, “Sometimes you have to slow down to speed up.” I didn’t understand what she meant when she first said it, but I get it now. If we don’t slow down enough to notice, we can’t get anything successfully accomplished.
I want to choose how I think about my current friendships as my one thing that I feel like needs improving. As I have grown older I am able to look back on my life and friendships and see so much that I didn’t see then. I have realized that I used be such a chameleon to “fit in.” There was no authenticity in anything that I decided to do in my life when it came to friends. While I enjoyed singing, I got emotional release from dancing, but didn’t dance as often as I sang. I didn’t want to be sexualized, but went out of my way to be noticed and even cared more about men than I did my friendships (now I recognize that as a trauma reaction but that is a different blog). As I think about it now, I owe someone an apology from high school. I was sneaky and manipulative, but that isn’t how I was raised. All I can do is shake my head, exhale, and thank God for keeping me. All of that to say, I was not once at a place where I felt like I could give guidance to others or even tell this story about myself without feeling shame. While I know that part of my personality is being extroverted I haven’t been the greatest friend over time. I can honestly acknowledge that now. I recognize that I thought about friendships in a reciprocal way. I counted how much a friend was there for me verses how much I was there for them. I expected friends to reach out to me when I didn’t take the time to reach out to them. I put certain friends on a pedestal, when no one should be higher than anyone else, as we are all human. God is the only one that is on a pedestal today. It has been a combination of factors that have lead me to friendship spaces I am in today. While I feel more lonely at times due to these decisions, I recognize that friendships are more about God’s timing than my own. God has continuously brought the necessary people IN and OUT of my life. I trust wholeheartedly in that now. My new and improved way to look at friends is to not stress over it, not assign blame to it, not allow myself to feel shame over it, and allow God to work. I accept new possibilities, growth, and even reconciliation, if it is God’s will. Being my authentic self means bringing myself to the table. Being up front about events that I don’t want to attend, being honest about how I feel when someone does or doesn’t reach out, and allowing myself to feel any and every emotion no matter who I am around. While all of this is much easier said that done, I know where my strength comes from.
New & Improved means being more authentic with yourself first. New & Improved means facing yourself in the mirror and liking what you see. New & Improved means setting boundaries and maintaining them for your own mental well-being. New & Improved means ALLOWING YOURSELF TO FEEL & HEAL. What will you choose?
