It takes work

If I had to choose the most important lesson in my healing journey it's this: you still have to earn it.

Like with everything else in life. You have to go through it to grow through it. If you want good mental health, if you want to be happy, you have to do the thing. Every day. You have to put the work in.

I think we were all born with this hole inside us that never quite has enough. We can give in to the vices which sell us the easy path, give us a moment of satiety until the void asks, again for more. I don't think it's necessarily an individual flaw, but more of just a human condition.

The work is sitting with what you have in the moment and choosing the higher path even though it's twice as long and twice the climb. Because that bliss is far more satisfying.

You have to climb the mountain for the view to be as sweet.

I was always worthy of love. And I was always everything I needed. But I didn't believe that. That was my healing - my trauma wasn't my fault. But I was going to continue to perpetuate the same traumatic and self-abusive cycles in my life if I continued to treat myself as if I'm not truly worthy of love, where I sit in this moment. And that takes work. Accountability is a gift. It is also. Work.

I had to continue to identify the things in my life which don't belong. The things that are toxic, or don't belong to me. And I had to go through the tangible steps of excising them from under my skin. This means shadow work. It means confrontation. It means creativity and sacrifice. It means collaborating and holding space in places we never would have before. It means trusting people and trusting myself. It means taking others at better than face value, but really believing that everyone around you is simply doing the best they can. It's realizing that children can tell when you don't like them and they can tell when you're lying. Its drinking the water and leaving the relationship and removing the clutter and selling the car. It's accepting that the things which made you comfortable also made you sick.