How do you pick yourself back up when your life has come shattering down around you? After my last IG post I got a message from someone asking me that question and she used that exact word, shatter! The same word I used years ago to describe my life.
Have you ever heard anyone use that phrase before? How about this one?
"2012 turned our lives upside down and inside out." A quote from my friend Cindy's blog who lost her 4 year old son to cancer.
or this one
" I rapidly began to lose my sense of security." Cari Crookston on her blog post titled Faith, Fear and The Free Clinic.
Do you know what it means when someone says shattered? Do you cry for them? Do you know that the words "shattered" or "upside down and inside out" or "lose my sense of security" all mean vulnerable. Some people use the word vulnerable with absolutely no understanding of how deep it can cut and how badly it can hurt.
I tried my best to explain what that feels like. Picture a person, yourself, with a bubble around you. A clear but hard and fragile bubble. And everywhere you go this bubble goes. In fact, it's just a part of you. You don't even know it's there. You are so used to it being there you actually don't see it anymore. You see everything outside of it but you live life as if it weren't even there. But that's the funny thing because that hard fragile bubble is in fact your life. And you're so caught up with everything on the outside of it that you don't even see how that bubble encircles you day to day. All of a sudden, in a matter of a second, a phone call, a knock on your door, a doctors report, what ever it may be that bubble shatters and is literally sitting on the ground at your feet in thousands of pieces. There you stand, alone, afraid and so very, very vulnerable. While you stand there, with your life in shambles around your feet, the rest of the world continues to live with their bubble still untouched around them.
What do you do now? You can't go to sleep and not wake up the next day. As wonderful as that truly sounds the reality is - sure as the sun will rise - so will you. There is nothing to do but rebuild your bubble. And slowly, so slowly it hurts you glue that fragile bubble back up around you. And in the process you leave all the pieces that don't matter on the ground. There are some things that simply have no place in this new, protected, tender bubble and leaving them on the ground is where they best belong. So here you are, with your life built up around you again but everything about the bubble is different. It's not clear like so many other people's. No, it's been stitched up, glued together and looks like a patch work quilt. But the beauty of this new bubble is that you cherish it, you value it because YOU BUILT IT! And now when you get up and face each day you no longer look past the clear bubble at the rest of world. You see the pieces that matter most that make up your very own life.
So what did I do to rebuild my life? I think it’s important to note that when I finally did come face to face with my abuse it was 20 years after it had happened. It just came waltzing back into my life and hit me over the head like someone smashing me with a 2x4. That was my rock bottom, when I remembered and realized I had been abused. And it’s hard to describe what my life was like in the following days and weeks. The good news is from rock bottom there is only one place to go and that is up. Here’s what I did to pick myself up and to rebuild my life. I am not a therapist who is giving professional advice, I am just sharing my own personal experience.
1. Almost immediately I changed my phone number, my email, and closed all social media accounts I had. We had just moved into an apartment while we were waiting for our house to be built so nobody knew where we lived and that was perfect. I NEEDED space! Space from friends, from family, from the world, from everyone! I wasn’t in a place where I could emotionally handle relationships. I had to figure ME out! And right from the get go, this is where I began to rebuild my life. Where I began to pick up those shattered pieces and place them back together. I got to decide who got my number and email and who I wanted to actually talk to and have be a part of my life. I was amazed at how many people I had in my contacts that I just didn’t care to ever talk to again. The other thing I learned very quickly was which people in my life truly cared about me and which people only wanted to talk to me to get the dirt and the gossip. Brene Brown, my favorite researcher/storyteller ever, taught her daughter about good friends by using a marble jar analogy. Her daughters third grade teacher had a marble jar and when the kids were behaving well she would add marbles to the jar. When they weren’t behaving she would take some out. When the jar was full the class would have a celebration. Finding true friends is like that! We share the most important things in our life with the people who have proven over and over again that, through their actions, we have been able to emotionally add marbles to their friendship jar. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life it’s that peoples feelings are important. And learning who you can and can’t share your own feelings with is equally as important. This first step to rebuilding for me was not only an essential one at the time but it was also a liberating one.
2. I researched the heck out of sexual abuse victims! I researched specifically how childhood sexual abuse can affect your adult life (because that’s what happened to me) and I can not emphasize how much this helped me. It was eye opening and incredibly validating!
One of the many things I read was a general conference talk by Elder Richard G. Scott titled Healing the Tragic Scars of Abuse, in it he says “Unless healed by the Lord, mental, physical, or sexual abuse can cause you serious, enduring consequences. As a victim you have experienced some of them. They include fear, depression, guilt, self-hatred, destruction of self-esteem, and alienation from normal human relationships. When aggravated by continued abuse, powerful emotions of rebellion, anger, and hatred are generated. These feelings often are focused against oneself, others, life itself, and even Heavenly Father. Frustrated efforts to fight back can degenerate into drug abuse, immorality, abandonment of home, and, tragically in extreme cases, suicide. Unless corrected, these feelings lead to despondent lives, discordant marriages, and even the transition from victim to abuser. One awful result is a deepening lack of trust in others, which becomes a barrier to healing.” Aside from turning around and abusing other people and suicide I had experienced almost everything on this list he mentioned. Reading things like this and other studies helped me to realize that I wasn’t just born a hot mess, instead I had some serious issues that needed to be worked through.
3. I started therapy. I knew I needed it but I had no idea what it would entail. This is where I worked through the issues addressed in number two and it was the hardest thing I have ever done! Number one was easy, I actually welcomed it! Number two was validating and that was healing in it’s own way. Therapy? It was HARD! I had so successfully tucked away all the negative feelings, thoughts and emotions and this is when I had to dig them all up and stare them straight in the face. While the actual abuse had happened over 20 years ago, to me it felt like it had just happened. I felt alone, scared and worthless. I wanted to hide. But working through those feelings is where the change came from. Up until this point I was like a marionette puppet whose choices and actions were blindly being led by fear, a belief that I was worthless, anger and a desperate need to please EVERYONE! I wish so badly I could put into words what the contrast feels like. What it feels like to let go of all of that and discover who you are! Who you truly are because it’s what you believe in and what you are passionate about. Once I had discovered those things my therapist worked with me on using my voice and teaching me how to set boundaries. You guys, for the first time in my life I knew how to say no to people, even HELL NO if needs be! For the first time ever I knew which events/activities I actually wanted to go to AND … I knew how to confidently say no to the ones that either didn’t matter or weren’t going to work out at that time. For the first time ever I could tell my husband how I felt, I could tell him if I disagreed with him about something and for the first time ever I could actually let him into my life, all of it, and see me. There are no words to describe the contrast between the person who started therapy and the person who finished it. I was no longer weighed down. I was free. Therapy was empowering!
4. Before I get into the last thing I did I want to talk about a scene from the movie Dan in Real Life. Have you seen that movie? I recommend it, super cute! But anyways, there’s a scene in that movie where Dan is saying goodbye to her daughters boyfriend after kicking him out and the boyfriend tells Dan “Love is not a feeling, it’s an ability.” I believe this whole heartedly! Like 100%, couldn’t agree more. If we don’t love ourselves than we can not love those around us. It just doesn’t work!
Loving other people is a wonderful ability but you have to start with yourself. Now with that, the last thing I did was turn to God. I had been raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and turning to God was just something I did naturally. Actually, the interesting this was, I never really felt like I hadn’t been turning to God. I remember praying to Him, begging Him to make it stop. And I’m not talking about the abuse. I’m talking about all the stupid choices I was making in my adult life. I knew they were stupid, I didn’t want to do them but from the bottom of my heart I mean it when I say I didn’t know how to stop doing the things I was doing. I DID NOT KNOW how to stop! I remember praying, on my knees, crying, asking Him to please make it stop! I didn’t care how. I didn’t care if I got hit by a truck. I just wanted it to end! I was dying on the inside and I was begging God to intervene! I prayed for that, I prayed to get hit by a truck. It breaks my heart to think of that girl. It’s interesting to me that when I hit rock bottom, my own living hell, that’s when something clicked in my brain. In an instant I knew there was a connection between these choices and the abuse that happened all those years ago. Suddenly I was able to say enough and I now know where that instant strength came from. Brene teaches us that if you tell a child “you’re a liar” there isn't any room for change, they just are a liar. But if you tell a child “you’re a good person who made a bad choice by telling a lie” than they can choose to change. See the difference? So in that moment, when I connected the dots, I realized for the first time ever that I could change! This wasn’t just who I was as a person. I didn’t just come messed up, I had issues that needed to be worked on and I could work on them! I had hope! There I was, at rock bottom and God gave me hope by reminding me of the abuse. Click! Dots connected! If I could work on that than I could change these choices. Hope!! He answered my prayers in a way I never could have expected. I wanted it to end by getting hit by a truck but instead He gave me hope! And now, as I was rebuilding my life up around me, I continued to turn to Him. If there is one thing I want to stress more than any other it is this. Gods love changed me! If there is one message I want to shout from the rooftops it would be that God loves each of you! I wish you could feel it. It is so real, it is deep and it is the most powerful feeling I have ever felt. The worthlessness that I had been carrying for so long didn’t stand a chance next to Gods love. Something happens when you feel His love to that degree, it reaches deep inside the depths of your soul and it changes you. It changes you from the inside-out. Life! Life has new meaning. Family! Family has value! You! You matter! You as an individual have meaning and purpose and nobody can ever take that away. I absolutely love the song from Frozen called Fixer Upper, “everyone’s a bit of a fixer-upper, that’s what it’s all about ... the only fixer-upper fixer that can fix a fixer-upper is true, true, true, true, true LOVE!” I was as big of a fixer-upper as they come, and I’m forever grateful for Gods love. It is the very thing that opened up my heart and allowed me to love myself and turn around and love those people in my life that matter the very most! What an amazing gift God gave me!
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