What I Wish I Could Have Told Myself At The Beginning Of This Year

The worst has already happened. You suffered some of the most painful rejection yet it didn’t break your heart or spirit. It strengthened you. Although some mornings were absolutely unbearable to face, you managed to get out of bed and still take pride in yourself. All of the  plotting, planning, and heightened expectations you placed on yourself left you with immense self-doubt when things didn’t materialize and happen how and when you wanted. However, you have learned to trust yourself knowing that your heart’s desire is stronger than the self-sabotage the head believes. God’s will is to be done, not yours.

There is a balance between taking action to fully realize goals and letting things come naturally in their own time. You strangled and suffocated the things you want most in your life, but once you were able to slowly breathe again, each piece of your life’s puzzle is fitting together in the way it needs to be. Although it’s not how you would have decided it to go, it’s actually better and more durable than what you could have imagined. One too many sleepless nights of worrying about how you didn’t feel validated or worthy of being loved, has propelled you to learn your self-worth. You now realize that in fact you have so much love around you — you were just temporarily blinded by your own perception of what “love is and how it should be.”

You judged yourself harshly while being most gentle and accepting of others. But now you have learned the benefits of being gentle and accepting to yourself — when you are blissfully happy, you radiate at your highest potential. Although most perceive you as put-together and steady, you have now internally realized it and feel what everyone has said and saw along — and it feels good. You took the biggest risk of your life by leaving America, job, family, and home to move to a foreign country to start life anew — a life that you’ve followed based upon the cues from the universe. It took many years of planning, but you did it. However, the difficulty of the arrival has lead way to the strength that you have earned. Sometimes things need to fall apart in order to re-build. Your foundation is now built on the strength of self-acceptance, self-worth, and self-awareness.

You have already lived a full life of many blessings along with much difficulty. However, the pain is tempered and you have made the decision to handle it if/when it comes, not anticipate it before it even arrives. You have always had a profound sense of appreciation and gratitude for the life you’re living along with the events and those who walk beside you — for better or for worse. You understood the principle that everything in one’s life is there to serve a purpose for self-growth. However, you now believe it. For many months before moving to Italy, you found comfort in playing a Jovanotti song, “La notte dei desideri.” His lyrics inspired you, but now you understand the meaning. “Non sento più bisogno di soffrire. Ogni cosa è illuminata,” which translates to “I don’t feel the need to suffer anymore. Everything is illuminated.”