There is nothing wrong with you

 

Isn't it amazing? How many of us walk around with this? The idea that there is something WRONG with us. Our desperate cry to be PERFECT - or whatever the hell that means? I had a big day today, a really important day and I am so grateful for how it felt to have a knife driven into my heart and for how it felt to realize how deeply and completely I love and accept myself exactly as I am. I thought it was important to reflect on my journey, to realize and confirm exactly why I am committed to the work I am doing as a coach and that it was a really important message I wanted to share with you. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU. and there is nothing wrong with me. 

Please stop trying to do everything possible to change who you are, change what you look like, change how you behave to please others. This is something that has been at the core of my work - that I want to empower people to FEEL powerful in their lives, feel confident and courageous and AUTHENTIC and to embrace the truth of who they are and know that they are enough and so worthy and deserving of love. I have spent a lot of time embracing who I am, loving who I am, all parts of me, regardless of whether I have a relationship or not (because of course, I used to believe that being in a relationship somehow meant I was enough, and without one, I'm not) - and it has not always been this way! This morning it hit me to the core. A moment where I felt a knife wound to my heart. STRAIGHT to my heart where one comment IMMEDIATELY brought me back to "there is something wrong with me" and it hurt. It hurt so much. And it doesn't matter what the person's intention was or how they said it. I am so grateful they did because I got to do the work on myself today. To experience how it felt to lay on the sidewalk in downtown Boston, tears pouring down my face, SCREAMING at the top of my lungs - THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME. I'm just going to go right out with this. Be more vulnerable than I have ever been and get rid of this shit - there is nothing wrong with ME and there is nothing wrong with YOU.

How to be unhappy? Try to please others. Direct link. I grew up trying so hard to be everything everyone else wanted me to be, trying to behave how you wanted me to behave so you would love me, dress the way you wanted me to dress, change my body so you would love me and then of course it got to the point so the only thing that was mine was my name. I then went through the world with no freaken clue of who I was until one day I was finally able to admit that I needed help. Here's how it went. 

My mom would constantly ask me "Why can't you be like the other girls at school?" Because they were smarter and apparently worked harder than me. In 4th grade I was made fun of for having hair on my legs - somehow all the other girls started shaving already and I was called a werewolf because I had so much hair. My eyebrows were black but my hair was light so I was told I had caterpillars on my face. So I tried to puck my eyebrows myself and let me tell you... it was quite ridiculous what I did. I taped my breasts down in 6th and 7th grade because I was getting so much unwanted attention and glances and I felt so insecure and out of control in my body I had to hide it - in a way that was so painful I often struggled to breathe. Then in 8th grade a guy at another school invited me to a dance - he sent me an email the night of the dance saying that if I wanted to come I probably should shave my arms so I wouldn't get made fun of. So instead of wearing my favorite tank top to the dance I wore a long sleeve shirt. I was kissing a guy when I was 16 and he asked me if I wanted to try his face wash because my acne was so bad and he told me whatever it was I was using wasn't working. I practically begged the popular girls at school to let me sit with them at the "popular" lunch table so that I too could feel pretty and accepted. The most humiliating times of my life. Where I slowly began to believe that there was indeed something wrong with me, and if I could just be prettier, skinnier, smarter, more athletic, more perfect, more outgoing, more talented, accomplished, extraordinary THEN you would love me! No wonder at 16 years old I couldn't take it anymore and I picked up alcohol.

Three years later at 19 I am suggested to go into Alcoholics Anonymous because I have lost myself so much that I can't go one day without drinking and it wasn't until 22 years old that I finally said, this is NOT how I want to live. So now as an alcoholic are you going to treat me differently from you? Is this one more thing that's wrong with me that I have to try to fix and change so I can behave well enough for you to be comfortable? No. It's not.

It is SO EXHAUSTING to walk through life constantly trying to be whatever anyone and everyone else wants you to be! No wonder so many people are miserable and struggling with self identity - because they don't spend the time to actually listen to what's in their heart and embrace who they are and celebrate who they are and celebrate the choices they make that are in alignment with who they are! What will it take for you to completely love and accept yourself as you are? WHEN will you decide to do that? When will you behave like the magnificent, remarkable, extraordinary human being that you are who is loved for exactly who you are for no other reason than you are YOU!?

I received a gift this morning. Thank you to the person who sent the bullet straight to my heart to remind me that when I look into the depth of my soul I LOVE what I see. I LOVE who I am, all parts of me. I love the part that can't stop crying all the time because I am so moved by LIFE and in deep gratitude that it touches my heart so much that I just release. I love my black eyebrows because they are exactly what makes me different. I love that I dance in my room by myself to my favorite music because I love how it feels to move. I love that my boobs are so big they sometimes get in the way of yoga poses I wish I could do. I love that my body is slowly opening up to yoga - and that I CAN'T do all these ridiculous poses YET and that I am in no rush - I won't be more of a yogi because I can do a handstand than I am right now. I love that I go to therapy so I can learn more about myself and grow and deepen my connection to my heart. I love that I have faith in a higher power, a power that is bigger than me who loves me and cares for me and works with me as I create my life. I love that I am an alcoholic, that I had a problem with alcohol, and that now there is a solution where I get to go to meetings all over the world and meet the most remarkable people I have ever known - that we have a shared experience, a shared safe space and that my best friends are in this program too and we support and love each other exactly as we are, in all our flaws, in all our mistakes and imperfections, everything that makes us HUMAN. I love that I eat a reeses peanut butter cup all around the outside first, then put the peanut butter part right on my tongue, I love that I love talking about sex, I love being with women, I love that I can get so riled up and passionate about the things I believe in, that I am so passionate about the people I love and I would die for the people I love. I love laughing so hard my cheeks and stomach ache, I love that my hair is a frizzy mess when I don't blow dry it, I love that I have hair on my body, I love my strong legs that enable me to run, jump, skip, stand, balance in yoga. I love my body, exactly as it is, that I don't go to the gym anymore because I am so committed to looking good naked FOR YOU. I work out because it feels good for ME and then I have more energy to go about my life and stay present and awake to every moment of it, and most of all...most of all, I love that I don't need YOU to love me so that I love me. I love me. I love who I am, who I am becoming, who I choose to be in this world. Powerful, feminine, free, fun, playful, joyful, grateful, vulnerable, courageous, awake, and alive to every moment of my life and that I can feel things right down into the depth of who I am and then can move past it, that I run my life today, not you.

And if one day, if one day I get so lucky that I meet a man who loves me for exactly who I am, I won't ever have to doubt it because I won't ever have to doubt that I have behaved any other way when I am with him. That he will know who I am when he meets me. Because I know what I'm like, and I act that way pretty much all the time, regardless of the situation. I won't pretend to like music he does if I don't, I won't pretend to like chocolate ice cream just because he does if I don't. The most important thing is for me to be entirely myself rather than date someone who demands I only be part of who I am. It is so much more relaxing, so much more free, so much more real to be upfront about who I am rather than hide it. Why bother hiding it? It takes so much WORK. AND I won't want him to be anything other than himself because I will allow him to be exactly as he is, and I won't try to help him, change him, fix him to conform to whatever idea I think I have of who my partner should be. 

When I wake up in the morning, when I call my friends, when I talk to my parents, or my sisters, I can tell them exactly what is going on and I don't have to worry about what they'll think, or if they'll judge me, and when my friends tell me their deepest darkest secrets, the things they are most ashamed about, afraid of. I feel blessed and honored to see them, to witness them, to hold them and let them know either that I have felt that way too or that I am so proud of them for telling the truth and working through their fears and insecurities and trusting me with their heart. 

There is NOTHING wrong with you, about you, or the way you are.
 

Whatever you think is the thing about your body, personality, passions, 

dreams - whatever it is keeping you from being perfect, attractive, wonderful RIGHT NOW it isn't keeping you from that. You're so wonderful. So beautiful. So freaken AMAZING and the world is so lucky to have you in it. Stop trying to be perfect because you already are. There is really, seriously, NOTHING wrong with you.