I sailed out into my soul every day for 12 months. Here is what happened.

8 and a half years ago I woke up with a longing to just be whole and free. Sounds cliché right “whole and free”, but in my case, it felt as if parts of me were scattered all over the place in different continents. Despite all the curveballs life had thrown my way, the one thing I truly longed for was to just piece everything together and not feel so lost. Truth is life will always throw things our way, but I personally feel that if you are ok within yourself, you have a higher chance of conquering your trials, and me myself and I were not in the greatest of places to achieve that.  Looking back, I really was in the thick of it, I had just lost my parents, moved to a whole different continent, etc., too many transitions at once. I was pretty much a ticking time bomb waiting to explode even though other people never noticed it. Usually, I would have just wallowed in my sadness and pretended to be ok, but every part of me was so done with the pretense on this day.  I had two choices, to wallow in my misery or face everything and I chose the latter.

I put my big girl pants on and decided to confront everything that continued to suck the life out of me, everything and anything that left me in a state of restlessness and uncertainty. Truth be told I really did not know how I was going to do it, where to start, all I knew was my desired outcome the rest would unfold each day. To mark this new journey, I wrote myself a note which marked the start of a beautiful self-love story.

06.12.2014

“Today marks the day that I sail out on the most incredible journey of my life: a journey of self-discovery. A series of events have steered me to this moment– events coupled with moments of frustration and an unquenchable desire to be whole and free. I cannot predict how long this journey will take or its discoveries. I believe the clarity will be uncovered in the process if I am receptive to everything I discover. I pray to God that I will be all he created me to be and unapologetically myself at the end of this journey”

It is so easy to start something, but harder to see it through. Unpacking myself was such a messy process and there were days I wanted to give up altogether, but I owed it to myself to at least try. I promised myself that I was going to show up every day, and deal with whatever God or the universe wanted to teach me. I cannot think of a period in my life where I cried as much as I did during this sailing out journey. I was acquainted with my brokenness, traumas, insecurities i.e. all those gruesome things we would rather just sweep under the rug or drink away. Somedays I would wake up with keys areas to focus on and other days I would wake up triggered by the simplest of things however one thing I learned to do during those trigger moments was to listen to my spirit. I observed it as it highlighted the problems I had to work on: the brokenness, anxiety, and inability to love myself etc. All I had to do was dig deep, the problems had already been revealed, and I needed to do the work. Simply listen to your inner dialogue, and it will tell you a lot about what you need to work on. Sometimes I got the focal points through random conversations with strangers and other times video recommendations on YouTube and TedTalk, books etc. I repeated this daily and some days I was not in the mood to confront anything and would just let myself be, instead I focused on the things I loved. You cannot force the process; everything will work out in its own timing; a key thing I also had to learn.

I really learned so much during this year. I learned to love myself, show up, set standards, dream big, rise from each trial and most importantly to be resilient.  I got what I wanted in the end, but I would be lying if I said that it came without pain and tears. Life threw a lot of bricks my way, but I chose daily to build myself again using those same bricks and so can you. Did you know that our problems are merely the steppingstones to our beautiful becoming? Everything I learned on this journey has helped to shape me into the woman I am now.  I am still growing and discovering myself, the journey never stops. I am at peace and unapologetically me which is all I ever wanted for myself.