Another Year….gone by

I’ve always enjoyed birthdays and use them as a way to reflect. Some people do that on New Year’s- for me…it’s my birthday. Tomorrow I will be 42 and if someone were to ask me to describe in one word how 41 went- I’d use the word “painful.” Forty-one was equally professionally and personally painful.

At the same time, it was humbling, and showed me generosity that quite literally brought me to my knees. You can never prepare for the pain that comes with disrespect, deception, hypocrisy, and betrayal- especially because it’s not something you ever expect to have happen at the hands of those closest to you. Yet it happened and it hit me like a ton of bricks, quite literally and figuratively knocking the wind out of me.

Wasn’t easy at all…yet, confronting all of these life happenings served a purpose fueling me to continue to evolve as a human being. Pain is universal, and as I shared what was going on in my life with others they often shared their pain and lessons learned from it. Not only did they share their pain but they also shared their reassurances that everything would work itself out.

And while I knew and understood and heard over and again that “everything happens for a reason,” I didn’t want to minimize my feelings nor the impact of how certain experiences and people were making me feel. Hearing everyone’s very personal stories compacted with my experiences made one thing very clear, if I could ever avoid making someone feel how I often felt this year I would do everything I could to make sure that happens.

A lot of times we can’t necessarily control all the things that happen to us in life, but you can control your attitude/approach and you can certainly control how you internalize, learn and grow.

This site is in part due to the growth I want to see in myself- through what I am living, reading, and conversations that I am having with others. Understanding that we are all a work in progress it’s my mission to not just pay it forward but to take the lessons learned, the endured pain and turn it into something positive.

Having said that, I am looking forward to forty-two and all that it will bring and am appreciative of the people that literally showed up and showed me support in ways that I could have never imagined or expected. I was truly moved and forever changed.

If you asked me to sum up forty-one with a quote and a lesson I will take with me into forty-two and beyond it would have to be this one:

“Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.” Khalil Gibran