“You know when you’re in Do or Die mode? When you’re hovering and stumbling right to your edge and need to jump just to save yourself from what pushed you there?  That’s the beginning of everything amazing. Everything worth doing.” –Victoria Erickson

Why does life has to be so hard and so confusing at times? That may be the most rhetorical question ever asked. Even now after all this time one might think that I would’ve gotten used to notion that my life is composed of seasons. Some move in and out as fluidly as the tides while others come and settle in like a bear over a long winter. The truth is it can go either way; you can have short periods of joy and long seasons of discontent, but it works exactly the same in the reverse. That’s the thing about life, it’s not consistent. So, if you’re counting on consistency know that the only thing consistent in our lives is change.

Why do we find ourselves so resistant to change? We are resistant to change even when the thing we need to change is hurting us do deeply? Dammit it’s frustrating. When it comes to this I have little patience for myself. I forget to be tender and to treat myself as a struggling friend. I hate the feeling of my own weaknesses and yet they are what gives me balance. I know this and yet in the midst of the struggle I find myself treading water, holding my breath, and praying for an SOS. Anything to distract me from the present reality I am facing.

We crawl, we walk, we stumble, we fall, we get up again…on and on it goes. Day in and day out, month after month, and year after year we cycle like this. Sometimes I picture God looking down on us shaking his head. I often wonder what he is thinking. Perhaps, “What simple people I created. Why can’t they just learn go with the flow? Why can’t they learn to be the flow? They are always pushing against the flow and they wonder why they are always feeling depleted?”

Well no offense intended God, but I think we are the farthest thing from simple. If we were simple I don’t think life would be so hard because we wouldn’t notice most of what we are experiencing. The fact is we are incredibly complex creatures. Our minds are in constant conflict with our hearts; rendering our attempts to reason often painful and futile. We end up we often overriding our feelings to our detriment. So what is it that we humans tend do? We run away.

We run away and lose ourselves in our work, other people’s drama, we overindulged, we self-medicate, and so often we develop addictions to numb out our reality. We do this to avoid the uncomfortable and often messy feelings that surface due to changes that need to be made. In the moment it feels better to just escape it, but eventually it comes back to bite us in the ass. When something in your life needs to be changed then it needs to be changed. You can choose to do it now or later, but if you wait then you need to know that what it is you needed to change has now gotten even more gnarly.

When we run away from our issues in life we only create a shit pile of “stuff”. We toss one thing to the pile and run off. When another issue arises we chuck that one too. After a while that pile of shit can get pretty deep and the thought of dealing with it is a tad overwhelming to say the least. This is why living in the moment and facing your problems head on is so critical. I know better than anyone how hard it truly is and how tempting escape plans can be. I have learned it is better to feel and heal, then it is to numb and run. It take some intestinal fortitude, but you can do this. Clear the way for your future and your dreams. Be Brave.

xo,  Ella