Your Story Is Your Strength as well as your Way to Healing

My story is my strength.

For a long time, I needed to think that i'm stronger than my story. I needed to believe that my story did not define me or my future. However, after battling depression, anxiety, and Ptsd (PTSD) throughout most of my 19-years of life, I learned that my story does define me in a number of ways.

I have struggled and then struggle to find my spoken voice. Advocating for myself verbally is something which has always been challenging for me since i was raised in a way that helped me think that my voice didn't matter. Whenever I'd make an effort to make use of the voice that I had, it might be silenced. This taught me that my opinions, beliefs, and values were something to be ashamed of.

Ultimately, I was the extension of my mother. Without adopting her beliefs and ways as my very own, I wouldn't have been able to survive yesteryear eighteen years. Her person became my person, slowly destroying any unique identity that my person had wished to form throughout the years. Like a now 19-year-old college student, I'm left to get the broken pieces and somehow uncover the person I have always been called to become while finding my voice on the way, an outing that has proven very difficult thus far.

A Path to Healing

Despite being difficult, your way continues to be worth it. It became worthwhile after i began to accept that I've got a story that's my strength. For a writer, that is everything. For a person, it's the path to healing.

Healing, for me, is recognizing that although your story defines your beginning, it doesn't have to define your ending. Use the past to help make the future better. Go ahead and take passions, interests, and hobbies you have and switch the past chapters of the story into something great. Creative methods to do this include writing a novel, speech, poetry, painting,  filming, and thus many others. The options are limitless! Decide to make your story your strength. In so doing, you may be the difference our planet needs. You are stronger than you believe- both you and your story that is!