The Story is Mine

Finally Owning that...to be able to write it

“I mean this, this is genuine, I wouldn’t pick the path to this moment, the way that it went down ever. I wouldn’t pick it. I wouldn’t pick it in this way. I wouldn’t have chosen this story. The way it went down, it was so much collateral damage, so painful for so many … I wouldn’t pick it. However, at this point in my life, I feel so lucky and so excited that I get to choose and write the second half of my life and it is mine.”

~Jen Hatmaker

I heard this quote the other day on “We Can Do Hard Things,” and it spoke deeply to me.

I spent many sessions in therapy and countless hours and days after my mother and brother died in 2020 pondering how I could move on.

I didn’t want to be stuck in the victim mentality or to think negatively and pessimistically, to just be bracing myself for the next tragedy. But I didn’t know how not to do that, because, quite honestly, that was what the last 5 years had been, after my father’s suicide and my mother’s downward spiral.

I know some of this was depression and anxiety, but some of it also—I recognize it now—PTSD. I was in flight or fight mode. My body had established a high level of cortisol as the norm. As my therapy explained to me, it was never able to reach homeostasis. It was on high alert mode so often that that became the established norm for my system. I had to unlearn that…through EMDR therapy and energy healing and a lot of time writing and processing.

But now, I’m looking at it, from the other side. And I am just so unbelievably thankful.

I am grateful because though—like Jen—I wouldn’t have picked it all to transpire this way…I can still recognize that I am no longer trapped or entrenched by bad choices from my dysfunctional family members. I get to write my story. I get to decide the rest, what comes next.

I was stuck for a very long time in the—but I don’t want THIS to be my story, a survivor of suicides of two immediate family members. Again, there was a lot of collateral. But there was also a sense of responsibility, accountability.

I could no longer use them as an excuse. Truly, I was the only one left. What happened next was truly up to me. It is up to me. I am excited because I have done the work. I’ve healed. My mental health has never been better.

All that happened forced me to seek out healing in many, many ways. It’s become a way of living for me. Because I am committed: I am on a life-long journey toward becoming the very best version of me.

I am excited for the rest of my life. And this seems an especially appropriate themed post because tomorrow I start my weekend-long moving process. I’ll begin the drive from Charlotte to St. Cloud to begin my position at St. Cloud University as Director of Composition.

Like Jen Hatmaker, I feel that, though I know it sounds insane, perhaps to some. But—

“I don’t think I would trade any of this…[there is a] Mary Oliver quote that someone once gave me a box of darkness and it took me years to know that this too was a gift.

…

“…this was always you. You were always in there. You can fully trust yourself.”

This is how I feel now.

And perhaps it’s because I just played Mario World this on the Switch this afternoon with a dear friend of mine, but to quote the silly video game:

“It’s ABOUT time!”