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No, I am not dating anyone, not seeing anyone special, not engaged, married or even thinking about a man, but I took myself out on a date for the day and came home to pure joy, and I am in love.

I hope I have the courage to take the next step and let go of trying to control who I am, I don’t know if I do yet.

I am no longer fighting, or flighting, or playing dead. I am accepting everything about who I am, so that I can decide who I want to be.

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I thought that who I created to survive was really me, but it wasn’t. My defense mechanisms are not my personality. I do have needs, I do have wants, I do want to be loved and treated like I am special. And before anyone else can meet my needs, I have to be honest with myself about where I came from and meet my own needs. In accepting the child that I was and all that happened to her, I am also accepting her strength, resilience and beauty.

What do I want next? I have come so far from the woman I was, who didn’t speak her mind and remained quiet in toxic situations. I feel like I am finally at the point that I am starting to look forward, and not back. Now, instead of being motivated by what I don’t want, I want to intentionally move towards what I do want, but what is that?

Whatever happened to me in the past, in my childhood and my marriage, doesn’t have to be what happens to me in the future. I can chose to protect myself, and to be around people that appreciate what I have to offer.

I had no idea that becoming sober would lead me to heal my past, and literally become a different person. Maybe different is the wrong word, because I am truly myself now. I am no longer a collection of other people’s needs of what they want me to be. Sobriety allowed me to come out of hiding, and show my authentic self. I no longer look back at the child that I was with a heavy heart, but with pride and happiness. I hope that my mother loved me, but I am no longer in desperate need of her love. Because I have learned that love is not a desperate and needy exchange of validating each other. Love is a calm and steady state of being, that requires no outside validation or substance. Love is already in us, we just have to let go of all the messages that tell us that we don’t deserve it.

I had put yoga above everything, and I had disengaged in being fully present in the rest of my life. Tulum didn’t let me float through my 8 days there in my yoga poses believing that I was superior to others because of my dedication. It broke me down flat, it made me engage with others, it took me beyond my physical comfort zone to the point that I wanted to leave 2 days after I got there. It brought me to a place I didn’t want to be; the present moment.

I used to hate January because it marked the end of the Holiday Season and all the twinkling lights came down and were put away. It made me sad not to have the lights of the holidays to warm my heart and bring me joy. January always seemed dark and cold, with no days off from work. I never used to see January as a new beginning, more of a month to get through so that I could get to warmer weather, and something to look forward to. But this year, I feel different.