By: Daniela Ortiz
It has taken me some time to understand that healing is a continuous process; it’s not linear, it’s confusing, exciting and liberating. I’ve spent years trying to heal myself, “heal” and “fix” others, but in the end, I ended up feeling just as empty and sometimes even worse not knowing whose life I was trying to fix.
I’ve learned that the answers I was looking for were always within me. I’ve silenced my inner voice because I was afraid of being rejected, abandoned and misunderstood. I signed off my happiness to those who only needed me for their own benefit. I gave away my power several times while trying to please others doing my best to make THEM feel happy. I also used people for my own benefit. I used them to fill voids in my life, I used temporary people to make me feel happy and complete.
I started questioning the situations that continued to happen in my life, and it slowly started to hit me that the only person making those decisions was me.
For the last couple of years, I’ve been trying to find myself in different people, places, and things. It’s sometimes hard to pinpoint the exact moment when you wandered off from yourself. It takes a lot of courage to connect the dots backward. It triggers intense feelings that are hidden underneath layers of denial and fear.
When you start your healing process it’s not as magical and fantastic as people think. I’ve learned that parts of my story were repressed because I was too “busy” to deal with the feelings and perhaps a little afraid to dig deeper behind my insecurities.
Throughout this process, I’ve learned that I have fears, doubts, and childhood insecurities. This baggage was given to me for a reason, it has a purpose, and I can choose whether to see it as a treasure or a limitation.
Digging through this lovely baggage has awakened anger, fear, disbelief, and resentment towards the most important people in my life; the ones who brought me into this world. As uncomfortable as it can be to retrace my steps back to certain moments in my life, it has helped me to gain my power back. I am no longer a victim of my story, I am the writer. I now choose what’s best for me, I choose what I want to believe in and what I want to have in my life.
I’ve learned that the only way of moving forward is accepting where you come from and how you were raised. Often times we may blame others for the choices we have made, but eventually, there comes a point where you learn to give yourself what you weren’t given as a child, and this starts to shift your perspective and life in a different direction. Just because you weren’t taught how to do it, doesn’t mean you can’t learn to do it yourself.
When you start to accept this part of your life, you also start to understand that those around you perhaps weren’t given what you were given, and perhaps they don’t know how to love, how to accept love, how to treat others or even how to love themselves. And when you accept this, you understand that it’s not your responsibility to save, heal or protect others, your only responsibility is to love them and accept them as they are.
You’re the only one responsible for your happiness.
I questioned myself numerous times in regard to what I needed to “heal” or “fix” in my life and the more I asked myself the worse I started to feel about myself.
The words heal and fix are often tossed around without a deeper understanding of them. Are we really that “broken” ? Are we really that confused about what we want in life and about who we are that we need to be constantly finding ways to “heal” and free ourselves? And the answer is no.
We do need to heal and we do need to fix certain areas in our lives, but before diving into a healing process and buying self-help books, you need to understand that there are parts in your life that require acceptance. By accepting these parts you will open a door that will guide you to find ways to cope with the feelings that arise.
Healing never takes a vacation. It’s a constant process that will test you, strengthen you and transform you into a better version of yourself.
You can’t change the past, but you can learn from it, laugh about it and eventually turn it into something that is worth sharing with others.
Instagram: @ortzdani
