Growth Taught Me The Importance of Time

Everything happens in its own time and at the right time. It may not feel like it, it may feel like the biggest inconvenience at the time, but trust that hindsight is a beautiful thing.

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In the midst of exchanging voice notes with my friend one night, she responded with a gif. A gif I didn’t see myself relating to anytime soon. I am hoping that from the title of this blog post, you can already guess exactly which gif it is.

Yup, this iconic gif.

I am only now seeing the growth that I have experienced over the past few years. Seeing people comment on my growth and feel part of this journey, is a weird and wonderful feeling. Weird because I’m still figuring out this creative space whilst trying to maintain my sanity and wonderful because if others can see I then I know I’m not imagining it.

A Few Lessons In Growth:

It’s Bloody Uncomfortable

As expected it has been uncomfortable and I have felt so uncertain. I thought I knew myself and I knew what I was and wasn’t capable of achieving. Which is somewhat true, I do know myself, but a very limited and restricted version of myself. I didn’t realize how much of a creature of comfort I was until I was no longer comfortable.

You will notice that you need to be willing and open to feeling uncomfortable. That isn’t an easy thing to do, it requires letting go of control, and it may open you up to feeling exposed and incredibly vulnerable.

It Is Freeing Through

I feel like I’ve just let go of so much and it’s only the beginning. I have felt a shift in my confidence like I can trust myself, being able to trust yourself is such a great feeling.

Looking back at how much stress I was carrying and how much of that stress I believed I deserved to experience, it now feels like a few bags have been lifted off my shoulders.

As great as that freedom is you do have work on not returning to unhealthy habits. I know struggle and stress so well, it almost feels like I have lost a part of myself and I catch myself longing for the familiarity that comes with stress and constant worry.

It Takes A Long Periodically Time

I always knew I needed to work on setting boundaries and not allowing people to walk all over me, but it’s only now that I’m on the other side of demonstrating this that I now see how long it really takes to unlearn certain unhealthy habits.

Whether it is small or large acts of mistreatments, it does take time to learn and believe that is not something you’re deserving of. It is not something we learn overnight, I know from experience that you can identify when others are being mistreated, but when it comes to applying those boundaries to our own experiences, it feels uncomfortable and misplaced.

There is so much that happens in between identifying the issue and demonstrating self love, which is why giving ourselves permission to take as long as we need to learn and unlearn is key to our growth.

This Healing and growing journey is a long and uncomfortable one, because we have to re-live the very things we have so desperately tried to ignore and run away from. I have a long way to go but this is a start and I now have an idea of what it feels like to claw my way through this experience and because of that I am just a little less fearful.

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Details:

Hair – @BreBraidBoss

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