Have you ever attempt to put your life together? It can be daunting. So what happens when you are attempting to put the pieces together and it seems as if the pieces are more complicated than before. So how exactly do you handle putting your life together piece by piece?
Start with a Goal
Sometimes with goals we attempt to do everything so we can feel accomplished. Here’s the thing, goals should be taken one step at a time. You can’t expect to do the most in your life and then also have where everything comes back together again in a matter of minutes. Goals can be a great way to focus your challenges but you also have to be willing to not let them overwhelm your progress. When I had my daughter my life before her was all over the place by choice. I was 27 years old when I got pregnant. I knew I had to take care of another life, I was stressed. Before her I was still in full party and travel phase. I was a single woman and I was doing what single women should be doing.
Parenting was about to be my newest challenge and I wasn’t prepared. So immediately I knew I needed to act fast. So where was I to start. I reached out to a parenting group and immediately I was given the name of a parenting class. Soon, I enrolled. Now of course these classes weren’t going to give me every lesson but I had a goal to be a good mom and this was a start. So don’t stress over the start, just make sure you start.
Honesty on what you feel
You have to be able to be honest throughout the process. A few weeks ago my therapist reminded me as I told her about the classes that I took almost 15 years ago that I was already protecting myself and my child and didn’t know it. Broken pieces of the puzzle always seems as if they don’t fit. If you ever worked with a difficult puzzle you know that it’s less about being done fast but being done right. With being right puzzles can take time. Grace yourself with taking the time you need as you navigate a better way of living for yourself and your loved one.
Grace One Step at a Time
One of the lessons I learned in my journey with broken pieces is to make sure that you apply grace. When I was in the healing phase of my postpartum my therapist had to constantly remind me. I hated how I felt during that time. A lot of what I was feeling was new to me and uncomfortable. She said weekly, that how could i add grace to my life daily. Every week I was struggling to understand how to do just that. Here are some small ways to navigate grace:
- Journals became my best friend
- I took walks to destress
- Learned to establish boundaries
A Mess can be Cleaned Up-Piece by Piece
Have you ever heard someone tell you that you would never be anything? It can hurt. Do not listen to that. Make strides towards a better you. Your biggest mess can be cleaned up. Yes you may still suffer the consequences of your actions but you must be able to move forward. If you think that you are too far left, remember that grace and hard work will get you to your next step.
Think about your worst mistake in life. Did you survive it? If you are reading this, the answer is yes. so with that being said, what did you learn from it? Apply those lessons to any mistake further. Also know that the lessons as you continue, will have a feeling of either ups and downs. Try not to be so hard on yourself. The first thing to clean up your mess is to be honest with yourself. I was allowing so many people to tell me what to do. However one day I sat down, I was honest. With that I wrote down a few lessons from when I was a kid. In those lessons, I came up with a game plan.
Leave a Few Folks out the Plan
The plan was simple, I would start with my spiritual walk, hit my finances, and go from there. I enrolled in credit counseling, found a pastor that I was able to confide in, and then I begin to be honest with myself and those around me. If I knew that I couldn’t live up to other people’s thoughts about what I should be in life, I simply let them know it. That was the most freeing thing to let people know that from now on I was going to do what made sense to me and what was best for my child.
So many people told me that what I was doing wouldn’t amount to much but looking back, it was the absolute best thing for me and my family. My fiance at the time also known as my current husband and I made a plan. We didn’t include anyone in that plan. The plan later on is the reason on how we are able to do what we do now. In that time, we grew, matured, and became closer. Messes have been cleaned. My motherhood changed me in the best way. Our family is better for it.
So yes broken pieces can be fixed in time. Be graceful and let time and being an active participant in your life and decisions be your guide. You made mistakes, don’t let them break you.
