I’m feeling pretty happy right now, but it’s not always been this way. I’ve been noticing that I’m feeling happy because I was not really smiled very much for the past 15 years or longer. Through my husband’s recovery from alcoholism, then our separation, then our divorce, then all the challenges in that period of time leading up to his death. And then after his loss …I lost my smile.
It’s hard. It’s really hard loving an alcoholic because there’s that part of you that hopes deep inside that things will change. Mixed in with the anger, the regret – the bundle of emotions. And in that whole bundle, happiness and joy just gets devoured. It gets forgotten.
I forgot how to smile.
There were moments of happiness. I would call them Picasso Moments, those little, little pockets where just in the moment, you wanted to capture it and frame it because it was beautiful. The Picasso Moments. I grew to look for those and enjoy them. I think that was probably the first step that I took over all those years, just looking for little moments that could make me smile, making a conscious choice to look for them despite all of the chaos that was going on around me.
When all of the guilt, the doubt, the insecurities, the anger, the regret, the sadness. That was all bundled inside of me. But now I’m smiling. And this is a real smile. It’s not just one for the camera. This is real. And I’ve been feeling this way for weeks now. And that all happened during the pandemic, during the lockdown, when I was forced to slow down and all these things that I thought about doing, I actually started thinking and I started making some changes, making some different choices, things that I normally do.
I’m putting myself first and actually choosing to look for joy in life, bring it back into my life again.
Then somewhere along the way it all changed. And I can tell you exactly when that moment was. And it was at that moment where something happened to make me feel it was okay to let go, let go of the past, to let go of all those emotions, all those hard memories. They kept pulling me back. I was able to let go and move forward. Blossome has come from this is that desire to help more people feel this way and find that smile again because you can, and you will. It’s in there and through blossom bottle, through my blog, through my podcasts and hopefully my writings one day through a book. And through speaking, I hope to share with you my story and the things that I’ve done that I’ve learned to do along the way to find this smile again because you can too. You might not feel like it right now. You can. I promise you, you can. And I hope to be the one that’s able to help you because it’s wonderful. I hope to help people blossom again, open up to joy and get that smile back.
It can all start with taking a day to do noting at all, at The Red Beach Hut. Go on, hire the beach hut. ❤️
