Tag Archives: challenge

The Beautiful Mess That You Are

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The Beautiful Mess That You Are.

One of the most challenging things about healing and growing, is learning how to be vulnerable. Figuring out how to show people your scars, both metaphorically and literally… Where do you start? Who do you trust? How do you admit the things to another person you barely admit to yourself? Where do you even start to develop the ability to accept what has happened in your life and start owning it? God knows it’s not easy to let one person (let alone the world) see the things that broke you, the things that scarred your body and soul. It’s terrifying to allow anyone to see the trauma and devastation you have experienced, so is it even worth it?

When you uncover those scars, you are doing more than just pulling off a bandage. You are tearing down years and years of defense mechanisms and fake smiles. You are shredding the illusion of yourself you have created for the world to see, and letting out the real, albeit messier version of yourself. It might not be as shiny or beautiful on the surface, and in fact, it probably won’t be. What it will be instead, is real and true. It will require a level of raw honesty that will probably hurt like hell at first.

Yes, you will be afraid that whoever sees your scars will only see what’s been damaged. You’ll be afraid that instead of seeing the strength it took to sew all those tears up yourself, they will only see the jagged stitches. Afraid they will see the gaping hole, and not the tenacity it took to pull the knife out of your back all on your own. Afraid the only thing they notice will be the cracks, and not understand the time and patience it took to glue it all back together again.

Here’s the thing, when you stop hiding from your past, your fears, and emotions you free yourself of the hold they have on you. You give yourself the chance to discover who you really are. You can let go of the fake version of yourself that is pretending you are happy with the life you are living… or I suppose for some people, you are giving up the fake version of yourself that pretends they hate their life and everyone in it. Whatever. Either way you are letting go of the illusion. Figuring out how to be real and honest, ESPECIALLY with yourself, is the most important part of healing.

Yeah, there will be the haters and naysayers. Those people who don’t want you to change or grow, because it makes them feel bad about their own lives. The thing is, the people who only see the damage, or criticize you for being your most authentic self aren’t worth having in your life anyway. So, pull off those bandages and let the world see the beautiful mess that you are. You never know who will love you, scars and all.

Embrace your perfectly imperfect self,

-Charli

Conquering Pride

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Conquering Pride…

Hey everyone! I think I can say that it has been a long month, and that things have been crazy would be an understatement.  I think we all had our own personal battles throughout this last mercury retrograde, things slowed way down, energies were depleted and things were turned on their heads.

When Retrograde hit us this hard its to make us slow down, but not to smell the flowers. We need to inventory on ourselves and what we are putting our energies into. I realized  that my pride was holding me back from letting go of a business venture that was no longer serving me.

I was apart of an MLM and this MLM has amazing products, that i just adore, and helped me regain my self confidence to really start pursuing my dreams ( and I do have multiple that I am actively pursuing). The capital gain potential for me isn’t there with this company, I poured my time, effort, and money into building this mlm as my business, and even though I was losing money I was refusing to give it up because I didn’t want to feel like a failure. So I had to face my pride and take off the rose colored glasses and face things for what they were. That business helped me grow but it’s no longer a fruitful path nor is it serving me anymore, infact its starting to hold me back.

Pride is one of the hardest things to over come sometimes, especially gracefully. I hope everyone was able to take this slow down as a time to take a hard look at their lives and do some trimming (Spring cleaning) of the things that are no longer serving them. When we ignore these things it hinders growth.

I am challenging myself to keep growing everyday, I refuse to be stagnant. I strive to be the best version of me and i wish all the same joy upon all of you.

Always be unapologetically true to yourself,

Ali

Practical Changes

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Below is my piece, Practical Changes, from 2007 when I was a contributing columnist to The Southern Ledger newspaper with my Practical Changes column, the night before my son’s birthday…as you all know my son graduated from High School early and will be 18 this coming May.  I wanted to share this old blog because it speaks to parenting and how it was for me back in those days where many of you are now…enjoy and hope everyone had a great holiday season.

XO, Noelle

WOW…I am writing a night early…Mr. Southern Ledger will surely fall out of his chair from shock tomorrow morning when he sits down to write that ‘friendly little reminder’ to the bloggers and notices that my column is already posted…HA

Six years ago tonight I was in a hospital in Plymouth, MA in the midst of 30 hours of HARD labor waiting for my son to make his first appearance…tomorrow he turns six and we have been counting down the days since Christmas…everything he sees goes under the ‘ I want this for my birthday’ category.  Those of you that know me well are now saying to yourselves, “just like his mother” and I can hear you.

In retrospect, I believe that was the hardest night of my life…I won’t bore you with the scenario of 30 hours, but trust me when I say it was FAR from pleasant…it taught me that if I could do that and endure that, then I could certainly do anything…what a good, smart, handsome little boy he is and funny and stubborn…sometimes I feel like the kid got a raw deal, all I do is work and it seems like some days I am always yelling…I have two modes loud and louder…it runs in my Italian family, we talk too much and most everything is loud.  Then there is that whole emotionally unkempt thing, which runs in my family too.

Sometimes I feel like I am doing such a bad job at all this…I think I should be nicer and more patient, yet someone or something is always pulling at me and I just have to keep moving because I don’t see anyone else around here paying for anything…granted this was my choice, to get a divorce rather than live in a situation that I was finished with just for the sake of security…I’m pretty sure the kid is normal, whatever that means anymore…I mean he goes to private school and has the best of everything and he is with me all the time…I have a great staff that helps a lot and without whom I would fail to function.

I think that no matter how smart we are there are always those times when we are second guessing ourselves, wondering if we are good enough or if we are doing it ‘right’…we must be doing okay around here though because we are starting year number six and that feels like a huge accomplishment.

As I sit here tonight I think back to who I was six years ago and I realize that so much has changed…I think that I am gaining some insight and wisdom as I go along…that’s a good thing…I am learning how to let things go, how to let someone else have the last word, how to walk away instead of react when someone is unpleasant, how to trust God and not be so scared all the time about everything turning out ok…I am learning how to take deep breaths and learning to remember that it will all still be there tomorrow.

I have also learned that I am too old to be blond anymore.  Recently, I had my hair highlighted and a lot of blond put in—it has been that way for about two and a half weeks and I have felt off the whole time—I kept looking at myself in the mirror and thinking how not like myself I looked, too washed out, too old and then finally this morning I wondered why I had done it, what was I hoping to prove?  In my other life I could carry blond, this life requires dark hair and ‘on purpose’ behavior—tonight my hair has been returned to a darker state and I recognize the chick I see in the mirror…  She has a messy desk, is emotionally unkempt, is a workaholic, is probably starting to wrinkle and sag, drinks too much coffee, shops too much and is not currently working out as much as she needs to, however, she knows how to get stuff done, she has a great kid, she has incredible friends, she is generous beyond measure, she knows how to laugh at herself and she understands that life is really about who we are and not what we have…I like that chick, she has dark hair and she’s not afraid to tell it like it is.

It’s good to mark time, to look back and see how far you have come…it makes us grateful for progress, grateful for all the gifts that we have been given…most everyone is always rushing through birthdays, Christmas Days, Mother’s Days, Father’s Days…how many times do we stop and remember the years past, how much do we acknowledge how far we have come?

We should you know, we should make a practice of acknowledging how much advancement we have gained over the years.  It is virtually impossible not to gain wisdom as time passes…life itself is such a profound teacher.

I will take my leave of you now as I have gifts to wrap in Spiderman paper and tomorrow there is a trip to Chuck E. Cheese in my future…I know y’all are jealous.

Relentless And Thirty-One

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Thirty was brutal.

It was brutally honest and unapologetically raw. It was a beautiful mess with parts I would not wish on my least favorite of human spirits.

Thirty was the year of sorry’s, and sighs, and throwing my hands to the skies. Thirty was the year of aging mentally and physically. Thirty was the year of allowing myself to be lost and not wanting to be found by anyone but me.

Thirty was letting go and a series of hard choices–the kind of decisions that prove your character. The kind that ache, bleed, and scar. It was self discovery and starting new.

It was hitting reset, rinse, repeat.

Thirty was the year of unrelenting chaos, followed by uncomfortable calm.

Reset, rinse, repeat.

Thirty was wanting to run away and never come back. Thirty was wanting to disappear. Thirty was wanting to be seen. Thirty was wanting to be held. Thirty was the paradox.

I looked around the house and just wanted to burn it down more than once. I looked up airline tickets for three out of the country more than twice. I second guessed my decision to leave my marriage…zero times.

I redecorated. I made new recipes. I cooked a lot of food. I lost ten pounds. I gained ten pounds. I gave zero f&*cks. I grew out my hair. I bought $40 foundation for the first time ever. I painted my first and last room. I told some of my best jokes. I did some of my best writing. I had some of my worst parenting moments. I had some of my lowest lifetime moments. Thirty was angry, and it was sad. It was a 24/7 adrenaline rush and it was exhausting. Thirty was adult dating, and school girl blushing. Thirty was laughing like I hadn’t in years, even when it was at my own life or expense. Thirty was saying hard truths out loud. Thirty was letting myself grieve things I’d been missing. Thirty was accepting good things when they presented themselves and not feeling guilty about it.

It was letting go of things I had already long lost. It was closing doors to rooms in my heart that made me cold and sad. It was opening windows to trust new faces and unfamiliar spaces within my new life.

It was a year of allowing myself to cry at green, yellow, and red lights. In conference rooms, in the shower, at daycare, at the doctor’s office, at the dinner table of friend’s and in the doorways of their homes without warning.

I left a dozen chapters of my life behind, and in my husband’s hands, hours before someone else’s wedding. I forced myself to spit out razor blades of truth at the person I said ‘forever’ to. My head had to forcefully tell my heart to leave my husband and be completely unwavering in that choice.

It was the year of asking for help and of saying ‘yes.’ It was a the year of the king size bed, an ironic choice for a person with one less body next to them. The year not for the bucket list, but the f*%ck-it list.

Thirty was love at its most genuine, whether it was for me or from me. It was finding out who really is in my corner and who deserves to be put in one.

Thirty was dancing in the rain, crying in the rain, jumping puddles in the rain, kissing in the rain. I made the most of it, but thirty is what made me. Thirty taught me to spit in fear’s face, to say goodbye to people and things that don’t add, but detract, from my life.

Thirty gave me a glimpse into what I am really made of.

I am braver and stronger than I thought. I am more loved than I realized. I am capable of much more than I gave myself credit for.

The year turning over only proudly reinforces two things: this is my circus and these are my monkeys.

This is relentless and thirty-one.

~Jessica-Awesome Single Mama

Fear Of Not Giving Into It

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As I have said to you recently over the last few days, it would seem that everything is particularly challenging right now and that I am having to work harder not to give in to worry, fear, etc

So I have been doing a lot of praying and reading to keep myself on track and I wanted to share something with you that I found this morning in a book by Florence Scovel Shinn called “The Magic Path of Intuition”…in the 8th chapter she talks about how ‘every test is a purification process and that when we are unmoved by the tests we will no longer attract them’.  I found this very insightful because even though I have been studying spiritual and success principles for a long, long time there are still some seeming circumstances that can really drop me to my knees and to me that means I still have work to do.  True mastery comes when you cannot be moved by anything, when no outside element can shake your equilibrium and to get to that place takes work and the ability to discipline your mind.  You have to be vigilant with your thoughts and when fearful, crazy, worried thoughts come into your mind you must push them aside and replace them with their opposite.  This takes practice and then more practice and then still even more practice…I have been doing this work for 36 years now and these last few weeks I have had to really work with myself daily to keep my thoughts focused on what works.

Start working on not letting appearances rock your inner boat, start replacing one fear-based thought for one positive one…it’s a practice and will take time, however this practice will change your whole life and return you to your own power—so start today, just replace a thought for a thought…xoxoxo

And here is the link to Florence’s book for anyone that is interested…

https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Intuition-Florence-Scovel-Shinn/dp/1401944159/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481039746&sr=1-1&keywords=the+magic+path+of+intuition