Fight!

My favorite new quote is by Joan Baez, “Activity is the antidote to despair.”

It is very common for clients, me included at the time, to wonder why things don’t change. Why do these bad things keep happening to me? Why don’t things get better? Why am I always sad? What is wrong with me? These are questions I used to ask myself all the time.

Fast forward to my life now. It looks completely different. New career, good friends, more contentment. Sure, not everything is perfect, but I’m human, and perfection is a myth. Yet, those questions I used to ask are not relative anymore. Do you know what I think the answer was to those questions? Me. Things “bad” or “not good” kept happening to me, things didn’t get better, and I was always sad because I sat in front of the computer or on the sofa and was lost in my head and feelings. There was nothing wrong with me, per se. I suffered trauma, and that changes you. It’s painful and stilting and breaking. But one does not have to stay stuck there. Like Baez said, getting up and off the sofa, “activity” helps. I had to make changes. Clients don’t like to hear that all the time. I didn’t. It seems impossible. I didn’t have the energy. I was exhausted all the time. I was exhausted by pain, and it takes great strength to fight thru that. But you can.

It’s not fair that we must fight. It’s not fair that trauma was done to us and changed us. I agree, none of that is fair. I wish I could just dream a new reality into being for myself and my clients. But it is not magic. It is activity. It is change. That activity and forcing yourself to make new decisions and new choices, hard ones especially, is what is transformative. It is life changing to develop new, healthier relationships. It is life changing to switch careers, go back to school, and do what you were born to do instead of just what pays the bills. And yes, I know you can’t figure those things out when you don’t know who you are. How can you know what your calling is if you don’t know who you are? But you won’t find out who you are by sitting on the couch. You find out by trying new things, meeting new people, and fighting. Please don’t let the trauma win. Don’t let the despair continue. Fight!