When The Story Changes.
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Every experience you have is part of your story.
Every experience helps shape you into who you are.
You learn, you grow, and you carry that with you. Nobody can take that away.
Sometimes things feel heartbreakingly sad. Weave it into the fabric of who you are. Look for the strength you know is inside you. Lean on those you know will support you.
Sometimes it’s not the end of a story; it’s just time for one of the characters to leave. And that can feel so painful for the characters left behind. But the one that leaves never fully leaves. They are woven into the fabric of who you are.
They have helped you to grow and to form; to know yourself better. They will always be part of your story and part of who you are, with a special place in your heart — whether they’re physically there or not.
Sometimes we have to let people go, even when we don’t want to, even if we never imagined a future without them. Sometimes we have no choice, so we have to make peace with that, as hard as it is.
We can struggle against it, we can resist. Or we can set the other person free, and set ourselves free in the process.
Sometimes things look very different from how we thought they would. We don’t get a say. We feel robbed of the chance to write that part of our story. But we are still artists. We can’t control what happens to us. We can’t control other people.
But we can control how we respond.
We can either choose love or fear. We can either close the gap between us and anyone else by choosing love. Or we can open it by choosing fear.
Trust that you’ll be okay even when things happen that you don’t want or expect. Trust that ultimately it’ll be for your highest good, and for the best, even if you can’t see how at the moment.
Things will happen that take away the story you had planned. You need to grieve for that. For the parts of the story you had so wanted to live, had things been different. You need to grieve hard.
Just as hard for that as for the memories that have passed. You need to grieve for it all.
And then you need to stand where you are right now, amongst the rubble. You realize that you’ll never lose all that has gone before. It’s part of you for life — part of your story and part of who you are.
You can take it forward in whichever ways you choose. You’ll carry it with you — the love, the important bits.
When it comes to the future, you’ll realize these parts of the story were only ever imagination anyway. It’s sad to lose a dream, to not get to play out a story we had so wanted and imagined.
But when things happen that we can’t control, we have to change tack.
We realize that we still get to be exactly who we want to be, playing whatever part we choose. It might just have a different background than what we’d imagined. And that might look and feel very scary for a while. But that’s okay.
The most important thing is to remember who you are amongst it — all that you are and all that you’ve got.
You’re still standing at the center of the story, and now more than ever you need to be its creator and artist.
It’s okay to be scared. It’s normal to be scared when things change. To feel a whole myriad of emotions: grief, anger, sadness, fear. They’ll all come out to play.
But these emotions are there to help you navigate through the new terrain. And they’re there to help pull you through to the other side.
The fabric of your story is woven into who you are. No part of the story is ever wasted. Not a single bit. It’s got you to where you are right now. And where you are right now is perfect — whole, enough.
Remember you will always have you. You’ll always have the people or the parts of any story you want to keep with you. They are in your bones, and in your heart.
So nothing is every truly lost, just transformed.
And if your story looks a little different from what you had planned, it’s okay. You’re an artist, write a new one.
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Kelly Burns is a UK-based writer specializing in women’s health and the mind-body connection. She writes for both print and online publications, working on a flexible and freelance basis. She also provides expert opinion to the media, and is the author of the Inner Jewel Weekly blog. You can get in touch with Kelly via her website and connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.
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