Rising Up After Life Knocks You Down.

Our spirit and soul can drain through our wounds, if we allow...Just let that sink in for a minute. 

If we wallow for too long in self-pity, we lose sight of who we are. The tiny joys of everyday life get lost in the roar of what’s been done to us. Woe fogs the lenses we view life through, making it easy to forget that adversity is the pressure that transmutes a lump of coal into a diamond. 

Having struggled with social anxiety for much of my life, I am no stranger to self-pity. I spend a lot of time stuck in the throes of anxiety and tumbling beneath the inevitable wave of shame that follows awkward social interactions.

Living and people-ing go hand in hand--you can’t get through life, let alone a day, without having to interact with others to meet basic survival needs. There was a time where my social anxiety was so bad that I couldn’t get through a job interview without having a panic attack.

Being able to live a relatively normal life has required me to bounce from one anxiety-inducing situation to the next--to consistently rise above fears and insecurities that could shrink my world, if I allowed them to.

Many of us forget that heroes are not born heroes, they are made heroes by the hardships they overcome. Likewise, the more despicable the opponent, the greater the hero. This is true in the fictional heroes we are all familiar with and with the real life heroes that have made tremendous contributions to the world.

It was the sudden loss of his parents that transformed Bruce Wayne into Batman, a hero driven by a strong moral compass and desire for justice; a debilitating illness gave way to the poignancy of Frida Kahlo’s paintings; and silence sparked by abuse brewed a lifetime of brilliant poetry for Maya Angelou.

If we fail to get back up and cauterize our wounds, we risk bleeding out on the field and thus missing the transformation that evolves from tragedy. With time, if we give it time, we will grow stronger at our weak points. Broken skin gives way to callouses that remind us what we have endured and prime us for a future bolder than the past. 

The key here is to get up after being struck down--to remember what we are fighting for and guard what is true to us with everything we have. 

Amanda,

Conscious Ink Staffer