If you’re unfamiliar with my story, I figured this would be the perfect place in which to begin my blog.

Three years ago, I felt that I was living a pretty average life. I lived in a small house in an average neighborhood, was engaged to a man that I got along with about 70% of the time, I ran a medical office that while, I wasn’t passionate about it, it paid me well… I felt there was some sense of normality in just going through the motions. I wasn’t really happy, but, on the other hand, I was content in the fact that I wasn’t completely unhappy.

Then, my so-called average life began shifting. At first, it seemed like just a few bumps in the road… I discovered that an employee at work was stealing and had to let her go… A co-worker’s carelessness rose red flags and the DEA start breathing down my neck and watching our company’s every move… I had a tire blow out on the freeway… My fiancé and I seemed to start fighting a little more often…

I discovered that was only cresting over the top of my life’s tipping point. Soon, it seemed that more and more things started going wrong in my life, on a more severe level… I was on the brink of losing my job, my engagement broke up, I became very ill, and doctor’s discovered I had an auto-immune disease that would require $1,000/month medication for the rest of my life… My beloved dog was diagnosed with bladder cancer… The new condo that I just purchased (a few weeks after the break-up) flooded…

Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, I got the phone call that no one ever wants to receive. My father, whom I loved with all of my heart, unexpectedly passed away. And, I never got the chance to say good-bye.

It seemed too much to bear. I found it extremely difficult to even function. My sorrow put me in such a pit of depression, I never thought that I would get out. I curled in a ball in the corner of my room and wouldn’t stop crying for hours on end. Trying desperately to catch my breath became a common occurrence. Eventually, the fits of crying would subside, not because I felt better, but because my emotions went numb.

It was difficult to turn to my family, not only because we all lived so far away from each other, but because they were all mourning the loss of my father as well. I could only turn to friends once in a while because how were they supposed to know how to handle my grief when I didn’t even know how to handle it myself.

One day, as I passed by my hallway mirror, I was horrified by the shell-of-a-woman looking back at me. I could tell by the hollow eyes that I had lost hope in ever feeling normal again.

I felt like the world and the Universe were in cahoots to make sure that I was never happy again, and thus the sparkle that was normally in my eyes was eventually snuffed out. I just stared in my eyes for what might have been an hour, and felt that my dad was seeing this as well. Seeing me crying, screaming, and withering away to nothing. What would he have said to me in that moment?

“Come on, sweetheart. It’s time to start being happy again. You’ve got this.”

How was I going to do this? I had no idea. But, the desire to crawl out of this pit of despair suddenly became so great, that staying where I was would no longer be an option. It was almost as if my dad was throwing me a life line from the other side of the veil.

Happiness. What was that? What did it feel like? What did I need to do to get there?

I decided that I needed something that would take my focus off of my grief. Not forgetting it, but rather shifting my focus to give my heart time and space to heal. This was when the journey of Finally Finding Me began.

So, that’s it… Just an intro as to where all of this started. In future posts, I’ll go into detail about how exactly I climbed out of the hole I had found myself in. But, until then…

Keep being amazing.