Scarred Beautiful

Unintentionally, I seem to be having a theme around what is beauty and how I feel about myself.  I am fully aware how much I struggle with my self image.  Sometimes meeting new people is the hardest thing I do because I have this view of myself that I often don't realize that other people don't view me the same way.  I am constantly changing, this is something I accepted during counseling.  For years, I worked at moving away from my past, my upbringing, the shame I feel for being unloved and unwanted as a child.  Now, I am constantly changing to become.  The two processes are quite different.  One I am trying to remove the ugliness I feel in my life.  The other is adding to and enhancing who I believe I want to become. 

Before counseling, I felt stuck and mired in the nightmares that haunt me.  Now the nightmares are still there but they are just back ground noise that motivate me to not quit my upward onward movement.  I am becoming the person I believed all along I am capable of being.  My parents inability to see my value and worth no longer defines me.  I do not need to prove anything to them any more.  I stalled for a while.  With out that fighting against, that quest for simple survival, who am I?  The battle is over.  The scars are still there but who am I?  I was fortunate to have a therapist that did not try to answer that question for me.  He encouraged me to explore and get to know who I am.  It was scary.  I was an ultimate hider.  I was conditioned to do exactly what I was told to do no matter the cost to myself.  I was a perfect door mat.  My therapist got the door mat to stand up.  I felt flat and invisible.  He would get so frustrated with me, my complete lack of understanding of simple things like boundaries and human rights.  Then he would show great compassion, apologize for talking to me like I was a little child, but he recognized and accepted me exactly the way I was a hurt little girl in an adult body with no emotional comprehension how to go on with my life.  His compassion won over his frustration.  He freely admitted if he had realized early on in my counseling how damaged I was, he would have referred me to someone else.  His compassion won, he worked with me for seven years with the end goal of I would believe in what he taught me about living and continue the journey without him.  He wanted me to be independent of my past.  He wanted me to see that I was not an extension of my mother, I was not the ugliness I saw in myself.  He wanted me to find out who I was.  He asked me that question many times.  Trying to help me see that I was not defined by what happened to me.  I learned that what happened to me was tragic and cruel but that wasn't who I was. I am not my trauma.

I continue my journey, exploring and trying things that before counseling I would never have done out of fear.  The fear is not gone but instead I feel the fear and do it anyway.  I keep learning and I am growing which by definition means I am thriving. 

For me, this is my redemptive story.  I shared here before that I believe in Christ and I prayed for answers.  I believe that My Savior kept my counselor in the dark long enough that he felt committed to helping me.  Yes, I believe Christ sent me to this particular counselor  to help me to learn to grow. 

This morning I listened to Andrea Casteel Smith share her redemptive story on her web page Scarred Beautiful  https://scarredbeautiful.com/  Her faith helped her use her lowest point to become her turning point.  I will be exploring her page more.  If you are a person that does not believe in God or still at the stage of your tragedy is God's fault, this page is not for you.  If you are a person that does believe in God and that Christ is the Master Healer than I believe this page will be a powerful new tool to share your story and be inspired.  I am fully aware that God the Father and Jesus Christ can be a real sore spot because sadly abusers will use scriptures and references to religion to justify their abusive behavior.  I know this because it happened to me.  I will testify to you, go to the scriptures yourself, read and pray and ask for what Heavenly Father actually intended for you.  Jesus Christ knows our pain, He desires to bring us comfort.  I pray often.  I share my frustration.  He sends me answers through what I read and other sources.  He knows my personality and works to teach in a way that I understand and expands my understanding from where I was to where He is leading me to become.  He asked me to follow Him, sometimes that is scary, but I feel the fear and do it any way.