Have you ever felt jealous of someone who had a near-death experience? Of someone with aggressive, terminal cancer? Of someone who had 90% of their body burned in a fire? Someone who had been in a freak accident? Someone who was assaulted or abused?
I have.
These are people whose stories captivate any audience. These are stories that will move you to tears. These stories inspire you to be better than you are. These are the tales that fire you up and get you motivated. Because the people have overcome enormous odds just to be able to tell their story.
You watch movies about these people. You sing songs about them. You read books about them. You learn about them in school long after their stories have ended.
Now, I’m not asking for trouble. I am noticing a theme. Overcoming adversity gets all the likes and all the shares. Positivity in the face of catastrophe goes viral because we all wish we could be so strong in such traumatic circumstances. I think, “if only I were put to the test, what a story I could tell!”
Of course if you’re anything like me, you might also immediately think, “Wouldn’t it be better if the tragedy could have been avoided altogether?”
Welcome to my life. Hello, my name is Sara, and I have spent a lifetime in the middle. I have a positive outlook on life, and though I’ve experienced the usual losses and challenges, mine have been light to moderate at most.
As I’m considering how I make an impact on the world, I’m combing through my past looking for one of those high impact stories. I haven’t found one.
I don’t have one obvious story that defines where I’ve been and who I’ve become.
I don’t have one singular moment in my life that I can point to as the defining moment.
I don’t have one great story that no matter how often I tell it brings you to your knees every time.
I just don’t.
And it’s perfect.
If you know me and anything about what I do or have done, you know that I do several different things. I write, draw, paint, crochet, sew, construct, create. I listen, see, process, learn, move and grow. I punch, kick, elbow strike, stretch, bend, defend and challenge my body in new ways every day. I inspire, influence, instruct, encourage, embrace and strengthen the people around me whenever I can. I sing, dance, play games, tell jokes, coach and pray. I have many interests and many talents, many joys and many mishaps.
No wonder I don’t have just one story.
I never have.
That doesn’t mean that the stories I do have are any less empowering or impactful. It just takes a little more finesse to string my story together from the tens of thousands of stories that brought me here. And that, in itself, is a challenge.
My intention is to share some more of my stories.
Let’s start with the November story.
From around my junior or senior year of high school, I began to struggle with seasonal depression. I was never formally diagnosed, because going to see a therapist wasn’t something very many people did back then. And if they did, they didn’t talk about it.
I noticed my emotional pattern, and in college, I finally decided to take advantage of the school’s on-campus counseling.
I can’t remember what I said or what the counselor said. All I remember is feeling overlooked and unheard. Because the man talked about himself for the good majority of the hour I spent in his office. I did not go back.
Instead, I did the best I could to get through the winters. After college, November was often the month that life just wasn’t great. Maybe that was when friendships changed or dissolved. Or when I felt lonely, no matter who was around. When I felt like I couldn’t do anything right. When any resentment I had stored up through the rest of the year finally bubbled over. November was the worst.
I wanted to shake it. I didn’t know how.
I bought a full-spectrum “happy light.” I took St. Johns Wort and tried other supplements. Some years it would be fine. Others it would get very, very dark. At least in my own mind. Maybe no one else noticed.
I figured, this is just who I am. I’m a person who gets sad in November.
Then around five or six years ago, I really understood the choice that I had. I discovered that everything in my life was actually a choice.
So I chose differently.
And I still had hard Novembers. Until 2020. It was probably the hardest November for so many people on this earth. Except me. I felt some feelings, of course. I lost a friendship. And yet, the sun kept shining. I surprisingly still felt alive and full of hope. And by last November, 2021, I found it hard to believe that depression, seasonal or otherwise, was something that had ever had an impact on my life.
Which is why the story seemed so unimportant to me. It was my past. Gone. Like it was never even there.
All it came down to was choice. It was as simple and as difficult as that.
And that’s why I’m here. To take a look at those ten thousand different ways I’ve shown up for myself in my own story and share what’s relevant and relatable so that someone might see their own fear, doubt, shame, darkness in it and find the shine in their story, too.
So what choice are you making right now? What would you choose instead if you only knew how?
To work with me, book a time on my calendar.