"The 7 Rules of Life" mini-series: Some things are meant to happen but not to last

Just like a year is marked by different seasons, our lives too are marked by different seasons and each one of these seasons in an individual life is an opportunity to grow, reinvent him/herself and write a new story. With each season most of the time comes different people, each bringing something different, something we specifically need at that very moment they enter our lives. And even though some of those people are in our lives only for a season, we can't help but get attached to them: we get obsessed by the idea that maybe they will stay forever. We start making plans hoping they will stick around for a life time, only to witness months or years down the road things falling apart. In a little as few months or a years, our relationships with certain people that meant so much to us go from best friends or lovers to total strangers.

And of course we are hurt. of course we are heart broken and feel betrayed by those people we thought would be our forever. I have felt that way on so many occasions but this is only because we failed to acknowledge that some of those people were not meant to be around forever. There were times where I refused to let go of some people but eventually I had to because the more I was trying to hold on to them, the more things were falling apart and the more I was losing myself and my peace of mind. I couldn't afford that ...

Seasons come and go and so do seasonal people. No matter how bad you would like the summer to last all year long (speaking of us people living in the coldest places of the world), it's going to end and winter is going to come a some point. The same is true of seasonal people: once their season in your life is over, they will leave and no matter how hard you try to hold on to them, you will only delay their departure but won't prevent it.

One thing you have to understand is that it has nothing to do with you or the fact that you didn't do enough to keep them from leaving. They had a purpose to fulfill in your life. They did what they had to do and now they are just pursuing their path of life. You need to understand that some things in life are meant to happen but not to last. Whenever a friendship or a relationship ends it hurts; getting over it is a painful and heartbreaking process that is sometimes necessary for us to grow and start another season of our lives.

As a year new year is about to start (thus probably marking a new season in your life), I want you to realize through this last article of "The 7 Rules of Life" mini-series that not all the people you started your journey with will walk the walk with you. Some people are meant to enter our lives, mark it forever either by the value they add to it or by the lessons they teach us and just leave.  And as hard as it can sometimes be, you need to be able to carry on with your life keeping close to your heart the good memories, the values they added to your life and the lessons learnt from their brief passage in your life.

I hope this mini-series theme did you good and that you found in it some helpful tools to carry on with life and make great things happen. I wish you a happy and blessed new year and may 2016 be the year you make your dreams come true because.

"The 7 Rules of Life" mini-series: Find your own wings and fly- You owe it to yourself

I was scrolling down my Facebook newsfeed a while ago and I stumbled upon the status update of a girl that I somewhat know where she complained about the fact that beside a few people that she knows, everybody else from our home country Cote d'Ivoire is only vlogging about men-women relationship. And the funniest thing is that, just like her, I’m wondering what is it about that obsession with relationship everybody seems to be developing right now?? And believe me when I say I’m not trying to be a jerk right here but I’m just like… am I missing something? Before you start throwing sticks and stones at me let me make a disclaimer: I am talking from my personal opinion and personal experience and you are free to agree or disagree with what I am about to say. So hold off your guns and read first. Then maybe after that we can start throwing sinks at each other.

The reason why so many people are bitter, sad, angry and get stuck on past relationships is in my opinion because they haven’t come yet to the realization that a relationship is a part of a life and not an entire life. People have gotten into the habit of being depend on relationships for their own happiness. They have grown into the habit of measuring their self-worth and self-esteem to the ability they have to be in a relationship with somebody. They live in a bubble where their significant other along with their relationship is their all. And then when everything fall apart they have nothing to fall back on because the relationship was a win or lose bet in which they dived head first. We have all been there at some point and for most of us our heart, self worth, self esteem has taken a HUGE toll because we were left with nothing that made us fell worthy when it all ended.

Speaking from my personal experience, I have come to understand from the long period of time I spent being single that there is a life to be lived and that life is an ensemble of multiple things, each taking a big or small place of our lives. I have grown to understand that there is a difference between having an aversion for commitment and a fear of confinement. The reason why I find it so difficult and complicated now to be in a relationship is that I have found myself confronted to confinement. I have dreams, ambitions, hopes and I cannot settle in with somebody who cannot understand that and support me. Why? Because I am not ready to give up on all that and lock myself up into something that might fall apart one day. It’s not being selfish… It’s understanding that I still have a long road ahead and the journey is far from being over, and as much as I would love to have company during my journey, I’m not ready to bailout on what I hold close to  my heart.  I do believe that everything in life is a matter of balance (which I am obviously not very good at the moment but I’m working on it) : people need to understand that they are sharing their life with someone, not making someone their life. It is important because in the event a relationship falls apart, you know that you still have something to fall back on and your life still has a meaning.

I have grown and learned a lot from being single. I have learned to be happy and content with myself. I have come to the understanding that my happiness, self-worth, well-being and self-esteem are not determined by my ability to be in a relationship. They have nothing to do with whether or not I am in a relationship. They are independent from each other. I get to determine my self-worth and self-esteem value, I am in charge of creating my own happiness. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying I’m against relationship and that being single is the way to live life. I am just saying that there are a few things being single can teach you about life and about the way you might want to handle your next relationship. It is time to find your own wings and fly. Stop depending on people to validate you; stop relying on people’s compliments to feed your self-esteem because when those compliments stop, your self-esteem will eventually die from starvation. Break your dependence on relationships for happiness and learn to be happy on your own because if you don't know how to be happy by yourself, you won't know how to be happy when you are taken. Yes it is hard at the beginning but you will find a way whether it's through traveling, working, praying, making a change in your life, pursuing your dreams, ambitions or working on yourself; just do what makes you happy without necessarily involving other people's validation. Find self-fulfillment, validation and accomplishment within yourself. Find your own wings and fly because after so many years of being down and not being appreciated you owe it to yourself.

"The 7 Rules of Life" mini-series: Learn to celebrate the little victories

About a month or so ago, I was walking home from my BJJ class, thinking about my day and how far I had come ever since I started the little journey I have been on to find myself (this also will be the story of another post later sometime)

You know how people walk into gyms and have a list of goals and you're just ready to crush every single one of those things you have your mind set on? well I didn’t have that the first time I walked into Mass BJJ and met Mike and Nate. To be honest I didn’t have much left at this time: I was going through a rough patch in life, I was lost and it was just a never ending fall to the abyss that felt like an eternity. Everything was falling apart and I needed something to hold on to. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was on my way back from meeting with a friend for a late afternoon coffee and I passed by the gym that had just relocated to a new place literally 5 minutes away from my house. I stood outside,  in front of the door and took a peek inside: the light was dim, it was as if the gym was about to close but there were still some people inside. So I walked in and greeted the people I found inside. After a few words with Mike, co-owner of Mass BJJ, I signed up for a trial because I thought “Why not? That might be fun and at this point I literally have nothing to lose". It was all I needed for my life to take a new turn, this time for the best. After a few months of training, sweating, drilling, frustrations from being choked and submitted but also of learning and taming the storm that was raging inside of me, I finally got promoted. I was getting my first stripe and boy did it feel good!

On my way home that day, I tried to think about what I would say if somebody asked me what that stripe meant to me. Of course I would say it’s an acknowledgement of the hard work and the hours I put in on the mat. But in all honesty, it was much more than that. That stripe to me was and still is a symbol of Hope as well as a little victory in my fight to stay alive.

Why? You might ask... Well simply because honestly I don’t think I would have made it otherwise. When I started BJJ I was looking for something to hold onto to when everything was falling apart. I was desperately in need of something I could invest myself in, pour my heart into; something that would help me get my head out of the water. I was in need of something and/or someone to rescue me because I was dying inside and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu saved my life. Mass BJJ gave me my life back.

That stripe is also a symbol of strength and endurance. I am not the broken girl who walked in Mass BJJ for her first class and was on the edge of fainting 2 min into the drill. Walking home after that first class, lightheaded, my legs barely holding me, I understood the meaning of the saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Training BJJ made me stronger and it is not just my body. Physical strength is nothing when it comes to being on the mat. Because you can be 300lbs and be taken down by somebody weighting half your weight. The strength I am talking about is the mental one. The first thing that I wrote on the goal board when I started training was “challenge my limits” and I am happy to say I did. My mind is much stronger and as a results I have grown comfortable getting out of my safe and comfort zone. I have grown in strength and I am still getting comfortable being uncomfortable and accepting challenges I wouldn’t have accepted years ago. One of them was the challenge of evolving and going from thinking “I can’t” or “I will never be able to do that” to “If I put in hard work, I will” or “One day I will be able to do that. I just have work on this”.

Reflecting on how I things have turned out for me lately and how far from my expectations I am standing at the moment, I thought it was a much needed thing to take a break and celebrate that little victory. Little but not so much because of the significance it carries. As we just celebrated thanksgiving, I thought it was the right time for me to stop and be grateful for that victory right here. It is so easy to get discouraged and disappointed because we don’t see the big things happen but what we forget is that the accumulation of the small victories create a ripple effect leading to the big victory. Raising today my bottle of water (while having some chocolates... of course...) to celebrate a small victory that is nothing but the sign that greater things are laying ahead of me; but at the same time a victory not so little because of how meaningful it is. Indeed a huge victory on the old me, a huge milestone in the transformation process that is happening in my life at the moment, a huge step forward in my journey to find myself in the midst of the chaos surrounding me. To our “littles” victories and to the biggest moment of joy they have brought to us, celebrating and being grateful/hopeful as sometimes it is important to be gentle with yourself and appreciate the results of your hard work because you are doing the best you can with just what you have and sometimes it's not much. So...

Cheers

"The 7 Rules of Life" mini-series: How to overcome challenges in life and find motivation to move forward

It is so funny how most of my articles come up at a time where I am hitting rock bottom and right after I am done writing them, I feel a boost of energy and go tackle whatever I had neither the strength nor the energy to do. It’s probably the reason why most artists and bloggers can easily reach a bigger audience:  they share their personal experience and give their audience something to relate to. Today is the perfect day for another inspirational (hopefully) article as I’m back into “The 7 Rules of Life” mini-series, after a short break which, indeed, did well to my thinking process and my creativity. In this article, I will be sharing with you some of the tips I personally find helpful when it comes to overcoming challenges in Life and finding motivation to move forward in life. They are not ranked in a particular order but rather listed in the order in which they come  up to my mind. So with no further delay, let’s get right into the heart of the subject.

#1-      Find and Understand your purpose

Moving forward in life with no purpose is the perfect way set yourself up for giving up as soon as a challenge arises. When you know your purpose in life you are unstoppable. Challenges may come your way and slow you down but never stop you. It is important for you to find your purpose in life, to find who and where you are meant to be. Why is it important? Because it times were you will be tempted to give up, you will remember it and find the strength to overcome challenges and move forward.

 

#2-      Don’ let your situation define you

Whenever I am having not such a great day and/or a great week or when things get really hard in life, I try to stay motivated by reminding myself that it is only temporary. A bad day, week, month or year (yes sometimes it can be a long time) doesn’t mean that you have a bad life. A bad chapter in a book doesn’t make the book a bad one. It is just a sucky chapter in the midst of a great book. As a matter of fact it might be the suckiest chapter ever seen in the history of the sucky chapters in a great book. Nonetheless, it remains nothing else but a bad, sucky chapter in what might be the greatest book that ever existed: your life. So keep that in mind and keep moving forward because things will get better.

#3-      Every challenge is meant to bring out the best in you

Let’s be honest challenges, especially the hardest ones suck… but think about it that way: consider the number of students entering med school and the number of them who actually make it to the end. It is ridiculous the amount of people that give up after a few years in the system. Those who stay in are the ones who have understood the first two concepts listed above as well as the fact that the challenges they face on their journey to become a doctor is meant to bring out the best in them. Those challenges are meant to turn them into the best, top quality doctors their program has ever formed. It is the same things in life: challenges are meant to bring you best out of you. A wise man a.k.a Mike Pellegrino (who happens to be my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instructor by the way) once told me: “Don’t give up when life throws challenges at you. Don’t say it’s too hard or you can’t make it. When life throws challenges at you, you adapt, you change, you evolve”. And that’s what we have to do, keeping in mind that it’s for the sole purpose of turning us into a better version of ourselves, ready to handle the greatness laying ahead of us. Challenges are about pushing you do be so good that people can’t ignore you. That’s what challenges are all about.

#4-      Believe in yourself and in your dreams

To be able to overcome challenging situations in life, you must have faith in yourself. Familiar with the saying “fake it until you make it”? yeah well there is a better one which goes by “fake it until you become it”. Believe in yourself and in your dreams, believe that you are capable of becoming whoever you want to be and of making your dreams come through. I like that quote saying “the only limits we have are the one we impose to ourselves in our mind”. The minute you believe you are capable of doing anything and being whoever you decided you wanted to be, amazing start happening. Believe in yourself, invest in yourself when no one else will and amazing things will happen.

#5-      Believe that eventually something will work out

I think out of everything I have talked about, this one is the most difficult I have ever had to practice on a daily basis. It’s hard because sometimes you can’t seem to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It is hard because the more you try to hold onto things, the more they start falling apart. It is hard because sometimes you are just too exhausted to inject some optimism and positivity in the midst of chaos. But believe me, in the few times that I have tried doing it, it made a HUGE difference in the way I handle challenges and in the way I perceived them. Staying positive and believing that things will work out can turn situations around for the best and I know because I have experienced it. So no matter how hard it can be, keep repeating yourself that someway, somehow, something will eventually work out for you. And it will J

Briefly, these are the tips I wanted to share with you about overcoming challenges in life and finding motivation to keep moving. I hope you will try some of them and if you know some more that can be added to the list feel free to share them J

The Queen is back and greeting her fans "Hello"

Taking a break from "The 7 rules Of Life" mini-series to talk about the News while I put my thoughts in order and pull myself together to deliver articles with content which you can (hopefully) relate to. This being said, on the agenda today is what has been on the headlines of every journal, magazine and website which is (of course) the Release of Hello, a title from the new record of Adele entitled 25. Although the majority of Adele's fans  loved it, some others didn’t. And it’s totally okay because we all have different taste and it is that difference and diversity that makes the world the complex yet beautiful place we live in. I personally loved that song and all of Adele’s songs, not only because I am a fan of her,  a fan of great music with substance, a fan of most of the artists the UK have given us, but mostly because most, if not all, of Adele’s songs hit home for me. Her lyrics make me travel in time and her music just says what I would say if I could find the right words. 

"Every song is a path that leads to an ocean of words that got lost somewhere in between our mind and our heart ; an ocean of words about the things that were left unsaid"~ F.A

I think it’s more than the words and the melodies: it’s about the emotions behind every song and how you can relate to them because each one of them takes you to a place in life; whether it’s a happy or a sad one where every word she says resonates and makes your entire being vibrate. I love how upon releasing this song she made a statement about life, what we want to be, stages we want to be at and once we reach them we then wished we hadn’t. What particularly moved me is how she talked about getting to know herself and finally being at peace with who she had become but more importantly, how she qualifies 25 as being a "Make-up record" unlike 21 which she says was a "breakup record"

 

"My last record was a breakup record and if I had to label this one I would call it a make-up record. I'm making up with myself. Making up for lost time. Making up with everything I ever did and never did." ~ Adele

Entering the early 20’s is an important turn in someone’s life. It’s the time where you start forming your personality as an adult, you start changing and evolving and understanding things in life you didn’t before. It’s a period for me that was about building myself, finding myself, nurturing myself and healing my wounds just like Adele said, because supposedly time helps you heal. And it does. And as years go by, you become wiser and start viewing life under a new angle and a new light. You start thinking more about your future in a more realistic way but you also think about the past a lot. You think about the choices you made which were not necessarily the best ones, you think about all the times you have messed up and if you hadn’t before, you draw lessons from them. You get to understand and experience at a deeper level the value of things like friendship, relationships, love, and every little moment of happiness you spend by the side of the people you love and who mean the world to you.  You are no longer blindsided by your anger, pain and frustration about getting your feelings hurt and your heart broken because you don't have the time nor the energy for it: you are focusing on better things. You have come full circle and have decided to redirect your energy to things that matter, things that will make you a better person. You reach that stage where you finally have a sense of who you are and where you stand and you are at peace with it.

In her first interview in three years with i- D that you can read in full here, Adele was asked what was Hello about. To that question her answer was : “The song is about hurting someone's feelings but it's also about trying to stay in touch with myself, which sometimes can be a little bit hard to do” and when asked if that song was a form of apology to the former love the refers to her most famous song Someone like you, the singer responded: "Oh, god no,"[…] "That's over and done with, thank fuck. That's been over and done with for fucking years. No, it's not about anyone specifically. It's about friends, ex-boyfriends, it's about myself, it's about my family. It's also about my fans as well”

Whether we talk about the topics addressed in Hello or about the musicality and the vocals, it is undeniable that maturity is imprinted in that album. It is what makes the DNA and the structure of that album: This album is about maturity, all it has to offer  and the opportunity to start a new season in life. People find that song simple and to that the only question I can’t help but ask myself is:  isn’t it what maturity is about? simplicity? Isn’t it about letting go of all the artifacts and superficial embellishments to get back to the basics and most simple things in life that we most of the time ignore? I think maturity is all about those things: getting back to the basic to figure out who you are in order to grow and be a better version of yourself.

"The 7 Rules of Life" mini-series: "Take life as it is"

Sometimes it is just hard to keep going. You feel like nothing is moving; like nothing you do is moving your life in the direction you want it to go. As a matter of fact sometimes you feel like the more you try the worst it gets and you are just like: “what am I doing wrong?!”. Sometimes you are doing nothing wrong. Sometimes you are doing everything you have to do in order to see results. But life is full of mysteries and has a way to work things around that is different from what we have in mind. The order in which we want things to happen, the time at which we want things to happen, the kind of things we want to happen… life the way we picture it in our mind… Everything is just different… If I had to talk about my life, I'd quote Rachel Wolchin and say:" My life can be described in one sentence: it didn’t go as planned and that's okay". Does it suck? Yes sometimes. But in those times I want to remember how what came unexpected was even better than what I asked and was hoping for.

Don’t give up too soon on your dreams, don’t give up too soon on your goals. Just because it didn’t work today, doesn’t mean it is not going to work tomorrow. Just because today was a rainy day doesn’t mean that the sun won’t be out tomorrow. We have a tendency to extrapolate today’s situations and apply them to the future without even being there yet. What we truly have to do instead is to take each day as it comes and believe that the next one will be different. You can't anticipate life : you have to let it be and work you way through it everyday to the best of your abilities

Good doors have to close so that better doors can open. Some things in life have to fall apart so that better things can fall into place. Don’t limit yourself to what you see or seem to see. Walk by faith and believe that good things are on the way. They might not be what you expect; they might not come at the moment you expect them to come but once they happen, they will shatter all those memories of pain, tears, hopelessness you have replayed so many times in your head. Let your faith be bigger than your fears, bigger than any circumstances you are going through right now. Let your faith the bigger than any battle you are fighting right you and let it take you were you are meant to be.
Life doesn’t always turn out the way we want it to but it’s okay because sometimes it’s even better than what we hoped for. So just take life as it is and let your faith be the light that enlighten your way when dark times arise; let it be the strength that moves you when you have none left.
 

"The 7 rules of Life" mini series: "Disconnect to Reconnect"

Welcome back to "The 7 rules of Life" mini-series. I would like to start by apologizing to all of you out there following the blog, encouraging me, reading these articles and using them as a way to inspire yourself to find your own way. I have been absent from the platform because of certain situations that demanded  my full focus and attention. Although I am not currently back full time to my blogging schedule (every 2 weeks; post is up on Mondays) I will do my best to post some articles and keep you in the loop. The blog is still here, I am still here; I just took a step back, a break to evaluate things, situations and life more clearly and it was a much needed thing in a world where people don't seem to ever stop.

We live in a world where the demand and the pressure is so high that we sometimes forget how important it is to just stop for a minute. We underrate the value of a step back because we are used to idea that we have to constantly be moving forward. And what happens is that we get burned out, we get exhausted. In between meeting the demands of the people surrounding us, behaving like we are superhuman, trying to make everybody happy, there is truly no time or energy left to evaluate what we want and what makes US happy.

These past couples of days have came with their share of toughness and challenging situations to deal with. As a response to life giving me lemons, I thought there was only one thing to do: keep moving forward no matter how hard it was. Which I did but soon, I reached a point where I was just emotionally exhausted, I was burned out and I couldn’t pick myself up anymore. I felt like I was trapped in some kind of vicious circle where the more I was trying to push and move forward, the harder it was for me to get my head out of the water. It is when I decided that I needed a break. So I took one: I disconnected myself from everything and took some time to evaluate my life. I took a step back to think about what I had gone through, what my life was like at the moment and what I wanted to do next. But most importantly I took time to reconnect with myself.

I got to a point where I couldn’t move forward because there were too many things I just pushed to the side pretending they didn’t exist in hope that it would make my life easier. But it did not: it only made things worse. Being stuck and having such a hard time getting my head out of the water made me understand that before I could deal with the challenging situations ahead of me, the sadness, the frustrations, the brokenness, the emptiness, the tears and the chaos, I had to heal first. I had to get to the core of myself and find the root of the problem to fix it instead of treating the symptoms. I had to reconnect with myself, fix myself, and heal myself before attempting anything else. It was something vital. Taking a step back was an opportunity for me to be in touch with myself, a moment to evaluate who I was, where I was going and what I really wanted and needed, what was best for me.

It was a really enlightening moment where I got to learn a lot more about myself than I thought I knew. It gave me a chance to look back and appreciate what I had accomplished, who I had become. I learned to spend time with myself, to nurture myself, to grow, to explore new routes and avenues the noise of the world around me prevented me to. It allowed me to also map out the changes I wanted to incorporate in my life not to make people happy, not to satisfy their demands and expectations, but first to make myself happy, second to create the life I have always dreamed of, and last, to be the person I have always wanted to be.

You can’t deal with life if you are broken and sometimes the best way to move forward is to take a step back. It is essential to disconnect with everything else around you and reconnect with yourself if you want to keep moving forward and get to the place you are meant to be at. It’s a moment where you get to define your true self, a moment where you mute everything else around you and tune into yourself to create peace, happiness and healing from within because like Trent Shelton always says “It all starts with you”

"The 7 rules of Life" mini-series : "Make peace with your past so that it won’t screw up your present"

Introducing the first part of "The 7 rules of Life" mini-series, I wanted to talk about something some of us have experienced more or less at different levels depending on our ability to recover from situations that happen in our lives and affect us whether we are aware of it or not. So today, let's talk about being stuck in the past, hoping that my experience will help you let go and move on. Now let's be honest here: it is really easy to stay stuck in your past and quite frankly for being there, it is one reason why I would NEVER judge people having a hard time letting go of things. Letting go/ making peace with your past is so easy to say but it is really a hard thing to do and anybody who has been there once in life can attest it. I can attest it. So many things can hold you in the past, things you might or might not be aware of. Things you thought you let go of but truly you buried in and repressed until the day something triggered those repressed feelings or reopened that ugly wound you thought you were done dealing with.

It can be an ugly breakup, the loss of someone dear to you, someone who did you so wrong and hurt you so bad that you can’t seem to get over it. A mistake you made which has been haunting you ever since. Whatever it is that is holding you in your past, you have to go back to it and deal with it. You have to find the root of the problem and solve it. Finding a way around will only delay the onset of the symptoms for a few days, a few months or maybe a fear years? But sooner or later it is going to come back around and kick you in the behind. I have myself been through a lot of very emotional things which I thought repressing was the answer to. But then every time I thought I was fine, something would come along and just hit on that very one thing I was trying to repress and cheat myself into think I was over with. It took me a while to understand the reason why this would constantly happen. Why it hurt so much but most importantly why it always seemed to bring me back to one specific thing deep down I knew I was not over with. And then I understood that maybe life was giving me an opportunity to go to the root of an issue I had that I never really dealt with.

Maybe life was giving me an opportunity to face those emotions I only knew how to respond to by shutting down and pretending I was okay. It was time for me to open up, talk about those issues, let out all those repressed feelings of anger, sadness and frustration. I had reached a critical point where I had no other choice but to talk about the way I felt and address those issues in order to  be able to move forward. It was the time I finally had the opportunity to forgive myself for the mistakes  I made and understand that it was my past. Not my present, not my future, just my past. I had the opportunity to hold onto the lessons and let go of the pain and the mistake in order to better myself. Once I finally understood this and I starting fixing what was broken by treating not the symptoms but the root of the disease, it finally felt like I was ready to move on. I was finally ready to definitely and permanently close some doors of my past I was always so prompt to reopen and burn some bridges that I knew would take me down roads I never wanted to take again. It wasn’t easy but I wanted to do it. I was tired of my past screwing up my present. I was done carrying over the broken pieces of me from my past into each new day I was offered and that I was supposed to use to build a better, happier and stronger me. Though making peace with my past is a daily effort and a constant work in progress, ever since I started doing it I feel more at peace with myself now than I ever felt.

I have learned two very important lessons from that journey. The first one is that I had the wrong notion of being strong: I thought it was not showing the world how you feel but I discovered that being strong is about showing the world that you have struggles too. You cry too. Your life is not perfect but you deal with it. You fall but you don’t stay on the ground: you stand up and you keep walking to reach that destination you are going to. The other and the most important lesson is that my past is just a story and coming to the full realization of this definitely set me free. I realized that the situations I went through, the mistakes I made were meant for me to learn a lesson and LET IT GO of the pain/ the situation.

It will not be easy to make peace with your past and letting go of all these things that are holding you back, if you are ready to move on to live a better, happier life and build a better future it will be worth all the troubles and the hardship it comes with. And if after this you are still not convinced and you are still stuck, just remember that you can't grow unless you let go.

Hope in the midst of pain and chaos

Pain is something natural that at a certain point in our life we all get to experiment. Some people can be good at handling it some other are not so great. I used to think that I was great at handling pain, smiling to the face of the world while pretending that I was okay but I was not. I used to think that crying or admitting that me being in pain especially emotionally was a sign of weakness but it wasn’t. there is only so much you can take and sometimes crying is a way to for you to say that you have tried to be strong for so long and you are just exhausted. But in no case does is make you be any less that what you are: a human being. Then I finally got to understand that it is totally okay to not be okay because life is not perfect and all pink: there are moment where reality is too harsh and pain can be difficult to suck in.

At some point in your life you have to come to the full realization that there is a need for you to acknowledge the pain. You need to stop hiding or running away from it and face it no matter how abrupt or intense it can be. Life will always bring you pain: physically, emotionally, etc… life will bring you pain under all its possible forms. You don’t get a say in that. When it comes to the emotional pain you don’t get to choose if you get hurt or not: we all eventually be hurt whether we want it or not. This is the sad and somewhat harsh reality of life. However, you get to choose how you deal with your pain, you get to choose who will have the privilege to be the author of that pain. You get to pick the way you want to look at that pain and consider it.

Most of the time, pain is associated with so much negativity but there is actually another side to pain. Pain is there to remind you that you are still alive. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be able to feel that abrupt pain that at time feels unbearable. Waking up everyday, putting one foot in front of the other in spite of giving up is a reminder that you are still here and you are making it alive. Each day is a miracle because you survive the pain from the day before and you make it into another day; and as long as you keep on doing it there is hope that one day you will be okay and that the pain you feel today will one day be part of your past.

Also, depending on your perspective of life, you can see pain on different angles. you can see it as something that hurts you and breaks you. It is totally normal and this is something that most of us do because it is the natural and human way to go about it. But you can challenge yourself and go beyond what you would normally see and look at pain as an opportunity to build yourself. It is similar to the perspective one can have of chaos. Yes chaos is everything being ruined, tore down and nothing is left standing. Chaos in itself is depressing. this is the normal outlook that every human being could normally have. But beyond that, beyond the fact that I have to start everything all over again, I see chaos as an opportunity to build myself the way I always wanted to be. I see an opportunity to turn my life into what I would have always wanted it to be. The same is true for pain: it is an opportunity to learn and allow for every scar to remind you that you can heal and every time you heal you become stronger.

Although this is true you have to understand and accept that healing doesn’t happen overnight: you need to give yourself time to heal. Time eases the pain, it helps you heal from your wounds. Everybody is different and everybody heal at a different pace. Just because someone recovered over a short period of time doesn’t mean that it will be the same for you.  Just like someone taking 2 years to recover pain doesn’t mean that it will take you the same amount of time. You have to do your own experience of it and find what works best for you. You have to find your own pace and work on yourself until the day you actually are actually okay.

As far as I am concerned, reaching that point where I am okay is a work in progress for me. There are days where everything seems easier and there are days where pain hits me in the face and stabs me in the chest. But “that's the thing about pain: it demands to be felt”. I have learned to cope with it, keeping in mind that I could be okay today, tomorrow, in 3 weeks, in 1 month or in a year. It will take as long as it has to but eventually one day, I will be okay. And so will you. Until then take care of yourself and carry on to the best of your ability.  

Struggles only curvy women understand

Let's face it: nobody is perfect and even though Mother Nature has blessed us with the most flattering features of all time (we all know what I mean here), we curvy women can't seem to get away with some of the below mentioned facts. And pretty much all of us will somehow cringe at the fact that we can totally relate to this whether it is on a daily basis or just when we go shopping and can't seem to be able to fit into anything nice and flattering!

1. The button down shirt gap aka sneak peek
if you mother nature blessed you with the greatest cleavage you never though you would have you understand that one. Like you literally see a shirt that is supposed to be your size. You think it will fit because well it is your size. You put it on and then all of the sudden you realize that you are giving the entire world a sneak peek to what is supposed to be hiding behind a buttoned shirt. Free preview!

2. No answer to the question "which size are you?"
such a hustle and you always have that weird face when the lady helping you shopping is asking you : which size are you? See, one curvy girl does not simply has one size. You have you regular size and you have your boobs size. But in reality your true size is your boob size lol. Why? Because if you can’t fit your boobs in, it doesn’t fit. Simple as that lol

3. One size never fits all
I never got the concept of that one size fits all. Like seriously... It never fits me. It is always too small and I feel like I can’t breathe in those types of outfits. It is more like one size fits most because excluding me. And I don’t get the point of this. I am just saying…

4. The never ending gap in your pants waist and the way-too-long struggles

you could fit a baby in there! Seriously! And this happens because you have to size up to have you butt fit in those jeans. It doesn’t matter if it is too long: after years of shopping that way you just tap into your shopping budget and go straight to the tailor to alter your jeans and make them look descent. Really shopping is a budget when you are curvy.

5. Cute stuff are never your size
you can’t have it all: either it is cute or it is your size. It rarely happens that it is both. Why? See #4 loool
It can happen that you find something cute in your size but let’s be realistic it doesn’t happen that often. And it is not that you are a plus size. It is just that you have been abundantly blessed and that Mother Nature has been more than generous to you. loool sad

And don’t even get me started on trying to make it through the finding a seat in the movie theater. Ring the Butt alert!!! It is all over the place and in everyone’s face! looool We might have a lot of struggles but at the end of the day, even though we will never be skinny minnies, we are happy with the way we look because guess what? We look daaaaaaaaaaamn good

Il est temps d'etre heureux

On consent parfois à beaucoup de sacrifices par amour, ou même parfois parce qu’on se dit qu’on n’a pas d’autre choix. Mais combien de personnes sont prêtes à faire ces mêmes sacrifices quand il s’agit de nous ? Combien sont capables de renoncer à leurs rêves ? À leur bonheur comme certains d’entre nous osent le faire pour que nous aussi nous ayons notre petite parcelle de bonheur.
On nourrit des rêves en secrets, des projets qui ne verront jamais le jour juste parce que nous vivons encore dans cette prison, dans cette illusion que le bonheur des autres vaut mieux que le nôtre. Nous préférons renoncer à nos rêves parce qu’ils pourraient briser ceux des autres mais combien de personnes se mettent à notre place, dans nos chaussures pour se rendre compte du mal-être qui nous ronge ?

Devant la face du monde tout va bien mais au plus profond de nous tout crie misère et chaos juste parce que nous ne sommes pas heureux. Il n’y a rien de plus noble que de renoncer à son bonheur, a ses rêves pour que les personnes que nous aimons soient heureuses, mais à un moment il faut savoir dire non à certaines choses et à certaines personnes pour être heureux. Depuis quand être heureux c’est être égoïste ? On a tous droit au bonheur alors pourquoi pas nous ?

 

Qu’est-ce que les gens vont penser ? Est-ce qu’ils vont me comprendre ? Comment ils vont réagir ? Qu’est-ce qu’ils vont dire à mon sujet ? Depuis la fondation du monde les gens n’ont pas arrêté de critiquer les choix des personnes avant nous et ce n’est pas avec nous que ça va changer : ça existait avant nous et ça existera après nous. Ce que les gens pensent ou disent n’est pas le plus important. Le plus important c’est votre bonheur, ce que vous ressentez. Les gens n’ont pas besoin de comprendre le pourquoi des choix que vous faites, ils n’ont pas besoin de comprendre pourquoi vous avez besoin de les réaliser pour être heureux. Ils ont juste besoin de les accepter. Vous n’avez pas besoin de vous expliquer sur vos décisions et d’étaler votre vie au premier venu. C’est votre vie, c’est votre bonheur qui est en jeu.

Quoique vous fassiez de bon comme de mauvais les gens vous critiqueront et auront toujours leur mot à dire. Mais je préférais être critiquée avec un sourire aux lèvres, vrai, sincère, qui vient du cœur et qui dit au monde entier j’en ai rien à foutre de ce que vous pouvez dire ou penser tant que je suis heureuse, que d’etre critiquée pour des choix que j’ai été obligée de faire et qui me rendent encore plus malheureuse que je l’étais auparavant. Dans le premier cas le bonheur fait la balance avec les critiques, dans le deuxieme vous sortez deux fois perdant.

Personne n’a droit de citer quand il s’agit de votre bonheur, de ce qui pourrait vous libérer de cette dépendance aux antidépresseurs, aux anxiolytiques mais surtout des larmes que vous versez chaque soir et dont personne ne connait l’existence. Parfois pour être heureux il faut être sourd à ce que les gens disent, être aveugles aux regards de dédain et de mépris qu’ils portent sur vous et n’écouter que votre cœur. Votre vie, votre bonheur, vos choix : arrêtez de vous souciez autant de l’opinion des autres et vivez votre vie. Au début ils vous feront la tronche mais s’ils vous aiment vraiment et s’ils voient comment vous êtes heureux, ils finiront par s’y faire et embrasser votre vision et vos choix.

Stop worrying...

... Start living

Confession of an Insomniac

If there is one thing I am always looking forward to the moment I step out of my bed it is of course the time of the day I will come back to and slide in between my bed sheets.
No seriously I am not even kidding. People are constantly questioning my sleep addiction. Coffee addiction, bed addiction, house addiction but they do not understand that unlike any other people my sleep cycle is reversed!
Unless you have ever in your life experimented insomnia you cannot understand what it feels like to lay down on your bed wide awake for hours. And then when you finally fall asleep at 5’45 am, your alarm rings at 6 am to let you know it is time for you to open your eyes and get ready to go wherever the heck you have to be.

I am sure the insomniac out there understands what I mean when I say sleep just loves playing hide and seek with you for hours before you finally find it and fall asleep into Morpheus arms. And sometimes you know you try to make that love and hate relationship (hate being more on the sleep side rather than yours) work. You make sure to give every single once of energy left in you to the world so that when you get home you are so tired that your body has no other choice than surrender to the power of Morpheus. And it works! You are so tired that you are literally battling sleep on your way home. You even skip diner because you know that wasting sleep time is something that might cost you one extra sleepless night on top of the … well… 10 previous ones you already had. So you fast forward everything looking forward to finally sleeping and the minute your head hit the pillow your brain is like: Just kidding!

And that’s when you start thinking about the worst decisions you have ever made in your life. You make a checklist of all the suspicious and questionable choices and/or tastes you had growing up. You go through some of your old pictures on your Facebook account thanking the Lord this period of your life is behind you. And this is the time you get the shittiest ideas you will ever get too! (except for when you are drunk! Drunk ideas are 100% the shittiest ones. No wonder you never have them when you are sober duh!) You go back and read some old texts or messages from when you were with you now ex gf/bf. Then you turn into a stalker and start stalking them on every social media and the next thing you know you are trying to reconnect and send a message asking if she/he is asleep? If she/he would like to meet for coffee? To go out? Yes? No? Nevermind? Yo… it is 3 am in the morning and if I was the gf in question I’ll be like WTF? The whole world is asleep!!! Get busy while I am getting some beauty sleep we’ll talk about that one day (or most likely never…) Or you just start asking yourself life related questions...

But as bad as it can sound, my insomniac hours turn out to be the most productive ones. For some reasons it is the moment of the day where my inspiration peak is at its highest. It is also the time of the day when passed the sluggishness of not being able to sleep, I become the most hyperactive person that has ever existed in the history of my family. Like I would clean the bathroom, the kitchen, do the dishes, fix my closet, do my homework and study for stuff I don’t even have too. Don’t ask me why I don’t know if I knew I wouldn’t be blogging at 4’00 am in the freaking morning. I guess creativity is the enemy of sleep that’s the only explanation I could find. Seems like my sleep is done playing hide and seek with me so I’ll just leave you here and go catch it while I still can.