Still Alive

When all hope is gone & you surrender your need to control everything. You find yourself.....

I have given up and given in a thousand times. I know when I lost my second daughter "My Plan" for life was derailed. I couldn't think about the future anymore. I couldn't truly be happy for other people because my focus was solely on myself. Reading book after book didn't help. Although I wanted to believe the words to be true for me, my heart wasn't ready to accept it. I knew I had to believe it was possible to heal before I could ever begin trying. Hope became a foreign word and Faith was just my daughter Emma's middle name.

Brokenness led me down a dark and dangerous path. I tried to numb the pain, hide from it and pretend it wasn't there. At my worst drinking became an everyday thing and along with it more bad decisions and more heartache. Those decisions have forever changed me, but not in the way you would think. I know now who I am more than ever before. I know what I don't want and also what I DO want. Most of all I know what I need and need to give.

Looking back I am sure I had other options, but the hard road turned out to be the road I found myself on. Someone wise once told me "it is not the number of times you fall down, but whether you pick yourself back up again." I have picked myself back up and with the support of a few close people to me.... I am Still Alive.

My heart is full today. Does it still hurt? Yes, but I can smile through the tears. Laugh despite the pain. Love a whole new way. I am alive. And for a change I want to live.