a time to reflect

So here as promised is my blog a little while later after the heightened state of emotion has returned to baseline. I have thought so much about my experience over the last week and how it is impacting and changing me.

I realize after re-reading my last couple of blogs that I was experiencing such immense shame and doubt over my behavior that my words didn't express much other than that. I apologize for it, because there were other emotions circling in my mind. The morning after I wrote, my mother and I went to a friend's house for breakfast. It was difficult for me participating in all of these functions for the time that my mother was in Boulder because I felt as though our friendship had turned inside out. I felt like I was walking on egg shells but didn't want to be. I felt like I needed to judge myself and then ashamed that I would. I felt like I couldn't be carefree with her and joke around because I was behaving like a toddler. I didn't know who I was, and therefore was having such a difficult time relating to the people around me.

But as we arrived at this breakfast, I was speaking to the hostess as my mother was outside, and she was listening closely to my story and what I had to say. She told me something important initially and that was (not exact quote) "I hear your shame and doubt, and I see that you are going over in your mind how unfathomable it is to be back at square one. But I want you to replace those two emotions with gratefulness. Now is the moment to be truly thankful that you are so young and learning this lesson."

And how right she is. For the first time in my life, I found myself not marinating in the negative of how I was feeling because of my actions. I was finding it all but impossible to separate my behavior from who I was as a person. And all I could see in my view was how horribly I had acted, and how that made me feel. When instead, I feel as though it came at a critical time to examine the behavior, separate it from who Greer Van Dyck is at the core, and be thankful that from that point on, I would bloom into a new kind of flower.

So here I am right now. Able to reflect on those many emotions I was experiencing all at once during the week, speak again to my mother, come to a beautiful place with her, and really appreciate where I am now versus seven days ago. It is truly remarkable how within one shell I can change into so many things. I feel like my transformation and evolution is occurring daily. I said it in my first blog, every day is a lesson. But through that, it is critical to be one thing: grateful.