Remembering Who You Are; Part Three

I have been thinking over and over again about how I would like to write this article. I was mostly thinking about how grateful I am; you know, counting my blessings. When I realized that what I really want to say is so much more than just gratitude even though that is a major part of it. I’ve learned so much this year that I cant help but share it! Not only does this keep it fresh in my mind, but when you share love, love comes back to you. Remembering who I am and where I came from has had a profound effect on my life, and how I see myself and my circumstances and I couldn’t be more grateful.

Spending a lot of quality time with family earlier in October reminded me of where a lot of these gifts came from. I am so grateful to God for showing me so much about my life that I couldn’t live without. Literally. Practices that keep me at my best, practices that have prevented me from falling further into depression, God has taught me through my family. It is because of the lessons that my family has taught me that I was able to build my own strong family of friends. People who support me in all aspects of my life. I couldn’t be more grateful for the quality relationships that I have been able to establish throughout my life. The fact that I have many people who take the time to think about me at all is amazing! It fills my heart with so much joy to know the love that exists in my life and I’m so grateful that I’ve learned to take the time to appreciate it all because it is so easy to forget when we get caught up in the daily grind of life. You can easily get swept away in the tidal waves of emotions that a single person can experience in one day.

However, it is through the very humbling experience of learning how to properly take care of all aspects of my well-being that  I was able to recognize these gifts and implement them into my life. My Nonno Dino on my Dad’s side of the family is to me, a symbol of what it means to take care of yourself. He taught me a lot about what it means to be the best version of yourself every single day. I am so proud that he is my Grandfather. Our relationship wasn’t always perfect but he has given me a tremendous gift, and I am forever grateful. Nonno Dino is a leader, someone who walks the walk, and leads by example. I went with my Father to visit my grandparents during the Thanksgiving weekend. I’m glad that all things considered, they are relatively healthy, and happy. However, my Nonno recently turned 87, and his health is significantly better than the health of my Nonna who is 82. Nonna, who has always been your typical 1950s house wife of Italian decent, was always taking care of and putting everyone else’s well-being above her own. A lot of people confuse “well being” with physical safety. A lot of people think that if you’re not currently experiencing a mortal threat, then you aren’t in danger. Reading this, I’m sure you know that, that is not true. You need to pay attention to the warning signs before they get to an unavoidable situation.

However, it is never too late! Obviously, the sooner the better, but I will never deny someone who needs to be healed, because I know that every person who comes to you in pain is an opportunity to heal both you and them. That is why I take this blog so seriously. My grandmother has Dementia, and she has literally lost the ability to take care of herself. My grandfather who has always made a practice of self-care is in relatively good health. Other than a pacemaker, he still exercises everyday and does his best to take care of my grandmother in any way he can. He’s even learned how to do simple cooking and cleaning. The only reason he was able to learn these new skills so late in life is because he has very strong habits built into his everyday life. Skills that he’s learned at a very young age. For my entire life, my grandfather has always exercised. Every day, he does some sort of physical activity. He has always been active his whole life. He played soccer, skied, he lifted weights, gardened, rode his bike, or at the very least he would go on a walk with Nonna every day after dinner. He still gardens, goes for walks, completes household chores. He’s in excellent shape for an 87 year old man.

My grandfather would keep his mind active, he was always working on something. I remember as kids, my grandfather had a huge garden. He grew grapes, he had apple and pear trees, a tomato garden, he grew so many different types of vegetables! He made his own wine and moonshine. He would fix his own car, he had many habits, hobbies and skills. He would always say things like, “if you don’t use it, you loose it.” He’s right. My grandmother spent the majority of her life, thinking and worry about other people. She didn’t take much time for herself to pursue her hobbies. She didn’t exercise as much as my grandfather did. I’m not blaming my grandmother. Her circumstances were completely different. She didn’t have the same freedoms and societal expectations as my grandfather. However, it is because of the sacrifices that my entire family has made, that I am able to grow up in a situation where I can look back and see the difference. I have the choice. Thank you God for helping me to see these important gifts that both my grandparents have given me, and my entire family. Thank you for helping recognize the importance of choice, and how much power I have over my own well being.

In reality, my grandparents are the reason why I live in Canada. My grandparents on both sides of my family made huge sacrifices. Left Italy and everything they knew to start over in Canada. Yes, their siblings came with them, but at the end of the day all they really had were one another. It was because of them that I have the amazing parents that I have, and the life that I have. It’s not just the importance of self-care that I’ve learned from my grandparents but all of the greatest life lessons have come from them. If they can come to a new country, learn a new language, find jobs, build a family and a home from nothing, there is nothing that I cannot do. My nonni (grandparents) inspire me every single day when I think back and realize all that they have done for me, I don’t think I know of a greater love.

My Grandparents celebrating “Grandparent’s Day” (my Mom’s idea). Missing Nonno Battaglia who passed away before this photo was taken.

Remembering Who You Are; Part One

I attempted to write this piece over a month ago. I wrote the title and that’s about it. I wasn’t even sure about the title at the time because I wasn’t completely sure of the direction I wanted this piece to take. It wasn’t until last week when I had dinner with my best friend, I was reminded of the importance of personal values and how they keep you grounded. How the things that you were taught by your parents, and grandparents inform you of where you came from, who you are, and what is the most important to you. These things were either taught to you in a positive way, leading by example, or in a negative way, where they show you what you don’t want in your life. I have to say that for the most part, my parents and family have been a positive influence. I was lucky. My family is not perfect that’s for sure, we are all human at the end of the day, but they have taught me a strong value and belief system that I still hold strong today. It is these core values that has helped me to fight against my own depression.

My depression has been a very humbling experience. I got into my depression by slowly forgetting about who I am, what I stand for, and who I dreamed I could be. Little by little, I let fear and self-doubt take over. Depression doesn’t just happen. It’s not like one day you wake up depressed, even though it can definitely feel that way. However, depression starts slow, it’s an accumulation of all the soul wounds you’ve experienced in your life. It comes from you constantly trying to “fight” your reality using defense mechanisms that only isolate you more and have you feeling worse than you did before. The thing is, when you’re living your life you don’t always recognize the negative events in your life as lessons, but rather as punishments. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be upset or feel pain when bad things happen to you. In fact, the only real way to turn these events into lessons is for you to feel all the pain that comes with it. Surrender yourself to the pain, don’t hide from the pain. Don’t drink your pain away, don’t smoke your pain away, don’t party your pain away, don’t try to pretend that you don’t feel hurt. Been there, done that. It doesn’t work.

For me, I lived the majority of my life deflecting my pain. When I was hurt deeply by someone else or by an event in my life, I would cry and be upset, then I would say “it’s fine, I’ll be okay.” I never wanted people to worry too much about me, seeing their fear for me would only amplify the fear I already felt. For example, my parents are great. They love me and my sisters more than anything in the entire world. I would always joke that my parents “care too much.” I know this sounds crazy, how could your parents “care too much?” Especially when some kids desperately want their parents to care about them just a little bit. I know this might make me sound like a spoiled little brat, and maybe I am, I don’t know. But eventually I stopped being honest with my family and friends as a defense mechanism. I was already feeling overwhelmed, and ashamed by the things happening in my life, I couldn’t bring myself to speak honestly about it with anybody, let alone the people who loved me most. I carried my crosses my entire adult life up until this point mostly on my own. I would sometimes drop hints here and there, but I would never allow people to help me. I would always say “this is my problem, don’t worry about it, I’ll figure it out,” or “I know you can’t help me, so what’s the point of talking about it?” So very foolish, and naive of me. I still do this, old habits die-hard. However, writing about my struggles in this way has helped to free myself of my own pain. It has allowed me to lift some of the heaviness I feel. It has slowly freed up space in my mind, body, and soul. Depression is like wearing chains and restraints that you have put on yourself, as punishment for not being able to do better, be better, for you basically being unworthy of happiness for whatever reason.

I think that we forget that we ourselves are human. We make mistakes. Whatever we did “wrong” in the past only happened because we didn’t know any better, or it happened because we weren’t ready to change. If you weren’t ready, it’s because you were scared. And that is OKAY!!! Punishing yourself for being scared, only keeps you living in fear. For me, I was always pretending that I wasn’t scared because I didn’t want anyone else to be scared. I was doing that to protect other people but also to protect myself. For me, it was easier to focus on helping other people because I would never have to really face my own fears. The things that scared me most. I’m extremely extroverted, and so I poured a lot of my energy into my friendships with others. Always being there for them in any way I could. I don’t regret this. Yes, doing this has put me in the place I’m in today, but at the same time it has allowed me to establish a really strong foundation and tribe for myself that allows me to now focus on myself fully and freely without fear. I know I don’t have to worry about loosing my friendships or my family. No matter what happens through this healing process, I know I have several people who love and support me. It is so very comforting. I now know that I don’t always have to be “around.” I don’t need to see them every single weekend like I used to. I don’t have to do EVERYTHING with my friends. I can be alone with myself and my thoughts now more than I ever could before. Not only is this important, it is healthy. I needed to learn to love myself, and to forgive myself for all the things I used to punish myself for, even things that I would punish myself for that I couldn’t control. I needed to let go of the shame and guilt that I’ve been carrying. The same feelings that brought me to my lowest point on New Years Eve 2018. I was with all my best friends, in a beautiful Air B&B celebrating the New Year, new possibilities, and I felt so scared and alone. I had this heavy guilt and shame on my chest. I broke down, I was bawling my eyes out, and I was hyperventilating. The thing is, I wasn’t alone, and my friends reminded me of that. Having all my closest friends there during my lowest point reminded me that I was safe. It reminded me that no matter what I am deeply loved. That is so powerful. New Years Eve may have been my lowest point, but it was also the most honest I’ve been in a while. I could no longer keep the barriers up that I worked so hard to build in order to protect myself. They were no longer helping me, instead they were preventing me from my own healing. That moment, looking back now, showed me just that.

This knowledge, that I can be completely vulnerable and show the parts of myself that I don’t like about myself to the people I love the most and they would still love me was huge. It gave me the courage to continue to be honest. A value that my parents, especially my mom instilled in us at a very young age. Honesty was probably the one value that my mom stressed the most. This is probably why I’m actually a terrible liar and why I wear my heart on my sleeve. I’m actually a very genuine and honest person. I only withheld the truth because I thought at the time it was what I needed to do to get through the shit I was going through. I now know how detrimental it was to go against my own values and intuition. It only made me feel more isolated and overwhelmed with the stresses going on in my life. It’s still very hard for me to talk candidly about what’s going on in my life. I still find myself focusing more on the positive aspects of my life when I speak to my loved ones, because again, I don’t want them to worry about me. I’m in a better place today because I’ve found healthy outlets for myself. Writing these blogs allows me to speak my truth in a way that feels safe to me. I have complete control over my story in this way. When I write about my thoughts, feelings, or the things that I’ve been through, I am the protagonist of my life story, and I am no longer the victim. It is my story to tell, and well, I’m a story-teller. Always have been, always will be. Another truth about myself that I’ve rediscovered. If you’ve been following my blog, you will know that there have been lapses in my posts that would last months. I lost my inspiration, my creativity, my motivation. I couldn’t bring myself to write. My life was too stressful at the time, and when I did write it was out of “necessity for my business.” It wasn’t really for me, it wasn’t genuine. I guess you can say I’m grateful for my depression, because it’s humbled me to come back to square one. To come back to my roots. To learn to be honest again, and to learn the importance of telling my story, of speaking my truth. That is the only way I can really help myself and therefore the world. We’re all human, we make mistakes but if God or the universe loves us then we’re gonna be alright.