Today, I would to take this opportunity to share with you – my present and future readers and friends- this very intimate and personal journey.

At 47 years old, in the middle of a pandemic, I’m finding the courage to make myself the most important promise of my life. The promise of not silencing my emotions ever again and finally give them the respect they deserve.

I’ve never been good friends with my own vulnerability. Just the fact of showing it is not in my nature. I would say, in reality, my strategy is to constantly ignore it, letting it wander inside my own sea of emotions. In my mind, that is a normal behavior, that’s how I grew up. I learned that I always had to think positively, which meant I had to pretend that everything was ok, denying my own feelings. I learned to be strong, even though that strength meant to burry what I was feeling. To keep going, thinking everything would “eventually” fix itself. Oh boy, was I wrong.

Today, experiencing very painful emotions, I can no longer use this strategy. It doesn’t work. It’s like having a twister of emotions that leave me almost breathless. Fragile. Paralyzed. I can’t recognize myself and that scares me. I have no idea on how to deal with all this. I just know that I can’t stop crying. I can’t stop thinking and wondering why people -who supposedly love us the most in this world- are the ones who can hurt us the most.

Have you ever asked yourself why there are stories that repeat themselves over and over again? Why we choose to accept people’s patterns and behaviors that are completely toxic to us? Why we keep hoping that eventually they would change? It’s hard to find the right reason, why we decide not to see reality as it is. We prefer to keep giving all we can give. Pretending, settling for any “crumbs” we can receive in exchange. Sounds familiar?

I can’t find the answer to that yet. Maybe it’s in our nature; or we stick to believing that others might change. Maybe we keep the hope, or the idea of a happy ending.  Maybe there is a chance that there might be something we are resisting to learn. A conscious -or unconscious- resistance to confront a situation that is hurting us. Because we’re afraid of what the result might be; or because this might represent a loss to us. Perhaps, we resist to confront it because the whole thing just seems inconceivable.

Throughout our lives, a lot of things make their mark on us profoundly and inevitably. Family, how we were raised, friends, experiences, prejudice, failures, etc. Thousands of experiences cause different impacts in our soul, in who we are and in who we become.Today, I feel consequences of this pandemic. Besides everything this pandemic brings, to me, it brings that repeated story, that lesson I haven’t learned yet.

I know the road might not be easy, it’s going to be a test for courage. I don’t know if this scares me or inspires me. What I do know and feel, is that something is telling me, “it’s now or never”. I know I’m not alone. I know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and I can do this! I have the right to be happy and find myself again.

It’s time to be able to have real strength. Strength to face my fears and give myself permission to be vulnerable. To know that being vulnerable will not make me weak, it makes me stronger. To learn and revise the concept of positive thinking. To direct that positive thinking towards me. To believe in my incredible capacity for growing, for improving. Knowing that I can and I deserve to change.

Finally, I’m deeply grateful because I have you by my side. You wonderful, brave, fragile, imperfectly-perfect women. Women who encourage and support each other to shine, or cry. Women – maybe like me- who haven’t learned that lesson yet; but are willing to take over the reins of their own life and stop silencing their emotions.

Thank you for being with me on this path. I will see you in the next chapter.

Ps. Please share this article with someone you think might need it and don’t hesitate to leave me your comments. I’ll be happy to read them.