To Be Continued

Everyone falls. We all get lost on a wrong path or make mistakes. We rise up, learn from them and live to be stronger. Our past choices and struggles do not define us.

Life would be much easier if there were no wrong paths, but each broken road we travel makes way for a new path in life. Some paths may be very rough, filled with curves and hills to climb, while others may be the easiest roads to travel. Each one teaches valuable lessons.

We may face unbearable heartbreaking pain along the way, but every struggle we encounter is meant to mold the person we are to become. I used to hide my pain, refuse to talk about it or just shrug it off and say it was just the story of my life – time to move on to the next book. I now realize there is no reason to hide the pain. If not for facing my pain, I would never find true happiness.

There is no other book to move on to. We each have one book of life that is constantly adding new chapters written for our new life experiences. Every chapter comes to a close so that we are able to open the door for what is next. Some of these chapters will make us happier than we ever thought possible; some will make us cry; some will leave us wondering what if; some will make us ask Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Some will include finding our greatest love, some will be the loss of that one person we loved so deeply – a person we feel we could never live without. Some will leave us in suspense or confused, with unanswered questions and no closure. Some will fill us with guilt or remorse, and some will scare the hell out of us.

Without all of these chapters, we would not truly be experiencing life.

My book is full of so many different chapters – the overwhelming love and pride I have for my children, finding love, the loss of love, heartache, betrayal, fear, rejection, being a victim/survivor of physical and mental abuse, anger, loneliness, depression, uncertainty and the most recent, rediscovering myself and regaining self-confidence that was lost.

At times my book may be very hard to read, but I will never regret a single moment from any of my life pages. I know there will be more pages of love and more pages of heartache and pain. Regardless of what life has to be written next for me, my book will never say, “The end.” The final words printed at the end of each and every one of my life chapters will always read: “She struggled, she fell, she made mistakes, and she went down many wrong paths, but she stood up and she grew stronger. She survived! To be continued.”