The answer is: I write about the biggest accomplishment of my life, and it has nothing to do with Medicine. It was the miracle of healing my soul enough that I was capable of  finding love against all prognoses. 

     When I met my soulmate/husband, I was living in a small town full of elderly retirees. I was a recently divorced mother of four children, (including one with special needs).  I’d never dated before my former marriage. I carried quite a bit of trauma from the previous relationship and from a Third-World country upbringing. Hence, everybody around me assumed that my chances of finding a man willing to accept my baggage and making a relationship with him work were zero.

     And before you roll your eyes at me in the name of feminism and rightfully remind me that we should all learn to be happy without needing a romantic relationship in our lives, please notice the grammar in the previous paragraph about my biggest accomplishment. The accomplishment was not finding love, but healing. Finding love was the natural consequence of healing myself.

     I’ve accumulated more degrees and hours of studying than a human being really needs. (It comes with the addiction to overachieving). I have other life-badges which could theoretically make me an advisor for people. I’m a survivor of a mother who died from cancer at an unfair young age. I’m the mother of a child with special needs who have taught me more about unconditional love than any book or workshop I could ever have access to. I survived a divorce coming from a strict conservative upbringing. Yet none of those credentials in isolation gives me the right to speak to you. The one experience I have to share is that I was once in a very unhappy and unhealthy, codependent relationship for many years. And that was nothing but a reflection of the unhappy unhealthy relationship I had with myself. 

     And I no longer beat up my past self about it. I didn’t know better. I had learned to interact with myself in that way from unhealthy examples in my family, my culture and the world. The fact that I was able to get out of it and find healthy and soulful love – and I did it in spite of all the obstacles I mentioned – is my only badge of honor. 

     So, in conclusion: I stand here before you not only as an example that it is possible to defy all prognoses and finding love, but also as an example that it is possible to reinvent yourself. 

     How did I do it? Each story in the blog focuses in a step forward.

     So, hopefully, next time you read one of my crazy posts you’ll have a better chance to get where I’m coming from. If you pay attention, they all come in a few categories.

     1- Letting go of the Past: Healing and Forgiving. Healing the culture, the family, past mistakes, bad experiences, forgiving self and others. (This category includes The Naked Man. Amazons and Mermaids.)

     2- Self Awareness: Learning about myself by listening to my feelings, wants and needs (CPR, Homeostasis)

     3- Stepping out of your comfort zone: Re-evaluating old paradigms and opening the mind. (Hope for Harmony, Homeostasis, Learning to Eat Sushi)

     4- Trusting. Keeping Faith, ignoring the pessimists. (The Boondocks).

     Finally, another category which you’ll see appear soon is 

     5- Enjoying life here and now. I like that saying that calls it “learning to dance in the rain instead of waiting for the storm to pass.” It’s about being Happy now, knowing that nothing you’ll ever get will make you any happier than your current capacity of feeling joy. So, if you’re hoping to add something (anything) to your life to make it more complete, make sure you first work on developing your capacity to feel happiness.

And stay tuned for more.

Love,

Diely