Before I decided to start writing again, I thought I had lost my love for it. And many times when we do feel lost, the things that we loved to do don’t feel fulfilling anymore.
Feeling like you’re lost in life is a similar feeling to losing your mom in the grocery store or the mall. It’s scary. You feel like you’ll never see her again because she’s not right by your side. And you search and search for her because you know you’ll find her. Eventually you have to ask for help.
Same thing with getting lost in life. Except we as humans, especially adults, are a little bit more stubborn when it comes to asking for help. We have this thought that if we ask for help that we’ll be seen as weak or vulnerable. So we try to convince ourselves that we can find our way by ourselves; sometimes that’s true but most of the time we do need someone to help us with directions.
Over the years of being a mom and a grown up, I’ve had my share of times where I felt lost. And I was ashamed. I was ashamed because I knew for sure that moms shouldn’t be lost. Moms shouldn’t feel like they don’t have it together because they have little people looking to them for guidance. I felt like that every time. And every time I suppressed the feeling of needing anyone’s help because in my mind “I can do it. I can get out of this by myself.”
Nope.
Not in the least bit.
You see, for me, I felt like I had to take the world on. I had to deal with everything Life threw at me because I was obviously strong enough to handle it (I can still be like that). Right? Especially by myself. I had it in my mind that if I didn’t handle my everyday struggles and struggles that I “didn’t ask for,” that I would be looked at with disrespect. I would be judged for not properly playing the hand I was dealt. No. I forgot that I don’t always have to deal with Life alone; I don’t always need to be stubborn and not ask for directions; opening up to the people you love about your troubles is not weakness. And so many times the feelings of being lost, feeling weak and afraid to show my vulnerability came out in a huge tidal wave of emotions. I would bottle things up so much that the moment I felt like I was being shaken BOOM!! I would burst. I felt like the road I was on in finding my way got split in two right in front me.
And right then and there, I had no choice but to yell HELP!!! And the directions that I so desperately needed were right in front of me.
And that’s when I realized that it’s okay to get lost sometimes.
It’s okay if you don’t know your way.
And it’s definitely okay to ask for directions.
“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.”-Henry David Thoreau
Life Lessons from a Novice 