I am her. I am that person I was fighting so hard to find in everyone else around me, and when everyone else around me couldn't be her, I was devastated. I am that person I wish I had when I was seven years old and nine and eighteen and twenty-one years old - the person I wished was there to protect me and guide me and stand up for me, but wasn't. I have always been her.
I've always been interested in peace. It's because all I saw growing up was conflict. Between my dad and his brothers. Between my grandfather and his sons. Between my father and my stepmother. Between pretty much everyone I knew in my immediate orbit - everyone fought.
And I didn't want that. I wanted peace. I wanted to build a bridge. I just wanted the yelling and violence and threats to stop. There's so much of that happening in the world right now, and I guess it doesn't surprise me. I guess I'm used to it because it used to my normal for so long.
But I don't want to live in fear anymore. I don't want to think there isn't a possibility for change in people. I don't want to live in a world where we forget that there could be the possibility of MLK's and Mother Teresa's and Gandhi's and Nelson Mandela's any day now. It can happen.
What these individuals had in common was their humility, their self-sacrifice for the greater good, their belief and undying hope in humanity. They went to jail, they didn't eat, they lived in poverty, they were beat -- but they never gave up hope. They built bridges for us.
When I was in college I studied political science and I decided to minor in Middle East studies. I wrote my college thesis on the Arab-Israeli conflict. I didn't understood how there could be such a divide between two peoples. I was ambitious and sought to solve the entire conflict in my 40-page paper. That didn't do it. But then I look at my life today. I taught English online from 2016-2017 and I met people and made friends from all over the world. One of those good friends is from Saudi Arabia. We still talk today. And I don't know if he knows it, but my grandparents and great-grandparents on my mother's side are from Israel. And we are friends.
Life has a funny way of working itself out and showing you how you can be of help and achieve your goals in ways you couldn't have planned for yourself. My life is proof of that.
For the longest time I convinced myself I was meant to be a lawyer. I have no idea why, looking back now, but I was convinced. I think it goes back to me wanting to be a bridge. The only reason I wanted to be an attorney, the real reason, was that I wanted to stand up for someone. In the hope that I would find some solace because I never had someone stand up for me. I thought if I could be the person I wish I had for someone else, then I would find peace.
That wasn't the case and I'm grateful I never went to law school. I did test out this concept when I became a life coach and started my own business. I told my clients they could be the person they wish they had for someone else. And, over time, they were. They became that leader. They became that person I knew they were all along. I saw that in them. You see, a lot of the time we can't, or don't, want to see that in ourselves. But that's the sweet spot.
When we realize that we have the potential to be the person we wish we once had, everything changes. We glimpse a version of ourselves we can't take back and we start stepping towards it.
What I should have been saying to my clients was that you could be that person you wish you had for YOU first. I became a bridge for others. I connected people and I was great at it. But a bridge with no support will cave in. And this bridge caved in on herself.
This has to do with self-love, but more than that this has to do with self-believe and self-empathy. I was being so much for so many people, overcompensating because I wanted to solve everyone's problems and wanted everyone to like me, but at the end of the day I wasn't in love with the person staring back at me. I avoided mirrors if I could.
I didn't know how to stand up for me. I didn't know how to advocate for me. And even if we end up creating an amazing tribe of supportive people around us who lift us up -- if we don't know how to be there for ourselves first -- their words of encouragement won't mean anything.
I had to step away from everything I knew in order to come face-to-face with who I was. I was a hurt little girl still wounded from loss, abandonment, neglect and verbal beat-downs. And in every person I encountered I silently asked, 'will you stand up for me?' When my now partner told me one day that I needed to love me first, it was the first time I really started to question.
But I do love me, don't I? The thing is, I was loving the version of me who was helping everyone else around her and doing good work. I wasn't loving the hurt little girl I still was in the behind-the-scenes moments of my life when she came out to remind me she was still there. It was someone else's job to love her up, not mine. But that's the thing, it was my job. It is my job.
These days I hug myself. These days I look in the mirror and smile at myself. These days I speak positive words over my life. These days I take a breath and show love to my little girl when she comes out and says something child-like in an adult situation. Because she's still learning how to grow up and be loved for who she is, and it's my job to teach her. It's my job to accept myself for all of who I am. I believe this is the greatest lesson I've come to learn accidentally.
I didn't plan my path, I've just lived it. And I'm finally at a place where I understand that I don't need someone else to stand up for me. I'm happy I didn't go to law school. I'm happy I had trouble in my business. All of these experiences have shaped my journey and they have taught me the one thing I was looking for the entire time. That I have the potential to be the person I wish I once had in my life right now, in this moment, and every day moving forward -- for me.
It starts with me believing I am capable of greatness and loving myself in all of my forms. I found peace...in me. Real conflict resolution starts within us. We can't be a Nelson Mandela or an MLK or a Mother Teresa or a Gandhi if we aren't willing to resolve the conflict in us first.
You can call that conflict whatever you like and for me it has many names. Darkness and light. Truth and lies. Acceptance and abandonment. Love and hate. We get to choose. And when we aren't battling ourselves anymore we can allow our light, truth, self-acceptance and love change the world. That is how we build a bridge that stands strong and persists.
So I am her. I am a Worthy Warrior. I have found my worthiness on the other side of not enough, and I am choosing to keep moving forward. Because I am her. I am my own advocate.