Reflections...and Growth

When you take the time you reflect on your life, you can recognize some fairly crucial turning points and situations and people that touch you in different ways. I believe these situations and people help you grow, within yourself and within the world around you. Situations could be illness, work, family issues and/or experiencing/touching different cultures or places. People can be colleagues, neighbors, schoolmates or those people who are closest to us….family, boyfriends/girlfriends or best friends. It can even be as simple as someone you meet in line at the store or airport that, if you are paying attention, help you understand more about yourself.

Lately I have been more profoundly impacted by my sense of awareness. There are many people (and situations) that I can thank for these impacts. When I started this blog, I thought that I wouldn’t touch on relationships, etc. because I wanted to focus on Health & Joy…but I soon realized that our lives are too interwoven to not have this reflected in my blog. Situations and people help us learn about ourselves, help us search for answers to the many questions that we have and teach us how to be better people in the process.

I remember watching “As Good As It Gets”, which is a great film with Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. His character is a successful author who struggles with obsessive compulsive disorder and she is a waitress that has a son with severe asthma. In the scene that sticks with me, these two characters are on a date in a restaurant, seated at the table and he struggles with giving her a compliment. He tries to search for words and finally says something like, “I take my medication now because you make me want to be a better man”. While she doesn’t understand the compliment completely, he is revealing that because of her, he is striving to be the man that he wants to be. I think that is a high compliment to give someone…..

I know how he feels since I have been struggling a great deal lately and I have someone in my life that helps me see the person that I want to be. He is my boyfriend of four years. He pushes me in ways that sometimes I can’t quite explain (nor do I have the patience for at times), but I have come to realize that he sees potential in me. Maybe he sees potential in me that I haven’t seen before and it is truly refreshing. I have grown tremendously since he has come into my life and I plan on growing even more in the years to come. He has given me the gift of viewing myself in a way that I have not previously….as a confident, pretty woman who has all kinds of possibilities……

This entry is dedicated to him and thanking him for showing me “my possibilities” through his perserverance, strength, patience and love. Thank you for introducing me to new experiences and chapters in my life. My hope is that we have many more to come together. Thank you for being my hero, challenger and comfort…..and my love.