Mining the Good

I spent a lot of time dwelling on all the bad things that happened to me. It took a tremendous amount of energy to focus on the negative things. So much in fact, that I lost track of the good things that happened and forgot about them. I traded the good for the bad and that became my story.

In the process of writing my memoir I had to go back and relive parts of my life that were painful in order to tell the most honest story that I could. As I struggled with this for the eight-plus years it took me to write Climbing a Burning Rope I began to realize that there were good times that I eschewed in order to maintain my story of being a victim.

By keeping myself in the story of victimhood I used all my energy maintaining a negative view and lost sight of the positive things that life and God offer to all of us if we’re willing to let them into our hearts.

Nowadays I find myself mining through my past to find the good things that happened. As I do this I become emancipated from the chains of negative self-story-telling by my own self-empathy through gratitude for the good things. And as I make these shifts in my thinking the weight of the bad becomes less heavy and my soul more buoyant.