From the Fall, We Rise

    At some point in your life, the world will fall away from beneath your feet. The foundation upon which you stand will crumble and the light in the sky you have been reaching for will never seem so far away. The crash will hurt and you will find yourself broken and cold on a floor so deep down you may wonder if you will ever feel warm again. I have found myself here for the third time in my life, and the climb ahead of me has never looked as daunting as it does now. As much as I would love to wallow in self pity at the bottom of my shattered reality, I know that is not me. I will never give up, and each time I make this climb I will end up higher than I ever could have before because every time I fall, I rise, stronger than before.

          I have left my dream job, one that I worked towards for years, one that seemed like it was going to keep me and my future family secure for a long time. I truly enjoyed going in to work for the year I was employed and I felt like I was truly making a difference. Even with all of this, even with the promise of security and happiness via my career that I had, something deep down was not right. The pillars on which I stood were rotting and collapsing under me and eventually no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to succeed somewhere that you don’t belong. I changed so much to make myself believe I could meet my own expectations of success. I have fallen from those false expectations; I am still on the floor, but I am not broken. I am standing because I will not let this break me. It is easy to be positive and to be happy when everything is going right, the real challenge is holding on to this when everything is going wrong.

     We are more than our careers. We are more than how we sell our labor. I had given up a drive within me to change the world, to help the lives of others through my writing. I put my true passion and my purpose in life on the back-burner in exchange for security and a paycheck. Life has a way of directing you towards your purpose, and sometimes it is a painful process. We must embrace these failures, and see them as an opportunity to grow and become larger and stronger than we ever could have imagined without facing that trial and obtaining the wisdom from having come out the other end. I won’t see this as an end, it is merely a new beginning.

          I am stronger than I was before. I am wiser than I have ever been. Strip away the false sense of security that held me down and all that is left is the freedom to grow higher than I ever could have before. I am free to truly chase my passion in this world and I will continue to choose happiness even at the bottom of this fall. I will continue to look up and see the light instead of pulling myself into the fetal position among the wreckage of my past life.

With every fall I become stronger.

With every failure I become wiser.

With every loss I become lighter and free to rise to new heights.

I will choose happiness; I will choose hope.

I will rise again, more powerful than ever before.

The wreckage of my fall will be the foundation upon which I will build my empire.

We all have one life to live, never stop living, never stop exploring…

Never Give Up