Recovery: Accessing your Inner strength

I've only met one person in my life who thought he'd never had a bad day. Nothing ever hurt him. He wasn't bothered by anything. Neither did he express a whole lot of emotion. That was my ex, and I thought it impossible to live like that.

Even after he fired someone at work, even when the day came that he found out his own job was expendable, he still never talked about it and certainly didn't give off the impression that he was hurting inside. He kept it all to himself, no matter how much I encouraged him to share. He just didn't.

I'd tell him things like, "Some day, you're going to explode," because I don't believe a person can hold stuff in like that. I don't believe it's healthy. And I was right. Turns out, he was releasing his anxiety in other ways. The things that did hurt him or bother him was all hidden in behavior he didn't want anyone to know about--till it suited him.

And on the day that it suited him was the day my life changed forever.

I'd had my Inner strength tested before. After all, I'd married as a teenager. I'd become a single parent in college. I'd become a widow afterward. I knew I could survive terrible times. I'd done it before. I had "experience."

But the day my then-husband announced his famous line to me at our kitchen table--"Jackie, I've been lying to you. I've been living a secret life. I think I'm a sex addict"--was my real test. His were the words I did not understand. His choices in life were the choices that left me reeling in a pain I could not stop. That was the only time in my life when I was no longer sure how much I could handle.

So my short lesson for you today is this: Know that you can handle a lot!

You'll have to dig deep to find all that Inner strength within. You'll have to trust it's there. And some days you won't. You'll have to keep digging. You'll have to believe you can go deeper when you need it. You'll have to rely on your natural instincts. You'll have to have faith that you can move those mountains. You'll have to know that it's possible if you expect to overcome the really bad stuff.

Oh, trust me. It's natural to feel otherwise, to think you're broken beyond repair. But as long as there's even the tiniest part of you that knows otherwise, that is where you'll begin. You'll take it one second at a time if that's all you can muster. Because to fall prey to victimhood will not be the right answer in this multiple choice game of life. That response will only allow you to fail at life. But you can rise above the fall.

You may not come out on the other side the same person that you were--Hopefully, you'll arrive on the other side a better person--but you will come out of your challenging times. You will if you let yourself, and if you find the guide you need to get you there.

As you know now, my guide was my bike. It was divine intervention. It was very symbolic. And it worked.

Your guide might be something else entirely, but it is still the same process. You must still believe, have faith, and see beyond the pain. No one else can do that for you.

So just know that you always have the ability to access your Inner strength. It is there and will be there at precisely the moment when it's needed. To gain some of that believe or faith, practice accessing your Inner strength today while making that phone call you don't want to make, or having that conversation with a friend you've been avoiding, or somehow feeling stuck in a situation that feels uncomfortable. Make the call. Talk to your friend. Get past the situation that makes you feel uncomfortable.

Do whatever is is that you may have thought impossible, and you'll see that the other side isn't so bad. And you will feel better because of it.