Grow Through What You Go Through

You will see those words on a plaque in my office and I love this saying. I love it for personal and professional reasons. I will dig deeper into the personal in my next blog post. But I grew greatly through my high risk pregnancy and nearly fatal delivery and then my postpartum PTSD.  Professionally, I get to witness this in the lives of my clients. Most times even in the deepest and darkest of spots, I can see growth. I work hard to try and help clients see that too. 

Anyone that has worked with me knows I hop on a “journal soapbox.” I know journaling can be viewed as homework or  just something else to do BUT a journal is so much more. First and foremost it gets “those thoughts”, (you know the ones that make us feel panicky, sad and overwhelmed, which then leads to us experiencing headaches, nausea, trembling) out of our mind and onto paper or an electronic device. This is step #1, getting those thoughts out of our mind.

Then we save those journals.  We save them for ourselves or maybe even others. We save them and look at them down the road and see how far we have come. We see growth!.  Then if comfortable we can save the journals and share them with others who are experiencing similar things and can be used to help someone else. 

The journals I have from my last pregnancy and delivery are fascinating for me to read. All I see when I read those is a changed person. I see what I walked through and not only did I survive it, I am thriving. I took that whole experience and have now formed my whole professional career around helping other individuals in the perinatal period. In other words, I Grew Through What I Went Through..