22.

My birthday is coming up so I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on what I’ve learned and improved in since being 21. I’ve come to realize three major things:

1. Nothing in life is ordinary
2. Seemingly useless moments—like waiting for my computer to turn on really slowly–are great invitations for spiritual growth (ahem, patience)
3. Self-improvement is often like cleaning my bedroom

Nothing in Life is Ordinary:

Spring is my favorite season because it’s the season of hope, growth, and reborn beauty. The flowers of spring are so much more striking after surviving the cold winter months. No season lasts forever.

This is very congruent with life. Experiencing joy, sorrow, peace and doubt make life full and real. Moments of struggle deepen my appreciation for life’s joys. When I’m struggling with anxiety or depression, I know it doesn’t last forever and that sweet serenity awaits after the storm passes.

I’ve learned that oftentimes my greatest triumphs are hidden and found in the nooks and crannies of the day. Life’s gratitudes and blessings can be easy to miss if I don’t pay attention; but in reality, I’m surrounded by flowers and sunsets which continue to remind me of how truly extraordinary life is.

Seemingly Useless Moments:

I’m pretty sure I’m a professional over-thinker. I can easily lose perspective by getting sucked into my own thoughts. “I need to have my life figured out right now. In fact, I needed it figured out yesterday!”  When I catch myself in these moments, I remind myself to breathe in peace, patience, and trust, and to exhale tension, fear, and agitation. I remind myself that little frustrations in my day are merely strengthening my patience muscle. Every moment is an opportunity to grow and learn, and to seek gratitude and beauty.

Life is Like Cleaning My Bedroom:

I’ve put forth a lot of effort to grow and heal emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. I’ve spent lots of time in therapy, in reflection, and going on lots of serenity walks. I’ve realized growth is very similar to cleaning my bedroom:  We often get messy before getting cleaned.

I’ve been reorganizing and decorating my room, and there is barely any room to move. Despite how awful it looks at the moment, it’s in the process of improvement. This is life: Growth is gritty; organizing our hearts is an everyday practice. But it’s worth it in the end.

With that said, I’m so ready for my birthday brownie; I’m ready to continue journeying life with curiosity; I’m ready to continue growing, learning, expanding, and discovering.

I just want to end by saying thank you to everyone who is reading this and has opened their hearts and come along my journey with me. It’s meant the world to me. Your support keeps me going! 

Vulnerability is a Muscle

We’ve been conditioned to believe that sensitivity is a sign of weakness. This is why so many of us learn to hide our truest desires and deepest feelings. When I talk about “sensitivity” I don’t mean “taking things too personally.” The sensitivity I’m referring to is having the courage to enter into both pain and joy; sorrow and gladness.

As one of my favorite authors, Brene Brown, says, we cannot numb out pain without also dulling our capacity to experience joy. They go together. I believe this is also why sensitivity and strength go together. Although I’m still on my journey of healing (I’m not sure there’s an endpoint?), what I’ve learned from my experience is that the healing is in the feeling – not escaping it, not drowning it out with something else, not suppressing it. Healing is inside the feeling. This takes both sensitivity and strength. The question is:

How do we re-learn to sensitize ourselves, when we’ve been so conditioned to desensitize from our own selves and others? 

I know the struggle of having deeply embedded pain suppressed so far down into the pit of my heart. I know the struggle of not even knowing it’s there, but feeling the consequences of it spewing out – in depression, self-doubt, food addiction, anxiety. I know the struggle of expressing my feelings in the studio and talking it out in therapy and feeling as though the pain doesn’t end and every layer of my heart is being stripped, one layer at a time. (Hint: vulnerability is a muscle. We must challenge our comfort in order to get better at delving deeper inside).

I recently met up with a dietician because my food issues started to creep up again. Food has always been an external manifestation of something that needs my attention. It started as a little kid. As young as age five, I would go days at a time hardly eating anything, afraid I would throw up if I swallowed anything down.

As my dietician asked questions to get to know me better, I realized I still have a lot of healing and work to do. There was no way around talking to her without telling her about my anorexia. As she explored my eating disorder with me, she asked questions like, “What lead to your eating disorder?” “Were you hospitalized?” “What was your lowest weight?”

In that moment, my mind went back to the seventeen-year-old girl who still lives inside me – her body emaciated, and starving, and hollow. She’s aware her bones are sticking out in all of the wrong places. What she doesn’t know is the long haul of struggle that is ahead of her.

Talking with my dietician, I knew I couldn’t run away from the pain that was resurfacing as I spoke with her about my anorexia. There’s no healing without honesty. Truly, we can only heal as deeply as we are willing to be honest. This has everything to do with sensitizing ourselves again and learning to feel our experience. Athough it’s something I’ve had to learn and practice, I’m getting pretty used to this whole “being raw” thing.

I used to run away from feelings of shame and guilt –I rarely ever cried–because I thought entering those emotions would unleash the monster hiding inside me.  But as I’ve begun to explore and get curious about the struggle, I’ve learned that — layer by layer, as I uncover the real me, underneath it all — there isn’t a monster. There’s a heart. One that beats for love, but struggles to find it in herself.

I left the office with tears buckling my throat. “Will this ever end?” I found myself whispering to God. Everyday I try to hold my head high. Everyday I seek the light of hope even when it appears to be hidden behind the clouds. Everyday I wake up determined to keep going. Today my strength looked a little different.

Today strength meant allowing my eyes to well up with discouragement because I’m (very) human, and my heart does grow weary. But a quiet whisper answered me back:  Yes, dear one. Keep going.

Dear reader, if you are in struggle and feeling discouraged, know this:  discouragement merely means you had the strength to climb high enough to fall. Discouragement doesn’t know defeat without resignation. Don’t give up. You don’t need to run away from yourself to hide from pain. Only when you become sensitive to yourself can you access the limitless strength you already have inside.

Check out my song, “Strong” for some more encouragement!

Resilience.

When I think of the word “resilient”, I think of one thing:  growing pains. But not all pain leads to growth. We must know how to let our struggles strengthen us. But let’s be honest, it’s hard to see any growth when we’re in pain.

Oftentimes I find myself looking ahead. Looking ahead to where I want to be, who I want to be, and what I want to accomplish. This forward thinking gives me motivation and direction, but sometimes I forget to stop and see the growth I’ve already made.

We often think of trials as making us tougher. And yes, this is true. I believe trials are seeds of renewal that deepen our roots. Like trees, we become grounded within.  But could it be that the real strength we gain through trials is that it can teach us to step back into quiet stillness?

I’ve thought a lot about what it means to be strong. In some ways, having strength is paradoxical. Yes, strength is forged when we reach our breaking point but choose to keep going. It’s the twelfth rep at the gym when our muscles are giving out. But could it be that even more than having power-it-out strength, our greatest strength is quiet?

 Strength can be both fragile and strong. It can come in the form of great fear being overcome by even greater courage. This is why many of the greatest stories of strength come from the smallest people. Our strength comes in the form of our soft gentleness, kindness, tenderness, and ability to see, understand and stay with the suffering of another. This is one of the beautiful things we learn through our own experience of pain. I see myself in your pain, and you are not alone. 

My mental health has been a trial my whole life. It’s impacted me in every area:  my jobs, school, my ability to sleep, eat, and even take a deep breath when I feel my stomach burning inside and my throat clenching. It’s easy to get discouraged when I feel held captive by my anxiety, despite tirelessly trying to overcome it.

I remember one of the lessons my Tae Kwon Do instructor gave us in class. Although he was referring to a sparring match, I think it’s a transferrable life lesson. “Don’t work harder,” he’d say, “work smarter.”I intellectually understood the concept of this, but the internal application was not something I totally got.

There is an art to learning how to face trials and grow from our struggles. I believe it has everything to do with stepping back and “working smarter.” Sometimes it takes more work to work less. To just be. To find stillness and rest there. When we step back, we can listen. This is where the growth happens.

One of the main reasons music has impacted me so much is because of the meditative state it brings me to. It’s one of the few things that, without my pushing or forcing, can take me into the present moment. Although my whizzing mind makes finding inner stillness harder, it also makes those moments of serenity all the sweeter. When I sit down to the piano, I touch on an inner, sacred stillness.

There is a way to making our growing pains a little less painful. Rather than trying to push, push, push (which makes everything worse), and figure everything out, what about taking that step back, taking a breath, and regaining strength through stillness? This is how pain renews us. This is how struggle–which is inevitable–leads to growth. Flowers need rain to grow. So do we. Turning our “wounds to wisdom” is the art of resilience and it starts with silence.

My anxiety still impacts me everyday. I’ll always be a work in progress. These moments of beautiful brokenness continue to remind me that I’m only human and that’s all I need to be. I’m learning to approach difficulty through silence and stillness, which is the quiet strength that grounds me deeply.

Resilience. Perhaps it doesn’t just mean “growing pains.” Perhaps it’s another word for “renewal” and “growing peace.” Silence. Stillness. Strength.

The Gift of Fear

I was recently in the studio. Excitement! Bliss! Euphoria! There’s not a single day that goes by where I don’t think about being there.  It’s where I empty my whole heart and leave everything on the floor.

After such a high, there’s always the low that crashes after. I often leave feeling completely emotionally and mentally exhausted. I feel the bliss and endorphins surging through my body as I express myself. I feel it all so strongly.

And then I leave.

But the therapeutic experience of the studio stays after I’ve left and I often find that I have a lot to process. I’m not just a songwriter. I’m a song-feeler. I’ve never thought of myself as a singer, but more, someone who has something to say. I have a voice. We all have our own, unique heartsong. I express mine in the studio and I come out feeling as though I’ve just gone on a mega soul-retreat.

This particular time upon leaving my little soul-excursion in the studio, I realized a question I’ve had since I was very young. “Is it ok to be me?”

I picture my younger six-year-old self crying and pacing around the living room because I’m in panic; It’s night time and my younger self hates night time because that means I’m alone to face the dark. I hear the loud voice of my dad yelling at me: “What’s wrong with you?” Those words reverberated inside my bones, jostling me like an earthquake.  If there’s “something wrong with me” when I’m crying and panicking, it’s clearly not ok to be me. It’s not safe.

Because I was an anxious child, I was already extra vulnerable.  Like the leaves that sputter in the wind, my little self was very susceptible to being carried away by the energy and emotions inside and around me. I had a lot of my own chaotic and turbulent feelings, so any outside chaos overwhelmed and overpowered me. Especially when I was in panic.

My heartsong became one of fear.

I didn’t learn that there’s something wrong and that’s why I’m having anxiety. I learned there’s something wrong with me because I’m having anxiety. This was a debilitating message and one often received by those who struggle with mental health. We learn to lock up and suppress. We learn to hide it.

There’s a lot of shame around the topic of mental illness. I wasn’t ashamed of my anxiety and my experiences when I was younger. But as I got older, I learned to suppress and withdraw. I didn’t do this on purpose, but by mere instinct. Whenever I had so-called “negative” emotions, my learned reaction was, “There’s something wrong with me.” 

The lingering question, “Is it ok to be me” was a definite no. Accessing this heartsong of mine–buried deep inside–in the studio continues to be like digging in the ground for hidden treasure. It still feels unsafe and vulnerable, like my six-year-old self pacing in panic. Our voice–who we are–is our greatest gift to the world, and when we walk around not living out who we truly are, we become mere machines. We feel empty when we aren’t living from our hearts.

I’m acutely aware that my studio sessions with my producer are far different from his typical clientele. Dealing with anxiety in the studio is a “behind the scenes” experience that only he and I share. This continues to both challenge and transform me. What people don’t see or hear when I show them a song is how much work goes into it.

I’m learning that inner-strength comes in unexpected places. It is not on the other side of fear where our strength lies, it’s walking through it that is courageous. The trembling feeling I get when I step close to the mic feels like my voice of fear. But truly in these moments when I show up, shaky and uncertain, is when I’m being my bravest and strongest. Fear is merely an invitation to grow. In this way, fear is a gift. The price of being wholehearted makes us vulnerable, but it also brings out who we are and what we’re made of. And that, my dear reader, is priceless. 

As I left the studio a few days ago, the vulnerability of being my truest self started to settle in. It’s what one of my favorite authors, Brene Brown, calls a “vulnerability hangover.” (I’ve never actually been hungover, but I can imagine the discomfort of a vulnerability hangover is just as bad). In these moments of exposure, the question, “Is it ok to be me” nicks in my mind. I ask myself, “Why did I show up completely unfiltered AGAIN?”

If there’s anything I’ve learned from continuing to show up in the studio and in the world as my most authentic self, it’s this:   It’s worth it to break through the shell of fear. It’s worth it to be vulnerable and raw.  The six-year-old girl in me, who hears “what’s wrong with you” ringing in her mind still lives. But it is now outweighed by my firm belief that it is not only ok to be me, but it is my greatest gift to the world to be who I truly am.  My voice is my unique heartsong and only I can voice it. Same goes to you. The question is:  Are you willing to show up and be seen?  

When Perfectionism Blinds You

“Good enough” is a triggering word for me.

I never wanted to be seen as someone who didn’t know her worth. But the truth is, I didn’t. In my eyes the words “good enough” meant, “just barely.” And I wasn’t even just barely. 

Somewhere along the path of life, I realized my desire to be perfect stemmed from my desire to feel worthy. But worthiness doesn’t require perfection. Worthiness doesn’t require “better than.” Worthiness is knowing that despite my imperfections, I am still loved abundantly.

I’ve always struggled not to compare myself to others, and yet, being better at something or ahead of someone always made me feel better about myself. This life-competition that I played in my head was exhausting. It’s like running a continuous rat race. There’s always someone ahead of me.

Perfectionism is really just “Protectionism.” We wear it like armor. When I was recording my album, I so badly wanted to be perfect. I focused all of my energy on getting everything right. This striving for perfection in the studio not only held me back immensely, but I completely missed the point (and enjoyment) of what I was doing. The only thing that perfectionism protected me from was myself.

It’s hard to see clearly through the lens of perfectionism. When we focus so hard on e-v-e-r-y  l-i-t-t-l-e  d-e-t-a-i-l,  our vision becomes blurred. The narrow tunnel through which we look misses all of the beauty and potential surrounding us.

I’ve come to understand that reaching my potential–particularly as an artist–is directly proportionate to the amount of perfectionism I let go of. When I’m too fixated on being perfect in the studio, I not only miss what I’m doing well, but I also lose the opportunity to improve because my flaws are so magnified and distorted in my eyes. Although I’m still learning this lesson regularly, acceptance is the antidote.   

The miracle of acceptance is that when we embrace who and where we are in the present, not only do we become more of who we really are, but we exceed far beyond who we thought we could be. Perfectionism is like wearing a pair of glasses with the wrong prescription. But through the eyes of acceptance, we can see ourselves clearly–as well as others. Our imperfections no longer blind us.

I’m still learning to embrace my imperfections. I still battle the voice of “was that right?” when I sing up close to the mic. I’m still becoming aware of when I get lost in the blurry lens of perfectionism–when I’ve put the wrong glasses on.

But I will continue to show up–disarmed, imperfect.

Instead of striving for perfection, I will strive to generously accept that I don’t need to be more than I am.

I am good enough, not in a “just barely” way, but in a “just the way I am” way.

And so are you.

Hidden Heart

Last year at this time I was in a very different place. I had just finished my album Serenity. The garbage that surfaced during the process of writing it was still clinging to my bones. Stuck.

I was exposed. I was afraid. I was uncertain.

I wanted to explore the attic of my heart, which for so long had stored and accumulated all of the lies I believed about myself. I wanted to open up, let go, and heal.

But I didn’t know how to.

I was in constant conflict with myself. Both empty and heavy at the same time. Depleted, yet filled with all of the wrong things: Self-judgment. Self-loathing. Self-destruction. I was trying to uncover myself, and resisting it at the same time. A single crack was enough for my self-criticism and perfectionism to sneak in, so I’d slam the door of my heart shut again. I was banging my head against the impenetrable wall of self-guardedness.

There’s nothing that keeps us stuck in ourselves more than self-judgment. Self-judgment is destructive and counterproductive. Amidst tearing ourselves down, we simultaneously build walls. We close off and block our own selves – and others – out.

Oftentimes, the process of opening up and letting go means stepping back and letting in. Rather than trying to force the barricade of my heart open, I stepped back and gently knocked. Knocked and listened.Space opened. Instead of resisting what came up inside me, I let myself into it. No forcing. No Resisting.

This was a process. It wasn’t intuitive. My reaction was to run and hide from myself during these moments of discomfort, but instead, I chose to make a home inside it. This created a safe space for my unresolved pain to speak. And I listened. Slowly, my heart started to shed its walls. I began letting myself in for the first time. One small crack at a time. Behind these hidden valleys, was me.

Not monstrous me.

Not who-I-thought-I-was me.

Not I’m-disgusted-with-myself me.

Me.

During this sacred time of transformation, I lay down the heavy backpack of life that I’d been carrying. It was filled with fear, perfectionism, broken relationships, anxiety, self-destruction, shame, depression. Every lie. Every belief. Every unshed tear.

I was none of the things I’d believed for so long.  I realized, self-judgment-criticism-condemnation-destruction-loathing does not reveal who you are.

It hides you.

Dear reader, I know what it is like to be hidden behind those bars. To be beaten and battered by a berating voice inside. I know what it is like to be stranded outside the walls within your own self. To be spiritually hollow. Both empty and heavy at the same time.

But I also know every wall and barricade built within us can be torn down. That love will unlock the door to who we truly are, and not who we believe ourselves to be. Our imprisoned hearts can be freed when we open up and let go of what encages us. Come out from behind those bars. Allow your hidden heart to open. That is where the healing pours through.

Tranquility and Roses

November is always a nostalgic month for me. Not because the year is coming to an end–well, perhaps that plays a part–but because so many memories surface. Emotional triggers fire like a shotgun.

But this year, the nostalgia is not painful or achey. The nostalgia is like a beautiful rose in a garden. While the thorns are still there, a new growth has taken place. I love the symbolism of the rose because it is a reflection of both strength and hope. Thorns and blossoms. Sun and rain.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about serenity over the past year, it is this: peace does not come when everything is certain. Serenity abides where there is trust. Thunderclouds and storms will inevitably come over us, but trust is what carries us through.

Embracing life’s storms from a place of openness allows us to look for the light even amidst the darkest valley. Each moment, each breath, is an opportunity to choose trust over uncertainty and embrace serenity. When I tune into my experience in this way, beauty surrounds me. The songbirds sing louder and clearer, and the contrast of colors in the sky become a watercolor wonder.

For the first time in my life, I am filled with deep, abiding peace. I’m not afraid of what lies ahead of me or concerned with what’s behind. No matter how difficult life may feel at times, knowing everything is just a collection of breaths releases me from being overwhelmed. Living moment by moment will bring me where I need to be, by being here now. Each moment, each breath, is a rose to cherish.

Trust is the soil through which I’m taking root. I will embrace uncertainty. I will continue to water the seed of my heart by nurturing who I truly am. I will continue to weed the garden of my mind and breathe in the aroma of tranquility and roses. I will continue to look for the miracle in every sunrise and the gift within every storm.

                        Every thorn will show its bloom.  Every storm will make me new. 

I am the rose. 

And so are you.

Pulverized Pieces

I have a reverent respect for hitting rock bottom. Not because I like pain or suffering, but because of what I’ve learned from being there:

Crashing and shattering into pieces is not meant for us to fall apart. It’s meant for us to break into place.

There are lots of metaphors to describe transformation. A butterfly in a cocoon. A seed taking root in the soil. A diamond in the rough. I love them all. But one, less known, is the Japanese philosophy “kintsugi,” or, the art of broken glass.

Kintsugi is a method of pottery that mends broken ceramics together with a beautiful gold, silver or platinum lacquer. The idea of kintsugi is that the new creation–the broken pieces put together and melded with gold–is even more beautiful than the original, untouched pottery.

This particular metaphor of transformation speaks to me because it takes the very pieces that were broken, and makes something even greater with them. I, too, was the shattered pottery. But being in a million shards gives us a million new ways to rebuild ourselves into a beautiful work of art.

In order to rise…

We must fall.

In order to transform…

We must break open.

In order to be free…

We must reclaim ourselves.

When we embrace our vulnerabilities, love can mend the shattered shards of our hearts–like the golden lacquer–and we can see the light of day again. Hitting rock bottom is our invitation to rebuild the pulverized pieces of who we were, into the transformed person we are called to become. It’s not about putting the pieces back in the places they were, but realizing our imperfections add to the masterpiece that we already are.

I am the kintsugi; broken and beautiful.

And so are you.

Crossing The Bridge to Healing

I took a Positive Psychology class a few years back. It’s not quite as hokey as it sounds, but also not as profound as I wanted it to be. I’ll save you from taking it and let you in on the main lesson: studies show that cultivating a gratitude practice increases happiness. Mind blowing, I know.

Here’s the problem:  I’m really bad at forcing gratitude when I’m in a rut. It feels fake, like plastered stage makeup. I had hit rock bottom the previous year with my anorexia and ever since had been wallowing in neck deep depression. Practicing gratitude felt like trying to smile in mud.

Ew.

One of the homework assignments was to write down three things we’re grateful for every night throughout the semester. Although I understood the concept of the assignment, it didn’t help me to see through the lens of gratitude. I hadn’t worked through the post-traumatic-stress that anorexia had put me through and I certainly hadn’t rebuilt my relationship with myself. I needed more than a strip of paper with happy thoughts on it.

I needed to find meaning in my depression. I wanted others to know that they’re not alone and that they can heal, but I had to heal first. I had to overcome my inner battles so that I could help others. I wasn’t sure how this would happen, or where this would lead me, but it gave me purpose. 

For my birthday, my family had given me the opportunity to work with a music producer to record some songs I’d written. I’d always intuitively found my fingers at the piano when I needed to feel better. But this time, I wasn’t going to my bedroom to play, but to the recording studio.

I remember sitting at the piano in the studio that day. I was wearing the big headphones. The ones you see in the movies. The microphone had the circular screen (a pop filter) in front of it. This is the real deal, I thought to myself. The mic was turned high. Every noise amplified.

I remember singing into the microphone for the first time. I’d never heard my own voice in a mic before. It felt as though I was encountering someone I’d never met. The voice coming through the mic sounded far different from the chaos inside. Her voice was fragile and tender and clear. Who is this? 

Recording was like the abrupt stillness that comes after a huge thunderbolt. Or when a really dramatic scene cuts in a movie. A light switched. Something settled in my soul. For the first time, I felt like I belonged somewhere.

The producer I worked with that day became my mentor. He critiqued my songwriting, and challenged and encouraged me as an artist, writer, and singer. Most of all, he believed in me. I took every word he said to heart and with his guidance, I wrote an album of thirteen original songs.

My songs were far more reminiscent of journal entries than a pop hit you’d hear on the radio. They were raw and transparent. My insides were oozing like the fizz that spews out from a shaken up Coke bottle. But my longing for serenity and healing became the goal I set my eyes on, and I would do anything it took to get there. This meant working through intensely difficult emotions that had become dormant. This also meant getting up close to the mic even though I felt as though I couldn’t open my mouth. 

We tend to think that our vulnerabilities are our weak spots; the parts of us that cannot be seen or we wouldn’t be loved. But in reality, our vulnerabilities are precious wounds that allow us to be loved even more deeply. The deeper the wound, the greater capacity to be filled.

I picture healing as crossing a bridge. Walking across the bridge takes faith and courage. But if we don’t cross the bridge, we wallow in the water below forever. Creating my album is what took me across the bridge and lead me to realize the unique purpose of my music:  to help others cross their bridge.

As I crossed my bridge to healing, I learned that it is by accepting, surrendering, letting go, and trusting that I find serenity in my heart. Looking back, I would not change anything about my life, experiences, or things I had to overcome. In fact, I’m grateful for all of it. Our perceived setbacks in life are the very forces that pull back the arrow to throttle it forward even stronger.

As it turns out, my psychology class did have a thing or two to teach me. I have since adopted the habit of writing down what I’m most grateful for every night to put it in a jar to fill. It helps me to focus my mind on all of life’s blessings and to cherish even the smallest of joys. But this time, it doesn’t feel forced. I’m attuned to the birds singing around me and the voice of my own quiet heartsong.

Dear reader, I know the rickety bridge to healing is difficult. Each step feels messy and painstakingly uncertain. But you are ready to cross the bridge. There is courage amidst your fear and hope amidst your despair. Each step is leading you closer to the person you truly are, who is waiting on the other side – healed and whole. Your pain becomes your strength. Don’t be afraid. 

To listen to a meditation song I wrote, click here:  Oh Soul

Komerobi: Finding Hope in Unexpected Places

Komerobi is a Japanese word I recently came across which describes the sunlight that streams through the branches of a tree. Although I love the image – even more, I love what it symbolizes to me.

Light can only shine through the dark.

Sometimes life can feel like the spindly, spider-like branches of a tree; dark and dead. The branches encage our very being like arms gripping us. But the light shining through the cracks reminds us that there’s something more beyond the horizon.

I remember walking on the boardwalk beside the water a few years back. I was in the city so this was my place of serene solitude amidst the busy, chaotic streets. I got to the end of the boardwalk, and spanning the water was a big bridge. Peering under the arch of the bridge was the setting sun. I could see the fiery orange shining through. It captured my attention.

After developing anorexia, I suffered from a deep depression that made it difficult for me to function on a daily basis. It drastically impacted my sleeping, eating and ability to work. On that particular day, I was barely trudging.

If you’ve ever experienced depression, you know its dark doom. It’s like you are feeling too much and too little at the same time. You feel dead inside but not numb enough. Each breath is both a resignation and a triumph. The most difficult part is that it seems there’s no end in sight.

We’ve all been stuck on a car trip and had to go to the bathroom. It’s awful. Passing the blue information sign on the side of the road that says, “Rest Area, 6 Miles” becomes the most beautiful sign you’ve ever seen. Knowing the discomfort has an end makes waiting to go to the bathroom far more tolerable.

But depression feels like the complete opposite.

No escape.

Not only is there no end in sight, but you don’t know if there ever will be.

Gray fog consumes you and follows you around.

Dreary. Drained. Despondent.

Seeing the light of the sun beyond the bridge that evening seemed to capture the picture of my life. There is more. Although it didn’t feel this way at the time, I told myself over and over, pain is temporary. Seasons of struggle rise and fall like the waves, but nothing lasts forever. As I stood awestruck at the boardwalk that night, this came to me:

“Inside this struggle there is light and hope.”

I’ve come to realize that hope is often found in unexpected places – such as the sunset that evening which seemed to be smiling at me. That glimpse of firelight was the message of komerobi for me. I took a few pictures as a reminder for the days to come when it seemed there’s no light to peer through the branches of my heart.

Some seasons of life are just hard. Sometimes these seasons last longer than we want them to. But perhaps the light of hope is not outside or beyond our struggle, but inside of it. It’s finding hope in the little – and easily overlooked – places that can uplift and awaken our weary and tired spirit.  I like to call these instances “God moments” because I don’t believe they’re coincidental. They come just when we need it.

Dear reader, I understand it’s hard to keep your chin up when the weight of depression – or any burden – is pulling you down like gravity. It feels as though you’re walking with a twenty ton backpack on your shoulders through quicksand. With each step, you’re sucked further down into the vacuum. The world around you keeps going, but for you, each moment feels heavier. 

In these darker moments, remember komerobi – the light dancing between the branches of the tree. Remember the sun peeking from around the corner of the bridge. Remember that where there are shadows light is near.

                           The sun will rise even in the rain. And so will you.

Check out my corresponding video here! Click here: Finding Hope