Lesson #5: Love Yourself

 I met my husband my junior year of college, and it was love at first sight.  My husband at the time was a football player and let's just say I felt pretty proud to be his girlfriend.  And the feelings were mutual, he was proud to have me as his girlfriend as well.  We spent most of our free time together, and it was beautiful, as all loving relationships should be.  There's nothing that I regret from being with my husband, as I reiterate, my husband is an amazing, handsome, hard-working, funny man.  But I can admit that I was so consumed with love that I do think I began to hyper-focus on my relationship and what I needed to do to make sure we would thrive and sustain a strong relationship.  I have always had dreams of pursuing artistic work: acting, modeling, etc.  And one of the things I wanted to do after college was to move to New York and pursue some of these ventures.  I never moved or launched myself into that space because I didn't want to jeapoardize our relationship.  Also, I think that my insecurities got the best of me, and I was too scared to do something that was not secure. 

I decided to pursue teaching because I knew it was one of my passions and I also thought it would be a safe career option.  Not only do schools always need teachers but if we needed to move to support my husband's career goals, it would be easy to transition.  I was right about all of these decisions, but I have to acknowledge that my decisions were driven by trying to be available and supportive of my husband.  Is that good?  I would say yes, it shows that I am a loving and considerate wife.  But as I developed some wisdom, I learned that I needed to be mindful of making decisions that fully reflected the vision I had for myself and that they weren't solely focused to support the loved ones in my life.  

 Pursuing my PhD was a decision to love myself and to do something that fully supported a vision that I had for myself.  Many people, family and friends, wondered nor understood why I pursued a PhD in education, but it made sense to me and that's all that mattered.   

Choosing to pursue blogging a few months ago and investing in myself is another reflection of my decision to love myself.  Blogging is time consuming, and it's a lot of work, but it brings me so much fulfillment and it's a space that allows me to be creative.  And like I said earlier, it supports the vision that I have for myself.   

My advice for you is that if you love something, and it supports the vision that you have for yourself, pursue it.  You have to be an advocate and warrior of who you want to be in this life.  You can't allow others to define what you should be because if you don't, you will live a life filled with resentment.   We all have a voice that is trying to communicate with you about what you love, and it can be hard to hear that voice because you have family members, ego, and  social conditioning that will tell you what is a good course of action or what is a poor idea.   I end with this: You have to own your own voice and move into the direction that your love and passion lies. 

  Lesson #5: Love Yourself

Outfit Time:  I have had this skirt and top in my closet for some time.  But I love wearing this skirt during the holidays.  It always gives me a sense of magic and wonder, and the holidays are a perfect time to feel magical.  The shoes are new and I loved wearing it with this outfit.   I linked a similar skirt that I found on Amazon, and the link to the same shoes.  Happy Thursday!