It Starts And Ends With One Question

A few years ago, a very good friend of mine asked me one question. It was a simple question, one that I needed to ask myself.

"Don't you feel like you deserve more than this?"

The context was different...but the question remained in my mind and on my heart for a long, long time. It took time in isolation, time away from everyone and everything for me to ponder. It took hour-long bus rides home from the city streets of Houston to the suburb where I lived full of journaling, much involving streams of tears that I'd try to hide from business-suit clad onlookers. It took long walks on my lunchbreak and weekends playing with my children in quiet stillness. It took introspection, and moving from denial to acceptance.

Yes, I deserve much, much more...and so do they.

I deserve to be happy. I deserve my health. I deserve to walk into a boutique full of cute womens clothing and to be able to pick something out, try it on, and purchase it without feeling pangs of dread and shame over where it will or won't fit my body. I deserve to play with my children without running out of energy. I deserve an hour a day where I focus on no-one but myself so that I can spend the other 23 hours of my day focusing on others. I deserve to hold my head up with confidence, to feel that all the hours of my day are productive and will amount to something that has meaning, to sleep each night soundly and restfully. I deserve to feel sensual in the bedroom, to give my best time and energy to people who appreciate it, to live a long, healthy life with those I love, to work at a job that I enjoy going to where I feel my skills are best utilized.

We all deserve this.

Asking ourselves this question is imperative. We start to work backwards from there. When we're honest with ourselves about what we deserve, it makes it easy to give up all of those things that take our happiness away from us. It shows us that we're not depriving ourselves by staying away from unhealthy foods or an unproductive job or a day off at the gym, but that indulging in these things on a regular basis deprives us of those things in life that we deserve.

Thank you, dear friend, for asking me the question that nobody else would.