Choosing to Bloom Amidst the Manure and In Between the Cracks in the Cement

We get to decide how we show up. Every day and every moment.

Especially in the difficult ones.

Mental illness in someone you love is unpredictable. Hard. Isolating. Frustrating. Lonely. Depressing.

You never know when it will creep back. Show up again. Or maybe it never stops showing up.

We can choose stories of unfairness or hardship. We can justify our pain and our anger.

Or we can own it and accept it and allow it. Feel the pain. And it still hurts.

We can nourish ourselves with self-care and breathe. And we may feel better but still feel lonely.

We cannot change our circumstances but we can choose how we respond.

We can choose learning over struggling.

We can choose acceptance over resistance.

We can choose hope over hopelessness.

We can choose to love and feel loved even when it looks different than we think it should.

We can choose connection and vulnerability over silence, isolation, and feeling alone.

Our power is always in our choices and in our mind.

Someone else’s struggle is not our struggle.

When we allow the pain and the frustration, they move through us faster.

Everything is temporary.

We can choose to remember that after the storm is when the rainbow appears.

We can choose to bloom amidst the manure and in the cracks of the cement.

We can even choose to decide that manure is the most nutrient rich soil for plants to bloom. And that the flower blooming out of the crack in the cement is stunning.