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Developing a personal relationship with God

My earliest memory of religion is waking up early on Sunday mornings and going to church with my Dad and brother. Back then I didn't actually understand why we had to wake up at the crack of dawn and HAVE to go to church. Me and my brother just knew it was a requirement and there was no way we were getting out of it. After the dynamic in my household changed, we did not attend church as often. Occasionally, I would go to church with my mom and every now and then I would be invited by friends to attend their churches. When I got older it was a bit more consistent when I tagged along with my brother, but that came to an end too, eventually. I know so many of us can relate to this sort of introduction. Although those early days were not some of the best memories, one thing that I did enjoy was the exciting, memorable feeling of the music that echoed throughout the church building. Till this day I can remember so many of the songs word for word. However, it wasn't until a couple of...
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How therapy changed my life

From an early age, I knew I wanted to work in the field of psychology. I was obsessed with shows like Criminal Minds and had a knack for learning and understanding things and people. I love to analyze, pick everything apart, and come up with solutions. It comes naturally to me. I hadn't realized it was a talent. A gift. Watching psycho thriller TV shows was not only entertaining for me as I excitedly went on a journey with the characters as they solved the cases and psychoanalyzed the perpetrators, but it ignited a passion within me. A desire to help others and make the world better. My early life set the tone for this as well as I spent a great amount of time in solitude and experienced my fair share of traumatic experiences. I yearned to understand myself, others and life. I'd always been the person to lend a listening ear to a friend, offer support and come up with ways to help people navigate through life's difficulties. This again was second nature to me and I wasn...
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Escaping Survival Mode

I've come to learn that survival mode is often a state that most people operate in for most of our lives. So many of us were born into so much trauma, chaos and pain. One of the first skills we learned was how to survive and protect ourselves from outside threats. In some cases, those threats started in our own homes. At least for me, this is where I first learned to protect myself from danger. Danger in my environment, danger from members of my family, etc. Sadly, a lot of us weren't born with the luxury of a safe, loving, warm environment. A place where we didn't have to have our guard up, look over our shoulder, be "on" at all times. A place where we didn't always have to be presentable, polished, and appear strong and unfazed. As sad as it sounds, most people allow this to become an identity. But for others, we do the work to break free from these chains. Survival mode can be compared to living on auto-pilot. Doing what you have to do to survive and get th...
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What is love?

Love is a concept that we can all relate to as human beings. How we interpret, express or receive love may be different, but we've all experienced it in one form or another. It's something that we've been trying to define since the beginning of time. Which makes sense because it's the fabric of our being and the driving force behind our existence. Although the question has always been asked, in my opinion, there is no definitive answer that has been reached among the average person. I believe this is because love is a subjective experience. No two people can define love in the same way because none of us have lived the same experience. This is true for siblings in the same household, parents who've birthed children, our passion for our careers, hobbies and so on.  Love is personal. It's shaped by our earliest experiences. It can also continue to take on different meanings as we experience life and the people around us. Our experience with love is often first inf...
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Returning

I don't know where to start. This is the most eye-opening, painful, loneliest, yet refreshing and chaotically peaceful part of my life I've ever experienced. So many changes. Good and bad. Blessings. Re-directions. Rejections. Reconciliations. Restoration. As I'm typing I'm noticing a theme that plays into the title I just came up with for this blog: Returning to Me. "Re." I just looked up the definition and it states, "a movement back to a previous location, state, or condition." It all points to us finding our way back to who we were first created to be. Who God created us to be. Before we were shaped by people, circumstances, opinions, projections...before people tried to dim your light before you even realized how bright it was..or that it even existed to begin with. Though I've always been a reserved person, preferring to observe and adapt, I definitely remember being more outspoken as a kid. Asking questions, speaking ideas, searching for c...
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