The Way to Find Happiness

This is a guest post from my beloved friend, Trisha Selbach.  Much Love and gratitude for her willingness to share it on The Love Post!

♥♥♥

I was a sad kid. Pretty much all the time.

And I looked for happiness everywhere . . . On TV. Under rocks. In the woods . . . It was that elusive thing that I longed for to fill up the empty space inside of me.

I ached for happiness. It felt like phantom limb syndrome of the heart. I could feel the pain of what wasn’t there. I tried to get it by bossing other kids around, through feeling self righteous, by attracting male attention, by engaging in extremely risky behavior.

Honestly, the fact that I am still alive amazes me!

You see, my mother didn’t want me. It wasn’t her fault and I don’t blame her a bit. She had her own demons to face. Just as I have mine.

Being emotionally abused and rejected by the person who was supposed to provide my first experience of unconditional love was the just beginning of my journey. And it gave me a special opportunity to find wholeness.

One of my first brilliant ways to overcome this was to marry someone just like my mother . . . I thought, “If I can change the person in front of me to love, value, and accept me the way I am, that should do the trick.” Right?

Except, you can’t change other people. Ever. They are who they are.

And just in case you were wondering, marrying someone exactly like the person who abused you doesn’t fix the hungry hole in your being. Neither does trying to get love from a narcissist.
(Trust me.)

I tried perfectionism. I tried over achieving. All that got me were feelings of inadequacy and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Having children began to change me . . .

I dove into raising my children. Their openness, wonder and amazement at the world gave me a second childhood. I’ll admit it, spending almost all my time with my children as they grew allowed me a rare and precious time to do it all over again. I began to feel happiness at times. The hollowness began to fill.

Then the world that was artificially propped up by insincere promises and illusions fell apart. (Exit the narcissist.)

(Enter me.) Unskilled, unprepared, poor, lonely and lost. Me who must now hold up the world in the most epic shit storm of all time . . .

This is when it gets good . . .

Truly, being abandoned by my husband; the provider, solid rock of all things, propelled me right into the dark night of the soul. Yes, the pain was excruciating. Because it wasn’t just the present pain, but the pain of all those years as a little girl when I couldn’t express the grief and anguish of not being wanted.

In that moment of pure free fall into the abyss I had one solid thought:

“I got this.”

I knew, somehow, deep inside, that now was my time to find what I had been chasing all these years.

Yes, I got this.

It was a blinding swirl of chaotic stabs in the dark. It was a free fall into the arm of the universe that was there all along to catch me.

I just pulled my self up and got going.

I took the LSAT and got into law school. Didn’t go.

I trained to be a bartender and got fired from my only two bartender jobs.

I became a ski instructor and when I found myself crying in the bathroom because I missed my kids, I quit.

I started to work out. Oh boy, did I love that! Everyday, I just got up and threw my whole self into fitness. I lost 35 pounds. I got fit.
I worked with an amazing trainer who thought she owned me so I started my own business.

I fell in love for the first time.

I got my heart broken.

I went on trips, got a slew of mentors and even more new friends.

I became a yoga teacher, much to my surprise.

I raised my children all by myself and fought like hell to give them everything I could . . .

And one day I just woke up and found out I was happy . . .

That day was today!

As I lay in bed wondering how this happiness thing happened to me, I think I figured it out:

I just did shit. And I messed up!
Then, I did more shit.

I kept trying and trying until I finally got it.

In this never-ending journey of falling down and getting back up, I learned that I can do this life thing. Through every struggle, set back, and painful moment, I eventually came out the victor. Through challenging myself I began to love myself.

I learned that happiness was inside me all along.

It wasn’t under a rock, in the woods, and sure as hell wasn’t in a man. I had to go through the cleansing fire of pain to realize that I could touch that happiness inside of myself, mostly just by tenaciously doing shit!

When we meet challenges with a victor’s attitude, it changes us. We become that victor. We find happiness.

You can find out more about Trisha’s amazing work at: trishaselbach.com