Heather Schneerman
Nov 7 · 4 min read

Recently I have been on a pursuit. I’ve been digging in, ripping, pulling and tearing away at my life experience. I’ve always been inclined to look towards myself when something goes wrong because I’m a true believer that happiness begins inside ourselves. Getting my hands dirty in the swirling filth of my brain is not a new activity for me. Quite the opposite to be truthful. There are times I crave to relive certain experiences all while learning new types of pain and quietly contemplating what caused me to miss the giant red flags. What can I say, I find pain pleasurable to an extent.

So, why is it I’ve not been able to achieve the level of happiness I desire? I could of course, pull a cliche out of psychology of why this is the case. The obvious one, I’m not happy with who I am. The generic one, fear keeps me from being happy. And of course the age-old cliche of parenting issues. It’s 2019. Those cliches fit me and nearly the world population. And frankly, I like to feel special so no, I won’t accept any of them as the final answer.

In no particular order, here are a few things I learned about how I’ve been looking at myself.

I Confine Myself

One of the more startling realizations I’ve had is that along my path, I created barriers that shaped how I define meaningful concepts such as what it means to be fortunate. I’ve always felt fortunate and grateful in terms of me against the world. I consistently contemplate others in the world and I know I’m more fortunate in many ways simply by default. I am an American woman and not once did I have to fight to have an education. How could I see myself as unfortunate when I know so many other countries in the world view female education as a luxury, not a given right as I experienced. What I came to see is I created a boundary where I could recognize how fortunate I was, but I could simply not allow myself to be fortunate as I wanted to be. My rational, it’s selfish to want more when others are literally dying to have the freedoms and choices I have. Because of how fortunate I know I am when stacked up against the world, I haven’t allowed myself to have a desire to have more than I felt was necessary. The boundaries I created have led me to only compare myself against a majority of the population. This mindset did not allow me to look back at myself in my teens and twenties to see how very fortunate I am and how far I’ve come in life regardless of the choices I made.

Lack of Emotional Allowance

This certainly wasn’t shocking for me. What exactly this means to me, was surprising. I am a highly turbulent individual. This is not a bad thing, it simply means I am emotional. When I’m passionate, it’s like Hell’s fire have burst to the surface of the earth. If I’m happy, then the road I walk is a glittery rainbow of giggles and cotton candy. This is only true when I feel like it’s ‘okay’ to have emotion. There are times where I know I have been the reason for the hurt or anxiety that is brought on. Therefore, in my eyes I did not deserve to be emotional. I knew better than to put myself in certain situations, so it is only fair that I couldn’t feel anything personal towards my poor decisions. If I felt shame as the result of my choices, then I deserved to be shamed and I wasn’t about to cry over things not going my way or the judgements placed upon me by others.

My Experience Matters

It may only matter to me, but it matters. Through my tears, anger, joy, anxiety and laughter as I forced myself to finally walk back through memories I had locked up tight, I came to see that my experience has a purpose. For myself, it’s led me to be able to finally start sharing my life experience with others without being fearful of being judged for the truth. For others, I sincerely hope one sentence, one shared experience prompts them to think differently about how they look at their own experience. We are all individual bodies, individual brains, souls and so on. We are all entitled to have our own experience and feel however we want about it.

If we put a straight jacket around certain moments where we are the cause of our own pain, then we risk never truly understanding why we made the choice we did.

The Outcome

I know I have a lot more inner-work to do so that I may finally be at a place of peace that I desire. I’ve learned that it’s okay that sometimes I make choices or take risks, that could result in pain, hurt, tears and shame. And these are emotions I’m allowed to have.

The Word I Won’t Use

You may have noticed that one word I have not used is failure. Not once in my life I have felt that I failed at anything. This is a perspective I’ve held for a long time and I am unbelievably grateful for this part of me. I know others have deemed me as a failure in most respects. I also know that some have gone to great lengths to make me feel like a failure. Perhaps this is where my lack of emotional allowance has paid off. Because I’ve not allowed myself to see any step in my life as a failure. I take them as teachings placed upon me, even when I am resistant to the lesson being learned. Not all lessons in life are positive. In my eyes, we tend to miss a lot of teachings when it always works our way.

This alone, makes me so very grateful and appreciative to my experience. If life had always worked out as I wanted, then I would have done myself a great disservice of never finding my way. Even scarier, I wouldn’t have learned to be authentically me.

    Heather Schneerman

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