It’s been a long and troubled path for me, this thing they call life. No more troubled than anyone else I’m sure, but this is my story on my journey of personal development that I wanted to share. I will be honest in all I tell, in all the embarassing and funny glory even at my expense because if my experiences or my words can help just one person going through any of the same things I did, then I can’t not share and be completely honest about it all. Even if just one person finds comfort or answers from my mistakes or from what I have learnt then I will have helped in some small way.
If only we were put on this planet with a road map and instructions, telling us what to do and more importantly how to do it! How great would that be? But then come to think about it, how boring would that be? We wouldn’t get to discover things for the first time, get that butterfly feeling in our stomach when we are nervous or excited. Get that feeling of pride when we accomplish something after numerous attempts at trying and then we finally get it right. We wouldn’t learn from making mistakes, learn what excites or interests us or learn that we can be so much more than we ever thought possible. Yes, I definitely think that a road map on lifes journey would be way too boring.
When I was young and was asked that age old question of “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, I always thought I knew. I was going to be a doctor! A child psychologist because I always wanted to work with children. That makes me smile now or maybe chuckle is a better word, because some days I’ve hardly got the patience for my own children let alone other peoples so thinking about working in that capacity now, makes me smile/chuckle. I’m honestly not sure I could do it now, but 13 year old me was going to be a doctor. But then life happened and I found myself a mother at the age of 18 and suddenly I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do with my life or where my path might take me.
I wasn’t particularly ambitious through my 20’s, although I did move to a foreign country at age 21 with my 3 year old son, leaving behind my home country of South Africa and all I’d ever known to start a new life. A move prompted by wanting to be able to offer my son more in life and England seemed to be the place I was going to do it. I worked in office jobs and moved my way up to managerial roles but never really felt like “This is it! This is what I want to be doing for the rest of my life”. I always felt like there was more out there for me. I got itchy feet often and tried my hand at a few different things. I say I wasn’t ambitious, but the truth is I opted for security, the security of a pay cheque at the end of each month because I had to make sure I could provide for my son.
My 30’s saw new challenges. I decided on a completely different career path and joined the police. As cliched as it might sound, I wanted to give something back and feel like I was making a difference. And for a while I did. I had raised my son, met my future husband and then had twins. Life was definitely throwing everything it had at me and I was so determined not to let anything get me down or get the better of me and I plastered a smile on my face everyday and carried on. I carried on like we all do, as wives, as mothers, as friends, as employees. We just carry on, until we can’t anymore.
And now I’m in my 40’s! Well what can I say? I hit the lowest point in my life after what should have been the happiest in my life, my wedding. Every relationship I had, including my new husband, nearly fell apart and I still don’t really know what turned it all around for me but its a journey I am still on. I’m still doing the job I love but finding it increasingly hard to enjoy, it gets harder to get out of bed every day to go in and face the ever increasing crap that we do and still keep that smile plastered on my face. So I started looking for something else to do, something that would allow me to have more time for my family and that would afford me to be able to travel; there is still so much of the world I haven’t seen yet and I’m not getting any younger.
I’ve never really been a feminist, but then growing up I never really noticed what a male dominated society we live in. It has only been recently since listening to audio books, which, in fairness are pretty female dominated (by choice) that I have realised how as women we do think differently to men, how as women we are treated differently to men is some circumstances and more importantly as women how we judge ourselves on a completely different level to everyone else. In our own eyes we are never good enough, we are never thin enough, we are never rich enough and we are always waiting for someone else’s approval! I’m learning that it is our self judgement, our self talk, our self acceptance and our self love that need to change. And only we can do this for ourselves.
Follow me on my journey as I fill you in on all the lessons I have learnt and the lies I told myself that I have overcome which, over the weeks will show you the steps I took on this path of mine, one step at a time, to make it a little less painful, a little more bearable and how I learned to make it a lot less troubled. I’m still walking my path, one day at a time and I have a lot to share so I hope you will join me for the ride, if for nothing other than a good laugh.
Angela Harris 