Follow-up to The Never-Ending Story.

Time can feel like it slows down long enough to make sure the lessons stick. Anything to confirm that you’re prepared for the curveballs and shots in the dark that life guarantees all of us.

Those experiences can make us both a teacher and a lesson.

On the positive side, you’re in a place where the mix of your own mistakes and ones you’ve witnessed, or were victim to, can teach people how to love themselves again. Or for the first time.

It’s how you can be proof that there’s a life still worth living, sharing, and reclaiming from other people’s control and deceptions. To also not be who you were, and who others still are.

On the negative side of it, lies someone refusing to believe they never did anything wrong to you or others. That any means of rejecting their presence is a punishable insult. And any announcement of what they did wrong should be met with reminders of “all I’ve done for you.”

It’s how someone can be a teacher and a lesson in how to NOT be them.

Throughout this blog, I’ve gone through my history of being someone else’s teacher and lesson, to willingly becoming a teacher. An advocate. A secular minister who learned how to speak to anyone willing to listen, regardless of their spiritual or societal beliefs.

To have shared it this way for so long has helped me become the kind of communicator that I have cursed myself for not being in old seasons. I can’t. And at times when I get close to doing it again, I have new history to prove that something was done about those burdens.

If you haven’t started yet, the same is possible for you.

There’s no categorical limits or requirement to who, how, and when to start believing in using your history to comfort and heal yourself first. The only limits are your commitment and imagination. The only requirement is that you believe that you can do it.

That’s when confidence is eventually built to do it for others, either privately or openly. It draws in people that may do the same. In rare cases combining forces to benefit the continued growth we deserve to have with each other.

Of course, opponents to your journey will exist and expose themselves in surprising forms. New connections and old, it doesn’t matter. Still, every journey to a brighter future is never without conflict and barriers.

Conflict can be avoided and resolved.

Barriers can be broken and rebuilt for you. Not against you.

Even experts can agree that there is no true end to this journey. The best thing we can do is not stop it for our own sake. To not be afraid to share yourself with safe people, professional or not.

To continue to do it for people that see you and love you in a healthy and unconditional state.

If not for them, then for people that may never meet you in person, but are blessed by your perseverance.

Your vulnerability.

Most importantly, the shade made by trees you planted seeds for a long time ago.

It’s taken 200 posts to know how to do it comfortably in the shade, all because I planted a few seeds to get the growth started. From there, I knew how to make it a space for others under a tree that has its weathered aches, but will continue to grow in love.

Just like we will.

D.F.

P.S. Taking a winter break. Will return next year with new posts, and more. Take care of yourselves, and know that you are loved all year round.