Affirmation: I trust God’s timing. I believe in my process.
In The Hot Box episode 5.5, I discussed how I use gratitude as a tool for resilience when combating anxiety. Time and time again, my life shows me why maintaining a state of gratitude is imperative, especially when we are talking about breaking toxic cycles and generational curses.
Ending of toxic cycles
This year a toxic cycle of co-dependency and lack of respect for my boundaries with my nuclear family came to ahead. Once again, there was an explosion in my life, and my world came crashing down. Another cycle, fear, was coming to a close in my life. For so long, I have been influenced by fear in my decision-making process, but now I had no choice but to be brave.
Initially, I had a short mental breakdown as I took time to process the events and grieve my losses, but now I’m ready to face adversity head-on. The aftermath of destruction leaves room for the reconstruction of my life. I now have all the space I need to structure my life in the real vision I have for it, uninfluenced by others’ desires or needs.
I prayed for the end of these toxic cycles, but I was hoping it would not come to fruition in this manner. Because I didn’t want it to go down the way it did, I was still upset with God when it happened. I think, as humans, we try to make sense of the world around us, and for myself, every time I lack understanding of an unfair situation, I get frustrated. I get frustrated even though I know that it will all work out in my favor. In life, we don’t always get to choose the situations that our blessings ultimately come from, and seldom does God send us perfect packages.
I realize that toxic cycles will never have clean endings. They will always shake the room. Breaking generational curses isn’t light work, and stopping toxic cycles in their tracks isn’t a small feat. It’s only right that the principle “you reap what you sew” applies even in this instance. You can’t manifest a clean ending from a messy situation.
Through gratitude, I’ve begun to realize that this fact is why my experience for so long has felt like a string of explosions for me to clean up, but more importantly that I have the power to shift the narrative. I realize I’ve been doing the work year after year to improve my life and end the toxicity points that have plagued it since childhood. At different periods within my journey, I have felt defeated as though there is no point in progress. Progress can feel like a daunting cycle of a few steps forward one step back, but I realize now that’s all a part of the process of winning. This nonlinear movement is what people are alluding to when they say failure is a part of success. My story is not one endless chaos but one of triumph. Cleaning up a mess of this size of the ones that had been lingering in my life was not going to be easy, nor was it going to be pretty. I have to trust in the process time and time again, and once more, because I’ve seen it work before.
Holding this perspective allows me to be more resilient and accepting to change by shifting my view of the situations before me. Where adversity used to be my enemy is now my teacher. Where I used to see destitution, I now see opportunity. Where I was initially resistant, I am now malleable. Gratitude allows the dark corners of my life to be illuminated by the magical light of hope and possibility.
Gratitude has kept me mentally focused and rooted in my purpose. My life has continued to get increasingly better over the years despite the significant setbacks I’ve experienced. I remind myself that it is time for me to improve once again, but this time in a different space, and that will require me to restart the process of overcoming, healing, and thriving.
So, here’s to the process. Here’s to new beginnings.
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