My Happy Place Where Love Grows from Within.

By Clarissa Carmack

Learning to love yourself first is a inward journey of self discovery. You will experience a lot of highs and lows during this process. Things about yourself that you never knew existed in such beautiful ways. The true magic of life that unfolds before you is something to embrace and cherish through out your life long journey. Once you fully understand and learn how to love yourself first the world will look totally different to you and you will have such a new meaning of life itself. Finding your own Happy Place as I have done is truly an amazing and magical way to see yourself. I hope everyone can find their own special HAPPY PLACE.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Aug 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684707614

Book preview

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MY JOURNEY ON LEARNING HOW TO LOVE MYSELF, LEARNING LIFE AS AN ADULT

As I started my adult life at an early age I threw myself into being a wife and mother to my two amazing children. I was so focused on being a loving wife and loving mother that I lost who I truly was. I did not know the identity of who I was without my title of wife or mom. Who was that person? What did I like, what was my hobbies, what was my personality like? Well, that is all really good questions. Going back to my upbringing I threw myself so far into loving my husband and my children I forgot someone very important, myself!

In my need of proving my unconditional love for them I lost my own self- worth. I did not realize that I had to take care of myself in order to take better care of my family. I would always run from the time my feet hit the floor until my head hit my pillow after a long day. Never stopping for myself, my self- worth, to love myself, or to show myself the love I so deserved. I did not know how to love myself. I only knew how to love others. I was always expressing my love outwards to others, but not inwards for my own self. So, for many years of being a loving wife, loving mother, along with a full- time job outside of the house I felt myself becoming bitter on the inside. I did not understand why I was feeling bitter, but I was. I always had a battle going on inside of me. Good verses evil cycle it seemed. I always felt if I done anything for myself it was being selfish. I had to love others and be kind to everyone else. That was how I was raised to be.

Daily my body was screaming from the inside out trying to make me understand that I needed love and I needed kindness also. I needed to be loving towards myself, but I had no clue how to fully do that, or even where to start. If I did try to do anything for myself I would feel guilty. In return making myself feel I was being selfish. I was fighting daily with my internal dialog. We all fight with our internal dialogue. Some more than others. As the years kept passing by I kept pouring my love out to my husband and children, but still did not give any of that back to myself. I ended up experiencing high anxiety and panic attacks out of nowhere. Though at the time I had no idea what was going on with myself. I had no clue what anxiety really was nor what all it could do to a person.

I always felt I was dealing with life just fine. I had a loving supportive husband, two wonderful kids, and a good job. What did I have to stress over? Looking from the outside in on my life I had it all together, but deep inside I was a total wreck. My life felt empty and dark whenever I took a deep look at myself, but why? Why did I feel this way? My mind was like a rollercoaster always going fast, up and down hills, upside down, and all around. I would lay in bed at night and my mind would not shut off. Later I found out all of the anxiety and stress in return led to me having insomnia. I was already dealing with high levels of anxiety and now insomnia had to set in with me. I was afraid to ask what was next! How do I fix this? What exactly is going on with me? Each night at bedtime was a horrible feeling for me because I knew once the day ended and all was quite with my little family that my mind and emotions would start screaming at me. During the day it was easy to silence the internal battle. I would just put that much more attention on my husband, my children, and my work. I always had it in the back of my mind thinking I was being selfish for wishing I had just 30 minutes a day to myself. Not knowing my higher self was screaming at me to love myself. I still did not understand this or know how to love myself. That was not taught to me. I was taught to love others, respect others, be kind, and to always tell the ones you love that you love them. So, that is what I did! I raised my children, worked full time and life went on. Through all of it my anxiety was growing into a big ugly monster that was consuming my whole life to where I could barely function.

After my children were grown and out of school I was at even a darker place in my life. Some people call it empty nest syndrome. I called it, what do I do now with my life? I could not remember a life without my kids. How was life before them? I kept myself so busy raising them that I only knew life with them in it. What would I do with all of the spare time I would have on my hands? I did not have any hobbies of my own because I did not do anything in life other then work and take care of my little family. All three of them were my whole life. Now what do I do? Do I throw more of myself into my relationship with my husband? That is how life goes right? Get married, you raise a family together, then the children grow up live and their own lives. Eventually you are left with each other to create a new chapter in your life just the two of you.

Yes, I thought. That is where I am at now. I am in a new chapter of my life and my journey goes on. I had to learn a new way of existing without my children living in our home and boy was that ever totally foreign to me. Although I was learning a new way to adapt to my new chapter in my life I still had my anxiety monster following me around daily controlling my every move.

LIFE WITH GROWN CHILDREN

Now that the children were grown and learning how to live their own lives and they did not need me as much now. I settled into the new way of life for him and I both. I gave 100% of myself just to him. Life seemed to be moving forward full steam ahead.

We were blessed to be in a place in our lives where I could quit my full-time job so him and I could spend more time together. Every night was still a nightmare for me. My rollercoaster mind would start revving up throwing me into a high anxiety mode then I would have panic attacks that would wake me up through out the night. While still battling with my insomnia I would lay there in the middle of the night listening to him sleep so sound, so peaceful, and relaxed. Wondering to myself how in the world could he do that? What was his secret? I still was not fully listening to my higher self screaming from deep within me. I heard her alright! All of the screaming, but I never stopped to fully listen and understand what she was so mad about. I just heard all the racket in