Surviving to Thriving - A Practical Guide To Help You Go From Barely Living To Living With Joy

By Jane Adams

They say that we all have a day, a dark day of the soul when we either sink for good or fight it and rise from the depths threatening our everything. I dont think I had a day, but rather a period of time where things were so dark I knew that if something didn't change - if I didn't change - then I would get pulled under and never escape, leaving my girls without a mum, just as I had been left without mine. 

 

This book is born from that journey, its my struggle from just barely surviving to truly thriving.

 

Its a practical tool that will help to equip you with the knowledge that I learnt along the way to allow you to get unstuck, to improve your life, to show you how to stop thinking small and how to make positive change no matter what you are currently going through. Finally allowing you to live the life you deserve to live.

 

I myself have been at the lowest of the low places, I have learnt how to pick myself up again and move forward to where I am today. I truly believe this book can help you to grow and evolve and change into the person I know you were born to be.

 

I am here to show you just what's possible when you finally choose yourself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jane Adams
• Release date: Mar 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9780473620462

Jane Adams

Jane Adams has spent over two decades researching and reporting on how Americans live, work, and love, and especially how they respond to social change. A frequent media commentator, she has appeared on every major radio and television program. The author of eight nonfiction books and three novels, she is a talented communicator, and an expert in managing personal, professional and family boundaries, dealing with grown children, coping with change, and balancing life and work. A graduate of Smith College, Jane Adams holds a Ph.D. in social psychology and has studied at Seattle Institute of Psychoanalysis and the Washington, D.C. Psychoanalytic Foundation. She has been an award-winning journalist, a founding editor of the Seattle Weekly, and an adjunct professor at the University of Washington. She is the recipient of the Family Advocate of the Year award from “Changes,” an organization devoted to improving relationships between parents and adolescent children.

Book preview

Jane Elizabeth

Introduction

They say that we all have a day, a dark day when we either sink or swim. I don’t think I had a day, but rather a period of time where things were so dark I knew if I didn’t change something I would leave my girls without a mother, just as I had been left without mine.

So I survived my dark day of the soul, my dark period. A time when I was suffering from depression, anxiety, adrenal fatigue, I was scared, bone tired and disassociated with my mind and my body

I was so homesick and fearful of where I was living that it physically and mentally hurt

Earthquakes were ravaging my home, the place I should have felt totally safe

I had a toddler and a new-born in tow

To the outside world I was ok but on the inside I was barely hanging on

I had become a very good actress by this point in my life so no-one really knew the battle that was raging inside

I felt totally and completely numb, I couldn't feel otherwise I'd lose it emotionally

I got to the point where something had to be done differently

I didn’t enjoy life, I didn’t care if I lived but I did care that my girls were safe

That they didn't end up without a mum like I had

So I joined a network marketing company..........

I hated every minute

I felt like mutton dressed as lamb, like a sleazy salesperson

Pushing myself to do selfies and lives - feeling like an imposter

But........

It was my first step to here

Network marketing is an amazing place to teach you about growth (and it gets such a bad rap unfairly in my opinion)

I began to immerse myself in self-development in a massive way

Learning all I could about the mind and body connection

How my thoughts could either save me or bury me

And then my soul kicked in and a spark was lit, I fed the spark with more and more and the fire was suddenly raging

So I came out of my darkness and into my light

And it led me to here

A place that isn’t perfect (but I don’t believe anything is)

A place where I am learning more and more every day about loving my mind and my body, confident in my own skin, knowing what I want

Being led by my soul, leaning in to my intuition and feeling brave and powerful for probably the first time in my life

And I am so grateful for the entire journey

Without it I would not be the person I am here, today, in this moment, so I am grateful for every part, the good, the bad and the ugly, and there were so many ugly moment I can’t count them

Healing isn’t immediate, it’s a process, it takes time

But I want you to know that no matter how dark things seems there is always light - find it, trust it and let it lead you

Let this book, my words, my story be the catalyst that you need to change, to become empowered, to build your self-worth, your self-love, to know that it really is possible, let me take your hand and show you the way. 

Chapter 1 - The Day Everything Changed

My life changed when I was 7 years old, one minute I was a normal happy go lucky little girl and the next everything changed. My mum had cancer, she’d had cancer for a while but we lived with it, to me it was normal, my life was just normal and I didn’t really think anything of the fact that she was ill a lot, was in and out of hospital, had turned yellow – with what I now know was jaundice – it was just all normal, until the day she died.

I remember she was upstairs in bed and my dad was up there with her and the doctor came. My sister Cathy and I must have known something was going on because we sat on the bottom stair together listening for clues, trying to decipher what was happening, two little girls whose worlds were about to be turned upside down.

I heard dad thanking the doctor and then he came downstairs.....or at least I think that’s what happened, that is the memory I have carved out for myself, whether it actually happened quite like that I’m not sure, I have erased a lot of that time from my thoughts, I presume as a protection for my emotions, because if I remembered them all they would surely destroy me.

I don’t remember Dad crying.... ever, although I am sure he did in secret away from the eyes of his two young impressionable daughters, I don’t remember what he said to us, I don’t even remember crying myself that day, I’m not sure I knew the severity of what had just happened or how it would affect every single thing about my life from that day forward, how could I, I was seven.

We were never allowed to talk about her again after that, I think for dad to be able to cope with losing his wife and now having a 10 and a 7 year old to deal with, two girls at that, he needed to shut it all out and pretend it had never happened, never talk of it and definitely don’t cry. As an adult now I get it, I completely understand why he had to do what he had to do but back then as that small child I was completely and utterly lost.

I remember some days later that he wanted Cathy and I to go to the funeral home to see her, I think he wanted us to see that she was at peace, that she was not yellow anymore, that she was finally free of pain but I didn’t want to go, even at that age I think I knew that seeing her like that would not be beneficial, everything in me was crying out not go, to not see her, my intuition was begging me to do what was best for me and to not go. Instead I followed what my dad wanted and I went.

I got up to her feet and I froze, I physically would not walk any further, I could not make my eyes look up any further up to her face and I ran - that is my first memory of crying, of sobbing so hard and for so long that I was exhausted.

That day has never left my memory, countless others have, many things that I should remember I can’t, many things that I wish I could remember I don’t – but that day, that memory has stuck with me forever and it is as real today as it was then, 40 odd years ago.

It’s funny that it was 38 years later that I finally got around to writing this book (yes I have procrastinated over writing it and finishing it for nearly 3 years) as that is how old mum was when she died, 38, such an insignificant number to you no doubt but to me it is a number that I hate. It’s a number that I dreaded getting to myself, even as a child I can remember thinking that when I hit age 38 something will happen to me, because that’s the age when people leave.

Looking back at it all and the way it all played out we should have had some sort of counselling, but this was England in the 70’s and dad was way too proud to ask for help, to admit that we needed help to get through it, you just didn’t do that in those days, you struggled through, stiff upper lip and all that - and struggle through we did, struggle through I did for the rest of my life.

I went from a happy go lucky girl surrounded by love and hugs to someone who became reserved almost overnight, starved of love and affection and no understanding of what had just happened.  Dad was never the emotional one, he was never the one to give big hugs, to tell us he loved us – that was mum’s job and we knew that was just how it was. Dad hadn’t really wanted kids, it was mum who did and who persuaded him to have us.

So dad went to work and provided for us and mum stayed at home and loved us.  

Don’t get me wrong I loved my dad, he was the best person and I was absolutely devastated when he died too not that long ago. But by then we had built many bridges the two of us, I had an adult’s perspective to look back at things by, I knew he loved me, and as he got older he found it easier and easier to show me. Oh how I wish he had found it easy 40 years ago.

So on that day and in the days and years that followed mum had gone and physical love, like hugs and kisses, for the most part was gone with her.

On that day I went in to my bubble, a little girl completely lost, utterly despondent, no clue how to cope with what had just happened to her life, becoming more and more introverted, less able to see the world as a nice place to live in. I went in to my own head and I didn’t come out of it until many years later.

In fact, I still live there on occasion but nowadays it’s become much easier to also live in the real physical world where everyone else resides.

Chapter 2 - I Was The Fat Girl

My battle with food started young, I’d always had a sweet tooth and loved everything that was bad for me. I was bought up in the 70’s in England, the time of microwave dinners, angel delight and E numbers. My household was also one where you didn’t leave the table until you had eaten everything on your plate – we would sit there, all of us in silence, around the dinner table until each plate was clean regardless of whether we were full or not.

And so I learnt that food was to be eaten, all of it and that other types of food, the good stuff, the sugary stuff that tasted amazing made me feel a little bit better about my life, it gave me comfort, it became the love that I was craving – and so started the emotional eating habits.

I remember talking to dad about my eating habits years later and he said cake made you happy and so I let you eat it and eat it I did, way too much of it.

School was a blur of bullying and name calling – thunder thighs, fatty, fat pig, ugly – you name it I was called it all. I hated that time of my life – at this point dad had remarried and I had a step family. How I longed for my step mum to love me the way mum had, I put her on such a pedestal that there was no way