Sarah Wilson's "first, we make the best beautiful" is a wonderfully raw exploration of anxiety and healing. If you or someone close to you lived with anxiety this is a great read!
I want to say a few things about a concept Sarah explores in this book.....she talks about "having (the) ability to be okay with the uncertainty of life". Finding peace with this concept brings Freedom.
When life throws something your way you go with it, you embrace it no matter how ugly it is. You find a way to manage through it with grace. This is Freedom. Life may no longer be as you planned, as you expected or as you wanted, but it IS....and you need to relinquish over to the inevitable.
When I first became ill I felt I had been robbed of my Freedom. I could no longer travel, go out for the night or get through one day without constantly considering my condition....my freedom was gone, in an instant. And it was gone forever, there's no recovery. I take this to the grave.
I believed it was my right to be able to do all the things in life I wanted to....born to an upper-middle class family, well educated, a girl who was told she could be and do anything she wanted to....total FREEDOM!
This is the myth, the fairytale, the 'happily ever after' we are told as children. We accept it and run with it without question. Who wouldn't? It's too good to be true....yes, it is.
What is freedom really?
Freedom is letting go of the falsehoods, the beliefs, the ideas that don't serve us. Freedom is learning to accept what IS, at face-value, without trying to rearrange it or manipulate it into something more 'acceptable'. Freedom is embracing the uncertainty of life.....and being ok with it, whatever it may be.
My previous definition of Freedom was selfish and short-sighted. It allowed me to have what I wanted, but not what I needed.
In learning to accept my life (what IS) I become free....I break away from the shackles I created one by one, slowly...baby steps; and in doing so I regain my life.
N x