2023 or when accepting yourself exceed loving yourself

What I love about this blog is that it reminds me just how much I've changed and grown over the last few years...

From the post about my first days as a naive traveler in New Zealand to the more painful blog posts about grief in Norway after my dad's death, from my yoga and climbing courses to my complicated arrival in Canada, words have always been like a bridge between you and me.

They have often calmed my difference because it's through them that I've been able to say out loud what I've been thinking inside my head this whole time.

But in 2023, I became quieter... Failing to find the right words, I censored myself a lot, scared that if I'd share what was going for me, I'd end up hurting those close to me.

But there was no shortage of adventures... From Nelson to the West USA, via France in May and the Canadian Rockies in September, it is still on the roads of the world and those of therapy and coaching that I've spent a lot of time looking for myself...

So, with 2024 already underway, it's time for a recap...

Are you coming? En route!

THIS CONSTANT SEARCH OF MYSELF

All my life I've secretly felt like a UFO. In my family, at school, at work, with my friends... Pointed out too quickly, too cruelly, I very quickly realised that something inside me was different.

I always spoke too quickly. Lacked filters. I always said what others didn't want to hear. I always felt too much. Too strongly. When I was a little girl, I'd fall off the sofa, thrown by a couple kissing on the TV screen. At 8 months, I was potty-trained, probably because the discomfort of a wet nappy was too much for my sensitivity. At 2, I was reciting my sister's poetry. At school, I was a fast learner. So fast that I often heard my teachers say that they always had to find something to occupy me for the rest of the day. At secondary school, I was extremely anxious about being categorised too quickly. The nerds, the popular kids, the forgotten ones, I didn't understand why I absolutely had to fit into one group only.

Like a chameleon, I spent my life adapting. I was always the girl the others wanted me to be. Top of my class, rebellious nerd, popular girl, artist, musician... I've often proved my loved ones and my friends that I can do anything without ever satisfying myself with my achievements.

My perfectionism in everything I could control was my own way of compensating for my intense emotions and hiding my difference. Because deep down, I knew that I could difficulty control or change these two.

"explore the unknown around you to better understand the unknown within you".

These are the words I wrote in 2017, on my first big trip to NZ. A year that, as you already know, was a revelation for me. As I threw myself wholeheartedly into this new country and this new culture, I dropped the mask and rediscovered, through my life and this blog, a real sense of freedom.

And it was by projecting myself into the total unknown, on several occasions, that I finally found myself.

BUT THEN, WHAT ?

6 years of discovery, exploration and adventures... But 3 years of going round in circles, not really knowing where else to go. 3 years that I've been here in Canada, in British Columbia, making do with an environment that's "not so bad" but which, deep down, doesn't really suit me. 3 years I've been dreaming of settling down somewhere but can't quite work out where. 3 years of swallowing this strange and yet so familiar feeling... That of a gap and a lack of alignment between myself and others. Between the world and me.

And then, laziness. The laziness of starting all over again, because deep down, I don't really know where to go from here. Fear. Fear of having lost track of everything I'd started. Guilt. Guilt that I've done everything I could to stay here when all I want to do sometimes is go back there. Shame that I've gone so far away and still haven't found somewhere to settle down, for real. Anger. Anger at being so indecisive and not moving fast enough for my liking.

In the end, the hardest thing isn't finding yourself. It's easy to drop the mask and explore who you are when you leave your life and your country behind and have the freedom to start all over again...

What's much more difficult, and not often talked about, is the journey it takes to learn to accept yourself.

KNOWING YOURSELF IS ONE THING, ACCEPTING YOURSELF IS ANOTHER.

This is perhaps my greatest lesson of 2023.

In a world where the fake is more realistic than the true, and where we're constantly told that we have to become the best version of ourselves, we all end up dreaming of becoming someone else...

And yet, in this quest for the impossible to look everywhere outside ourselves, we forget to look at everything that is beautiful and wonderful inside ourselves.

2023 will have been the year of my most beautiful inner journey. A year of proclaiming my difference loud and clear at the dinner table with family and friends. A year of asserting my joys, my sorrows, my sensitivity, without filters or shame. A year to sort things out, to transform my isolation from others into peaceful solitude. A year to accept my flaws, my faults, my way of functioning, which is sometimes so disturbing to neurotypical. A year of practicing self-love, whatever the cost. A year of learning to self-regulate my emotions. A year of daring to ask for help, daring to set boundaries and daring to apologise when I make a mistake. A year of letting my anger out in the face of rejection, and of giving back to people, the responsibility for their own emotions.

In the end, there's the idea we have of things and then there's reality. Completely lost 7 years ago, I thought that if I hit the road and travelled, I'd eventually find myself, but 2023 proved to me that there's more to life than knowing oneself. & then, Deep down, we never really lose ourselves. As we grow up, we simply forget how to get there.

I know many of my questions are still unanswered, but maybe that's not where I'll find the meaning of life. Maybe life is just about daring to ACCEPT ourselves. Daring to BE, fully & authentically, without judging ourselves or each other. Or, maybe it's just about daring to live wholeheartedly, doing our best to accept what make us simply human.

Love.

Co.