August 28: Nothing you've been through was wasted.

I turn 53 on Sunday.

Happy Birthday to me!

And when you've been on this earth that long, working with as many Millennials and Gen-Xers as I have, you start hearing the same sentence over and over.

"I feel like I wasted years of my life."

I hear it from couples trying to open up their relationship, or trying to find their way back to each other after years of drifting.

I hear it from people fresh out of a divorce.

I hear it from folks whose tastes run a little spicier than "normal," who spent years hiding that, doing what they were supposed to do, staying somewhere they weren't fulfilled because it seemed like the responsible thing.

And they say it like a confession.

Like they're the only one who screwed it up.

So here's my birthday thought for you:

It's not your fault.

You did the best you could with who you were and what you knew, at every single step.

That's not an excuse.

It's just true.

And nothing you've been through has been wasted.

Not the good years.

Not the bad ones.

Every bit of it deposited something in you, and that deposit is part of what makes the you who's reading this right now.

Maybe you're ready to step into something new.

Maybe you need a while longer to cook, and that's fine too.

Either way, it's in you now.

And it can fuel the next 10, 20, even 50 years, even if getting it cost you something.

I'll say this plainly because I don't hide from my own story:

The abuse I went through made me a different person than I would have been.

I won't tell you it was better.

Maybe I would have been a world famous something-or-other and philanthropist. I don’t know.

I don't excuse what happened to me, and you don't have to excuse what happened to you either.

I know I stayed too long in it.

I wasn't ready to leave yet.

That time wasn't wasted, either, even though it hurt like hell.

And I know that some of what I do now, the helping, the connecting, the loving people hard enough that they start loving themselves, exists because of what I went through, not despite it.

If you're sitting with your own version of "I wasted years," I'd like to hear it.

Not so I can fix it for you.

But because naming what those years gave you, even the ones that hurt, is usually where the next chapter actually starts.

Book a free 15-minute Big Ask with me.

Bring the years you think you wasted. Let's find what they actually gave you.

https://my.curiouser.life/15-minutes-big-ask

--
Rev Heather, aka Nookie, LUQ
https://my.curiouser.life
+1-855-712-5433 (toll-free)

P.S. What's something from your past, even something painful, that turned out to be meaningful or useful to who you are now?

Hit reply. I read every single one.