SELF-EMPOWERMENT

Self-empowerment. Yes. What does this mean to me?

It has been a long, arduous journey to get to where I am today. I am in a stable place and it feels wonderful. Wonderful: inspiring delight, pleasure; extremely good; marvelous. Yes! In some ways, I feel relieved. Relief: alleviation, ease or deliverance through the removal of pain, distress, etc.

Stability and normalcy are good when you have gone without. Incidentally, the word "normalcy" sounds made up but it is associated with Warren G. Harding and for some odd reason, I've always remembered that from one of my history courses. It was his campaign promise to return to pre-WWI society. What did America need, according to W.G.H? Healing, normalcy, restoration, adjustment, serenity and dispassion. Random tangent but not all together unrelated.

Anyway, I have a full-time, steady job and am currently enrolled in an awesome MSW program. I am pleased with my academic progress so far and feel motivated to keep going. I have my family and a group of wonderful friends, acquaintances and colleagues. Health-wise, I am probably the healthiest I've been in a very long time - physically, emotionally and mentally. I have clarity of mind and I feel driven by focus and purpose.

All this in stark contrast to five years ago! It was very painful at times and in the past, I wanted so much to escape those painful feelings. It felt like it was too much but now I realize that it wasn't too much - I just lacked to proper tools to deal with it in constructive ways. In light of everything, I am happy to be where I am today and I probably wouldn't change a thing. Well, maybe I would change a few things but there's nothing I can really do about that. I feel grateful for my experiences and I will say it was hard to get where I am today. Freakin' hard. 


How did I get through it? Well, when you hit rock bottom sometimes you have no choice but to go up. That's how I saw it anyway. I thought, crap, I've got to get out of this, but how? It started out with little steps. Jogging, if only for a few minutes at time. Trying to quit smoking, then trying again when I started up. Opening up here and there, crying to someone. Taking it day by day. Accepting that I couldn't change the past but I could change the present, I can change the here and now, this very moment, with hopes that I could somehow influence the future.

The hardest part out of all this, so far, has been having self-compassion. It's hard to accept yourself at your worst. I try not to judge myself in the past (practicing that mindfulness thing) but that takes discipline and effort. Brene Brown spoke of having self-compassion, that we can only begin to have compassion for others once we have compassion for ourselves. I think that this is true - we tend to judge/evaluate others based on out own self-perceptions. So how can we begin to fully love others until we love ourselves?

Scholars and academics explore whether empowerment is a process or an outcome, or is it both? I would say that it is both. Do I consider myself empowered? To some degree, yes. Was it the journey that led to self-empowerment, or was empowerment the outcome? Both. I guess in the end it doesn't really matter because my journey is not complete.

So what does self-empowerment mean to me? I think it means being able to control your own life, health, etc. It means being able to take care of yourself. But it's more than that - it means being able to accept yourself at your worst; it means having self-compassion and self-love. Once you achieve that, and only after you achieve that, then you can go out and change the world.