[Original post 4.22.2020]

Hey friends! Hope you’ll all been well since we spoke last.

I ended my last post by saying all of the small things carried a lot of weight for me and helped to shape my character. I want to dive in a little deeper today so we’re going to have another little story time. Buckle up ! 

Okay so the year is 2008. I’m a senior in high school & I got accepted into my college of choice, George Mason University. I still get chills thinking about my acceptance letter. 

June 13th was my graduation day. June 14th my friends and I headed down to Myrtle Beach, SC for Senior Beach Week. (What a trip that was!) 

I returned home from the beach and my world slowly (yet very quickly) turned upside down. 

I spoke to my grandma the day I graduated. She called and told me how proud she was of me. When I returned, my mom told me that she wasn’t doing too good. In the next few weeks that I went to visit her, she stopped remembering who I was. She knew I was family but she didn’t know my name. She didn’t know I was her granddaughter. I remember the last time she talked to me. She called me her sisters name (my great aunt had passed years prior). 

I walked away crying. My heart still hurts thinking about it. She was my biggest fan. She was my baby and I was hers. She was a second mother to me. She was also the only grandma I knew because my dads mom passed away when I was two. 

In the midst of all this we were packing up to move, again. We had gotten evicted, again. My mom wasn’t making enough money and I tried to help her with bills as much as I could but I had a little part-time job. (Now, she never asked me to contribute to the household unless a utility was going to get cut off and she had NO ONE else to turn to.) 

As far as my dad, let me just say, I absolutely LOVE him.. but he had a drug and alcohol problem. (Looking back now, it was much more serious than I knew at the time.) My dads addiction had led him to make some bad choices in the past & it caught up to him right in the middle of having to move and preparing for the worst with my grandma. He ended up being sentenced to 2 years in prison, in another state. 

A week before I went away to college, my grandma gained her angel wings. I moved into my dorm on a Friday afternoon, went right back home for the wake that evening, buried her the next morning, and started classes that Monday. 

So here I am at 18 years old having just buried the only grandparent I knew, my father is in a prison 5 hours away, at a school almost 2 hours away with no friends. Just thinking about it brings back all the feelings I had: Excited to go away to college. Sad that my dad would be gone for 2 years. Guilty because I’d be leaving my siblings behind. Nervous and alone because my friends and I had gotten accepted into different universities. 

I cried every day and almost flunked out of school the first semester. I lost all my grants. That was my first bout with depression. That was also my first time as an adult seeing a therapist and she taught me some valuable lessons that I still carry with me. The most important thing she taught me is: Things are going to happen to you that are out of your control, how you let them effect you is your choice.

I could let these big life changes continuously bring a darkness over me, OR I could let the small wins in life carry more weight than the big disappointments. 

Life will NEVER be perfect. In my opinion it’s not meant to be. Life is suppose to test your character.. You’re suppose to come out of every situation having learned something. (Sometimes we have to go through the same bullshit before we learn the lesson because we’re hardheaded but that’s okay too!)

So, are you going to let the big disappointments carry the most weight in your life? Or are you going to make a decision to accept that shit happens and appreciate all the little wins in your life? 

I don’t know about y’all but I’m going to keep appreciating the small wins because ultimately, the smallest things are where I find the most happiness. 

List 5 small things right now that you consider to be wins. I’ll start:

1. I purchased my domain.

2. I got enough sleep last night.

3. My boyfriend made me laugh as soon as I walked in the door from work today.

4. Almost all my vitamins were delivered today.

5. My best friend sent me a surprise gift in the mail this week.

Did your list makes you smile or feel relieved? If so, you should now understand why I say the smallest things are always the biggest.

Until next time; Be You. Do You. LOVE YOU 💜