My Why… — NYA About Me

This is a post I have wanted to write for a while but I am writing it now as a reminder to myself why I started.

This past Saturday was the MM Movements First Care Card making workshop. I want to write and tell you that it went off without a hitch, that it filled my tank and I am overwhelmed with pride…

But I can’t, it didn’t. I am learning to be ok with that. Truth be told it was a blow to my ego, let’s be clear,

The MM movement WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT MY EGO

but I am human and I have put more money, time, and passion into this project than any endeavor in my life. I am the girl who passionately starts things and then quits them without notice. I am hot or cold, in or out and I “enter explicit word here” hate that!

The MM movement was meant to challenge me to fight for the best version of myself and to truly learn to accept and love myself despite my past, my flaws, and my nature. A nature that I am actively fighting to break because it serves me nor the people around me any good. This movement was to show others if I can do it they can too because I am a mess! (don't get me wrong I can still be pretty awesome but I am sure you get it)

So as I write this now I laugh a little realizing that maybe Saturdays event sucking big time wasn’t the end of the world moment it felt like...Oh yes it indeed felt like that, I cried in the car before walking into the house after the event, I felt as if I failed, failed myself and failed others but again with my selfish nature felt more that people had failed me. I am not proud of these moments but they are my truth.

I am supported, I am loved and I am a woman actively fighting my depression.

So back to the first moments of the MM movement. It is just that that did it… my depression. I was diagnosed with depression April 2016 and I have believed I kept it under control and that was until about a year ago when I unknowingly had started an unhealthy coping mechanism with whiskey. Please keep in mind I was not a binge drinking, black out, table dancing, missing work mess but I was a couple of times a week “get my mind off things” “it helps me sleep” drinker. I did not even notice I was doing it. I did not even know I had so much undealt with hurt.

In fact, before my new coping mechanism I was doing “fine” I had participated in my first ever art shows, I was working out, I was to my knowledge beating my depression I realize now that is not possible without facing the things I was covering up with what I was calling Self Care. We can’t just put lipstick on our wounds and wonder about our way. No we must put on our big girl pants and do the very thing we always knew we had too.

We have to pick up the broken pieces we were left in, acknowledge them, hold them and deal with them and only then can we reshape them.

I didn’t admit I was still broken and that is where it started to really turn for the worst. Admitting I was broken meant the person or persons who hurt me got to me. It was admitting I was not strong enough to “get over it” Who was I trying to prove myself too? What did it matter what others thought? So people think I am tough but inside I am a broken mess? yeah Jena that’s winning…*sarcasm…so much sarcasm*

In September of last year, it hit a head I got a DUI, no one was hurt and I was stopped two seconds after getting in my car. I was not extremely over the limit but enough for it to matter. I am not going to justify my actions. I was over the limit. PERIOD. It didn’t matter if I had drove home safely after the same amount of drinks before. I was wrong.

Needless to say that spending an evening in the County jail will spike up your depression, you know how they say it gets worse before it gets better….well whoever they are, their right. After community service, mandatory classes, driving restrictions and some serious beating myself up, I was finally where I needed to be … face down and without a clue.

What the hell just happened? Can this really be all there is for me? After everything I have been through (another story for another time) this was the direction I was going?

I felt defeated I could not.. COULD NOT LIVE MY LIFE THIS WAY.

I did the one thing I had been running from for years. I prayed. You see I had trusted God with something and it did not work and I never truly forgave him for it. You ever feel like you’re just talking to a wall when your praying well that is what it was like, but I had no other option, I was lifeless. I needed purpose so I prayed for it. I asked others to pray for it too. I am not the girl who ask for help remember, I was uncomfortable, I did not like it but I did it anyway.

Shortly after things started to fall into place. A book I was reading at the time, one I am still reading, mentioned how you should always say yes to creativity. That creativity is like a person asking for collaboration with you and if you say no too many times it stops asking you to work with it. A friend came into my life, and left shortly after, but not before telling me he believed “My healing was in my Art” A memory came to mind after years of its absence of when I was being mentored as a young women and was asked what I was passionate about? Do you know what my answer was…

The first thing that came to mind when I was asked at the age of 23 what I was passionate about? … it was WOMEN.

Women?! I remember thinking what kind of bogus passion is that? Oh so now I am supposed to be some kind of motivational speaker? (my stubbornness was even more animated back then can you believe it? Lol) I thought how “stupid” and never really thought of it again…

Until 7 years later, after asking for help, I kept thinking about it, about everything. About me and how I did not want to keep living my life in pieces, about the women in my life who I wanted more for, about what made me happy. It was what motivated me.

I thought I could use my paintings to help women, but how? (doing as the book said and saying Yes to creativity) I sat and wrote up the MM mission statement, a physical plan on what that looked like, I had a friend proof read it and I sent it into the world.

Things clicked, they fell into place, I had a plan, I felt a purpose and it had been rooted in me from day one but I had to dig, and it hurt damn it, it still does but I am not giving up I am calling them growing pains and I am fighting through it.

*Photo via Pinterest...got to love Pinterest!

And if I fail, well I tried and I won’t be a failure if I see this through because I started this MM movement to break my nature and a part of that was quitting.

Please don’t quit! find you passion and let it save you, let it save others around you. You matter and you have something to give! You are a Beautiful Mosaic and you are a Bad A**!

Con todo amor,

Jena