I came from a childhood ridden with painful history. I didn’t think that there was anyone who would understand everything that I’d been through or encountered, so I kept it inside and continued hurting.
But the one thing that helped me during those trying times was keeping a diary. Regardless of what happened to me then, I wrote it down. For some reason, it helped me to feel better after doing so. No one ever saw it, and I tucked it away so that it remained private.
As I matured and thought of my difficult childhood—the way things transpired and, more importantly, how they could have been avoided—I began to seek solutions. I knew that holding onto that negativity wasn’t doing me any good, and it was causing me tremendous stress in multiple areas of my life.
There came a point that I was tired of carrying around such damaging emotions. For my own benefit, I had to do something about it. I was determined to use my painful history to help inspire others.
Making a Change
After recalling how helpful it was for me to pen situations that occurred and lock them away in my little diary, I decided to write my memoir. With every stroke of my pen, I felt as though I was removing negativity from my life. I was convinced there were others out there that would unquestionably understand my journey without judging me. Even if they did judge, I had a bigger objective.
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I wanted to help people by allowing them to take my journey and connect to the choices I made to keep from allowing myself to remain a victim of circumstance. Given the layers of painful history that I was born into, I had to find a way to keep that history from repeating itself. I could change it if I wanted to, but it was necessary for me to make a choice and be diligent in doing these things:
- Be willing to forgive to alleviate being held emotionally captive and avoid passing along anger to others.
- Embrace positivity to overcome negativity and adversity, and teach others how to accomplish that feat.
- Share the truth to better connect with others seeking comprehension and healing.
Once I was able to do those things, it allowed me to open my heart and freely share my experiences to inspire others to move past their painful history as I had done.
I discovered that in sharing my painful history along with solutions to avoid or overcome the types of challenges I was faced with, I would be able to inspire others to believe that they could too.
Believing you can heal has a lot to do with taking the steps to do so. Keeping everything locked inside of me only disrupted my life, and it wasn’t healthy for me.
Sharing allowed me to facilitate healing because I was talking about it, offering solutions, and providing inspiration to create change.
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The Takeaway
Each of us has a story to share that will help others in some form or another. By allowing people to know that there is someone that has struggled with the same pain they are facing, you will offer inspiration to help shape and improve lives. You may never be privy to the outcome, but your experiences have more meaning to others than you may realize. If you can help change their mindset, you can help change their lives!
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Marala Scott is a multi-award-winning author, inspirational speaker, leadership advocate, humanitarian, and Oprah Ambassador of Hope who has taken her prolific life story and written about it in the groundbreaking book In Our House: Perception v Reality (Premier Digital).
Photo by PinkerthanFloyd