The moment that the world shut down was the moment that I opened up...

From a very young age, I was always told that I could do anything that I set my mind to. It's one thing I remember being told very clearly from my childhood. My parents always pushed me to get out of my comfort zone and make choices that I maybe didn't feel ready for. I also remember that from a young age, I was diagnosed with severe anxiety. So as a result, those pushes outside my bubble, although beneficial in the long term, were so terrifying that I often liked the idea of sitting on the sidelines and simply watching or listening.

Throughout my life, I became comfortable watching and listening from the sidelines. I learned a lot this way. I also hid a lot this way. I formed a lot of opinions and world views from always observing. From what my family showed me and what I decided myself, my belief became that I wanted everything I did to be led with love and kindness. I started breaking out of my shell a bit with these ideas and visualized a life where I could do good for a world that seemed so sad.

This got a lot of criticism from people around me. People started saying that I was "too nice" or "too understanding" or "needed to see the world for what it really was." I was told that the universe didn't work for people who thought and felt like me, that I'd be walked all over and taken advantage of. So for a while I let that become the story I told myself. I shrunk and became small and stuck myself back in my bubble where I wouldn't be seen or heard. My anxiety took control and although I kept watching and dreaming, I stopped listening to my heart.

I lost so much of myself in the years of high school that the person I was becoming was completely unrecognizable and so far from who I knew I was meant to become.

Fast forward to 4 years after high school - I had just moved out to a new city with my boyfriend, started a new program at university, found a new job and truly thought that this was my moment to finally be happy.

Then came 2020. The year of the shift. When the world shut down and I had a moment to just BE, I realized how much of myself was lost in the things I was doing. How so much of my identity fell into my relationship status, my grades, where I worked, and so many others. I was floating through a life that I felt so stuck in. I had settled into a routine that wasn't serving me. I saw that I had stopped living a life with love and kindness first. I was living from a place of fear and hurt and letting the opinions of everyone around me shape my life. I wasn't working towards a life where I could make a positive impact on the world, and I knew that I deserved more. I knew the world deserved more from me too.

I decided that I had been living my life stuck on the sidelines and in a bubble for too long. So when the world shut down, I broke open. I remembered what it was like to get out of my comfort zone and make choices that I didn't feel ready to make. I followed my intuition and it led me to the most wonderful community. This is when Dreaming Bigger, Living Louder and The Freedom Era came into my life. I have found a home in these communities that have allowed me to be whoever I need to be. I'm never too much here. I'm always enough. This space has given me the inspiration I so desperately needed to remember that I am capable of becoming anything and everything that I set my mind to. Just like I knew from the beginning. It has shown me that the universe does work for people like me, and that I'm not alone in the way I think or feel. It's allowed me to rewrite the story I was telling myself for so long. PLUS, it has given me the beautiful opportunity to live a life of financial, emotional, and spiritual abundance by simply being myself.

I get to be me, live a life led by kindness and love, and inspire others who are exactly where I was to stop sitting on the sidelines and live the life they know they deserve. I get to impact the world in the best possible way.

Because the truth is, we can spend a lot of our time believing that we are not enough. We can get so comfortable in our discomfort that we don't even realize how stuck we are. We can watch other people live our dream lives and think "why not me?" every day. I know I did. I'd like to break the cycle. I want to show everybody how beautiful this life can be if we all just gave ourselves permission to be seen and heard as our most authentic selves and followed our hearts. We are all worthy of happiness, abundance, love, community and so much more. We are all worthy of LIVING. This life is meant to be better than what we are told.

When the world shut down and I opened up, I truly made the best decision of my life.