“Hell yeah!” I yelled. We were hooting and hollering our way, hiking up the first hill of the season.
This ‘hell yeah’ didn’t feel like a simple remark of excitement though.
This hell yeah held the power of the complete surrender, the overcoming, the growth and the healing that has been the last year of my life.
One year earlier, I was melancholy, malnourished, living in a mental state of doubt, still anchored by an eating disorder that lasted 15 years of my life and a few months away from the darkest spell of depression I had ever seen.
It’s been a year now and how life changes. A year of returning to the sunshine state that I love. A year of challenging conversations with people who love me but didn’t understand the path I was taking. A year of humans welcoming me with open arms. A year of building community. A year of being supported by my friends and family who held me up when I didn’t have the strength myself. A year of discovering and diving into psychedelic healing, then heading heart first into work in the space to help others have the same kind of access.
This ‘hell yeah’ was for being out in nature, doing one of my favorite things of all time, with one of my lifelong best friends.
Earlier in the morning I put on my old ski pants which no longer fit due to my newfound curves and juicier booty. What would have normally been a feeling of shame and sadness, that my thinness didn’t uphold the standard I had hoped, I tossed the pants aside and went digging in my ski bag. There I found the onesie passed down to me from my father, the man who taught me how to ski, and taught me how to live, with a relentlessly positive attitude, grateful for every moment. My full rear end had grew out of the old and opened the door for something better. So off I went in a onesie from the 80’s, belted around my waist, grinning ear to ear. It’s going to be a great day, I exhaled.
We breathed in another cool, fresh breath of air and I yelled again at the top of my lungs, ‘yeeeew!’ How damn good it feels to be alive.
There are great days like this one and there are really hard days like the ones I was living in just one year ago. I’m celebrating this one and honoring the ones that have come before it that I worked through to make it here. If you’re in the stuckness, having a hard time remembering there is another side, I feel you, I see you and I am one with you. Today I’m sending Sending my prayers for anyone in the stuckness, having a hard time remembering that there’s another side, and sending joy and gratitude out to this Universe for which I am so grateful to be one with.
Thanks for reading and I hope you find your hell yeah moment!
