A lot of the people I admire have told me, “The only constant in life is change.” My high school robotics coach told me this along with her wife followed by some of my family members and therapists. It seems as if they are all reading from the same hymn and if a myriad of people I love preach from the same bible, there has to be some validity to their sentiments, right?

These past few months have been filled with an overwhelming and transformative amount of change, but I’ve come to realize that their sentiment is incomplete. 

The only constant in life is change, but we are also the most consistent thing we can rely on in this change.

I remember reading Nat Sohni’s blog post, “You have yourself”, a few months ago and what really resonated with me is the idea that we will, we have, and we will always have ourselves in this lifetime. No matter how many curveballs life throws at us, we are the only person capable of getting ourselves through a moment.

I recently found out I might be losing coverage to see my therapist who I’ve adored since the day I did an intake with her a few years ago. Just the idea of terminating therapy is disheartening, but yesterday I realized for the first time in a long time I am thriving. I am thriving AND I am not manic. I am thriving AND I’m taking all my medications as prescribed. I’m thriving and I’m only a fragment into my professional career. I’m thriving and I know the best is yet to come. I’m thriving and it’s because I’ve been doing the work to be able to live more healthily. Therapy has definitely been a strong guidance in my “journey towards wellness”, but it isn’t my therapist that is making my life better. It’s me.

The thing with being so treatment oriented is that you rely so much on systems, medications, treatment teams, and providers, that you forget you are your strongest advocate. I forget that I am capable of making decisions just based on my own insight and experiences. 

No one can objectively ever tell us what is in our best interest because only we carry that insight-others just carry the bias or inclination to believe in what they limitedly know.

Where we are in life may not be up to us, but how we are in our life is.

I don’t know what next week means in terms of therapy and if the deck will have to be reshuffled or what that means in terms of my treatment plan, but what I do know is that I’ve been consistent with myself and if I can uphold that same measure of accountability through and through-I’ll be okay. And heck, maybe I’ll be more than okay-maybe I’ll continue to thrive.

How are you going to show up for yourself today? What about yourself is constant? Does consistency create confidence for you because of its predictability or does it create stagnancy because of its lack of variance?

I hope you strive to show up for yourself in the most authentic and life-giving ways because I know personally, when I’m able to do that for myself I’m able to do that for others. Our lives are a tiny blimp in the unending progression of the universe. We are exactly who we need to be and when our confidence shakes and our worries overwhelm us, remember that the only constant in life is change and we are the most consistent thing in this change.

Much love,

Michelle