Finding Your Strength

Life offers us all the opportunity to become a better person. Being a better person, means bravely going into the dark areas within yourself to seek out the truth of your being. It takes more than great courage, stamina, and endurance to become a better person. Sometimes it takes a war.

The path is narrow, the roads are curved, and the terrain is unstable, rough, and rocky. You will walk alone most of the time. Searching through the dark caves, following the shadows that lead you into the dark places in your life.

You have to be willing to sacrifice more than you know you’re capable of. Climbing up those steep mountains, through the foggy forest of your nightmares and fears, will make you face all the things you've hidden inside yourself.

You will meet your dark side. The faces of fear, deceit, and sadness, all await your arrival. You’ll reach for comfort and find that no one is there. You’ll scream from the thoughts that haunt you from past experiences.

No one can take this journey for you. There comes a time, in each of our lives, when we are given the choice to follow this path. The path in becoming a better person. Should we decide to take this journey, we can never turn back. Our lives are forever changed. On this journey, there are many different places we can choose to slip into and hide. But the path will continue to build itself in your mind. You’ll have to move forward or decide to stay stuck in your own misery.

If you decide to stay the course, you’ll be wounded and scarred along the way. You’ll feel exhausted and out of energy. You’ll struggle to get back on your feet, only to take a few more steps before falling again. You’ll have to continue the treacherous path that’s helping you become a better person. Your journey continues, even though you feel beaten and weakened by the struggles that surround you. Your journey continues.

The day-to-day challenge of being a better person will rip you apart inside and out. One day, the battle of loneliness and the desperate fight for freedom is over. Then the day arrives when you awaken and see that the sun has broken its way through the dark clouds. The birds begin to sing and somewhere you find a change in the energy that surrounds your once battered heart and soul.

That deep change within yourself. A clear view of who you've been searching for. The battle of the dark night of the soul is won. A new energy now fills your mind and body. A new path was paved for you to walk upon. A kinder, gentler path filled with past experiences and old wounds.

You are now a person that has won personal empowerment. You have a new awareness about yourself. One that allows you to feel free within your own mind, body, and soul. You can no longer ignore the world around you. Today, you are a better person than you were yesterday.

Every day is a fight to be a better person when you’re suffering with PTSD. Tomorrow's a new day with new hope and dreams for a better you. Reach for it. Keep reaching until you find it within yourself.

Ty Warrick, July 2014