UPDATE on Shannon & Beautiful

This month’s Key to Life e-newsletter is just a short summer ‘hello’ to you as Shannon continues her work on her upcoming book, Beautiful, which will share her story and the inspiring stories of other addiction-survivors. We wish you all a wonderful summer and appreciate those of you who have emailed with words of encouragement and support and have shared your personal stories for possible inclusion in Beautiful.

It is so tempting to write off the hard times as personal failure or weakness. Or at least it is for me. I tend to think that if I am struggling in some area of my life I must be doing something wrong. Can you relate?

I have been blessed over the years to attract into my life a wonderful team of healthcare professionals that I can immediately turn to when I need balance, support and guidance. And I feel incredibly fortunate to be living in a time period when we are encouraged to seek expert professional assistance to navigate challenging times in our lives. After all, when we have money to invest, we seek the assistance of an expert financial advisor to guide us. Why should our attitude be any different when we have time and energy to invest into our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health and wealth?

I have learned – the hard way – that hard times can bring into our lives a unique wealth that we might easily undervalue or even miss altogether. I will confess that I often don’t perceive any benefit from hard times – from personal sadness and grief, anger, fear, struggle, uncertainty, depression and illness – until after they have passed. In my own life, it is usually only after the storm of hard times has abated that I become aware of a newfound and much greater faith, internal strength, perseverance, and compassion than I had before. And I often find I am also less affected by the winds of hard times the next time they blow through my life. Each set of trials instills at an ever-deeper level within me a belief that ‘this too shall pass’, and that I AM strong enough to make it through even the most challenging of circumstances, which, however severe, are always found to be temporary and beneficial in hindsight.

This is why the new Key to Life e-newsletter for our community of eating disordered-recoverees-in-progress is called Good News. This is why, after donating over 15 years of my own life to anorexia and bulimia, depression and a host of health-related side effects, I train my eyes firmly towards the future and the wide-open doors of possibility that I have walked through in dedicating my life to promoting healing wherever healing is needed and wanted, including and especially within myself. And this is why, when hard times hit, I pick up the phone and call the team of healthcare professionals I have assembled for just such a time as this, and I work with them to learn the lessons life is presenting to me with faith and a sense of adventure. This is also why I continually encourage all those I meet to do the same.

We are worth it. Our lives are worth the hard times they sometimes bring, and worth the faith and strength we have to dig down deep to access when we are in the thick of trials and tribulations. Speaking from personal experience, sometimes it is so tempting to give up. Sometimes it is almost unbearably alluring to say ‘this time I am NOT going to take this standing up – this time I am going to lie down and let life steamroll over me if that is what it insists on doing, because I am just too tired to fight anymore.’ And I tell you this so you know that every word on the Key to Life website, every insight shared in Good News and in this e-newsletter, every sentence we’ve ever exchanged personally on email, over the phone or in person, every lyric of each song and every word you will read in Beautiful is steeped in the authenticity of personal hard times experienced, overcome, digested and learned from the only way any real learning ever happens – the hard way!

And if I can do it – if I can survive and thrive from the hard times – you can too. This is the basis of 100% of the work that I do, and I truly believe in this work because I am living proof that it is possible to overcome and triumph over, and become the better for, whatever life brings. And as I believe in me, so I believe in you, and I love and celebrate you for being you - for accepting the hills and valleys of life and not getting stuck in either - and for doing the hard work of living when really, each moment of every day you choose to live is a conscious choice you are making. You are brave and courageous, deep and beautiful, and it is a privilege and a joy to keep company with you and share our lives together in this way.

Shannon