Sometimes I look at everything I have now, and it blows me away.
It wasn’t always going to be like this. I was on a dark path there for a while. I was on track to heart-disease at 45, children who hated me, still up to my eyeballs in debt…
… and, most probably, sad and alone.
But, somebody saved me.
I did.
And looking back, I don’t know how or why that younger version of me did it. A young woman, a single-mum working 80 hours a week, nothing to her name and no time for the kids…
… crying her eyes out on the couch.
And I don’t know how or why she did it, but she got up and said, ‘No.’
‘No, I’m not going to live like this. I’m not going to spend my life slaving away for nothing, I’m not going to become an absentee parent, I’m not going to be sad and alone.
I’m going to chose something else.”
And she did. She made that choice. She rose to the fight, and everything I have now is thanks to her.
I wish I could thank her.
But, I can’t. And so I honour everything she gave me by letting myself enjoy and savour every moment. I make gratitude a practice.
And I honour her by continuing her legacy. I will keep on planting the seeds that will become tomorrow’s forests.
And I will keep on fighting, to be the hero my future self will always remember.
And when it’s not me, it will be my children, my community, my country.
So take this moment now, and be the hero that your future self will always remember.
There is a hero in all of us…
… waiting to come out.
DB