Good To Yourself

May 31, 2025

Today, I realized that I was blessed with some of the darker parts of being human. I’ve experienced grief & loss, shame, powerlessness, guilt and the insecurities of feeling unworthy and undeserving. It doesn’t seem like a blessing, but I realize that not only did I experience it, but all the women in my family line have, as well. I mean, of course, the men have, too. But one has to be a woman to understand how these things play out specfiically for females in the world. It is not better or worse. It is just, different.

I have realized why I am drawn to wanting to create communities of empowering women. To be a voice of truth and reason and this deep passion to want to help other women heal generational trauma’s and the insecurities that come with it. I have realized why I want to shed light in dark spaces and bring truth to areas that have been covered in lies. It is not my own pain that I am transforming. It is also, the pain of all the generation’s that have come before me. If I had to put words to my purpose - I would definitely say that this was it. To transform pain into growth.

I am incredibly empathic and have the ability to put myself in other people’s shoes in the most natural way. It is easy for me to understand why people do what they do. It is easy for me to understand why people make the choices that they make. I wasn’t always this way, but it really began to develop when I started to see everyone as a reflection. I see parts of myself in every one I meet. Even, the darker parts of me. I would even say, especially, the darker parts of me. I used to pass harsh judgment on those parts of people, but I’ve come to realize, it’s only because within them, I seen me. And that part of me, I didn’t love. I didn’t appreciate. I believed it was bad.

It is so interesting how cruel we are to ourselves, you know? It is also interesting, how cruelty expresses itself in different ways. In some, it manifests as too much kindness and over-giving. Wanting to prove their worthiness to others because they haven’t learned to honor themselves. So they go above and beyond for other’s. Deep inside, they just want to be unconditionally loved, seen and appreciated, even if it’s not really them.

I don’t belive that kindness is a bad thing. Everyone, loves kindness. But kindness given from a space of wanting to be chosen, sends a different kind of, incongruent energy. Authentic people can see right through that.

For some of us, self-cruelty manifests as being cruel to other’s. People who are cruel, are many times, incredibly cruel to themselves.

Both examples contain unhealed pain within it. I’ve experienced both. I’ve been the giver and the receiver and it all stemmed from the fact that I did not know how to honor myself. I did not know what it meant to love myself and those, were all passed down from the women who came before me.

There was no bad intention in the passing down of it, either. It just is, what it is. We do what we need to do to survive. We teach what we believe will help the generation’s after us. It is how things have always been done. So I hold zero angst against the women who came before me. However, I do hold myself 100% accountable for how I choose to transform this pain.

And honestly, that’s really all we can do - take accountability for what we were blessed with. I say it is a blessing, because life shifts in a beautiful way when you begin to take accountability for transforming your pain. Even, if it didn’t begin as your own. In a sense, you level up. You see potential in places you never used to see before. Life feel’s more free and at the end of the day, I feel that is all any of us really want - is to feel free.

So the question then becomes, what is my first step? For me, that first step was simply, truth. To unravel my own truth’s. To see myself as I am without judgment. You cannot change what you don’t acknowledge. You begin to realize that you were perhaps, your very own narcissist. Saying you were one thing, but acting as another. We all do it. In one way or the other. We say we’re happy on social media, but behind closed doors and with our closest people, we are in tears about how unfulfilled we feel. And the thing to remember is - none of it is bad. It is just simply, the truth. And you can change that truth for yourself if you choose.

You just have to be courageous enough to take a real look at who you are. I call that the first steps to being authentically good to yourself.

Love Always,

Ariel