2020: The Year That Kicked Off My Recovery
The year 2020 came and shook me awake. HARD.
As the world began to change on the outside, I began to change on the inside.
All of a sudden, NOTHING became more important to me than freedom– something I’d realized I’d been taking for granted.
I began to see all of the opportunities I’d never taken out of fear and just how little of my life I was living or actually loved.
The realization that I had been wasting my life away brought me profound grief and sadness, but it was also a catalyst for my own recovery.
And it all started with using my voice.
I didn’t care if I lost all of my friends or if my colleagues thought I’d gone nuts. I just knew that NOTHING else mattered more than speaking truth.
It was primal.
It was visceral.
And it went something like this:
“NO, I will NOT be covering my face. NO, I will NOT be taking whatever’s in that vial. And YOU don’t have to either!”
That was my message to everyone, all day, everyday.
NOTHING felt more important to me than being strongly vocal and creating and sharing content about the authoritarian abuse that was being inflicted upon us.
That primal urge to speak up and create from my heart changed my life.
What started off as a mission to help others see that they had a CHOICE, that they did not have to stay silent or be forced to do ANYTHING led to me realizing that there were changes that needed to happen within ME.
That, while I wanted others to be and to feel well, I wasn’t being or feeling well.
And that it was time to step it up.
So I prayed for answers, was led to the exact support I needed, and little by little, I began making the changes I needed to make.
2020 was the catalyst for:
- finally moving out of a location I loathed
- admitting to myself that I had a drug problem
- learning how to properly detox and nourish my body after years of self-neglect and poor eating habits
- piecing together my childhood sexual abuse
- detaching from my abusers
- healing my chronic pain and night terrors
- breaking free of a toxic, dead-end marriage
It wasn’t until I was finally willing to get real about how I was living my life, start taking better care of and truly listening to my body and my intuition, and learn how to be there for myself in a way that no one else had ever been that I could finally have a shot at living the full, happy, healthy life I deserved.
It's been nearly three years since I began my recovery, and I now see that it was the catalyst for my inner freedom – for breaking the generational cycle of abuse – so that I could now help other women to do the same.
– Malana
