Take Back Your Life!

Here’s the long and short of it; There is no why. You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’ve holding.”
~ Cheryl Strayed

I love this quote by Cheryl.

It’s easy to throw a pity party for yourself and bemoan the cards you’ve been given, instead of embracing those cards and using them to your advantage.

Cheryl’s mother died young. She took her often unbearable loss and turned it into essays and best selling books and the book became a film.

Reminds me of that other quote to take lemons and turn them into lemonade.

When I was a girl, I used to wish I looked like Marcia Brady, especially her long, straight blond hair. I spent hours smearing my hair down taut with goopy gelatinous products, trying to erase the waves. If if it didn’t look right, I’d wet it and start all over again.

If it had as much as a minor bump in it, I spun into a funk and often couldn’t even leave the house that day.

Hours lost in front of the mirror, upset with unruly hair that kept betraying me.

Then one August day in my late 20’s, I got caught in a rainstorm during my work lunch break, followed by a burst of humidity and my wavy hair re-asserted itself.

I saw a mess of curls, completely out of control. All I wanted to do was hide in the bathroom until 5 pm, but I couldn’t. I had no choice but to go public with this insidious spaghetti on my head.

The guys I worked with began stopping by my desk and saying, “I love your hair like that.” (more…)