Dear Self...

If any of you have read Bob Harper's book " Are You Ready?" then I'm sure you know all about the first few exercises that the book opens up with. One of the most challenging one is to release whatever pain and resentment you have built up inside you towards other people by writing them a letter of forgiveness and acknowledgment of your portion of the responsibility. When you carry all of that pain around with you, you just stop yourself from being able to achieve what you want and deserve in life so I put real serious thought into my letters and just started writing. What came out shocked even me. I wrote over 30 letters and with each one, went through an entire range of emotions from anger to sadness to grief and everything in between. I wrote letters to friends I have wronged, friends who wronged me, to family members I had strained relationships with and even a letter to a father who abandoned me. I was careful and deliberate with each word I wrote down, making sure i didn't write anything I didn't truly feel in my heart. I felt a HUGE weight lifted off my spirit when I was finished and have ever since that day, worked hard to live up to the forgiving nature of each one of those letters but of all the ones I wrote,the hardest was the one to myself. I haven't thought about that letter to myself since the day I wrote it until tonight when it popped into my head while I was running to clear my mind tonight, as I often do. I've been struggling with a LOT of things this past month and no matter how hard I've been trying, I can't seem to get rid of this dark cloud that keeps following me. I've been carrying every rock in the road onto my back and carrying it along with me and then been wondering why I'm being weighed down. Tonight when I thought of the letter I wrote to myself, I knew that that was the answer I was looking for, I needed forgiveness for myself for all the bumps I've hit and stop carrying them around with me. I wrote another letter to myself tonight after my run and set free in the ocean. There is no once and done in weight loss, I'm sure there will be many more letters to myself and its NEVER too late to let go of whatever you've been holding on to