Be the change..

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

― Mahatma Gandhi

This quote has been in my mind a lot lately. Some work things have been hard lately and some life things have been as well. I find it ironic that often I find myself in a position of giving advice  when I am talking to patients who are struggling with a variety of issues and yet  I struggle to , "practice what I preach". The result of this lack of action in my own life is feeling pretty dang shitty about myself. How can a person have so much education ,experience, common sense and still mess up? Because we are and I  am..human.  Sometimes as much as we want to make the best choice or take  the road less traveled we instead find ourselves on that same road, that same path of destruction. Lately, I feel like I wake up many days and think..What the hell is going on in my life? I read a lot of blogs, most of them written by woman who fall into similar demographics as me. Married, mommy, daughter, working and you know what..WE ALL STRUGGLE. I think that part of my problem with my various struggles is that I have wanted so badly to  deny that I am struggling. No one really wants to be the person, friend, spouse, sibling, etc that is walking around complaining about how much they screw up. I want to be the woman, social worker, mommy, friend that has it mostly together. (Notice I am not saying all together! Apparently I do have some sense.) But, somehow I think changing what I do not like that I do or say will happen magically. My first semester of graduate school I had a professor who asked us to write a paper on the topic of how a person goes about change in their lives. The stages ranging from recognizing what you would like to change and then doing it. In theory it seems simple enough but in actual life, I have realized that it is much easier to stay in the contemplating stage of your problem, or what you want to change than to actually get off your butt and change it. I think I have finally gotten so sick of my current path that I actually will take the flipping steps to change. Am I making any sense here?? I am starting to think that as forty approaches it is time to truly figure how who I am and what I want to be. By the time March 25, 2015 arrives and with it the big 40..I want to have a better handle on me. I have had thirty nine years of living. All of those years have helped to shape who I am . I can't help but feel that at times I am just beginning to know who I really am. I feel like part of this next nine months, before I turn forty, is to discover who the real Susan Simpson is. She may be a little tattered, and there may be some wounds that I have been denying exist from the past, but with some hard work, dedication and certainly grace, she can find her way to a happier, healthier way of existing.