Too Broken to be Fixed? Watch Me.

Margot X. Sterling, Author, reading of Too Broken to be Fixed? Watch Me.

Approximate Read Time: 5 min

I once had someone tell me that my soul was too broken to be fixed.

They didn't use the word soul, they just said that I was too broken to be fixed.

In my mind, it was the same thing. My life has been filled with childhood sexual and physical abuse, which just continued to follow me into adulthood, to some pretty extreme levels.

Unfortunately, these words came from a man that I trusted very much, and considered a friend.

He was not trying to hurt me, he was speaking his truth. He had been close to someone that had gone through childhood trauma, and it appeared like she had processed it, worked through it, and then one day “she broke,” and she never came back.

Lucky for me, I'm a rebel!

Instead of surrendering and giving up when I am told something is impossible, it ignites curiosity and drive in my soul.

If someone tells me I can't do something, it immediately ignites a spark inside me that makes me want to prove them wrong. I physically feel heat and fire igniting inside me, and I want to push back. My mind literally says “ Tell me I can't do something, and then stand back and watch me prove you wrong!”

I never would have called myself a rebel until recently, although I'm sure this is something that my mom was aware of very early on. I truly am a rebel at heart. I don't follow what society tells me I should do, I evaluate and follow my own path. Many times that path is lonely. Most of the time, I feel I don't fit in with society, but the truth is, I don't, because I don't try to.

I look around, and I see insanity. I see people doing things over and over again, expecting a different outcome.

We all know this is the definition of insanity, we all laugh about it, and then we keep doing it. There are times I do it in my own life as well.

This was my biggest frustration when I was a massage therapist. I truly want to help people heal themselves. I can't do it for them. I can assist them, but they have to take the steps and make the changes to see different results.

My massage customers would come in and see me on a regular basis, and we became friends. I very much looked forward to coming to work everyday and seeing all my friends and customers. Most of them were repeating continually, many times, for years. I rarely had time to take on new clients.

Unfortunately, I found my massage practice to be a pattern of heartbreak for me.

The people would come in and tell me about their aches and pains, physically and mentally. We would discuss things that they could do to support the therapy that I was giving them in my practice, because they told me they wanted lasting results. They wanted to see change.

Together, we would come up with one small step, one change that they could implement before they come back to see me again. We would find something that they would agree they could make a change in easily.

The next time I would see them I would ask them, what's one thing they did different from the last time they saw me, and they would always smile and say “nothing,” and we would chuckle and I would tell them to get on the table, so that we could repeat our pattern of insanity together, once again.

I am continually evaluating myself and my life. If I am unhappy with something, I immediately look to make a change. I make changes in my life at this point, much faster than most people. When I find a change that I want to make, it is implemented almost immediately, and I have cultivated the ability to be very disciplined with most of my changes. This ability has taken me many years to cultivate.

While I am a perfectionist at heart, I have also found balance in this. I pay attention to detail and I see everything, but I understand that there is “good enough”.

I am an entrepreneur, I hardly have any college background at all. Everything I do is self-taught. While I am typically really good at whatever I put my heart into, there are always people who are better, people who have had formal training, and can do better than I do, so I have had to learn that there is such a thing as being “good enough” and being okay with that. I cannot reach the unattainable.

This is me showing compassion for myself the same way that I show compassion for others. I am always striving for changes and to be better, but like everyone else I fail just like they do, except, I don't see those failures as negatives. I see them as learning experiences so that next time I try, I will do better and eventually I will succeed.

Let's learn to show compassion not only for others, but for ourselves.

Let's break the cycles of insanity, and step out of our places of fear, and into a place of faith, that the universe will support you.

Let's make this world a better place, starting inside ourselves.

Truly,

Margot X. Sterling

Author | Speaker | Transformation Expert

Conflict Resolution | Resilience Strategist

Mastering the X-Point: Where shadow meets strength.

Margot in Fiji, 2019