How Do You Wake Up Your Sleeping Beauty?

Suddenly waking up and realizing I have traveled across a certain time period in my life and not being awake for it is a little frightening. I’m not necessarily speaking of missing a particular milestone in life, but instead realizing that the last time I thought about what I wanted in life was many years ago. I remember vacations, family gatherings, and other photo worthy moments, I just haven’t really felt awake for many of these moments, and I suppose part of this is that after a loss in my life I decided to take on the persona or the attitude of “I’m just living”. No need to set goals of where I’m going or timelines of when I need to be there- They only get changed anyways…

My life before was goal driven. I not only had goals for everything, but I also needed to know exactly when I was going to achieve every one of those goals. When I went through this personal loss, my world fell apart and all of my goals and timelines crumbled right before my eyes. I learned that one person can set goals for a future, but another can crush them just as easily. Maybe this is also when I decided to just close my eyes in order to get through the pain. The only consequence is that I also closed my heart and forgot who I was and who I wanted to be.

Now after years of becoming who others have wanted me to become because “I’m just living", I need to find out what the process is to wake up and how to uncover the layers, yet not go back to the person I was six years ago?