Welcome to: The Good Side of Bad.

How does one write about truth without a negative tone, when the truth is just that, negative? Sometimes the truth hurts and it is hard to accept. The purpose of creating “The Good Side of Bad” is that we can find good in the bad. This blog is my attempt to write about my truth, my understanding of who I am and how I got to this point in my life.

8 years as of the date I am writing this. I’ve found that writing things down, helps me to be able to process the information in a way that can help me learn from an experience and use this learning to help me navigate my life journey.

Hindsight is a potential gift for us, that is, if we can gain something from that hindsight. Most of us deliberately avoid this gift. We don’t want to see if our behaviors are right, wrong or as failures. We just don't want to know. It's far easier to think from our assumptions and perceptions, that we did right. We are not willing to seek change in our ways, if we won't learn from our behaviors. We’d rather sweep our actions under the rug and hope the rug is never moved, to reveal the ugly parts of ourselves, all our truth.

Scary movies, thrillers, are just that, twisted and suspenseful enough to be scary. What about the thrillers that portray the scary monster as suave and likeable, as to be the deceiver? Sometimes we can be the twisted suspenseful monster in our own lives, appearing normal and likeable, but then out of nowhere we lash out and hurt others.

As for our real life, we are creating our own movie. It's long, perhaps pretty mundane. But every now and again, we get triggered and unfortunately we behave like a tripped up rattlesnake. Our words or actions are forced upon the unsuspecting recipient. Luckily there is forgiveness, mercy and restitution. But that doesn't come into play without hindsight.

Hindsight gives us opportunity to explore the why of our actions. It takes guts to look into our own hindsight. We tend to shy away from parts of our truth that are ugly, we’d rather not acknowledge those parts. I believe our ego, is desperately trying to save us from hurt. Well meaning as it may seem, it gets in the way of real growth that can come from the hurt in our lives. One way is through cognitive dissonance. The Wikipedia definition for cognitive dissonance is, “the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time”.

How can we possibly learn from hard experiences if we don’t examine our reactions and behaviors that occur during the hard times? Why is it so hard for us to just be still? Sit a while and reflect? Why are we so afraid to be alone with ourselves?

For me personally, it’s because then I’d see my truth, and what if I don’t like that truth about me? My ego has done such a wonderful job of creating blind spots, it appears to be helpful. The blind spots allow me to not see, so I will not honestly address my weaknesses. It’s as if my scary monster approaching me as a young child thinks, "if I, but only just close my eyes, it will go away".

The ego is immature, it has no reasoning or depth. It’s just there to make us feel good about ourselves, at any cost. It is unfortunately ignorant, and a hinderance to our life journey of gaining knowledge through our experiences.

I will be writing about my personal struggles with things that have been difficult for me, maybe not for you, but for me. I resisted looking at them and that only punctuated my suffering. I will share on this blog, my journey with addiction, and how my addiction influenced my perceptions and thought processes. How rehab forced me to sit in the discomfort of acknowledging all of my truth… the good and bad parts of my truth. My identity crisis. My grief. I will honestly talk about my battle with suicidal ideation. I’ll share with you in this blog, keys that I have gravitated to in helping me embrace all of what makes me who I am and discover my meaning for life.

I'll address my never-ending battle with ego. How I came to understand, how important my self-worth is needed in order to rise above my ego. I had no other option, because what I was doing as a young mother of three almost killed me. Obviously, as you will read, I needed change. The paradigm I was living in, just didn’t work for my personality.

Through this blog I will give my reasoning for hope and trust in something greater than myself. I’ll also write about my faith journey with Christianity.

I am a thinker. I like to play devil’s advocate and ask hard questions. This blog is only a record of my learning. It is not right or wrong. It is my opinion that has formed over the 47 years of my life experiences. There is quite a bit out there that I’ve had to question. The readers will get a glimpse into my mind, and see the "mental gymnastics" I went through, to get to where I am now. It works for me. Again, maybe not for you. But for me, I am a much better person for breaking down my perceived reality, in order to put aside what was put upon me growing up. I have a better sense of self. I feel more confident. I have found meaning. My reason for getting up in the morning, every… single… day.

My ideas are possibilities to explore. They are not set in stone. I am always open, and I allow myself to put a lot of possibility on the table. My hope is that the readers will gain insight to their own lives as they read about mine.