Manifestation….

man·i·fest1

adjective

1. clear or obvious to the eye or mind.

I have been on a life changing mission since I decided to get sober. I didn’t really understand it until much later but that is when I believe it started. I made the choice to stop drinking, and two months later God blessed me, I got pregnant. It was the beginning of what would be the best decision I ever made. I did the hard work to say “I want to be sober”, but that was just the first step because every step after that had me trying to manifest the best life I could. Not just for me, but for this life I wanted. One I had dreamed about since I could remember. A loving husband, a family, a beautiful home…..seemingly everything you could ask for. Well, I didn’t just ask for it, pray for it, wish for it on every “star light, star bright”……I worked hard for it, and every step of that life (what I like to think of as “sober life”) was mafe up of choices made from gratitude that I was sober. I had DONE it. It felt like a victory.

"You are always only one decision away from a totally different life!"

There are times I still cannot believe I am sober. When I think back to the women I was before and who I am now….it is night and day (and yet….that same ol crazy Staci is still here!😛 ). That definitely didn’t happen overnight though. Like, I didn’t decide to get sober and “poof” I now had everything I ever wanted. No….it took a lot of healing. That healing didn’t come quick, easy or without pain….and I do not believe that healing will ever be done fully, but I do know with each step I took, after that decision to get sober, I was manifesting my best life. Me getting sober was all me….me getting pregnant, that was fully (in my eyes) an act of God. He knew I wanted it….he knew I would be a wonderful mom and devoted wife, but not as the women I was when I was drinking. So, he gave me this sweet, wonderful and joy filled gift of a baby boy. That baby guaranteed I would stay sober, at the very least, until he was born. Once I felt him growing in me and I held him in my arms, I knew I would never drink another drop of liquor again. It was then, in those first moments as a mother, that I knew I had played a part in manifesting my best life.

But life is not a straight line, it is not linear. It is a roller coaster ride like no other. It has you about to throw up and laughing at the same time. The curse words flowing freely from your mouth as you experience loss and love. As you watch loved ones leave your side in death, and meet new friends that will have a lasting impact on your life in such a way that you could have never imagined. Life has you thinking you know the drop is coming, and instead it throws you into a corkscrew. The roller coaster ride you are on does not come with a safety harness, so you clutch on to anything you can hold….hoping it keeps you in the car. There are moments you are looking ahead with awe and excitement, and then all of a sudden the bottom drops out and you can feel your heart in your throat. You wonder if it will ever slow down, let you catch your breath….and yet, this feels like pure joy!

Through each one of life’s “thrills” it took great courage and strength to not take a drink. When I was nervous and in front of new people, being sober was the scariest. I was so uncomfortable in my own skin and now that fucking thing had to drag me to all these “events” with fellow spouses, AND try not to be awkward? Great….I thought for sure I was going to die. Of course, I didn’t, and with each new event, and each new friendship formed, I got better in my sober life. I honestly thought I had it all figured out while we were stationed at Kirtland AFB. I had learned, in some weird way, to really love this women I had become. I was so used to feeling embarrassed by who I was when I was drinking, but here I was killing it……then life, the stupid fucking roller coaster ride, took me down. I got sick…and I wasn’t sure how I had manifested THIS for myself.

"One of the hardest things you will ever have to do is grieve the loss of someone who is still alive"

Here I was loving life, sober and mother to two of the most amazing boys. I was a proud military wife and tried my best to serve in the best way I could, while he served his country. I had the most blessed life….and I was so grateful. How, how did RA manifest itself into my life? I was very bitter, and really disappointed. I felt cheated. Like, here I had done all the hard work. Changed my life, and was living “the dream”. THIS was my fate? I was angry! Not at the very beginning. At the very beginning I was positive that I could get better. I could beat this. I mean, after all, I had gotten sober. I had to be able to beat this. But the problem was, RA was a villain I was not familiar with. I knew alcoholism….I understood where that all came from. My demons, the ones that sat in my head, feeding me lies…I was familiar with them. I knew how to fight them. I had no clue what kind of fight I was in for. It would not only test my physical strength, but also my emotional and mental as well. I would lose the very women I had fought so hard to find. I can look back and watch as the life I manifested faded away. I tried to keep my pace, still trying to be everything I loved being, but my body was not having it. I slowly gave up. I let the sickness win and I stopped trying to manifest a better life. I felt defeated. I just didn’t understand how this could be happening to me…after EVERYTHING I had done, to be the best me. What the hell was this shit? How could I be the best version of myself with a broken down body?

……and this is FINALLY where I get to my point, manifestation is not just about looking at your blessings and knowing your choices lead you to a better place. Knowing, you took the steps to manifest the good….that is easy to see. Those steps are easy to look at and say “Wow, when you made this great choice, great things came from that”, try looking at the shit choices and understand those also lead you to where you are. Manifestation is about the whole thing. Understanding that the “bad” choices are ALSO manifesting something. Now, I am not here to say illnesses are a manifestation and are therefore all curable by changing your mind set…because I have done A LOT of learning and growing in the last year and you know what….I am still sick, I am still tired, and I still suffer from a lot of physical, mental and emotional pain due to RA. What I am saying is this, once I learned I was sick…..what did I start manifesting in my life?

"What you feel, you will attract"

I was angry….um, yea, not a great manifestation! I was sad……yea, I was really sad guys! I was grieving a person I had come to love so very much. I was more than sad, I was in a deep depression! (My sweet Evelyn would play such an amazing role in helping me heal….I cannot wait to share that story with y’all!!!) I wasn’t able to be who I wanted to be and that made me bitter. It made me question everything. Why did I do all this work only to live in pain every fucking day. Once my brain started thinking like that all the time, guess what happened…..you guessed it, all those blessings seemed to start to fade, but not in reality…..in the manifestation that I had in my head. The perfect life looked one way and now I was being asked to find gratitude in this new way, and I failed miserably. It would be a good six years of grieving to find a better path. To fully understand that, although I may not be able to control my RA (and I will be exploring if that is true of not, because the more I learn, the more I wonder….) but I can control how I LET….IT control me.

I will not live sick! I lived sick for most of my teenage years with depression, then I added alcoholism to it and lived even sicker well into my twenties. I got sober, and had a family….only to get physically sick! What bullshit? Am I right? How was I going to do this? Because I could “get sober”, I could “work through my depression”….how the hell do you heal from a physical illness that you cannot heal?!?!?! Manifestation……a clear vision of what you want, and the determination to keep taking the best steps forward to get there. Manifestation, to me, is faith. Faith in the fact that….if you want it, it can be yours. Manifestation is not magic, it is having faith in the fact that YOU have everything you need to create what you want, even in the eye of diversity and grief. Even when the roller coaster ride that we call life, has run out of track and is headed for a brick wall. It is seeing with faith that, that wall will open and that there is a track on the other side. It is faith that each new twist and turn leads you to the next loop-de-loop…..and that is where the ride gets EVEN better! So, you throw up your hands and you let faith lead you forward.

"Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change" - Wayne Dyer

Manifest – clear or obvious to the eye or mind! I truly believe that when you can manifest something in the mind, with faith that it is already yours, you can manifest it with the eyes! How? It is really not magic……it is having faith that, that vision is already yours! It is faith in knowing that if that is what you want….you can have it, AND THEN….it is going out and doing the hard work to make it happen! Live by faith, yes…..but hustle hard!!!