The chance to have a rich full life comes about through change

October 26, 2019 is the date that marks 1 full year since being at TLC. My discharge date is estimated to be around January. I've found comfort living here, and adapted to living in a group home. It has become hard for me to do home passes as I am reminded of my past and almost as if I'm put back in time. Los Gatos, I've lived in my home for all of my life. Since leaving my childhood home, I have realized the importance of change. Living in a new environment, new school, community, different house, room, having the ability to start fresh and make new friends has impacted me in a way that has allowed me to find myself, comfort within my body and really express who I am. While being at home I have grown up with the same people, already having views of who I am. I was know as annoying, having trouble fitting in. So I gave up looking for people to be accepted by. Everybody already had there "clicks", viewing me as someone who they didn't want anything to do with. Within my family, there was no "I", only "we" as I have been so caught up with impacting my parents in a negative way, fear of causing them to feel worried. I couldn't pull myself out of my parents worries, I was so cautious of sharing things with my family, I hide my pain, thinking through how this or that would impact them. I worried about being too much of a burden, our financial situation, my parents happiness and stressors. I wasn't able to take a step back from this, causing me to not know who I was, what I wanted to do, how I was feeling. I never found a connection with myself as I was intertwined within my parents lives. I was lost and wasn't able to focus on myself. Being able to have the opportunity to being put in a new environment has been a huge blessing in my life, as I have been able to find myself. Living at TLC I have become aware of my worth, self love, who I am, confidence, my purpose. Which has lead me to the appreciation of being alive and the pain I struggle through. I have been able to focus on myself, while working through trauma and pain within my life. I have gained extreme amounts of wisdom, self awareness, abilities to reflect and make peace with my life and within myself.

While transition slowly back to my family, I have taken a few steps back as I am having trouble staying confident while at home. I am starting to fall back into the pattern of worrying about my parents, while not having the ability to focus on myself. I still have trouble feeling comfortable expressing my emotions and communicating my needs at home. This has been very hard for me as it has been creating fear within me. I am fearful that this instinct to worry about others is too powerful for me to work through. In addition my family is moving to Sebastopol to start a new life, which hopefully leads to peace, balance and happiness. My family has been burned out from the life of living in the bay area. My mom has been working at the same job for over 23 years. It is doing more harm to her than good, because of the change within the job over the years, the long hours and the commute she has to do daily. She's drained and has become hopeless as she has been impacted in a way that can't be undone within our way to familiar life in Los Gatos. My dad has been in and out through different jobs within the tech industry. When I was younger he had a stable job but then was laid off which was soon to be followed by a rough road to finding a consistent job. He currently does not have a job which has created a lot of stress within the family. Dad has become hopeless and views himself as a "failure". These were the many of the closing signs that our life in Los Gatos was coming to an end, as it has been time for change. Since moving away from my childhood life in Los Gatos I have become aware of my best self and a whole new perspective of life. It has not been easy at all as I feel like I have left my old self in Los Gatos. I feel like parts of me are missing as my friends, home, neighbors, community, school, volunteer activities, places, routine, that helped me identify myself are becoming less familiar to me. This has felt like an ending to the first act of my life. I am putting a lot of hope into this beginning of a new chapter of my life. I am reminded of the fact that change is our only constant. Which is what allows us to stay alert, fresh, young, joyful and therefore capable of invinite understanding.

"The weight of the past drives you to conform, toe the line, and through conformity the mind feels safe, secure; it establishes itself in a well-oiled groove so that it can run smoothly without disturbance, without a quiver of doubt. The mind is the result of habit, is it not? It is the result of tradition, the result of time - time being repetition, a continuity of the past. If you go into this problem very deeply you will find that it can; and when the mind renews itself without forming new patterns, habits, without again falling into the groove of imitation, then it remains fresh, young, innocent, and is therefore capable of infinite understanding. In dying to the past from moment to moment the mind is made fresh, therefore it can never deteriorate or set in motion the wave of darkness." (Krishnamurti)