Brianna Wiest - The Mountain Is You_ Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery (2020)

THE MOUNTAIN IS YOU
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One day, you wake up and discover that by every identifiable
measure, you have moved on. You’re so many miles
from where you started, you can’t even remember it clearly.
What you’re underestimating is the fact that though
you can leave a place, or a person, or a situation…you can’t
leave yourself.
Why would it ever come as a surprise that you keep thinking
about the past? You weren’t given the opportunity to
shine a light on that particular darkness and deem it okay.
You weren’t given much of anything at all.
When your mind is stuck in the past, it isn’t because it
wants to return there; it’s because you were impacted far
more deeply than you ever realized, and the aftershocks
are still rippling through you.
They surface as thoughts here and there, but under the
surface is a deep echo that has the power to place you
right back where you were as though you never left.
You can leave the country, get remarried, build a whole
new career, date 12 other people, find an entirely new
friend group, feel happier and more fulfilled than ever, and
still grieve for what your younger self went through.
Even though you’re different on the outside, that part of
you still very much exists within. That younger self doesn’t
just want you to keep walking; it wants you to turn around
and acknowledge it.