Coming Home to Yourself: It’s Time to Heal

Coming Home

to Yourself

By Laura Lee Peters

It’s Time to Heal

Copyright © 2018 Laura Lee Peters.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Balboa Press

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-1633-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-1637-5 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 11/16/2018

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Preface

Mini Bio and Inspiration Intro

Part 1 The First Steps of Healing

Part 2 Understanding Ourselves and Our Pain

Part 3 Turning the Page to Healthier Relationships

Part 4 Lift Off!

My Wish for You

Acknowledgments Continued

About the Author

References

Dedication

At this moment, you may feel alone and lost. But I promise you, it will get easier and you will find happiness again. From this moment on, you are no longer alone.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank every person who is now or was at one point a part of my life. Every single one of you has helped to shape me into the person I am today. I will forever be grateful for every smile, every laugh, every teardrop, every moment of pain and every moment of pure love you’ve all helped me to experience.

Sending so much love to every soul out there that needs it. Thank you for sharing your beautiful soul with the world.

For further acknowledgments, please go to the back of the book.

Preface

Coming Home To Yourself is about removing all of the layers of pain you’ve accumulated over the years and replacing them with new information so that you can get back to being who you really are or you can become the person that you’ve always wanted to be. I believe that the tools that I provide in this book can help anyone who has gone through emotional loss, pain or toxicity in their life.

This book went through many transformations along the way. I came up with the title while having a conversation with my mom about how I was working on healing myself and that I felt as if I was working on coming home to myself. At the time, I was living on the other side of the world from where I’m originally from, yet I was feeling more at home than I had ever felt before.

Along my journey of healing and self-discovery, I realized that I kept searching for my sense of self and love outside of myself. I thought I would be able to fill the giant void I was feeling with food; shopping; the approval, attention, love of others and more. Only when I completely removed myself from everything I was familiar with, did I realize that this thing and/or feeling wasn’t an object, place or person outside of myself. The feeling of love, peace and being home was inside me the entire time. I just had to heal myself enough to realize it.

Once you start learning how to truly love yourself, everything else seems to fall into place. Whether you have been through extremely emotionally draining and toxic situations, such as myself, and are in serious need of healing and self-love or you’re already feeling pretty good and simply want to step up your self-love game, you’ve come to the right place.

So, pull out a pencil and eraser, sit yourself down in a comfy place, and get ready to dive in! I’m so excited to begin this journey with you, and I hope from the bottom of my heart that this book helps you to start your journey of health, happiness and love, and that, more than anything, it will help you to finally come home to yourself. <3

Mini Bio and Inspiration Intro

Before we begin, I would like to share a brief version of the journey that I had to take to get where I am today. Like everyone, my journey started when I was very young. I grew up in a middle-class family. My parents had their own business and they both tried their best to find a balance between home and work life. We were extremely blessed to be able to always have food on the table and a safe place to call home. My parents, who are two of the most important people to me in the entire world, and whom I love with all my heart and soul, wanted to give me and my brother the world. They both came from backgrounds where good food wasn’t always guaranteed and where money was incredibly hard to come by. So they made it their goal to give us the opportunities they didn’t have.

Just like everyone, though, they had been through their own painful experiences and brought those experiences with them. Although it was never their intention to do so, and they did the best they could, the leftover unhealed parts of their past experiences were sometimes passed on to me and my brother and also, to each other. As a child, I wasn’t always sure where these emotions were coming from, but I tried to understand them to the best of my abilities. Even though it didn’t have anything to do with me, I felt as if it was my responsibility to help my parents as much as I could. Because of this, I became an emotional caregiver and thought that in order to be loved I needed to fix the emotional issues of everyone else.

As you can well imagine, this led me to have many toxic friendships and relationships throughout the years. Yes, I did help a lot of people on my journey, but I kept hurting myself in the process. Along the way, I dealt with many forms of loss—loss to cancer, pneumonia, old age and suicide, just to name a few. There was a two-year span where I lost five people who were very close to me. And because I was already dealing with so much emotional turmoil from multiple sources in my life, I fell into a deep depression and developed severe anxiety. I tried my best to hide what I was going through from the world, and for the most part, I did a good job.

I am a singer, so sad songs provided me with the perfect outlet to release my emotions at the time. When I was at home, though, it was a different story. When the depression was at its worst point, I would literally wake up and start crying. I didn’t want to continue living in the way that I was, and I felt like I was never going to feel better. My parents tried their best to make me feel better with the tools they had, but my soul needed something different. So, they sent me to see a grief counselor and, at another point, a psychologist.

Talking with the counselors made me realize that I needed to start working on myself. I won’t deny that there were a million flip-flops along the way. I would be going strong for a while and then, out of the blue, wake up feeling right back in the thick of the depression again. But those days got further and further apart, and I finally started to believe I would be able to feel genuinely happy again.

Now, when I wake up I am so incredibly happy and feel so very blessed to have yet another day! I have worked so hard to change myself and my world in order to match the life I dreamed of having and to completely come home to myself. One of the most important things I learned along my journey was that all the effort I was putting into my external world wasn’t really working because I hadn’t yet fixed what was on the inside. When I finally started working on the internal, my external world and self started falling into place.

With that lesson, I started creating tools to get myself to where I wanted to be. All of those tools are here for you to use in this book. I have tried, tested and continue to use these exercises in my life whenever I lose track of myself and need to make my way back home again. I really believe that everyone has the ability to live the life of their dreams and that everyone has the ability and the right to be the person they want to be, aka their true self.

Starting now, you will be working to create that life and the person you dream of being. And you will have me, along with many other people, cheering you on from the sidelines, telling you that you can do it and that it is possible. You simply have to decide right now what it is that you want. So, what do you say? Are you ready to come home to yourself?

PART 1

The First Steps

of Healing

Let’s Begin with You

The most important relationship that you will ever have, is the relationship that you have with yourself.

This one sentence reflects the core belief of this book. No matter what people say about you, what they try to convince you of or what joy or pain they have caused in your life, the ultimate truth is that the only person who knows what’s right for you is you. Knowing this, you also know that the only person that truly has the power to change your life is you.

For some people, the thought of having the power to decide where their life will go is invigorating, and for others, the thought is absolutely terrifying. If you grew up in an environment where you were always told what was and wasn’t right for you and were also constantly being told who you were supposed to be, then the idea of being the only one in charge of where your life goes may be pretty daunting.

Many people will help you along your journey, giving you a hand or a lesson to be learned and applied in the future. At the end of the day, though, you’re the one that has to go on your journey and follow through with whatever path you decide to take. Will it be easy? Sometimes yes, but you’ll definitely be forced to face some incredible challenges along the way that are meant to make you question the very fabric of your present reality. In these moments, you’ll be forced to face the darkest parts of yourself and decide whether or not you will allow your inner demons to destroy you and make you lose all sight of the light or choose to rise above them by holding on to the light with everything you’ve got.

The most important thing that you can do in building your relationship with yourself, is learn how to love yourself. If you can learn how to show yourself the love, kindness and compassion you seek, you will start attracting more of those things into your life. Focus on what it is that you really want and where you really want to be, and work your way towards those goals a little bit more each day. Whether you are dealing with loss, pain, depression, anxiety, wanting to become healthier or simply wanting to learn how to love yourself more, love needs to be a part of the equation. Without love, there is no progress. It is my goal to help you to start understanding the things that may present themselves as challenges in a new light, so that you will able to love yourself a little more each day.

Sign a Contract with Yourself

Almost everything begins and ends in your mind. We all know that to see a noticeable change in our lives we actually need change something, right? What kind of change or changes should we be making though? Well, I’m here to give you a big spoiler so turn back now if you don’t want to know. Any self-help or self-development book you read essentially says the same things. So why do so many people read two, three or even fifty self-help books and not see any results? Well, it’s simple yet complicated. It all comes down to your mindset and how you connect to the words on the page, along with whether you actually put into action what those words are saying to you.

You can read the same thing said a million different ways until that one time when it just clicks. Think about it. When we were growing up, our parents could tell us the same thing over and over and we wouldn’t get it, or we just wouldn’t listen. Then one day a complete stranger came along and said it in a slightly different way and it suddenly made sense. I’m hoping the way I phrase things in this book will hit home for you and that it will be the key for you to take the next steps to start healing. I’m not going to sugarcoat anything because if you want to see changes in your life you need to put in the work. You’re going to have to sort through a lot of baggage. But just like ripping apart your entire wardrobe in order to create the perfect outfit only to later place everything back into your closet, the absolutely amazing feeling you get at the end of the process is totally worth it!

The first thing you need to do is make a conscious decision to commit to your journey of self-discovery and healing. You must promise yourself that you will try your best to be kind to yourself throughout the process and acknowledge that you, just like anyone else in the world, have a divine right to an abundance of positivity, healthy relationships and self-love. I would like you to make yourself a contract that looks a little something like this and either type or write it out on a piece of paper so that you will be able to see it every day.

On this contract, I would like you to include the reason or reasons you are deciding to take this journey. Those reasons are your WHY they are the thing or things that will make sure that you don’t give up on yourself along the way. Whatever your WHY may be, I would like you to write it down. Then, at the bottom of the contract, I would like you to sign your name.

Here is my original contract with myself: