Out of the Pit of Despair
By: Alysia Lyons
(3 mins)
Being a mom has been the greatest, most rewarding and most difficult job I’ve ever had. The emotional and physical changes I’ve gone through in the last 11 years have been indescribable and every single one of them is worth it just to see my son, Zander, thriving.
In addition to being a mom, I am also a coach. I didn’t always know I wanted to be a coach. In fact, it took several years to realize that coaching moms was not only something I enjoyed learning about but also something I had a passion for.
My personal development journey began when I said yes (for the third time) to a home-based business. I was fed up with Corporate America and attracted to the freedom and flexibility that came from working for myself.
With this new career came a lot of new challenges, some I faced head-on, and others forced me to work on things like my self-esteem, self-worth and other limiting beliefs. But my greatest teaching in my life has been Zander. In fact, I’ve started seeing him as my course corrector. Whenever I’ve found myself on the wrong path, he’s been the one to point me in the right direction.
The first-course correction came when he was a little over a year old, and I left a marriage that was no longer serving the woman I was becoming. Since that’s not exactly how I saw it at the time, I slipped into the deepest depression of my life.
In six months, I’d lost everything I prided myself on. All the things I’d used to bolster my self-esteem were stripped away one by one. I lost my status as a wife, I was going through a second divorce, I stepped down as a leader in my company, returned the free car I had earned, and I was back to living in my childhood home, completely dependent on my parent for financial support.
I wanted to die.
But that little boy, who once shared my heartbeat, the one that depended on me for his survival, needed me, so I had to keep going.
For years, I stayed in this half-life. I went through the motions of living my life, working my business and raising Zander, but I’d lost my joy of living. On January 1, 2017, I got an email from a life coach with a subject that said, “I wish you more P.A.I.N.”
Pain was an acronym that I don’t remember, but the subject was disruptive enough that I opened it.
I signed up for his course called “Success & Fulfillment in Your Business.” That sounded fantastic, although the only word I really paid attention to was “Success.” I desperately wanted to succeed in my business to reclaim my glory days. I would have paid anything to be successful in my business, although I think it was only $197.
During the course, I hired a coach to work with one-on-one, and I fell in love with the way I started to feel, the results in my business, and the changes in my personal relationships. I fell in love with myself.
Me? Being in love with me? The woman who hated being alone with herself, the woman who needed to be around people, the woman who needed to be in a relationship, the woman who had lost her identity to being a wife, a mother, and a beauty consultant finally didn’t need those things to feel good about herself and truly loved me for me? This woman who didn’t feel lovable was finally loving herself and what a difference that made in my life!
From an extreme place of love and gratitude, I want to help other moms change their relationship with themselves, their children and their families. I want to help moms embrace their imperfections as they work toward being the best version of themselves. No one is perfect, but we can all still be better, and it starts with self-healing.
