When Life Gives You Lemons, Learn to Make Lemonade

Absolutely nowhere does it say that life is easy. If it were, I'd have called my newest creative venture "life is peachy" rather than Lemonade Living.

But just because lemons are sour, doesn't mean that this is blog is. Lemons also provide us with amazing benefits and when mixed with the right ingredients, lemon enhances the final result. My goal is not centered in ruminating on all of life's woes. On the contrary, I dream of centering it around ruminating on the lessons we stand to learn in the face of difficulty and ways to care for the garden within us with love so that we can continue to grow.

I was sitting by the water in Zurich yesterday, full of raw emotion. Fresh off of a breakup with a man that I love deeply and passionately, in ways that I didn't know were possible for me, I ran to Zurich to get away from my beloved Geneva, the city I call home.

Wondering how we could have ended, in the almost 2 years that we were together I never imagined living another day without him by my side and yet, here I am, trying to understand what happened and how we got to a place of such deep separation and heartache. The story of our love and our life together has played on loop in my memory, but no matter how good of a storyteller I can be, I just can't re-write history.

I began thinking through the defining moments of my life, and yikes, what a difficult series to replay. But I also realized: life gives us all our version of lemons. For the first time, I acknowledged that one of my superpowers just happens to be squeezing the joy out of them with all my might.

Suddenly, the shame, sadness, disappointment and frustration I'd been feeling in the 2 weeks that we've been broken up morphed into pride in my ability to quickly recognize that things like this are what have made me who I am: a person who is courageous, who lives and leads with love, with the hope that my future will include all I dream of love and partnership. I thought that he was the man of my life; I still do, but the universe is pushing me to learn something and grow from it, and I just have to accept that as we are right now, we can't be each other's perfect match.

In life there are all of the easily enjoyable moments: getting a great new job, a marriage, a gorgeous beach sunset. But what happens to our mind, body and soul when we lose the job of our dreams, find ourselves facing divorce, or feel so down that it seems that the sun will never shine again?

An opportunity for learning, growing and healing, that's what happens.

The process of resetting after disappointment, loss, frustration and sadness, is a difficult one depending on the person and the situation. And this is what I want to talk about. This is what I want to learn about. These are the triumphs I want to celebrate. Not because the expectation is that all of us will power through the tough times, but because the hope, dedication, vulnerability and faith that is required to persevere is empowering and encouraging. No matter what, it's ok not to be ok and it takes strength to be open about it with ourselves and others.

That's what I want to celebrate as I take this journey down the road of self-reflection, confronting the shadows that follow me and ultimately, finding the love I've been seeking my entire life: self love.