I don’t know how long it takes for things to come together. For the wrongs to be right. For the lessons to sink in and for the mistakes to stop repeating themselves. I don’t know how long it takes for you to face your own truths, to win your internal battles, to have an honest conversation with yourself and ask the hard questions until you stop running away from the answers when they’re not the answers you hoped they’d be.

I don’t know how long it takes for life to start making sense or for your dreams to come true or for your happiness to stop evading you. I don’t know how long it takes until you can rest your head on the pillow and sleep peacefully without carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. I don’t know how long it takes for you to wake up and find everything you’ve ever wanted waiting for you in the morning.

But I do know that you have to believe that it’s right around corner, that it’s going to happen sooner than you think, that things have a way of turning around in the blink of an eye, that your happy ending is not an elusive fantasy but a reality waiting for the right moment to enter your life.

I know you carry with you the heaviness of a painful past and the emptiness of broken relationships. I know you carry burdens from your family and heartaches from your past lovers but I also know that these are just crumbs of things that have already burnt. These are just remnants of hitting rock bottom and all you have to do is dust yourself off and step into your new power, your new light, your new life. A life that’s not defined by anything that you didn’t have control over or anyone who has deeply hurt you. A life that’s not defined by old wounds or hidden scars.

Because the beauty of life is that you can always redefine it, you can always change it, you can always rewrite your story if you no longer want to live the same old one.

And yes I’m aware that there are things in life you can’t control and things that you can’t really change but I also know that these roadblocks are not in your life so you can turn the other way and drive off, they’re there so you can find a way around them, to figure out a new way to get to your destination without backing up. They’re there so you can learn how to keep moving instead of standing still.

I don’t know if there’s a manual that teaches you how to maneuver these roadblocks but I do know that sometimes you might have to write your own manual. And I don’t know if you’ll ever master or perfect the art of penetrating these roadblocks but I do know that every time you try, a new street opens up, you notice a new sign, you find a new direction, you see a lamppost that lights up the way and shows you what’s ahead of you. You discover something that makes the journey a little less terrifying.

You learn that there’s always something better waiting for you after every roadblock. A little detour that takes you to a whole new path that would have stayed out of sight had you stopped. You eventually learn that roadblocks are not trying to ruin your life, they’re trying to move you into another direction that brings you closer to where you truly belong.