KirstyTV's video: JOURNEY TO FREEDOM - HER STORY ADA PIA

This is my story of the beginning of my journey to finding a level of freedom that I did not know existed. This is a story of digging my soul out from under my ego. In my 20s, my early 20s, third year of college, I moved to Europe on a six-month exchange program and I ended up staying for 11 years. See, I had always wanted to explore the world. I was adventurous, a free spirit, independent. I wanted to have this amazing life. I wanted to have love, career, success, and maybe even be this international woman of mystery. I was young at the time, in my 20s, right? I know who I am. I know what I want. Don't tell me what to do, I'm an adult. I'm 20 something. And I did. I had an amazing life. Right out of college, I got married. I moved to Italy to Lake Como, which is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I would ride around in my Vespa, wind in my hair, sun in my smiling face. I had what you would imagine to be this renascence painting of a perfect life; the food, the wine, the culture, the art, the fashion, everything. And despite the difficulty for a woman in Italy to have a career, I made that happen, too. So, I had it all, the picture-perfect life on the outside. But on the inside, it was a different story. On the inside, it was like that painting was cracking and peeling. So what was wrong? Everything. Everything was wrong. Everything that mattered, because as much as I would like to say that I married for love, I didn't. And I chose, I made a decision at that time to follow my head instead of my heart. And that decision opened up a flood of judgment, guilt, blame, and shame. I hated myself and I couldn't admit it. I didn't know it. I didn't know it, but I hated myself. I couldn't admit it. There was too much pride, there was too much ego. I had so much at stake in this life that I really wanted and created. And I kept it up, I kept up this painting, this life, this image. How many of us do that? We keep it up. We don't want anyone to know. Especially, for me, my parents. I could not let my parents know. Especially not my dad, he would kill me. Because I could not be the eldest child that went off and made an irrational decision and put other people's lives in this sphere of my mistake. And we stay. Why do we stay? We have good reasons to stay, but sometimes why do we stay for reasons that are so hurting us? And I'm not just talking about relationships or marriages. We stay in jobs, we stay in careers, we stay in conversations that we'd rather not be in. We don't get that time back, but we stay. And we stay, sometimes, until we can't stay any longer. There was so much at stake. I didn't want to hurt my husband. He wasn't a bad person, he was a great person. My family, our friends, nine years of relationships, my lifestyle, my lake, my Vespa. God, I would have to leave everything. Everything. And then I would have to face people. I was going to get blamed, I was going to be hated, I was going to get yelled at. My dad was definitely going to kill me. I was so afraid, but I made the decision anyway. Seven years ago, I started digging my soul out from under my ego but I didn't know that at the time. I had no idea what was going on. I had to make it through one day at a time and I had avoided these difficult conversations for nine years. For me, the past seven years since leaving have been seven years of understanding myself, of learning to trust myself, my heart, my soul, to have compassion because I was carrying shame. I was carrying guilt and I was carrying self-judgment. I even tried to leave some things out of this speech because I couldn't understand that part of me, how much I had been hiding. Unlike Kirsty's example, where she knew her secret, I didn't know. I didn't know because I pushed away for so long the importance of love, self-love, love for others, true love, and it's so important that we love ourselves, that we honor ourselves. That shame came from dishonoring myself. I only have me and if I can't love myself and honor myself, I can't expect anybody else to do that for me and I can't give back because it has to come from here. We catch ourselves in cycles of self-judgment and we think it's other people's judgements but it's our own. As I've learned to honor myself, to stand in my power, to say no when I mean no and yes when I mean yes, and do the things that have meaning for me, to stop chasing this picture-perfect life, and start listening to my heart, my life feels better. My heart feels full and I feel good about myself. Ada Pia d'errico spoke at the Truth Telling For Truth Seekers l.A event in 2018.