Welcome to Love Notes from Rhonda.

And let's rewrite our story.

Do you know that you have the power to rewrite your story each and every moment of the day?

I know that.

We all have a story.

Story we tell others.

When somebody says, what's up with you?

Like, what's going on?

What's happened to you?

Tell me your story.

Especially in the media and marketing now, everybody talks about your story.

And of course, the power of telling a story, well, those things are wonderful.

And it doesn't mean your stories are going to go away, right?

Like my father did not murder my mother, right?

Like it's always going to be that truth for me, a fact, let's put it that way, a fact.

But my interpretation of that event has completely altered my divorce.

The interpretation has completely altered.

And that's what I'm talking about, rewriting the story.

There may be facts, right?

You may have been abandoned as a child, you may have been an alcoholic, you may have had trauma and violence.

You may have had horrible things happen.

You might have been rejected, you might have been fired.

Those are all stories and they have facts.

Yet how you interpret it is where the power lies.

How you interpret what has happened to you, what is happening to you now, and what will happen to you is where your true power lies.

Because when you decide what it means and you decide from a place of, well, as we say in Fearless living, the wheel of freedom, when we decide from a larger perspective, when we know that just because we're hurt doesn't mean it's only about hurt.

Just because there was hatred doesn't mean it's only about hatred.

We can get so blinded by our one dimensional thinking, by our one dimensional seeing.

So you have so much more power than you know.

And by being willing to look at the stories of your past and the present and actually ask yourself, well, if I was going to reinterpret this story based on what I know now, based on how much I've grown, based on who I am today, if I could look back at that story, what would I say?

My father murdered my mother and committed suicide when I was 14 years old.

And, and who knew that that moment would propel me into eventually, of course, many years later, 20 years later, would propel me into what was my destiny.

I didn't think of it that way at the beginning, of course, I didn't think of it as my destiny.

But when I look back on it now, when I see the unfoldment of everything, right?

Perspective, the time perspective, we can look Back and we see the whole picture, and when we can look back and see the whole picture, you know, that day, yes, I was in denial and in pain, et cetera, et cetera.

And I drank and all those lovely things I did.

Yet it also propelled me on a path to figure out what was wrong with me, maybe even what was wrong with my dad or wrong with my mom.

But I was on a quest between numbing myself out, I would be on a quest.

And I only know what I know today because of the amount of pain I had, amount of hurt I had.

I remember the first place I publicly told my story was in a lecture with Marianne Williams.

And she always had a question and answer period during her talks.

And so I raised my hand, and this was the first time I ever told my story with other people around.

Right.

First of all, I never told my story, hardly ever.

So to anybody.

So this was.

I'd been listening to Marianne for many months, and I just decided she was talking about something about trauma and pain, et cetera, from the past.

And I just raised my hand and I said, but how do I get over it?

How can I change it?

How can I rewrite my story?

I didn't use those words, but that's basically what she was asking me when I was asking her.

And her answer has stuck with me to this day.

She said a lot of beautiful, beautiful things.

But what stood out for me is she goes, rhonda, how low you have gone is how high you will rise.

How low you have gone is how high you will rise.

I didn't know it at the time.

I didn't understand at the time, but it gave me hope.

It gave me hope.

You mean I don't have to stay down here?

You mean I don't have to stay stuck?

You mean I don't have to stay the victim.

I don't have to do that.

I can change it.

I didn't necessarily know how yet, but when she said those words to me, how low you have gone is how high you will rise, I knew that maybe there was a way out.

There's always a way out, and it so often is in your hands.

By making a choice on how to interpret the stories of the past, you've been sharing them one way, telling them one way.

Well, what about if you told them differently?

What about if you told them through your eyes, through your heart, of the wheel of freedom, of love?

This holiday season, I ask you to embrace that love and allow it to seep into every one of your stories so that you can see those stories differently.

Give yourself the gift this holiday season, rewrite your stories.

Until next time, be fearless.

I love you.