Listen to me: get out of here, and move forward.

I can’t believe I’m alive.

I can’t believe that any number of the times I should have, or intended to, die, I just…didn’t.

I can’t believe how much my life now has absolutely zero to do w/ who I was or what happened to me then.

One of my favorite scenes in all entertainment is when, in the first season of “Mad Men,” Don Draper, dripping w/ intensity, tells Peggy Olson, “Listen to me: get out of here and move forward. This never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened.”

Don was right.

We reinvent ourselves endlessly. Thoroughly. Completely.

I know and know of people who literally reinvented themselves from the ground up, away from their family of origin, their church growing up, their home state. Only a genetic test would “prove” they’re the same person.

Life is short– but life is long, too.

We go through eras. Many eras, if we live long enough.

This is one of the reasons I’m so committed to supporting others in their recovery journeys, because I fervently want them to know: you don’t have to be who they told you you were.

You don’t have to be who you were born as or who you were growing up.

You can rewrite and rewire almost anything and everything about you.

Your life doesn’t have to have anything to do with them.

Do not buy into the lie that you cannot change.

Stay alive. Learn about the building blocks of identity. Learn about psychology and somatic healing and recovery.

Learn everything you can about the source code of being human.

Stay. You don’t know how profoundly you can transform. And I swear to God, that’s real.

It is.

Stay.

Don’t quit before the miracle.