Given what I’d recently experienced, I appeared as if I was doing okay from the outside. I had a little less energy, but that was to be expected. Everyone thought I was okay because I still dressed the same, kept my appearance the same, and my daily routine was the same. It was a lie. There were days I didn’t even want to get out of bed. They couldn’t see what was going on inside me. Mentally and emotionally, I was facing one of the darkest times in my life.  Being hit head-on by a drunk driver with my side of the car taking the full brunt of the impact, I had been trapped in the car, unconscious, and critically injured. At 18 years old, through no fault of my own, I lost my physical appearance, self-confidence, self-esteem, and all my hopes and dreams for the future. Feeling anxiety, and at the same time depressed and hopeless. I wasn’t trying to “fake it ‘til I make it,” I was just mechanically going through the motions of life. Unknowingly, I was stuck in a mental downward spiral of negative thoughts. The only future I could see looked like more of the same.

Please enjoy the following excerpt from Move Forward Stronger: A Dynamic Framework to Process Change, Loss, and Grief.

The day began the way the previous one ended. The same thoughts had been pounding in my head for days on repeat—a broken record I couldn’t run from.

I don’t deserve this. I’m a failure. My life is ruined, over. I can’t go on. I don’t want to live anymore.

These thoughts started a few days after I had experienced a major loss in my life. At times, they were so all-consuming I almost convinced myself to act on them.

More frequently than I care to admit, I considered veering into the oncoming lane of traffic when I saw a large semi-truck coming toward me. The mental and emotional pain, guilt, blame, shame, grief, and loneliness I carried were just too heavy. The voice in my head urged me closer and closer to the solid yellow center line of the two-lane highway. This is a quick way to end your suffering. You don’t fit in the world anymore. Relief is only seconds away.

The voice was persistent as a whisper. Each time I heard it, I whispered back a question in soft defiance, and the voice in my head responded with what sounded like a logical answer.

On this particular day, for no specific reason that I can pinpoint, two words seeped into my continual churning of telling myself I don’t want to live anymore. Those two words, a mere eight letters—like this—would become my lifeline. They would silence the voice in my head and completely change my direction.

What I had been endlessly telling myself was only partially true. The 100 percent accurate truth was I didn’t want to live like this anymore. Like this meaning in mental and emotional pain: the overwhelming feelings of grief, blame, shame, and guilt. Until then, it hadn’t occurred to me that it was possible to feel any other way than the way I felt. I also hadn’t fully grasped that ending my life would permanently eliminate the chance of anything else being possible. Even though I was still disheartened, exhausted, and depleted from my loss and all the unwanted changes as a result, the words like this gave me something I desperately needed: hope.

Life has lots of heavy things—unwanted changes, challenges, and loss. For simplicity’s sake and to be all-inclusive, I’ve come to call these heavy things “its.” Its come in all shapes and sizes and never at a “good” time. Some of us experience more of them than others, and yet, each and every it is unique. No it is necessarily more important than another, and each person’s reaction and response to an it can vary dramatically.

In this book, I’m going to share with you some of the heavy its I have experienced and, more importantly, how I processed them in a positive and productive way so that I could move forward stronger and live with them as a part of me.

I suspect you’ve experienced heavy things, too. I’ve met many people who have experienced heavy things even though they don’t appear heavy to others on the outside. My heavy things and your heavy things will likely be different, but know that I see you. The Framework I use to process mine that I will share with you in the following pages may be just what you need to process yours. I know if I can get through and process my its and live with them and learn from them, if I can feel happiness again, you can too.

You might be thinking, “But I don’t have anything left!” I promise, you do. We all have access to three life-sustaining gifts that were given to each one of us at birth. We may not always be aware of them, and we may not draw upon all three of them at the same time, but if we can tap into at least one, the power from it can carry us through and lift us out of even the most unimaginable and painful circumstances in life. They can never be taken from you, and any one of them alone can sustain you for a period of time. These three gifts are faith, hope, and love.

Faith, by definition, is a “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.” Although for some, like me, faith is placed in God, faith does not necessarily pertain exclusively to God, a higher power, or a religious belief. You can have faith that the sun will come up tomorrow, faith in science, money, reason, or astrology, your pet’s loyalty, the four seasons, or your five senses. You can have faith there is something better beyond where you currently are—faith that you can learn and grow from it.

Hope, as Vaclav Havel said, “is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.” Hope is also having an expectation or desire for a certain thing to happen or be the case. You can have hope that you can move forward stronger, your life will get better, and you will experience happiness and joy again.

Love is an intense feeling—a powerful driving force of positive emotion. Love is universal. Love allows you to accept and forgive not only others but also yourself. Love helps you grow. Love lets you see things in a different light. Love can conquer all.

Being able to move forward stronger is not so much about how you define these gifts, as it is about knowing they are there, available for you to tap into any one of them when you are ready—to have faith in something, have hope about something, or have love for something. In these pages I share my faith, hope, and love for you, your life, and what it can and will become. Together we can get through the its and move forward stronger!