“The truth will set you free”… I’m not gonna lie, I had to Google the origin of this quote and Lord please forgive me, it’s a Bible verse! No wonder why this quote has had such a divine healing effect on my life! I haven’t been clear on who I was in so long that when she arrived she scared the shit out of me in my bathroom mirror! I cried when I saw her and welcomed her back, we’re happy to be here!
The truth is when I was catapulted into morning radio in Chicago over 10 years ago I was pretty clear on who I was and who I was needed to be in that role. It all vibed, I was the hometown Chicago Girl, single and ready to mingle, I was still bartending at nightclubs and I had been popping up on Chicago airwaves going back a decade. But I was carrying a dirty secret… I was secretly engaged and getting married in a matter of months! I decided to keep the engagement secret until I secured my job, KNOWING that my change in marital status was bound to create issues, eventually my engagement and marriage became apart of my storyline but it disconnected me from my most organic self, a skill I would come to perfect in the decade that followed.
Do you know what it’s like to be all things to all people? I certainly do, and it means being nothing to no one simultaneously. I adjusted, A LOT, because if I didn’t I couldn’t keep a roof over my family’s head or food on our table. There was a lot of tampering with “my product” and I allowed it. But it wasn’t like I was an accountant or a lawyer I WAS the commodity and the commodity had lost it’s identity.
In the years that followed I became highly skilled at being who the company needed me to be. If you think about it, it wasn’t exactly a stretch, we are very layered people capable of tapping into the different layers to serve the purposes needed, especially if our livelihoods depend on it. And so I did, until I stopped and when I stopped it ALL came crashing down!
I lost and I lost hard! First I lost my will to be all things to everyone especially because I wasn’t being replenished to sustain this charade. Then I lost my ability to care, which often happens when you’re living an unfulfilled life. Next came the loss of my job, which expedited the loss of my marriage, which resulted in the loss of my home and culminated in the loss of my financial security. Then it REALLY got interesting. Slowly but surely I began to lose these little pieces of myself: My joy, compassion, optimism, hope and ultimately my self respect! I’ll never claim to know for sure what “rock bottom” feels like but I’m quite sure I can guess!
And then, just when I thought I would shrivel up and die, unnoticed, I began to observe the miracles that were happening in my life. Kindness and compassion from family and friends, old and new, a sense that things wouldn’t make as much sense in their lives if they made no sense in mind. (Funny how that can work, right?). An opportunity for a new beginning, my ultimate comeback, then I knew EXACTLY what my new life would look like because I had seen it. Visualized the way things “could have been,” though when I get my chance “they will be,” fantasized through the experiences of other what they “should be.” That was when I knew I was capable and DESERVING of a comeback, we ALL are!
So to those of you out there going through something, no matter how bad, embarrassing or damning you perceive it to be please know you’re capable and deserving of a comeback! A chance to make things right to the person who has gone hardest for you… Yourself! And I’m your girl and this is your community. Because inevitably in life some F’d up things are going to happen to you. But when they do, we won’t call it quits, we’ll call it a comeback!
Welcome to Comeback: with Erica Cobb…