Choosing Self-Acceptance and Taking Back Control of Your Life

It's time to take back control. To return yourself to a place where you truly know who you are, or at least begin the journey of self-discovery. Because that's where this all starts: it starts with knowing yourself. What makes you, you.

Living a Life Shaped By Others

For a long time, I didn’t really know who I was. My life was shaped by other people’s expectations, by the way I’d been conditioned to live. I went along with it because I thought that’s what you were supposed to do – that looking to be accepted, meant saying “yes.”

But in saying “yes,” I was forgetting my own needs. Not because I wanted to, but because I didn’t want to disappoint. I thought I needed acceptance to belong, but in trying to fit in, I lost touch with myself – little pieces of who I really was started to fade.

The Turning Point was Discovering Spirituality

Everything changed when I discovered spirituality. It wasn't just an idea it was like being handed a mirror. Spirituality taught me how to live my own life, how to simplify, and what I needed to let go of. It showed me that the only acceptance | truly needed was self-acceptance and with a very late cerebral palsy diagnosis, my writing journey back to me, began.

That realisation soon changed everything. Because if had to live with myself, with my life choices, then those choices had to feel right for me: not for anyone else. It was the first step to truly take back control of my life and begin a journey of self-acceptance.

Choosing Myself Over Expectations

So, I started the work. I questioned old patterns and began to focus on mental health. I made different choices. It is important to remember in starting your own journey, that not every decision you make has to make sense to others. Some choices you make are simply for you.

You're Allowed To Choose

But that when you make space for yourself, you learn the most important lesson: that you are allowed to take back control of your life. You are allowed to live differently. You are allowed to choose yourself. Because in the end, it's about self-acceptance.

It's not about being selfish or ignoring others’ needs, it's about loving your soul, and learning to bask in self-care.

Ilana Estelle is a mental health and wellbeing advocate who combines educational insight with her personal experience of living with physical, mental, and emotional disabilities. She holds diplomas in Counselling, Diet and Nutrition, Nutritional Therapy, Psychotherapy and Counselling, and Stress Management. Through her writing, Ilana supports others in navigating their emotional, mental, and physical health challenges. In addition to writing for The CP Diary, her work has appeared in healthy lifestyle magazines. Ilana is also the author of three books: Cerebral Palsy: A Story – Finding the Calm After the Storm, Spirituality, Healing and Me, and Survival: The Covid Years – Time for Change.

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