This Is My Life. It Isn’t Perfect, But I Love It.

Claiming Life is not about creating a perfect life.

It is about coming home to the life that is yours.

It is about looking around at your home, your family, your work, your memories, your mistakes, your dreams, your loneliness, your joys and your ordinary days—and saying:

This is my life.

It may not be perfect.

But it is mine.

And I love it.

Claiming Life is about discovering that your worth does not depend on being useful to everyone else.

You don’t have to have the perfect home.

You don’t have to have the perfect body.

You don’t have to have the perfect career.

You don’t have to make everyone happy.

You don’t have to prove that you are worthy.

You already are.

It is about allowing yourself to live rather than constantly trying to become someone else’s idea of who you should be.

It is about finding beauty in your own surroundings.

Meaning in your own work.

Joy in the people you love.

Comfort in the ordinary.

And creativity in the quiet places.

It is about taking what life has given you—even the loneliness, disappointment, loss and imperfect circumstances—and asking:

What can I create from this?

It is about reinvention, but not reinvention because you are not good enough.

Reinvention because you are still alive.

Because there are still things you want to discover.

Still things you want to create.

Still places you want to go.

Still beauty to notice.

Still chapters to write.

Claiming Life is for the woman who has spent years caring for everyone else and is finally asking:

What about me?

It is for the woman who is beginning again.

The woman who has been through things nobody knows about.

The woman who has learned to stand on her own.

The woman who is lonely sometimes, but uses the quiet to create.

The woman who is ageing, changing, rebuilding and discovering that life does not end simply because it didn’t turn out exactly as she imagined.

It is about choosing your own definition of a beautiful life.

Not somebody else’s.

Yours.

And perhaps, ultimately, Claiming Life is this:

I don’t need my life to be perfect before I am allowed to love it.

I can love my home.

I can love my family.

I can love the work I have created.

I can love the little moments.

I can love who I have become.

I can acknowledge what has hurt me without allowing it to define me.

I can be alone without believing I am unwanted.

I can need help without believing I am weak.

I can change without rejecting who I was.

I can look at the life in front of me and say:

This is my life.

It isn’t perfect.

But I love it.

And I am claiming it.

Love Amanda