For those of you who have been following my blog or listening to The Wife of an Alcoholic Podcast, you know that I used to do yoga on a pretty regular basis. I had just turned 40, I was feeling tired of my exercise routine, and I needed something that was a lot more gentle and a lot more reflective. I was also in a difficult spot physically. But I was really into yoga and loving it, and then Hurricane Irma came. We evacuated our house and couldn’t get back in for over a week, so my exercise routine dropped by the wayside. Then I found myself in a really weird place. I’m not a person who loves to exercise, so it’s not weird for me to feel like I don't want to work out. That’s pretty normal for me. But I just couldn’t find the motivation to do anything. I love to pray, and I didn’t want to pray. I love meditation, and I had no interest in that. I’m a huge advocate of self-care, but I just could not bring myself to do anything. And I found myself in a really numbed out place which made me panic because that’s not like me. I’m very ambitious and driven. I get up in the morning, and I think, “Okay, what needs to be done? Let’s get through this to do list.” But this was the season in my life. I actually went to talk to somebody about it because I was so scared that I would never get out of it. I went to see a therapist, and during my session, she said, “Michelle, you're in the wilderness.” She was right. It was the perfect thing that I needed to hear to let me know that the wilderness is temporary. I didn't know how long I would be feeling stuck in this spot where I was tired, unmotivated, and dull. I felt like I just wanted to be lazy, and I just wanted to sit on the couch for weeks on end. My creativity and my curiosity were gone which was not a place I had ever been to before. It scared me, but I knew, based on the session with her, that it would return. This was temporary. I trusted that I would be able to learn a lot from this situation. There were lessons that I needed to discover in this period of my life. During this time, I moved to Tampa and, very slowly, I started to get that desire back. I started to feel the little bit of light in me that got stronger and stronger with each day. But I think the number one lesson I learned during my wilderness stage was something that was reiterated to me today when I was running. There were women passing me that looked amazing, toned, and tanned. They looked like they were running for fun which is something I cannot understand on any level whatsoever. While I was running, I can’t tell you how many times I looked at the app on my phone to see how many minutes I had left. I was suffering. Suffering. There is no podcast, no music, no specific running shoes that I could spend a bazillion dollars on that will make this more enjoyable for me. But I am determined. So I’m out there running, and this beautiful woman runs past me who’s probably 12-15 years older than I am. My 13 minutes had just ended, and then she whizzed by. My first thought to myself was, “Why can't I be more like that? Why can't I be more like her?” Then it hit me. And I remembered thinking, “Michelle, you did well. You just ran 13 minutes in a row, and you didn’t stop. You did well. I’m proud of you. You can do this.”   That loving, compassionate, soft whisper of a voice healed my soul in ways that I needed so badly. And it brought me back to that time when I was in the wilderness. The way I got out of the wilderness was by being gentle and kind to myself. I talk a lot about this in the Love Over Addiction program and on The Wife of an Alcoholic Podcast because it works. So today I want to ask you: what if you became your biggest fan? I know a lot of us, including myself, depend on the ones we love to make us feel good. We look for validation from other people or through our accomplishments. My mom is married to one of the most wonderful men in the world. And I grew up around this man telling her how beautiful she was. He wr