Recently, I’ve talked with many people who are feeling great despair over the state of their lives. They are self-motivated and positive people who approach life with good intentions, compassion for all, and a strong work ethic. Yet, lately everything they touch seems to blow up in their faces.

Their stories remind me of my journey from misery to my dreams.

When I was pregnant with my son, I started visualizing the life I wanted to live. By the time he was 18 months old, I was moving in the right direction: out of the garage and off of welfare. The next step was to move to Los Angeles where I’d have more familial support and the opportunity to finish school (after dropping out of 9th grade). I knew I was doing the right thing, I was willing to work as hard as necessary, and I was no longer relying on taxpayer money to survive. I felt like the Universe was on my side and how could it be any other way? I was doing the right thing so everything should have gone right.

Instead, everything went wrong. I arrived in (normally glorious and beautiful) Los Angeles and it was pouring cold rain. I lost the address to where needed to go and I had no mobile phone. I pulled into a gas station to use a payphone, opened the door and stepped into the stickiest, steamiest, enormous pile of . . . yep that. My son was exhausted and screaming hysterically in back seat and I thought “Come on God, this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. I’m doing the right things now, everything should go my way.”

It was just the beginning. In Los Angeles, I struggled to find work, friends, and comfort. The city was big and much dirtier than my pristine home town. One morning, I woke up to a family of roof rats running around my bedroom but was too afraid to call the landlord because I couldn’t pay the rent. 

I was devastated. Everything I’d believed about our creative powers and the Universe’s eagerness conspire with us to manifest our deepest intentions seemed untrue. 

I wanted to give up and if I hadn’t had a child, who I so strongly felt deserved better, I would have. Thank God I didn’t. 

I kept my internal eye on my vision and got back up. It was not easy. Two jobs, and a move out of state and back, later everything changed again.

In the span of a few months, I found a great job, started a business (with the itty bit of real estate knowledge I’d gleaned), stabilized my finances, created a schedule that allowed me to be with my son all day, gained probationary admission to an accredited law school, fell in love, and was on my way to buying my first home.

By the time my son was seven, the life I’d dreamed of, way back in the garage, was my reality.

Although we all would prefer that life just unfurl a path leading directly to our dreams at our feet, it doesn’t always happen this way (although sometimes it does).

Looking back, I can see that when I moved to Los Angeles I wasn’t yet ready for the life I desperately wanted. I was still immersed in limiting beliefs, insecurities, unworthiness, and I had many “toxic” relationships. All of that had to be stripped away and replaced with qualities and people who matched up with what I’d envisioned before I could take competent ownership of it. 

Like all births, bringing dreams to life is messy.

It is worth it nonetheless.

If you’re stuck in the seemingly endless “mean” time, take heart. Every delay is not a denial. Look closely at your situation and try to identify the lessons you’ll have to learn to move into a better space. You may speed your process.

Whatever happens, know that failure only attaches when we give up. Fall 99 times, get up 100.

Persevere. Every delay or obstacle is not a denial.