September was a rough month. And the roughness lasted up to and including September 30. And that hurt.

What was really hard was preparing to write about smiling for the next 30, uh pardon me, 31 days.

So in attempt to be honest and authentic, I need to write about the things that don’t make me smile right now. The quotes and sayings I’ve heard over the past month and subsequently, I replayed in my head.

Things are the things that make smiling hard for me. And to be perfectly honest with you, some days I didn’t smile, even though I needed to.

Because just when I thought I was ready to smile again, some weird, crazy force would come by and steal my joy. And sadly, I let it.

So I wanted to share with you exactly what prevented me from smiling. Until I decided that it shouldn’t.

Tell me friends, how have you felt when you hear these phrases?

“You are notoriously unreliable!”

“I felt that the real you kicked in, and that’s not what I needed.”

“I know you had cancer, but it was just thyroid cancer.”

“You don’t care about me like you care about the others.”

“You don’t really want a man in your life because you don’t know how to be in a relationship.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you emotionally.”

“Shame on you!”

“I can tell you’ve been hurt really badly.”

“I understand why your ex-husband isn’t involved.”

Those words hurt. They didn’t make me smile. And to be perfectly honest, some days I didn’t want to smile every again.

Until I realized that smiling is who I am. And something needed to change.

Join me tomorrow, and we’ll talk about what to do when the smiles escape you.