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A post shared by Tarn Ellis (@tarnellisart) on Feb 22, 2020 at 3:56am PST

I’m tired of always trying to be a positive thinker.

Thinking positive makes me feel guilty or afraid to have “negative” thoughts because, god forbid, that might bring more negativity into my life, and I already have enough.

There is a way that positive thinking can lead us out of the darkness, but it’s not what most people think. I do not believe that negative thinking causes bad things to happen.

Oppression does not occur because whole cultures and societies walk around thinking negative thoughts and causing other people to come in and murder them and their children.

There are bad people in the world who do bad things. Natural catastrophes happen and cause buildings to topple and homes to be washed away in floods, or spun apart into splinters in a tornado. But I don’t believe that any of these things happen because someone, somewhere, is thinking negative thoughts.

I don’t know what the cause of evil is. I don’t know the reason behind various natural disasters. I do not understand, in my heart, what causes genocides, even though I am here because my family survived one. I do not understand the cause of a pandemic. But I don’t feel like our negative thoughts drew those things to us.

Sometimes, sh*t things happen, and I need to feel angry. I need to feel wronged because I was. And I need to feel deep, seemingly bottomless sorrow.

There is power in honoring those things. There is power in honoring our reality and emotions.

Part of honoring reality is knowing that when I’m in a pile of rubble—blaming myself is not going to help. But looking at where I might need to fortify myself to become stronger does help.

Asking myself if there are any lessons to learn helps.

Asking myself what is the most loving and compassionate thing I can tell myself right now helps.

I’m not saying we don’t have to take responsibility for what’s undesirable in our lives. Sometimes, we make choices that have consequences we don’t desire, so we can learn how to forgive ourselves and do better.

Sometimes bad things happen that have nothing to do with us, at other times, we are the ones left to clean up the mess. And most of the time, we end up healing from things we did not bring upon ourselves.

Knowing the difference is important. Positive thinking for me is knowing that if I’m still here, whether I’m standing or crawling, then there is hope that things can get better.

Positive thinking means remembering the things I’ve overcome and the things I did when I thought I couldn’t do them.

Positivity comes in handy for me when I’m in a pile of sh*t, and I start to imagine a future where something better exists or could exist, and I take one step toward that.

If we are not where we want to be, either through the choices we make or don’t, we can find a way to move toward something better.

If you don’t know what that is yet, believe that it’s possible.

That’s where our power is.

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