“What was the promise life made the moment you were born?”

This is the question Dawna Markova likes to ask people. She followed her precious grandmother’s footsteps to become a midwife, but instead of babies, she helps people birth possibilities. Over the past seven decades she’s been a teacher, psychotherapist, researcher, executive advisor and an author of many books, including ‘I will not die an unlived life’. 

This book is a collection of stories of Dawna’s own journey to uncover her purpose and make her life matter, even though it has not been an easy journey for her – she’s been raped, had five miscarriages and has been living with cancer for decades.

She says, “I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.”

Dawna writes that loss, inertia, rage and denial can stop you from living a life of purpose and passion. Instead of blocking out everything you don’t like, you have to try to keep an open heart because there is wisdom hidden in your greatest difficulties. She says that your greatest trouble can help you realize how you matter as well as what really matters to you.

“Befriending myself seems to be about opening my heart as a homeless shelter for all the destituted and prostituted aspects of my being that I have been running from for years without even knowing that’s what I have been doing."

So, have you been on the run, girlfriend? Without knowing it? With your heart closed up like a clenched fist? Wondering why your search for joy feels like wearing leaden boots in a labyrinth?

“I don’t think anyone “finds” joy. Rather, we cultivate it by searching for the preciousness of small things, the ordinary miracles that strengthen our hearts so we can keep them open to what is difficult,” Dawna writes.

In ‘I will not die an unlived life’ Dawna asks herself many evocative questions to find and follow her own wisdom. They basically all boil down to: How do I find a way to live a life I can love now? Right now, for me the answer would be to learn how to turn self-pity into self-compassion.

Christy Whitman says that self-pity not only feels awful, but it’s one of the most disempowering energy frequencies we can attune ourselves to. “Because when we’re caught in the loop of feeling sorry for ourselves, we deprive ourselves of the ability to create anything better or different.”

She says that when you’re finding fault and beating yourself up over past mistakes, you’re ultimately radiating regret and discontent. You’ll find yourself defending the reasons why everything seems to be out of control, thereby undermining your power to change the situation. 

“Feeling sorry for yourself is like listing all of your limitations, over and over, on a chalkboard.” Christy says.

Choosing self-compassion over self-pity is like pushing a reset button. Compassionately acknowledge what is. From this place of neutrality you can begin to turn your attention towards what you want. You can use the experience of what-you-don’t-want to clarify what-you-do-want.  

Look for the gifts in every situation, says Christy. “No situation, event, or circumstance is ever without blessings, because every life experience has the potential of serving us in some way. But, to find them, we have to be willing to actively look for the positive aspects.”

Also, you have to become as picky about the words you speak as you are about the food you eat, she says. Try not to speak in opposition to what you want. Saying words such as things-never-work-out-for-me or this-always-happens-to-me really isn’t helping, girlfriend.

You can continue to feel powerless and live a habitual life or you can open your heart – even when in proverbial purgatory – and say with Elizabeth Streb: “When I’m taking my last breath, I want to look at how I used up the best of myself. How much did I sweat, push, pull, rip, fall, hit, crash, explode? My dream is to be so well-used that in my last-half second, I just burst into dust.”

After all, as Gary Keller writes, “Life is a question and how we live it is our answer.”