Like a tree struck by lightening and pierced through to the deepest parts of our soul, we often stand helpless and exposed to the elements surrounding us after life's unpredictable forecast. Once the damaging winds, blistering temperatures, and torrential rain have subsided, we become focused on the brokenness surrounding us and the ways in which we can survive with the loss, therefore missing out on the vast horizon and its limitless potential for new opportunities.

The damage from a storm does not define the tree; it defines the storm. The defining moment is when our life becomes the storm, although in truth, the storm no longer physically exist. Our thoughts limit us to the experience and what that experience has taken from us. What about if we chose to consider what the storm has given us instead? The aftermath of a storm reveals things about its target that would have otherwise gone unnoticed without vulnerability and exposure, all the while shifting its foundational structure to form a new existence. What does that new existence look like from a positive perspective?

Change is inevitable; the force of nature has shifted landscapes since the beginning of time leaving behind destruction, as well as breathtaking geographical landscapes, changing life. Seasons change and life evolves.

Even with the smoothest transitions, life changes. Not one person remains the same throughout their life. It is through choice that we evolve or stagnate, but even with stagnation, we have created action, an active thought to remain with the rubble around us.

Just like the tree in my cover photo, we begin as a whole, providing shade and refuge for the relationships in our lives. Life gravitates toward us and we envelop it beneath our branches. However, if unexpected lightening strikes and we hold steadfast to the rubble clutter at the base of the part of us that still stands, then the storm defines us. We become the storm when we focus on what is scattered instead of what still stands; of what is lost instead of what remains.

The damage does not define the tree, it defines the storm. We define ourselves through choice, courage, and perseverance. By not internalizing the experience, we allow the circumstance to create the equation on the outside of us in order that we produce the solution from within us, which in turn defines us. When we internalize the experience, we become part of an equation that does not have a solution.

When we stand in our proficiency and not in our experience, we are empowered through the root system of our truth. We draw from our own resources and discover potential we would never have otherwise accessed. When we access our own power and strength we redefine life through a fresh perspective and take prevalence over the chronicle of events and the end result thereof. We have the power through transformation and choice to impact the prospect of our lives in reverence to the loss and in celebration of the metamorphosed.