Sadly, too many people have lived very difficult childhoods. If you are one of those, you may feel like you can never escape or overcome it. If you know someone who has gone through incredible obstacles during their formative years, maybe you see their destructive habits seemingly out of their control.
Your life may not have been handed to you on a silver platter, but rather a paper plate with cold pizza that you still prefer to steak & shrimp. You may have grown up with tattered furniture, hand-me-down clothes purchased from Goodwill or remember one (or both) of your parents badgering you physically or verbally. You may not have had a clue what it took to get to college & be successful because you never had that modeled for you.
You remember what life was like and you know you want it to be different as an adult. You aren’t sure if that is possible, but you dream that it could be. You hope that it will all turn out different for you.
I’ve got news for you. It can. But, it doesn’t just happen by hanging out & hoping the same negative inertia that led to your childhood circumstances don’t repeat themselves. In fact, if all you do is hang out and wait for things to change, surely they won’t.
This is why I wrote NEVER SETTLED: a memoir of a boy on the road to manhood. I wanted people who have had incredible childhood challenges know they can overcome. It won’t necessarily be easy, but it can be done. I wanted people to see examples of how one person could transform their life from extremely humble beginnings to change the lives of people around them, to even transform their family legacy.
I also wanted people to see their own stories in a new light. Often times, when we have endured such hardship, we retell our stories to ourselves (and others) in such a way that redemption is not possible. That nothing good could ever come from us or our situation. We spin cycle our trauma over and over in such a way, it creates more chaos, not order.
The reality is for each of us, we can see our stories in a new light, like they are actually headed somewhere. Somewhere good. Sometimes it takes hearing, listening, reading someone else’s story before we can imagine those things in our own.
I wrote NEVER SETTLED so that you will be inspired to change your past into a brand new future. I wrote it to share my story of overcoming so that you know you can overcome too. We are in this together, if you want to be. Let’s go! You can overcome!
Follow this link to read more about NEVER SETTLED. https://shawndcongleton.com/neversettled/
Shawn D. Congleton ~ author 