Liberation can be defined as  the "act of setting someone free from imprisonment, oppression" or the "freedom from limits on thought or behavior"

Freedom can be defined as "the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved" or "the power or right to act as one wants without hindrance" 

Both qualities are associated with an individual's rights and self-efficacy. To achieve both states of being - liberation and freedom - begins with an individual choice.

With a shift in mindset. An acknowledgment that each of us is worthy of our power to act as we want. That we are worthy of being limitless. 

What's often not told is how difficult that shift is, particularly for people who are at different intersections of oppression and hindrances on their innate right to be as they should be. The deep and oftentimes painful work that's required to recognize that we are worthy of liberation is easily glossed over when people scream for freedom and living in a just world. 

To begin to be liberated and free, one must first understand what it is they are held captive by.

That first stage is Discovery. Most will find that there are many things we are bound by - some obvious (i.e. oppressive governments and systems, substance addictions, etc) others not so much (i.e. other people's opinions and expectations of us, materialistic mindsets, self-limiting beliefs). Nonetheless, Discovery is both necessary and terrifying. 

We discover that we have played a part in our oppression. We have allowed our power to be stripped from us. We have limited ourselves. We've shrunk. We've assimilated. We've been silenced. 

We become aware of the role we've played in our own demise and perhaps others - we start to see points where we aided in our oppression, where we let things be out of fear, out of not knowing.  

Discovery helps us in our journey to liberation but it also hurts us as it illuminates the things we couldn't see while in the midst of it. It requires opening wounds and secret doors we've long forgotten and demands we see it in full view for all that it is, was, and can't be. It requires us to be brutally honest with ourselves and opens our eyes and hearts to the second stage - Awareness (more on this later).

No one can liberate another person. Liberation is an individual choice and collective liberation only becomes a movement when a multitude of individuals join together to liberate themselves.  

You choose when to start and know that Discovery is painful but necessary. Healing is not linear nor is it glamorous but it starts with You.