They say life is like a mountain climb, but they are wrong, and I’m going to tell you why: Human beings are good at burying our truth, as a kid I was a pro.

I didn’t want the world to know family was poor, my mother was a drug addict, my father had PTSD and his regular episodes would often get physical.

I was a good kid, seen, but not heard. Bright enough to know odds were against me leaving no room for mistakes. The happy-go-lucky girl people knew, didn’t dare to roll the dice, didn’t dare to dream. I was a realist, even at seven years old.

At 14, I got my first job. And before I knew it, I was helping to put food on the table. At 16 my mom left for good, our house went under foreclosure and I became my own afterthought. If I wasn’t in school or at work, I was cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping. The judgmental stares in the grocery line when I used our ACCESS card were burned into my memory.

Growing up I kept this theme of forfeiting experiences that would cultivate who I was at heart, for safe bets, security, to survive and break the cycle.

I escaped home at 18 and struggled to get by. I went to school for a career I had no interest in, kept jobs that were utterly soul-sucking, stayed in relationships that left me feeling empty and alone.

Little did I know that every sacrifice of self was a shovel full of doubt, depression anxiety and isolation. I was just layering on that self-oppression, and one day, I just crumbled under the façade I had constructed. I wasn’t “breaking the cycle,” I was burying myself alive. Every effort I had made, everything I had built, suddenly felt like a lie. I was living someone else’s life. To make matters worse, I didn’t even know who “I” was, anymore. That person had not seen the light of day in decades. I put that happy go-lucky-girl in a tomb. But, she deserved to be free and she deserved to dream. I decided then, that I could either live as a shell of a person, or I would start digging myself out. And that’s what I did. And I dug deep, throwing off all the layers that were keeping me suffocated.

I left the job, I got a divorce, I gave up EVERYTHING, but found myself.

I dared to dream. I placed my bets on me.

Here I am five years later I have two thriving businesses, I’m in a healthy, loving relationship, and I am living my passion, everyday, including this very moment here with all of you.

And you know what? My Mom and Dad, the bankers, the judgey grocery shoppers, all of us! Are just chip, chipping away, gasping for air, buried under years of bullshit. This struggle to hold on to self is what it is to be human. Seeing it so clearly, in ourselves and each other, honoring it, that’s love.

No, life is not a climb because success is not at the top of a mountain where you can look down and see who and what you’ve surpassed.

Life is an excavation. It’s an unlearning of BS, and an unearthing of your best self. And success is not in the view from the top, looking down. Success is finding that beauty within us. Every single one of us is a treasure. Keep digging.