EsotericErin

Tag: mental-health

  • Sometimes Things Just Suck

    We have a habit of looking for meaning when something hurts.

    What is this trying to teach me?

    Why did this happen?

    What am I supposed to learn from this?

    Everything happens for a reason, right?

    Maybe.

    Sometimes.

    But sometimes something just sucks.

    Not everything that happens is a lesson waiting to be uncovered. Not every difficult experience is secretly preparing you for something better. Not every loss contains a message. Not every shitty thing needs to become a chapter in your personal growth story.

    Sometimes you get bad news.

    Sometimes someone disappoints you.

    Sometimes the thing you really, really didn’t want to happen happens anyway.

    And it hurts.

    I think we’re often uncomfortable leaving it there.

    Especially when we’re used to looking for patterns.

    If we can find the reason, maybe we can make the experience feel less arbitrary.

    If we can find the lesson, maybe the pain wasn’t wasted.

    If we can turn it into growth, maybe we can feel like we got something out of it.

    And I understand the impulse.

    I do it too.

    There is something comforting about believing that everything has a purpose. It can make an unpredictable world feel a little more orderly.

    But I don’t believe everything is laid out in advance.

    And I don’t believe everything that happens to us was somehow meant to happen.

    Life isn’t a story where every terrible chapter was necessary because the ending wouldn’t have worked without it.

    Sometimes things happen because things happen.

    People make choices.

    Bodies do things.

    Systems fail.

    Circumstances collide.

    We get unlucky.

    We get lucky.

    Other people have agency.

    So do we.

    There is a lot of uncertainty in being alive.

    And I think we can acknowledge that without turning it into nihilism.

    Because meaning can still be useful without being mandatory.

    You might eventually understand something about yourself because of what happened.

    You might notice a pattern.

    You might change your mind.

    You might make a different choice next time.

    You might even look back years later and realize that something painful changed the direction of your life.

    That’s okay.

    But you don’t have to know that now.

    You don’t have to squeeze a lesson out of something while it’s still hurting.

    You don’t have to be grateful for the experience.

    You don’t have to believe it happened for you.

    And you certainly don’t have to believe that you somehow attracted it, manifested it, or failed to learn the lesson that would have prevented it.

    Sometimes the most honest thing you can say is:

    This really fucking sucks.

    And then you can make dinner.

    You can call someone you love.

    You can cry.

    You can be angry.

    You can go for a walk.

    You can watch something stupid.

    You can do absolutely nothing useful.

    You can keep living.

    Maybe meaning will come later.

    Maybe it won’t.

    I don’t think self-trust requires us to know which.

    Maybe it means trusting ourselves enough to meet what happened without immediately needing to explain it.

    There is a difference between making meaning from an experience and believing the experience was meant to happen.

    There is a difference between learning from something and believing you need the suffering in order to learn.

    There is a difference between finding something valuable afterward and deciding the painful thing was somehow valuable because it happened.

    We can let those things remain separate.

    Sometimes life gives us something beautiful.

    Sometimes it gives us something difficult.

    Sometimes it gives us something that is simply, spectacularly, profoundly shitty.

    We don’t have to make it profound.

    We don’t have to make it beautiful.

    We don’t have to make it useful.

    Sometimes things just suck.

    And maybe that’s enough truth for today.

  • Maybe You’re Not Supposed to Be Over It Yet

    There’s a strange thing that happens after something difficult.

    You feel it.

    Maybe you cry. Maybe you get angry. Maybe you finally admit that something hurt more than you wanted it to.

    And then, eventually, you have a good day.

    You make breakfast. Answer some emails. Laugh at something your kid says. Put the laundry away. Maybe you even forget about the thing for several hours.

    And because you’re functioning again, a little voice can start suggesting that you must be finished.

    Okay. I’m fine now.

    I should be over this.

    But what if those aren’t the same thing?

    What if being able to carry on with your life doesn’t mean the thing is finished with you?

    I think we sometimes imagine difficult feelings as having a tidy beginning, middle, and end.

    Something happens.

    We feel the feelings.

    We work through them.

    We learn whatever we’re supposed to learn.

    And then we put the whole thing neatly behind us and get back to normal.

    But I’m not sure people work that way.

    Sometimes something matters and then becomes quieter.

    It moves from the middle of your attention to the back of your mind.

    You’re making dinner and suddenly you remember something someone said three days ago.

    You’re driving home and realize you’re still angry.

    You’re folding towels and it occurs to you that you’re sad about something you thought you’d already dealt with.

    Or maybe nothing happens at all.

    Maybe you simply notice, Huh. I guess I’m not quite finished with that.

    That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to do anything.

    You don’t have to pull the feeling back into the foreground and start dissecting it.

    You don’t have to journal about it.

    You don’t have to figure out what it means.

    You don’t have to make a plan.

    You don’t even have to decide whether you’re still allowed to feel it.

    Sometimes something can sit on the backburner while you get on with your life.

    I think we can mistake that for being stuck.

    But there’s a difference between being unable to move forward and moving forward while something is still settling.

    Those aren’t opposites.

    You can have a genuinely good day while something in you is still tender.

    You can laugh and still be grieving.

    You can feel relieved and still be angry.

    You can enjoy yourself without having resolved everything that happened.

    You can even feel better without being over it.

    Maybe that’s part of why I like the idea of a backburner.

    Not everything needs to be cooking at full heat all the time.

    Some things can simmer quietly.

    They can exist without demanding your full attention.

    And sometimes, after you’ve had a little distance, you understand something you couldn’t see when the feeling was taking up the whole room.

    Sometimes you realize what mattered.

    Sometimes you realize what didn’t.

    Sometimes you discover that the thing you thought was about one small moment was actually about a pattern.

    Sometimes you decide you’re ready to put it down.

    And sometimes you don’t.

    I don’t think self-trust requires us to know which one it’s going to be in advance.

    It might simply mean trusting ourselves enough not to force the ending.

    Because moving forward isn’t always the same as moving on.

    Sometimes moving forward looks remarkably ordinary.

    You make the coffee.

    You answer the email.

    You pick up the groceries.

    You laugh.

    And somewhere in the background, something is still finding its place.

    That’s okay.

    You don’t have to return to who you were before something happened just because you’re able to function again.

    You don’t have to put everything behind you to keep going.

    You can keep living your life while something is still settling inside you.

    Maybe you can let today be today.

    And if it comes back tomorrow?

    You can come back, too.

  • Maybe It Wasn’t Just the Dishes

    There’s a story I see come up on Reddit every so often.

    A man writes about his divorce.

    The title is some version of: She divorced me because I left dishes by the sink.

    And at first glance, it sounds ridiculous.

    A marriage ended over a glass beside the dishwasher?

    Really?

    But that’s not actually the story.

    The story is about a pattern.

    The glass wasn’t the whole problem. It was one small, repeated thing in a much larger collection of things that had apparently been wearing away at the relationship.

    And I think about that story sometimes when I think about feelings.

    Because I wonder how often we do something similar to ourselves.

    Not with dishes.

    With “it’s fine.”

    It’s just one thing

    It’s just one unanswered message.

    One interruption.

    One time someone asked you to do something when you were already exhausted.

    One more evening when you made the plans because it was easier than waiting for someone else to decide.

    One comment that bothered you, but probably wasn’t worth bringing up.

    One disappointment that wasn’t quite big enough to justify being disappointed about.

    One time you wanted something different but thought, I don’t really care.

    And maybe you don’t.

    Maybe every individual thing really is small.

    So you let it go.

    Then another thing happens.

    And another.

    And another.

    None of them seems important enough to stop everything and say:

    Actually, this bothered me.

    So you keep going.

    You accommodate.

    You understand.

    You give someone the benefit of the doubt.

    You tell yourself it isn’t worth making a fuss over.

    And sometimes that’s exactly right.

    Sometimes letting something go is a perfectly good choice.

    But there is a difference between choosing not to make something important and never giving yourself enough space to find out whether it mattered to you.

    Small doesn’t mean meaningless

    I think we’re sometimes very good at arguing ourselves out of our own feelings.

    It’s not that serious.

    Other people have bigger problems.

    I don’t want to be difficult.

    It’s only a little thing.

    I can deal with it.

    And maybe you can.

    You probably can.

    You’re capable. You’ve dealt with plenty before.

    But capability has a strange way of making things disappear.

    If you can tolerate something, you can start believing that means you should.

    If you can accommodate something, you can start believing that means you don’t mind.

    If you can carry something, you can start believing it isn’t heavy.

    And then one day something tiny happens and you are suddenly furious.

    Or crying.

    Or sitting in the car longer than necessary because you don’t want to go inside yet.

    And the obvious thing to say is:

    Why am I so upset about this?

    Maybe the better question is:

    How long have I been telling myself it wasn’t worth being upset about?

    Sometimes resentment is a collection

    I don’t think resentment always arrives as one enormous feeling.

    Sometimes it seems to accumulate almost invisibly.

    A little disappointment here.

    A little frustration there.

    A need you didn’t mention.

    A preference you handed over.

    A hurt you decided was too small to bother with.

    A boundary you didn’t realize you’d crossed because you were busy making sure everyone else was comfortable.

    None of these moments necessarily feels like the thing.

    But they don’t necessarily disappear just because you didn’t make a fuss about them.

    They can sit quietly.

    And then something happens.

    The dishes are left by the sink.

    Again.

    And suddenly the reaction seems much bigger than the dish.

    But perhaps the dish isn’t carrying only itself.

    Perhaps it has arrived carrying every previous dish.

    Every previous “It’s fine.”

    Every previous moment of “I’ll just do it myself.”

    Every time you noticed something and decided your noticing wasn’t important enough to mention.

    This is one of the reasons I think feelings deserve some attention even when they seem small.

    Not because every irritation is secretly profound.

    Not because every annoyance needs to become a conversation.

    And certainly not because we should walk around cataloguing every minor inconvenience until we can produce an itemized list of grievances.

    Quite the opposite.

    Sometimes noticing something while it is still small means it gets to remain small.

    You don’t have to make it a big deal

    I think this is where self-trust gets interesting.

    Self-trust isn’t necessarily saying:

    This bothered me, therefore everyone needs to change.

    It’s not making every preference a demand.

    It’s not insisting that every feeling is evidence that someone else has done something wrong.

    Sometimes self-trust is much quieter.

    It’s noticing:

    I actually do mind that.

    Or:

    I thought I didn’t care, but I think I do.

    Or even:

    I’m more upset about this than I expected.

    And then you have information.

    You can decide what to do with it.

    Maybe you say something.

    Maybe you don’t.

    Maybe you ask for something different next time.

    Maybe you realize the thing wasn’t actually important once you had a little space to think about it.

    Maybe you discover that it wasn’t this particular incident that bothered you. It was the pattern.

    Maybe you discover that the pattern is yours.

    Maybe it belongs to someone else.

    Maybe there isn’t anyone to blame at all.

    You don’t have to know immediately.

    I think we underestimate the cost of “fine”

    “Fine” is useful.

    Sometimes it’s exactly what we mean.

    Sometimes dinner really is fine.

    Sometimes the change of plans really doesn’t matter.

    Sometimes you genuinely don’t care which restaurant you go to.

    Sometimes you really would rather let something go.

    But fine can also become a place we put things when we don’t have the energy to figure out what we actually feel.

    And if we keep putting things there, eventually the cupboard gets full.

    Not every item needs to be taken back out.

    But perhaps it is worth opening the door occasionally.

    Just to see what’s there.

    There may be nothing wrong

    This is the part I don’t want to lose.

    Because I don’t think the answer is to become hypervigilant about our own emotions.

    I don’t want to turn every bad mood into a message from our deepest selves.

    Sometimes you’re tired.

    Sometimes you’re hungry.

    Sometimes the day has simply been annoying.

    Sometimes someone left a glass beside the sink and that’s all it was.

    A glass.

    A glass is allowed to be a glass.

    But sometimes it isn’t.

    Sometimes the thing that finally gets you is carrying the weight of everything that came before it.

    And if you never give yourself permission to notice the smaller things, you may not realize how much you’ve been carrying until something tiny breaks the surface.

    Maybe that’s part of what healthy wallowing can be.

    Not sitting around marinating in every grievance.

    Not making pain your personality.

    Not refusing to move forward.

    Just being willing to stop for a moment and admit:

    That bothered me.

    I wanted something different.

    That hurt.

    I am more tired than I realized.

    I thought I was fine, but I don’t think I am.

    There doesn’t have to be a dramatic conclusion.

    You don’t have to turn it into a lesson.

    You don’t have to make anyone else responsible for making the feeling disappear.

    You can simply let yourself know the truth of it.

    And then decide what comes next.

    Because maybe the point isn’t to prevent every difficult feeling.

    Maybe it’s to notice them while they’re still small enough to hear.

    Before they have to become the dishes.

    Again.

  • Maybe You Don’t Need to Feel Better Yet

    I have a tendency to want to move on.

    Not necessarily because I don’t feel things deeply. Quite the opposite, actually. I can feel something very deeply and then almost immediately start looking for the way out.

    What’s the lesson here?

    What am I supposed to do next?

    How do I make this useful?

    How do I stop feeling like this?

    There is a certain appeal to those questions. They give us something to do.

    And sometimes doing something is exactly what we need.

    But sometimes something has happened and the appropriate response is simply:

    That really sucked.

    You failed the exam.

    Someone broke your heart.

    You didn’t get the job.

    A friendship ended.

    You were treated unfairly.

    Something you wanted didn’t happen.

    Someone you trusted hurt you.

    Sometimes there isn’t a silver lining.

    Sometimes there isn’t a lesson yet.

    Sometimes you’re just sad.

    Or angry.

    Or disappointed.

    And I think we’re often much less comfortable with that than we pretend to be.

    We’re very good at talking about feelings as though they’re problems waiting for solutions.

    Anger needs to be processed.

    Sadness needs to be worked through.

    Grief needs to be moved past.

    Disappointment needs perspective.

    And certainly, there are times when those things need attention. Feelings can tell us something important. They can change the way we understand ourselves, other people, and what has happened to us.

    But I don’t think every feeling needs to immediately become productive.

    Sometimes you need to wallow.

    I mean that affectionately.

    If someone breaks your heart, maybe you need a few days of terrible music, ugly crying, and telling your friend the same story for the sixth time.

    If you didn’t get something you worked incredibly hard for, maybe you need to be disappointed before you start figuring out what’s next.

    If someone has hurt you, maybe you need to be angry before you can decide what you want to do about it.

    I don’t think wallowing means giving up.

    I think sometimes it’s the opposite.

    It’s acknowledging that something mattered enough to hurt.

    There is a difference between feeling something and letting it run your life indefinitely.

    The first is human.

    The second is where we can become stuck.

    And I don’t think anyone else gets to decide exactly where that line is for you.

    There isn’t a universal number of days you’re allowed to be heartbroken.

    There isn’t a socially acceptable amount of time to grieve a friendship.

    There isn’t a deadline where disappointment is supposed to have become wisdom.

    Some things take longer than others.

    Some things seem finished until a completely ordinary Tuesday reminds you that they aren’t.

    And that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve gone backwards.

    It might simply mean there’s something there you haven’t finished feeling.

    This is where I think about meditation.

    For years, I thought meditation was about keeping my mind focused for twenty minutes. My mind would wander, I’d notice it, and then I’d berate myself for having wandered in the first place.

    Which was particularly unhelpful once I understood that I was living with untreated ADHD.

    Then someone explained it differently to me.

    Your mind wanders.

    You notice.

    You bring it back.

    And then it wanders again.

    The return is part of the practice.

    That was a genuinely cool revelation for me.

    I hadn’t been failing at meditation. I’d misunderstood what I was supposed to be practising.

    And I think feelings can work a little like that.

    You can spend an afternoon feeling miserable about something and then laugh at a stupid video.

    You can have a good day and still be grieving.

    You can think you’re finally over it and then find yourself crying in the shower three weeks later.

    You can decide you need a break from thinking about it and then come back when you have the capacity.

    None of those things erase the others.

    You don’t have to stay inside a feeling all day for it to be real.

    You don’t have to keep yourself miserable to prove that something mattered.

    And you don’t have to force yourself to feel better just because you think you should be.

    Maybe moving forward isn’t always a clean line from feeling bad to feeling better.

    Maybe sometimes it’s more like:

    Feel it.

    Step away.

    Come back.

    Keep going.

    And then, when you need to, come back again.

    The danger of ignoring difficult feelings isn’t that they’ll somehow punish you for being insufficiently emotionally aware.

    It’s that they don’t necessarily disappear just because you’ve stopped looking at them.

    They can turn into irritability.

    Resentment.

    Anxiety.

    Numbness.

    A vague sense that something is wrong without knowing what.

    Sometimes they show up in places that have nothing obvious to do with where they began.

    I’m not suggesting that every difficult emotion needs to be excavated until you’ve found its deepest possible meaning.

    That sounds exhausting.

    Sometimes you really are just having a bad day.

    Sometimes you’re sad because you’re sad.

    Sometimes you’re angry because someone was cruel.

    Sometimes you’re disappointed because you wanted something and didn’t get it.

    That can be enough.

    And then you can decide what comes next.

    Maybe you need to cry.

    Maybe you need to complain.

    Maybe you need to take a walk.

    Maybe you need to watch something ridiculous.

    Maybe you need to talk to someone who loves you.

    Maybe you need to do absolutely nothing useful for a while.

    And maybe tomorrow you’ll feel a little different.

    Or maybe you won’t.

    That’s okay too.

    I don’t want wallowing to become another thing we can fail at.

    There’s no gold star for processing your emotions efficiently.

    There’s no achievement badge for turning pain into wisdom before anyone else.

    And there certainly isn’t a little green owl waiting to shame you because you missed your emotional-growth streak.

    Sometimes the next step is very small.

    Sometimes it is simply admitting:

    This hurts.

    Then you make dinner.

    You answer an email.

    You watch something funny.

    You go to bed.

    And maybe tomorrow you come back to it.

    That’s not standing still.

    Sometimes feeling the thing is part of moving forward.

  • What If You Just Asked for What You Want?

    I’ve been thinking a lot about preferences lately.

    Not boundaries. Not dealbreakers. Not the things that make us say an unequivocal no.

    Just preferences.

    The restaurant you’d rather go to.

    The seat you’d prefer.

    The shirt you like better.

    The way you’d like something done.

    The plan that sounds a little more fun to you.

    Small things, mostly.

    And I think we sometimes make having a preference much more complicated than it needs to be.

    There can be a strange amount of work involved in admitting that we want something.

    We want to know whether it’s reasonable.

    Whether someone else wants it more.

    Whether it’s worth bringing up.

    Whether we’ll seem demanding.

    Whether we have a good enough reason.

    Sometimes we don’t even get that far.

    Someone asks what we’d like to do, and “Whatever you want” comes out before we’ve considered the question.

    Someone asks where we’d like to eat, and we say we don’t care.

    Someone suggests a plan, and we say, “That’s fine.”

    And sometimes it really is fine.

    Sometimes we genuinely don’t have a preference.

    Sometimes we do have one and decide that it isn’t important enough to pursue.

    Sometimes we know exactly what we’d prefer and are perfectly happy to let someone else choose.

    I don’t think any of those things are failures of self-trust.

    In fact, I think self-trust requires making room for all of them.

    The important part is knowing which one you’re doing.

    Because there is a difference between choosing to accommodate someone and automatically giving the decision away.

    There is a difference between thinking, “I don’t mind”, and never checking whether you do.

    There is a difference between saying, “You choose” because you genuinely don’t care and saying it because you’ve become so accustomed to accommodating other people that your own preference doesn’t even make it into the conversation.

    And there is a difference between advocating for what you want and believing you should always get your way.

    I think we sometimes collapse those things together.

    We worry that if we admit we want something, we’re being demanding.

    So we soften it.

    “I mean, I’d prefer this, but it’s really not a big deal.”

    “I’d like to do that, if you want.”

    “I’d rather go there, but whatever works.”

    Sometimes that softening is simply our personality.

    Sometimes it’s kindness.

    Sometimes it’s an attempt to leave room for another person’s preference.

    But sometimes I wonder if we’re just trying to make our own wants as unobtrusive as possible before anyone has even responded to them.

    What if we didn’t?

    What if we could simply say:

    “I’d prefer this.”

    Not as a demand.

    Not as a declaration that our preference is objectively better.

    Just as information.

    This is what I’d like.

    Then the other person gets to respond.

    Maybe they agree.

    Maybe they don’t.

    Maybe you find a third option.

    Maybe their preference matters more to you in this particular situation, and you happily go along with it.

    Maybe yours matters more this time.

    Maybe neither of you feels strongly enough to make the decision worth much discussion.

    All of those are possible.

    Communicating what you want doesn’t decide the outcome.

    It simply gives your preference a place in the conversation.

    And I think that’s an important distinction.

    Self-trust isn’t the belief that your way is always the right way.

    It’s not needing to win every disagreement.

    It’s not putting yourself at the centre of every decision.

    It’s knowing that your own perspective is worth consulting.

    You can listen to someone else’s preference without abandoning yours.

    You can advocate for yourself without demanding that someone else agree with you.

    You can compromise without disappearing.

    And you can change your mind without deciding that you were wrong to want something in the first place.

    That last one feels particularly important.

    Sometimes we talk about self-trust as though the goal is to become completely certain about what we want.

    I’m not sure that’s possible.

    Sometimes you want something and then discover you don’t.

    Sometimes you think you care and realize you don’t.

    Sometimes you want two things that can’t both happen.

    Sometimes you very much want something and still decide that something else matters more.

    Self-trust doesn’t remove any of that complexity.

    It gives you somewhere to stand while you’re figuring it out.

    Maybe that’s why I’ve become so interested in the tiny moment before we answer.

    The moment someone asks:

    “What do you want?”

    And instead of immediately handing the decision back, we pause.

    Not because we have to make our preference known.

    Not because we’re supposed to choose ourselves every time.

    Just long enough to find out if there’s something we’d like to say.

    Maybe the answer is still:

    “I really don’t care. You choose.”

    Wonderful.

    Maybe it’s:

    “Actually, I’d rather go here.”

    That’s worth knowing, too.

    And maybe you say it.

    Maybe you don’t.

    That’s your choice.

    But there is something quietly powerful about letting yourself have a preference without immediately turning it into a justification, a negotiation, or a demand.

    You don’t have to make a fuss for your preference to matter.

    You don’t have to convince anyone that it’s the correct preference.

    You don’t even have to get what you want.

    You can simply let it exist.

    And perhaps that’s where advocacy begins.

    Not with becoming louder.

    Not with learning to insist.

    Just with allowing your own voice to enter the room.

    I’d prefer this.

    Then listening to what happens next.

    Not:

    “What if you stopped accommodating?”


    More:


    Sometimes we make having a preference much more complicated than it needs to be.


    You know where you want to eat.


    You’d rather have the window seat.


    You want your boss to consider your idea.


    You’d like your partner to do something differently.


    You want to wear the thing you actually like.


    And you don’t necessarily need a dissertation explaining why.


    You can just say:


    “I’d prefer this.”
    This is about the uncomfortable space between having a preference and feeling entitled to get your way.


    Because I think that’s where a lot of women get stuck.


    We don’t want to be demanding, so we make our preferences sound like non-preferences:


    “I mean, if you want…”


    “It’s totally fine if…”


    “I don’t really care, but…”


    “Whatever works.”


    Advocating for yourself doesn’t require certainty that your preference is objectively better.


    It can simply mean letting someone know what you’d like.


    And then being willing to hear their answer.


    That’s much more interesting to me than another post about stopping self-erasure.

  • When Accommodation Becomes Automatic

    I’m pretty good at reading people.

    Not in a particularly mystical way. I notice things.

    A change in someone’s voice. A pause before they answer. The expression that crosses their face when something isn’t quite what they wanted. The difference between “that’s fine” and that’s fine.

    I’ve learned to pay attention to those things.

    Sometimes that’s useful.

    My husband, for example, is not particularly interested in making decisions. If I wait for him to decide where we’re going to eat, we may still be discussing it tomorrow. So I make the decision.

    Then I watch his reaction.

    If he seems happy, great.

    If I can tell I’ve picked something he doesn’t actually want, I’ll usually adjust.

    There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, I think there’s something lovely about knowing the people we love well enough to notice what they aren’t saying.

    The problem isn’t accommodation.

    The problem is when accommodation becomes automatic.

    Because there is a difference between:

    “I noticed what you need, and I chose to respond to it.”

    and:

    “I noticed what you need, so I never stopped to ask what I need.”

    From the outside, those can look exactly the same.

    A person who is accommodating can look generous, thoughtful, flexible, easygoing.

    And sometimes she is all of those things.

    Sometimes she also has a preference and has decided, quite consciously, that it isn’t important enough to pursue.

    That’s different too.

    I don’t think self-trust means insisting on every preference.

    If my husband wants Thai food and I don’t particularly care what we eat, I have no inner turmoil demanding Italian.

    Sometimes someone else’s preference simply matters more.

    Sometimes the choice genuinely doesn’t matter to us.

    Sometimes we’re willing to give something up because the relationship matters more than the thing itself.

    That’s not self-abandonment.

    That’s choice.

    What interests me is what happens when we stop knowing whether we’re choosing or simply reacting.

    Women are often rewarded for being good at accommodation.

    You’re so understanding.

    You’re so reasonable.

    You’re so flexible.

    You’re so easy to work with.

    You’re the person everyone can count on.

    Those can be genuine compliments.

    They can also teach us something.

    Not necessarily because the person praising us means to teach it, but because praise is powerful. We tend to repeat things that make other people happy.

    If being agreeable gets us approval, we may become more agreeable.

    If anticipating someone’s needs gets us appreciation, we may become very good at anticipating them.

    If never making a fuss keeps things peaceful, we may learn that peace is worth the cost.

    And eventually, something that began as a useful skill can start to feel like part of who we are.

    “I’m the reasonable one.”

    “I’m the flexible one.”

    “I don’t really care.”

    “I can work around it.”

    “I’ll just do it.”

    Maybe that’s true.

    Maybe you really are flexible.

    Maybe you genuinely don’t care where you eat.

    Maybe you’re perfectly happy to let your boss make the decision.

    Maybe you don’t mind changing the plan.

    But there’s a question I think is worth asking every once in a while:

    Do I actually not mind?

    Not because the answer needs to be no.

    It doesn’t.

    Sometimes the answer is an enthusiastic yes.

    Sometimes it’s a shrug.

    Sometimes it’s, “Actually, I’d rather do something else.”

    And sometimes you know what you want and decide not to pursue it anyway.

    All of those are different experiences.

    The important part, at least to me, is getting the chance to know which one you’re having.

    Because I don’t want to confuse self-trust with getting my way.

    I don’t think self-trust means that my preference should always win.

    It means my preference gets to exist.

    I can know what I want and still choose something else.

    I can disagree with someone and still respect their decision.

    I can accommodate someone without becoming meek.

    I can be easygoing without making myself easy to overlook.

    And I can notice someone else’s reaction without immediately making it the most important information in the room.

    That last one is probably the hardest.

    When you’ve become good at reading people, their reactions can feel urgent.

    Someone looks disappointed, and your attention moves toward them.

    Someone hesitates, and you start wondering whether you should change course.

    Someone seems unhappy with your decision, and suddenly you’re reconsidering one you were perfectly comfortable making thirty seconds ago.

    Sometimes that information matters.

    Sometimes it tells us something we genuinely need to know.

    But sometimes it is simply information.

    Someone else’s reaction doesn’t automatically become an instruction.

    That’s something I’m still practising.

    Noticing the reaction.

    Listening to it.

    And then remembering to listen for myself, too.

    Because being thoughtful about other people doesn’t require us to stop being thoughtful about ourselves.

    And perhaps that’s the distinction I’m most interested in.

    Not between being accommodating and being selfish.

    Not between being easygoing and being difficult.

    Between accommodation as a choice and accommodation as a reflex.

    There is nothing wrong with giving someone else the restaurant they wanted.

    There is nothing wrong with changing your mind because their preference matters more to you.

    There is nothing wrong with being the person who can roll with things.

    But there is something worth noticing when you no longer know what you would have chosen.

    Sometimes self-trust is simply making enough room to find out.

  • When Did Their Comfort Become Your Responsibility?

    Sometimes I hear myself apologizing before I know why.

    Sometimes it’s for interrupting someone.

    Sometimes it’s for asking a question.

    Sometimes it’s because someone else seems uncomfortable and, before I’ve had time to think, the word sorry has already left my mouth.

    The feeling is real.

    The apology is real.

    What I’m less certain about is whether the apology actually belongs to me.

    Sometimes I just feel… responsible.

    Responsible for smoothing things over.

    Responsible for making the conversation easier.

    Responsible for making sure everyone leaves feeling okay.

    It took me a long time to realize those aren’t the same thing.

    Living alongside other people means we’ll sometimes get things wrong. When we do, it’s important to own our mistakes and do what we can to make things right.

    But there are other moments that are quieter.

    The moments when someone disagrees with us.

    When someone is disappointed.

    When someone misunderstands us.

    When someone simply has an emotional reaction to something we’ve said or done.

    Somewhere along the way, many of us learned to treat another person’s discomfort as something we were expected to fix.

    Not because anyone sat us down and taught us that lesson.

    Because we absorbed it.

    A raised eyebrow.

    An awkward silence.

    A frustrated sigh.

    A subtle shift in someone’s tone.

    Eventually, we become fluent in reading the emotional weather around us.

    It’s an extraordinary skill.

    It helps us notice when a friend is struggling.

    It helps us comfort people we love.

    It helps us move through relationships with care.

    Like many strengths, though, it has a shadow.

    Sometimes we become so focused on everyone else’s emotional landscape that we stop checking in with our own.

    Someone looks uncomfortable.

    We explain ourselves before they’ve asked.

    Someone seems disappointed.

    We immediately start looking for what we did wrong.

    Someone grows quiet.

    We begin rearranging ourselves to make the silence disappear.

    I’ve done all of those things.

    I still do them sometimes.

    Not because I believe women should simply stop caring about other people.

    Care is one of the things I value most.

    But care and responsibility aren’t the same thing.

    Someone else’s feelings deserve compassion.

    Compassion doesn’t automatically make them ours to carry.

    That distinction has changed the way I move through the world.

    Not dramatically.

    Quietly.

    Now, every so often, I catch myself rushing to make someone else more comfortable.

    Before I apologize.

    Before I explain.

    Before I make myself smaller.

    I try to pause.

    Just long enough to ask one question.

    Is this actually mine to carry?

    Sometimes the answer is yes.

    Sometimes I’ve genuinely made a mistake.

    Sometimes I owe an apology.

    Sometimes I need to listen more carefully.

    Other times…

    The discomfort belongs to the conversation itself.

    Or to the other person’s expectations.

    Or to a difference of opinion that doesn’t need to be erased.

    Learning to tell the difference is still a practice.

    I’m not writing this because I’ve mastered it.

    I’m writing it because I’m practising it too.

    And every now and then, that small pause reminds me of something I’d forgotten.

    Not every uncomfortable feeling belongs to the person who notices it first.

  • You Don’t Have to Figure Yourself Out Alone

    For a long time, I thought understanding myself meant reaching a conclusion.

    If I reflected enough…

    If I read enough…

    If I asked enough questions…

    Surely I would eventually arrive at the version of myself that finally made sense.

    I don’t think that’s what I was really looking for.

    I think I was looking for someone to tell me I was doing it right.

    Someone to reassure me that I wasn’t too much.

    Or too sensitive.

    Or too complicated.

    Or simply getting it wrong.

    There’s comfort in believing that someone else can hand us the answer.

    Sometimes they can offer perspective.

    Sometimes they ask the question we couldn’t have found on our own.

    Sometimes they simply remind us we’re not as alone as we thought.

    But I’ve learned that no one else can build a relationship with me on my behalf.

    Only I can do that.

    That realization wasn’t discouraging.

    It was strangely freeing.

    Because it meant I could stop trying to become someone who finally deserved my own understanding.

    I could begin with the person who was already here.

    I think we often imagine self-reflection as a lonely practice.

    A journal.

    A quiet room.

    A conversation that happens only inside our own heads.

    Sometimes it is.

    But I’ve come to believe that reflection also has companions.

    A sentence that stays with you for years.

    A book that asks the question you didn’t know you needed.

    A trusted friend who listens without trying to solve you.

    A symbol that helps you see yourself differently.

    Companionship doesn’t always tell us what to think.

    Sometimes it simply helps us stay.

    That’s the kind of companionship I’ve been trying to create in my own work.

    Not answers.

    Not instructions.

    Companionship.

    A place where curiosity feels safer than judgment.

    Where questions are welcomed instead of hurried.

    Where you don’t have to perform certainty before you’re allowed to begin.

    Over the past few months, that understanding quietly reshaped something I was creating.

    I thought I was making a journal.

    Somewhere along the way, it became something else.

    It became a conversation.

    The journal remained at its heart, but it slowly gathered companions around it.

    Not because I wanted to give people more content.

    Because different conversations ask for different company.

    Some days we need courage.

    Some days we need compassion.

    Some days we need honesty.

    Some days we simply need someone—or something—that reminds us to stay with ourselves a little longer.

    That’s the spirit behind Within.

    Not a collection of answers.

    A collection of conversations.

    Not lessons to master.

    Companions to return to.

    Because I don’t think the goal is to figure yourself out once and for all.

    I think the goal is something quieter.

    To become someone you can keep company with.

    Again tomorrow.

    And the day after that.

    And every ordinary day that follows.

    I can become a safe place for myself.

  • The Questions That Changed Me Didn’t Have Immediate Answers

    There are a few questions that seem to return to me every year.

    Not because I haven’t answered them.

    Because I’m not the same person who asked them the year before.

    For a long time, I thought a good question was one that eventually disappeared.

    I assumed that if I reflected long enough, read enough books, or understood myself well enough, I would finally arrive at the answer—and the question would quietly leave.

    But that hasn’t been my experience.

    The most meaningful questions in my life haven’t vanished.

    They’ve evolved.

    Sometimes they’ve softened.

    Sometimes they’ve become more complicated.

    Sometimes they’ve stopped asking what I thought they were asking in the first place.

    And I’ve started to wonder if that isn’t the point.

    We often treat reflection like a problem-solving exercise.

    We search for the correct answer.

    The perfect insight.

    The breakthrough that finally explains everything.

    There’s comfort in believing that enough understanding will eventually bring certainty.

    Sometimes it does.

    But more often, I think reflection asks something else of us.

    Not certainty.

    Presence.

    The questions that have changed me most are the ones I couldn’t answer all at once.

    Questions like:

    Why do I keep apologizing for things that aren’t mine to apologize for?

    Why does rest still feel like something I have to earn?

    What does it actually mean to trust myself?

    None of those questions had a single answer.

    They became conversations.

    Each time I returned to them, I noticed something different.

    A new memory.

    A different pattern.

    A little more compassion than I had the last time.

    The question didn’t disappear.

    I changed.

    Somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to finish the conversation.

    Instead, I started paying attention to how it was changing me.

    That shift has quietly transformed the way I think about reflection.

    I no longer believe its purpose is to produce perfect answers.

    I think its purpose is to deepen our relationship with ourselves.

    To notice.

    To return.

    To listen again.

    That’s the kind of conversation I’m interested in now.

    One that leaves room for uncertainty.

    One that allows us to outgrow old answers without feeling like we’ve failed.

    One that reminds us we are allowed to become someone new without abandoning who we’ve already been.

    If you’ve been following my writing for a while, you’ve probably noticed this shift too.

    Over the past few months, I’ve written about permission, self-trust, belonging, and curiosity.

    Slowly, those ideas began gathering around a single question:

    What happens when we stop trying to solve ourselves and start listening instead?

    That question became the foundation for something I’ve been quietly creating.

    It’s called Within.

    Not because it contains the answers.

    Because it’s an invitation to begin a different kind of conversation.

    One that doesn’t end when you close the journal.

    One that continues every time you choose curiosity over judgment, presence over performance, and relationship over perfection.

    I think those are the conversations that change us.

    Not all at once.

    But one honest return at a time.

    🌟 I can stay in conversation with myself.

  • What If You Stopped Waiting for Permission to Exist?

    Some of us spend years waiting.

    Waiting until we feel more confident.

    Waiting until we feel more certain.

    Waiting until we have everything figured out.

    Waiting until we become the version of ourselves we imagine we are supposed to be.

    Only then, we tell ourselves, will we begin.

    Only then will we take up space.

    Only then will we trust ourselves.

    Only then will we allow ourselves to fully inhabit our lives.

    The waiting often feels responsible.

    Reasonable, even.

    After all, shouldn’t we prepare first?

    Shouldn’t we be sure?

    Shouldn’t we become better before we ask more from life?

    The problem is that the finish line keeps moving.

    There is always another goal.

    Another improvement.

    Another obstacle.

    Another reason to postpone your own existence.

    Many of us have spent so much time trying to become acceptable versions of ourselves that we have forgotten to ask whether we are actually living.

    We tell ourselves that life will begin after the next achievement.

    After the next breakthrough.

    After the next season of healing.

    After the next version of ourselves arrives.

    But life has a way of happening while we’re waiting.

    It unfolds in ordinary moments.

    Quiet mornings.

    Conversations with people we love.

    Books left open on the nightstand.

    The sunlight through the kitchen window.

    The walk we almost skipped because we were too busy trying to become someone else.

    There is nothing wrong with growth.

    There is nothing wrong with healing.

    There is nothing wrong with wanting change.

    But growth becomes exhausting when it turns into a prerequisite for belonging.

    When we begin to believe that we have to earn our place in our own lives.

    That we have to become enough before we are allowed to participate.

    For many people, this belief begins early.

    We learn to perform competence.

    To minimize mistakes.

    To become useful.

    To stay agreeable.

    To work toward an invisible standard that promises acceptance just beyond the horizon.

    And because the standard is always moving, we never arrive.

    We become experts at self-improvement and strangers to ourselves.

    We spend years asking:

    “What should I become?”

    instead of asking:

    “Who am I, right now?”

    The second question is harder.

    It asks for presence instead of perfection.

    It asks us to really see ourselves as we are.

    Not as a future project.

    Not as a potential outcome.

    Not as a list of things still needing correction.

    But as a living, changing person worthy of attention in this moment.

    That kind of presence can feel uncomfortable.

    Especially if you’ve spent years believing that visibility has to be earned.

    Especially if you learned that taking up less space was safer.

    Especially if you became skilled at waiting your turn.

    But there’s a difference between growth and postponement.

    Growth expands your life.

    Postponement delays it.

    One invites you deeper into yourself.

    The other asks you to remain at the threshold indefinitely.

    And maybe that’s the question worth considering:

    How much of your life have you spent waiting for permission to exist?

    Waiting to be ready.

    Waiting to be certain.

    Waiting to become enough.

    What if you stopped waiting?

    What if you allowed yourself to be here now?

    Not finished.

    Not perfected.

    Not fully healed.

    Just here.

    Because your life is not something that begins after you become someone else.

    It’s already happening.

    And maybe the permission you’ve been searching for is not permission to become.

    Maybe it is permission to be.

    I am allowed to take up space in my own life.