Read more: Mother Wounds & Choosing Yourself

Returning here after an unintentional two-week long hiatus calls for the examination of an old wound. A hard-hitting, weeping one that sears the soul. A wound I swore I healed but am somehow confronting again in true, old western style. I draw a gun; the wound draws a gun. Eerie, howling music plays in the background as a tumbleweed rolls past. We raise our pistols. Steady our aim.

But this time, I pause before firing. Before sinking into tears and destruction. I deliberate. I feel the pattern as though it’s my own breath.

“Oh, I see,” I say as I slowly lower the pistol back to my side. The wound remains – steady as the prayer tie that lives on the thickest, steadiest part of a branch – poised to fire.

“Do you?” It seems to say.

And this time, I do.

We all have that one wound – a habit, or feeling, or trauma – that lingers in our emotional body like a plague. It spreads like a rash, and just when you think that you’ve treated it with enough time, ointment, and love, it reappears. Only, this time it arrives with a vengeance. A searing, soaring, smoldering tendril of tension that spreads everywhere: into your love life, into your friendships, into your career, into your home, into your emotions, and into your family. It swoops and it shouts until you finally address it, and see it in all its forms. So, that you may examine it and eradicate it once and for all.

For me, that wound is choosing yourself.

This is my most pernicious life lesson. If you believe in reincarnation, karma, and past lives, then you may believe that your soul chooses the path it will walk, the lessons it will learn, and who will walk beside it along the way.

Not for the first time, I question how drunk my soul was when it chose this lesson for this lifetime.

The lesson itself isn’t the problem. Learning how to choose yourself – against all odds and uncertainties – is vital. However, my soul chose a hell of a lifetime to tackle this lesson.

For one, I am a woman. Women naturally face this insurmountable pressure to be everything to everyone. You don’t need kids or pets to fall into this pattern; it is organically thrust upon us with the gusto of time and virtue. Women are nurturers. We care for others, even at the expense of ourselves.

Secondly, I have been a caretaker for others since I can remember. It has lessened in recent years, mostly due to the realization of this lesson, but it is at the heart of who I chose to be in this lifetime. I had a disabled sister. My mother was disabled. My father eventually became disabled, too. There was a long time in my life where I felt I didn’t know who I was if I wasn’t caring for someone else. I didn’t know how to sit with my own thoughts, in my own head, and process life without others needing me.

This realization showed its heavy weight after I moved to D.C. for law school. Shortly after moving, I sat on my couch – a sticky, faux-leather contraption – uninterrupted for hours. In that time, no one needed me. No one asked me for anything. I simply sat, surrounded by my thoughts, as FRIENDS innocuously played on the TV and the air conditioning cooed in the background. I had never experienced this. Never been unneeded. 23 years old – and that was the first time I could remember where my nervous system breathed a sigh of relief.  It was a whole new world. It was also the beginning of a very long journey of self-advocacy and boundaries. Unfortunately, it would take five more years, and rapid loss, for that lesson to gain ground.

Thirdly, I chose to live in a world of endless performance, while having a socially driven personality. Social media provides an endless avenue of self-soothing through the validation and attention of others. Eric Church said it best when he said this generation faces “the temptation to perform for everyone and belong to no one.”  Truly – sometimes it is difficult to even belong to ourselves because we are so consumed by what others think. It is formative problem, especially when you thrive on attention and social validation.

This is compounded by being a woman where, for much our lives, we’re taught that attention (particularly male attention) makes us desirable. High value. You begin to curate a version of yourself – online and among your friends – that you think others find appealing. You rely on the opinions and advice of friends to make decisions.  And when you don’t take their advice, or think you act contrary to it, you start to question your worth in their eyes. You must take conscious steps to stay true to who you are. To remind yourself that it doesn’t matter what your friends think, or how people perceive you on social media – what matters is how you feel. How you want to feel. Just because your friend disagrees with you doesn’t mean you are wrong. Especially if you are doing something to feel safe.

So, here I am – at 28 years old – staring down who I finally am. This arrives on the eve of a major career jump, and so many life changes that, while welcomed and exhilarating, challenge every effort I put into becoming a woman confident enough to break free of a stifling, unfulfilling situation for herself.

Of course, the pre-requisite to this career jump was years of inner work. It took a long time to learn to say “no” to draining familial, relationship, and friendship dynamics. I learned how to stop chasing love interests, and friends who couldn’t return texts and calls. I learned how to show up for myself through small, everyday actions like taking short walks and going to the gym. I learned how to pause before reacting so I could ascertain how I felt about a situation; not how others needed me to respond or be. I learned how to choose myself.  Not out of selfishness or greed, but out of a necessity for grounded simplicity. No drama. No fire. No fighting. Just calm.

Recently, I had a dynamic that reminded me just how far I’ve come in choosing myself. Not only in my career, but personally. I made the choice to block someone. At first, I was hesitant. It seemed immature, petty. But I kept getting this nagging anxiety at keeping the door between me and this person open. So, I performed a test on myself: I tried blocking and then unblocking the person to see how my nervous system responded.

The result? Instant relief. The departure from drama completely cooled me. I made the internal choice to shut a door to preserve my peace. Not out of fear or anger, but from a place of inner knowing. Years ago, I would have kept the door open. I would have given the person chance after chance to be better, even after they routinely proved they couldn’t be consistent or caused drama. I would have tried again, and again, and again. People-pleased. I would have hoped that showing that person kindness would magically convince them to choose me, to unwire all that they are and act differently. I would have chosen the other person.

But not this time.

This time, I chose myself.

In my career, in my love life, in my friendships – I choose myself. Even if sometimes choosing yourself means disapproval or separation. On this evening of reckoning, revisiting this lesson is difficult – crying on the bathroom floor, head fog, doubt-your-conviction difficult. But on the other side of it? Truth. Power. Confidence.

An immovable conviction that you can – and will – succeed at everything you do.

Lower your gun, mother wound.

You’ve met your match.

Spiritually yours,

P.S. happy Taurus new moon!

Did this post resonate with you?

Show a little love with some coffee money for your favorite old soul. 💚