I am proud of the life I’ve built for myself. I’ve erected it all on my own after years of running on fumes and strengthening under pressure. This life I’ve built — it survives hard inner reflection and the clamoring of a burgeoning world. It knows laughter and tears; frustration and elation; silence and sound. It welcomes the ecstatic pitter-pattering of canine footsteps as they rush to greet me at the front door where hiking boots linger, sand and dust from far-off beaches and trails slicking their soles. Vibrant green Ivy dangles on the back porch, and friends wave into my windows as they pass. If a neighbor doesn’t see me for a day or two, I get a check-in text. A “hey, how are you” that carries no guilt, or manipulation, or hidden agenda. Acceptance ripples beneath my floorboards and up through the soles of my feet into my hands as they type this post.
August brings reflection energy. These past eight months have seen progress, delays, and risk. So, so much risk. Now, there is another season of delay, one that whines and sighs beneath the force of greater fates. In between the pauses, revelations emerge. This week’s revelation? Well, it arrived through an unexpected emotional wave: You need a life you can grow into, not out of.
Deceptively, we believe transformative energy hits us hard and fast. We finally get fed up with a relationship or a pattern, and our first instinct is to tear it up, dump it in the trash, and haul it to the curb. “No more,” we tell ourselves.
But throwing away the pattern? It’s not sudden, or hard, or fast. It’s been building around you. There is an environment that accumulates around those old relationships and patterns that bears noticing — one that paved the way for you to realize that something needed to end for something better to take its place. Taking out the trash? Not sudden. You’ve just finally noticed that the smell conflicts with the crisp-smelling fall candle on your counter.
You haven’t grown out of something. You’ve grown into the peaceful life you’ve worked so hard to build. Anything incompatible with it must go. What remains is a life that is irrevocably yours.
This revelation arrived on the wings of several things. One, there has been a literal shift in my home environment. I moved in February, but the settling and shifting didn’t really set in until this summer. I spent July purging cabinets and closets, and scrubbing floorboards while Rosie looked curiously on. (One or two of her toys fell victim to the purge.) I bought some new patio furniture and lamps. I purchased motion-activated lights for beneath my cabinets, so I can drift in and out through the night without harshening the ‘night vibe’. The new trappings matched the emotional maturity I’ve been cultivating for months.
Second, my career is the catalyst for my growth in increasingly unexpected ways. If you’ve read anything here, you know that I made a big career leap in May. It was a long time coming, and did more to align me with past dreams than future ones. I left a very draining career to uncover a new, freedom-fueled one.
But that decision wasn’t made without risk.
Choosing to trust yourself is the ultimate leap. Starting your own business, specifically, produces fear. There are financial setbacks and downfalls; doubt and dismay. You wonder if you’re putting aside enough tax money or logging the right amount of hours on your projects. Your invoices get delayed; a credit card gets over charged. These delays carry risk.
But they also carry great rewards. Mainly, that you can always grow.
For me, a doubt that has persisted across all my career lives is outgrowing things. Part of the reason I have the resume I do is because I grow out of things fast. Growth in my last job was capped around the first six months, although I knew there wasn’t much left for me by month four. I started taking on outside side projects to feel alive. Then, I built those projects into full-time passions with growth potential. But I really didn’t realize how ripe that potential was until this week.
The past two weeks have been interesting. There were stops and stalls; old love interests emerging and disappearing into the night, and career starts and stalls that drew me to pause. I looked around my newly organized house at the very practical, newly installed cabinet lighting. An uncertainty stirred in my gut around an old work project. I asked: What am I missing here?
The answer arrived quietly: Lauren, you need something you can grow into, not out of — and you already have it.
I’d spent months rearranging my space, but my career was rearranging itself, too. All the doubts I had about leadership and moving forward were being slowly overcome by action that heralded growth. Every doubt I had was gradually being overcome by everyday acts. That revelation — although heralded by a panicked burst — wasn’t hard and sudden; it was gradually carved out of the life I was carefully curating. The cabinet lights, the career, the new plants on the back porch… they go together. They fit. Because they have been something I’ve been growing into day by day; minute by minute.
So, these sudden moments of doubt we have: they are not sudden. They have been building around the life we’ve been growing into. The dog, the cabinet lighting, the career revelations — they grow into the inner sense of self you cultivate to form a home inside and outside.
Here’s to growth,
Soul Reads 
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