Who are you disappointing?

Don’t let it be your own heart.

I feel like I’ve been letting people down lately. Mostly through bailing on things I intended to do. Whether or not I’m letting people down or just afraid that I am, it’s irritating to feel. Things come up in our awareness so they can be held and then let go of, right?

The more I lean into doing what’s most right for me, the harder it is to do what I don’t want to do. I won’t say yes when I mean no. I cannot, I will not, my body won’t let me. This means I disappoint people sometimes. And that has to be okay, because it is how I am choosing to live.

I used to live from a pleasey accommodating place all the time — I was the little mediator who tried to make everyone happy with everyone else. The eating disorder was what I used to try to reclaim some agency over my life (fucked up, I know). I’ve done a lot of work to break these patterns — which is why I get so frustrated at the parts of my brain that still feel guilty for choosing to respect myself. Like can I please be entirely done with this narrative that I’m responsible for keeping the (fake) peace and managing other people’s feelings.

The ultra-accommodator conditioning runs deep in our society. And! The purity of the human spirit runs deeper.

I am learning that there is another way to be in communion with others that does not require shrinking and pleasing. There is a richer, truer way of caring for and loving other people that allows us all to choose what we know is right for us, over and over and over.

One of my dearest friends is in a long term relationship that I look up to more than any other in my age sphere. It’s because there is space for each of them to be themselves — and their commitment to each other comes along with their individual commitments to themselves.  Their love for each other does not come at the expense of their ability to honor their own knowings — and I think this is what creates the foundation for a more trusting, lasting kind of love.

When I think about the relationships I want to sustain in my life, they are with people who choose what’s best for them when they know what’s best for them. Even if it takes a long time, even if it hurts my feelings in the process.

And as Glennon says (wow can anyone get Glennon to read this sometime??) — “all our lives, may we shorten the gap between the knowing and the doing.”

May we go when it’s time to go.
May we stay and work when it’s time to stay and work.
May we soften and open, again and again and again.
May we love and let go, again and again and again. 

And if we disappoint people, as we often do, may it be because we chose ourselves. And in doing so, may we free them up to choose themselves, too.

Again and again and again.

And so it is. 

xx, maggie 

P.s. I guess I’ll continue to promote my podcast, which has two episodes so far. I’d recommend the second one which is about the SELF and what does it mean to know yourself, and does it matter what we call that kernel of divinity within us?