Dear Rising Soul: When Survival Becomes Self-Abandonment
Dear Rising Soul,
Are you exhausted and running on empty?
Saying yes when you want to say no?
Feeling miserable and disconnected from life?
If so, it isn’t because you did anything wrong.
Like many of us, you may have learned early on to choose survival over authenticity in order to feel safe. We rejected parts of ourselves to fit into environments that could never truly make space for us, often because of their own limitations. These early lessons taught us to take up less space in the world, to set limits on ourselves. A choice made in the name of survival comes at a cost, one that eventually catches up to us.
We start to feel the weight of it all.
Our energy slowly drains away.
And we grow so disconnected from the Self that we often no longer know who we are or what brings us joy.
So we keep pushing through, forcing life to happen, because this is how we learned it had to be.
When we begin to see these patterns, and the disruption this way of coping has created in our lives, we are invited to look with self-compassion and grace for the younger version of us who did the best they could with what they knew at the time. From there, we can meet ourselves with the wisdom we’ve gained through living. Not to shame or judge, but to choose differently. Change doesn’t happen overnight. It happens through awareness, through repetition, and through consciously choosing not to turn against ourselves for perceived failures.
As we honor what once kept us safe and gently recommit to the Self, we begin to break old patterns and create new ways of living that support our well-being.
And in choosing ourselves, life begins to soften.
Our nervous systems begin to settle.
And something within us remembers how to feel at home again.
Pause. Reflect. Honor.
With love,
Naomi
Recent Comments