There comes a season in our lives when we stand at a crossroads in our relationships and are faced with the question: Is this still working for me? Has the timeline of this relationship run its course?
This experience is very human. And even with that, it is also one of the most challenging experiences.
Be it our marriages, our friendships, or our families, sometimes our souls ask us to sit with our emotions. To evaluate where the relationship stands and what possibilities it still holds.
How do our bodies respond to the energy of the relationship?
Are we retreating inside ourselves, closing off our hearts?
Do we find ourselves starting to dread interaction with that person because we are aware of the disconnection, as it is screaming at us like a neon billboard every time we enter the same room?
Often, out of comfort, fear, uncertainty, guilt, and a desire not to ruffle feathers, we stay in relationships that start bringing more challenges and unhappiness than they do good.
And often it isn’t because the person is bad or wrong, nor are we, but because, as we are meant to do, we evolve, and sometimes that means we outgrow relationships. Remaining in them can slowly create pain for both people involved.
Sometimes we feel guilty for changing. We carry the fear of hurting people if we choose ourselves and what truly makes us happy. We think we are being loyal when the truth is, we are silencing our needs in order to remain because of history, obligation, or hope that things will improve.
Silently, we grieve the person someone once was, or mourn what we hoped the relationship would become.
Sometimes, we become more comfortable with suffering because society paints suffering as normal. Acceptable. But suffering and shrinking ourselves is not what our souls came here to do. That is part of the illusion that keeps us trapped in cycles and patterns that bring more harm than good.
The truth is, our souls are always guiding us because our purpose is to learn and grow, and sometimes that means we reach a point where we have evolved, and with that comes misalignment with others. Sometimes the lessons we were meant to learn within a relationship have simply run their course.
I understand this on a deeply personal level because I have lived through the grief of relationships changing after I chose to speak my truth openly. Some relationships in my life could not survive the breaking of silence around painful dynamics, and that reality brought immense grief with it.
I know what it feels like to mourn people who are still alive. To wrestle with guilt for changing, and to question whether choosing your own healing makes you selfish. But I have also learned that love cannot thrive where truth must constantly be abandoned in order to keep the peace. And sometimes healing asks us to accept that not every soul is meant to walk beside us forever.
We also place enormous pressure on relationships, believing that if they end, then we must have failed. That if we had only tried harder, stayed longer, sacrificed more, or suffered quietly enough, we could somehow force the relationship into what we needed it to become.
That is not love. That is the ego, afraid of change and remaining loyal to a pattern that has long stopped serving us.
We can love someone deeply and still reach the end of what that relationship was meant to be.
And perhaps the most empowering thing we can do — for ourselves and for the other person — is to release our attachment to the outcome. To honor the relationship for all of its seasons. To give it room to expand, or to naturally fade, without forcing, clinging, or betraying ourselves in the process.
Not from a place of numbness, but from a place of acceptance. Understanding that every soul is on its own journey, and sometimes that journey guides us toward new landscapes, new lessons, and new ways of loving ourselves wholly and honestly.
Making someone else’s understanding the measure of your worth becomes kryptonite to your soul.
The truest validation comes from the journey inward, where self-understanding meets self-love.
Have you ever felt that hollow ache after a conversation with someone, the feeling of being invisible, unseen, and unheard? You replay the moment over and over in your mind, wondering if they ever truly heard your heart. The emotional aftershock settles in. Did they even hear me? The loneliness that follows is unmistakable.
Dear Rising Soul,
We have all been there at one time or another and felt the sting of being misunderstood, a feeling that leaves us almost alien in a world that does not seem to understand or see us. Sometimes we long for validation from people who may never truly see or understand us, which can leave us feeling hurt, disappointed, and rejected. Validation can feel like safety.
But here is the part we often miss: not everyone will see us the way we hope to be seen, not because we are wrong about who we are, but because of their emotional capacity. Some people cannot see beyond their own need to be seen and validated, their own search for safety. Others cannot see past the version of us they have created in their mind or their need to be right. And that sense of safety we chase through validation is, like many things in life, an illusion rather than truth. We think being acknowledged solidifies our humanity.
People often lack the ability to truly listen. Many are already in their own heads, preparing what they will say next. Small ears cannot hear your heart. And when we hand over our worth to someone else’s response, we give our power away.
We all crave not just to be seen but to have our hearts seen. We yearn to belong. Humans are tribal, so it is in our nature. We seek community even when our pain tries to convince us otherwise. As a form of protection, pain tells us we do not need anyone. So we shut down, lock ourselves away, and convince ourselves we are better off alone, that the risk of vulnerability is too high, and that using our voices and speaking our truth is not worth the potential hurt.
Much of this comes from childhood, where we learned that being seen equates to being loved. Our worth does not decrease because another person fails to understand us. When we realize that the only validation we truly need comes from within, we stop chasing breadcrumbs and looking for affirmations from others to prove our worth. When we see and understand ourselves, we stop giving others the power to reign over our value. We begin choosing people and spaces where we are naturally understood. The moments we once misunderstood hold less power, and we move past them with greater ease because our sense of self no longer depends on someone else. We begin living and breathing the truth that we are enough, and we understand ourselves so deeply that we are not easily shaken or unraveled.
We do not need to over-explain ourselves to those who genuinely see us. These people become the ease and light in our lives, the mirrors that reflect the understanding we once craved, because we have gained the self-understanding we were missing. These people feel like family, like safety, like home, because of their willingness to try to understand us. We no longer feel the need to fix others’ perceptions, and we do not measure our worth by whether someone understands us. Instead, we step into a life where we feel recognized and aligned with likeminded individuals. We stop climbing mountains and spinning in circles and take the path toward community and unity. We learn to see ourselves in all our beauty and to allow our truth to stand firm. And in this, we rise.
You, dear soul, are all the validation you need. You hold the reins. Embrace the understanding you offer yourself.
It begins within — the healing, the remembering, the rising.
Each time you choose compassion over criticism and authenticity over perfection, the light within you grows.
And that light? It helps heal the world. 🤍
Dear Rising Soul,
Are you tired of chasing perfection? Afraid that if you aren’t thin enough, wise enough, or worthy enough, you can’t risk being seen? To be perfect is the biggest lie we tell ourselves. You don’t need to be perfect; you need to be you.
There is no mountain to climb, valley to trudge through, gold medal to be won, or degree to be earned to be worthy of your place in this world. The day you drew breath, you were enough. Somewhere along the way, conditioning made us forget that we were divinely created.
When we accept our humanness and offer ourselves compassion and grace, we let go of self-criticism. We stop giving weight to opinions or to others’ judgments that are often projections of their own pain. We align with “know thyself” and step into the quiet strength within us that reminds us that people will always have opinions, but the one that matters most is the one we hold of ourselves.
When we build our worth through our own eyes, we step out of the illusions and constraints of conditioning and learn to offer ourselves grace, love, and forgiveness. We begin to move to the rhythm of our own drum and let the noise of others fade away.
You are worthy, beautiful soul. You define what is right for you, never measured by someone else’s perception, but by the love within that softly reminds you, you are good enough right now, in this very moment. You deserve to take up space in this world. It is your birthright.
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