Stand in integrity of who you choose to be by following your “Yes.”
If you follow my Facebook shenanigans, you might have seen my latest Facebook Live. I’ll point it out so you don’t need to . . . Yes, I’ve gotten a bit fluffy. I love my marshmallowy bits but the bigger issue was about standing in integrity. Self care sharply declines when you stop listening to what is important to you.
I haven’t been living in my yes, and so I wasn't standing in integrity. I don’t mean I’m a shifty minx that will stab you before I rob you blind. I mean I haven’t been standing in the integrity of who I am and choose to be. I’ve been making space for unconditional love, and making space for that left little space to make for me. And I didn't feel like I could share on my blog because I felt fake and phoney. Then I realized my shenanigans are real and raw, and not always going to show me in the best lighting. And when did I start caring about that?
There was a boyfriend. A strong, sexy dominant one that I love very much. It wasn’t a right fit. He was unhappy. I was unhappy. But yes, I still love him, and loving him means letting him go. Because of my love for him, I chose to repeatedly make space for what I thought would make him happy, not realizing I was becoming so different that I couldn’t recognize me. I was short changing him in that process.
A lot of it was grief. We miscarried in April, but I’m still getting emails to remind me that I should be wearing third trimester maternity clothes, and the fact that they were twins means they would have been in my arms right now. I found so much comfort in him, but his grief and pain turned to anger and while he helped me get through it, I wasn’t helping him and I have to let him go. I often hear about amicable relationship partings. I never could imagine it until the day I realized I loved him enough that I really needed to let him go. It’s been a week of release and I set our babies ashes free at the beach yesterday.
Throughout the day I remembered the sweeping shift of our relationship and our babies and our loss. I remembered his excitement and joy. He was extremely intuitive and knew we lost them a day before I did. I think it might have been his super power. He knew things most people didn't and his instincts were solid on most things. There is a lot about him to love and admire. I had so much hope for our lives in the palm of my hand and I needed to set them free. Here I was at the ocean, letting go of the last and most precious gift he ever gave me.
I don’t even know when the shift fully set in from who I was to who I have become. I was no longer walking like a mom. I was no longer catching beach sunsets. It’s been a few seasons since I’ve been to a museum. I was barely blogging and I had pretty much stopped interacting with anyone but him and my kids. (I really don’t blame him. I made my choices and he was it every single time.) I stopped wearing heels (because comfort won). I stopped wearing red lipstick and perfume because I forgot to. I stopped acting like I love myself and instead of eating healthy snacks, I was fully focused on emotional eating and my massive ass expansion. Everything that made me insanely happy kinda stopped. It was never something he made me do or forced me to stop. I just spent a lot of time worrying about how my behavior would affect him whether or not he saw it. (Old chains are hard to break.)
I’ve been living in the Land of Instinctive No and right now I’m snacking like my heart is broken because right now I’m emotionally bottomed out. You like me for my uncomfortable honesty, right? I was living as someone that was bullied by my to-do list because I didn’t create it. I was doing what was expected of me. I was doing what I thought others would have wanted me to do. I made choices, but those choices made me feel like a victim to my life, rather than the rightful leader of it. How silly, right? How could I not be the rightful leader of my own life? How could I let someone else's perceived opinion be greater than mine?
So . . . How do you stand in integrity of who you are and live in your Yes?
What feels good to you? What sounds right or inspires you? If you are given a request that you don’t want to jump up and do, then you are living in your no. This means you committed to doing what feels wrong to you and it becomes an emotional vampire on your to-do list. Imagine if instead you only had a get-to-do list? It would be more like a pocket battery.
There’s not a lot of room for “just this once” when you live in your “yes.” The little things are an extension of the big things because how you do anything is how you do everything. When you allow the leadership of someone else to take over the small decisions, it becomes easier to give them control over more and more. Leave the Land of No. In Yes Land, you get to play big. You’re playing at this life game, right? Small moves give you small results. The lower risks might be consistently winning, but why are you playing small? Every goal is a dream until you make it happen, right? Let other people gamble with their own lives and follow your "yes."
Big risks take a bigger investment and come with a bigger audience. Big risks mean bigger wins and bigger failures, but the support you need always comes exactly when you need it.
My big risk this week was in releasing. In releasing I’ve been emotionally supported in ways I never imagined. It’s so much easier to keep things the way they were and that’s what I had been doing. I was keeping the status quo, and not taking a risk. I was doing the easy thing instead of the right thing. The right thing is letting go so I can open my hands and my heart for something else. . . So I can let the man I love do the very same thing.
Ouch. That’s big, right?