Stepping Away From Small and Comfortable

“Because then I wouldn’t have to grow,” I said out loud, piercing the emptiness around me. “I wouldn’t have to do this next part; I could just stay small and comfortable.”

(I can’t be the only one who responds to their own thoughts out loud, can I?)

I’d been driving for a couple of hours, lost in the madness of my mind, which is honestly my favorite place to be. Making sense of the heaviness in my heart and the ache I felt for someone who’s no longer in my life as I barreled toward higher elevation.

At that moment, seemingly out of nowhere, the desire to curl up in their arms and nuzzle into their neck the way I used to was intensely overpowering, so I kept asking myself why.

Why did I desire a place and space that never felt fully restful? Why did I crave a connection that was absent or faltering far more often than it held me? Why was this coming up now, after everything I’d healed and cleared?

“Because then I wouldn’t have to grow… I wouldn’t have to do this next part.”

Ooof.

I exhaled immediately.

This next part in my story is hard and scary for reasons I can’t make sense to many around me.

It’s terrifying in ways I’m still holding close to my heart as I figure out what they mean and how I’m meant to show up inside of them. It’s unsettling because I’ve realized how much of me got lost over the last several years. Not only from grief and trauma but within the relationships that followed, both personally and professionally.

There’s a massive reclaiming that needs to happen now, and it scares me to death because showing up fully expressed has cost me so much in the past.

It’s taken a life—at least that’s the story trauma likes to tell.

But I don’t want to be afraid anymore.
I don’t want to hide in small, safe spaces.
I don’t want to go back to what was never for me.

I want to be brave enough to bring my big visions to life, to step off the well-worn path and carve out something that’s all mine. I want to lean in and keep facing forward—wholeheartedly, and with all the courage I can muster.

And so I do.

A little bit more every single day.