I didn’t realize how often I was saying yes
before I ever checked in with myself.
This feels like the beginning of something new for me.
After a year of writing through grief, I can feel a shift—quiet, but real.
I’m calling this a Year of Becoming.
Lately, I’ve been paying attention in a different way.
Not to what people say.
Not to what I think I should feel.
But to what happens in my body.
A tightening in my chest when something feels off.
A heaviness when I say yes but mean no.
A quiet sense of ease when something is actually right.
For a long time, I didn’t notice these things.
Or maybe I did—and learned to move past them.
To be agreeable.
To be kind.
To keep things smooth.
I got very good at overriding myself.
Grief has a way of interrupting that.
When everything is stripped down to what matters, your tolerance for pretending gets smaller.
Or maybe your capacity for truth just gets louder.
Just recently, I felt it happen in real time.
My mom needed help with something.
And instead of immediately saying yes, like I usually would, I said—
“I’ll check that Bruce is available and let you know.”
Even that was new.
A small pause where there normally wouldn’t have been one.
A moment of not fully committing before I had checked in with myself.
It bought me time.
For 24 hours, I sat with it—and wrestled with it.
I talked to Bruce. He said he could help, but he had other things that needed his attention first.
And still, I felt that familiar pull.
That sense of responsibility.
That quiet weight of this is mine to carry.
At one point, I tried something different.
Instead of pushing the feeling away, I sat with it.
On the inhale, I let myself feel the weight of it—
the responsibility, the pull, the urge to take it on.
And on the exhale, I imagined softening it.
Letting it move.
Letting it release.
I don’t know if that changed anything outside of me.
But it changed how I stayed with myself.
And that was enough.
The pause itself felt uncomfortable—
but not as uncomfortable as immediately saying yes would have been.
So I stayed there.
I checked in with my body.
I wrote.
I let myself feel what I was actually feeling instead of rushing past it.
The next day, I could feel the anxiety building.
I was pacing a little, trying to figure out what I was going to say.
And underneath it was something younger—
that feeling of being a little girl who doesn’t want to disappoint her mom.
That part of me is still there.
I called her.
She didn’t answer.
And I felt… relieved.
So I texted instead.
A few minutes later, she called me back and said she had already handled it.
She thanked Bruce anyway.
And just like that—it was done.
It felt like a small, quiet miracle—
the kind that happens when you don’t override yourself.
Not because everything worked out perfectly.
But because I didn’t abandon myself in the process.
I didn’t rush in to carry something that wasn’t fully mine.
I let the pause exist.
And something shifted.
I’m noticing it in smaller moments too.
The other day, my mom asked me to find her an outfit.
I felt it right away—
that same tightness in my chest.
This time, I didn’t ignore it.
I offered what I could do.
Shop together. Look online together.
She didn’t want that.
She wanted me to choose for her.
And I could feel the pull—
to just do it anyway,
to be helpful,
to keep things easy.
But I stayed where I was.
Not pushing.
Not fixing.
Just… not overriding.
I’m also learning that becoming asks for honesty.
Not forceful. Not confrontational.
Just clean.
Recently, plans shifted with family.
And instead of quietly accepting it and wondering if I had done something wrong,
I asked.
Gently. Openly.
Not to challenge—
but to understand.
And it turned out to be something simple.
Not a story. Not a rupture.
Just logistics.
That felt new too.
Not holding it in.
Not carrying something that wasn’t mine.
Just letting the truth be what it is.
Lily didn’t struggle with this.
What feels hard and unfamiliar to me was as natural as breathing for her.
She didn’t stay where she didn’t feel connected.
She didn’t give what she didn’t genuinely have to give.
There was no performance in it.
No second-guessing.
Just truth.
I’m not becoming her.
But I am learning from what came so naturally to her.
Less performance.
More alignment.
Less overriding.
More listening.
I don’t want to talk myself out of what I feel anymore.
Maybe this is where becoming begins—
in the small pauses
where I used to say yes without thinking.
If this resonates, you’re not alone in it.
I think a lot of us learned to override ourselves without even realizing it.
And maybe becoming begins the moment we start to notice—
and choose not to abandon ourselves in those moments.