Category: Relationships

When I get quiet…

This blog is about personal reflections and whatever I feel writing publicly about in the moment. It’s not about personal growth. It’s not about politics. It’s not about building a brand, personal or professional. So there are times I have nothing to say here.

It doesn’t mean I’m silent. It means I’m working on something, most often several things.

A couple of months ago, a partner and I broke up. I did it in a horrible way, and I said things in the process I regret. I don’t say that lightly, because I don’t regret things very often. Usually there is something to learn or take from an experience, but everything I could have learned from it I knew going through it. I just didn’t do better, to my own expectations or any reasonably kind vision of how a breakup should go. So that’s regret.

Part of the last couple of months have been spent processing it, grieving it, and thinking about how I can do better in the future. Apologies, even immediately offered, don’t reconcile pain already caused from cruel things said meant to hurt in the moment. We deserved a better ending than the one I gave us.

The rest of life has come together well in Portland. I have a solid social circle forming. I’m in a regular DnD group. Partnering with others, I’m starting a Druidry seed group. I’m in the hiring process with a couple of different professional opportunities, and hope to have something to announce soon. My son has lost his first tooth, and he’s doing well in school. I’ve explored, hiked, read books, completed another journal, and still doing some other writing as well, thinking about my book project and if I want to pivot it to another format. I’ve written more poetry I need to organize, and heaven help me, maybe get a little more serious about it.

As summer turned to fall, and fall has already begun shifting to winter, I’ve updated my wardrobe for the first time in years with warmer clothes. No more California winters in shorts.

We made it through the election season, all kinds of other turmoil, and I closed my twitter account like many others.

I was worried about moving here, nervous about meeting people and starting a new life. I’m glad I did.

Be Yourself.

Be yourself. Be everything you are. Be open and vulnerable and beautiful and hideous, don’t hide a thing. Don’t conform or change for someone. Don’t try to be anything or anyone other than your own blessed wonderful self for another person or group.

The people who choose to be with you will be the ones who truly care for and love you. They will have no expectations built on their own imaginations of who they think you might be. These people will be your closest friends, partners, and family, and they will bless your life further.

The people who leave or do not wish to know you will do so making the most informed choice. They are honoring and respecting you, knowing they are not right for you. Mourn their loss, when appropriate, but not their absence, for in their absence they are freeing you for greater happiness.

The people who stay but try to change you, or make you conform to expectations other than who you are or who you want to be, are the greatest for concern. These are people with their own false expectations, who neither respect who you are, nor who you want to become. It is the greatest act of love for yourself and them to leave, freeing you for greater happiness, and freeing them to someday find their own.

All cases lead to greater happiness in your life and the lives of others. Getting there can be messy. It means breaking old expectations, setting and negotiating new ones. It requires finding love for yourself and seeking your own happiness and joy independent of others. It doesn’t happen once then never again, it is a continual practice the rest of our lives. Be yourself.