Choosing Your Self

set it all free

I’ve often heard it said that sometimes you have to lose your self to find your self. It’s one of those sayings that is so cliche that it’s almost cringe to write it here, or say aloud. More often than not though I find that the most cliche sayings are so cliche because there is significant universal truth to them. That they have stood the test of time and hold up strong in their meaning and consistency throughout the human experience. And while I don’t necessary believe cliches are absolutes, there is absolutely wisdom behind them relative to our life’s circumstance. Right now, this cliche has me.

I just returned to the village where I’ve been living in northern Michigan after visiting my hometown a couple of hours south for food, friends, family, and space. I spent ten days there, driving down a couple of days sooner than anticipated after seeing impending snow storms on the weather app, and after my best friend urged me all the way from Seattle to go home early. My mental and emotional health had taken a turn, which you can read about in my last couple of newsletters, and it was evident that I needed something that felt familiar and safe.

I’m relieved to be able to say that I returned from that trip with a much more solid sense of self. Sometimes it takes a village to be a human. And it never ceases to amaze me how the most subtle shifts put me right back on a path toward my self. How perspective is sometimes everything and often forward movement just asks you to be a witness to your life from an ever so slightly new vantage point. One that observes where you’re looking, how you’re feeling, how you’re thinking, what you’re believing, what you’re holding on to, how you’re showing up, and who you’re being. It asks if the version of you that you’ve been is the one that chooses you. The one that chooses what you want. That no longer chooses people or things or jobs or circumstances or habits that aren’t choosing you in return.

And I think we all experience multiple rites of passage. Initiations if you will. Moments where we are placed in just the right circumstance, whether by our own volition or not, to see how willing we actually are to choose our selves. How worthy we deem our selves of our own presence, awareness, love, and holding. How willing we actually are to continue becoming who we’ve always truly been in our heart of hearts, even if it means giving up who we have believed our selves to be.

I feel like I’ve been going through a rite of passage of my own. I’m no stranger to this as I experienced a quite intense dark night of the soul awakening after my divorce and have since experienced many pivotal moments that felt like significant identity shifts and potent redirections. I don’t fear death anymore. I have reverence for it. I have figuratively died to my self over and over and over again. And while we’re lead to believe death is a one time event at the end of life, we are in actuality encountering death all the time. We are constantly being reborn, sometimes moment to moment. Death is intrinsically part of living. Of being alive. It is necessary to live a rich and fulfilling life. To die is how we go on truly living. Often times, though, it is dependent upon how willing we are to let go.

I’ve been doing a lot of grasping. Clinging. I’d say I’ve even been in denial. It was a hard pill for me to swallow recently in the admittance that I am the only thing holding me back by hiding behind a fear of my own potential. It turns out the fear was only half of that pill. The other half was my resistance to letting go.

The last relationship I was in was in 2020. We met in the beginning of April on a dating app and got to know one another for a month via phone and Zoom because of the lockdown before meeting in person in May. We quickly fell in love and in to a life together. We wanted the same things, had similar values and dreams long term, and shared a vision for what we wanted our life to look like. Everything just kind of clicked. Before we even knew of each other’s existence, we both were traveling the southwest before returning to Michigan because of the pandemic. Because of that shared vision of being nomadic, because of our love for similar outdoor places, and I thought because of our love for one another, we planned to buy an RV together and hit the road the following Spring.

In the meantime, we spent half of every week living together. We traveled up and down the Lake Michigan coast of southwestern Michigan up through the UP frequently. We spent hours on the beaches, scouring for rocks and being the sun worshippers that we are. We shared a love for photography. I met his entire family on family vacation. The most frequent comment I received was that he seemed the happiest he had ever been and that I seem really good for him. It wasn’t said as frequently, but he had a similar affect on me.

Around Thanksgiving, something shifted. One day I sat him down and told him I was unwilling to continue not talking about the very noticeable shift between us. He said he’d been having thoughts that contradict everything we were moving toward. That he had been feeling like he might want to do it all alone. That he’d been in a relationship his entire adult life and that he needed to do this for him, even though he’s never had what we had with each other. Even though we was afraid he’d regret it. Even though he was afraid of letting go.

He said that in my old coaching business I talked at length about how people need to choose themselves and that this was him choosing him self. I laughed amidst my tears and very jokingly said “in that case, this was all my fault!” In hindsight, knowing what I know now, I’ll never let a man get away with using my own values as a scape goat, perhaps even as manipulation, to no longer be in relation to me. Ever.

I was devastated. Nothing had come so far out of left field since my parents told me they were getting divorced when I was 11 years old. Amidst my devastation though, there was a part of me that understood what he was doing. I was full of grief, but I also understood that some times we just have to do things for our selves that don’t make sense to any one else. That defy logic. And I have always believed that unconditional love is freedom. If you love someone, and they want to exit the relationship, you have to be willing to let them be free. And I loved him. In fact it was the first time I had ever truly been in love. I’ve dated and been with many people. I was married for god’s sake. And I have never felt what I felt for him.

In the end, it was apparent that we loved and cared about each other, and that we both remained open to whatever the future had in store for us. And perhaps because it wasn’t a “clean break” as they say, our break up was not the end of our story. We’ve come in and out of each other’s lives four or five times throughout the last couple of years, most recently over the summer. It always ends the same though, where he essentially runs away without a word and I’m left wondering what the hell just happened. Each time with more information revealed that does not line up with what I knew about why and how we went our separate ways. How he did not in fact do nomadic living alone. And how his actions, at least as they relate to me, rarely align with his words.

This is the point as I’m writing this where I pause/freak out and seriously consider deleting it all and start anew. Where I worry that I’m revealing too much, or that I’m not being fair in how I portray him in the story when in actuality I’m being very generous in his portrayal. And honestly, this is my newsletter. I’ve carried so much of this for a long time. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t live like this. I’ll get more in to what “this” is below. But we all have stories in our hearts that need to be told in a way that works for us and besides therapy and friends, this is my outlet. So as my friend lovingly advised, I’m going to “set it all free.”

After we broke up we often chatted, in times when we were actually in communication, about how we met during seasons of our lives where our individual pots were boiling over. I had a business that wasn’t working that I was resistant to close, and I was coming out of my dark night awakening and still wrapping up some things with that. He had his own things going on that are not my place to share, and they were not insignificant. We concluded that sometimes the timing just isn’t right. Whether I truly believe that, I’m still deciding.

I do believe though that some connections stay with us for a lifetime. Whether we are in communication with those people or not, somehow someway they continue to be mirrors for us. Catalysts for growth. This connection continues to be that for me. For that, I’m grateful.

And while I’m sure he’s moved on, and despite the fact that I blocked him on all of my social media platforms, I’ve remained stuck due to my own grasp. When we were together, I was living the life I’d always dreamed of. I found a love I had been looking for. I was living nomadically often in all of my favorite beach towns. We had plans to head west with Joshua Tree being our top priority. I got a really sweet taste of my dream life. I was in it. Living it. And when everything changed and we parted ways, he continued moving forward in that life while it seemed like my life was continually heading in the opposite direction. I had to get a job in my hometown that prevented me from working from anywhere. I was then laid off, my car was totaled in a move, and I struggled to find work for 5+ months. It’s been a lot.

I struggled to let go. First, of him. But then, a most recent revelation, of the life. The life I was living inside of a my dream. I’ve pushed and pushed and pushed the last couple of years to try to make remote work work for me. I’ve tried to force my current life to fit in to the life that I had, and it didn’t even have to include him. I just wanted to work for my self so that I could travel and have time freedom and, basically, control.

It felt nearly impossible for me to let go of that. Not because I thought that I’d failed because I didn’t get to do it with him or whatever else, but because I got that taste of it. And what if I never get it again? Getting a taste of it almost makes the waiting worse. Though from another perspective it shows me what’s possible. But I’ve been trying to walk through doors that are clearly closed. I have been so resistant to where I’m at, to being in acceptance of my circumstance, that nothing was moving. I wasn’t getting job offers. Hell, I wasn’t even getting invitations to interview. I lost my self in trying to force my life to go a certain way. I wasn’t choosing my self.

When I was at home staying with a friend last week, I told her everything. How I’ve been afraid of my own potential. How I’m afraid to be where I’m at because I’m afraid it means I’m abandoning my dreams. How I’ve been in resistance to where I’m at because it means letting go of a life I used to have that in some ways still kind of appeals to me. How it’s finally not even about my ex-boyfriend anymore, but more so just about the fact that I’m afraid to say goodbye to the life I had created with time/location freedom. How I’m afraid to surrender. How I’m afraid to let go.

I don’t know what’s in store for me. What I do know with 100% certainty is that everything in my life has always worked out, 100% of the time in ways I couldn’t have expected. That as soon as I let go of the How and just focus on the What, I’m immediately in flow and shit just works out. And doors don’t have to remain closed forever. But sometimes there are other doors that are wide open just waiting for you to walk through their threshold, waiting to give you want you want.

The most wide open expansive door that is embracing me right now is creating financial security for my self. AKA getting a job. I suddenly had four interviews this week.

BECAUSE I DECIDED THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE TO CHOOSE MY SELF RIGHT NOW.

It doesn’t mean I can’t/won’t ever work for my self again. It doesn’t mean I am abandoning my dreams. It means I’m choosing my self. I am asking my self the most profound question one can ask one’s self:

What do I want?

Because right now, I don’t know. Saying good bye to a life and closing a chapter has left a lot of room for possibility. There is suddenly so much space and potential. The world is truly my oyster. And there is a lot that I actually do know. Along with financial security, I want to build a community while I lay roots here in Northern Michigan. Ultimately I do want to live in the desert during the winter but there’s no where else I’d rather be than here in the summer months. I know that I want to continue writing both this newsletter and a book. I want to pay off my car. I want to fly to Seattle to visit my best friend and see the life she’s created there. I want to continue landscape photography and get back into using film. I eventually want a partner. For now, those things are enough. Perhaps when I feel more security, new things will come through. For now, this is where I’m at. And it is my best practice to just be here.

It’s also been really helpful for me to do two things:

1.) Check in with my self about my values. What are they? Have any of them changed? Write them down. Revisit them often. Live your life, make choices, and build relationships in alignment with said values.

2.) Think of the version of me who has everything she wants. The life, relationship, job of her dreams. Who is happy and fulfilled and joyous. Ask my self/journal about these questions:

What is she like?
How does she feel?
Who do I have to be?
What is stopping me from being that version of me right now?

It seems strange, but sometimes the simple act of letting go and floating for a bit in the void is choosing your self. Sometimes getting a job is choosing your self. Sometimes deciding to be your dream-come-true self right now is choosing your self, even if where you’re at doesn’t seem like part of your dream. Sometimes asking your self “what is true for me right now?” and taking action based on that is choosing your self. Sometimes you just have to say fuck everything else that is not choosing you, or prevents you from choosing you. It’s your life, dude. Act like it.

Tallyho,
Jenny