I’m not on many newsletters anymore, mostly because I never have time to keep up with the emails and then I find myself getting annoyed when they pile up. So I’ve unsubscribed from any of them that send content frequently enough to annoy me. Susannah Conway is one of the few I still receive and I often like reading what’s on her mind.
Here’s what she shared this week from her instagram in response to it being her 45th birthday:
This feels like a really massive pivot point, as if this is truly my mid-way point between birth and death (assuming I make it to 90). I’m not having a midlife crisis, but rather I’m feeling a sense of “well that’s it then, NO MORE MESSING AROUND!” I am utterly grown-up and know myself so thoroughly I don’t want to apologise for anything anymore. Not that I have been, but there is always a lingering “sorry” somewhere isn’t there. Sorry if I’m taking up too much space. Sorry if I’m speaking about things I shouldn’t speak about. Sorry if my beliefs don’t match yours…
Having true as one of my core desired feelings this really resonated with me. I find that I definitely also have a lingering “sorry” all the time and I want to put it down. I don’t have any desire to be arrogant or full of myself. But I do want to be able to own who I am and just make peace with it.
This doesn’t mean I don’t continue to grow and improve, those are my core values and I will always work on myself. But, I don’t want to spend my life apologizing. I don’t want to choose to be with people around whom this feeling is heightened. I want to be able to embrace me. Embrace who I already am, both the goods and the bads.
Glennon Doyle Melton often speaks about how we can do hard things but we can’t do easy things and this is so very true for me. I have a hard time with small, easy daily life things that so many people seem to move through seamlessly and yet I can do many things others would consider hard. Instead of beating myself up about the small things, I just want to learn to acknowledge this about myself, get the help I need for the easy things and spend my energy on the hard things.
I know that so much of life is about learning who you are and making peace with that instead of fighting who you should be. And as I approach my mid-life, I want to make sure to remember that not only intellectually but in my being. I want to shift my mindset and way of living so it honors who I am more and leads me to a more fulfilling life.
One without unnecessary apologies.
On My Mind is a year-long project for 2018. You can read more about my projects for 2018 here.
Leave a Reply