How To Stop Leaving The People You Love The Most

Sit down. Intentionally. Close your eyes.

Ask yourself to imagine your 89th birthday party. Steep in this daydream for a full minute. Who has their arm around you? Who is at the table sharing a part of your story? What is being said in your honor?  Where are you celebrating this day?

If this image brings a wave of fear (or fear of regret), then you may be a runner. Running from things and people that care about you. You run because they care. You run because they chose you.

Being chosen is terrifying. It means you have to face the fact that you are enough. You are more than enough by yourself. You are not a waiting “other half”. You are an intimately whole-self, and now someone wants to share a piece of this beautiful self. Let them in. Let them choose you.

Let yourself be chosen by choosing yourself first. Listen and trust your intuition. Move towards places and people that see you fully. Let go of memories that celebrate fear and instead remember that specific fear and how it betrayed your trust. Interrupt self-talk that says, “You can’t…you shouldn’t.” On your 89th birthday, what will you be the most proud of? What will 7-year-old you be the most proud of?

Begin to make choices that rub right up against your fear. Pain is as certain as change. Running from it, or the fear of it, is like running from change. You can’t. But choosing yourself and a well-lived life in spite of pain is the space where growth happens.

So choose yourself and this certainly uncertain thing called life, and let yourself be chosen. Notice and name fears as they surface, but do not let them be your only guests at that magnificent and unique 89th birthday party of yours.