“Never make yourself smaller in order to survive.”
This, my therapist told me two summers ago when the pandemic was raging. I had called to tell her we were moving to Omaha, Nebraska, of all places.
I had a job offer. We could sell the house, sell the school and buy ourselves out of a restaurant that was shuttered because we all thought we were going to die if we left our homes.
Therapists aren’t supposed to tell you what to do, but she’s known me long enough to know I hardly take her advice and that I was willing to shrink to nothingness to keep my head above water. She had to at least try to stop me.
I took her advice this time. We didn’t move.
I almost allowed myself to do it again this past week. Shrink that is. I wanted to pull the plug on my sweet little school. I wanted to walk out and hide in a cave and never come out. Or, go back to Plan A: O-M-A-H-A–far away from any soul I know.
I wanted to shrink and say “okay” to some who wanted things their way.
But it wasn’t okay, and my therapist’s words came barreling through my brain and gave me permission to say “no.”
It didn’t feel good. It never does.
Then it hit me.
They, too, shouldn’t have to make themselves smaller to survive.
No one should.
I cannot fault them for leaving if staying was forcing them to become a smaller version of themselves.
And as I believe Glennon Doyle has said, “there is no such thing as one way liberation.”
Maybe if we all stopped shrinking, we’d all be free.
Running a school is a hell of a job. I don’t recommend it, while simultaneously fully recommending it. I see my job as holding a space for each person to build a capacity for receiving what life offers, even when it offers a shit-show as it seems to have wanted to do for at least two years now, and especially this past week.
But here I am ready to face another day, not smaller, but with a larger capacity to hold more of life, thanks to my therapist and to the universe, which seems to think I have more to learn in this life.
Thanks for reading.
