I Didn't Know Who I Was. Then I Met Her.

Eighteen months after my daughter was born, I was done.

Done fighting.

Done fixing.

Done wishing for things to be different.

Most of all, done feeling like an intruder in my own life.

I had completely exhausted myself inside and out. Everything I had learned to protect myself and cope in my life was no longer working. And worst of all, I felt like I was carrying the weight of everyone’s world, and if I stopped it would all come crashing down.

So…

I kept showing up to a job I hated.

I smiled while secretly consuming every book, podcast, and article that promised to fix me.

I made sure my husband didn't have to carry the stress at home.

I cared for my daughter the way she deserved.

I disappeared while always choosing everyone else.

The pressure was crushing me, strangling my sense of self, and the harder I fought the more it tightened.

Then I stopped, before I lost anymore.

I don’t mean this to sound like a rock-bottom kind of way. Nothing catastrophic happened.

I simply stopped trying to carry everything.

I surrendered to not knowing what would happen when I finally laid down what I had been carrying all along.

Plus I was convinced I had already failed, so for the first time I stopped fighting to become someone else.

The first thing I did: I asked my mind and body to call a truce.

To put down their weapons.

To stop fighting each other.

To stop fighting me.

I thought when I gave up, it would feel like a numb resignation. But something unexpected happened instead. The mental noise started to quiet. Day by day… All the fears, inadequacies, comparisons, and judgements that had always been present started to dull.

The crushing responsibility lightened, and I started to notice myself underneath all the other voices. I wasn’t someone new, I just had never been quiet enough to hear myself.

And each day I became more acquainted with myself.

I could hear what my mind was saying.

I could feel how my body responded.

The only difference was now I was finally part of the conversation instead of the wall trying to put myself into boxes that I could analyze.

I couldn’t believe I had spent my entire life talking over her.

Shrinking her.

Explaining her away.

Waiting for someone else to tell me who I was supposed to be. So I could be that version for them.

But now, all on her own, here she was. In all of her sarcastic, inappropriate, validating glory. All I had to do was give up control. Which I know sounds so simple. But the journey I had to get here was nothing short or simple, but it was worth it when I finally gave myself the space to notice she was there all along.

Then things started to change, in big life changing ways. And not because I forced them, created them, or wanted to believe it would change. Because I let them.

For the first time I wasn’t swimming upstream, trying to escape my body with anxiety.

My mind with judgements against me.

I was just here, with myself.

I was whole. All parts of me were communicating, and I was able to see the whole picture.

I could hear what my mind was actually asking for. What my body needed from me to support it. I started listening.

If I was hungry, I ate.

If I was tired, I rested.

If I was overwhelmed, I stepped away.

I started building myself back brick by brick. I would even argue that I was learning about myself each day, whatever version of myself this was. I was giving her permission to just be her, without an undercurrent of shoulds. It was really exciting… And freeing.

Every time I listened and acted on one of my needs, even the smallest one that seemed silly to pay attention to. I was giving myself new information, that what I needed mattered. What I wanted mattered, and most of all that I mattered.

The funny thing is, the more I trusted in myself, the more it felt like my body also started trusting me too.. My anxiety lessened because my mind and body didn’t need to scream to get my attention. I started enjoying motherhood. I was more present in my daily life and what I wanted for my future…

Those tiny moments became evidence.

Every time I listened to myself instead of dismissing myself, I collected another piece of proof that I could be trusted.

Trust wasn't something I found.

It was something I practiced.

Then I did the ultimate trust fall in my life.

My husband and I decided to list our house of horrors for sale.

We broke even.

We decided to leave our jobs in our hometown and buy a business in an area we had never lived in.

We thrived.

I became a stay at home mom… sort of. I helped manage my husband’s clinic, but I got to be home with my babies.

Looking back, selling the house wasn't the brave part.

Leaving our jobs wasn't the brave part.

Buying a business wasn't even the brave part.

The brave part was believing that the quiet voice inside me deserved as much attention as every loud voice around me.

Once I started listening to her, everything else became possible.

Motherhood didn't make me lose myself.

It simply created enough pressure that I could no longer survive by abandoning myself.

It demanded one of two things:

Keep performing...

Or finally meet the woman who had been waiting underneath it all.

And it turns out, I like her.

Still here,

Bethany

Protection, understanding, unruly confidence.

-Nettles