Returning Home To Yourself

I hope that you value your inner voice enough to make the effort to hear it.

Do take care though, because fear has a sneaky way of sounding the same, and sometimes that voice is just dutifully echoing back the voice of someone you respect - but who is not you.

But, listen regardless and do the work to distinguish where that voice comes from. Trust that you can untangle the threads and find your own voice in there.

And if it is the one speaking up, honor it by really listening. Trust that it’s holding you accountable for remaining true to yourself. It is gently guiding you back to your path.

I’m a sensitive person, in the sense that a) I tend to be quick to have feelings about things and usually explore those feelings thoroughly, and b) I am easily affected by the energy of people around me which can take time to offload. People who (often unknowingly) have strong energies can overpower or sway mine if I don’t advocate for myself.

I spend a lot of my time exploring my feelings and having discussions with others about theirs. I am endlessly fascinated by how emotional humans are by nature - and I think it is so beautiful. I think of the times that I have made rigid schedules for myself and fallen short of them because life is far more complicated than what checklists and schedules suggest. We are emotional beings and need to account for the flux that comes with it.

Living as a sensitive person, I need to have say over my pace so that I can breathe and process things. I need flexibility to potentially redirect when I feel an emotional response - those are sometimes important compasses for me to consider. I need my autonomy acknowledged and encouraged so I can regularly check in with myself and hear my own voice, without feeling the influence of others. 

This alone time can look like many different things - solo dates somewhere beautiful, self-care routines, working from home for a bit - it depends on the circumstances. Most often I’m able to take these intentional, but small actions and feel back on track. But if I’ve been neglecting those needs for too long, and/or feeling overpowered by the energy around me I can get off course, instead listening to the muddled influences I carry, and confusing them with my own voice. When I’m there I feel distant from myself and the solution costs more, and can mean radical change.

Decisive change can be so emotionally exhausting and disorienting, uncomfortable, abrupt. But it can’t speak to the slow burn of ignoring your own voice and the distrust it breeds in yourself.

I’m trying to practice not holding things so tightly to help with change. Things change constantly, people live - let them. All we can control is ourselves and cherish the things in our world while we get to be in their presence. Celebrate your experiences and be so grateful for them, but hold things with gentle hands so that they can breathe and evolve as they see fit.

Needing time alone, thinking of your own feelings and path and making changes based on them could all be seen flatly as selfish. But, if you are a sensitive person who can be mutable to other people’s energy (as my sister puts it), advocating for yourself is a non-negotiable. Life looks like regularly setting boundaries whenever the feeling arises of your personhood diminishing and trusting that by doing this you are ensuring that you are staying true to yourself. You have to care for yourself in order to have anything to give to others.

Be brave knowing that striving to be unwaveringly yourself isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s easy to doubt yourself and feel unsure. But if the alternative is ignoring your own voice or folding to pressures, I guess pick your poison.

Suss out if the things calling out to you ring true to your own voice and if they do, I hope you love yourself enough to care for that voice, and act on it when it feels right.