Dear June, sometimes I wish I could be on my own.

"The constant thinking about how others will react to anything I do or say and trying so hard to be true to me, is a clash that reverberates through my soul."

Dear June,

“Sometimes I wish I could be on my own. Just looking after me. The constant thinking about how others will react to anything I do or say and trying so hard to be true to me, is a clash that reverberates through my soul. I do choose them over and over again because this is life, but in my dreams and my wanderings of the mind, I have a small cottage on a Scottish hill and I write, paint and teach to my hearts content. But maybe having this mind scape is enough. Because in the end, love will always win.”

This writer gave consent for their message to be shared and responded to publicly.

Dear friend,

Thank you for entrusting this space with your dreams and your fears. I see you, I am you.

I, too, have a mind scape that looks much like yours. A dreamy cottage, an overgrown garden, and ducks wandering both inside and out.

It’s a happy place where responsibilities amount to caring for animals and tending the vegetable patch. To cross-stitching, writing, and gazing off into the sunset at the end of each restful day.

Surely, a worthy mental escape, and perhaps a goal that the sum of your actions will someday lead you to if this is the life that truly lives in your heart. As you said, “love will always win.”

I do believe that what is meant for us will always find us. Certainly not what we think we want for ourselves, but what is right has a way of attracting us in the end.

I wonder for you (and myself) what it would be like to tend to ourselves where we are currently planted first. Though the conditions might not be ideal, the soil rough and dry, we persist in reaching hungrily towards the sun.

Other flowers may bloom and grow around us, and we may feel too eager to prove ourselves among them, but it is not in our control how and when we bloom. It is only in the consistency to which we try, only for ourselves, to stretch into the light that we find it reaching back to pull us up in equal measure.

In my own life, and I am no expert yet at this, I have been working to pause before I speak or react to those in my company. The pause allows me to hear my automatic response, the one I think will please the original speaker, and then to hear - however fleetingly - how that response makes me feel internally.

Do I feel discord, knowing I am lying to fuel their ego?

Do I regret knowing that, in my immediate reaction, I would compromise something of myself?

Do I feel assured that my response aligns with my beliefs?

Do I feel acceptance, that though my response might be for their benefit, I know they need it, and it costs me nothing to lend them this kindness?

Do I feel like this is worth my response at all? Do I recognize a lost cause when I see one, and perhaps silence hurts me less?

It’s a moment, not always an accessible one, but I find that when I can allow for it, it helps differentiate the anxious reaction from the feelings attached to it.

Before I give away a piece of myself to be more digestible to others, can I perhaps honor that I deserve protection and peace more than they deserve my catering response?

I have struggled with this feeling for most of my life. My value has historically been tied to how acceptable I am to others. I am right if I made them laugh. I am valid if they agree with what I have to say. I am safer to hide parts of myself that I know they will not like or understand.

I write about this often.

There is nothing wrong with these parts of us that learned protection through adaptation in this, or any, manner.

Somewhere along the way, this was how you survived in the world, and how could survival be wrong?

Your mental escape tells me that you crave a space to show up for yourself. Not that your sole desire is to be alone on a hillside (lovely as this sounds), but that it is to be safe in who and how you are. Protected from the opinions of others that threaten to hurt your inner child or present-day identity.

That protection is within you. The love you have for yourself will keep you safe; it will indeed always win. It will be that cottage you find reprieve and comfort in. It will be rich and lovely and earthy and grounded. It will see storms pass and delight you with the safety of a home well cared for. One that no one can take away and no one can enter without your permission.

You build this cottage stone by stone, each time you choose yourself and realize you were okay & safe doing so.

I am rooting for you every step of the way.

with gratitude,

-June

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