LOVE LETTERS
Honest stories that lead to real lessons.
No lessons handed down from a summit. These are the letters I wrote on the way back. These are the stories of how I learned to ROAR and what I do every day to keep up the practice.
A LETTER FROM JULIE
I can't remember the first morning. I only remember the shape of it: over an hour's drive, then a slow loop of the parking lot until I found the space, and then ten minutes sitting in the car trying to gear up to go in.
I wasn't weighing my options. I didn't believe I had any. I was justifying — trying to find enough emotional resource to open the car door and walk into that building.
Some days I couldn't find it. I would back out of the space and pull onto the road, and my shoulders would drop, my chest would loosen, and the only thought in my head was how fast I could get to the safety of my own front door.
The next thought was guilt. Then shame. Not being enough. Being too much. Wearing golden handcuffs, drenched in despair, and not understanding why. Shouldn't I be happy?
That went on for nine months. I was in therapy. I was meditating. I was negotiating my exit.
The last day came. I pulled in, walked up to the office doors, planted a smile on my face and pretended to be engaged — only I couldn't pull it off. I reeked of sorrow.
Looking back, I was an overstuffed garbage bin at a popular beach the day after Labor Day. Full of self-pity and self-loathing, playing a role I was never meant to play. And even full, I kept angling things in and shoving them down. I wanted so badly to be the one who never let anyone down, the one who could get it done — until the resentment came over the top.
I had been cast in storylines and roles I never noticed agreeing to. The persona built up over years until I didn't recognize myself. I was lost. I couldn't hear my intuition, because I had stopped listening — and it cost me myself.
The months of negotiating were brutal. There was a dynamic at play that I had a hand in building, and my pulling out of the family business was read as betrayal. Everyone has a perspective and a story about it. Mine is that it was past time for me to move on, and in the end I was getting out. The cost of staying had gotten too high.
I have had many painful lessons in this lifetime. This one — the move I made to reconnect with myself — cost me the most. And I would make it again. I found me. And now I write my own story, from my own point of view.
The Parking Lot
I lost a family and gained myself.
Growth doesn't have to be this dramatic. Mine was. The drama came from years of silencing my truth, agreeing that I came second to what everyone else needed, and letting myself get resentful about it. I didn't know my worth. I looked for it in my role instead of in who I am. I was too far inside the dynamic to see it. I couldn't see it until I blew it up and sifted through the ashes.
At fifty I quit. Not because I had a plan. Believe me, I did not.
The last time I walked out of the business I had helped build, there was no fanfare and there were no teary goodbyes. There was me, my things, a car I owned outright, and a scared, sad drive home. I had no idea what was next, or what I was meant to do when the sun came up the next morning.
I turned the radio up and sang out loud.
I was free to find out.
So if you are sitting in a parking lot somewhere — an actual one, or the kind with no pavement — I'm not going to tell you to open the door. You'll know when. What I will tell you is that the person waiting on the other side of that decision is already in there. That person has been in there the whole time. Today's work is smaller than you think: start listening again.
Take your time. The door doesn't lock behind anyone.
With love,
Julie
Author · Coach · Podcast Guest. Circle Keeper
P.S. — The book is the longer version of the way out. It's called ROAR: Your Sacred Rebellion. And if you'd like more letters like this one, leave your email below — no noise, no treadmill, just something true once in a while.
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Now, go ROAR. Not quietly. Not politely. Radiantly.
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