Life is short. Most people are understandably focused on their own lives, goals, and priorities.

Likability was never a reliable measure of goodness. It was sometimes simply nothing more than a sign of how much had been suppressed. What becomes possible, slowly, is disappointing others without disappearing in the process.

Releasing the need for approval requires allowing others their disappointment, risking being misread, accepting that integrity may cost belonging. It doesn't reject connection. It denies the hidden contracts of self-denial that connections sometimes ask for.

When I remember the dock, I no longer think about the person I was trying to escape.

I think about the woman sitting quietly among the reeds and lilies, listening to the water, unaware that she was practicing for the rest of her life.

So perhaps there is something sacred in learning to look gently at ourselves as we disappear and become.

It All Begins Here

Beauty