The Power of Pulling Back & Graceful Healing

I wanted to bring you alongside me, as I reflect on my current journey of healing. Even while celebrating so many joyous and empowering experiences in my life, relationships, and in my work, there have been several years of being faced with some heartbreaking challenges in life. This past year in particular has been when I’ve needed to really focus on taking one step at a time to keep moving forward, while staying true to myself and still trying my best to have hope.

I feel that I have always had strength to push through and be resilient while still doing all the things for everybody. Not this year. I needed to adjust my approach to coping so that I could focus on deep reflection and purposeful steps to lean in with grace. This meant I needed to pull back my energy from many aspects of life and some of my most cherished relationships.

Finding myself again meant activating the grit to prioritize my energy inwards. I’ve done this many times in my life, just not to this extreme I guess. It’s tough, especially when I feel that people may “expect” me to be there for them more or wonder why I haven’t been reaching out as often as I typically would…ahhh yes, all the things we feel guilty for and think about in the quiet moments. Honestly, part of me just can’t bullshit and tell people, “I’m fine” or to tell only the “good stuff” and leave out everything else. I definitely couldn’t possibly have had the energy to tell everyone what was really going on, also out of respect and dignity for those involved. So there you have it – the pull back. With the best intentions of love and grace. I wonder if you are reflecting on times you have needed to pull back from situations or relationships, or if you are feeling that might be a good decision for you at this time.

I learned a lot about myself in this season of life, and it has been profound for me to experience what I have learned about others when I slowed down to step back and not be so involved in everything with everyone.

I observed people focusing on jealousy, intentionally hurting others, comparison, judgement, blame, misunderstanding, dishonesty, dysfunctional patterns of behaviour, misaligned values, choices that broke trust, and lack of meaningful communication and connection. I believe that for some, this may bring them a temporary feeling of power over others or feeling like they have “won”, perhaps trying to fill a deep unhealed void within themselves, but often likely leads to feelings of guilt and regret, and of course, damaged relationships. For those people, I hope they can find their own healing journey.

This reinforced my need to reduce the impact of those behaviours in my life so that I could heal and standfast in my way of being and stay true to who I am, who I have worked so hard to become. I am ready to lean back in to my cherished relationships and create more connection in meaningful ways, one step at a time.

I am choosing to embrace peace, kindness, laughter, simple joy, honesty, trust, balance, compassion, talking through the hard stuff, healthy boundaries, celebrating the successes, consistency, and unconditional love. It is a journey, and there is no such thing as perfect, however when we are intentional about these priorities, we all win.