Audio version:
Hello, friend.
I’m writing to you from my corner this morning with something soft and honest on my heart. Pour yourself something warm, settle in, and let me tell you what I’ve been noticing.
There’s something I’ve grown bored with, and I’m so grateful for the boredom.
I’m bored of unwinding the same balls of limiting thoughts. You know the ones. The thoughts that loop and loop and keep us circling the same patterns, only to land us back in the same hurtful results. I’m bored with how much of my time and energy they ask for. I’m bored with how awful they leave me feeling. And feeling into that kind of awful makes me sad, and tired, until something in me whispers, there has to be a change that actually works.
Lately, I’ve been noticing something tender about how my own mind moves. When my defense responses aren’t on high alert, when I’m not braced, there’s a softer way of responding waiting underneath. It’s quieter. It’s kinder. And when I land in that softer place, oh, it feels good. It feels accomplished. It feels hopeful, in that way hope feels when it isn’t trying so hard.
For so long, the sad, sensitive cloak was a familiar, well-greased safety space for me. It made sense once. It kept me feeling like I had somewhere to retreat to. But as I grew, that cloak stopped being protection. It became a weighted jacket I was longing to shake off.
What did wearing it look like in real life?
It looked like huge amounts of unbalanced sensitivity. It looked like taking everything personally. Never quite leaving room to consider the other person’s circumstance. Being so fragile that the smallest swerve from what I’d expected could send me into a tailspin. I remember the blaming I used to do when something challenging came my way. I couldn’t hold the situation generously, I didn’t have the strength to hold it at all — so I deflected. I made it someone else’s fault.
And then, recently, life offered me a real test.
I had a deeply challenging conversation with someone I love. They were angry with me; there was a lot of blaming, a lot of shaming. I listened. I listened some more. And when I felt myself reaching the edge of what I could hold, I said, I need to get off the phone now and process. I told them I loved them. I said goodbye.
What I realized afterward, sitting with my breath, was that strength is exactly that. Strength is not talking meanly back. Strength does not match their meanness. Strength is holding the space for someone else to release what they need to release, and then stepping away when the holding becomes too much for me to carry.
The other big piece… and I think this might be the bigger piece, is not believing the meanness.
I used to come off a hard conversation and believe the person. Whatever they said about me in the heat of their hurt, I’d carry home and try it on like it was mine. Now, I let their hurt belong to them. I take responsibility for what is mine to own. Not more. Not less. That alone has changed so much.
So much of my growing has come from this quiet, ongoing practice, the ability to see and feel inside myself. To stay accountable to myself. To develop an objective, generous perspective of myself that offers many choices instead of one well-worn groove.
The cloak is on the floor. And I have taken the jacket off.
And the boredom? The boredom is a doorway. I’m walking through it. I hope you’ll walk through yours, too.
You don’t have to wrestle the limiting thought to the ground, my friend. You only have to notice it, name it gently, and choose differently — one small, brave step at a time.
That’s how the cloak comes off.
With so much love from my corner,
Sarah
P.S. If you’d like a little practice that will help you unravel limiting thoughts, give this simple practice a try.
It’s a great one to have in your back pocket.
The ACT Check-In
