Change is difficult because identity is not just a label. It is the thread that connects our memories, choices, loyalties, and sense of responsibility. So when we change, the fear is not merely that life will look different. The fear is that we may no longer be the person who lived the life before it.
But perhaps that is also why identity can become protective in the wrong way. Sometimes “this is just who I am” protects something true. Sometimes it protects an old survival strategy that once kept us safe but no longer lets us live. The question is not whether change makes us someone else, but whether it brings us closer to ourselves or further away from ourselves.
I greatly appreciate reading our comments. They are so thoughtful and aligned with how I feel. Thank you. I’ve been exploring this concept for sometime and it’s curious to me how in different context, the volume of various identities, both actively chosen and previously lived gets amplified, minimized, etc. I recently returned to my hometown after a decade on the opposite coast and it’s been a fascinating exploration, both and observing my own memories and loyalties to old stories. A lot of what we tell was told to serve a version of us that was needed to survive but weather through comfort, habit, loyalty or other, so few of us update the story even when we suffer by it!
Comments from people who live here and family who have little sense of interior observation to understand that I don’t need people to agree with me to commit to what I know. They feel my opinion on this place somehow challenges their commitment to it but any belief so weakly held that it’s threatened by someone’s disagreement is a red flag for me. So I guess it manifests in feeling like there’s nowhere and no one to whom I can express this utter lack of desire to be here without the criticism that it’s “just me” and I have a bad attitude.
I love to hear that your family moved on and had the courage to live by their own standards rather than the ones that (projecting my family here) are more common and agreeable to the ecosystem. Thank you again for asking + sharing
I understand better now. You are not asking anyone to agree with you, leave with you, or experience the place as you do. You are asking for enough room to say, plainly, that it is not right for you without that being turned into an accusation against everyone who stayed.
People can hear someone’s refusal of a place as a judgement of their own commitment to it. Then they stop listening to what is being said and start defending what they need the place to mean.
And I would not call my family’s path courage so much as continuing. My grandmother could return, see that it was no longer home, and still leave again without having to force that old story to fit. I think that matters. You do not have to prove that your body is right by making anyone else’s attachment wrong.
Bless you SEE and HEAR me clear. I have copied this: "People can hear someone’s refusal of a place as a judgement of their own commitment to it. Then they stop listening to what is being said and start defending what they need the place to mean." into my notes app on my phone as a reminder and m-a-y-b-e offering toward opening perspective to those possibly willing family members. As they say, everyone wants a village but no one wants to be a villager. I am personally so okay with people disagreeing with me that I forgot (as we all tend to) most people don't think like me (the irony in this!)
I won't infer my beliefs to your family, but in my experience, continuing IS courageous. Acceptance and confirmation and seeing reality vs trying to wrestle it back into the old shape and demanding to live from the past is courageous. Maybe (luckily) we've normalized continuing so much like my oblivion that people don't like disagreement, we forgot how many people actually choose to keep going. Thank you so much - this convo really helped me with some perspectives
Very grateful you shared this perspective. I can only know the truth of what I feel, but it’s hard not to see myself thru the same lens as people here, the ones who stay, as though I am the problem. “something is wrong with ME” is a daily consideration but what’s much where this essay came from: my body is not wrong. That’s as far as I’ve gotten but it’s enough. Thank you again sincerely. Did you grandma stay or leave again? I don’t think I’ll ever come back here once I leave again
That is also why I asked whether it was almost, but not quite, like coming home.
I do not see why you would be the problem. What makes you feel that way, if you do not mind me asking?
My grandmother left again. It was a three-week holiday with my mother and her younger sister, who was born there in a Japanese internment camp. But I imagine even a short return can make clear that both the place and the person have changed beyond recognition.
No, it actually felt entirely foreign. I don't have the words for it but the body is revolting. It feels jarring and wrong. The obvious similes are "a fish out of water" but it's worse than that. But I am beginning to think that this season/chapter is more about my un-becoming. Thank you for asking, btw.
I asked because my grandmother was born in the Dutch East Indies, when Indonesia was still a Dutch colony. She came to the Netherlands in 1947 and only returned to her birthplace eight or nine years ago. She no longer recognised it as home, and in a sense it did not recognise her either.
It is a very different history, of course, and separated by a much longer passage of time, but I can understand something of the bodily dislocation you describe. Perhaps un-becoming begins when an old story can no longer contain either the place or the person we have become.
Interesting piece. I think the part of you that refuses to change isn't always a self-block. Sometimes it's a body that's correctly read the soil and is conserving until the conditions shift. How do you distinguish between resistance that's yours to move through, and resistance that's the place asking to be changed first?
Brilliant reflection, and thank you. My take is there is a very real difference between block as a wound-tether and block as an accurate signal. Discernment is the work (learning this in real time personally). They can feel the same on the surface, but ‘sovereignty’ (what I’m writing toward as I build my own) to me, is a capacity to distinguish that true signal from a wound in disguise.
The FEELING I have found personally is once I look underneath, they seem to point in opposite directions. Wounds feel stubborn and want me to stay. Signals feel energizing (negatively) and want me to be somewhere else different. I guess the question then is what is the feeling reading? Me or the environment?
In all cases tho, it returns to what you mentioned: the inner place that is asking for change in the first place. When we start pathologizing all resistance as self-sabotage and we essentially just override our own wisdom, which is a pervasive and common cause of harm we see everywhere. Great think - thank you. Do you have a way to distinguish? I’m still finding the words for it honestly
I love that distinction, and it rings incredibly true. For me, the shorthand usually comes down to this: a signal is trying to protect our nervous system, but a wound is trying to protect our ego.
A wound is driven by old conditioning and shame. It’s the voice that forces us to mask, care about status, and twist ourselves into a pretzel to try and make a toxic room work because we're afraid of looking like a failure. But a true signal is pure biology. The mind can be completely calm, but the body just quietly pulls the plug and refuses to cooperate because it correctly reads that the environment is toxic.
One is fear trying to look impressive to the world. The other is just your system fiercely protecting its own soil.
Brilliant synopsis truly. As I just commented on your latest essay, I am personally in a beautiful discovery chapter of learning that difference after wayyyy too long ignoring the signal in favor of protecting the wound. I could never understand why ‘doing everything right’ fell SO WRONG for me until I finally accepted the truth about who I am. Thank you - really love your spcae.
I also couldn't understand it for a long time. It is the ultimate trap, isn't it? Checking every single box perfectly while your biology is quietly starving underneath. It takes so much radical honesty for us to finally trust our bodies over the societal blueprint. But when we do, everything changes.
So glad you're in this beautiful discovery chapter and finally honoring who you actually are. And thank you for your kind words. Excited to see your space grow. 💚🌿
Change is difficult because identity is not just a label. It is the thread that connects our memories, choices, loyalties, and sense of responsibility. So when we change, the fear is not merely that life will look different. The fear is that we may no longer be the person who lived the life before it.
But perhaps that is also why identity can become protective in the wrong way. Sometimes “this is just who I am” protects something true. Sometimes it protects an old survival strategy that once kept us safe but no longer lets us live. The question is not whether change makes us someone else, but whether it brings us closer to ourselves or further away from ourselves.
I greatly appreciate reading our comments. They are so thoughtful and aligned with how I feel. Thank you. I’ve been exploring this concept for sometime and it’s curious to me how in different context, the volume of various identities, both actively chosen and previously lived gets amplified, minimized, etc. I recently returned to my hometown after a decade on the opposite coast and it’s been a fascinating exploration, both and observing my own memories and loyalties to old stories. A lot of what we tell was told to serve a version of us that was needed to survive but weather through comfort, habit, loyalty or other, so few of us update the story even when we suffer by it!
Did it feel like coming home after all those years, or was it almost, but not quite?
Comments from people who live here and family who have little sense of interior observation to understand that I don’t need people to agree with me to commit to what I know. They feel my opinion on this place somehow challenges their commitment to it but any belief so weakly held that it’s threatened by someone’s disagreement is a red flag for me. So I guess it manifests in feeling like there’s nowhere and no one to whom I can express this utter lack of desire to be here without the criticism that it’s “just me” and I have a bad attitude.
I love to hear that your family moved on and had the courage to live by their own standards rather than the ones that (projecting my family here) are more common and agreeable to the ecosystem. Thank you again for asking + sharing
I understand better now. You are not asking anyone to agree with you, leave with you, or experience the place as you do. You are asking for enough room to say, plainly, that it is not right for you without that being turned into an accusation against everyone who stayed.
People can hear someone’s refusal of a place as a judgement of their own commitment to it. Then they stop listening to what is being said and start defending what they need the place to mean.
And I would not call my family’s path courage so much as continuing. My grandmother could return, see that it was no longer home, and still leave again without having to force that old story to fit. I think that matters. You do not have to prove that your body is right by making anyone else’s attachment wrong.
Bless you SEE and HEAR me clear. I have copied this: "People can hear someone’s refusal of a place as a judgement of their own commitment to it. Then they stop listening to what is being said and start defending what they need the place to mean." into my notes app on my phone as a reminder and m-a-y-b-e offering toward opening perspective to those possibly willing family members. As they say, everyone wants a village but no one wants to be a villager. I am personally so okay with people disagreeing with me that I forgot (as we all tend to) most people don't think like me (the irony in this!)
I won't infer my beliefs to your family, but in my experience, continuing IS courageous. Acceptance and confirmation and seeing reality vs trying to wrestle it back into the old shape and demanding to live from the past is courageous. Maybe (luckily) we've normalized continuing so much like my oblivion that people don't like disagreement, we forgot how many people actually choose to keep going. Thank you so much - this convo really helped me with some perspectives
Thank you for trusting me with it
Very grateful you shared this perspective. I can only know the truth of what I feel, but it’s hard not to see myself thru the same lens as people here, the ones who stay, as though I am the problem. “something is wrong with ME” is a daily consideration but what’s much where this essay came from: my body is not wrong. That’s as far as I’ve gotten but it’s enough. Thank you again sincerely. Did you grandma stay or leave again? I don’t think I’ll ever come back here once I leave again
That is also why I asked whether it was almost, but not quite, like coming home.
I do not see why you would be the problem. What makes you feel that way, if you do not mind me asking?
My grandmother left again. It was a three-week holiday with my mother and her younger sister, who was born there in a Japanese internment camp. But I imagine even a short return can make clear that both the place and the person have changed beyond recognition.
No, it actually felt entirely foreign. I don't have the words for it but the body is revolting. It feels jarring and wrong. The obvious similes are "a fish out of water" but it's worse than that. But I am beginning to think that this season/chapter is more about my un-becoming. Thank you for asking, btw.
I asked because my grandmother was born in the Dutch East Indies, when Indonesia was still a Dutch colony. She came to the Netherlands in 1947 and only returned to her birthplace eight or nine years ago. She no longer recognised it as home, and in a sense it did not recognise her either.
It is a very different history, of course, and separated by a much longer passage of time, but I can understand something of the bodily dislocation you describe. Perhaps un-becoming begins when an old story can no longer contain either the place or the person we have become.
Interesting piece. I think the part of you that refuses to change isn't always a self-block. Sometimes it's a body that's correctly read the soil and is conserving until the conditions shift. How do you distinguish between resistance that's yours to move through, and resistance that's the place asking to be changed first?
Brilliant reflection, and thank you. My take is there is a very real difference between block as a wound-tether and block as an accurate signal. Discernment is the work (learning this in real time personally). They can feel the same on the surface, but ‘sovereignty’ (what I’m writing toward as I build my own) to me, is a capacity to distinguish that true signal from a wound in disguise.
The FEELING I have found personally is once I look underneath, they seem to point in opposite directions. Wounds feel stubborn and want me to stay. Signals feel energizing (negatively) and want me to be somewhere else different. I guess the question then is what is the feeling reading? Me or the environment?
In all cases tho, it returns to what you mentioned: the inner place that is asking for change in the first place. When we start pathologizing all resistance as self-sabotage and we essentially just override our own wisdom, which is a pervasive and common cause of harm we see everywhere. Great think - thank you. Do you have a way to distinguish? I’m still finding the words for it honestly
I love that distinction, and it rings incredibly true. For me, the shorthand usually comes down to this: a signal is trying to protect our nervous system, but a wound is trying to protect our ego.
A wound is driven by old conditioning and shame. It’s the voice that forces us to mask, care about status, and twist ourselves into a pretzel to try and make a toxic room work because we're afraid of looking like a failure. But a true signal is pure biology. The mind can be completely calm, but the body just quietly pulls the plug and refuses to cooperate because it correctly reads that the environment is toxic.
One is fear trying to look impressive to the world. The other is just your system fiercely protecting its own soil.
Brilliant synopsis truly. As I just commented on your latest essay, I am personally in a beautiful discovery chapter of learning that difference after wayyyy too long ignoring the signal in favor of protecting the wound. I could never understand why ‘doing everything right’ fell SO WRONG for me until I finally accepted the truth about who I am. Thank you - really love your spcae.
I also couldn't understand it for a long time. It is the ultimate trap, isn't it? Checking every single box perfectly while your biology is quietly starving underneath. It takes so much radical honesty for us to finally trust our bodies over the societal blueprint. But when we do, everything changes.
So glad you're in this beautiful discovery chapter and finally honoring who you actually are. And thank you for your kind words. Excited to see your space grow. 💚🌿